Carol Hymowitz wrote a piece in today's Wall Street Journal reviewing CEO reading lists.
Leaving aside her assessment of the new trend in these reading lists, away from celebrity authors and CEOs, and back to basic business operations, I did observe one oddity.
Hymowitz, whose work I generally like, spotlighted Diebold CEO Tom Swidarski. He allegedly returns frequently to his dog-eared copy of Jim Collins' "Good to Great."
Maybe Tom should toss the book and try another author, because, juding by Diebold's performance over the past five years, and longer, whatever he's doing isn't working.
According to the Yahoo-sourced charts above, for both five years and going back nearly twenty years, Diebold has failed to outperform the S&P500. I suppose with dividends, Diebold may have eked out a slight edge. However, it's recent performance has clearly been inconsistently mediocre.
Leaving aside her assessment of the new trend in these reading lists, away from celebrity authors and CEOs, and back to basic business operations, I did observe one oddity.
Hymowitz, whose work I generally like, spotlighted Diebold CEO Tom Swidarski. He allegedly returns frequently to his dog-eared copy of Jim Collins' "Good to Great."Maybe Tom should toss the book and try another author, because, juding by Diebold's performance over the past five years, and longer, whatever he's doing isn't working.
According to the Yahoo-sourced charts above, for both five years and going back nearly twenty years, Diebold has failed to outperform the S&P500. I suppose with dividends, Diebold may have eked out a slight edge. However, it's recent performance has clearly been inconsistently mediocre.
If Swidarski is using Collins' ideas, this doesn't speak well for them. As I noted in this post, Collins' work has some very serious problems. It does not seem to translate well to a multi-period, total return-oriented world.
I wonder if Diebold's performance is indicative of what happens when CEOs try to apply Collins' insights and 'findings' in a real company, ex ante?
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