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Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about emergency response, frugal engineering, ranking employees, virtual teams, and identifying future leaders.

From the NY Times: In Case of Emergency: What Not to Do
"WHOEVER suggested that all publicity is good publicity clearly never envisioned the wave of catastrophe engulfing high-profile corporations over the last year, laying waste to some of the most meticulously tailored reputations on earth."

Wally's Comment: This excellent article draws lessons from recent problems encountered by BP, Toyota, and Goldman Sachs. The only downside is that the focus is mostly in the PR aspects of dealing with a crisis.

Compare this piece with Bill George's post from earlier this year on Toyota and its troubles. It's titled: "How Not to Lead in a Crisis."

The best short and helpful guide to dealing with a crisis is chapter 10 of Jack and Suzy Welch's book, Winning. The chapter title is: "From Oh-God-No to Yes-We're-Fine."

Shortly after Katrina, I wrote a post titled: "Planning for Critical Incidents," drawing on my experience of working with public safety agencies. There are pointers to resources on business disaster planning.

From Strategy + Business: The Importance of Frugal Engineering
"Providing new goods and services to “bottom of the pyramid” customers requires a radical rethinking of product development."

Wally's Comment: This article concentrates on designing products for buyers in developing countries who need something simple and functional. There are a lot of those potential buyers.

For background on how this is playing out on a global stage, read "Bottom Of Pyramid Changed Business Models In India" from the Times of India and "Japan's Exporters Eye Every Rupee" from the Wall Street Journal.

There's a pretty big market in the US too, methinks. It's made up of people who don't want the super-sophisticated-wake-you-up-and-smell-the-coffee-for-you products that feature creep has given us. See "World's cheapest car, Tata Nano, revs toward US" from the NY Times

From Wharton: Ranking Employees: Why Comparing Workers to Their Peers Can Often Backfire
"It's often assumed that employees who are benchmarked against each other work harder, to either hang onto a high ranking or raise a low ranking. However, Iwan Barankay, a management professor at Wharton, calls that assumption into question in a new study titled, "Rankings and Social Tournaments: Evidence from a Field Experiment.""

Wally's Comment: Originally, forced ranking at GE was a way to shake managers out of rating most of their folks "above average" or "exceeds expectations." It did that, but then became institutionalized with forced ranking combined with "eliminate the bottom ten percent." It's doing that last part reflexively that creates problems.

Publically ranking performance can be effective in some workplaces. Carrier pilots have every landing rated and the ratings posted on a rank board. No one wants to be at the bottom.

But for other work groups, forced ranking simply doesn't work because it creates competition where you need cooperation. Then the ranking itself can be disruptive and not get at the issue of underperformance, failing on two dimensions.

In general, those who write about forced ranking and aren’t named Jack Welch oppose it as a bad idea. An exception is a post by Tim Sackett at Fistful of Talent titled: "Forced Rankings are for Winners!"

From Forbes: The Four Keys To Success With Virtual Teams
"There are more global virtual teams today than ever before. And their numbers are increasing rapidly. INSEAD, the international business school where I teach, has been bombarded with requests to set up a program showing executives the skills they'll need to meet this new management challenge. The latest research shows that those skills are not simply different from those needed for running co-located teams; they are often the exact opposite. Here are four principal ways they're very different."

Wally's Comment: It wasn't that long ago that a virtual team was an oddity. No more.

Last year, Fortune published "How to build a (strong) virtual team." Trusted Advisor has posted on "Trust and Virtual Teams." I've posted on "Working from Anywhere and Talent Management" at the Results vs. Activities blog. And Steve Roesler has an excellent post titled: "Virtual Teams, Real Relationships & Organizational Reality."

Those are all worth a look. And be sure to download Wayne Turmel's free whitepaper: "Three Reasons Virtual Teams Fail and How to See It Coming."

From Industry Week: Identifying Your Future Leaders
"Sustained, committed leadership development can be a key differentiator between the most successful manufacturers and the also-rans. Are you taking care of your talent pipeline?"

Wally's Comment: This article covers leadership development like the dew. The core is survey data from Deloitte and from Hewitt.

You should also check out the news release: "New Research on Creating a Sustainable Leadership Pipeline" and my post from earlier this year, "Leadership Development: Big Company Programs and You." Be sure to read two excellent posts from Dan McCarthy. They're "How to Develop a Leadership Preparation Program" and "A View from Inside the Leadership Pipeline."

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check back on Wednesday when I select five excellent posts from the week's independent business blogs. Last week I highlighted posts on attitude contagion, talking to people who work for you about performance, leading and hard truths, and two insightful posts connected to Mark Hurd's ouster.

The most popular post on my site last week was: "Leadership, management, and one more thing."

And be sure to find out more about my latest book, Ruthless Focus: How to use key core strategies to grow your business or just jump right over to Amazon and buy a few.