Chief Executive (U.S.) articles from November 2003

Chief Executive (U.S.) archives from November 2003

Heading for higher ground.(Editor's Note)(selection of CEO of the Year)
November 1, 2003... News organizations that write about business have become overtly hostile to CEOs. BusinessWeek, in a report card on how various constituencies have responded to Sarbanes-Oxley, gave all CEOs a "D" for their efforts. Regulators, in contrast, got...

Leadership redefined.(Feedback)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Your October cover story ("In Search of Leaders") focused attention on one of the most pressing challenges facing large, complex companies today: finding and developing an adequate supply of leaders who will guide their companies into the next...

Two sexes make a 'Breed'.(Feedback)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... "The New Breed" of CEO (Cover Story, August/September 2003) suggests we are entering an era of a more humane leader who understands that communication and team building are the best tools for success. Yet although you profile two...

New Breed must sell, too.(Feedback)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... Just a short note to tell you how much I enjoyed your article on the "The New Breed." I would suggest only that you add one more block to the illustration depicting the anatomy of the new CEO. That would be "chief salesperson." By that, I mean...

Motorola's Chris Galvin.(Darts ...)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The deposed CEO should have fallen on his sword much earlier. The problems at Motorola started at the top. The third generation of Galvins just didn't have the right stuff. Go, Mike Z.

Kodak's Dan Carp.(Darts ...)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Here's another icon going down the tubes. Carp says Kodak has finally figured out the digital era. Yeah, we've been hearing that for years. Either bring in new leadership or say goodbye to the Kodak moment.

John Reed.(Roses ...)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The one-time banking boy wonder is now a white knight riding in to run the New York Stock Exchange, at least for now. Be on your best behavior, John, and don't do anything nasty to your old pal Sandy.

Wanted: engineering students with multicultural skills.(global)
November 1, 2003... How U.S. companies conduct R&D and engineering has dramatically changed. As a result, universities must train engineering students in new ways, enabling them to collaborate on projects with co-workers overseas. That was the message at a...

David Neeleman of Jetblue.(Darts ...)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... All that work to create a thriving low-cost airline while the rest of the industry swoons, and you jeopardize it by turning over customer data to a defense contractor. Boneheaded move, son. You're grounded.

Steven Milunovich.(Roses ...)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The Merrill Lynch analyst made some tough statements about Sun Microsystems being in trouble, which it is. All manner of naysayers whined that Milunovich shouldn't be doing that. Note to all whiners: this is what good analysts are supposed to...

Ron Gettelfinger, UAW President.(Roses ...)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the union made modest concessions in talks with the U.S. auto industry. But Japanese and German competition is intensifying. Is the UAW gesture too little, too late?

Is CEO pay forever changed?(compensation)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The tumult surrounding former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso's pay package may have a lasting impact on the way CEOs are paid, according to a survey by executive compensation firm Clark Consulting. The survey, which polled 246...

China tops the list.(CEO Watch)(Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... CHINA IS A MORE attractive place to invest than the United States--and in fact the most desirable location in the world--according to the latest Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index by A.T. Kearney, the management consulting firm. The...

Execs want growth, but maybe not more workers.(CEO Confidence Index)
November 1, 2003... American CEOs are hungry for top line growth, but that doesn't necessarily mean they plan to dramatically increase their hiring. That is the implication of our latest CEO Confidence polling. We asked CEOs by email what they believed was the...

The 'compliance industry' is going too far.(Thought Leader)(corporate governance)
November 1, 2003... 'The whole subject of board function and corporate governance is becoming a cottage industry in recent years and there is a lot of superficial thought." That statement was made by Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William...

To the top with benevolent leadership.(Thought Leader)
November 1, 2003... There are many paths to the top in a career. Yet there is one thing common to nearly every person who has achieved extraordinary success, a pattern of behavior shared by 95 percent of the executives we studied over three years. That is a...

Restoring trust at the NYSE.(Commentary)
November 1, 2003... The recent turmoil at the New York Stock Exchange should never have happened. An able leader lost his job and the NYSE lost credibility with the investing public. Richard Grasso's pay package was just the beginning. The revelation of it exposed...

DuPont's Teflon dilemma: how Chad Holliday, the champion of sustainability, is managing an environmental challenge.(Special Report)
November 1, 2003... Since the early 1900s, the Tennant family had raised cattle over rolling hills in the far western reaches of West Virginia, near the Ohio River. But in the late 1980s, Wilbur Earl Tennant's herd began to die off--280 Hereford cows in all. The...

Dell: one company, two CEO's: Michael Dell knew he couldn't manage alone. So he's struck a partnership with Kevin Rollins.(related article: Dell on Dell's Future)(Interview)(Company Profile)(Cover Story)
November 1, 2003... At Dell Inc.'s headquarters on the northern outskirts of Austin, Michael Dell is standing in his office and looking at a feature that's rather unusual in a CEO suite. It's a glass wall, with a wide open, sliding glass door, leading into the...

HR takes center stage: in the age of intellectual property battles, this long-overlooked corporate function is becoming a critical weapon in the arsenal.(Management)
November 1, 2003... 'He's not a backroom, second-chair member of the staff," says Robert Nardelli, referring to Dennis Donovan. The first executive Nardelli hired "after becoming the president and CEO of The Home Depot in December 9000, Donovan makes presentations...

The general of Fifth Third: CEO George Schaefer launched his Ohio bank into the company of giants by transforming his work force into an army of salespeople.(Banking)(Company Profile)
November 1, 2003... The chief thing to remember about commercial banking, says George Schaefer, CEO of Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati, is that it's not exact]y rocket science. "It's several hundred years old," Schaefer says of the practice of accepting deposits...

Seeing the big picture: new data tools are enabling CEOs to get a better handle on performance across their organizations.(Technology)(business performance management)
November 1, 2003... For much of its existence, Harrah's Entertainment was a loose compilation of casinos operated autonomously by well-intentioned general managers, each of whom had his own ideas of how to separate customers from their wallets. The managers knew...

Racing to stay ahead: BMW is investing heavily to survive as an independent automaker. Will it work?(Global)(Company Profile)
November 1, 2003... A BMW promotional movie spot: In a vast hotel room, brilliant with kitsch and klieg lights, a BMW driver looks on, stunned, as his passenger, the singer James Brown, haggles with the Devil. Trying to recast a deal on his soul, Brown challenges...

Heels over head: execs turn to air combat for life lessons and thrills.(ceo extreme)(guest piloting as team-building exercise)
November 1, 2003... So there I was, flat on my back at 8,000 feet, bearing down on a "bogey" a thousand feet below. It wasn't a video game. My cheeks were pulling down, my lunch pushing up. There I was, in a "Top Gun" flight suit sitting in the pilot's...

The Devil's Triangle: at Mahogany Run in St. Thomas, golfers must navigate the Caribbean version of Amen Corner.(golf)
November 1, 2003... At this breathtaking golf course in St. Thomas, carved and blasted into a steep coastline overlooking the Caribbean Sea, the so-called Devil's Triangle casts an imposing presence. Like Augusta National's Amen Corner, the Triangle is a fearsome...

Scanning for superiority.(Flip Side)(device reveals corporate citizenship)
November 1, 2003... A graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a hand-held electronic device that can instantaneously tell a consumer whether the manufacturer of a product is a "good corporate citizen." Encased within what The New...

Let the NYSE heal itself--and thrive again.(Editorial)
November 1, 2003... We may have just witnessed the 21st century equivalent of a mob lynching. Put aside for a moment whether Dick Grasso deserved $140 million for 36 years of service in which he defended the New York Stock Exchange against the Internet challenge...