The Corner Office

It was the end of a long work day, but back then, the days seemed to go a lot quicker than they do now. It was 1998 and the stock market’s unprecedented bull run - fueled by the dot-com boom - seemed like it would never end.

At the tail end of a phone interview with USA Today’s Silicon Valley bureau chief, Julie Schmit asked if I would be a source for another reporter’s story on how unbudgeted tax income from the stock market surge was responsible for the nation’s first budget surplus in almost 30 years.    

For those who were too young or have short memories, at that time, the market had indeed seen an impressive bull run. But as they say, “they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Over the next 3 years the NASDAQ would skyrocket 250 percent, only to plummet right back down to where it started. Maybe we’d all just as soon forget that ever happened.

And yet, there was a remarkable benefit that, for the most part, slipped under most of our radar screens. But when you read this excerpt from the USA Today archives, the lesson we, in the deficit and budget-challenged present, can learn from history comes into focus:  (more…)

The other day I was listening to Soul Sacrifice from Santana’s remarkable first album, c. 1969. I’ve probably listened to it a thousand times, but I was still blown away by how tight the band was. All I could think of was what it must feel like when a band jams together for the first time and everyone realizes there’s magic in the room.

But the concept of “Great Groups” - where the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of the parts - goes way beyond Santana, The Allman Brothers, or The Beatles, for that matter. This rare, once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon can occur wherever there’s challenge, opportunity, and creative talent.     

Like its topic, there’s an exceptional, one-of-a-kind book that describes - in dramatic and insightful fashion - the conditions under which great groups occur. It’s called Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman.

The premise is straightforward enough. “In our society, leadership is too often seen as an inherently individual phenomenon.” We hoist Apple’s Steve Jobs up on a superstar-CEO pedestal, but the book reveals a relatively unexplored talent of Jobs - his ability to inspire groups of developers to great heights. For example, he told the first Macintosh design team that they were there to “make a dent in the universe.” And they did.  (more…)

When I was a fulltime executive, I never would have found time for social media and all the communications gadgets everyone’s eyes, ears, and thumbs seem to be glued to these days. I used to work like 50-60 hour weeks, not to mention all the travel. The rare times I was home and not working or sleeping, I had things to do, fun to have, and relationships to maintain … like my marriage.

Now I work a lot less but my time is still somehow consumed - with what, I don’t know - and the lure of social media and communications gadgets loom like an ever-growing mountain of unmet expectations. So I wonder: how the heck does anyone have time for all this stuff and is your business life “more” or “less” fulfilling and productive now than it was pre-social media?

For me, the answers are “I don’t” and “less” and “less.” Bigtime. (more…)

Entrepreneurs worry too much about what they’re going to develop, make, or market. What’s more important is that they make, develop or market something. The odds that they end up making it big doing something different are apparently pretty high.

Here are 15 companies that became famous, not for what they started doing, but for something that came later. Sure, they may be related, but the point is still valid: better to get started on something; innovative people find a way.

• Backed by French venture capital, DuPont began making gunpowder in 1802.
• McDonald’s. In 1927, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald opened a hot dog stand called “The Airdrome” at the Monrovia airport in California. 21 years later, the company began focusing on hamburgers.
• Nokia was originally a paper mill in Finland. (more…)

  Email Steve Tobak (if you must)Get The Corner Office updates on Twitter Get The Corner Office updates via email or RSS

Some executive staff meetings can get pretty heated. I’ll never forget one where we fought over a multimillion dollar promotional budget centered on the prelaunch of a major product line. In the middle of the mayhem, one executive asked a very good question.

“Why do we even need all this PR stuff? Why not just deliver the goods?”

“Because,” I replied, “The only thing more powerful than delivering a great product is saying you’re going to deliver a great product and then doing it.”

That was 12 years ago and I don’t mind admitting that today, my answer would be different. Indeed, telegraphing the introduction of a potentially breakthrough product in advance is a powerful PR strategy I’ve employed many times before and since. But the risk of overpromising and under-delivering can, at times, dwarf the potential reward. (more…)

If you’ve never won a big contract or huge piece of business, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s an incredible feeling; like a burst of adrenaline that lasts for as long as the business lasts. But that’s sort of the problem with adrenaline, isn’t it? When it’s gone, you feel like you’re dead inside. And when a company loses that one big deal, that’s exactly what can happen.

