Buffet: It’s the Personable Leaders You Have to Watch Out For!
Can You Trust Shoeless CEOs? So, the truth is out, from no less than the oracle of Omaha. What’s the skinny? The biggest problem we face in investing in companies are the CEOs themselves. You knew that didn’t you? According to the Oracle, “You get a guy or a woman in charge of it—they’re personable, […]
Do most leaders lack business acumen?
Uh oh, GE just warned of another year of falling profits. It recently sold off its BioPharma unit making investors feel a bit better, until they realized things were still getting worse. GE needed to do something after cutting its dividend and reporting a huge loss. Jack Welch would be turning in his grave except for the fact that […]
Labor still beats capital in leadership development
As is my wont I was recently idly surfing the net checking out stuff about leadership. I ran across the latest issue of Entrepreneur magazine, a very good publication I am sure. Here were its three top headlines on the leadership page: I’m sure these are all good articles. And they are definitely representative of the […]
The Difference between Agile and Supple Leadership
So where did I get “supple leadership” from? I made it up of course! Actually I was reflecting on the now widespread use of the term “agile leadership”. It’s in use by many companies and there are even assessments for it now such as one from Korn/Ferry. Even I have been guilty of using the term […]
Could you purposely redesign your personality with a pill?
Another apparently useless piece of information, courtesy of researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts medical School. It looks like particular chemicals in your immune system cause you to be social. Specifically it’s a molecule called gamma interferon. Who would have thunk it? For some reason, the immune system governs whether you […]
A Turing Test for Leadership?
Did you notice that the next Apple developer’s conference will focus on Siri? Meanwhile the digital assistants’ wars have heated up with Google Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa. These all aim to create a human-like assistant that can interact through voice. Nor are these the only entries. We also have Watson from IBM, NELL from Carnegie Mellon and Cleverbot from Rollo […]
Would Trump be a Billionaire without his Inheritance?
Is this the elephant in the room? Trump’s frequent allusions to his vast wealth and to how smart he is sounds awfully like the rich son who inherited it all but wants to convince everyone else – and himself – that really he did it all himself. So I thought I would do an analysis […]
An Inconvenient Truth – Alpha Financial Styles Beget Ginormous Returns
Apologies to Al Gore for another inconvenient truth. There’s been a lot of talk about alpha these days, but not just about investments. Trump, Putin – alpha is definitely in vogue. As in alpha male. Like Tarzan. Does that tell us something about the investing world? Yep it does. Check out my book The Three Financial […]
Behavioral M&A – Yahoo Needed It But Too Late Now
So what’s behavioral M&A anyhows? See here for the skinny, will tell you more below. When Marissa Mayer was appointed CEO I predicted she would fail. Right on the money (“Yahoo – Product Bling 1, Business Acumen 0”). Was the problem Ms. Mayer or something else? How about the 70 or so acquisitions she made? They cost around […]
“The Big Short” – The Real Problem with Ratings
Did you see “The Big Short”? I’m sure Bernie Sanders is having a field day, his ticket to the big job he thinks. It’s worth seeing if only to reveal the zeitgeist in 2007, a fin de siècle moment. Naturally it paints the banks and the ratings companies in the darkest of colors. So what […]