02/2/21

The Role of the CEO In Dispute Resolution

Several years ago, I was advising a fairly inexperienced CEO — a terminal condition that everybody eventually outgrows, remember that — who found himself in the midst of a dispute in the 8/10 range — meaning it would not tank the company, but it would change the speed, trajectory, and azimuth of the company’s future progress. It was important.

There was plenty of regrettable behavior on both sides and there was an important legal issue, but it was a heated and contentious confrontation made moreso by the personalities involved. These personalities were not the CEOs’, but the management of both companies.

Push led to shove and they were on the brink of paying off some lawyer’s lake house and turning their fate over to twelve morons with a collective semester of community college amongst them.

They had both talked to their lawyers, but no lawyers had been unleashed. It was still solvable.

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02/1/21

Joe Biden Is Coming For Your Guns

The election is over. Joe Biden is our President (he is my President) and he is going to start paying off all the chits he wrote during the election.

One of those chits was putting Beto in charge of gun control — maybe not literally, but figuratively.

I care not a whit about the gun issue, as I think the Second Amendment is dispositive of the matter though it may take going to the Supreme Court to make that stick, but I do think there is room for some common ground.

Will we find it? No. Sorry. Not a chance in Hell.

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02/1/21

The View From Afar — Spain/Germany #6

You will recall we are canvassing the world to get an idea of how folks think about themselves, their own businesses, their own countries and the United States.

Today, we speak to a very special correspondent in Madrid who is the Chairwoman of the Board of a truly global company. She is from Germany, but lives in Spain and speaks several languages. She is educated in the United States (electrical engineering) and is running an almost 100-year-old manufacturing business heavy on R & D.

I have watched her (hey, I’m supposed to be helping her, not just watching) meet and master some of the hardest challenges in such an enterprise with grace and aplomb while pushing and shoving into what is mainly a male dominated industry.

She is the mother of lovely girls and makes a mean snowman. Will drop her work to make a snowman with her kids on the fall of a snowflake in Madrid where it never snows.

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01/30/21

Monetary Policy v Fiscal Policy — What Do They Even Mean?

Other day I am scanning a blog post from what was once my favorite blog. The author uses the words “monetary policy” and “fiscal policy” in a manner that reveals he has no earthly idea what they mean, but they sit nicely in the sentence and give off the erroneous notion that he is an erudite and educated observer of the condition of the world and our economy.

So, your Big Red Car will tell you what they actually mean.

Monetary policy and fiscal policy are not interchangeable. They mean different things.

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01/28/21

The View From Afar — South Africa #4

Please see earlier posts from:

Spain #1

Israel #2

Chile #3

The questions:

1. How are you feeling — optimistic, pessimistic — about business, the world, your country in general?

2. What is the world’s biggest challenge from here on out?

3. Anything that you think I need to know?

Comes now the voice of “deepest darkest South Africa” which speaks with authority as to South Africa and Kenya.

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01/27/21

The View From Afar — Chile #3

Please see earlier posts from:

Spain

Israel

The questions:

1. How are you feeling — optimistic, pessimistic — about business, the world, your country in general?

2. What is the world’s biggest challenge from here on out?

3. Anything that you think I need to know?

My amigo from Chile is a high level, seasoned software professional (with languages, children, and perspective) with English roots and sensibilities in this lovely country with its mountains and endless coastline.

Snow skiing on one side, surfing on the other.

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