- Cover
- Praise for Business Exposed
- Contents (1/2)
- Contents (2/2)
- About the author
- Publisher’s acknowledgements
- Introduction: The monkey story
- Management happens
- Forced to be stupid
- Collective inertia – if you don’t join them, you can beat them!
- Pharma – the devil is in the detailing
- The Abilene paradox
- Same same but different
- "Selection bias”
- Numbers and strategy – do they mix?
- Inebriated cyclists
- Deciding stuff – that’s the easy bit
- How well do you know your company? (My guess is not very well at all . . .)
- How to make a compelling corporate strategy in six easy steps
- Wanna play Strategy? Get a board game
- “Framing contests”: what really happens in strategy meetings
- It looks like we don’t have a strategy . . .
- The success trap (and some ideas how to get out of it)
- Why good companies go bad
- The Icarus paradox
- Tunnel vision – “in the end, there is only flux”
- Operation Market Garden
- Mental models – let’s all think within the same box
- A creosote bush: how “exploitation” drives out “exploration”
- A bitter pill
- Framing something as a threat or an opportunity dramatically alters what we choose
- In a downturn, manage your revenues, not your costs
- In a crisis, innovate
- Is your company brave enough to survive?
- The urge to conquer
- How big is your yam? (not that it matters)
- Deal-eager executives – tribal instincts
- CEOs, marriage, mergers, geriatric millionaires, and blushing brides
- When acquisitions take over
- “Time compression diseconomies” – too much, too fast
- Seeds and fertilizer – how to build a firm
- “I’ve won . . . I’ve won!”
- Most acquisitions fail – really!
- “Heerlijk, helder, Heineken”
- Toads and acquisitions – where does CEO “hubris” come from?
- Gods and villains
- The heroes of our time
- Narcissus versus Humble Bloke – and the winner is . . . ?
- Are overconfident CEOs born or made?
- Hang the hero
- Celebrity CEOs and the burden of expectations
- Successful managers – incompetent for sure
- Executives: superhuman after all . . .
- “Over the hill and far away, top managers are here to stay”
- Chief story-teller
- Managers and leaders: are they different?
- Women on top
- Liaisons and intrigues
- Facts over fiction
- Analysts, astrologers, and lemmings – three of a kind?
- Conflicts of interest – do analysts rate their bank’s clients’ stock more favorably?
- Banks’ blurry categorizations – have your cake and eat it too
- Analysts rule the waves (whether we like it or not)
- Sirens and investment bankers – birds of a feather
- How to tame an analyst
- Advice or influence? Why firms ask government officials to be directors
- Boards of directors: cliques and elites
- Board-cloning – a rewarding habit
- Boardroom friends
- CEOs and their stock options . . . (oh please . . .)
- Stock options, risk, and manipulations
- Too hot to handle: explaining excessive top management remuneration
- How to justify paying top managers too much
- CEOs do seek advice – if you pay them for it . . .
- Dirty laundry: who is hiding the bad stuff?
- Myths in management
- No stranger to fiction
- Say you will – that’ll do
- Right again! Managers and their self-fulfilling prophecies
- Your expectations manage you
- “Reverse causality” – sorry, but life’s not that simple
- Eating Uncle Ed – don’t worry, it’s called downsizing
- Does downsizing ever work?
- Who can downsize without detriment?
- What management bandwagons bring
- Remember this one: “total quality management”?
- ISO 9000 makes you reliable, myopic, efficient, and dull – and unable to invent Post-It notes
- How bad practice prevails
- Can we please stop saying that the market is efficient?
- Pin-striped pigeons
- Management consultants – happy slapping
- Star knowledge workers – you really should not pay them that much, you know
- Patent sharks
- Information overload – and how to deal with it (if you’re the one loading)
- When knowledge hurts
- Exaggerating to make my point
- R&D – it’s a steal
- Making far-reaching decisions (when you can’t see a fricking thing ahead of you)
- The Red Queen
- Binoculars in the mist
- “Today’s fast-changing business environment”? The same as it ever was!
- Is innovation over-rated?
- Customers? Ah, forget about them
- Means and ends; profits and innovation
- It is OK to get lucky – even for a top manager
- Getting lucky – fortune favors the prepared firm
- Sometimes it is about knowing when not to decide
- Retaining your ability to make money? Causal ambiguity’s the answer
- Company cloning – how to change a winning formula
- When to fire your M&A management consultant
- Not all trouble is really trouble
- Change for change’s sake
- Now change it again!
- “A serial changer”
- “Innovation networks” and the size of the pie
- Spinning clients – the McKinsey effect
- A rock or a soft place?
- The hidden cost of equity
- “Shareholder value orientation” – now, where did that come from?
- Who should come first? Shareholders? Are you sure . . . ?
- Human nature: self-interested bastard or community-builder?
- Downtown Calcutta firms
- Pay inequality – good or bad for team performance?
- What really caused the 2008 banking crisis?
- The third sin
- “Work–family initiatives”?! That’s rather soft and fluffy, isn’t it?
- Corporate social responsibility – nice, but does it earn you any money?
- Taking care: companies make love and money (if their shareholders let them)
- Epilogue: The Emperor’s new clothes
- Literature (1/2)
- Literature (2/2)
- Index (1/3)
- Index (2/3)
- Index (3/3)
Index238
warning signs 34–5
Ward, Geoffrey (Bisque) 26, 171–3
Watson, Thomas (IBM) 36
Welch, Jack (GE) 11, 69, 73, 75
West, Al (SEI) 186–8
who-knows-who, inuence of 88
“winner” in merger 55
work-family initiatives 209–10
Zaleznik, Abraham 84, 85
zero-based budgeting 135
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