The Big Payout
Eric Dash has an intriguing story in The New York Times today Outsize Severance Continues for Executives Even After Failed Tenures. Read the rest of this entry »
Lady Gaga and Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is well known for its case study method. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Anita Elberse, case study method, entertainment, Harvard Business School, Lady Gaga, leadership, management
CEO’s into the Breach?
As the aftermath of the debt ceiling debate continued two CEO’s—Howard Schultz of Starbucks and Warren E. Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway stepped forward with ideas to mitigate the debt.
On Monday Mr. Schultz stepped forward to urge his fellow CEO’s to boycott campaign giving. The story in Bloomberg was Facebooked 3,000 times.
A day earlier Warren E. Buffett in an op-ed piece in The New York Times called on Congress to raise the taxes of wealthy Americans.
Under the headline “Stop Coddling the Super Rich” Mr. Buffett made the case of why taxes should be raised and as expected met with mixed results. There were those on the left who agreed with his argument. Some on the right said there was no reason he couldn’t make a private donation to the I.R.S.
Just over a year ago, Mr. Buffett, along with Bill and Melinda Gates met with great success when he prevailed upon 40 billionaires (you can read the list of who has signed a non-binding pledge to give away half their wealth, a total of $600 billion in all.
Months before Mr. Buffett put his plan into action Kevin Salwen and his daughter Hannah detailed their family’s experiences about living below their means and donating half the money to charity in The Power of Half (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2010)
While Mr. Buffett probably wanted to start the conversation (he had previously written for The New York Times about buying stock during the height of the financial meltdown), he hasn’t gotten a lot of traction or buy-in about his latest proposal at this point. It sounds a lot more high minded to give to those in need than to bail out a government in debt.
Whether other CEO’s get on board remains to be seen. While some CEO’s may think one or both ideas have merit, their corporate responsibility is to the shareholders to make money.
Ideas from Aspen
I didn’t make the trip but I’ve been inspired and transported this week by the provocative ideas coming from the Aspen Ideas Festival that ended Sunday. And I’ve also been transfixed by the interviews of Chrystia Freeland of Reuters, a festival sponsor.
Tags: leadership
You Can’t Fire Everyone by Hank Gilman
Hank Gilman, the Deputy Managing Editor of Fortune has come out with a new book, You Can’t Fire Everyone, a career reminisce packed with solid advice for all those who are a promoted to management and then find they need to stay ahead of the curve they didn’t know existed. It’s not just aimed at those who have reached the tippy top of management. For journalism buffs, its also offers insights on the recent transformations in the industry. Read the rest of this entry »
Where the Female Executives Are–Country by Country
Overall the numbers of senior executives dipped in the last two years according to research from the Grant Thorton International Business Report, an annual survery of the views of senior executives of privately held companies by the accounting and risk management firm of the same name. The percentage of female senior managers dipped from 24% tin 2009 to 20% in 2011.
Thailand led with 45% of senior management positions held by women, followed by Georgia (40%) Russia (36%) Hong Kong and the Phillipines (tied at 35% )
The data revealed the countries of the G7 lagged behind Asia/Pacific. Great Britain(23%) and the United States(15%). Stil the United States did better than Germany (11%) and Japan (9%). What can we learn from the Pacific Rim?
Lessons in Shattering the Glass Ceiling
Attention recently turned to corporate boards in Europe again after a report commissioned by the British government said women should comprise at least a quarter of the boards of the largest British companies by 2015. The report stopped short of the mandate that’s existed in Norway since 2005. There 40% of corporate boards are required to be women by law. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Amalia Miller, corporate boards, female executives, Frank Matsa, glass ceiling, leadership, management, mentoring, networking, stock prices
Should You Turn Down a Promotion to Management?
Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative , has just co-authored a new book with Kent Lineback called Being the Boss. It was Mr. Lineback who a decade ago wrote about entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley with Randy Komisar in The Monk and the Riddle.
Mr. Lineback, spent 25 years as a manager and executive and has been candid about his shortcomings. The book he and Dr. Hill wrote may provide new insights for managers and leaders, in the post recession economy. It may even spare employees some grief as their new managers negotiate a learning curve. Dr.Hill says she frequently asks executives, “How many people have suffered as you tried to learn to do this job?”
Tags: leadership, management, mentoring
Has a Recommendation Cost You a Job or Promotion?
Even a favorable recommendation could impede a woman’s career according to on-going research at Rice University, that shows qualities described in recommendations for women differ sharply from those of men.
And those differences may be costing women jobs and promotions in academia and medicine according to the findings of psychologist Michelle Hebl, her colleague Randi Martin and graduate student Juan Madera, now an assistant professor at the University of Houston. Dr. Hebl says the ramifications extend beyond academia and medicine into the corporate culture. “Women, even if they are protected by law or the organization, experience discrimination in subtle ways,” she said.
The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, reviewed over 600 letters of recommendation for nearly 200 applicants for eight junior faculty positions at a United States University.
Female candidates were described in “communal” terms like sensitive, caring and nurturing. Their male counterparts were described in “agentic” terms that included decisive, independent and aggressive. “Having people describe you in communal terms is not a good thing,” said Dr. Hebl who says that words that are supposed to be positive are not the ones that come to mind when someone thinks of a leader.
Dr. Hebl doesn’t think using gender neutral terms in recommendations will make a difference. Instead, she suggests recommenders look at the requirements of the job itself rather than resorting to conventional stereotypes. The traits that are valued in the academic job are research ability, independence and autonomy, not words that may say a women is not serious about a job, for example role model.
If an employee asks for a recommendation, Dr. Hebl suggests eliminating qualifiers in your description. “Phrases like, ‘I think she might be good’ or ‘might be a leader’ are doubt raisers about ability.”
Combining Great and Leadership
On Saturday, I traveled 100 miles round trip the original Hall of Fame of Great Americans on the Bronx Community College campus that once belonged to New York University.
The 630 foot sweeping colonnade punctuated by busts of famous Americans was designed by Stanford White at the turn of the last century.
The “greats” were clustered by categories—statesmen, inventors, authors. Still, many of the names that might be synonymous with commerce seemed in short supply. As an example, George Westinghouse was primarily known as an inventor.
The only clearly recognizable business bust was that of Andrew Carnegie, as well known as a philanthropist as he was an investor. Even he was a fairly late arrival, added some three quarters of a century after the Hall was inaugurated.
Only the day before a newly released book from Random House arrived. Entitled When Remarkable Women Lead, it was written by two McKinsey consultants. McKinsey appears to gain traction when the economy goes into the reverse. They have recently been in the news for their recommendations for streamlining Conde Nast.
The first two chapters seem like a direct descendant of the book The Managerial Woman by Margaret Hennig and Anne Jardim which coincidentally came out in 1976, the year that Andrew Carnegie’s bust was added to the Hall of Fame. The authors promote the idea of “Centered Leadership.” I’m interested to see how they develop their theme.
Tags: consultants, female executives, leadership
