between & among

• Between (AMONG). preposition. Among two or more people or things.

The money was divided equally between several worthy causes.

We drank two bottles of wine between four of us.

Trade between the two countries has increased sharply in the past year.

There is a great deal of similarity between Caroline and her mother.

You'll have to choose between (= choose either) a holiday or a new washing machine.

• Among. preposition. Part of a group of people or things.

I saw a few familiar faces among the crowd.

Rescue teams searched among the wreckage for survivors.

A decision that has caused a lot of anger among women.

Relax, you're among friends.

She has worked as an estate agent among other things.

SUGGESTION: Go to "Listening" and listen to Bill Vlasic's report on General Motors reporting a second-quarter loss of $15.5 billion.

Charlie Rose: a conversation with Orhan Pamuk

A one-hour conversation with Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk about his new essay collection: Other Colors.

Don't mess with them!

(from www.livingingperu.com)

The FBI had an opening for an assassin. After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were 3 finalists: two men and a woman. For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. 'We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances.' Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair . . . Kill her!!' The man said, 'You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife.' The agent said, 'Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home.'

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, 'I tried, but I can't kill my wife.' The agent said, 'You don't have what it takes. Take your wife home.'

Finally, it was the woman's turn...She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, wiping the sweat from her brow. 'This gun is loaded with blanks' she said. ' I had to beat him to death with the chair.

MORAL: Don't mess with women.

NUMBERS

13- 30 - 14 - 40 - 15 -50 - 16 - 60 - 17 - 70 - 18 - 80 - 19 - 90

55 - 81 - 100 - 250 - 376 - 499 - 783 - 977 - 1000 - 2500

10,000 - 25,000 - 100,000 - 250,000 - 1,000,000 - 2, 500,000

numbers.mp3

Bench Strength: Grooming Your Next CEO

(An excerpt from Harvard Business Review)
By Jay A. Conger & Robert M. Fulmer


Finding a new CEO goes beyond maintaining a roster of talent. Smart companies link succession planning with leadership development.

What could be more vital to a company's long-term health than the choice and cultivation of its future leaders? And yet, while companies maintain meticulous lists of candidates who could at a moment's notice step into the shoes of a key executive, an alarming number of newly minted leaders fail spectacularly, ill prepared to do the jobs for which they supposedly have been groomed.

Look at Coca-Cola's M. Douglas Ivester, longtime CFO and Robert Goizueta's second in command, who became CEO after Goizueta's death. Ivester was forced to resign in two and a half years, thanks to a serious slide in the company's share price, some bad public-relations moves, and the poor handling of a product contamination scare in Europe. Or consider Mattel's Jill Barad, whose winning track record in marketing catapulted her into the top job—but didn't give her insight into the financial and strategic aspects of running a large corporation.

Ivester and Barad failed, in part, because although each was accomplished in at least one area of management, neither had mastered more general competencies such as public relations, designing and managing acquisitions, building consensus, and supporting multiple constituencies. They're not alone. The problem is not just that the shoes of the departed are too big; it's that succession planning, as traditionally conceived and executed, is too narrow and hidebound to uncover and correct skill gaps that can derail even the most promising young executives.

By marrying succession planning and leadership development, you get the best of both.
However, in our research into the factors that contribute to a leader's success or failure, we've found that certain companies do succeed in developing deep and enduring bench strength by approaching succession planning as more than the mechanical process of updating a list. Indeed, they've combined two practices—succession planning and leadership development—to create a long-term process for managing the talent roster across their organizations. In most companies, the two practices reside in separate functional silos, but they are natural allies because they share a vital and fundamental goal: getting the right skills in the right place. ...

Focus on development
The fundamental rule—the one on which the other four rest—is that succession management must be a flexible system oriented toward developmental activities, not a rigid list of high-potential employees and the slots they might fill. By marrying succession planning and leadership development, you get the best of both: attention to the skills required for senior management positions along with an educational system that can help managers develop those skills.

It's a lesson that might have helped Coca-Cola and Mattel. Coke's Ivester was given the top job largely as a reward for his financial savvy and years of loyalty to Goizueta and the company; but not enough attention was paid to how his particular skills might apply to the broader role. And as for Barad, she had grown Mattel's Barbie brand nearly tenfold in less than a decade, yet her controlling management style and lack of experience in finance, strategy, and the handling of Wall Street—essential capabilities for any CEO—proved to be her downfall. Early intervention might have exposed her limitations and provided an opportunity to develop these skills—and perhaps would have kept her career on track. And indeed, Robert Eckert, who became CEO at Mattel after Barad, links succession directly to development efforts.

