Lonergan Resources
Articles of Interest to CEOs
Pull the Right Levers for Your Situation
Bain & Company, Inc.
By Darrell Rigby
The current economic downturn is likely to be steep, long and turbulent. What are the right moves now and over the coming months to adjust and play to your strengths?
Published by McKinsey Quarterly. Lowell Bryan and Diana Farrell
December, 2008
The range of possible futures confronting business is great. Companies that nurture flexibility, awareness, and resiliency are more likely to survive the crisis, and even to prosper.
A Fresh Look at Strategy under Uncertainty: An Interview
McKinsey Quarterly. Hugh Courtney
December, 2008
Although even the highest levels of uncertainty don't prevent businesses from analyzing predicaments rationally, says author Hugh Courtney, the financial crisis has shown us the limits of our tools—and minds.
WSJ.com
Authored by by Darrell Rigby and Steve Ellis
September 30, 2008
Lehman Brothers' headlong pitch into bankruptcy protection, Merrill Lynch's dramatic sale to Bank of America and the U.S. government's rescue of AIG have battered financial markets. But in the turbulence lies opportunity. Like dangerous curves on a racetrack, economic downturns create opportunities for companies to move into leadership positions, argue Bain & Company's Darrell Rigby and Steve Ellis.
A downturn can give smart companies a chance to upgrade their talent.
McKinsey Quarterly
Authored by by Matthew Guthridge, John R. McPherson, and William J. Wolf
December, 2008
Downturns place companies’ talent strategies at risk. As deteriorating performance forces increasingly aggressive head count reductions, it’s easy to lose valuable contributors inadvertently, damage morale or the company’s external reputation among potential employees, or drop the ball on important training and staff-development programs. But there is a better way. By emphasizing talent in cost-cutting efforts, employers can intelligently strengthen the value proposition they offer current and potential employees and position themselves strongly for growth when economic conditions improve.
Companies can maintain their attractiveness to internal and external talent by using cost-cutting efforts as an opportunity to redesign jobs so that they become more engaging for the people undertaking them. A job’s level of responsibility, degree of autonomy, and span of control all contribute to employee satisfaction. Head count reductions provide a powerful incentive to use existing resources better by breaking down silos and increasing the span of control for challenging managerial roles—thus improving the odds of engaging key talent in the redesigned jobs.
Recession 2008: Take the Offensive
Published in BusinessWeek
January 24, 2008
A lot of managers are now readying their team for Recession 2008 and are thinking in ways that are completely understandable and, according to Tammy Erickson, likely to be wrong.
How to Take the Reins at Top Speed
Published by BusinessWeek / online
February 5, 2007
Borrowers have their grace periods. Married couples have their honeymoons. And new corporate leaders have long had their "first 100 days." For CEOs, at least, that's the approximate time between a new job's starting line and Wall Street's first quarterly day of reckoning.
Published by The McKinsey Quarterly
Authored by Kevin P. Coyne and Bobby S. Y. Rao
2005
It must be one of the most thrilling moments of an executive's career—the call to lead a company. With the new office come new responsibilities, new excitement, a sense of accomplishment, and, unfortunately, a high risk of failure: within three years of the appointment, one-third of all CEOs chosen to guide US companies are gone.
Perspectives on Corporate Finance and Strategy
4 Articles published by McKinsey on Finance
Number 9, Autumn, 2003
Restructuring Alliances In China
The View from the Corporate Suite
Smarter Investing for Insurers
A Closer Look at the Bear In EuropeAlliances In Consumer and Packaged Goods
Published by the Harvard Business Review
Best of HBR, 1992
Authored by Christopher A. Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal
If your operations span the globe, you need to develop three very different kinds of managers and then unite them in a common purpose.
Articles of Interest to Directors
The Crisis: Mobilizing Boards for Change
Published by McKinsey Quarterly. Andrew Campbell and Stuart Sinclair.
February, 2009
To meet the challenges of the economic crisis, corporate boards must change the way they work.
