The Wall Street Journal: Carlos Ghosn

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn spoke to Journal about "How I Work:" the true automobile of the future, the toughest period in his career, and whether he'd rather go on a road trip with Elon Musk or Mary Barra. The Wall Street Journal, 3/14/2017, Photo: Robert Libetti

Carly Fiorina Faced 'Tough Choices'

The "HP Way" and the change agent.

Carly Fiorina talks about leadership, management, and culture ans her book, 'Tough Choices:' 





"When culture becomes convention, then something has to change."

"...sometimes the toughest choices you have to make are to fire somebody, not because they're not getting results, but because their values and judgment are inconsistent with what you say you stand for. The toughest personnel choices I have ever had to make in my career are where I have had to deal with abusive or dishonest people and, let's be honest with each other, abusive, dishonest people get results in business."

"I was taught long ago that values are what guide your behavior when no one's looking and you think no one will find out."

Ford is in the Black

Matthew Dolan and Jeff Bennett reported on January 29th in the Wall Street Journal "Ford Posts First Full-Year Profit Since 2005." Ford earned $2.7 billion in 2009. Any number greater than zero is a miracle in Detroit. This despite the fact that Ford is burdened with a much greater debt burden than Chrysler and GM for whom the federal government rolled its bondholders.


The easy interpretation is that is one for capitalism as opposed to socialism.  Any student of the decline of American car making will realize that Detroit's inward focused culture and its willingness to run to Washington when in trouble are better. A deeper analysis shows that Ford, by bringing in an outsider, Alan Mulally, they committed themselves to remedying the root problem: Detroit's culture.

An ode to Work?

March 22 2009: Lucy Kellaway writes in the Financial Times, "Last week the Guardian newspaper published a list of the 1,000 best pop songs ever written. There were songs about love, sex, heartbreak, protest, life and death. Yet on the subject of work there was almost nothing: Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” got a mention, but that was about it."

If folk music was primarily work songs, modern pop music is anything but about work. How so?

What Tesco knows and Woolies forgot

John Kay is an economist who believes markets do a better job than governments in organizing the economy, but his understanding is nuanced. He is keenly aware of the value of institutions and he knows that "market economies function because they are embedded in a social, political and cultural context, and cannot work otherwise."

He writes in his current column,"I do not think children should be taught that greed is the most powerful human motivation. The people who are most successful in business in the long run are people who are passionate about business, not money."

It is not greed that drives capitalism's success but the dynamism that freedom and incentives set in play to unleash human creativity. Some of its defenders are its worse enemies: they talk "about 'wealth creation', although most of what they described seemed to be a diversion of wealth for the benefit of particular individuals rather than the creation of new wealth."

John Kay is mostly devoting himself to writing these days. He has a weekly column in the Financial Times. His forthcoming book (The Long and the Short of It - everyone's guide to investment and financial markets ) is recommended by the Institute for Economic Affairs, the think tank that supplied Maggie Thatcher with economists.

Asterix Kerviel et al

Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He has previously reported from New York and Brussels. He maintains a blog that can be quite amusing. Here is a link to his January entries. He tells us the new Asterix movie is very unFrench and not very funny. He has great fun with Jerome Kerviel and His Royal Highness, President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Enjoy.