Directors Forum 2016 is a ‘must’ in an increasingly complex and volatile environment with expanding investor and stakeholder activism, geo-political unrest and 24/7 political campaigning, boards and management facing unprecedented demands. “Directors Forum 2016: Directors, Management & Shareholders in Dialogue,” hosted by Corporate Directors Forum on January 24-26, 2016, provides a forum for three constituencies […]
Proxy Mosaic is beginning a series of dialogues. The first is entitled “Are Meaningful Shareholder Proposals a Thing of the Past?” (more…)
Sign up today for the 10th anniversary, Directors Forum: Directors, Management & Shareholders in Dialogue, which brings together a unique blend of institutional investors, directors, management, regulators, consultants and contractors in an intimate setting designed for genuine access and interaction between speakers and attendees. January 25 – 27, 2015 in beautiful San Diego. I attend several […]
The march of women into the upper echelon seems inevitable. A few points from the introduction: 60% of recent university graduates have been women, 50% of those graduating with advanced degrees in law and medicine, 1/3 of those with MBAs. There will be labor and skill shortages in all developed countries over the next two […]
This is the last in my series on the Corporate Directors Forum 2013. See materials, slideshow, Corporate Directors Forum 2013: Bonus Session, and Corporate Directors Forum 2013 – Day 1, Part 1, and Corporate Directors Forum: Day 1, Part 2. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there will be little in the way of attribution below but I hope to provide […]
Below are some relatively quick notes I took at the Corporate Directors Forum 2013, held on the beautiful campus of the University of San Diego, January 27-29, 2013. See materials. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there will be little in the way of attribution below but I hope to provide some sense of the […]
Bob Frisch is the managing partner of Strategic Offsites Group. He has more than 29 years of experience working with executive teams and boards worldwide on their most critical strategic issues. He has published three articles on teams and decision making in the Harvard Business Review: “Who Really Makes the Big Decisions in Your Company” (12/11), “When Teams Can’t […]
Who’s in the Room?: How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them reminds me of the classic political science booklet by Lloyd S Etheredge, The Case of the Unreturned Cafeteria Trays: an Investigation Based on Theories of Motivation and Human Behavior (pdf). Both take a simple problem and explore various alternatives to how it can […]
Guest post from Glenn Furuya, courtesy of Pacific Business News, 1/18/2013, page 31. The article caught my eye soon after returning from the funeral of my wife’s great aunt, Kay Kramer (98), who embodied the three cultures Furuya discusses below, both in the flesh and through her work and life. Having read hundreds of publications and worked side-by-side with many […]
These are some relatively quick notes that I’m sharing from the Corporate Directors Forum 2012, held at the University of San Diego, January 22-24, 2012. This post may be a cryptic… incomplete sentences bt hopefully mor intelligible thN txt msgN or Tweets. (more…)
Stakeholder Theory: Impact and Prospects edited by Robert A. Phillips provides a great education in history to those of us who have been using the term “stakeholder” but who have little idea of its origins. Honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of R. Edward Freeman’s Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, Phillips assembles a collection of commentaries and critiques […]
CEOs are six times more likely than employees to believe they work in a company where people are inspired. Instead, employees see themselves as coerced (84%) or motivated (12%) by “carrots and sticks,” rather than a commitment to mission and purpose (4%). Are CEOs just deceiving themselves… or employees deceiving their CEOs? How important is […]
From August 2011 Harper’s Index: Portion of employers who say they conduct criminal-background checks on potential employees: ¾ Chance that an American adult has a criminal record: 1 in 4 Percentage of applicants offered undergraduate admission to Harvard this year: 6.2 Percentage of applicants accepted for employment on McDonanld’s National Hiring day in April: 6.2 […]
Bartley J. Madden’s recent paper, Management’s Knowing Process and the Theory of Constraints, explores the brain’s capability for forming and re-forming neural circuits that constitute our perceptions of the “world out there.” Our “realities” are built up from specific and limited past experiences. Managers and boards would do well to be more attuned to uncovering erroneous assumptions […]
Perhaps it takes the mass media to illustrate the skewed focus of corporate law. Here we have the [at least for now] CEO of Tribune Company, Randy Michaels, under fire for a lot of superficial things, such as an alleged frat house atmosphere in the company, while his role in the company going into and […]
Disclaimer: Given Dodd-Frank, proxy plumbing and all those comments I want to provide the SEC, the report below doesn’t do the ICGN Mid-Year Conference justice. I wrote this up more than a week later with poor notes and memory. Comments, corrections and substitute photos are solicited. Sharing Perspectives Across the Atlantic. Phil Angelides, Lord McFall […]