A spate of blogs and press releases tout upgraded or “new and improved” capitalism, corporate governance, and executive-pay models. Before common sense can prevail, we have to use it. More power to people who want to make things run better. But, how much of what is proposed is really an upgrade, or new and improved? …
Ethics Aikido is the art pushing back without pushback. It doesn’t take a black belt. Just one simple question. I used it once to stop a potentially scandalous $500,000 plane flight. We’ve all found ourselves in ethical jams. Our bosses or colleagues want to do something we think is wrong, or plays too close to …
This is a non-partisan legal question, so nobody get angry. A friend of mine installed a Trump garden gnome in his front yard. Does common law of tort recognize such a thing as an “unattractive nuisance? #TheRightWaytoWin
S&P Dow Jones Indices recently dropped energy-giant ExxonMobil, big-pharma company Pfizer, and defense contractor Raytheon from the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Taking their place will be cloud-software company Salesforce, biotech firm Amgen, and industrial conglomerate Honeywell. The DJIA isn’t really an industrial average any more. Many of its constituent companies (Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, Visa, …
President Trump recently called for the U.S. Government to get a slice of proceeds from the forced sale of TikTok to a U.S. buyer. There may be legitimate national-security reasons for Trump to force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the personal-data-rich social media application to U.S. investors. And arguably, the forced sale will take place …
Breakthrough inventions happen when we solve technical contradictions without performance trade-offs. For example, you need to cut a material fast but without building up heat. The solution: cut with a jet of cold, high-pressure water. Steve Jobs’s contradiction was running the world’s largest start-up: how to meld public-company size and scale with start-up innovation and …
How Steve Jobs made Apple a $2 trillion company. Lessons for your company and career Read More »
In the movie Wall Street, the protagonist asks insatiably greedy villain Gordon Gekko, “How many yachts can you ski behind?” It turns out that life imitates art, when the issue isn’t greed, but ego — and someone else is paying. Reportedly, as CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt regularly used two corporate jets at the …
In August of last year, a Business Roundtable press release proudly announced that the “Business Roundtable Redefines the Purpose of a Corporation to Promote ‘An Economy That Serves All Americans.’” Roundtable statements carry weight because the Roundtable comprises over 180 CEOs of global companies. This particular statement presented itself as a big deal because it …
Corporate Governance Shell Games — The Business Roundtable gets caught pocketing the pea Read More »
Unsung heroes are still HEROES. Here is a message from a small-business owner who, for the last four weeks, has kept everyone on payroll.
The IACCM just published my practical article on “Working without a Safety Net.” Covid-era tips based on business during Russia’s wild ’90s.