The Great Debate UK

Potential own goal with congested mobile network traffic

-Steve Nicholson is CEO at The Cloud. The opinions expressed are his own.-

There we were, transfixed as a nation hoping to see England beat Germany to progress in the World Cup – we watched the match from our homes, maybe the office, or in my case at the pub.

Over the course of the World Cup more and more of us have been able to snatch a glance of the matches whilst out and about – on our mobile phones, iPods or maybe even iPads for those lucky few..

Oh how the world is changing – we used to dream of using our mobiles to watch TV and here we are thanks to Sky, the BBC and ITV, with their iPlayers, able to do so.  However, just as the moment arises, the mobile networks don’t have the capacity to enable this to happen.

I remember vividly back in the early 90’s shouting from the roof tops about how 3G would transform the way we use mobile technology, how our mobiles would switch the lights on and off, set the central heating, the alarm and even park the car – ok, that bit’s not true!

So here we are nearly two decades on, the third generation of mobile telephone networks has arrived (3G) and its already choked to capacity before we even start.

Steve Tappin on what makes a CEO tick

Being a CEO should be one of the best jobs in the world, argue the authors of a new book.

“It offers the chance to make a real difference,” Steve Tappin and Andrew Cave write in The New Secrets of CEOs: 200 Global Chief Executives on Leading.

“However, real life for most CEOs is tough and many are not enjoying it.”

The authors interviewed 200 CEOs for the book, which includes profiles of such leaders as Tesco’s Terry Leahy , Avon’s Andrea Jung, Xstrata’s Mick Davis, Kraft’s Irene Rosenfeld, Haier’s Zhang Ruimin and Cisco’s John Chambers.

CEOs are divided into five “distinct categories” characterised by similar leadership styles.

In the following video interview, Tappin, who heads up the CEO counselling firm Xinfu, discusses some major issues confronting top leaders at global firms since the financial crisis of 2007-2009, and shares his views with Reuters on how BP’s Tony Hayward should manage the the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis.

from The Great Debate:

Are a CEO’s health problems a private matter?

-- Dana Radcliffe is a Day Family senior lecturer of business ethics at the Johnson School at Cornell University. The views expressed are his own. --

Are a CEO’s health problems a private matter? Or does he or she have an obligation to disclose them to investors and other stakeholders?

These are questions Apple and its iconic co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs have had to face ever since he was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003.  Happily, the disease proved to be treatable with surgery, which Jobs underwent in 2004.  But shareholders didn’t learn that Apple’s chief had been ill until he sent out an email to employees, announcing that he had had cancer but was now “cured.”

The issue of what, if anything, the company should disclose about its CEO’s health concerns resurfaced last summer, when Jobs spoke at Apple’s annual developers conference.  There he appeared, as the New York Times put it, “unusually thin and haggard.”  Reacting to the inevitable rumors that Jobs was ill again, the firm’s public relations department reported that he was suffering from “a common bug.”

A PRIVATE MATTER

However, according to the Times’ John Markoff, Jobs told some associates that he was experiencing “nutritional problems.”  Moreover, people close to Jobs told Markoff that in early 2008 he had a surgical procedure to treat a problem related to his weight loss.  Yet, in July, in a conference call after the release of Apple’s quarterly earnings statement, a senior officer deflected an analyst’s question about Jobs’s health, calling it “a private matter.”

Not surprisingly, investor uncertainty about whether Jobs would be able to continue as CEO was reflected in sharp fluctuations in the price of Apple’s stock.  In December, the worries intensified when the company said that Jobs would not give his much-anticipated annual keynote address at Apple’s Macworld conference.  At first, the reason offered by a spokesman was that the firm would not take part in the event after 2009.  That “explanation” only fueled the rumors.