The Washington Post drew plenty of criticism when its plans to host $25,000-per-guest secret dinners that brought together reporters, editors and government officials became public in July. Now, Charles Pelton the marketing executive charged with putting these plans into motion, has decided to resign from his post following the immensely negative response to the plans.
 
The Post originally sent fliers to several important lobbyists and trade groups that advertised $25,000 sponsorship opportunities for salons at the home of Katherine Weymouth, the newspaper’s publisher. Journalists both involved with the Post and outside of it quickly criticized the plan, which was seen as …read more

Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio faced the wrong side of the law when he was convicted of insider trading and sentenced to six years in prison. However, Nacchio may soon find his sentence reduced due to his recent victory in a federal appeals court, in which the convicted executive successfully argued that there was a miscalculation.
 
In the ruling, the Denver-based appeals court found that the trial judge miscalculated Nacchio’s earnings from the illegal sales of his stock, which may have extended Nacchio’s sentence by several years. While the trial judge found Nacchio’s earnings to top $44.6 million, Nacchio argued that …read more

If IBM had its way, former head of mergers and acquisitions, David Johnson, would not be allowed to work for Dell because he would allegedly be able to provide his new employer with trade secrets that would give Dell an unfair competitive advantage. However, a U.S. judge has sided with Dell and turned down IBM’s injunction against Johnson.
 
In his ruling, the judge decided that IBM never quite proved what secret information Johnson could actually supply to Dell that would give the company an edge over its rival.
 
Johnson, who now works as Dell’s senior vice president of corporate strategy, still faces …read more

Although he just left Yahoo Inc. a year ago in the middle of a messy battle between the company and an investor, Jeff Weiner has now signed on to become the new CEO of LinkedIn, a social networking website for professionals. Weiner joined LinkedIn in January as its interim president and has received the support of other LinkedIn executives.
Yahoo and Weiner parted ways when the company decided to get rid of some of its executives due to its proxy war with investor Carl Icahn. Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo last year, but when Yahoo completely refused to entertain the offer, …read more

Citigroup Inc. lost its most senior executive in Asia to MasterCard Inc. when Ajay Banga, 49, left his executive role at Citigroup to become next in line for the title of CEO of MasterCard. On August 31, MasterCard president and CEO Robert Selander will cede his president title to Banga, who will also serve as the chief operating officer.
 
MasterCard Worldwide debuted in 2006 and has done very well since its launch, with its stock more than quadrupling in value throughout the last three years. Banga leaves behind a troubled Citigroup, which recently took $45 billion from the U.S. government as …read more

I listened to Karl Rove on the radio talking about how John McCain can win in November. He focused on developing the story about John and gave many examples: the McCain’s adoption and raising a foster child, his father and grandfather’s committment to their country through militaty service, and his own story of captivity during war as a character builder.
The point that Rove made was that voters want to know the people they are voting for; once they do, assuming the “story” is a good one, they are more likely to listen to the candidates positions. Note I did not …read more

My post on the PMO relieving pain prompted a response by ActiveEngine about pain being crucial to gain people’s attention. Pain and uncovering it can be a multi-layered process seemingly without end- i.e., dealing with one problem inevitably leads to having to deal with others which can get discouraging. This is probably because the “swamp is being drained”. Read my response below:
Pain is an interesting phenomenon. One of the analogies used for improvement is “draining the swamp”. When you drain the swamp you start seeing a bunch of ugly rocks. In project management this means getting rid of the projects …read more

Following up on Margaret Rouse’s post on my Choosing the Right PMO Vision Series, today we deal with the mythical queue:
Margaret: You really got me thinking. I think what REALLY blew me away was when you said that 74% of all projects fail — and that the number could be even higher for IT projects. I’m interested in any concrete strategies you can offer for avoiding getting small projects lost in what we used to call the mythical queue.
Bob: The PMO or, for smaller firms, some type of project control function, succeeds with excellent business processes for project visibility, strategy …read more

Margaret Rouse blogs at IT Knowledge Exchange on an amazing variety of topics. Read it and be informed! I find some of the most interesting blog commentors are IT people who engage with me about innovative project management processes- clearly they are making an effort to bring IT and the user together. Her post about my Choosing the Right PMO Vision Series led to a very nice conversation, edited for brevity, and repeated here today and tomorrow:
Margaret: The line that stuck in my head from [your] post was: Usually something painful drives the creation, or reevaluation, of a Project Management …read more

A great article in Strategy+Business, “A Blueprint for Strategic Leadership”, concentrates on how to lead innovation. In it the authors emphasize that the best leaders pay a great deal of attention to the design of the elements around them. Seemingly basic, but powerful, things to do are:
1. Articulate purpose,
2. Create effective teams,
3. Prioritize and sequence initiatives, and
4. Redesign the organization to make execution easier.
Apart from revealing the importance of doing the right projects, the article is full of fascinating examples of the deployment of these principles by the best executives; two from the experiences of A.G. Lafley, chief executive of …read more