Monday, August 27, 2012

Neil Armstrong on what constitutes a good work ethic.

Here.  And my favorite quote in this Wall Street Journal piece?
I can only attribute that to the fact that every guy in the project, every guy at the bench building something, every assembler, every inspector, every guy that's setting up the tests, cranking the torque wrench, and so on, is saying, man or woman, "If anything goes wrong here, it's not going to be my fault, because my part is going to be better than I have to make it." And when you have hundreds of thousands of people all doing their job a little better than they have to, you get an improvement in performance.
R.I.P., Neil Armstrong

Friday, August 10, 2012

Frank Partnoy on the lawyers involved in the Standard Chartered scandal.

HereHe said it perfectly.  My favorite part of his Financial Times piece?
We know bankers can be ruthless when pursuing profits. But bank lawyers are not supposed to think like bankers. Decades ago, the general counsel of a bank thought more about ethics than efficiency. But today’s in-house counsel are often profit centres, fonts of wisdom on how to avoid accounting rules, cut taxes and maintain the secrecy of dubious practices. One reason for the recent wave of abuses at big banks is that their in-house lawyers have been more focused on speed and profit than on right and wrong.
And that's why it's important to focus on more than the bottom line.