Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

The Presidential Election: America In a Trap

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley and it is difficult to imagine how disruptive Superstorm Sandy must have been to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. He was effectively prevented from campaigning and forced to watch his … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged 1984, Barack Obama, Big Brother, change, china, Chris Christy, Chrysler, community, dependency corruption, ecocycle, ecological perspective, George Orwell, Great Recession, Jeep, Jeremiah Wright, John McCain, Lawrence Lessig, leadership, management, Mitt Romney, Mormon, narrative, Ohio, power, regulation, social trap, special interests, Superstorm Sandy, sweet zone, tax code, winner-take-all | 1 Comment

Romney and Obama: Do Mormons Make Better Managers than Leaders?

We are into the last six weeks of the presidential election and the contrasts between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama throw light on the sometimes-controversial distinction between managers and leaders. In his 1977 article in the Harvard Business Review “Managers … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy, Uncategorized | Tagged Barack Obama, Clayton Christensen, context, David Brooks, Democratic National Convention, George W. Bush, leaders, manager, means and ends, Mitt Romney, Mormon, narrative, pull, push, strategy, Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, Zaleznik | 1 Comment

The “Comeback Kid” Comes Through and the Perils of Improv

Last week I wrote about Clint Eastwood’s unintended highlight speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) and this week my topic is the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Clint Eastwood has since revealed what he was thinking when he gave his … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Leadership | Tagged anthropology, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton speech, Charles Krauthammer, Clint Eastwood speech, Comeback Kid, community, Democratice National Convention, hunter-gatherer, improv, improvisation, Lorna Marshall, Michelle Obama speech, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, more perfect union, narrative, religious revival, Republican National Convention, William James, Wittgenstein | 4 Comments

“Go Ahead: Make Our Day” – What Clint Eastwood Might Have Said

The unintended highlight of the Republican National Convention (RNC) last week was Clint Eastwood’s rambling address on Thursday that consumed 13 minutes of precious prime time, delaying Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech. Scheduled for only five minutes in the rigidly scripted … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, apathy, Barack Obama, challenge, change, chaos, Clint Eastwood, communities of capitalists, community, cowboy, Democratic National Convention, despair, entertainment, government service, gunslinger, heart, hope, how, identity, individual, meaning, mission, Mitt Romney, narrative, narrative centre of gravity, network, obstacles, passion, political parties, purpose, Republican National Convention, stories, support, tension, trade-off, unemployed, values, what, who, why | 2 Comments

Is “Shareholder Value” a Myth or a Tool for Corporate Euthanasia?

I have been reading Lynn Stout’s The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations and The Public. It is a short, highly readable book, written with the objective of demolishing what Professor Stout calls the “shareholder value … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged bankruptcy, boards, corporate law, directors, Dodge v. Ford, ecological perspective, innovation, liquidation, Lynn Stout, Mitt Romney, principal-agent, purpose, shareholder value model | 2 Comments

Obama and Romney: Prisoners of the System?

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at a conference in Las Vegas where I was speaking. The meeting was put on by the Applied Finance Group (AFG), a financial consulting company who create sophisticated corporate valuation models for … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership | Tagged addiction, Barack Obama, Clinton incrementalism, Congress, corruption, creative destruction, dependency, East Coker, ecological perspective, economic rents, Facebook, flat tax, gift economy, House of Representatives, Instagram, Lawrence Lessig, Milton Friedman, Mitt Romney, Republic Lost, Ronald Reagan, rootstriker, Senate, social traps, sunset clause, The New Ecology of Leadership, Thoreau, TS Eliot | Comments Off on Obama and Romney: Prisoners of the System?

Bain or Bane? Private-Equity and Creative Destruction

With Mitt Romney now the inevitable Republican Presidential candidate, renewed attention is being focused on his incredibly lucrative years running Bain Capital. In that private-equity firm he and his colleagues played key roles, mostly as the turnaround managers of mature … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged American economy, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Bain, complex systems, creative destruction, ecological perspective, forest renewal, incentives, innovation, Mitt Romney, neoclassical economics, Obama, predator, private-equity, scavenger, shareholders, tax policy, The Economist, venture capital | Comments Off on Bain or Bane? Private-Equity and Creative Destruction

The Fusion of Ideas: Welding Imagination to Experience

In a recent HBR blog, Bronwyn Fryer, a contributing editor to hbr.org , put out a call for what she called “idea fusers”. She pointed out that great inventions are often the result of the fusion of ideas from very … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged 3M, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, cooperation and collaboration, creativity, ecologics, egalitarian teams, fission-fusion, Google, herding dynamics, horizontal thinkers, hunting dynamics, IDEO, innovation, Jump Associates, Mitt Romney, neoclassical economics, power hierarchies, Rent the Runway, T-shaped thinkers, vertical thinkers | Comments Off on The Fusion of Ideas: Welding Imagination to Experience