Under David Steiner’s leadership, Waste Management stepped up its game and modernized its image. A focus on pricing, and a tiny violin.

SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 2013

Turning Trash to Cash

By RESHMA KAPADIA  | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Under David Steiner’s leadership, Waste Management stepped up its game and modernized its image. A focus on pricing, and a tiny violin.

On the surface, at least, David Steiner is as casual as they come. The CEO of Waste Management, the nation’s largest trash hauler, regularly cracks jokes in the halls of its Houston headquarters, and ribs colleagues whenever his beloved Louisiana State University Tigers beat football rivals. He has even been known to rip off his shirt at a company gathering to reveal a fake tattoo pasted on his chest, in honor of a company driver sporting the actual tat. Spend just a few minutes with Steiner, 53, and it’s easy to understand why he was voted the class wit in high school, and president of his college fraternity.

Yet, behind the antics is a deeply serious, analytical chief executive, who is said—only half in jest—to have a mainframe computer for a brain. Steiner is fond of focus groups and data, and has relied on both to change the culture of Waste Management (ticker: WM), which he has led since March 2004. Read more of this post

China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image

China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image

Release date: February 19, 2013

The first book to examine the unprecedented growth of China’s economic investment in the developing world, its impact at the local level, and a rare hands-on picture of the role of ordinary Chinese in the juggernaut that is China, Inc.

Beijing-based journalists Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araújo crisscrossed the globe from 2009-2011 to investigate how the Chinese are literally making the developing world in their own image.  What they discovered is a human story, an economic story, and a political story, one that is changing the course of history and that has never been explored, or reported, in depth and on the ground.  The “silent army” to which the authors refer is made up of the many ordinary Chinese citizens working around the world – in the oil industry in Kazakhstan, mining minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, building dams in Ecuador, selling hijabs in Cairo – who are contributing to China’s global dominance while also leaving their mark in less salutary ways.  With original and fresh reporting as well as top-notch writing, China’s Silent Army takes full advantage of the Spanish-speaking authors’ outsider experience to reveal China’s influence abroad in all its most vital implications – for foreign policy, trade, private business, and the environment. Read more of this post

Richard Thaler: Breadwinning Wives and Nervous Husbands

June 1, 2013

Breadwinning Wives and Nervous Husbands

By RICHARD H. THALER

GIRLS are generally outperforming boys in high school, and then proceeding in greater numbers to attend and graduate from college. And as women take the helm as chief executives of more major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M. and PepsiCo, there are hints that the glass ceiling may be at least cracking, if not breaking.

Such developments should encourage aspiring young women to believe that social norms are changing, and that barriers to success are dropping. But a new study reveals that women’s gains on the economic front may be contributing to a decline in the formation and stability of marriages.

One reason for this decline may be that women with greater earning power have greater economic security that allows them to leave bad marriages. Yet another possibility is that many men seem to be clinging to a social norm from the “Mad Men” days: that the husband should be the primary earner in a family. Read more of this post

In the Book “Buy Side”, A Wall Street Trader’s Crash Landing

June 1, 2013

A Trader’s Crash Landing

By BRYAN BURROUGH

REMEMBER Bud Fox, the callow, young go-getter portrayed by Charlie Sheen in the 1987 movie “Wall Street”? Ever wonder how Bud’s career would have gone had he lasted another 10 years or so? Frankly, me neither.

But I suspect that things might have turned out almost as badly as they did for Turney Duff, a callow, young hedge fund trader who writes of his own noteworthy flameout in a bracing new Wall Street memoir called “The Buy Side” (Crown, 320 pages). Read more of this post

Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization

Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization [Hardcover]

Dan Pontefract (Author)

Publication Date: April 8, 2013

Arms you with powerful tools for overcoming resistance to change and creating a culture of collaboration, engagement, and employee empowerment

Your people are your most valuable asset, and if you want them to excel (and your profits to soar), you’ll need to abandon your traditional command-and-control management style and adopt a collaborative, open leadership approach—one that engages and empowers your people. While this isn’t a particularly new idea, many leaders, while they may pay lip service to it, don’t really understand what it means. And most of those who do get it lack the skills for putting it into practice. In Flat Army you’ll find powerful leadership models and tools that help you challenge yourself and overcome your personal obstacles to change, while pushing the boundaries of organizational change to create a culture of collaboration.

Develops an integrated framework incorporating collaboration, open leadership, technologies, and connected learning

Shows you how to flatten the organizational pyramid and engage with your peoples in more collaborative and productive ways—without undermining your authority

Explains how to deploy a Connected Leader mindset, a Participative Leader Framework, and a Collaborative Leader Action Model

Arms you with powerful tools for becoming a more visible leader who demonstrates the qualities and capabilities needed to become an agent of positive change Read more of this post

Bread: The Story of Greggs; How a small family business became the high street favourite

Bread: The Story of Greggs [Kindle Edition]

Ian Gregg (Author)

Publication Date: May 9, 2013

Bringing home the bread for 50 years: Ian Gregg helped take the bakery chain from a single shop to a £416m company with 1,600 branches and more than 20,000 staff

