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Week 42, 2006

6) AUDIO/Marketplace: Fighting for their right to parle français [Un reportage texte-audio sur les école privées algériennes qui enseignent en français, ce qui est désormais interdit. VOUS POUVEZ AUSSI ECOUTER CE TEXTE EN LIGNE]

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1) New York Times/The Ethicist [La réponse d'un déontologue officiel aux questions des lecteurs.] 
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/magazine/16wwln_ethicist.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 

April 16, 2006 
The Ethicist: Office Politics 
By RANDY COHEN 

Q: 
I am married to a wonderful man with whom I share moral and political values. He runs a managed-health-care company that sometimes supports political candidates we believe are taking this country in the wrong direction. To my chagrin, he has also given these candidates contributions from our personal account. How can we reconcile his obligations to his company with our values? Anonymous 

A: 
You can't, not if his duty to act in the best interests of his company compels him to give strong support to candidates you and he detest. If that's so, then something's got to give — his job or his self-respect. Even if he stopped writing personal checks to dubious candidates after work, he'd still be on the hook for his company's political activities. Life cannot be so neatly compartmentalized: our actions in the evening do not erase what we do during business hours. 

What's needed, however, may not be reconciliation but forbearance. If the gap between your husband's personal and professional political activities is narrow, that is something to be tolerated. We all vote for imperfect candidates, with whom we agree on some issues but not others. Also significant is the amount of support your husband gives. Nobody must resign because a company's PAC donates $10 to a weasel. Political life — all life — compels us to weigh the difference between realism and hypocrisy. The quest for purity leads only to paralysis (or divorce court). 

This approach has its pitfalls. What constitutes strong support? What distinguishes an "imperfect" candidate from a villain? Such things cannot be precisely calibrated. If you and your husband are unable to form a consensus here, the best you can do is remember that in the realm of marital Realpolitik, bedfellows make strange politics. 

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Q: 
My young sons' toys often break right after the receipt is chucked and the 30-day guarantee expires. When a toy breaks because of its low quality, we buy a new one, put the broken one in its box and return it using the new receipt. (We never do this with a toy the boys themselves actually break.) This burdens the store and the unknowing person who buys the broken one we reboxed — the store returns it to the shelf — but it pressures the manufacturer to stop selling defective products. Ethical? Tim Mummers, Port Washington, N.Y. 

A: 
Would that it were. I love this tactic: if you don't like the terms of a warranty, simply defraud the manufacturer. I've always believed that computers should last, oh, 10 trouble-free years. Now I can do the old repackaging switcheroo that you eloquently defend, and I'm set! 

Alas, your ingenious deception is not ethical. As you note, it penalizes the unsuspecting customer who buys your reboxed rubbish. And you deal deceitfully with the retailer and with the manufacturer, whose questionable business practices do not justify your own. Nor am I persuaded that your return plan has the effect you desire. The manufacturer is more likely to regard the repacked scrap as the work of a crank than of a social reformer. 

It's vexing that manufacturers are insulated from customer reactions, but you'd do better to write them angry letters, join with consumer groups, read product reviews before purchasing or, when you suspect actual fraud, talk to consumer-affairs officials. Or pack up the bits and pieces and mail them to the home of the appropriate C.E.O.: costs a few bucks, but you can't put a price on catharsis (or petty vengeance). 

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2) Houston Chronicle: Stolen lunches? [Vos collègues vous piquent votre déjeuner?]
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/sixel/4137785.html?rid=23n
WORKING
Stolen lunches? Substitute cat food for tuna on wheat

By L.M. SIXEL
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

SOMEONE stole my lunch from the office refrigerator the other day. It was a really good lunch — leftovers from dinner the night before accompanied by caramel flan, yogurt, a peach and delicate French cookies from a previous brown bag seminar.

Now, it could have been nicked [stolen] accidentally. Or maybe someone was really hungry and needed the food. Either way, I was annoyed, and after taking an informal survey, it turns out I'm hardly the only victim.

When Patty Kingan was working as a secretary for a utility in Houston, she'd stock the communication's department refrigerator with sodas. But every morning when she'd come in, Kingan would find entire six-packs missing. "We didn't know who was taking them," recalled Kingan, who began to notice that the "good drinks" — the Cokes and Diet Cokes, along with the root beer and orange drinks — disappeared the fastest. "We'd put in Perrier every now and then — they didn't go for that," she said.

