Rick Wartzman: All Publications, Events and Press

Rick Wartzman in Bloomberg News | 'Lehman, AIG Chiefs Should `Man Up,' Stop `Kissing the Mirror' '

Articles — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:51:00 -0400

New America in the News:

At no point did the witnesses acknowledge errors in judgment, a management ``travesty,'' said Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. He is also a former Wall Street Journal reporter, editor and business columnist.

``Being a leader is about being responsible and not passing the blame. True leaders step up,'' Wartzman said. ``To say you're acting on the best information available is a failure of leadership that reflects a failure of the system.'' LINK

CA EVENT: Censorship and Politics

Communications — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/10/2008 - 12:00pm

Come hear more about the book that Studs Terkel calls "revelatory and stunning"; that Anthony Lewis praises for providing "a dramatic glimpse of a dark American past"; that Publishers Weekly says "artfully weaves the personal and the political" in a way that "readers will find engaging on more than one level."

Rick Wartzman, Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, will lecture on his new book, "Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" -- a powerful narrative that has particular resonance today.

Lunch will be provided.

This event is co-sponsored by the California Research Bureau.

The Financial Crisis: What Drucker Would Have Said

Articles — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:09:00 -0400

Peter Drucker didn't have a whole lot of nice things to say about those on Wall Street, at one point likening them to "Balkan peasants stealing each other's sheep."

Given the magnitude of the latest crisis to grip Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, American International Group, Lehman Brothers, and their friends, one can only imagine what kind of acid analogy he might have used today.

Or perhaps he would have simply said, "I told you so." After all, so much of the trouble that has befallen these giants of the investment banking, mortgage, and insurance sectors--and that threatens to "undermine the financial security of all," as President George… more

The Joneses and the Joads

Articles — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:24:00 -0400

After storms ravaged Iowa last summer, devastation wasn't the only thing that people found amid the flood waters. Scores of out-of-work electricians from Michigan, hard hit by auto industry cutbacks, spied opportunity. Trekking hundreds of miles from home, where the unemployment rate of 8.5% is the highest in the U.S., they were eager to scoop up jobs rewiring Cedar Rapids -- even if it meant sleeping in a tent for weeks on end.

To some observers, the desperate scene evoked an unmistakable image. "The Joads leaving Oklahoma is exactly what we are seeing coming out of Detroit now," UC Berkeley labor expert Harley Shaiken told reporters. Nearly… more

Put a Cap on CEO Pay

Articles — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:09:00 -0400

For a guy whose astute counsel helped to make so many CEOs rich, Peter Drucker had an intense loathing of exorbitant executive salaries.

He hated high CEO pay on every level: what it said about the individual as a leader, how it undermined the smooth functioning of the organization, and the way it tore at the fabric of society as a whole.

Drucker's strong feelings on the subject—he once termed sky-high CEO compensation "a serious disaster"—are well worth revisiting in light of the news that the men who sat atop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (BusinessWeek, 9/10/08) could be eligible for as much as $24 million… more

Obscene In the Extreme

Ron Tang — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:08:00 -0400

Few books have caused as big a stir as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, when it was published in April 1939. By May, it was the nation’s number one bestseller, but in Kern County, California -- the Joads’ newfound home -- the book was burned publicly and banned from library shelves. Obscene in the Extreme tells the remarkable story behind this fit of censorship.

When W. B. “Bill” Camp, a giant cotton and potato grower, presided over its burning in downtown Bakersfield, he declared: “We are angry, not because we were attacked but because we were attacked by a book… more

Organizations Need Structure and Flexibility

Articles — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:50:00 -0400

There is certainly no shortage of management lessons to be gleaned from Michael Phelps's record-shattering performance at the Beijing Olympics--the importance of setting firm objectives and staying sharply focused perhaps chief among them.

Nevertheless, I suspect that Peter Drucker would have been more intrigued by the blows suffered in the boxing ring than by the gold gathered in the swimming pool. It was there, in the square circle, that the U.S. turned in its worst-ever showing, winning but a single bronze medal and sending disheartened fans scurrying to figure out what went wrong.

Interestingly, the answer appears to have relatively little to do with the fighters' athletic prowess… more

Why Manners Matter at Work

Articles — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:25:00 -0400

For those of you who never bothered to pay attention to your mother, perhaps you'll listen to Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, instead.

This cheeky thought has crept into my head a couple of times in the last few weeks as I've noticed a run of stories about etiquette (or lack thereof) in the workplace. Most recently, there was the case study posted on this Web site (BusinessWeek.com, 8/12/08) about a worker who had to deal with a boorish boss.

And just a couple of weeks ago, I saw that officials in Anaheim, Calif.--home to Disneyland (DIS)-- were set to hold classes for… more

What Drucker Would Say About Mervyns

Articles — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:21:00 -0400

Mervyns portrayed itself as a victim of the crummy economy and a miserable retail environment last week as it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But in truth, a key part of the department store chain went bankrupt long ago. It's what Peter Drucker called the "theory of the business."

Every organization rests upon a set of such premises--fundamental notions about customers and competitors, about technology, about a company's own strengths and weaknesses. When an enterprise fails, Drucker explained, it is often because "the assumptions on which the organization has been built and is being run no longer fit reality."

As obvious as this may seem, it… more

When 2008 Feels Like 1968

Articles — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:36:00 -0400

It's been a bummer of a summer, hasn't it?

At the gas station the other night, I found myself staring in disbelief—as I have for weeks—while the numbers on the pump kept spiraling higher and higher. The total: $67.83 to fill my Passat. I hopped back in my car and flipped on the radio, figuring a little music might take my mind off the lightness of my wallet, but the news came on instead: Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) were reeling. Nervous depositors had stormed IndyMac Bancorp, looking to pull their money. General Motors (GM) was poised for another round of cuts.

