Senior executives expend much effort into grooming their directors and managers and keeping them satisfied in their jobs with the aim of retaining their key people. The operative word here is people. According to a new paper from PricewaterhouseCoopers, it may be smarter to shift the focus to pivotal roles. People in pivotal roles are the ones that have the most direct impact on customer satisfaction. The roles different in every organization, and they're not necessarily high-profile.

When we think of great leaders, those that come to mind first -- say, Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, or Martin Luther King, Jr. -- tend to be charismatic, larger-than-life figures. Such examples have led to the popular belief, particularly in business, that extroverts have an advantage in their careers. Those who are outgoing, unafraid of the spotlight, and speak their minds and give direction are natural leaders, the conventional thinking goes. While this isn't necessarily wrong, nor is it the whole story, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Harvard Business School, and the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School. Introverts can be equally effective leaders, says Wharton's Adam Grant, lead author of "Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity" in a forthcoming issue of the Academy of Management Journal. Interestingly, Grant and his colleagues find, neither extraverts nor introverts perform better in productivity or profits. Instead, the real indicator of success lies in the pairing of each type of leader with different types of employees.

Life isn't always fair, certainly not in the job market. We've all been exasperated when a seemingly undeserving competitor gets a plum job or promotion. If it seems that style and presentation often trump real substance, it's because they do, according to research from Harvard Business School.

One would be hard pressed to find any CIO who doesn't believe in and argue for IT's ever-growing stature within the organization. New Research from Harvard Business School, however, suggests a surprising new angle on the power CIOs really have to influence the way their companies run.

In a Q&A in the current edition of PricewaterhouseCoopers's quarterly Technology Forecast, EMC Corp. CIO Sanjay Mirchandani shares his views on how the cloud is accelerating the repositioning of IT to support business development and innovation. Cloud computing, the self-described "career businessperson" tells PwC, is enabling IT to be more responsive to the business. At EMC, members of the IT team are responsible for running core integration projects, "and they're seen as subject matter experts."

In a Q&A in the current edition of PricewaterhouseCoopers's quarterly Technology Forecast, EMC Corp. CIO Sanjay Mirchandani shares his views on how the cloud is accelerating the repositioning of IT to support business development and innovation. Cloud computing, the self-described "career businessperson" tells PwC, is enabling IT to be more responsive to the business. At EMC, members of the IT team are responsible for running core integration projects, "and they're seen as subject matter experts."