Kingan tried to stop the soda thief — or thieves — by writing notes. She started out nice: "The soft drinks are for the department only." Then got increasingly nasty: "We're going to report you." But to no avail. Taping the refrigerator shut didn't work either, so Kingan eventually called maintenance to attach a lock. "We'd laugh," she said, speculating that the culprits were contractors who worked at night. "We never did figure it out."

When Nora Dool was director of marketing for a career management firm, job seekers continually paraded in and out to take workshops and meet with consultants. The office refrigerator was fairly accessible, and Dool heard plenty of complaints from her co-workers about missing sandwiches, restaurant leftovers and desserts. But Dool said she was never a victim, and she attributes that to her diet. "I only brought in frozen dinners," she said. "I guess no one wanted Lean Cuisine."

Maybe it's a matter of packaging, a point that was lost on me when I brought my lunch. I packed it in a cute sack with handles, and I placed it prominently on the front shelf. If I had only put it in ragtag plastic grocery sack and shoved it in the back of the refrigerator so it looked like it had been there since New Year's, maybe no one would have touched it.

Taking revenge

After you've been the victim a few times, thoughts of revenge can begin to take shape. When Dennis Hoard was an electrician apprentice, he'd bring a meatloaf sandwich every Thursday. But every week the sandwich would disappear by lunchtime. Hoard suspected the foreman, a big guy who liked home cooking. So Hoard poured a laxative oil on his tasty sandwich one day.

"I thought I'd teach him a lesson," said Hoard, who is now a retired contractor in Willis. "He spent the rest of the day in one of the port-a-cans." The foreman had some harsh words when he emerged from the toilet, but the two later became good buddies, Hoard recalled. And it established Hoard's reputation as someone not to be messed with.

Sometimes the subtle approach can be just as effective. Brian Hill recalled the time when he worked at a local radio station and someone would regularly raid the weekend provisions of one of the anchors. So the next time the weekend anchor made her popular tuna fish sandwiches, she changed the recipe a little, said Hill, who was an editor at the station.

"There was no tuna," said Hill, who is now director of public affairs for the Houston Zoo. "It was all Little Friskies." And like usual, the nicely wrapped cat food salad sandwiches disappeared, so the anchor wrote up the popular recipe — including her secret ingredient — and posted it on the station's bulletin board for all to see. "I always thought that was the most beautiful thing," said Hill, who said that from that point on, food was safe in the linoleum lounge.

Eight out of 10 people want to feel they're part of a team, said John Buffini, president of Buffini Communication Systems in San Diego, which does personality testing for corporate clients. It's the other two who are not part of the team who can be a problem and are the likely culprits when confronted with the vast richness of the "office Serengeti,"as Buffini describes it.

Sometimes they're angry in a passive-aggressive way and act out by sabotaging the personal property of others, Buffini said. Others take lunches as a way to be funny or provocative. And then there's a group that lacks integrity, rationalizing that there's no name on the bag or that the owner is overweight and could stand to skip a meal anyway.

So which department is most likely to steal a lunch? Accounting, Buffini said, drawing on his experience with personality traits at work. They have to do things by the book, but they're often mad in a passive-aggressive way. Another likely candidate is the customer-service department, because personnel there are under constant pressure and have to handle angry people, he said.

As for the least likely lunch bandits, Buffini said, it's managers because of the scrutiny they're under from all sides, as well as "hero" departments like information technology, which come to your aid when you're down. And the mellow marketing folks get so many gift baskets that they're not interested in someone else's tuna sandwich, he added.

Caught in the act

And don't think home-office workers are immune from missing out on lunch. Freda Blackwell, who works from home in Katy as a sales associate for DBM, was eating her carefully prepared ham and cheese sandwich at her kitchen table when the phone rang, and she ran to answer it. When she returned, Blackwell found that Henry, her dachshund, had taken her place. He was sitting on the chair with his paws on the desk, munching away. "He loves cheese," Blackwell said with a laugh. "You still have to guard your lunch."

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Unknown ComicEven those of you who choose plastic over paper must admit that the old-fashioned paper grocery bag is an engineering marvel. It stands upright even when empty so that you can fill it using both hands when you’re in a hurry. It folds flat for easy storage. And you can cut eye holes in it and fit it over your head to make a scary mask, but that’s another story.

