CIO Insight Magazine named Billion-Dollar Lessons one of the top 10 business-tech books of 2008.
This award follows similar recognition from several other prestigious publications. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, named Billion-Dollar Lessons the #1 business book of 2008. Inc. Magazine named it one of the best books for business owners in 2008.
There’s something important that is getting overlooked in all the coverage of the stunning news that Bank of America has had to line up $20 billion in assistance from the federal government to handle problems at Merrill Lynch, just days after closing the Merrill purchase.
That something is this: The problems are just beginning.
As we’ve watched the Wall Street Journal chronicle the problems with Bank of America’s integration of Merrill Lynch’s retail brokers, we’ve assumed that competitors would be going as hard as possible after BofA and Merrill clients. We figured those competitors would succeed, too, because our research is full of examples of customers being poached during transitions such as those that follow a merger. Now, though, a WSJ article describes a strategy by Morgan Stanley that may be too aggressive.
The article says Morgan Stanley wants to combine its brokerage operations with those of Citigroup’s Smith Barney, to become the biggest retail broker. There are several problems, though, even beyond the sorts of culture clashes and other formidable integration problems that have afflicted BofA and Merrill, as well as many, many others.
In her eloquent way, Peggy Noonan writes in today’s Wall Street Journal that people in Washington must speak forthrightly to President-elect Barack Obama about the problems the country is facing and about the potential shortcomings of his attempts to fix those problems. She says people often intend to be blunt, then get tongue-tied right as they walk into the Oval Office. Noonan suggests the problem will go away if we can just stop putting presidents on pedestals.
That’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t work. At least, it hasn’t worked historically, whether in Washington or in the world of business.
Much of the $700 billion financial rescue package, originally intended to buy toxic assets, seems to be destined instead to finance a financial industry consolidation. An article in today’s Wall Street Journal highlights one of the dangers awaiting consolidators: the complexity of integration.
The article is replete with examples of how “the job of combining two banks is notoriously expensive, complicated and risky.”
In acknowledging an enormous fraud at Indian outsourcer Satyam, the chief executive said the overstatements of earnings, revenue and cash were, well, not really intentional. It’s just that he had this small problem a few years ago, so he fudged a bit. Then, to cover that up, he had to fiddle a bit more. Then a bit more. Now, he’s having to acknowledge a scandal that threatens to kill a company that he spent more than two decades building and that employs 53,000 people worldwide.
Inc. Magazine names Billion Dollar Lessons one of the best books for business owners in 2008.
“Success is inspirational; disaster is educational. Billion Dollar Lessons offers an exhaustive curriculum on how not to run a company. This is a great book for decision-makers anxious to eliminate their own vulnerabilities.”
Billion-Dollar Lessons has been named the best business book of the 2008 in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper!
Best of the best: intelligent, clear, filled with advice
The authors’ study of colossal business failure found that strategy was invariably the cause. They pinpoint seven popular strategies that can lead a company off the rails: Foolhardy pursuit of synergy, financial engineering, rollups of mom and pop operations, steadfastly refusing to switch from a misguided course, moving into an adjacent market, riding the wrong new technology, and consolidation. The list is a catalogue of strategies that companies are routinely urged to follow and that can work – but also can lead to disaster. The authors provide sobering examples of failed companies as well as tough questions to ask when considering any of these strategies.
The window is open for the One Laptop Per Child “Give 1, Get 1” program. It’s a chance to buy an XO laptop, a revolutionary educational computer designed and built from the ground up for children while, at the same time, donating another XO that will be given to a child in a developing country. Last year’s program resulted in more than 100,000 XO laptops being distributed to children in developing countries, including Haiti and Rwanda. Get it for your child (or the child within you) and, perhaps, change the life of another.
Sometimes, what we see as our being decisive can, in fact, shut down important discussion. That’s what we take away from “Arrogant, Abusive and Disruptive — and a Doctor,” a New York Times article by Laurie Tarkan about how domineering doctors shield themselves from information that challenges their diagnoses and, in the process, can make life-threatening errors. While doctors certainly believe in the Hippocratic oath, their unwillingness to encourage dissent is a major problem.
