At our 2013 ReThink Conference – an annual summit focused on best practices in global Human Capital Management – we had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Collins, author of the international bestseller Good to Great. Among his many valuable insights was his emphasis on the fact that when all is said and done, it’s people who really make the difference and distinguish great companies from good ones.

The key is to align your talent with the opportunities and roles that fit their passions, their natural abilities and what makes them significant within the organization. Effective human capital management is dependent on hiring and retaining employees who share the same values as your organization and can then excel at building or participating in winning teams – growing from good to great. But, as Jim points out, managing talent – attracting and keeping enough of the right people in an organization – is a journey, not a sprint.

In his interview, Jim shared three specific challenges that can hamper a company’s journey from good to great:

Today’s hard-working employees often struggle, they have real pain at times on the job, and most of them are working their butts off to succeed. As leaders, it’s our job to help them power through it all and to stay highly engaged. 

If we want employees that give 100% effort at work, and who then go home and shout from the rooftops, “My Company is a great place to work,” we need to do a better job of listening to our people. Unfortunately, not everything we hear has equal importance. Drilling down to the core of what our people really need to succeed is a big job, and it’s why so many companies invest in employee engagement studies each year. The problem is, too many of these studies trivialize our people’s careers and struggles.

The quality of our lives has a lot to do with the quality of our relationships.  I am not referring to the number of people we know but to the depth and solidity of the ties we establish.

As human beings we have a series of needs that we have to meet in order to achieve a sense of balance.  We strive to feel valued and we also need to know that we belong to a group that accepts us and makes us feel important.  In addition we have to have the sensation that we are contributing to a project that has value, a project that makes sense for us.

Social recruiting is an effective way to make direct connections to savvy individuals and attract employees that fit with your company culture and core values. In fact, in a study conducted by the recruiting software platform specialist Jobvite among 800 HR and talent acquisition professionals, 89% of U.S. companies said they would recruit through social media, up from 83% the prior year. Furthermore, two thirds of the respondents confirm that they have successfully hired a candidate through social networks. With a rating of 7 out of 10, social media ranked fourth in terms of the quality of applicants, behind referrals, internal transfers and direct sourcing but before a company’s own career site.

As a communicator, perhaps nothing is worse than scanning the audience halfway through a presentation only to see people fiddling with smartphones, fidgeting in their chairs, or—worst of all—falling asleep in a puddle of drool. If someone had filmed my life, my communication blunders and mistakes could be turned into hours of humorous outtakes. Learning to connect with people has been an ongoing process for me, involving trial-by-error and plenty of disconnects. Yet I am grateful for my failures, for they have taught me valuable lessons about getting through to others. Hopefully you can glean from my missteps as you hone your own skills as a connector.

How much would you pay for an advisor that permits you to get to know yourself better, that helps you discover the resources that live within you and that shows you the obstacles that are preventing you from moving forward?

Within every one of us there exists an ability that we do not use most of the time,  because most of us do not know that we have it. Discovering this ability and learning to utilize it can be one of the most important things we can do in our lives. Though this process, we get to know ourselves better and arrive at an ability to see through moments of darkness.

The Papacy is a singular, unique position, one that can’t really be compared to any other leadership role. Still, the events of a couple weeks ago surrounding the election of Pope Francis brought to mind three surprising reminders of something I’ve written about before: the qualities of sacrifice, humility and selflessness that all true leaders must possess.

The first example has to do with the place where a new pope goes immediately after being elected. It is called The Room of Tears. As one website explained, the name stems from the idea that it is the place where “new popes have often been overcome with emotion at the thought of the heavy burden that has been given them.”

Whether in the office or at home, the humble desk continues to be the primary place of work for millions.  In many cases we spend more time sat behind our desks each day than anywhere else.  So today we wanted to pay brief homage to the desk, taking a look at what our workspaces say about us and look at someways of improving the environment in which we spend so much of our time.  Linkedin recently asked to their users to tell them about their workplace  and got feedback from global leaders like Arianna Huffington, Richard Branson and David Cameron.  So how would you describe your desk space. Super tidy or is it chaos that dominates? Personalized or absolutely anonymous? In the following we offer you some tips about improving your workspace and invite you to share photos of where you work with the hashtag #ThisIsWhereIWork and taggin @wobi_en.

An avid proponent of looking at the world through humorous inquisitiveness to fuel our creativity and imagination, Gabor pens this weekly series of comic anecdotes on strategy and innovation. 

All businesses are subject to the unpredictable evolution of the market place.  The danger you face is of misjudging or ignoring trends that can make your business become obsolete. 

Regardless of your occupation, have you ever stepped back and thought of yourself as your own personal sales person? Aren’t we all living in a world where we all are sales people? That is what the author Daniel Pink makes us reflect on in his new book To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. Pink, presenting this year in World Innovation Forum New York, World Innovation Forum León, and World Business Forum Milan, explains how without even realizing it and on a daily basis we are constantly interacting, convincing and persuading. “Selling”. In the following learn the six new pitches for the twenty-first century.