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The scenario seems simple enough: an expatriated employee goes off to an assignment, gains new knowledge and insights, and eventually returns to the home office, energized by the experience and ready to take on new responsibilities that will enrich the company. Unfortunately, say Professor Günter Stahl and Mark Mendenhall, the reality does not always follow this path.

The true test of any company's leadership development is the caliber and depth of its senior management ranks.Yet so often we hear CEOs complain that they just don't have enough talent on the bench. The problem is that traditional management development remains too far removed from the day-to-day realities of business. A few companies have pioneered effective approaches. Consider the tack taken by Kraft Foods. At Kraft, leadership development isn't an isolated process; it goes hand in hand with the company's business model. It takes place on the job and, even more important, for the job.

A few pioneering companies have married a perceptual shift with the new tools of human capital management. For First Tennessee National Corporation, it was a natural match. In the late 1990s, First Tennessee, now the 31st largest bank holding company in the United States in asset size and market capitalization, believed there was significant leverage in highly developed human capital management practices. The case study that follows shows what First Tennessee learned about itself from data it hardly knew it had. The findings are helping the company make major workforce decisions on the basis of net value to the firm, not just cost.

Bob Nardelli's pursuit of perfection, 3 billion human interactions per year.

Incentive programs are common in the software industry, where, instead of relying on a direct sales force, corporations like Sage Software often turn to small resellers to pitch their applications to a vast market of customers. Incentives as extensive and generous as Sage's are rare, however. For the past three years, the company (formerly known as Best Software) has invested $1 million a year to provide 100 resellers with $10,000 each to hire a salesperson. The initiative, which Sage calls the 100/100 program, provides interesting insights into why entrepreneurs delay recruiting salespeople--sometimes until their companies falter--and what mistakes businesses make in the hiring process.

Training programs generate greater value for organizations when the curricula reflect key business performance metrics. Testing real-world outcomes is crucial.