Tag: Organizational Effectiveness

The Dark Side of Success

Startups pine for profits, predictable cash flow, a sustainable competitive advantage, and the personal wealth and comfort that come from success. Not many will get there. The ones that do are mostly deserving of all those accoutrements previously mentioned. The leaders of that organization toiled and stressed and made do and sacrificed a great deal […]

Board or Bored Relations?

For the CEO of a company with a fiduciary board (as opposed to an advisory board), there’s perhaps nothing more complex than developing a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship with the board. I’ve been on numerous boards, worked for a few and observed many management-board relationships up close and personal. Few of them work on the […]

The Organizational Effectiveness of Democracy

I’ve been thinking a lot about democracy and capitalism recently so thought that I’d share a few interesting quotes—some of them conflicting messages—from some very bright fellows to whom I looked for guidance. Before you read them, please ponder this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in […]

“Your Momma Don’t Dance and Your Daddy Don’t Rock and Roll”—Family Business Matters

Common wisdom says that family businesses have an extremely high failure rate when moving from the first to second to third generation, and that’s absolutely true. The numbers often cited state that 30 percent survive the second generation, and it decreases to midteens by the third and single digits by the fourth. What you don’t […]