Until the mid-19th century, paper bags were more like envelopes, pasted by hand at the bottom in a V-shape. Margaret Knight, who was born and raised in Maine and had been inventing things since the age of twelve, decided that the world needed a better bag. She was employed at a paper bag factory in 1867 when she began spending her evenings at home designing a machine to perform a four-step action: (1) cut a strip of paper from a large roll, (2) glue it into a tube shape, (3) cut the ends, and (4) fold them neatly and quickly into a flat bottom. She built a wooden prototype of the machine by herself and was demonstrating it at the factory for her bosses when a visitor to the plant happened to stop by. Unbeknownst to Knight, he studied her machine and proceeded to try and patent it. Knight challenged him in court, and since his only defense was “a woman couldn’t possibly have designed such a complex machine,” he lost the case, and the patent was ultimately awarded to the machine’s true inventor.

The satchel-bottom bag, as it is known in the industry, revolutionized retail sales. Clerks could serve customers twice as quickly, since they didn’t have to wrap each order in paper and wrap it with twine. Knight went on to patent 22 other inventions. Shortly before her death in 1914, she remarked that, despite her success, “I’m only sorry I couldn’t have had as good a chance as a boy.”

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4 ) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Midterm elections [Le 7 novembre auront lieu les prochaines élections aux USA.]
http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=7579

Midterm Elections: Voters get ready to choose the nation's leaders

By Tiffany Chaparro

The race is on. Voters across the nation are getting ready to shape America’s next two years as midterm elections approach. Midterm elections are held midway into a president's term in office. This year, voters will elect 36 governors, 33 of the 100 U.S. Senators and all 435 members of the House of Representatives. The election is Tuesday, November 7.

The stakes are high in a midterm election. Since Congress has the power to pass legislation, the party that wins control of the House and the Senate can affect the amount of support the President receives for his agenda.

The majority party, or the party with the most elected members, also has more power to get things done. Right now, the Republicans have more members in the House and Senate. This means they can chair, or lead important committees and pass more laws. But since the Republicans only have a small majority, they don't always get to pass the laws they want.

Nancy Pelosi of California is the minority leader in the House for the Democrats. In 2002, she became the first woman to be elected in that position. If the Democrats do win control of the House this November, she could become the first female Speaker of the House as well.

"If elected Speaker, I would set the House on a new direction to ensure economic opportunity and security for all," Pelosi said in an interview with Scholastic News Online.

Midterm elections often indicate how the public feels about the President’s performance. If a Republican President is doing well, his party is more likely to do well in midterm elections. If voters are unhappy with a President, they sometimes vote against his party in midterm elections.

This year, Democrats hope to regain control of congress. If the Democrats can win 6 more seats in the Senate and 15 more seats in the House, they will have the majority in Congress.

This year, public opinion polls revealed that the President’s approval rating had dropped to the lowest of his presidency. As a result, some Republicans running for office are trying to distance their connection to the President.

The Republicans have had control of the Senate since 2003. They have had control of the House since 1995.

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6) AUDIO/Marketplace: Fighting for their right to parle français [Un reportage texte-audio sur les école privées algériennes qui enseignent en français, ce qui est désormais interdit. VOUS POUVEZ AUSSI ECOUTER CE TEXTE EN LIGNE]
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/10/11/PM200610118.html

Fighting for their right to parle français

INTRO

In Algeria, many parents send their children to private schools to learn in French, which is better for business than Arabic, but the government's threatening to shut them down if they won't teach in the national language. John Laurenson reports.

TEXT OF STORY

KAI RYSSDAL: A second...or even a third language...is almost required these days if you want to make a fast climb up the career ladder. Immersion programs are becomming more popular. French and Spanish of course. Chinese and Arabic, too. But what happens if learning a new language suddenly becomes a crime? In Algeria Arabic is the official language. But French is spoken for business. John Laurenson reports.

JOHN LAURENSON: Seven-year-olds at the Colombes, or Doves, primary school show off their flawless French:

[Student reads aloud in French]

LAURENSON: That's very good. And can you speak any other languages apart from French?

[Student responds]

LAURENSON: What do you speak at home?

STUDENT [in French]: Just French.

Until now, almost all the teaching here has been in French — a "linguistic deviation" according to the Algerian president. He's ordered Algeria's 150 private schools to teach in Arabic or close. One-hundred-eight of them, including this one, have agreed — in principle at least — to comply. The other 42 can expect the police to turn up any day. They already closed some schools in spring before the government granted a temporary reprieve to let pupils complete the school year.

