About a third of S&P 500 companies are family-owned. Wonder what CBS’s Les Moonves thinks about that? The CEO has been fighting the Redstone family’s National Amusements Inc., which controls CBS and Viacom, for ages. The latest boardroom drama would rival any show CBS is pitching for next fall. Shari[…] Read On
The real reason the great experiment called America turned out as well as it did can be summed up in a single word: competition. Competition for customers, competition for talent, competition for jobs, competition for political office. When we compete on our merits, it brings out the best in us. The[…] Read On
The court of public opinion is no place to meter out justice. That’s why we have a criminal justice system with the blindfolded lady and the scales. Without it you’re left with groupthink and confirmation bias which ultimately deteriorates to mob rule. Who would have thought that an enlightened society[…] Read On
I bet if you ask 10 people how to rate a CEO, you’ll probably get 10 different answers. There really is just one way, though. You rate them the same way you rate athletes, entertainers, doctors, attorneys or anyone else, for that matter. Including yourself. One word: Performance. In the[…] Read On
Sooner or later every retailer faces a dilemma: How to adapt to changing consumer behavior without alienating brand loyalists? Lately, that dilemma has become a Catch-22. Bet you didn’t know that Black Friday deals at Best Buy, Macy’s, Target and Walmart are mostly the same from year to year. Turns out[…] Read On
Friends often ask me why I do what I do. By any measure I had one hell-of-a career. I went out on top. Why bother blogging and consulting? Why not just retire to some pristine island in the pacific, lounge on the beach, write my memoirs and work on the[…] Read On
I am what a good shrink might call a master at compartmentalization. In case you’ve never heard the term, it’s an unconscious mechanism that enables people like me to make believe that things we don’t want to exist really don’t exist, all so we can focus on our own narrow[…] Read On