David Brook’s fine column today about a different kind of modern leader: Read it and weep.
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Posts Tagged ‘CEO’Former Citigroup CEO says he’s sorryThursday, April 8th, 2010
“I can only say that I am deeply sorry that our management—starting with me—was not more prescient and that we did not foresee what lay before us,” says former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. See his whole testimony here, and weigh in on its effectiveness. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! How to turn your CEO from zero to thought leader in 90 daysFriday, March 12th, 2010
“Executives are undeniably busy and many admit they would never finish a book unless they had someone to drive the process,” says Steve Wilson, CEO of a startup called FastPencil. This week that firm introduced a “Concierge Thought Leadership Book Program,” that can transform a CEO without a thought in his or her head into an influential book author, all in 90 days. On my personal blog Writing Boots, perhaps I went over the top in claiming that Wilson’s “book authoring team” must be miserable wretches, and predicting that the firm will be out of business in two years. But I do think Wilson owes ghostwriters, and all writers, an explanation for his claims of having routinized their work. And if his explanation is somehow good enough—hell, we might turn out to be some of his best clients! I’ll invite him to comment here, and to sit for an interview on the Vital Speeches podcast. We’ll see if he takes me up on it. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! All about Sun CEO’s high-tech resignationFriday, February 5th, 2010
Sun Microsystems’ Jonathan Schwartz was the first big CEO blogger and he’s the first CEO to resign via Twitter. If you’re interested, here’s the story. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! Reporter breaks “unbreakable phone” in front of CEOTuesday, January 12th, 2010
The chief handles it the only way it can be handled. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! The most important executive utterance of 2009Monday, December 21st, 2009
Former G.E. CEO Jack Welch, father of the so-called “shareholder value” movement that said a company’s singular strategic focus should be on creating value for investors, told the Financial Times last spring: “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy … your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.” If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! HuffPo: executive exposure, in both senses of the wordMonday, December 7th, 2009
Disney CEO Bob Iger had a piece on the Huffington Post yesterday that demonstrates the promise and the threat of that platform for executive communication. The promise: Iger got as many words as he wanted to propose to an elite, educated audience his two-part proposal to create jobs: push the U.S. as a tourist destination and pass measures to protect intellectual property. The threat: Commenters got as many words as they wanted to respond to Iger’s somewhat strained argument. (We’d have advised him to unhook the two ill-fitting concepts, and tackle one or the other convincingly.) Some HuffPo readers supported his piece, but others did not: “You want to help the economy? Lower prices on those crappy theme parks of yours, it’s robbery every time parents take their kids there.” “Do you think this entry is just a little full of special interest? Come on, Huff Post, at least have someone other than special interest groups make your arguments.” “You know, sometimes an industry making a baldly self-interested pitch has logic on its side. This isn’t one of those times.” You get the idea. HuffPo readers have lots of skepticism toward big business and sharp tongues. Proceed with caution. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! CEO ‘office hours’: The best idea we’ve heard this monthTuesday, October 13th, 2009
Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne has “office hours,” during which any employee at the luxury-brands maker can get on her calendar for a half-hour, according to an interview in The New York Times. Lyne gives over a couple hours a week to office hours, and she reports, “it’s turned out to be a fantastic way to find out what’s bubbling under the surface.” The half-hour seems about right to me, and the only conceivable objection—I’m going to be besieged by crackpots with nutty ideas or malcontents with chronic complaints—melts away when you think of the career-gripping courage it would take for most people to make such an appointment. I think every CEO ought to have office hours—and that’s not something I say about many ideas that come along. The question is, why in hell don’t they already? If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! |
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