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| Volume 8, Issue 4 |
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In This Issue:
 The most valuable companies in America
 Your boss is a monkey
 Eliot Spitzer's seven deadly sins
Career lessons from the candidates
 Down $900 million or more, the chairman of Bear sells
Treasury Dept. seeks new U.S. power to keep markets stable
Equity loans as next round in credit crisis
 It's getting much harder to receive
The loan danger
Sucking it up [oil & your supply chain management]
 The coming death of Indian outsourcing
 Responding to employee rants: 4 do's and don'ts
25 good interview questions ... and 8 to avoid
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The most valuable companies in America
A lot of the economic news these days seems depressing, but there is at least one reason to remain optimistic:
It's still a great time to sell your business. To get a sense of where the market is headed these days, Inc. has partnered, for the fifth straight year, with Portland, Oregon -- based Business Valuation Resources, a leading provider of data about private
company transactions. The information here is based on 3,838 transactions completed from January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2007, in 141 industries. So where are the real opportunities?...
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Your boss is a monkey
"Managing up" using the tricks of exotic-animal training.
Exotic-animal trainers need a great poker face. Let's say you're a trainer, and one day, a beluga whale spits a mouthful of cold water at you. Your first instinct will be to shriek or jump or curse, but any reaction will probably reinforce the
spitting. If you react, that whale will own you, and you'll be a Spit Bull's-eye for the rest of your life. Instead, you must ignore it and appear unfazed, expressionless -- a training technique called "least-reinforcing scenario," or LRS. The writer Amy
Sutherland studied animal trainers who could teach whales not to spit, dolphins to jump through hoops, and monkeys to ride skateboards. One day, it hit her: What if she used those techniques on her husband? This epiphany led her to write her witty and
engaging new book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage. Shamu proves that behavioral training works on whales and husbands. But let's apply Sutherland's
approach to another irritable mammal: your boss. Maybe you should start treating him or her like an exotic animal. Say your boss is a yeller...
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Eliot Spitzer's seven deadly sins
Lust is the least of it. Here's a look at the mistakes New York's sex-scandal-scarred governor made, and the lessons for any leader—in politics or business.
Stunning, shocking, schadenfreude-inducing. All those adjectives have been used to describe the fall of Eliot Spitzer, "The Sheriff of Wall Street" and the man Time Magazine named "The Crusader." On the surface it seems his involvement with a prostitution ring and other
possible illegal behavior are what doomed him as governor. But really they're only the tip of the iceberg. As a leader and manager, Spitzer made plenty of other mistakes that made it untenable for him to stay in office. Here are Eliot Spitzer's seven deadly sins (with
apologies to St. John Cassian, Pope St. Gregory the Great, and Dante), and the lessons they contain for any leader or manager...
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Career lessons from the candidates
Take cues from the Presidential hopefuls—while avoiding their missteps—and apply them to your own career campaign.
News analysts can't stop talking about the most closely followed Presidential race in recent memory. Nearly every day there's a new twist or side story to renew the media frenzy. What can business leaders and career-minded types learn from the candidates'
widely varying approaches to campaigning (which clearly have had unexpected results)? See if our observations on the current and past front-runners' strategies and communication styles might serve you in your own race to the corner office.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI...JOHN MCCAIN...HILLARY CLINTON...BARACK OBAMA...
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Down $900 million or more, the chairman of Bear sells
Oscar Hidalgo/The New York Times
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James E. Cayne, the Bear Stearns chairman, sold his shares on Tuesday.
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Only a year ago James E. Cayne’s stake in Bear Stearns was worth more than $1 billion. But on Thursday, Mr. Cayne, the chairman of Bear, disclosed that he had sold all of his shares in the troubled investment bank this week for just $61 million.
While the sale leaves Mr. Cayne a wealthy man, it nonetheless underscores the deep losses suffered by Bear’s shareholders after the company’s forced sale to JPMorgan Chase two weeks ago. And for Mr. Cayne, the liquidation evokes a deep sense of loss. It
represents a humiliating capitulation for a brash executive who, with his ever-present cigar, suspender-snapping ways and Friday golf outings in the summer, epitomized the
classic, if outdated, picture of the Wall Street chieftain. To the end, Mr. Cayne heeded the advice he often gave his colleagues at Bear:...
