Perthblog

This is the official Perth blog site for posts, comments, and other contributions about leadership, behavioral finance and economics, and about management generally, as well as other related topics that take our fancy.

When do You Need a Cowboy Reserve? The Cases of General Motors and Malaysian Airlines

I got to thinking about all this recently, what first with the unhappy event on MH370, and then the ignition lock saga at General Motors. Both were crises, in their own particular way. And both were badly handled. The question that arises for me is: how can smart leaders in good companies and organizations make such a massive screw-up of a crisis e...

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Ripples In Corporate Space-Time: Do Companies Have An Internal Clock?

Did you hear all the latest buzz about those boffins (at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) who just discovered gravitational waves? So we can actually measure time back almost to the time of the Big Bang? And they did it by actually showing the super-imposition of these waves on the Cosmic Microwave Background (Ok don’t ask but look here...

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Chinese IPOs in the US – How Low Should You Go?

So Weibo and Alibaba are planning to go public in the US. They follow a number of other Chinese companies that already went public. What has the record of these Chinese IPOs been? US investors are generally a pretty trusting crowd. Partly this is because the word “China” makes them think of vast numbers of people and therefore presumably vast reven...

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The Beatles’ Leadership and Innovation Lessons

I guess you have been watching all the news that’s fit to print about the Beatles and the British invasion? Yup, I’m old enough to have listened to the Beatles when they were in their prime. I was, however, young enough not to realize how innovative their music was. And now it’s all getting revived again. Anyone remember Tommy Steele? The Beatles p...

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Is High Intelligence a Handicap to Creating Wealth?


Do you have to be smart (as in high IQ) to be rich? You’d think that the answer would have to be yes. And you also have to believe that any research showing this, or the opposite, would have to be famous. You would be wrong on both counts, at least if you look at a piece of research published in 2007 by one Dr. Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University...

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Did You Inherit Your Management Style From Your Parents? The Epigenetics of Leadership

Ok so is this a trick question? How you inherit things was fully worked out by Darwin right? It’s all about natural selection and that takes many generations. And we all know that Lamarck, who said that you could inherit characteristics acquired by your parents only in their own lifetimes (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_of_acquired_ch...

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Are You Addicted to Leadership?

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Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO – Stockholders want Safety, Not Innovation

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Unlock your Inner Neanderthal to Become a More Caring Leader

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How do Exoplanet Leaders Create Highly Sustainable Worlds? The 9 Leadership Principles of Really Prescient Aliens

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Does Your Leader Have Substance - or Just Style?

How do you distinguish between leadership style and substance? First-time leaders usually don't understand how closely they are being watched and that even the smallest signals count. That means insubstantial styles and actions also. See my article in Warren Bennis' Leadership Excellence

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Can Siri Become a Great Leader? – The Coming Out of Synthetic Psychology

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Can Good Leadership Trump Bad Corporate Genes? Why Tesla Should Buy Chrysler Out of Fiat

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People who Exercise Win More Lotteries

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Mary Barra GM’s New CEO – Breaking the Glass Ceiling or Déjà Vu All Over Again?

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The Uncanny Valley in Leadership: Don’t Think Like a Sphinx

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Did Nelson Mandela Use Quantum Leadership Techniques?

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Business Acumen and the Bitcoin Bubble

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The Emergence of Commissar Capitalism? – JP Morgan and the Settlement

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Fix the Deficit – Sell Alaska and Puerto Rico

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