• Home
    • CEO Briefing Newsletter


Sort by: Article Title Contributor Topic Date

IT Is too Important to Leave to the Technologists

It’s no secret that information technology is core to modern business. To make the most of IT investments and innovations, chief executives must understand how technologies enable their company’s competitive advantage. Yet how many of today’s CIOs are considered the leading candidates to succeed their CEOs? Precious few—a weakness that CEOs and their boards should consider changing.

Alan Kisling CEO Briefing Newsletter May 22 2013

Learn (Don’t Just Manage): Three Critical Steps to Help Navigate Through Perilous Moments

Nearly a quarter century has passed since Stephen Covey, who sold 20 million books and authored Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, cautioned against allowing the urgent to crowd out the important. He reminded leaders of the tremendous pull of the urgent demands of today and advised being more mindful of addressing the complex challenges of tomorrow. Covey’s wisdom and insight remain timeless, but the demands of our volatile and uncertain world have exposed an even greater vulnerability. CEOs should note three critical steps: getting unstuck; building new capabilities and routines; and sustaining the changes.

 Kerry Bunker, Art Gechman, and Jim Rush CEO Briefing Newsletter May 9 2013

Leaving a Legacy: Embedding Success—and Succession—In Your Organization

How difficult is it for a company to remain on the Fortune 500 list? Jim Collins, of Built to Last fame, wrote in 2008 that since the list’s inception, nearly 2,000 companies have appeared on it—and only 71 companies from the original 1955 list were still running strong. The Kauffman Foundation, in a recent report, noted that after seeing relatively low turnover in the 1960s and 70s, Fortune 500 turnover accelerated to new highs in the 80s and 90s. And Peter Senge of MIT’s Sloan School of Management writes that the average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company is only about 30 years. With such an uneven record, any successful CEO preparing to depart from his or her company should rightly be concerned about the legacy he or she is leaving behind—but that legacy is about far more than the CEO.

 Randy Ottinger CEO Briefing Newsletter May 2 2013

Four Fundamentals of Revenue Growth

With recovery from the recession still moving at a snail’s pace, how worried should you be about your company’s future revenue growth? In a word: very. “But wait,” you might say. “Corporate profits are at their highest levels in 60 years, with profitability as a percentage of GDP at an all-time high of 10.3 percent. Companies are holding trillions in cash reserves, and are looking stronger than ever after squeezing every dollar of cost they could find out of their operations over the past four years.” This is correct, but it fails to tell the whole story.

Laurie Brunner CEO Briefing Newsletter May 2 2013

How to Grow your Company

These five rules will help bulletproof your growth strategy.

 Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell CEO Briefing Newsletter , Leadership & Strategy May 21 2013

The Four Best (and Worst) Uses of Market Research

In an informal poll of top executives the single biggest obstacle to successful innovation was, “actionable insights.” Yet every year companies spend billions of dollars in search of “actionable insights” only to come up empty-handed. To add insult to injury, in many categories, breakthrough innovations are launched by unproven upstarts, begging the question: How is it that small teams with modest resources and limited industry experience are repeatedly able to win the innovation contest?

 Taddy Hall CEO Briefing Newsletter April 9 2013

Go Ahead… Drive Your Company Out of Business

Frustrated by their inability to get things done, many executives want to know how to overcome internal resistance and promote a culture of empowered, transformative thinkers. How about creating a new company within the old? It’s a radical concept called NewCo.

Brian Klapper CEO Briefing Newsletter April 3 2013

Six Lessons in How to Turn Crisis into Opportunity with Superior Customer Experience

Can you believe it? Carnival Cruise Lines suffered yet another incident on March 14, shining a spotlight on the importance of customer experience once again. No company can long survive such a bruising experience. There are lessons for SMEs to ensure customer loyalty.

 Brad Smith CEO Briefing Newsletter March 21 2013

Focus Your Company Goals by Zooming Out

Sometimes leaders can get overly and narrowly focused on an issue or a challenge in ways that can prevent them from seeing the bigger picture.

 Francesca Gino CEO Briefing Newsletter , Leadership & Strategy March 11 2013

Top 5 Eco-friendly Cars

Looking to drive—literally—energy efficiency? Check out these lean, green machines.

 William J. Holstein and Bill Visnic Cars , CEO Briefing Newsletter , CEO Life March 18 2013

Free Newsletters

Sign up now to receive our free e-newsletters. You can choose to receive our weekly CEO Briefing updates, monthly Entrepreneurial CEO newsletter, and exclusive CEO surveys.