“How can you say that you’re not responsible? What does it have to do with me? What is my reaction, what should it be? Confronted by this latest atrocity.” Family Businesses need problem solvers. Businesses have problems. Family businesses have problems, some common to every business and some unique. Cultures, companies have a problem solving [Continue Reading]
Lincoln Memorial Vandalized; Lincoln on the Opposition
Last week vandals threw paint inside the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln freed the slaves and won the Civil War. Lincoln did what he thought was right, even though it meant losing half the country. This week congress went home for summer recess. What did they accomplish during the most recent session? Leaders must make tough choices. [Continue Reading]
Corporate Social Responsibility And Accountability
Corporate Social Sesponsibility is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby a business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company’s actions and [Continue Reading]
Is It Innovation Or Accountability?
INNOVATION “Innovation is what America has always been about,” President Obama remarked in his recent State of the Union address. It’s hard to disagree, isn’t it? We live in a world dominated by innovative American companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook. And even in the face of a recession, Silicon Valley’s relentless entrepreneurs have [Continue Reading]
Privileges And Responsibilities
This week we encountered a number of situations that drove me back to metrics. In business we should spend some time measuring, we should measure sales, profits, growth rates, ROI (return on investment) and rate of growth. An issue with many of these metrics is that they report history rather than being a tool to [Continue Reading]
The Causality Dilemma — The Value Of A firm Or The Values Of A Firm?
Values – The Value of a firm or the Values of a firm? This week the New York Times ran a piece in their You’re the Boss – The Art of Running a Small Business Section, called “The Very Picky Customer.” The author owns and manages a custom furniture company that specializes in tables, [Continue Reading]
ACCOUNTABILITY: “It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.” — Moliere
A recent Harvard Business Review article explored accountability in business. Accountability has become an area of investigation by consultants, social scientists and practitioners. Many experts feel that if you break the conundrum of accountability you will have solved one of the biggest issues in modern business. Accountability requires an in-depth understanding of the marketplace, opportunities [Continue Reading]