Corporate governance

The key is knowing what your top price is—and having the discipline to stick to it.

Hitting the hiring bull’s-eye is one of an executive’s most important—and most difficult—responsibilities. Ten common mistakes can get in the way, but a pointed and systematic approach can virtually guarantee success.

By pooling the resources of the poor and by sharing information, religious and financial institutions can work together to change inner-city economies.

In my last post, I talked about the ways you can use green data — footprinting information on your products and services up and down the value chain — to create enormous value for your company. As they say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And those with the best information can cut costs, […]

Bonuses and other forms of incentive compensation are an effective motivator of executives to achieve ever higher earnings per share. The drive to produce short-term results, however, often influences management to forgo investment in capital equipment and R&D that would benefit the corporation several years hence even more than improved earnings next year would. The […]

Your organization can become more decisive—and can implement strategy more quickly—if you know where the bottlenecks are and who’s empowered to break through them.

A framework to help you understand the backlash and stay true to your values.

When should a family business give up on an outside leader?

I recently returned from the Peter Drucker Global Forum Vienna, Austria, an event held as part of the centennial celebration of Peter Drucker’s birth. Having studied and written about Drucker extensively, spent years infusing his thinking into my own management consulting work, and befriended him late in his life, I take three messages from the […]

Why should that be a surprise?

Joe Ryan turned a small-town cosmetics company into a national powerhouse, making employees happy and shareholders rich in the process. Does it really matter that he cheats on his wife?

Most experienced negotiators are comfortable working out the terms of an economic contract--they bargain for the best price, haggle over equity splits,...

Eliminating algorithmic bias can unlock value for your company.

Startups typically operate with the mentality that growth and profit come first, higher calling comes second. This strategy, however, is misguided. Increasingly,...

In the wake of a series of gross corporate abuses around the turn of the century, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was intended to make corporate...

They care about society at large.

Create something that will outlast you.

I have a colleague who cares passionately about the environment. She worries about global warming, supports policy to reduce carbon emissions, and is...

Neutrality is no longer a viable option.