(FORTUNE Magazine) – HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS

As Secretary of Labor--as Secretary of the American Work Force--I read this year's honor roll of the "most admired" American corporations with particular interest ("Corporate Reputations," March 6). Fortune's new list does more than celebrate the achievements of ten exceptional companies; it also signals an emerging corporate consensus that a new type of workplace offers exceptional rewards in the marketplace.

The new consensus is that the greatest competitive advantage for the American company lies in a skilled, empowered, and adaptable work force. Training workers and flattening hierarchies are not only beneficial for employees but also critical to providing specialized goods and services to rapidly changing markets.

That is why pension funds like Calpers have announced that they will include workplace practices as a factor when they review the companies in their portfolios.

At the Department of Labor we established the Office of the American Workplace because we believe that high-performance workplace practices have the potential to yield extraordinary benefits to investors, companies, workers, and the economy. This year's Top Ten confirms the good news: The most successful companies in America flourish while giving working men and women the opportunity to prosper.

ROBERT B. REICH Secretary of Labor Washington

THEY BOUNCED BACK TOO

"So You Fail. Now Bounce Back!" (May 1), about people who have tried, failed, and later succeeded, was not only informative but also inspirational. I would guess that most of us have experienced similar failures during our careers. I certainly fit that category. My only wish is that others gain as much from your article as I did.

JOSEPH L. STILES Joseph Stiles & Associates Houston

I, too, failed, albeit at the tender age of 22. Right out of college I opened my own collegiate sportswear store with burning ambitions slightly larger than my checkbook. I was confident, having come off four years of college making more than $150,000 doing the same thing. So with some experience, money from the folks, and a business education, I was determined to open 30 stores by the time I was 30.

It was a dismal failure--even after I put a competing store out of business. Why? I was a marketing whiz but lacked financial restraint--and the wisdom to admit I was wrong.

Today my friends laugh when I tell them how happy I am working at a Fortune 100 company; they never thought I could take orders from someone else. My career is back on track, and I simply love my job, my company, and corporate America.

The lessons I learned? Persistence is everything. If you believe in yourself (I always have), then you can do anything--even if you stumble, blow it, and screw up the first few times. I used to feel that I was a 40-year-old in a young adult's body--that's how stressed out I was. Now I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything, even if I am up to my eyeballs in debt.

PAUL ROSENFELD Sales Manager, American Express Staten Island, New York

IGNORE YOUR FOCUS GROUPS

"Ignore Your Customer" (May 1) warns against being "slavishly devoted to customers, trying to get in even better touch through more focus groups, more surveys." In fact, one of the most common ways we ignore customers is to use focus groups and surveys.

How do we currently "listen" to customers? First, we have them complete surveys, allowing them to speak only in multiple-choice responses that we have chosen for them. Then we march them into focus groups, where they spend two hours competing with ten strangers for five minutes of airtime. There they try to share their ideas with us while we hide from them behind one-way mirrors. Finally, having made it impossible for them to communicate with us in any way natural to human beings, we proclaim, "Customers have nothing to say. Let's ignore them for their own good."

Steelcase and Urban Outfitters succeed not because they ignore customers but because they ignore focus groups and surveys. Leaders who truly study and talk with customers can get the insights needed for stunning breakthroughs.

GERALD BERSTELL Chicago

TOSCANINI'S FUMBLE

In a box that accompanied "Memory: Why You're Losing It, How to Save It" (April 17), you note that Arturo Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra for the final time in 1954. However, it was planned as his final performance, and he did not forget a passage. As Harold Klawans discusses in Toscanini's Fumble, he suffered a transient ischemic attack: The vigorous movement of Toscanini's arm created a demand for blood, and the high blood velocity a "venturi effect," causing blood to be diverted from the brain stem.

DENNIS SMITH, D.V.M. Director of International Sales and Marketing Brown Medical Industries Hartley, Iowa

RESISTANCE IS PART OF CHANGE

In "Making Change Stick" (April 17), the concept of resistance to change takes center stage in understanding organizations, much as it has in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis for several decades. Why pay an organizational consultant (or a shrink) $100 an hour when the local barber can give reasonable advice for free? First, because organizational culture, like the human personality, is defined by its pattern of resistance: resistance to change itself, resistance to seeing the need for change, and resistance to the process of change. And second, because it is crucial to understand that resistance--a term that has pejorative connotations suggesting that there is something wrong with the "resistant" employees--is a normal response to the loss of the familiar and the fear of the unknown that are part of the process of change.

When Michael Hammer says that human beings' innate resistance to change is "the most perplexing, annoying, distressing, and confusing part" of reengineering, he misses the point. Bringing to light any resistance is the work of change. It is not an obstacle to be demolished before change occurs. Change without understanding and remodeling resistance isn't really change at all; it is an external mandate unlikely to get employees motivated or committed to the process. Hammering away at resistance will yield one of two things: either a broken, defeated organization or an even more resistant one.

JONATHAN INGBAR, M.D. Topeka