Boxed in by Best Practices

Welcome to the?MAD?newsletter - for C-level Executives who want to?Make?A?Difference - in themselves and their organizations. Highlights this week:?#Inflation, #Recession,?#TimeManagement and more.

In this Issue:

1. The Best Practice?Trap
2. Profits, Pricing and People
3. America and the?Lonely Office
4. Input on?Output
5. Ike’s?Two by Two
6. Econ Recon

The Best Practice Trap

A commitment to best practices is laudable but may also be a trap.?Adam Grant of Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the world’s pre-eminent organizational psychologists warns that?"What scares me about that is that many of our best practices were built for a world that does not exist anymore."??Is this true of your “best practices”??His one page missive in Inc Magazine will explain why he urges executives?It’s time to rethink best practices.

Profits, Pricing and People

Vistage is offering two terrific webinars?in August (free to non-members) that deal with two of today’s most pressing problems:?coping with inflation through pricing?and?winning the war for talent.

August 12:??Member roundtable on hiring best practices:?Vistage helps CEO and this roundtable features three of our members who will share ways to attract and retain talent?other than compensation. “Our?research shows that 65% of CEOs report they are not able to operate at full capacity due to hiring challenges.?While boosting wages continually tops the list of how small and midsize businesses are addressing this challenge, this CEO roundtable brings together Vistage members who have found success in other strategies.”?

August 26:?Strategic Pricing when inflation crashes into recession with Casey Brown of Boost Profits.?Casey and her team have helped thousands of Vistage CEO gain a new perspective on pricing to drive profits.??In a time of inflation, this couldn’t be a more important webinar to attend.?

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America and the Lonely Office

Last week’s newsletter contained a column by WSJ Columnist and former White House Speech Writer Peggy Noonan on some unappreciated aspects of “the Great Resignation”?(If you missed it,?click here)?She follows it up this week with some wisdom about remote work. Many companies are justifiably concerned about the impact of Work from Home on their company culture. Noonan’ is also concerned the effect on our national culture.?Find out why she thinks that?The Lonely Office is Bad for America.

Some additional commentary on this subject can be found on Mike Smerconish’s show on why?American Needs to Reconnect.

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Input on Output

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” is one of the oldest management principles.?In a tight labor market and increasing numbers of people working from home and out of sight of supervisors, measurement and productivity are doubly important. This article from?Knowledge at Wharton?reminds us of a few tried and true methods for measuring output and offers a few new ones as well.

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Ike’s Two by Two

Peter Drucker once described the CEO’s job as “infinite.”?If so, then the art of setting priorities is itself the greatest priority.?Dwight D. Eisenhower not only ran the biggest country in the world, and he also ran its largest war as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during WWII. An article from Chief Executive Magazine shares a simple method embodied in a 2 x 2 matrix that served him well in setting priorities…along with a few others tips you may find helpful.?Make it a priority to read?How Prioritize 101 (with Help from Dwight D. Eisenhower.

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Econ Recon

Jobs and Money:?Dr. Brian Wesbury says there’s “No Sign of a recession in the labor market.?Just the opposite:?the job market was very strong in July ”...bringing the unemployment rate down to 3.5 % from 3.6%.” Check out his executive summary of the?July Employment Report.?In a separate article on monetary policy,?Dr. Wesbury opines that Fed Chairman “Jerome Powell does not think the US is in recession, and neither do we.”?In particular, he thinks that confusion about the respective roles of interest rates and money supply growth in creating inflation are instead creating a?Monetary Muddle.

A Bridge Too Far???The Fed raised its Fed Funds rate by 75 bps on July 27?as they had promised.?Did they overreact??ITR Economics Brian Beaulieu has a few thoughts:??Has the Federal Reserve Gone Too Far?

CEO Confidence Index:??Since 2003, the Vistage CEO Confidence?Index has provided a quarterly comprehensive report of the opinions and projections of CEOs of small- to mid-sized companies about the economy, their hiring and investment plans, and prospects for their revenues and profitability. I package up and share this data with a wide variety of people in my network. If you want to be on the quarterly distribution list,?email me.?You will find the second quarter data at?CEO Confidence?Index Q2 2022.

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Sue Tinnish, PhD, Vistage Chair & Executive Coach, 847.404.7325, [email protected], Twitter:??@STinnish, LinkedIn:??www.dhirubhai.net/in/suetinnish, Website:??https://vistage.com/chairs/sue.tinnish

#Leadership