Posts tagged as:

board of directors

Valid or reliable – in the board room

07.30.2010

In my last post on the theme of looking at metrics as either valid or reliable and the balance between them, I wanted to examine the impact on decisions in the board room. So far we have covered the following:

Valid or reliable – take your pick
Valid or reliable – trying to break the tradeoff
Valid or [...]

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Setting Board Priorities

07.06.2010

GE’s Board of Directors from a couple of years ago.
What should boards of directors be focused on? Strategy? People? Competition? There might be several choices that could receive votes that you could feel comfortable about. Would you feel comfortable knowing that the board’s top priority is keeping up with new regulation?
That’s exactly what is at [...]

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Long Term Success of the Family-Held Business

06.08.2010

Last week I spotlighted some success and failures in family-held businesses in Zildjian versus Viacom. When done poorly, the family can destroy the business, or the business can destroy the family. How can you avoid some of the bad outcomes? I think two major factors must be considered: influence and succession.
Influence
Influence must help the family [...]

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Zildjian versus Viacom

06.03.2010

Publicly held businesses create most of the news. But family-created and held business are a bigger part of the economy than most people realize. They might be a brand-name you use every day, or something deep in the supply chain that you’ve never seen. But there are a great many family businesses. What makes the [...]

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Noses In, Fingers Out

04.27.2010

Noses In, Fingers Out is a long-standard rule of thumb for boards of directors and the organizations they govern. What does it mean? Well, that’s not so clear especially as the world has gotten more complicated.
Fundamentally it means that board members should have their noses in the business. They should know what’s going on. They [...]

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Lean thinker Paul O’Neill

10.01.2009

True lean thinkers in positions of power are hard to come by, but Paul O’Neill may be one of the best examples we have in the US. Former head of Alcoa, former Treasury Secretary under President Bush (for a very short period), and founder of the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative to help bring lean to [...]

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