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| Volume 8, Issue 6 |
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In This Issue:
 The world's most influential headhunters
BlackBerry bold: No mere iClone
Centuries-old family businesses share their secrets
The reason for high oil prices
 Why some presentations … um-ah … stink
Cultural capital in the C-Suite
The power of adversity
Lessons from Luxury travel
 Culture shift: The ultimate hiring blunder
 HBS cases: Negotiating with Wal-Mart
 Why Americans are going abroad for health care
 Nine ways to reduce stress
How to keep a billionaire safe
 I.R.S. seeks reports of foreign accounts
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The world's most influential headhunters (updated)
Joseph Daniel McCool is a writer, speaker and advisor on executive recruiting and corporate management succession best practices. He is the author of Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive,
Direct & Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent, which has been recognized as "one of the 30 best business books of 2008" by Soundview Executive Book Summaries.
You can't get to the top without the headhunters. That's as true for businesses as it is for established and emerging leaders. The world's top headhunters control access to the lion's share of C-suite succession and leader-replacement searches for the world's
largest corporations. Their influence also extends to the top ranks of the most ambitious smaller companies, which understand how crucial top talent is and are willing to pay for it. That's why BusinessWeek has introduced its exclusive database
of the world's most influential headhunters, with comprehensive information on 100 of the top global executive recruiters. So what is it that separates these executive recruiters from the rest?...
Read the article. Back to top
BlackBerry bold: No mere iClone
This is a great time for anyone who hates to be away from e-mail and the Internet for more than a few minutes at a stretch. Apple (AAPL), which last year redefined the mobile experience with the iPhone, seems poised to introduce an improved version.
And market leader Research In Motion (RIMM) has risen to the challenge with the BlackBerry Bold. When the phone launches this summer, it should be a potent weapon in RIM's fight to defend its dominance of the corporate smartphone market. Unlike recent
BlackBerry products such as the super-slim Pearl, the Bold is aimed at the heart of RIM's traditional enterprise market. I had only a brief chance to try it during a
meeting with RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, but what I saw was impressive. The Bold's most striking features are the screen and the keyboard. The screen displays...
Read the article. Back to top
Centuries-old family businesses share their secrets
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Third-Generation Young Electric Sign Company Credit: YESCO
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Eighth-Generation Lyman Orchards Credit: Lyman Orchards
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Third-Generation T. Anthony Credit: T. Anthony
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Eighth- and Ninth-Generation Villeroy & Boch Credit: Villeroy & Boch
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In 2000, a few members of the Lyman family moved out of its capacious ancestral home. Though the house, set on a sprawling farm in Middlefield, Conn., had been inhabited by Lymans since its construction in 1785, it was feeling too big for them.
Two years later, the 180-member family decided to turn the homestead into an event space for weddings and other occasions. It was the latest in a series of business decisions that have kept the family business thriving for over 200 years. Today, the
event space is one of multiple businesses spun out of Lyman Orchards, including two golf courses, a line of baked goods, and Connecticut's largest indoor farm market. The farm, operated by eight generations of Lymans, sits on 1,100 acres and earned $10
million in revenue in 2007. "I think obviously it's unusual for a family business to last as long as us," says John Lyman, Orchards' executive vice-president.[According to
John Lyman, the key to his family's 265 years of success has been remaining tied to the land as well as continuously diversifying offerings...]
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The reason for high oil prices
"One of the things I think is very important to realize is that the growth in the world oil consumption is not that strong." —David Kelly, chief market strategist, J.P. Morgan Funds; The Washington Post, May 4, 2008
"...There is substantial evidence that the large amount of speculation in the current market has significantly increased [oil] prices." —U.S. Senate Staff Report, The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices, June 27, 2006
On May 13, the price of a barrel of oil briefly hit a record of $126.98 on the New York Mercantile Exchange The reason was ostensibly that Iran was cutting oil production. But there is no gas shortage. So why are prices still going up? In late
April the American Association of Petroleum Geologists held its annual invitation-only dinner in Dallas for, as my source put it, "the bigwigs" of the energy industry. During this meeting, influential and knowledgeable CEOs reached the consensus that
"oil prices will likely soon drop dramatically and the long-term price increases will be in natural gas." Of course, despite the pedigrees of those in attendance, their forming a consensus on the direction of energy prices does not mean that it's written
in stone or is even going to happen. The group is clearly bullish on natural gas. But petroleum keeps getting more expensive. [Why ?...]
Read the article. Back to top
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Why some presentations … um-ah … stink
Andy Craig is a presentation coach and owner of Elevator Speech, Inc. His clients include Microsoft, CA (Computer Associates), Deloitte, Humana, Reebok, Ingram Micro, Petrobras
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It was 9:15 a.m. on a typical day of presentation coaching.
