In 1784 Immanuel Kant suggested that “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made.” This quotation came to mind as I was reading several recent blogs discussing the sad condition of US business. Off the record, many CEOs of larger corporations fear for our country; research, operations and new facilities overseas. The ease with which we can now outsource pieces of our operation has even very small private companies outsourcing some “back office” functions, for example.
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Ethical Corporation, Governance, Leadership
So, it’s no fun to have made the call, but I see that Tony Hayward is in fact on his way out. He is being held accountable (not necessarily blamed, but the buck stops with him).A recent Gallop Poll showing how the “confidence” people had in various institutions means we have a very long way to go in getting folks to have faith in big business. Luckily, many still have confidence in small business. “Small businesses rate a 66% while big business gets 19% and organized labor 10%.”
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Corporate Culture, Crisis Management, Governance, Leadership
A colleague, Ira Wolfe, asked a great question over on one of the many leadership blogs we frequent. His question was, “The BP Gulf of Mexico Crisis is just gushing with leadership lessons. What do you think are the most important lessons leaders can learn from this?” I like this question and had been thinking about this very thing for weeks now. There were several responses, and I too contributed since I’d been pondering this topic anyway.
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Ethical Corporation, Governance, Leadership, Management
I spent about two-and-a-half days in a weekend training session with my colleagues this month. The topic was Understanding Company Financial Statements. The training was excellent, as is usual with Vistage, and it was well worth my time. To make things even better, we “saved the company.”
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Finance, Governance, Leadership, Management
A friend volunteers a the local public library where he sorts and prices the donated books for the used bookstore portion of the library. He knows I speak on Business Ethics and so he called the other day to announce that he had a “really old book” titled “Ethics in Practice.”
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Governance, Leadership, Management, Shaping the Corporate Culture
