I’ve decided to start adding my thoughts and experience regarding cooking, which is one of my favorite activities. Cooking offers some parallels to the overall theme of risk-taking I’m so fond of extolling in these pages. That’s what I hope to explore anyway. At its best, cooking is improvisational, highly creative, personal, which could well […]
Thanks to Yahoo’s dismissal of Carol Bartz, we have a fresh example of how CEO firings are communicated. Instead of a well-crafted joint news release, Bartz herself trumped the company’s announcement by sending a terse, firm-wide email that quickly found its way to the press. And before everyone else had it, Kara Swisher at Dow […]
Last week Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK) abruptly announced that its CEO, Robert Kelly was leaving, citing “differences in approaches to managing the company.” The story made headlines for a day but was quickly forgotten, and the stock price has held pretty steady – both hallmarks of a communications success. Of course it […]
Ten years after the terror attack that killed two-thirds of its New York staff and nearly destroyed the firm, Cantor Fitzgerald is thriving, the New York Times reported in a Sunday feature. The firm’s success is due in large measure to CEO Howard Lutnick and a handful of executives who survived the day. Their determination, […]
I’m starting a new feature that will run every Friday (well, that’s the plan anyway) and focus on one or two interesting pieces on risk. I’ll flag news articles, speeches, commentaries and other content that offers a thoughtful perspective on risk – both purposeful risk-taking as well as risk mitigation. This week, it seems appropriate […]
Bank of America’s shot at Henry Blodget is a measure of how influential the blogosphere has now become in the financial markets. It’s also a reminder of the pitfalls of taking on critics publicly in any forum. For every company that has seen its stock price plummet, the scene within BofA is a familiar one: […]
It’s hard to know if Standard & Poor’s believed its Friday-night downgrade of the US credit rating was a routine action or something unusual. After all, the agency had warned about the risks of a downgrade, and many in the market believed it was possible, if not likely. And it announced the decision in the […]
I recently spoke to graduate students at Baruch College in New York City. The topic was employee communications in M&A deals, and I introduced what I call “Richard’s Rules” for these situations. Here’s a sample. 1. News will leak, and usually at the worst time. Anyone who has handled communications for an M&A deal knows […]
There were two interesting items in the New York Times yesterday on innovations in magazine publishing. The first, by David Carr, looks at Lucky Peach, a new food-centered magazine started by chef David Chang that’s rich in content and texture. At 174 pages and printed on heavy matte paper, it turns magazine convention on its […]
Not long ago, I read Life, by Keith Richards. Sure, he’s known around the world as the lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones, but I’d add him to the pantheon of business-management gurus. Surprised? Don’t be. Richards’s life is filled with examples of the kind of behavior that people and organizations should do to be […]