It's not just about training. Leadership development, as traditionally practiced, focuses on one-off educational events, but research at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, has shown that participants often return to the office from such events energized and enthusiastic only to be stifled by the reality of corporate life. It's far more effective to pair classroom training with real-life exposure to a variety of jobs and bosses—using techniques like job rotation, special assignments such as establishing a regional office in a new country, and "action learning," which pulls together a group of high-potential employees to study and make recommendations on a pressing topic, such as whether to enter a new geographical area or experiment with a new business model.

Leadership development, as traditionally practiced, focuses on one-off educational events.
Eli Lilly, for example, has a biannual action-learning program that brings together potential leaders, selected by line managers and the human resources department, to focus on a strategic business issue chosen by the CEO. Eighteen employees identified as having at least executive-director potential, representing a mix of functions and regions, participate in a six-week session in which they meet with subject matter experts, best-practice organizations, customers, and thought leaders, and then analyze what they've learned. In 2000, one such team was charged with developing an e-business strategy as a new avenue of growth—an issue that was a pressing concern at the time. The group interviewed more than 150 people over five weeks and in the final week developed a set of recommendations to present to senior managers—who took their ideas quite seriously. For example, the group recommended naming an e-executive and providing a certain level of funding to the initiative. Without hesitation, the CEO responded, "We will appoint an e-executive within two weeks, and he or she will report to me…appropriate funding will be made available." And he followed through on those promises.

Learning in action
Action-learning programs such as Lilly's serve a dual purpose: They provide developmental experiences for employees—who are forced to look beyond functional silos to solve major strategic problems and thus learn something of what it takes to be a general manager—and they result in a useful work product for the company. Such programs have increased in importance because many companies, in downsizing and creating economies of scale, have eliminated a number of the roles that used to be prime training grounds for top management.

Look at Dow Chemical. Under its old organizational structure, some sixty countries had country managers—who were, in essence, country presidents—to whom all the business units and functions reported. These roles served as excellent opportunities for developing general management skills. In 1995, the company consolidated into thirty global business units built around business and functional specialties like the manufacture of a specific set of chemicals. Under this structure, all functions report to the global business-unit leaders, and the country manager is essentially an integrator. The new structure allows Dow to enjoy the economies of scale now permitted by the relaxing of trade barriers, but it reduces the number of developmental opportunities by half. In addition, about ten years ago an employee might have been a country manager in his or her late thirties to mid-forties. Today the average age of those heading the global lines of business is mid-forties to early fifties, which means that people wait longer to step into the role.

One way to provide general management experience in this environment is to launch small joint ventures or internal enterprises. Managers can also make lateral moves across functions and business units. For example, one of Dow's global business-unit heads served for a time as president of operations in the Asia-Pacific region to gain a cross-functional perspective. And a future leader in the research organization was named vice president for purchasing, to broaden her expertise.

Opportunities like these should be incorporated into individuals' development plans, with mechanisms to trigger associated developmental activities as needed. Lilly's group development review (GDR) is mandatory for the approximately 500 employees who are identified through the company's talent assessment process as having executive potential. The GDR is a periodic, in-depth review of a single person, involving input from both past and present supervisors (the employee is not present for the meeting). In a facilitated ninety-minute discussion, the group identifies the next steps the employee should take, gathering input from others in the organization if necessary. The immediate supervisor then shares a summary of the results with the employee, who, with the supervisor, is responsible for incorporating the feedback into his or her development plan.

One way to provide general management experience ... is to launch small joint ventures or internal enterprises.
A marketing manager we'll call Bob was the subject of a recent GDR session. During the review his current and previous supervisors concluded that he was overly dependent on his strategic-thinking skills and needed more operational experience before he could be promoted to the executive level. Bob's supervisor shared this information with his peers during the marketing function's next succession management meeting, and the team agreed to help Bob round out his skills by placing him in a key sales role in Europe. When an employee goes through a significant transition such as Bob's—taking on an important role without the experience usually required—Lilly generally mitigates the risk by placing the person with employees who are already strong contributors. Company leaders also make periodic progress checks and may send the employee to a training program or appoint a mentor (not the employee's boss) to give hands-on guidance.


Jay A. Conger is a professor of organizational behavior at the London Business School and a senior research scientist at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations in Los Angeles.

Robert M. Fulmer is the academic director at Duke Corporate Education in Durham, North Carolina, and a distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

New York Times Podcast (Backstory): Bill Vlasic on General Motors reporting a second-quarter loss of $15.5 billion

JB: This is Backstory, a daily conversation with New York Times reporters on the stories they’re covering. I’m Jane Bornemeier, editor of New York Times radio.

Today I’m talking to Jim Vlasic in Detroit about enormous losses reported by General Motors in their 2nd quarter. Bill thanks for talking to me today.

