Bob Lutz’s ‘Car Guys vs. Bean Counters’ is the most inspiring book on leadership I’ve ever read.
Here’s why.
The CEO Marshmallow Test
Nearly 60 years ago, Stanford researchers asked children to choose between one marshmallow now or two later.
Indications are that most CEOs of American companies would have grabbed the first marshmallow.
Tesla’s Elon Musk, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, and Amazon’s Andy Jassy are among the rare U.S. business leaders managing their companies with long-term horizons.
Brad Parscale and Israel’s $50M PR Debacle
Israel’s intelligence operations may be brilliant, but its political and communications judgment is astonishingly naïve.
UAW Shawn Fain’s Zionist Conspiracy Enablers
Nazi Germany sought to remove Jews from public life by claiming they couldn’t administer justice impartially.
Shawn Fain is using a modern version of that tactic against the Jewish federal monitor investigating him.
An unabashed anti-Zionist labor reporter obtained UAW Executive Board transcripts that undercut Fain’s allegations and exposed conflicts of interest among journalists who helped validate them.
CEOs and the $4.8T Looting of Corporate America
Corporate America has spent more than $4.8 trillion buying back its own stock since 2018.
CEOs say buybacks signal confidence because they believe their companies’ shares are undervalued.
Then why are so many executives selling their own stock while their companies are buying it?
An Unsung Engineer and the Cadillac Vistiq Recall
Not all heroes wear capes.
Many remain unknown.
Some thoughts on the unidentified GM engineer who forced the recall and stop-sale of every Cadillac Vistiq GM ever manufactured—and what the episode reveals about the automaker’s engineering, software validation, and supply chain.
Ford, the UAW, and a ‘Stolen’ $1.95 Cookie
Veteran automotive journalist Phoebe Wall Howard recently uncovered the disheartening story of an experienced Ford factory electrician who was fired after being falsely accused of stealing a $1.95 cookie from the plant commissary. Howard’s reporting burst my bubble about Ford’s leadership and reaffirmed my dim view of the UAW.
Howard’s prodigious reporting deserves amplification.
The Marketing Tragedy of Ford’s Mustang Mach-E
Ford’s Mexican-made Mustang Mach-E has muscled its way big time onto the roads of my west Los Angeles neighborhood. For years I rarely saw the vehicle, which first went on sale in December 2020, but these days they’re everywhere, in some pretty sweet color schemes, I must add. I saw…
Sharon Leite: The Vitamin Shoppe’s Unsung CEO
In a not-so-long-ago era, my recent experience at The Vitamin Shoppe in Santa Monica would not have been a blog-worthy experience. Once upon a time it was common to walk into a retail store and engage with someone who was well versed in the company’s products and cared enough to…
VW’s 100,000 Job Cuts: BCG’s Fingerprints
It speaks volumes about the corporate media that to better understand antisemitism, growing wage disparity and labor unrest, and the declining state of the global automotive industry, I’m increasingly drawn to the World Socialist Web Site. The corporate media covers politics and business through the prism of its business owners—that’s…