ABERRAME BELAID: "Ces ecoles, elles doivent se soumettre au programme du Ministere de l'Education Nationale . . . "

Aberramane Belaid is one of the old-school Algerian politicians who are proud of their French. He was a French teacher for 10 years and school principal for another 25 before becoming mayor of the neighboring town of El-Kseur.

But he insists a clampdown is needed. "It's just about respecting the national curriculum," he says. "Arabic is our national language. It has to be taught properly in all schools."

Others say this new measure is a concession to the Islamists with whom the government has an uneasy peace. Whatever the cause, parents like Katia Kaci see a threat to their children's future. Most high-paying jobs require French and that language also opens the door to work in France where opportunities are greater.

KATIA KACI [voice of translater]: "The system they're creating is illogical because, when you get to university, if you want to study medicine, biology, architecture — anything scientific, at least — the teaching is practically all in French! So, inevitably, children who have been brought up only speaking Arabic are going to struggle. That's why we're demanding bilingual education for our children."

SAMIR BENIKEN: "In some institutes such as the Faculty of Medical Science, 65 percent of the failures are due to the language problem."

The founder and principal of Les Colombes school, Samir Beniken.

So, if Arabic-speaking kids are getting lost at French-speaking universities, isn't the logical next step to make the universities use Arabic as well? Samir Beniken says no.

BENIKEN: "Arabic is not a language of technology. Everybody knows that. Everybody's aware of that. A language is developed according to the economic growth of the country and also the industrial growth of the country. And, so far, the Arab countries did not reach that level in technology, so it would take years and years to have Arabic reach the international standards.

LAURENSON: You don't have the vocabulary?

BENIKEN: Yes, we don't have the vocabulary."

Children rush out of class to a tiny playground. In rich countries, private schools are usually better off than their public counterparts. Not here.

Les Colombes, in a cheap and dusty part of town, actually shares its building with a bunch of private apartments. If parents are willing to pay even this school's modest $600-a-year fees, it's to give their children French.

To try and satisfy them and the government, school head Beniken is increasing teaching in Arabic, maintaining French for math and sciences, and crossing his fingers. The government says it'll be sending out inspectors to make sure all schools tow the line.

In Bijaya, Algeria, I'm John Laurenson for Marketplace.

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7) Poems: When you are old and grey [Un poème de Yeats qui me fait penser à Ronsard... En fait je viens d'apprendre que c'est normal, puisque c'est une adaptation par Yeats de l'original de Ronsard. Yeats est un artiste, non pas un plagieur...]

WB Yeats - When You Are Old and Grey

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Pierre de Ronsard - Quand vous serez bien vieille

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle
Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant :
Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j'estois belle.

Lors, vous n'aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s'aille resveillant,
Benissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.

Je seray sous la terre et fantaume sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos :
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain.
Vivez, si m'en croyez, n'attendez à demain :
Cueillez dés aujourd'huy les roses de la vie.

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8) The Economist: Denmarks labour market [Un petit aperçu de la flexécurité danoise.]
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SRRDTJR

Denmark's labour market
Flexicurity

Sep 7th 2006 | COPENHAGEN
A model that works

THE Danish finance minister, Thor Pedersen, was cock-a-hoop as he outlined his economic record and spending plans for 2007: “We'll end up owning the whole world.” Extravagant brags aside, Mr Pedersen had reason to be cheerful. In its five years in power Denmark's centre-right government has presided over a boom. Unemployment, at 4.5%, is at its lowest in over 30 years, inflation is below the euro-area average and growth is faster. The budget surplus hit 3.9% of GDP in 2005.

It is Denmark's exceptional performance on jobs that has attracted most attention. Over the past three years the Danes have shaved the public payroll by almost 1% while boosting private-sector employment by 3.7%. Latest estimates suggest that 34,000 private-sector jobs will be created this year.

The government cannot take all the credit, but many economists fulsomely praise “flexicurity”—a peculiarly Danish blend of a flexible labour market, generous social security and an active labour-market policy with rights and obligations for the unemployed. Workers pay high taxes, but trade job security for a guarantee, should they be laid off, of time-limited but generous unemployment pay that they can live on and a promise that they will get new jobs fast. Hiring and firing can happen from one day to the next, which gives Danish companies a decided competitive edge over rivals in Sweden and Germany. About a fifth of Danish workers lose their job in any given year but most find a new job quickly.

