Future of Work Briefs

The dot-com bust not only hurt Internet start ups—it pummeled telecom companies, many of which went bankrupt or were forced into mergers. Ciena CEO Gary Smith, the company’s CEO since 2001, describes how his company survived, regrouped, and resumed its growth.

When you find yourself thinking about old-fashioned, out-of-touch, hierarchical, siloed organizations, General Motors quickly comes to mind. Criticism was levied at GM’s cars — described as “cookie-cutter” or worse.

The former Secretary of Defense talks with HBR editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius about his new book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.

Not all directors perform equally well once inside. Sometimes a prince in other realms can even turn into a petty gabber, the very opposite of what English novelist George Eliot had championed: “Blessed is the man who having nothing to say abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.”

Whistle-blowing reveals not just acute misdeeds, but chronic and longstanding patterns of misconduct. For example, Edward Snowden’s bombshell release of more than 200,000 documents revealed questionable government surveillance programs that existed for years.

Men who take time off from work to care for their children live longer than other men, sociologist Scott Coltrane writes in The Atlantic. According to a study in Sweden, fathers who took paternity leave in 1978 and 1979 had a 16% decreased death risk by 2001.

On January 17, Dennis Kozlowski will be released on parole by the State of New York after serving an 8 1/3 year sentence in the state’s tough prison system. Kozlowski is the former CEO of Tyco International.

In the years since Zappos was founded, we’ve had to make some big decisions. One of the most significant came in early 2004 when we decided to relocate from San Francisco to Las Vegas. Our biggest problem then was customer service—specifically, finding the right employees to staff our call center.