When hard-nosed Harold Geneen drove the growth of ITT during its heyday in the 1960s and '70s, he had a blunt management philosophy: "In business, words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality." In 2001, when Jim Kilts arrived at Gillette as the first outsider to run the Boston-based company in over 70 years, he found a business with great brands that were losing market share. The company's acquisitions of Duracell and Braun were not delivering, sales and earnings were flat, and the company had missed its earnings estimates for 15 straight quarters. The stock had plummeted, and Wall Street had lost patience. Yet, two-thirds of the top managers were receiving top ratings. People were being rewarded for effort, but under Mr. Kilts' regime, performance became the new measure. As recounted in "Doing What Matters," Mr. Kilts was fortunate to have a wise board that included Warren Buffett and Henry Kravis. According to Mr. Kilts, Mr. Buffett believed that unrealistic earnings estimates were the problem. Mr. Buffett expressed his opinion "both at Gillette board meetings and in public comments," with Mr. Kilts quoting him as saying: "For a major corporation to predict that its per share earnings will grow over the long term at, say, 15 percent annually, is to court trouble." Additionally, Mr. Buffett warned that "Managers that always promise to 'make the numbers' will at some point be tempted to 'make up' the numbers."
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is the story of an African boy, Kek, who loses his father and a brother and flees, leaving his mother to secure his safety. Kek, now in Minnesota, is faced with difficulties of adapting to a new life and of finding his lost mother. He believes that his mother still lives and would soon join him in the new found family. Kek is taken from the airport by a caregiver who takes him to live with his aunt. It is here that Kek meets all that amazed him compared to his home in Sudan, Africa. Home of the brave shows conflicts that Kek faces. He is caught between two worlds, Africa and America. He feels guilty leaving behind his people to live in a distant land especially his mother, who he left in the midst of an attack.
The essay, “Standing Up for the Power of Learning,” by Jay Mathews explained how one of many students was accused of academic dishonesty. During the regular school session of the year 2001, three fourths of 187 students at Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) were found guilty of cheating. This was because they collaborated on an assignment in a computer science (CS) course with friends. By communicating with others about the project, the students violated the course honor code that prohibited the discussion among students for that particular class.
A Few Keys to All Success by Jim Muncy, published in 2002 explains that there are 7 universal keys to success that we can relate to everyday life. Discernment, Optimism, Responsibility, Initiative, Perseverance, Purpose, Sacrifice. Each one represents how we grow and teaches us how to have a high quality of life. From reading this book I am confident because I know being normal means being average and what we do can change how we act significantly. Also we can’t let the world hold us back from greatness. There will be negativity, there will be those who lack enthusiasm but you can’t let them interfere in what you have in store. And these keys will help you get to that point in your life. Discernment; Judge the seed by the harvest. The first
We all experience a rite of passage in our lives, whether it be the time we learned to swim or perhaps the day we received our driver’s license. A rite of passage marks an important stage in someone’s life, and one often times comes with a lesson learned. Three selections that provide fine examples of rites of passage that individuals confront include “The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant” by W.D. Wetherell, “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins” and “First Lesson” by Philip Booth.
Collin’s objective in Good to Great is to show how companies have gone from good to great. Disciplined thought and creating a culture of discipline are the significant components that gave momentum to the companies who have gone from good to great. Collins conducted a research team of students over a span of five years to do research, interviews, and collecting data that would reveal how disciplined thought and action moved companies forward within a time frame of fifteen years. (The eleven good to great companies the research was drawn upon were Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens and Wells Fargo. These were compared with elven other companies that were good but no great)
Many people believe that in order to succeed in a business that is having difficulties, it is important to focus on a particular area in order to be better productive in each of them, and be able to reach the goal. Instead, Goldratt and Jonah demonstrates that is important to focus on the company as a whole, but at the same time, it shows that it is incorrectly to only focus in an specific manufacturing department, or one plant, or a department within the plant, because people should not be concerned in local optimums.
Was James' novel an allegory for corruption of the innocent, or a straight forward ghost story?
Is The Tyranny Of Shareholder Value Finally Ending? N.p., n.d. Web. The Web.
Thomas Green was experiencing a growth point in his seven month history as Senior Market Specialists at Dynamic Displays. The division Vice President Shannon McDonald had requested a written statement from Green giving his perspective on resolving performance discrepancies that had developed and he was already forgetting her instructions and wondering if he should schedule a meeting with her to explain the situation. Somehow Green needs to assess the train wreck that has developed in his career and effectively translate an action plan to correct the situation before he loses his job. (Beckham, 2008)
Not all strategies “fit” within the companies activities, some are hit and misses such as when Stewart placed Charles Koppelman to the board, where “he became chairman of the board in 2005, where he negotiated a paid consulting arrangement for himself. He was viewed as enabling Stewart’s self-regard as much as tending to th...
Who is the birthday party a rite of passage for, the birthday boy or his mother?
Cost effective leadership was what both companies were seeking in an effort to capitalize off their ability to provide goods and services at a lower costs delivering exceptional services to their clients without their clients getting dismayed about the cost, which contributed to the successes of Ternary. Consensus were built when decisions were made instead of using compulsory tactics in order to surpass their organizational objectives (Leduff, 2015). Robertson B., (2006) believed that Ternary is one of the companies that have grown the fastest in Philadelphia, while he believed that he could not have gained this type of success using the traditional management system (Robertson B. ,
However, during the 1990s, Philips and Matsushita both faced major challenges to sustain their position in the market. Changing profile of the industry and globalization forces made Philips and Matsushita’s organizational models and competitive advantages obsolete, and brought up the need for drastic actions. At the brink of a new century, the battle of two giants unraveled with CEOs from both sides implementing another round of strategic initiatives and restructurings. The pressure put on new CEOs was enormous – wrong st...
One of the central principles presented in Built to Last is the importance placed upon building the company, rather than relying exclusively on building a specific product or service. Collins and Porras use the metaphor of clock-building versus time-telling to illustrate this point. The distinction is drawn between leaders who are able to merely "tell the time" and those which are capable of "building a clock". Charismatic managers tell the time " they have exceptional skills in the here and now. However, truly great leaders build the clock " they create a company culture that can succeed far beyond the term of any one leader or the life of a product. Visionary companies don't simply follow others in their field, they tend to lead the way. While having a great product or operational idea is time-telling, creating an organization that has the capacity to succeed through many product life-cycles, and under successive leaders, is clock-building. This metaphor shatters the myth that truly s...
Accounting profit can serve as an alternative to intrinsic value. But Buffett states that “...we do not measure the economic significance or performance of Berkshire by its size; we measure by per-share progress.” Accounting reality was conservative, backward looking, and governed by GAAP (measures in terms of net profit), therefore Buffett rejects this alternative. According to the world’s most famous investor, investment decisions should be based on economic reality, not on accounting