Culture
In a thought-provoking op-ed, Ross Douthat tells a very summarized history of Jon Corzine (of MF Global infamy). He notes that America has been fertile ground for a kind of “reckless meritocracy” where brilliant, ambitious people who work very hard actually get to very high places – which is great – and then proceed to do themselves, their companies and society in general great harm by failing spectacularly. Mr. Douthat says this happens or has been happening “mostly by (this elite) being too smart for its own good”. We were ready to disagree with him until we got to the last two paragraphs – the text is actually great.
Huge, sprawling article on Business Insider about Groupon since the early beginnings. It’s telling when an article about the big article is 3 pages long. Normally we would recommend reading the summary for conciseness – and because the day only has 24h – but the big article is a keeper. They got almost all of it right, except for the culture change part. It is more important, and far more disruptive, than they make it seem.
According to the news, this is the line MF Global insiders used when questioned why they went along with Jon Corzine’s trades: “He was from Goldman Sachs”. Thus Mr. Corzine guided MF Global to a very public, very messy bankruptcy – and hundreds of millions of dollars of client money are missing. We wrote just days ago, regarding the “key people” aspect of a company: “Ultimately, it’s all about the key people (…) – it’s vital to understand their real motivations, aspirations, personalities and incentive/moral systems. Not what they say it is, what it really is.” Finding out about a given company’s true culture is just as difficult and time consuming, and as we can see in this example, just as important.
A bit off-topic, but very much worth the time – especially collectively. We post two articles that highlight how hard it is to define an “Asian Culture” and the forces starting to change the very idea that there is such a thing, both from within and from other cultures “looking in”.
The WSJ had an interview in late June with Carlos Brito about his plans for Anheuser-Busch Inbev. The video inside is focused on the corporate culture aspect, and it’s always refreshing to watch. That said, we wonder if the video registers for foreign investors as much as it registers for investors who have been exposed for so many years to the effects that Brahma’s/ AmBev’s/ InBev’s and now ABI’s culture really has over time.
