The Wall Street Journal recently devoted an entire section, called C-Suite Strategies, to what leaders of corporations were thinking.
Frankly, it was a little underwhelming.
I expected to see great thoughts on gaining market share, pricing philosophy or people strategy and other worthy topics that bedevil CEOs, but that wasn’t present.
Instead, we get Joe Ripp, CEO of Time Magazine saying that People magazine allowed competitors to get a digital foothold, meaning somebody screwed up. No mention of what he’s going to do to fix it.
Or we have Susan Cameron CEO of Reynolds American saying a decade from now, people could be ‘vaping’ or smoking e-cigarettes. News flash Susan: they already are. What’s your plan beyond ecigs?
One we have someone named Melissa Ben-Ishay talking about how she apparently turned down venture capital to keep her bakery ‘true to itself’. Maybe the wrong v.c.’s were talking to her, maybe she’s afraid of growth. Either way, it looks odd. Why not have a smaller part of something much larger.
So, at least WSJ is covering some business strategy; the bad news is that they’re not probing very deeply, and the CEOs come off as looking rather shallow.
And, they missed a few topics: customer service is a major omission. How are they using social media, if they are?
Time for a follow-on article, guys. Let’s get a more positive outlook on things, not just how we screwed up.