My video camera was fixed on a software company executive, and I was sipping Starbuck’s. Forty minutes and more than 300 “um-ah” stammers later, I thought: “Why do so many great executives give such crummy presentations?” Here’s why: presentations in
corporate America are created backwards. Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’re assigned a date for a presentation. To customers, partners, employees, analysts, industry peers, whomever. You follow one of three paths: One, you email your marketing
department for a suitable PowerPoint presentation you can use with this group. After reviewing the slides, you think about how you’re going to talk to each one. Two, you...
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Cultural capital in the C-Suite
The corporate world is in an extreme state of flux.
The sub-prime crisis, the incredible rise of parts of the developing world, developments in forgotten places like Africa and other factors are changing the game. At the same time, the markets continuously scrutinize the short-term performance of
companies and CEOs. Can we make any suggestions about the future from all this? What emerging trends will be critical for lasting leadership in the coming years? Global experience and a worldly perspective will become increasingly important for corporate
leaders as the marketplace evolves. Consider Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault and Nissan. He successfully operated a French and Japanese company in parallel over the last several years—a feat due, in no small part, to his understanding of the people in the
organization and what it takes to effect change in their cultures. He also has a great appreciation for talent and makes a genuine effort to really get to know his team. Another good example is Sam Palmisano at IBM. He once ran IBM Japan, speaks Japanese
and is highly credentialed in the Asian community. His global perspective and ability to operate across geographies helped build IBM’s business in Asia. American companies
are slowly starting to appoint more non- U.S. leaders and those with a more worldly perspective...
Read the article. Back to top
The power of adversity
Al Weatherhead is the founder and CEO of Weatherchem Corp.(www.weatherchem.com), a $50 million Cleveland, OH based maker plastic dispensing closures. His book, “The Power of Adversity,” was recently published.
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Harnessing with relentless passion the infinite power of adversity has led me to stunning revelations.
Before adversity struck, I was preoccupied with false impressions of personal appearance and grandiosity. Adversity beat out of me self-delusion and stripped me of false vanities. And as I began to understand my own suffering, I began to view life
with new eyes. For example, I came to see that Weatherchem, my plastic cap and closure company, was alive. It is not merely a place built of concrete, steel, machinery, and motion, but a living, breathing entity pulsating with energy and in possession of a
soul. When I am in my factory and listening closely, I can hear its heartbeat, and not just in the rhythms of its machinery but individually and collectively from the people who work within its walls. I have also come to believe that successful management is
more like taking a pulse than taking inventory. After decades of leadership experience, I can now walk onto any factory floor and intuit its health from the
spark, rhythm, and air of its space. Is there the buzz of dissonance or the hum of synchronicity?
Confusion or creativity? Chaos or vision? Conflict or unity?
In short, is the adversity that inevitably must run through a factory like electricity, a friction or a fuel? I can always find the answers to those questions in the faces of the employees, for beyond all the mechanics of the place there is one
truth: a factory is a collective human endeavor. Indeed, much of what is wrong in a good deal of current business theory and practice is its failure to recognize that the heart of any factory beats to the rhythms of its employees. The bottom line must not
be profit, because profit can only come as a fruit of the health and dreams of the human endeavor the factory represents. Management’s responsibility, then, is to cultivate within the workplace an environment that lends itself to creativity, dreams,
and a collective spirit larger than the sum of its paychecks and mechanical parts.[If you’ve read this far, you know that I believe that problem solving—moving from challenge to challenge, no matter how painful and difficult—is the greatest thrill in
the world. However, I wouldn’t want to leave you with the false impression that I’m incapable of backsliding once in a while...]
Read the article. Back to top
Lessons from Luxury travel
There’s really only one word to describe Machu Picchu, and Ingram Chodorow uses it as he steps off a bus having just toured the Inca empire’s ruins.
“Spectacular,” he says. “Just spectacular.” But that’s not the only thing he had on his mind that day. He was also thinking about distribution. Chodorow is the chairman, president and CEO of Placontrol Inc. of San Diego, Calif., a private company he
founded to promote his invention, the Plackers tooth flosser—the horseshoe- shaped device with a string for flossing one’s teeth that has been widely imitated. He and his wife, Ellen, were traveling with 72 other passengers around the world in a
chartered B757 run by TCS Expeditions. The 25-day trip from late January to mid- February hit 11 destinations, starting in Peru, ending in London, and making stops in
between at Easter Island, Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal, Dubai, and the Serengeti. It cost $55,950 per person, and included...
Read the article. Back to top
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Culture shift: The ultimate hiring blunder
INCENTIVE online "Culture Shift" columnist Paul Levesque is an author, seminar leader and public speaker with two decades' experience as an international business consultant specializing in the connection between employee motivation
and customer satisfaction. He is a senior consultant with Boston-based Novations Inc., and is also founder and CEO of Customer Focus Breakthroughs Inc.
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Hint: It has nothing to do with hiring candidates with the wrong qualifications or experience.
