Kaptain Karl Speaks: Performance, Executives & Outlook
A couple of weeks ago the WSJ held its' "Deals & Deal-Makers" Conference and put up several of the interviews on it's web site. Two of the most interesting, at least from our perspective here of being focused on total enterprise performance, were with Carl Icahn. One of his key, much-repeated themes was the lack of executive accountability for performance through a focus on the wrong things. One of the videos is embedded so you can reach your own interpretation but Kaptain Karl, as I've called him in reference to an earlier post on how to balance leadership, rewards and employee commitment (the Pirate's Code) starts to address these issues. At the other end of the spectrum the implications of the buyout and buyback liquidity-driven boom is that executive management is holding up earnings by NOT investing in their companies long-term development. Stop and consider for a minute, if the Kaptain is right, about the future outlook for rapidly growing worldwide competition, escalating earnings pressure and liquidity-driven valuations what that means for re-thinking enterprise performance.
An earlier post (On Being a Boiled Frog) talked about the strategic outlook for US industries and enterprises and, hopefully, made the major point that business as usual - tending to internal agendii and quarterly earnings - is not a recipe for success. Rather it's a recipe for declining performance without a fundamental re-thinking of value, strategy, execution and performance. Which is the point the Kaptain makes to my mind. The final conference interview with Icahn is here and the panel interview with Alan Murry below. See what you think:
An earlier post (On Being a Boiled Frog) talked about the strategic outlook for US industries and enterprises and, hopefully, made the major point that business as usual - tending to internal agendii and quarterly earnings - is not a recipe for success. Rather it's a recipe for declining performance without a fundamental re-thinking of value, strategy, execution and performance. Which is the point the Kaptain makes to my mind. The final conference interview with Icahn is here and the panel interview with Alan Murry below. See what you think: