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

The inside story of how Clarke’s tenure at Tesco came to an end

Andrea Felsted and Andrew Hill tell "The inside story of how Clarke’s tenure at Tesco came to an end" in the Financial Times, July 23, 2014

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."

Apple Hires a Fashionista to Add Some Bling to Its Online & Instore Retail

Kathy Gordon, Ian Sherr and Joann S. Lublin report Apple is "hiring Angela Ahrendts, the chief executive behind a seven-year growth spurt at British luxury-goods company Burberry Group Inc." They report Apple's 365 stores generate average sales of over $50 million a store.

Helen Thomas interviews Kathy Gordon, the Journal's Retail Reporter, about why:




To understand Ahrendts uses media, consider this YouTube video based on Burberry's work with Salesforce.com:

Is Koch overpaying for Molex?

Yesterday's (9/9) Wall Street Journal proclaimed that Koch Industries (a "conglomerate known for unglamorous industries") is buying Molex.  Koch, privately held, is one of Wichita's largest employers and one of the two largest privately held U.S. companies.  Cargill is the other.

The current Merger and Acquisition market is pricey, if not frothy.  According to the Journal, Koch is paying 38.50 a share or $7.2 billion.  Given the scanty numbers in the article, that seems rich: about twice sales, thirty times earnings, and 1.78 times enterprise value.

Nevertheless, Koch only buys companies when it thinks its Market Based Management philosophy can produce positive results.  It has found that it has a core competence in managing process business.  Still this is an industry with powerful customers including Apple (14% of Molex's revenues) and the automotive industry.  They do not roll over for suppliers.

James Haggerty and Bob Tita report in the Wall Street Journal, "Molex, based in Lisle, Ill., makes products including connectors, sockets, antennas and switches used in cars, computers, cellphones and factory equipment, among other things."

MOLEX is traded on the NASDAQ. You can find their SEC filings online.

Interview with Ford CEO Alan Mulally

Joshua Topolsky interviews Ford CEO Alan Mulally at Hotel on Rivington in New York City. They talk about Alan Mulally's time at Boeing, new alternative energy sources, and how space exploration inspired Mulally to become an engineer.

Alan Mullay on Successful Teams

In this Thirty Second MBA video, Alan Mullay tells what he learned about making successful teams:

Would Alan Mallay Use the Verb, "Witchhunt?"

Boeing's 787, the Dreamliner, has been grounded worldwide because to fire worries with the lithium ion batteries used in it. According to the Economist's Schumpeter blog, the grounding "follows a string of safety problems, including two fuel leaks and an electrical fire aboard a domestic flight that required an emergency landing. There is particular worry about the potential for the plane’s lithium-ion batteries to catch fire."  Moreover the blog also quotes Sandy Morris of Jefferies who "points out that Airbus’s A350 (a forthcoming rival to the 787 which is already more than a year behind schedule) uses lithium-ion batteries like the ones suspected of causing some of the 787’s problems. So if they are to blame, the A350 programme may suffer too."

Jon Ostrower and JoAnn S. Lubin wrote in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that two very high profile CEOs have their names very firmly attached to the Dreamliner: Ford's Alan Mullay and Boeing's Jim McNerney, chairman and CEO since July 2005.

They write that in the summer of 2005, Boeing "hired Mr. McNerney as CEO, succeeding an interim chief after Mr. Stonecipher, who had resigned suddenly because of an affair with a subordinate. A short while later, Mr. Mulally, who had also been a contender for the CEO job, left.
"Boeing soon stumbled as a string of supply-chain and design delays pushed back delivery of the Dreamliner by 3½ years. 'We are trying to witch-hunt the issues in this program right now,' Mr. McNerney told investors in October 2006 as the problems became apparent."

I find it hard to believe Alan Mallay would have said that.  "Witch-hunt" does not sound like a word in his vocabulary.  In American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company, Mullay's biographer, Bryce G. Hoffman, describes how he used the same techniques to turn Ford around that he used in managing projects like the 777. He built teams with his weekly "war room" meetings that thrived on a culture of both trust and accountability.  Hard bitten, cynical Detroit executives took his "aw shucks" Midwestern manners for weakness.  That did not last long. Those veterans of cutthroat corporate politics soon learned to either cooperate and be up front or play their political games somewhere else.

It would be interesting to learn how McNerney's management style differs from Mullay's.  It would be interesting to learn which style works better across the teams of engineers and managers from Boeing and its suppliers.

Hiring McNerney from the outside was forced on Boeing by the Department of Defense after successive scandals.  Military work is the other half of Boeing's business.  Such government induced changes in management can have unforeseen consequences.  Think of AIG after New York State's Eliot Spitzer forced Maurice R. Greenberg out in 2005.  It is hard to imagine Greenberg letting his trading desk get as out of hand as his successor did.  The subsequent near collapse of AIG and its bailout are now history. 

In this video from January 24th, Ostrower tells the Journal why both McNerney and Mulally have much at stake:




Spirit, as a big supplier of the Deamliner, is of course vulnerable to the plane's troubles.  we here in Wichita hope for a speedy resolution.

Visa Raids JPMorgan for Its CEO

Jamie Dimon has built a powerhouse in JPMorganChase and demonstrated that good management can weather financial crises and prosper.  Visa, which went public a few years ago, poached some of Dimon's talent to head the payments giant.  In this October 25th video Robin Sidel on Markets Hub reports Charles Scharf is stepping out of James Dimon's shadow and into Visa's executive chair:




Sidel tells us "Mr. Scharf is well-known within J.P. Morgan as a methodical, decisive and sometimes prickly executive who doesn't like loads of bureaucracy. Those traits may shake up employees at Visa, which relies heavily on meetings and group discussions, according to people familiar with Visa's corporate culture."  Furthermore, in his new job, "Mr. Scharf's job will be to manage delicate relationships with millions of merchants, and to steer through rising competition from nontraditional payment companies such as eBay Inc.'s PayPal division."