The Good News:
"We needed someone with solid technical computer skills in this department to sort out all our local network headaches. I was extremely lucky to find a whiz-kid who knows
this stuff inside out. The guy’s technical savvy just blew every other job applicant out of the water."
The Bad News:
"Turns out everybody in the department finds the guy too abrasive and cranky to deal with, so they continue to try and fix their problems themselves. Now I have as many computer problems as I did before, plus one more person on the payroll who basically
does nothing all day." It's the most costly and damaging hiring blunder of all—yet, sad to say, also the most common. It's the "temporary amnesia" that sets in during hiring interviews—when interviewers are so busy making sure each applicant has the
right technical qualifications for the job, managers forget all about checking to see if any of the applicants also have the kind of personality or value system that will
strengthen the organization's culture. [How to interview and hire for cultural alignment...]
Read the article. Back to top
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HBS cases: Negotiating with Wal-Mart
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Wal-Mart could clearly live without Frey Farms, but it's pretty hard to live without Tide and Pampers."
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Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, sold $315 billion worth of goods in 2006.
With its single-minded focus on "EDLP" (everyday low prices) and the power to make or break suppliers, a partnership with Wal-Mart is either the Holy Grail or the kiss of death, depending on one's perspective. There are numerous media accounts of the
corporate monolith riding its suppliers into the ground. But what about those who manage to survive, and thrive, while dealing with the classic hardball negotiator? In "Sarah Talley and Frey Farms Produce: Negotiating with Wal-Mart" and "Tom Muccio: Negotiating
the P&G Relationship with Wal-Mart," HBS professor Jim Sebenius and Research Associate Ellen Knebel show two very different organizations doing just that. The cases are part of a series that involve hard bargaining situations...
Read the article. Back to top
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Why Americans are going abroad for health care
"This doesn't look like a hospital," says Ruben Toral, showing me around. "It feels more like a hotel or an upscale mall."
After studying the gleaming lobby of Bumrungrad International for a minute or two, I'm inclined to agree. Americans in shorts recline across from Arab couples in flowing white dishdashas and black abayas, the latter accessorized with designer handbags and
sunglasses. We're in Bangkok in August, when even the asphalt is overripe and malodorous, but the only scent inside is a faint whiff of espresso from the Starbucks in the corner. Toral is responsible for luring that cosmopolitan clientele here,
thousands of miles from home, for a knee replacement or a triple bypass or even just a checkup. Before he arrived in 2001 as Bumrungrad's marketing director, "we were a Thai hospital serving a Thai community," he says. "Now we're an international hospital that
just happens to be in Thailand." Toral himself just happens to be a dead ringer for George Clooney, and he tells his story in similarly seductive tones...
Read the article. Back to top
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Nine ways to reduce stress
Despite all the long hours and working weekends you've been pulling, you had another rough quarter.
While what you really need is a nice, long break, if you’re an executive, chances are that your workload won't allow it. The rigorous schedule simply comes with the territory.But staring at your computer screen all day and night and eating only what
you have time for will take its toll sooner or later--you're likely to burn out. If the health consequences of a lack of activity and focus on your diet aren't a motivator, consider the impact that general exhaustion might already be having on all
your hard work. [Top Techniques Hummingbird health coaches, who counsel hundreds of executives (mostly based in North America), typically work with clients immediately
following their annual physical exams. Cold, hard numbers, such as high cholesterol and blood-pressure levels, can be hard for business types to ignore...]
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How to keep a billionaire safe
Burglars beware.
There's a house not far from New York City that's waiting for you. Force entry through one of the bulletproof doors or windows and you'll trigger hidden shotguns loaded with non-lethal ammo. If somehow you're still standing, the owner can retreat to a hidden,
fortified room where he can flood the rest of the house with tear gas. Other security features include biometric scanners and trap doors. The fortress cost its owner (a prosperous hedge fund manager who we've agreed not to name) $10 million to build. It
highlights just how concerned the ultra-wealthy are about their safety, and how much they're willing to pay to protect themselves...
Read the article. Back to top
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I.R.S. seeks reports of foreign accounts
In its hunt for wealthy Americans who have stashed money overseas to evade taxes, the federal government has turned to an obscure law enacted nearly four decades ago.
Under the law, originally aimed at rooting out laundering of drug money, citizens or residents of the United States must tell the Internal Revenue Service each year if they have any foreign bank or financial accounts holding a total of $10,000 or more.
Income from the assets is taxed at ordinary rates of up 35 percent. The law took effect in 1970, but many taxpayers have either ignored it or were not aware of it, and the Treasury Department has rarely enforced it. The I.R.S. estimates that one million
American taxpayers warrant disclosure, but that as few as one in four file the disclosures. Now, as it intensifies its efforts to root out offshore tax evasion, the
I.R.S. is moving to enforce the law aggressively and to apply stiff new penalties to taxpayers who don’t file the disclosures...
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