Mary Berner is Making Changes

Ad Age tells us that she has been dipping into Conte Nast for key executives to lead the changes at the Reader's Digest Association. Having people you know, have confidence in, and can trust can be crucial to an outsider's success in an organization in need of change.

Read more in Ad Age.

Koch on Success

Wichita's Charles G. Koch (pronounced to rhyme with "Coke" ) has just published his manual in real investing, the Science of Success. You can read Mark Skousen's review in the Wall Street Journal and Cecil Johnson gives us his insights in the Eagle.)

Koch is the architypical active investor who grew a family business into the largest privately owned business in America. He has strong ideas on management (embodied in his Market-Based Management philosophy.) In contrast to the conflicts too evident in many publicly traded companies, Koch explains that "[a]t Koch, we use incentives to attempt to align the interests of each employee with the interests of both the company and society. This means we strive to pay employees a portion of the value they create for the company. We believe this approach tends to attract and retain the right people, and motivates them to be principled entrepreneurs."

For a fuller exposition of his ideas, read his interview with the Eagle last Sunday or just read the book.