Although flexicurity is much admired abroad, it is not necessarily easy to copy. For one thing, it is based on a century-old habit of dialogue between employers and unions that is not easily exportable to other countries seeking a quick fix. Moreover, despite enviably low unemployment and labour shortages in industries from construction to health care, the Danes are having difficulties nudging the long-term unemployed into work. The post office complains that it cannot recruit new postmen. Newspaper distributors have started importing delivery boys from Poland. One ferry operator's effort to recruit 365 new workers was stymied by an epidemic of seasickness among the unemployed who applied. Even in Denmark, it seems, would-be workers have their limitations.

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9 ) Slate: Pinching the Penny Pinchers [Les entreprises imposent parfois des mesures d'économie absurdes. BONUS AUDIO: Ecouter un entretien avec le journaliste au sujet de cet article.]
http://www.slate.com/id/2150340/

moneybox: Commentary about business and finance.
Pinching the Penny Pinchers: Idiotic examples of corporate cost-cutting.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, at 4:14 PM ET

Listen to an interview with the author here, or sign up for Slate's free daily podcast on iTunes.

.How do we know the economy is slowing down? The falling house prices are a clue. So are the bad macroeconomic data. And then there are the mindless, ultimately meaningless cost-cutting actions by gigantic corporations. We've reached the moment that occurs in every business cycle, before the news gets very bad, when successful companies start turning their employees upside down in hopes of shaking out a few pennies. Today, for example, the Financial Times reported that humongous investment bank Credit Suisse has told bankers to cut down on color Xeroxes and deal-closing dinners as part of a cost-reduction effort. And the Wall Street Journal, fleshing out a story broken last week by Valleywag, reported that Yahoo! "will require its U.S. workers to take vacation or unpaid time off the week between Christmas and New Year's, in a move that could signal concern about hitting some financial goals for the year."

Expect many more of these nickel-and-dime stories in the months to come. Big companies relentlessly benchmark. So, you can be sure that Microsoft's human resources folks are looking into unpaid vacation policies while accountants at Citigroup are examining color-toner budgets. (After all, back in July, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a huge shareholder of Citigroup stock, called upon CEO Chuck Prince to enact "draconian" cost-cutting measures. When a Saudi prince accuses you of profligate spending, you know there's a problem.)

These cost-cutting efforts differ from the massive cuts seen lately at crisis-ridden companies such as Ford. Yahoo! and Credit Suisse are trying to prepare for a slowdown in earnings as industry conditions decline. Ford is fighting for its life and so is offering to buy out unionized employees, slashing the white-collar workforce by one-third, and suspending its quarterly dividend. Ford's blunt cost-containing instrument, which takes something out of the hide of everyone from assembly-line workers to shareholders, is certainly damaging to morale. But it's accepted because 1) the company is losing money and 2) everybody bears the burden. By contrast, the cost cuts at highly profitable, sturdy companies such as Credit Suisse are imposed with ruthless indifference, reminiscent of something you might see on The Office. And because they're so arbitrary and meaningless, because they're apparently designed to inflict maximum annoyance on employees, they can be far more damaging to morale.
Click Here!

Frequently, managers looking for low-hanging fruit impose symbolic cost-cutting measures that take away some of the few pleasures their fellow employees enjoy. James Dimon, the legendary cost-cutter who is now the chief executive at J.P. Morgan Chase, has won kudos for his merciless efforts to slash expenses at the bank. Among his triumphs: shutting down employee gyms and cutting off cell phones provided to employees.

What ends up infuriating employees is that the scrimping on minor employee perks co-exists with a pay-any-price attitude for so much else. Credit Suisse, for example, pays seven-figure bonuses to hundreds of bankers every year. Telling associates who prepare deal books that they can't print out color PowerPoint slides because the bank needs to pinch pennies seems an exercise in futility. Yahoo!'s cutback seems even more likely to infuriate. On the heels of a warning on revenues that caused its stock to plummet about 10 percent, Yahoo! told its 10,500 employees to take off the week between Christmas and New Year's. Offices will be closed, allowing workers "to enjoy guilt-free time off while helping Yahoo! reduce unused vacation time," wrote Libby Sartain, Yahoo!'s human resources boss. Assuming average weekly wages of $2,000, that would save the company only $21 million—or about the combined earnings of CEO Terry Semel, CFO Susan Decker, and COO Dan Rosensweig last year. (See Page 26 of Yahoo!'s proxy statement.) Meanwhile, Yahoo! is rumored to be contemplating a $1 billion acquisition of Facebook.