Sigh. You… more

Cartooning Obama's Economics

Articles — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:46:00 -0400

Among the things I admire most about Barack Obama is the way that he’s able, without sounding wishy-washy, to capture issues in their full complexity – to explain them not in the obtuse terms typical of so many politicians but in a manner that recognizes nuance, that allows for shades of gray.

It’s too bad that the same can’t be said of John R. Talbott’s Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics. Instead, much of it presents an overly simple, cartoonish view of the world.

Trumpeting any politician’s platform while he’s still out on the campaign trail can be perilous. Still, I had high… more

Leveraging the Strengths Of the Disabled

Ron Tang — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:30:00 -0400

When the House passed legislation in late June that expanded protections for disabled people, it marked an important step forward on an important issue. But what the workplace needs, even more than a new law, is an old insight -- one first offered by Peter Drucker more than 40 years ago.

"To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization," Drucker wrote in his 1967 classic, The Effective Executive. "It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant."

This holds true for everyone, of course. As Drucker noted, "Strong… more

Drucker's Take On Making Mistakes

Ron Tang — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:29:00 -0400

Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House when KeyCorp first began raising its dividend. The Beatles topped the pop charts. Martin Luther King Jr. led tens of thousands of civil rights marchers through Alabama.

For 43 straight years, the company's annual payout climbed, "a record we were extremely proud of," in the words of KeyCorp Chief Executive Henry Meyer. That is, until earlier this month. The Cleveland bank, slammed by the weak housing market and an adverse tax ruling, announced that it would halve its dividend to 75 cents in a bid to save $200 million a year. It also said it… more

No Gay Weddings In Kern County

Ron Tang — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:14:00 -0400

A few years ago, I heard writer Gerald Haslam explain his struggle to describe the difference between the Kern County burg of Bakersfield and the Bay Area city of Mill Valley, both of which are settings for his novel, "Straight White Male."

"Then it suddenly occurred to me," he said. "There was nobody in Bakersfield who cared whether Tibet was free."

Haslam's remarks came rushing back to me last week with the news that the Kern County clerk will stop performing all civil marriages before June 17, the first day same-sex couples in California can legally apply for licenses.

The clerk, Ann Barnett,… more

Obama's Drucker-Style Win

Ron Tang — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:13:00 -0400

As Barack Obama claimed the Democratic nomination for President last week, pundits were quick to credit any number of factors in his vanquishing of the once-vaunted Clinton political machine: Obama's rock-star charisma, his scintillating speechmaking, what he himself has described as his "almost spooky good fortune."

But I chalk it up, in large measure, to one thing: his superior ability -- or at least his advisers' superior ability -- at management, Peter Drucker-style.

In fact, it was almost as if the Obama camp had methodically worked through the five questions with which Drucker believed every organization -- whether a business, public agency,… more

The Seven-Year Rich

Ron Tang — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:12:00 -0400

After the brutal bust of 2001, we didn’t expect new masses of multimillionaires to reappear around here quite so fast. But they did -- and this time, no recession will send them packing. A 2008 field guide to a new, super-driven kind of upper class -- whose motives and morés, like it or not, are now part of our DNA.

I. The Penthouse View

On a recent Friday morning, at the end of a week in which the dollar has continued to sink, stocks have fallen deeper into negative territory, and a widely watched measure of leading economic indicators has slipped, I… more

Conditioning the Corporate Athlete

Ron Tang — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:47:00 -0400

Thirty-five years ago, in his classic Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Peter Drucker declared that the means by which most people had long run their organizations -- through a mix of perks and punishment, rewards and reprimands -- was all but dead.

"The basic fact," Drucker wrote, "is that the traditional... approach to managing, that is the carrot-and-stick way, no longer works."

It was striking, then, to read a few weeks ago of Whirlpool's decision to suspend 39 workers who had claimed to be nonsmokers -- apparently in an attempt to avoid paying a $500 surcharge on their health insurance -- but then… more

Exxon Mobil Needs a Longer View

Ron Tang — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:18:00 -0400

John D. Rockefeller has been described in many different ways: as greedy and cutthroat, as munificent and caring, as "solitary, taciturn, remote, and ascetic," in the words of author Daniel Yergin. But as a manager, perhaps Rockefeller's most indispensable quality was this: He was uncompromisingly forward-looking.

It was Rockefeller, more than any single figure, who helped revolutionize the way people in the 19th century illuminated their homes, hastening the shift from costly whale oil to kerosene -- a fuel that was, as he put it, "cheap and good."

Rockefeller's heirs recently evoked that history, as they went public with their criticism of… more

Dusting Off a Managing Tome

Ron Tang — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:28:00 -0400

Of all of Peter Drucker's achievements -- advising captains of industry and heads of state, coining the term "knowledge worker," winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the most remarkable may be this: In 1974, his 800-plus-page tome, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, vaulted past The Joy of Sex on the national best seller list.

Last week, HarperCollins released a revised edition of Management. And regardless of whether it winds up eclipsing Bonk, the latest hot-selling volume on the physiology and psychology of sex, I can tell you this: It deserves a spot on every manager's shelf, much as the Physicians' Desk… more

Peter Drucker's Winning Team

Ron Tang — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:23:00 -0400

In the summer of 1985, an executive named Peter Bavasi pored over a Harvard Business Review article by Peter Drucker in which the great management thinker described the "widow maker" -- a job so inherently impossible that it was apt to defeat even the best and brightest.

Drucker's warning, "Any job that ordinarily competent people cannot perform is a job that cannot be staffed," was especially ominous for Bavasi. He had, you see, just become president of the Cleveland Indians, a sports franchise to which the word "hapless" seemed inextricably tied.

So Bavasi called Drucker to seek his counsel, and there began… more