Words .....that work

I have a guest from across that pond:  Mark Rogers, Founder/CEO of BoardProspects.com - a space you will want to watch closely in coming weeks.

Here's Mark, complete and unedited:

Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE:CHK), appeared before its shareholders at its annual meeting this past week as a reincarnation of itself. After a year of responding to the fallout from the scandal involving unreported loans to former CEO and Chairman Aubrey McCl...

It is all now getting personal.

Some progress is being made in making it more difficult to absolve oneself of personal responsibility while doing an 'office job.' And it's about time - because you're expected to be personally responsible when you do other jobs, from driving a school bus (carefully and responsibly), to selling vegetables (fresh, clean, priced right), to working on a building site (so much room for disaster).

You are expected to be persona...

Gerhard Roggemann has a lot of experience of boardrooms - in the UK and Europe.

If you click on the link above you will find his Bloomberg Business Profile. It also helpfully tells you "This person is connected to 89 board members in 7 different organizations across 15 diff...

I have been thinking about the disconnect between the 'tone from the top' advice we keep hearing in the UK about boardrooms, the very 'top' of our companies - and the message being given (or not) by government at the top when it comes to the way its own business is conducted.

By that I mean the way women in politics - or those who aspire to it -

I was dumbstruck by the FT story two days ago that the UK government is considering 'relaxing' the Bribery Act legislation which took long enough to get approved in the first place. If you don't have access to FT.com it quoted the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the UK's top business lobbying organisation, as supportive of...

Too much to say and not enough time. That's good, I think - it means there are more things that I care about than the time at my disposal. A productive mix. 

First - next week the British Group Inter-Parliamentary Union (BGIPU) has kindly asked me to be part of a panel debate on violence v women in Politics (from a media perspective). The timing could not be better. Three women took on Facebook last week on misogyn...

There might be a problem with frozen middle management in business.

I say 'might' because I have done no studies, but I read (and think)  a lot - and there are some interesting things to consider. I am focusing on UK, but I know the readers of this blog are global - and it might resonate. Please share if it does.

Today there is a huge emphasis on recruitment at graduate level - and given the economic climate, plcs can take their pick. Some of the most-...

The most interesting thing about the not-about-to-go-away row about plcs paying their corporate taxes isn't really about tax at all. It's about trust and reputation.

That became clear in the UK as we shifted through the companies in the spotlight on our front pages; Starbucks, Amazon, Google....and Apple. The first three were somehow big anonymous companies, even for the coffee aficionados out there - but Apple- well, Apple felt different.

It sudden...

Fighting for good corporate governance is hard enough without the use of words for obfuscation. At the very least, we should be clear about what we want to achieve in appointments to the boardroom. Sometimes - in the UK at least, we are very good at using words that confuse, rather than elucidate. 'City grandee' has become just such an epithet.

On May 16, the FT Lex column headline said:

Thinking ahead clearly isn't a strong point of UK plc.

I say this as we are still talking, two years on, about the serious under-representation of women in business. It has taken us two years in the UK to work out that - oops, there's a problem with the pipeline - and it needs multiple measures to fix it.

I wonder how long it will take before tax breaks are considered in any serious capacity. How about one for maternity ? That would both send a strong mess...