Monthly Archives: June 2009

Survive company mergers

June 30, 2009 1:25 am by Stefan Stern

Many promises are made at the altar during a merger or an acquisition. Most of them get broken. It is worth reminding yourself of this now, before the next wave of whirlwind corporate romances arrives.

So far this year there has been only mixed evidence of renewed appetite for M&A. Sure, the proposed £40bn ($66bn, €47bn) merger between the mining companies Xstrata and Anglo American caught the eye, just as Oracle’s $7.4bn deal to buy Sun Microsystems and GlaxoSmithKline’s $3.6bn move for Stiefel Laboratories did.

The past three months have been relatively quiet, however, as businesses wait to see how robust any potential economic recovery really is, and whether finance will be available. Getting valuations right at a time like this is in any case extremely difficult.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Posted in Strategy/ops | Permalink

Leading in a crisis, the 2009 edition

June 29, 2009 2:03 pm by Ravi Mattu

London Business School’s Global Leadership Summit (theme: Leadership in Challenging Times) is taking place today. Stefan Stern is tweeting from the conference but I made it part of the morning session, including an impressive keynote address by Jeff Immelt, chief executive of GE, and a panel discussion chaired by my colleague Martin Wolf, that included Ian Davis of McKinsey, Paul Walsh of Diageo and Kishore Mahbubani.

Here are a few highlights from Immelt’s presentation on “The way forward for business in a reset economy”:

Continue reading: “Leading in a crisis, the 2009 edition”

Posted in Management | Permalink

Different methods of staff management

June 26, 2009 4:01 pm by Ravi Mattu

Oprah Winfrey is taking her entire staff and their families on a luxury holiday – for the second year running. Stuart Jeffries offers some reasonably plausible reasons why it might not be a great idea
Abercrombie & Fitch is being sued by an employee who says she was discrimated against because she has a prosthetic arm that did not fit Abercrombie & Fitch’s “look” and led to her being relegated to the back room.
Apple is so protective of its operations, that it senior managers have apparently released false information in internal meetings in order to identify the source of stories that had made it into the public domain
Xerox’s CEO-elect, Ursula Burns is the first African-American woman to head a big US company. The company’s progressive policies on diversity are part of the reason but why have so few other ethnic minorities made it the top of corporate America?

Posted in Management | Permalink

Controlling the message

June 23, 2009 2:54 pm by Ravi Mattu

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter, recently escaped from the Taliban after being held as a hostage for seven months. Unusually, particularly in the world of the 24-hour newscycle, the NY Times managed to keep the story of his abduction quiet with the co-operation of a raft of other news organisations.

Bill Keller, the paper’s executive editor, explained to CNN how they worked with their sometime rivals and also dealt with the bloggers who are often thought to be more difficult to control.

UPDATE: David Rohde returned to the New York Times yesterday, with his Afghan translator.

Posted in Leadership, Management, Managing others | Permalink

Effective networks lead to innovation

June 23, 2009 1:19 am by Stefan Stern

Why aren’t businesses and organisations more innovative? Are they filled with dull, unimaginative people? Are they lacking crucial “core competencies”? Or are their people just not working hard enough?

The answer to those last three questions is no, no and no. Something else must explain the inability of companies to display greater innovative flair. What is it?

The problem for senior managers is that, as you walk round the business or study the organisational chart, nothing much may seem to be wrong. People are at their desks or in meeting rooms, hard at work. Something that looks like two-way communication appears to be taking place. And then there are all those e-mails, instant messages and texts. You can be confident that good ideas must be flowing freely within the organisation.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Posted in Management | Permalink

Jack Welch launches online MBA

June 22, 2009 4:19 pm by Stefan Stern

Wow.

I suppose there is a logic to this. What do you think an online Jack Welch MBA will be like?

Suggestions please.

Posted in Management | Permalink

Innovation, project management and HR (kind of)

June 19, 2009 12:39 pm by Ravi Mattu

Google’s Sergey Brin on why the company’s massive size can be a boon to innovation
A look at the Dreamliner project from Boeing – two years late and costing the company billions more that it should have
Poker and politics – a novel way to solve a political HR problem

Posted in Management | Permalink

Sir Fred – too little, too late

June 19, 2009 10:21 am by Stefan Stern

I cannot improve on this excellent commentary on Sir Fred Goodwin by my colleague Andrew Hill in today’s Lombard column in the FT.

Posted in Leadership | Permalink

Bonne anniversaire Cirque du Soleil

June 18, 2009 2:25 pm by Ravi Mattu

Cirque du Soleil is 25 years old this week. To celebrate, the company on Tuesday tried to set a world record for the most people simultaneously walking on stilts. It will take the auditors at the Guinness Book of Records some time to analyse whether they realised their ambition.

Cirque du Soleil, which began as a small group of stilt-walkers, jugglers and musicians has become a global business that employs more than 4,000 and has revenues of more than $700m. As we reported last year, Guy Laliberte, its founder, even won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award a couple of years ago. More recently, Mr Laliberte paid $35m to become a space tourist.

The joys of being a successful entrepreneur.

Posted in Creativity, Leadership, Management | Permalink

Are Generation Ys the new Baby Boomers?

June 18, 2009 1:05 pm by Ravi Mattu

For anyone wondering whether we have our finger on the pulse of management, our story on how Generation Y is may be more similar to the Baby Boomers than marketers and managers had thought taps in into a rich vein of discussion right now on a group commonly defined as “demanding, selfish, text-addicted job-hoppers with little loyalty to their employers”.

In addition to the studies mentioned in the story (one by London Business School’s Centre for Women in Business the other from the US-based Center for Work-Life Policy), LBS has opened up a blog called Genderation Y on the issue and the Ashridge Business School has just released Generation Y: Inside Out, a research project into this sector of the workforce.

Posted in Corporate culture, Management, Managing others | Permalink