BV: Oh I’m glad to be on, thanks.

JB: So General Motors has had some historic losses in the 2nd quarter, give us some other details I mean how big are these losses and put them in perspective with the other US carmakers…

BV: Well, General Motors announced a 15.5 billion dollar loss for the 2nd quarter which I believe it’s among their largest quarterly losses ever. It’s significant there’s no question about it, some of this was attributed to charges that they took for a variety of issues: job cuts, factory closings, continued payments for their Delphi part subsidiary that’s in bankruptcy...but they lost over 6 billion dollars on operations alone…and that’s a large number and it goes to how difficult their 2nd quarter has been in the US market for GM and the other automakers…

JB: And is this largely a result of falling sales or what can you attribute these losses to exactly…

BV: Ah...the sales are down substantially, GM US sales for the three-month period were down 20%...this is a big number and not just sales but revenues were down almost 33% which means not only they’re selling a lot less vehicles, they’re not making money on them either…and this has to do with just absolute demise of the big SUV market and the weakness in the pickup truck market which are the two traditional profit centers for GM, Ford and Chrysler…

JB: This may be a little of hair-splitting but is it clear that people aren’t just buying cars at all…or that they’re not buying that kind of cars, the big cars that General Motors makes and they’ve actually switched to smaller cars and therefore are benefitting different automakers than GM…

BV: Well,both…the economy is clearly…keeping…people out of the car market…that had been a new year’s path…through June… first half of the year overall sales for all manufacturers were down 10%...The projections are that 2008 will be one of the lowest levels of overall sales of the industry in about 15 years…So yes…people are not going to buy new cars like they have in years past…Secondly, they’re fleeing from big trucks with their 15 miles per gallon engines into smaller vehicles, particularly in the May-time period, May and June, their drop off in sales of bigger vehicles was unprecedented really, and people are just stampeding to smaller cars...unfortunately for the Detroit automakers while their small car sales are going up, they really weren’t prepared for the kind of demand they’re seeing so ironically they’re short on inventories…

JB: What do the latest sales figures up-to-date tell you overall about the health of the US car market?

BV: Earlier in the year automakers thought that the 2nd half of the year would be better and there would be a recovery…It’s not looking that way, it’s looking like the economy and the continued pressures in the mortgages and credit and just …disposable income in general…are keeping people out of the car market and they’re not necessarily going to come back in the second half of 08. This may be a downturn that stretches well into 2009.

JB: Is it your sense that the carmakers are in a complete panic or that there are some calm processes going on to try to change production or to do something positive besides cutting costs and laying off workers to turn this situation around…?

BV: Well, we’ve been in a huge restructuring process for all the Detroit automakers for the last three years, I mean… between the three of them they have already cut more than a hundred thousand blue-collar jobs since 2006, there have been more cuts, there’s a ten thousand white-collar jobs being cut right now between GM, Ford and Chrysler …so they’re cutting costs dramatically… but it’s almost like the scuba diver who’s under water and hoping his oxygen doesn’t run out before he can get to the surface… I mean these companies are burning through their cash reserves and… yes they can cut costs but you can only go so far on that regard, they’re hoping that their cash and their liquidity will hold out while they’re making very dramatic shifts in production from the trucks and SUV’s that were stable to smaller cars…

JB: Who turns out to have had the more foresight about what was about to happen among American companies and among companies overall, who was the most prescient?

The three American companies are all pretty much in the same boat, in the sense that they have been very heavily weighted toward the bigger vehicles and of course those vehicles generated incredible profits in the 90’s and earlier this decade so I would say that General Motors is further ahead in globalizing their product development which allows them to spread their costs around the world but on the other hand to look at the profit and loss statements GM is hurting the worst there so it’s a mixed blessing…Clearly the one company that has done the best in this market so far’s been Honda…Honda never built a V8 engine, never built a pickup truck, never built a full size SUV…That was their strategy for many years and they never deviated from it but on top of that they have put their resources and their efforts into fuel efficient cars that have very high quality and this is exactly what consumers are looking for today.

JB: Bill thanks so much for your time…

BV: Oh sure no problem, thank you.

That was Times’ reporter Bill Vlasic on the Quarterly Losses reported by GM. For New York Times radio I’m Jane Bonnemeier and I’ll be back next week with another edition of Backstory. To subscribe with the Backstory Podcast go to nytimes.com /backstory. July 31st, 2008

NOTE FROM THE BLOGGER: Words and phrases highlighted in red are defined individually in separate posts.
Phrases highlited in black and brown are present perfect tenses.

The Alphabet

A B C D E F G H I

J K L M N O P Q

R S T U V W X Y Z

alphabet.mp3