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The Recession Talk Your Board Should Have
Don't waste valuable time discussing the nuts and bolts of cost-cutting. Your board should be asking if a recession presents any opportunities for growth.
Published by BusinessWeek / online
January 29, 2008
Given the increasing likelihood of a recession, board meetings in the next few weeks are certain to include discussions about course corrections to stave off potential earnings hits. Such discussions are likely to irritate many management teams, who have seen little time pass since completing their multimonth budgeting process. But there is a much larger issue than how management will react to such talks: Are boards having the right recession-related discussions? For most boards, the answer is no. In fact, surveys taken during the last recession by management consultants suggest that as many as 70% of boards will make two classic errors: They will hold discussions they shouldn't, while not holding the discussion they should.
Published by BusinessWeek / online
January 22, 2007
Activist shareholders, tougher rules, and anger over CEO pay have put directors on the hot seat.
CEO-as-Chairman Still the Rule in US
Authored by Stephen Taub
August 3, 2006
US companies are far more likely to appoint a lead independent director than separate CEO and chairman into separate roles.
Splitting the Roles of CEO and Chairman of the Board
Authored by Paul Dorf, PhD., APD
Assisted by Kim VanDeWalle
March 2004
Recent corporate scandals have focused attention on corporate governance issues, one of which is the role of the CEO and his/her relationship with the Board of Directors. Presently, most major companies have CEOs who also hold the position of Chairman of the Board. In an effort to improve corporate governance practices, it has been suggested that companies split the roles to facilitate the mission and oversight of the Board and to guard against a potentially domineering CEO, which has been a perceived problem in several recent corporate failures such as Enron and Worldcom, and most recently in the shareholder dissatisfaction at Disney.
Even Private Company Boards of Directors Are Changing
Published by Financial Executive
Authored by William M. Sinnett
October, 2003
A question on private company boards to Financial Executives List Exchange for Private Companies - known as FELIX PC - has given Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) some interesting insights.
Is It Time For The Non-Executive Chairman?
Authored by Madeleine B. Condit and Edward D. Hess
Date
Common in Europe, but rare in the U.S., a permanent board chair separate from the CEO is drawing renewed attention as we seek to reform corporate governance. Can the concept of a non-executive chairman finally take root in America? If so, how do we structure the role, and make it effective?
What Directors Know About Their Companies: A McKinsey Survey
Published by The McKinsey Quarterly, Member Edition
April 26, 2006
Boards of directors are becoming much more knowledgeable about and actively involved in their companies' core performance and value creating activities, according to the executives who responded to the latest McKinsey Quarterly survey.1 However, in one controversial area of corporate governance—compensating executives with stock options and bonuses tied to earnings growth—these more active board members have effected relatively little change.
Articles of General Interest
Instead of cutting back and cowering, why not see it as an opportunity?
BusinessWeek, March 18, 2008
Commentary by G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón
Pop quiz, hot shot: What do MTV, Trader Joe's, and the iPod have in common? Yes, of course, they're all now ubiquitous and make our lives much more agreeable. But to us, the most interesting thing about all three is that these great brands were born during recessions. (Trader Joe's: 1958; MTV: 1981; iPod: 2001, if you are scoring at home.) And therein lies a point everyone seems to be forgetting in the midst of the current economic slowdown. If handled correctly, a downturn can be a good thing for your company. It can give you the opportunity — and the funds — to innovate and get a substantial leg up on the competition. But only if handled correctly.
How Companies Think About Climate Change
A McKinsey Global Survey
December, 2007
Against a backdrop of rising global concern about the environment and climate change, a McKinsey Quarterly survey finds that executives view climate change issues as important for their companies, seeing both opportunity and risk.
Why Some Private Equity Firms Do Better than Others
Published by The McKinsey Quarterly
Authored by Joachim Heel and Conor Kehoe
2005
Private equity firms have long promoted the virtue of active ownership—the hands-on style that distinguishes them from traditional portfolio investors. But what does active ownership mean, and does it really lead to superior performance?