I have written frequently about personnel decisions and offered various references on the relative value of furloughs and layoffs. The WSJ today published another article on this subject that compares and contrasts these valuable tools.
Business Week summarized a book entitled Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. It's a practical guide to challenging conversations in which you're required to deliver bad news, major screw-ups and other sensitive matters.
For almost two years, I have been writing a regular column for the North Bay Business Journal, a publication of the New York Times, a weekly business newspaper which covers the North Bay area of San Francisco – from the Golden Gate bridge north, including the Wine Country of Sonoma and Napa counties.
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Article References
Article published – April 13, 2009
by Lary Kirchenbauer
I can’t help myself this week. The mounting encroachment by the federal government across the terrain of American enterprise is very troubling, so I hope you’ll join me as we take a slight detour to address a few of these issues.
I understand the outrage over the egregious pay packages, bailout bonuses and inscrutable investment products of many of the nations’ major financial institutions. I also understand the unsettling power of the lender of last resort. Yet, to ignore the federal government’s track record is like overlooking a cliff when climbing the Matterhorn. Two recent and provocative reports serve as vivid reminders of the federal government’s woeful track record and ineptitude at managing large-scale enterprises. (more…)
On the first day, God created the dog and said:
“Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years.”
The dog said: “That’s a long time to be barking… How about only ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten?” … and God agreed.
On the second day, God created the monkey and said: “Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” (more…)
I overlooked posting this article earlier, entitled After the Fall. It was written by Michael Lewis of Liar's Poker fame and published in the Dec/Jan 09 issue of Portfolio magazine. It is an fascinating exposé of the sub-prime loan market, the Credit Default Obligation (CDO) securities that embraced it and…
John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay, was interviewed in the NY Times and mentioned the laminated card he keeps in his wallet. It comes from a speech John W. Gardner delivered to the Hawaii Executive Conference in Kona, Hawaii, in April 1993 and published in Stanford, an independent publication of…
I have posted many items and reflections about the critical importance of regular, unbiased feedback as the linchpin to achieving accountability throughout your organization. The most recent example is the interview with Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox. John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay since 2008, offered his unequivocal enthusiasm for…
Business Week carries a fresh look at The Peter Principle, the seminal work that coined the phrase about people being promoted to their "level of incompetence". Still a worthy concept for evaluating talent and making sure that your greatest salesman doesn't become a big failure as a sales manager.
The NY Times reported on a recent study by a team at the Harvard Business School who found that failure in a first venture is an unreliable signpost of future success.
The study looked at several thousand venture-backed companies over a 17 year period. They found that first time entrepreneurs receiving venture funding (more…)