The Conference Board Review is the quarterly magazine of The Conference Board, the world’s preeminent business membership and research organization. Founded in 1976, TCB Review is a magazine of ideas and opinion that raises tough questions about leading-edge issues at the intersection of business and society.

© 2010 The Conference Board Inc.
The Conference Board torch and logo are registered trademarks of The Conference Board Inc.

Openers

Economists tell us that the recession most likely ended a couple of months ago. So soon comes a recovery, right? With capital spending and shiny new products and millions of jobs? The advice is familiar to the point of tedium: A downturn is the time to move forward, not hunker down. We’re at the low point of buy-low-sell-high, and companies should be taking advantage of the softness and market gaps to acquire competitors, launch marketing campaigns, ramp up innovation, roll out products, snatch up top talent, and put all that surplus labor and idled equipment to use. Surely it’s worth taking on a bit of extra debt to expand and be in an optimal position when things eventually pick up.

But one gets the sense that an awful lot of CEOs are indeed wasting this crisis. Whether this reflects long-term pessimism—a fear that demand won’t recover next year or any year soon—or extreme caution, it doesn’t bode well for the United States’ economic future that the federal government is the only organization promising substantial future hiring.

In such an uncertain corporate landscape, the impulse to clamp down and avoid error, to maintain control, is overwhelming. And in striving to retain market position and share, it’s easy to become fixated on top-line growth and big-ticket items, and to indefinitely postpone—or even dismiss—initiatives bubbling up. But the middle of the organization is where things really happen, and in “Who Executes?”, John Baldoni advises CEOs to step aside just enough for those who have ideas and ambition—but reside one or two or three boxes down in the org chart—to step forward. Encouraging leadership from the middle, he insists, doesn’t undermine a CEO’s authority among newly empowered managers—it actually increases their commitment to the organization. Plus, as Miki Saxon writes in a sidebar, “people do not join companies because of the CEO or a few top executives—they join for the culture and the people, specifically their team and manager.”

Elsewhere in this issue, Jim Krohe takes on one of a company’s biggest decisions: whether to relocate. “Location? Location? Location?” examines why headquarters end up where they are—and why the key decisions probably aren’t financial. As Krohe notes, “lowering costs matters, but moving to a new location isn’t the best way to do it.” It’s an article that’ll get you thinking about your nearby talent pool, your airport access, and—not least—the distance between the CEO’s home and the CEO’s reserved parking space.

In “Culture Crash,” former Lehman Brothers managing director Hope Greenfield offers an inside look at the unique corporate culture that led to decades of success for Lehman—and, inexorably, to its doom. Her story is a cautionary tale for any corporate leader. “Clinging to cultural habits that become outmoded as a company grows and as markets change is a recipe for disaster,” she writes. “It can lead to misuse of talent, reward leadership styles that have become dysfunctional, and undermine the company itself.”

And in our cover story, Jay Stuller explores how technology-driven demands for instant decisions are affecting both daily work and once-in-a-career crisis management. He observes that “as the pressure to make quicker judgments grows, the task is both aided and complicated by information that flows as deep and wide as the Mississippi but that can thunder down on clear thinking like Niagara Falls.” I suspect that for most readers, “The Need for Speed” will hit home—perhaps a little too close.

• Print
• Email
• PDF
• Share