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Treasury Dept. seeks new U.S. power to keep markets stable
The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send
SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.
The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial
calamity in decades. Democratic lawmakers are all but certain to say the proposal does not go far enough in restricting the kinds of practices that caused the financial crisis. Many of the proposals, like those that would consolidate regulatory agencies,
have nothing to do with the turmoil in financial markets. And some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation. According to a summary provided by the administration, the plan would consolidate an alphabet soup of banking and securities regulators into a
powerful trio of overseers responsible for everything from banks and brokerage firms to hedge funds and private equity firms. While the plan could expose Wall Street investment
banks and hedge funds to greater scrutiny, it carefully avoids a call for tighter regulation. The plan would not...
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Equity loans as next round in credit crisis
Little by little, millions of Americans surrendered equity in their homes in recent years. Lulled by good times, they borrowed — sometimes heavily — against the roofs over their heads.
Now the bill is coming due. As the housing market spirals downward, home equity loans, which turn home sweet home into cash sweet cash, are becoming the next flash point in the mortgage crisis. Americans owe a staggering $1.1 trillion on home equity loans — and
banks are increasingly worried they may not get some of that money back. To get it, many lenders are taking the extraordinary step of preventing some people from selling their homes or refinancing their mortgages unless they pay off all or part of their home
equity loans first. In the past, when home prices were not falling, lenders did not resort to these measures. Such tactics are impeding efforts by policy makers to help...
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It's getting much harder to receive
Last month, former IBM and Chrysler Corp. finance chief Jerry York warned CFOs to watch their receivables "like a hawk."
His advice at this year's CFO Rising conference accentuated his dire prediction that the U.S. economy is entering a long and dark recession. "In a contracting economy, receivables become a
concern," he said. York's warning, however, may have come too late for some finance departments...
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The loan danger
The credit crunch has come home to roost in many unlikely places, from the student-loan market to the municipal-bond arena.
Here's another improbable victim: your human resources department. The subprime crisis and its many ripple effects are prompting more financially strapped homeowners to borrow
from their 401(k) plans. That not only puts their long-term fiscal health in jeopardy, but also places a large burden on their employers...
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Sucking it up [oil & your supply chain management]
Here's a consequence of escalating oil prices that many businesses have yet to contemplate, or don't want to:
The supply-chain management strategies spawned during the last 20 years — quick transport, lean inventories, and a growing reliance on low-cost, offshore labor — may not make good business sense anymore. Why?...
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The coming death of Indian outsourcing
India is riding high on outsourcing. Information technology and IT-enabled services will employ 4 million people in 2008 and account for 7% of gross domestic product and
33% of India's foreign-exchange inflows, according to Nasscom, an Indian IT industry organization.
The death of this industry is far from anyone’s mind. However, the reality is that wages are rising in India. The cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6.
Today, it is at best 1:3. Attrition is scary. Jobs that are low value-added and easily automatable should and will disappear over the next decade...
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Responding to employee rants: 4 do's and don'ts
Discipline and termination meetings are emotionally charged events that carry the potential for nasty words, hurt feelings and even legal troubles.
As a manager, you never know how employees will respond to discipline or firings. But you need to be prepared for anything—including employees who “let it all out” in long, loud rants. Rants are unpredictable. Some employees simply vent, cry or complain
without pouring their scorn on management. Other employees scream, insult, curse, threaten—or even get physical. In either case, it’s wise to follow these four do’s and don’ts to defuse rants and avoid lawsuits:...
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25 good interview questions ... and 8 to avoid
When preparing to interview job candidates, it’s important for supervisors to plan out their lines of questioning.
Decide which skills are most important for that position, then focus your questions on assessing those skills. Here are some sample questions to work from:
Employment history
1. If you had to evaluate your performance in your present job on a scale of ...
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