At 4:05 pm EST on Monday, solid state drive maker STEC announced its third quarter results. Revenues and earnings were up considerably, beating the company’s previous guidance. All good, right? Not exactly.

Buried way down in the fifth paragraph of the earnings press release, came a whopper:  

“One of our customers entered into a $120 million supply agreement with us for shipments covering the second half of 2009. We recently received preliminary indications that our customer might carry inventory of our ZeusIOPS at the end of 2009 which they will use in 2010.”  

The next day, STEC’s stock was down a whopping 39 percent on volume of 32 million shares. Turns out the customer referenced in the quote, EMC, accounted for 15 percent of STEC’s revenues last year. Sure, STEC had 329 customers in 2008, but just two of them - Smart Modular and EMC - accounted for 50 percent of the company’s total sales. (more…)

Picture this: You are a top executive at one of the biggest technology companies on the planet. You spent 30 years working your tail off, climbing the corporate ladder, building your reputation, and it all paid off. You’re set for life; you can retire tomorrow and never have to worry about money as long as you live.

So what do you do? You leak all kinds of inside information on upcoming earnings releases and a high-profile restructuring and spinoff to a friend at a hedge fund who you know is going to illegally trade a million shares on the information and let another hedge fund manager in on the fun, too.

But you’re caught red-handed on tape by the FBI. Poof, it’s all gone. Just like that.

So, can you picture that happening to you? Of course not; neither can I. But it allegedly happened, and not to just one guy, but two. 

One is former AMD CEO and Motorola president Hector Ruiz, who yesterday agreed to step down as chairman of AMD spinoff Globalfoundries. Ruiz, apparently caught in the FBI snare, cooperated with the investigation and has not been charged.

The other is Bob Moffat, an IBM senior VP who has been mentioned as a possible successor to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano. Moffat, who was arrested by the feds a couple of weeks ago and charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, ended his 31-year career at IBM on Friday.  (more…)

It’s a hot trend and it’s here to stay. Retail marketers at Starbucks, Kraft, and Campbell have discovered that “simple” sells. Products that stress fewer ingredients - food, drinks, cosmetics, even pet food - are outselling rivals, as this USA Today story explains.

But is simple really better, or is this just another fad for health-conscious consumers, not to mention the ever-growing number of people looking for a quick fix so they can continue to gouge themselves on high-fat and sugary foods without feeling guilty? Sure, fewer additives and processing is a good thing, but three simple ingredients - butter, sugar, and flour - will kill you faster than you can say “cardiac arrest.”  

More to the point, tricking consumers with creative marketing is one thing. But will the trend extend beyond consumable products? Is ’simple’ something we should all be watching and considering in our marketing, branding, and positioning? The simple answer to that is yes. Here are …

Five reasons why you should Keep It Simple: (more…)

Updated 1:15pm PST: Just heard that the Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot the runway in Minneapolis last week were reportedly on their laptops and failed to notice all the control tower and control panel alarms and messages. I rest my case.

Last week, university researchers announced the results of a study on awareness: Just 8 percent of pedestrians talking on cellphones noticed a clown on a unicycle pedaling across a campus square, versus 60 percent of pedestrians talking with a friend.

The results are fascinating, but I think gadget and media-bombardment presents cognitive issues that go well beyond “distraction.”

A recent Stanford research study suggests that media multitasking or “high-tech juggling” between web browsing, emailing, and texting, for example, impairs cognitive control and is counterproductive. (more…)

Regret is a bitter pill to swallow. That’s why, in terms of your career, it’s a good idea to understand opportunities missed and mistakes made in real time. They don’t age well.

Unfortunately, when it comes to career moves, insight can be elusive. And the good moves can be just as perplexing as the bad ones. I’m not sure what’s worse: having one success and being completely unable to duplicate it because you don’t understand how or why it happened, or not facing the fact that you made a bad decision and blew it all on your own.

That why you really have to take a hard look at both the good moves and the bad for them to be of any value. To that end, here are my best and worst career moves and lessons learned. They’re amusing and insightful all by themselves, but in exchange, we’d all like to read and laugh at … I mean learn from yours. That’s the deal, okay? (more…)