As a reverse fairy tale for the CEO set, the reality television program Undercover Boss is fascinating, not so much in the witness-to-a-train- wreck mode of the rest of the genre, but because it is so revealing of our conflicted relationship with "the boss."

The premise of the show—that the only way to get a clue about what's really going on in his (or her) organization, is for the boss to go undercover on the front lines—is all too often the actual reality in organizations of any size. Yet, at the same time, the view of the boss as the ultimate authority with the heroic power to swoop in and save the day—whether that means paying down a mortgage, granting an instant promotion, or banishing a reviled policy—holds sway in real life as well as on "reality" TV.

Our big goal here at the MIX is to inspire and unleash as much collective aspiration, audacity, imagination, energy, and passion as possible when it comes to making all of our organizations fit for the future--and fit for human beings.

We've said it before: so much is broken when it comes to how most companies are managed, organizations are structured, and work is designed. "Modern" management was developed by a bunch of long-dead big thinkers who were solving for a very different set of challenges than we face today: maximizing control, conformance, discipline, reliability, and predictability. Those are important organizational virtues, but they're not what creates real value today.

If we want organizations that are resilient enough to change as fast as the world is changing, inventive enough to imagine a whole new way to create value, inspiring enough to invite and unleash the best gifts of employees (and other stakeholders), and mindful enough to find a way to win without others (the community, the planet) having to lose--we can't just scrounge around for best practices. We have to cast off the ruling (and stifling) ideology of control, power, and growth-at-all-costs for a new ideology--a new set of...

I'm delighted to share the first of six videos from my conversation with our latest MIX Maverick Seth Godin. Seth needs no introduction--he's a 13-time bestselling author, serial entrepreneur and tireless game-changer . He is a one-man army when it comes to unleashing the passion and initiative of individuals to make a positive difference in the world. I'm always struck by his ability to make sense of the economic and cultural moment in a way that is both practical and profound.

Our recent conversation was clarifying and galvanizing. I hope it is for you too.

First up: "Why being human is the only way to win."

Seth sums up this moment for workers and leaders of all stripes with two questions:

For workers: "The real debate if you're a worker is: do you want a job where they'll miss you if you're gone, a job where only you can do it, a job where you get paid to bring yourself to work--because those jobs are available. In fact, there's no unemployment in that area. OR, do...

Some fifteen years ago, in the early days of starting up Fast Company magazine, co-founder Alan Webber, shared one of his rules of thumb with me: "a good question beats a good answer." That pithy wisdom sunk in and took hold immediately. In the course of hundreds of reporting journeys and thousands of conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and doers of all stripes, I've tuned into the questions people ask.

The first thing you notice when you have your ears pricked for questions is that most people (especially businesspeople) are more interested in presenting solutions, making assertions, and sharing their vision. This isn't surprising. School programs us to focus on producing the right answer and the job description of the leader for the last century has basically been "the person with all the answers."

That's why it's so refreshing (and instructive) to spend time with people who lead with questions rather than answers. Why? Why does inquiry beat certainty every time? Here are just three reasons:

1) Questions are a powerful antidote for hubris , which inevitably arises in a culture that celebrates mastery, values decisiveness, and reveres the top guy...

Here is a tricky question: How many living management gurus can you name who did not learn their trade in North America? I have asked many colleagues this question, and it's pretty hard to come up with a good list. For example, consider the individuals in last year's "Thinkers 50" ranking list. By my reckoning, there are only seven who make the cut: Richard Branson (Virgin), Kris Gopalakrishnan (Infosys), Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale (Stockholm School of Economics), Lynda Gratton, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones (London Business School).

Does this matter? I think it does.

In the years following the Second World War, the United States dominated the global business world completely--it was the major source of capital, the home of advanced manufacturing, and the source of most major technological developments. It provided the best quality management education, and it was the source of all the latest management thinking.

Today, we live in a more complex, more plural world. The US is now the world's largest debtor nation, and the biggest sources of capital are the large Sovereign Wealth Funds of the Middle East, Russia and China. Leadership in advanced manufacturing is spread across such countries as...

In 1997 I bought an e-tablet from A.T. Cross, the pen company. Codeveloped with IBM, the CrossPad was hailed as a breakthrough product that would open up a whole new category--portable digital notepads. I'm a copious notetaker, so the idea of turning my scribblings into digital files was too good to ignore.

Truth is, I'm not so much an early adopter as an easy mark. Who was I to argue with "Ozzie" Osborne, head of IBM's Pen and Speech Business Systems business unit, when he declared that the CrossPad would "redefine how users perceive pen and paper?" Yet within a month, the CrossPad was sharing shelf space with all the other "revolutionary" products that had promised to change my life but somehow hadn't.

Over the years I've become a tad less susceptible to the utopian visions of technology's self-proclaimed prophets. Recently, for example, I walked out of a Sony store without a 3-D television. I've learned to my sorrow that a lot of geeky gadgeteers are hucksters...

Editor's note: Team performance is critical to an organization's success, but many teams feel they're not performing as well as they should be. Poor team performance, especially among teams that work across departments or functions, tend to breed silos, competing agendas, turf wars, and indecision; high performance produces organizational coherence and focus. McKinsey & Company's Organization Practice has researched the performance and attitudes of teams, those that are successful and those that are struggling, to identify the behaviors, attitudes, and organizational principles that make for effective teams. This is the second in a series of posts, based on the findings of that research, on building better teams.

Many teams have difficulty focusing their efforts in the right places. In our research on teams of senior executives, only 38 percent said their teams focused on work that truly benefited from their top-team perspective. Only 35 percent said their top teams allocated the right amounts of time among the various topics they considered important, such as strategy and people.

What are they doing instead? Everything else. Too often, these teams of senior executives fail to set or enforce priorities and instead try to cover the waterfront. In other...