Business, Culture, Writing, and Other Stuff
I've been thinking about failure a lot. My career has some doozies in its wake. I've heard people speak about failures at conferences. The current trend is to tell people failures are okay because they learn from them. I've seen some suggest extremes like encouraging failure. Back in the late 80s, "failure was not an [...]
Why is everyone surprised when the banking bailout turns into a catastrophic failure? The AP is shocked, shocked I tell you that executives are still holding on to their jobs after the bailout (see AP: 9 in 10 execs at bailout banks remain on job). What did the AP think was going to happen to [...]
Yahoo has spoken out about their Chinese connection and it makes the stomach turn. Yahoo executives feel "horrible" about political arrests of Internet users in China but believe it's better to operate in that market and cooperate with authorities than not be there at all, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said Wednesday. This position is the [...]
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It's supposed to be about remembering the man who articulated the struggle of black people so well during the Civil Rights Movement. Like so many important issues of today, King's legacy has been twisted and transformed into something negative. Racism has turned the corner and is no longer [...]
Is it possible to change today's business culture? To do so requires CEO buy-in and they make up much of the problem. The change I'm writing about is how business should treat employees, treat customers, and demand excellence of itself. Mediocrity seemingly runs the business world. At the risk of sounding like Ayn Rand, this [...]
While scanning the news this morning, I noticed that Cingular posted a $497M loss. Cingular closed its $41 billion purchase of AT&T Wireless in late October, a move that gave the Atlanta company about 5 million more subscribers than previous market leader Verizon Wireless, a joint venture owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group [...]
There is a definite danger of reducing everything down to a formula. When you do that, you get crap. Adding a formula to a creative process can be visualized best as: creative + formula = crap It's really unfortunate that success breeds its own sort of creative stagnation. Each new creation has to be better [...]
I've been giving a lot of thought to the culture of CEOs. I've been watching Ken Lay with bemused interest as he says things like "I accept responsibility for Enron's collapse. But failure does not equate to a crime." He's right, but if he didn't know something was wrong, it was a moral crime to [...]
This is an excellent opinion piece on the current state of the MBA program: The MBA Menace. Congratulations! You have a sparkling new degree, highly prized in this world. You have learned a great many things about business. You have invested two years of your life, not to mention lost wages and a small fortune [...]
Unrest by Parkway Drive