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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (15171)	7/17/2002 12:31:27 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 23153

MCI Pie - The Day that WorldCom Died (An Ode to MCI) Message 17750958 btw, Kb thanks for sharing about raising your kids...I agree that the power of ideas is crucial.

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (15171)	7/17/2002 12:44:19 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 23153

How to Attract a World-Class CEO TALENT MONGER By James M. Citrin July 17, 2002 business2.com Remember the talent wars of 1999 and first quarter of 2000? Remember how hundreds of early-stage companies were scouring the market for willing and able chief executive officers? It has been quite a while since those "good old days," when venture capitalists would ask, "What will it take to attract a world-class CEO?" The answer back then was usually an interesting concept, a business plan funded by a name-brand investor, and 5 to 7 percent of the equity. Times have changed, of course. But the search for top executive talent continues. So I thought it would be interesting -- even refreshing -- to talk about what it takes for a startup to attract a strong leader. This isn't an idle exercise. At Spencer Stuart, we're currently conducting a CEO search for a very exciting, early-stage company based in Boston. The company's board worried that it hadn't found enough candidates with proven track records of achieving rapid, profitable growth; building an organization; and (ideally) taking a company public. After reviewing our first series of potential candidates, the board asked us to take a break and come back with answers to an interesting question: What conditions would have to be in place at the company to attract a world-class CEO? We did some of our own thinking on the matter, and we also posed the question to several top-notch CEOs we admire. Then we went back to present our findings to the board. To set the stage, we explained that we had drawn inspiration from Eric Schmidt, who joined then-upstart online search company Google, giving up his position as CEO of software giant Novell. And then there was Meg Whitman -- arguably the best CEO ever recruited to an early-stage company -- who joined eBay after leaving Hasbro. We found that in today's sober market, far beyond a heap of stock options, several concrete conditions must be in place to attract the best of the best. 1. An exciting company name. It is no coincidence that many of the formerly early-stage companies that broke through, especially in the technology sector, have snappy, memorable names. Amazon, eBay, Google, Intuit, Yahoo, and the like all have company names that create an immediate emotional connection that connotes fun, innovation, and freshness. 2. A sound and easy-to-understand business model. Top candidates want to know where the company gets the bulk of its revenue and what will fuel the much-desired "explosive upside." CEO candidates want to see a legitimate opportunity to add significant value for customers by providing products or services that they will pay for. This is important: A smaller, more straightforward business model is better than a larger, more complex one in today's skeptical environment For the rest of this story, including related links, go to: business2.com

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (15171)	7/17/2002 7:32:06 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 23153

More on Talent... Talent, Inc. The New Yorker Issue of 2002-07-22 Posted 2002-07-15 This week in the magazine and here online (see Fact), in "The Talent Myth," Malcolm Gladwell examines the "talent economy"—the recent movement in corporate culture in which star performers from top-ranked business schools are favored. This trend, while intended to produce the best companies, in fact has been associated with one of the most notorious cases of mismanagement in recent history: Enron. Here Gladwell discusses his article with The New Yorker's Ben Greenman. BEN GREENMAN: What does "talent" mean, exactly, in a business context? Or, in other words, what are companies hoping to see when they hire a "talented" person? MALCOLM GLADWELL: What companies want, obviously, is someone who will perform well, and the idea of "talent" is that it's what most of us would think most accurately predicts performance. But it's that notion that I think is suspect. This doesn't mean that there aren't people who are better at their jobs than others. Of course, there are. But writing this story convinced me that there really isn't a good way to predict that kind of success. In your piece, you raise the athletic metaphor, in which top business-school grads are analogous to great natural athletes. Do companies actually think in these sports terms? I do think that companies think in terms of sports metaphors. But the problem with sports metaphors is that the meaning you extract from a sports metaphor is entirely dependent on the sport you pick. I think, for instance, that you can build a winning baseball team just by snapping up individually brilliant players. That's essentially what the Yankees are, and they win the World Series all the time. Starting pitchers and slugging first basemen don't even have to get along with their teammates to make a huge difference. But basketball, or football, is a different story. I tend to think of corporations as more like basketball teams than baseball teams, but clearly the folks at Enron and their consultants at McKinsey, a company that has been a great proponent of the talent principle, think otherwise. Do other business cultures share the obsession with stars? What about Japan, for example, where promotions are traditionally earned over long periods of time? Yes, Japan is quite different, as, I think, are European countries. And remember, for a long time America was also a place where the organization was king. The grand old companies of the American economy—Procter & Gamble and I.B.M. and General Motors—were built that way, as are many of the newer stars, like Southwest Airlines or Wal-Mart. This whole "talent" movement is really a recent phenomenon: it's another of the innovations we owe to the "new economy." Much of the problem with promoting talent seems to come down to the fact that schooling rewards individual and not group achievement. Why does the burden rest upon companies? Why don't schools, who are producing the prospective employees, emphasize teamwork more? That is a good question, and the answer is that I have no idea. I have always thought it odd, for instance, that the one thing that otherwise impoverished inner-city schools are good at doing is producing great sports teams. In other words, it is clearly possible to teach highly successful teamwork on the playing field under the most adverse of circumstances. So why don't we try the same strategy in the classroom? In your article, you raise the possibility that Enron, by rewarding "talent," was running its business for its managers, rather than for its customers or stockholders. How much did this have to do with its failure? Is all the talk of talent just an excuse for overpaying executives? I don't think that the talent mind-set at Enron was a cover story. I think that they honestly believed in the idea. Enron was not a cynical place: it was a place for true believers, and it was this true belief that led directly to their fall. They chose their business not according to what made sense for the company, but according to what the "stars" wanted to do. That may be why some people there had to cook the books—because, as it turns out, what makes business sense and what makes personal sense don't always overlap. newyorker.com