This type of self-defeating cost-cutting often occurs at knowledge businesses whose only real asset is smart, motivated employees. Docking everybody a week's pay at a time of year when 1) they're incurring high expenses and 2) a lot of their friends and colleagues are receiving bonuses doesn't seem like the smartest retention policy for Yahoo!.

To be sure, if companies were indifferent to costs across the board, they wouldn't be in business. But the penny-pinching is aimed squarely at the vast productive middle. Top executives are generally unaffected. (Do you think James Dimon pays for the cell phone he uses at work?)

As the economy moderates and as elevated interest rates continue to take their toll, it's likely we'll see plenty more such examples. Christmas/holiday parties are a prime symbolic opportunity for expense reduction. When an investment bank that took the whole gang to Vegas for a bash in 2005 instead decides to hold its party at TGI Friday's with a cash bar, disgruntled employees will leak the news to the press. Some investors may take it as a sign that management is watching the bottom line. But in the long run, that penny saved may not be a penny earned.

Got an example of mindless corporate cost-cutting? Please send it to Moneybox@slate.com. E-mails may be quoted by name unless sender requests otherwise.

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10 ) The Economist: Executive onboarding ['embarquement des dirigeants, un nouveau concept à la mode, à savoir l'importance pour un nouveau PDG de s'installer très rapidement s'il veut pouvoir agir plus tard.]
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_STSDQQP 

Executive onboarding 
That tricky first 100 days 

Jul 13th 2006 | NEW YORK 
From The Economist print edition 
The business of helping executives get off to a good start is booming 

BEING boss of an American firm may be fabulously well paid, but never has the position of top banana been harder to cling on to. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a consultancy, 728 chief executives left their jobs in the first half of this year—some willingly, many not. That was 6.9% more than during the same period in 2005, a year with an all-time record high of 1,322 departures. Many of these changes were at smaller firms, but there have recently been several sudden, high-profile exits at firms including Kraft, Novell and Williams-Sonoma. 

With increased turnover comes reduced tenure in the top job—and, indeed, in other senior positions. Executives are now being judged more quickly than ever, it seems. This trend has spawned a business designed to help newly appointed corporate leaders to hit the ground running. “The average CEO is in the job for under four years now,” says Rich Rosen of Heidrick & Struggles, a recruitment firm. “So firms are looking for a new CEO to make a quicker impact, and are prepared to invest in making sure it happens.” Reflecting the management industry's addiction to jargon, this process has been named “onboarding” (that is, helping a new executive successfully climb on board). 

Among those offering onboarding are the big recruitment firms, including Heidrick, which in the past two years has added several “accelerated transition” experts to its leadership practice, and various management consultancies, including McKinsey. Heidrick sometimes works with Michael Watkins, a management professor at INSEAD, an international business school, who is the author of the onboarding bible, “The First 90 Days”. (Political leaders may be afforded the luxury of 100 days, but not corporate bosses, he reckons.) There are even onboarding specialists, such as PrimeGenesis—named to evoke good beginnings, despite sounding like a Bond villain's front company. 

Heidrick tried to buy PrimeGenesis before deciding to build its own onboarding practice, which it regards as a sensible extension of its recruitment business: pick the right person and then help that person to succeed. This combined approach might help to ease growing concerns in America's boardrooms about the quality of the bosses provided by recruitment firms. Academic studies have found that, on average, outside hires tend to perform far worse as chief executives than internal candidates do. Similarly, McKinsey may be hoping that helping a new boss to make a good start will make him more inclined to award consultancy work to the firm later in his tenure. 

Onboarding focuses on three areas that can cause a new executive to fail: getting up to speed, forging effective relationships and accomplishing what is expected. “The era when a chief executive could come in, take a couple of years to get to know the business then formulate a long-term strategic plan, is over,” says George Bradt, the founder of PrimeGenesis. Instead, a new boss should ideally have picked his new team and have a communications strategy—if not a fully worked-out business plan—in place on his first day in the job. To this end, PrimeGenesis particularly emphasises making the most of “pre-boarding”—the period between an executive accepting the job and officially starting it. 

