Watching the dismal Super Bowl two weeks ago, Cousin Rob became bored and began playing with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence apps he has on his latest and greatest iPhone. Being the technophobe that I am, I’ve resisted artificial intelligence with even more of a vengeance than I have electric vehicles, and didn’t fully appreciate what all the AI fuss was about. Cousin Rob is my tech rabbi, always gently educating me about the latest advancements of the modern world.
I confess, I quickly took to ChatGPT and was wowed how it could dramatically reduce the time I spend researching my blog posts. On a lark, I asked Cousin Rob to ask ChatGPT its opinion of this blog. The response was both heartening and sobering.
ChatGPT praised Starkman Approved for the quality of my writing, and noted my contrarian views, particularly my criticisms of CEOs. It cautioned that my blog isn’t subject to the oversight of a professional news organization, which possibly was an unintended compliment. My hero, Ann Telnaes, the Washington Post cartoonist who quit after her unflattering image of owner Jeff Bezos was spiked, wasn’t appreciative of the management oversight she received.
But one ChatGPT criticism really stung. It said I was overly negative.
Moi, negative?
In my defense, I dubbed this blog “The Gold Standard of Criticism” and criticism by definition is negative. Coincidentally, I received a message from a normally supportive and encouraging reader advising me to “cut the snark and negativity.” I prefer to think of my sometimes-biting sarcasms as “dry wit,” but some readers say TOEmato and others TAmato.
Still, I take the negativity criticisms to heart, and don’t want to be perceived as the Debbie Downer of the blogging world. So today, we are going to celebrate the positive and call attention to some leaders and companies that give me the warm and fuzzies.
ChatGPT possibly overlooked my ode to Fidelity Investments, which I posted more than four years ago. I perceive Fidelity among the most ethical corporations in America and the gold standard of customer service. The family-controlled enterprise is overseen by CEO Abigail Johnson, who rarely talks to the media, reaffirming a variation of the Starkman Approved Theory that the CEOs most often gracing magazine covers or appearing on CNBC are the executives least worth listening to and most likely to fail.
Too often, when the third generation takes over a family business the enterprise falters. Under Abigail Johnson’s leadership, Fidelity has soared to new heights.
Fidelity disclosed last week that it posted record annual operating profit and revenue last year as the firm’s funds swelled with more money and spurred increased trading activity by its customers.
Fidelity reported that its operating income soared 21% to $10.3 billion. Revenue jumped 16%, to $32.7 billion. Assets under management, or what Fidelity holds in its investment funds, leaped 21% to $5.9 trillion. Assets under administration, which includes Fidelity’s own funds as well as other assets held in the accounts it manages, rose 20% to $15.1 trillion.
That’s not a typo. $15.1 trillion!
Let me put that into perspective. China’s GDP is $17.8 trillion, while Germany’s is $4.5 trillion and Japan’s is $4.2 trillion.
Fidelity was late to the ETF game, but now has more than 70 exchange traded funds with $108.5 billion in assets. Fidelity funds seem to dominate Kiplinger’s most recommended investments.
Despite its size and substantial growth, or arguably because of it, Fidelity attracts impressive top-tier talent. My advisor has a law degree from an Ivy League university and previously ran his own money management firm. He joined Fidelity because of the company’s robust platform, which he told me gives him capabilities he previously didn’t have.
My advisor returns my calls within 24 hours and promptly responds to my email messages. An advisor at a competing firm where I have some money recently told me she wasn’t available for a call to review my portfolio for more than a week. Fidelity offers round the clock customer support. I’m still awed that years ago I called Fidelity at 2 a.m. East Coast time on Christmas morning to ask a technical question about Roth IRAs and the customer support person readily knew the answer.
Johnson is worth an estimated $36 billion. I don’t begrudge her or her family one penny of their wealth. Unlike some other billionaires who I won’t mention while wearing my rose-colored glasses, the Johnson family didn’t achieve their wealth on the backs of U.S. taxpayers.
What’s good for the Johnson family is good for America.
In the late 90s when I had my PR firm, I represented a brilliant young tech entrepreneur who I recall looked an awful lot and had many of the mannerisms of Elon Musk. My client shared that all his tech employees were required to take a writing test before they got hired.