May 31, 2013 6:13 pm

Bringing home the bread for 50 years

By Natalie Graham

Ian Gregg, 74, led the eponymous family business from a single shop in 1964 on Tyneside into a public company in 1984 with several regional bakeries and 300 shops. Today, Greggs is a £416m company with 1,600 branches and more than 20,000 staff. The son of founder John Robson Gregg, he was just a boy when he first joined his father at work, selling pies from a van to miners’ wives in Newcastle. The company is currently the subject of Sky 1 documentary Greggs: More than Meats the Pie. Recently published is Bread, The Story of Greggs, in which Gregg records the company’s 80-year history. Read more of this post

George Washington, politician: The virtues of the pragmatic founding father are much missed nowadays

George Washington, politician: The virtues of the pragmatic founding father are much missed nowadays

Jun 1st 2013 |From the print edition

A SPECIAL rogues’ gallery at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia estate, displays portraits of three revolutionary leaders who went astray. Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon are portrayed as heroes with clay feet who toppled tyrannies only to grab absolute power for themselves. Washington was different, it is asserted. In guides’ commentaries and schoolboy-friendly action films (featuring artificial snow flurries and seats that throb with cannon fire) Mount Vernon rams home the message that America’s revolutionary commander-in-chief and first president had a genius for well-timed exits. A display depicts him resigning his military commission after biffing the British. The chair in which he decided to retire as president is pointed out as a national treasure. Washington’s supreme virtue, it is suggested—greater even than martial derring-do—was knowing when to leave, ensuring his country’s future as a civilian republic. Read more of this post

Your mega summer reading list: 200 books recommended by TEDsters

Your mega summer reading list: 200 books recommended by TEDsters

Posted by: Kate Torgovnick
May 31, 2013 at 2:00 pm EDT

Books can entertain, sucking you like a tornado into incredible new worlds. Books can teach, giving you a richer understanding of time periods, people and ideas you’ve never been exposed to. But books can do so much more.

In today’s talk, TED’s own Lisa Bu introduces us to the concept of “comparative reading,” the practice of reading books in pairs, to give deeper context and reveal new insights. Comparative reading not only helped Bu adjust to American culture after moving here from China for graduate school — it also helped her re-imagine her life and find new directions after her dream failed to come true. This personal, moving talk about the magic of books and resilience of the human spirit is a must-watch »

Every year at TED, we set up a bookstore filled with books recommended by TEDsters of note. Today, as you prepare for a summer filled with reading, we are releasing this incredible library of recommendations from this spring’s TED2013 bookstore. We’ll begin, of course, with Lisa Bu’s must-reads, followed by book recommendations from Rainn Wilson, Sarah Kay, Baratunde Thurston, Maria Popova, Guy Raz, Chip Kidd, Cindy Gallop, Keith Yamashita, Bill T. Jones, Safwat Saleem, Raney Aronson, Raghava KK, Tiffany Dufu, Chris Kluwe, Karen Wickre and Colleen Keegan. Click the name to hop straight to their list. Let’s get started… Read more of this post

Boomerang bosses: When retired chiefs make a comeback their return is often less than triumphant

Boomerang bosses: When retired chiefs make a comeback their return is often less than triumphant

Jun 1st 2013 |From the print edition

IT SOMETIMES seems as if there is nothing but second acts in American lives. Bill Clinton has had more comebacks than Elvis, most recently as a global statesman. Mark Sanford has just got himself elected as a Republican congressman for South Carolina even though his governorship of the same state was consumed in a fireball of adultery and divorce. Donald Rumsfeld is resuming his career as a management guru, with a new edition of “Rumsfeld’s Rules”, having previously put in two innings at the Pentagon. And it is not just in American life. Shinzo Abe is having his second go at being prime minister of Japan, and Nawaz Sharif his third in Pakistan. José Mourinho is set to return to manage Chelsea football club after a six-year absence.

And two prominent second acts began recently in the American corporate boardroom. On April 8th J.C. Penney, a department-store chain, sacked its chief executive, Ron Johnson, after just 17 months and brought back his predecessor, Myron “Mike” Ullman. Then on May 23rd Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest maker of household products, sacked its boss, Bob McDonald, replacing him with his predecessor, A.G. Lafley. This sort of thing is surprisingly common: in “The Market for Comeback CEOs”, Rüdiger Fahlenbrach, then at Ohio State University, studied 275 publicly traded American firms whose CEOs had stayed on the board after retirement and were still around when the company again needed a new CEO. About a quarter rehired the old one instead. Read more of this post

Beware of your inner self; Investors’ decision making is distorted by all sorts of in-built biases and prejudices

May 31, 2013 7:37 pm

Beware of your inner self

By Norma Cohen, Demography Correspondent

On a visit to the London School of Economics in 2008, the Queen asked the assembled professors why nobody had seen the financial crisis coming.

Her Majesty’s question was a pertinent one. Part of the answer is that there’s a big problem with conventional economic and financial theory. Many of the big ideas that underpin it – from Eugene Fama’s efficient market hypothesis to Harry Markowitz’s modern portfolio theory – are based on the assumption that, when it comes to investing, the human mind is rational.

The financial crisis, and the fact that it came as a complete surprise to the vast majority of investors, has blown a hole in the whole notion of rationality. No longer is it assumed that froth and bubbles will be smoothed out by “smart money” that knows enough to sell an overvalued asset. Read more of this post