Unlike executive coaching, which focuses on the career-development of an individual executive, onboarding firms concentrate more on establishing teams. New bosses often fail to work out which relationships matter. They should have two priorities, says Mr Bradt. First, identify the “shadow board”—that is, who is really pulling the strings upstairs: a member of the real board, perhaps, a former senior executive, or a big shareholder. “It's usually the shadow board that does in a new chief executive,” says Mr Bradt. 

Second, new executives should single out the executives who could undermine them, such as those with strong relations with members of the “shadow board”, or those who were passed over for the top job. Particularly in “hot landings” (when a new executive needs to bring about big changes fast), if others who wanted the top job do not make it clear that they are both loyal and enthusiastic within the first two months, they should be removed, says Mr Bradt. New bosses “tend to move too slowly on people like that, but you don't have time for insubordinate subordinates,” he says. 

As for accomplishments, the secret is, first, to ensure that what is expected of the new executive is clear and agreed on; and, second, for the executive to notch up some quick, unarguable victories. A couple of triumphs early on can do wonders for the credibility of the new boss and the motivation of his team. 

At LexisNexis, a business-information firm that is a client of PrimeGenesis, Mike Walsh went through what he calls a “fascinating and essential” onboarding process. Before starting as head of its big legal division, he and PrimeGenesis sorted through his web of relationships to work out “who my main stakeholders were and what I needed to achieve with them, which, frankly, I wouldn't have thought about,” he says. A plan was drawn up covering everything from schedules for initial and follow-up meetings, team formation and setting achievable milestones. This was so successful that Mr Walsh was recently promoted, and has hired PrimeGenesis to work with his new team. 

Onboarding may not always work so well, of course. Nor is it cheap: PrimeGenesis charges $50,000 for each executive, for instance, and the firm is not on-site much of the time. (An executive coach, by comparison, might charge anything from $200 per hour to $15,000 a day.) Still, it is cheap when compared with the costs that arise when a new boss goes overboard—perhaps after being made to walk the plank. 

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Consumed: Branching Out

By ROB WALKER
Published: September 24, 2006

Ours is the age of lifestyle. From clothes to coffee to cookware, every product or service seems to represent not just function but a statement about who we are and how we live. So the fact that Umpqua Bank, a chain based Portland, Ore., recently announced that it had “released its first album” makes a certain kind of sense. Umpqua isn’t just a financial institution, of course. It’s a lifestyle.

Certainly the message you would get if you were to visit the Umpqua branch in Portland’s trendy Pearl District neighborhood seems only vaguely related to the mundane business of certificates of deposit, checking accounts and loans. With free wi-fi access, Umpqua brand coffee, a spacious seating area and flat-screen television monitors, the place has been designed to suggest a stylish hotel lobby where you’re tempted to hang out (and, perhaps, read a tastefully printed brochure about certificates of deposit, checking accounts and loans). This and other Umpqua branches also serve as the setting for things like sewing groups, yoga classes and movie nights. Actually, the word “branch” is not used in Umpqua’s official internal terminology: the bank operates 127 “stores” in Oregon, California and Washington. As Lani Hayward, who oversees “creative strategies for the company,” explains, Umpqua sees itself as a retailer.

The reason for this strategy is the same one that leads companies across many sectors to play the lifestyle card: a proliferation of competitors peddling largely interchangeable wares. If a bank wants to stand out, it’s fairly difficult to do so with the financial products it offers. It can, however, differentiate the manner in which it sells and packages those products. This is more or less the approach that Umpqua’s C.E.O., Ray Davis, has taken over the past dozen years or so. When he started, Umpqua was just another small regional bank, with about $150 million in deposits. Today (because of acquisitions, in addition to building new branches), the figure has increased to more than $7 billion.

According to Hayward, the central idea of Umpqua’s image is “community hub.” The company trains its employees through a program offered by the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, with the goal of providing service that’s better than what you might expect from a bank. And it gives its managers the autonomy to, for example, stay open during a snowstorm if the manager thinks the customers will want that. But the community-hub notion also plays a role in the curious-sounding decision to start selling CD’s (the kind with music on them) through a program called Discover Local Music.

