Management - Leadership

Contracts, transactions, and records of them provide critical structure in our economic system, but they haven't kept up with the world's digital transformation. They're like rush-hour gridlock trapping a Formula 1 race car. Blockchain promises to solve this problem.

esearch conducted on venture capitalist pitch meetings revealed four key findings. First, passion is overrated: a commonly held convention is the more enthusiastic individuals are in communicating their ideas, the greater their chances. However, entrepreneurs and VCs were found to prefer a calm demeanor.

Sena Aslan, the CEO of FDM Turkey, wished the drive from the Ankara airport to the bank's largest branch were a bit longer. She had made site visits a hallmark of her short tenure at the company's helm, because they helped her see how frontline employees were weathering the changes she'd been spearheading across the bank.

Agency theory, a new model of governance promulgated by academic economists in the 1970s, is behind the idea that corporate managers should make shareholder value their primary concern and that boards should ensure they do.

Barbara Hackman Franklin, the 29th U.S. secretary of commerce and international business consultant, believes that shareholder activism has grown in recent years, and that its presence has changed the normal interrelationship between investors, boards, and management. She cites hedge fund activists as an influence on other investors.

David Pyott, former chief executive officer of Allergan, describes the conditions prior to the hostile takeover bid in 2014 by Pershing Square Capital Management and Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

The article notes that a quarter of chief executive officers who left their companies between 2000 to 2013 were forced out, and a primary reason is that a fundamental disconnect exists between what boards of directors believe creates a successful CEO and what in reality leads to optimum performance.

The article identifies five tasks that new executives must perform in their critical first few months with a company.

The article examines neurodiversity and the benefits it can deliver to companies. Neurodiversity describes individuals with neurological conditions such as dyspraxia, dyslexia, and autism spectrum disorder who possess significant skills that include memory, mathematics, and pattern recognition.

High-potential employees can falter when idealization and identification, two psychological mechanisms, combine to form a trap: others idealize the high performer's talent as a component of the firm's future, and the high performer then identifies with that perception.