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Week of June 27, 2016
“The secret of a long life is double careers.
One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years.”
David Ogilvy
Founder of advertising giant Ogilvy and Mather
The Price of Nice
The old dictum that “Nice guys finish last” has always been the slogan of cynics. Most executives hope this isn’t true, but fear that it is not. Recent research summarized in the Harvard Business Review seems to support the cynics in many aspects of “niceness”, especially in how it shows up in decision making. Check out “The Dangers of Being a Nice CEO” ; the good news is that you don’t have to be a jerk to be decisive.
HR, Are You There ?
Most CEOs rely on the day-in, day-out administrative and compliance aspects of their HR Team to keep the company out of legal trouble and assure an orderly workplace. But new studies of HR effectiveness show that CEOs are increasingly vexed by the ability of HR teams to acquire and retain talent. This research is summarized (with links to the actual studies) in a recent Forbes article which shares that overall CEOs give their HR Teams a D+ in the talent arena. How is your team doing?
Dueling Commercials
In the 1950s early TV Commercials would compare a company’s offerings to a hypothetical “Brand X.” This changed in the 70’s and today it’s hard to find a commercial that doesn’t take on a competitor in a less than cordial manner. One of the newer tactics is for a company to respond to a rival’s message with a very similar commercial.
Recently, Mercedes created an attention grabbing commercial that demonstrated its ride handling and stability. Rival Jaquar responded with its own message that mirrored Mercedes’ commercial with one “killer” addition. Click here to watch the Mercedes commercial then wait a few seconds for the Jaquar response.
When you’re through chuckling…ask yourself if a competitor could do this to you?
Econ Recon: Brexit Briefing
The UK Referendum that surprisingly chose an exit from the European Union only became official last Friday morning so there hasn’t been enough time for the economists I usually feature here to reply.
However, Roger Martin-Fagg, a UK economist much followed by our fellow Vistage members in the UK offered the attached analysis shared by Iain Lindsay a fellow Vistage Chair across the pond. You’ll find it attached (he’s not optimistic).
If you’re looking for the impact on your portfolio, Vistage Member Jim Maher, CEO of Archford Capital Strategies, sent me a quick analysis by one of his veteran analysts, Jerry West. Click here for this short article. (Archford was recently named to the Financial Times Top 300 Registered Investment Advisors).
More on this next week.
Make it a GREAT week