“Why would you require a tech employee to take a writing test?” I asked.
“If someone can write well, they can think well,” my client responded. “I can teach someone how to code. I can’t teach them how to think.”
I’m doubtful that American CEOs are required to take writing tests, particularly since most delegate their communications to their chief people officers or their PR folks, who specialize in disingenuous messages calling employees “partners” and parroting corporate spiels that are in vogue, until recently the importance of diversity and now “high performance” cultures.
The most inspiring leadership message I’ve read in recent years was sent to employees by SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell after some non-critical employees circulated a petition protesting the antics of company founder Elon Musk. You can read Shotwell’s communique in this profile I published last August, which I note was also entirely positive.
I don’t know if Shotwell wrote the memo, but it’s to her credit that she employs someone capable of crafting such a powerful message. Watching this video, it’s readily apparent that Shotwell is articulate and has the humility of Fidelity’s Abigail Johnson. I can’t imagine either woman using vulgarity when speaking to employees.
I’ve identified another executive who sends employees inspiring messages. His name is Tom Conrad, and he is the interim CEO of Sonos, the wireless speaker company. Six years ago, I posted a very positive piece about Sonos and the integrity of the company’s founders (ChatGPT must have missed that one, too) and last August I wrote about how an empty marketing suit from Canada named Patrick Spence destroyed the company.
Spence stepped aside last month, and was replaced on an interim basis by Conrad, a longtime board member. Chris Welch, a reviewer for the tech publication The Verge, got a hold of a message Conrad sent to employees, and I’d wager Conrad wrote it himself.
Here it is:
I vowed I’d never buy a Sonos product again. If Conrad remains at the helm, I will have to rethink that.
Note to Conrad: If you want to make Sonos great again, you need to move the company’s customer support back to the U.S. Customers, and President Trump, will thank you!
During my recent weekly lunch with Cousins Rob and David, I shared that my computer was constantly freezing up and the dreaded spinning beach ball derailing my writing efforts. More than once, Microsoft Word didn’t save my copy.
Cousin Rob offered to look at my computer. He was aghast to learn I bought it 2015.
“You need a new computer,” he said.
Cousin Rob configured online a new iMac for me, which wasn’t supposed to arrive until next week. It arrived more than a week early.
I feared that transferring all my data to the new computer would be a nightmare. I’m still recovering from experiences years ago when transferring data required downloading to floppy discs and nothing ever went smoothly. Apple has made great strides since then.
Getting customer support from Apple is easy peasy if you have the company’s Starkman Approved customer care app, which allows you to schedule a call at your convenience. In my experience, Apple doesn’t suffer from “unusually heavy call volumes,” possibly because it makes superior products that even I can often master without much assistance.
Within minutes, I ended up talking to some awesome tech dude named Drew in Sacramento, who had the patience of Job and walked me through what proved to be a simple task. Setting up the transfer took minutes, and within hours, my new computer was fully up and running.
Unfortunately, there was an issue with Word, understandable given that it’s a Microsoft product, which prides itself on its vulnerable software and its horrific overseas customer “support.” It took more than an hour for me to troubleshoot the issue, as I didn’t want to aggravate myself calling Microsoft.
I also had an email issue, which forced me to deal with GoDaddy, a once great company with stellar customer service staffed by knowledgeable persons in suburban Phoenix. I ended up talking to “Bob” in India, who despite some language barriers, finally understood my issue and helped me fix the problem.
Life isn’t a bowl of cherries. If it was, all companies would be exemplary like Fidelity and Apple and the CEOs of all U.S. corporations would be of the caliber of Abigail Johnson, Gwynne Shotwell, and Tom Conrad. We must be sympathetic and tolerant of CEOs incapable of achieving excellence, as few in the corner offices of America can achieve top-tier standards.
There I go again. Old habits die hard!
If, by chance, you are craving more of my signature negativity and snark, you’ll find it in my latest Deadline Detroit article about Mary Barra and Jim Farley, the respective obscenely paid CEOs of GM and Ford.