Originally, Hayward says, Umpqua simply planned to offer free music CD’s to people who opened new accounts; it was part of an effort to woo younger customers. The bank worked with a Portland music marketing firm called Rumblefish, which put together what has become a 214-song library of tracks by local, relatively undiscovered talent in the markets where Umpqua operates. A test run in a few markets found that the new customers who wanted a free CD of promising local artists included not just young people but, basically, everybody. The program was rolled out across the entire chain, and Umpqua even sent Rye Hollow, a Portland band, on a five-city tour; it performed at several banks, as well as at a brew pub in Chico, Calif. Earlier this year, the bank started a Web site where anybody, customer or not, can listen to clips, put together a CD and buy it. (The bank splits the proceeds with the artists.) And in July, it began selling its own curated 12-track collection, “Discover Local Music: Vol. 1, Sacramento to Seattle,” at all Umpqua locations.

All of this of course brings to mind Starbucks’s famous forays into the music business, but Hayward says Umpqua views its championing of local musicians as more of a marketing effort than a potential profit center. (And of course, in addition to underscoring community-ness, working with upstart artists is a lot cheaper than putting together the star-studded compilations Starbucks sells.) It happens that, despite the fact that we’re well into the era of the A.T.M., Umpqua’s efforts to increase its number of locations (it’s planning to add smaller, “cafe-style” locations to the mix soon) is part of an industrywide branch-building boom. That’s why, as Hayward says, “we need to give people a reason to come in.” Just like any other lifestyle retailer. 

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12) The Washington Times: Hill fries free to be French again [Les "freedom fries" ne sont plus...] 

Hill fries free to be French again
By Christina Bellantoni 
THE WASHINGTON TIMES 
August 2, 2006 

The fries on Capitol Hill are French again. So is the breakfast toast in the congressional cafeterias, with both fries and toast having been liberated from the appellation "freedom." Three years after House Republicans trumpeted the new names to get back at the French for snubbing the coalition of the willing in Iraq, congressmen don't even want to talk about french fries, which are actually native to Belgium, and toast. 

Neither Reps. Bob Ney of Ohio nor Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, the authors of the culinary rebuke, were willing this week to say who led the retreat, as it were, from the frying pan. But retreat there has been, as a casual observer can see for himself in the House's basement cafeterias. "We don't have a comment for your story," said a spokeswoman for Mr. Ney. Several Republican staffers and lawmakers suggest that the change isn't worth investigating, unlike the eagerness in March 2003 to get into the headlines about patriotism on the menu.  Mr. Ney, who was then the chairman of the House Administration Committee, which oversees the cafeterias, gleefully announced the change at the height of anti-French sentiment, when Paris scolded Washington that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was premature. "This action today is a small but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France," he said on March 11, 2003. 

The Ney spokeswoman, who wasn't aware Monday that fries and toast had reverted to their original names, observed that Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers of Michigan, the Republican who chairs the House Administration Committee now, "has the right to change the name."  But Jon Brandt, a spokesman for Mr. Ehlers, doesn't want to talk about it, either. "Officially the committee has no comment on the matter," he said. "I really don't see how this is a story." A spokeswoman for the panel's Democrats said she is unaware of the change, and none of the House staffers are willing to talk about it. A manager in the House's basement cafeteria said "freedom fries" and "freedom toast" were taken off the menu last week, and referred all calls to the Capitol's guest services department. The cafeteria in the Longworth Office Building apparently restored french fries in January. 

Democrats on the panel did not return calls requesting comment, but other Democrats, who had called the switch in nomenclature "absurd," are free with the quips. "Now that they've changed the name of the french fries back, maybe they will admit their other foreign policy mistakes were wrong, too," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader. 

The Senate never made any such changes at its cafeterias. 

The change apparently reflects shifting public attitudes. A Pew Global Attitudes survey in June revealed a sharply different opinion of France from the days at the beginning of the war in Iraq. Fifty-two percent of Americans surveyed now have a favorable impression of France, up from 46 percent last year and 29 percent in May 2003. Before the Iraq war, 79 percent of Americans said they had a favorable opinion of France. 

The term "freedom fries" actually originated at Cubbies, a restaurant in Beaufort, N.C., which caters to U.S. troops stationed at three nearby military bases. Mr. Jones, whose district includes the bases and the restaurant, circulated a letter to his colleagues seeking to call the spuds "freedom fries" because, he said, the French were "sitting on the sidelines." 

A spokeswoman for the French Embassy noted that her country has been working "very closely" with the United States on the Middle East and that Presidents Bush and Jacques Chirac dined on french fries in February 2005. "Our relations are definitely much more important than potatoes," Agnes Vondermuhll said. "French fries are back in the Capitol, back on the presidential dinner menu and our relations are back on track." 

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