This is a group, like the aloof royal families of early 20th century Europe, that seems chronically incapable of responding to reality until devastation arrives on stilts.
The timing was remarkable. In the same week that began with the world’s credit-battered capital markets falling off a cliff, the world’s rich and powerful opened their annual summit at Davos. But that’s not all the subprime investment vehicles that caused the commotion and the World Economic Forum have in common. Both were incredibly over-hyped. And both have been shown to be totally incapable of delivering what was promised. (more…)
He was not a politician, nor was he a CEO. The conqueror of Mount Everest was something even more rare by the subprime standards of present day: he was a leader.
He gazed upon heights where no man had dared raise his eyes before and scaled their tallest peak. He did it without a golden parachute. There was no fifty-page contract that promised to reward the prospect of failure and ensure a prince’s living for his retirement years. Unlike the corporate titans of today, success for him, and his trusted guide Tenzing Norgay, was a singular effort; there were no legions in far flung offices and plants around the world who did the hard work. And when he ascended the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, public relations departments weren’t required to put a spin on the triumph. There was no chimera to inflate the accomplishment as there so often is in the arenas of business and politics today; nobody cashed in big-time leaving others to discover later that the feat was illusionary, like Enron, or folly, like the current credit fantasy that has propelled so many into the stratosphere and then into the ground. In this quest, you will find no social luminary vying for 15 minutes of fame or boardroom baron whose misguided values would lead to downfall and jail time. Genuine success, like the character that produces it, speaks with a voice that needs neither translation nor amplification.
It is perhaps only the greatest of men and women who can confront danger, straddle risk and rise to the top, yet know that humility and an honest concern for others are among the most accomplishing of attributes by which to live and the defining hallmarks of the authentic individual.
He was not a politician, nor was he a CEO. Sir Edmund Hillary, who died today at the age of 88, was something even more rare by the subprime standards of present day: he was a leader.
We’ve had a few things to say about Bear Stearns’s CEO James Cayne over the past few months. He also made it into the Finlay ON Governance Year End Awards. He was not a winner. Just earlier today, we suggested that standards were slipping so badly in America’s boardrooms that: (more…)
The board of SLM Corp., known in many circles as Sallie Mae, announced the appointment today of a new chairman and company CFO. They must have forgotten the other change they need to make: CEO Albert L. Lord. (more…)
The year has already started off with a surprise, and for many, carries with it the promise of profound change. In our annual year-end review, we predicted that Americans may not be quite as eager as some have thought to place a cartouche around the Clinton dynastic name. Last night, the Democratic voters of Iowa showed their independence and an appetite to embrace something entirely different: a young African American who may be light on experience but stands tall in his ability to see and articulate a vision for a different America. (more…)
In December 1957, a future prime minister of Canada received the Nobel prize for peace. In December 2007, a former prime minister is forced to explain to a skeptical country why he received envelopes stuffed with cash.
It is hard to imagine a more striking contrast in political character. Yesterday, Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18th prime minister, appeared before a committee of parliament to explain why he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from a businessman who wanted him to help sell armored vehicles when he left office. 
Fifty years ago, almost to the day, the man who would become Canada’s 14th prime minister received the Nobel peace prize and the adulation of the world for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. (more…)
This is a group, like the aloof royal families of early 20th century Europe, that seems chronically incapable of responding to reality until devastation arrives on stilts.