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MAY 29, 2006
Edited by Deborah Stead Talk Show "You don't have to prove people got together in a smoke-filled room....This isn't Hollywood." -- Kathryn Ruemmler, prosecutor, explaining the case against Enron's Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, as reported in The New York Times 
WORK LIFE What Do Men Want? A Thermostat To build a better work space, consult the worker bees. In a poll conducted by Knoll (KNL ), a furnishings maker, and research firm DYG, 850 workers at companies with 100 or more employees were asked what surroundings made them productive. Some 45% said they work best in private offices. The rest prefer collaborative spaces (16%), their homes (18%), or other sites outside the office (22%). Some 40% of Gen Y workers, aged 18 to 29, said they like open office plans. (Just 18% said they would choose cubicle-like stations with panels for privacy.) "Young people are saying this is how we expect and want to work," says Christine Barber, Knoll's director of work-place research. "That's driving a trend toward more creative, inter-active work environments." Then there's what might be called the thermostat factor. Women listed eight attributes as having a "high impact" on productivity, including privacy, natural light, and the option of personalizing a space. Men named just one: the ability to control the air conditioning or heat. By Elizabeth Woyke   C-SUITE CFOs Sing The SarbOx Blues Sarbanes-Oxley swells the workload of many a chief financial officer. The stacks of documents needing certification, the extra sessions with board members -- they tend to crowd out the strategic (and creative) parts of the job. And now SarbOx may be denying CFOs the corner office as well. A study by executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates shows that last year the share of CFO job turnover due to promotions to CEO sank to just 19% of all CFO churn, down from 30% in 2004 and 27% in 2003. One reason for 2005's lower number: resignations, which accounted for 32% of all CFO turnover. "What we're hearing is: 'I want out,"' says Lorraine Hack, a member of Russell Reynolds' financial officers' practice. And more boards are keeping their financial whizzes in place. "You become more hesitant to move them if you've got a good player," she says. But take heart, CFOs. Hack believes the trap is temporary. As other finance managers gain SarbOx acumen, more will pass board muster, perhaps allowing more CFOs to move up. Besides, a study by executive compensation consultant Steven Hall & Partners shows last year's average total CFO pay up 13%, to $1.75 million annually. By Jena McGregor THE BIG PICTURE 
REALITY TV (Un)Survivor From the movie Network (1976): MAX SCHUMACHER (network executive): "We could make a series of it. Suicide of the Week. Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? Execution of the Week." HOWARD BEALE (anchorman): "Terrorist of the Week." SCHUMACHER: "I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hit men, automobile smash-ups: The Death Hour. A great Sunday night show for the whole family." From a press release announcing A&E's pilot episodes of two reality shows about "the most feared topic of all: the end of a human life" (2006): "A&E is in development with two distinct programs that deal with the overarching themes of death and dying: Last Requests (working title) and Six Months." A&E spokesman DANIEL SILBERMAN: "These shows are still just pilots, but both of them are celebrations [of life]. Neither of them are exploitive. They are very serious programs." Burning Corn At the Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend, pit crews will pump a mix of 10% ethanol and 90% methanol into race cars. And next year, racers plan to use only fuel-grade ethanol. The switch is aimed at "proving a point about performance," says Tom Slunecka, who heads the Ethanol Promotion & Information Council (since 2005 an Indy Racing League sponsor). To wit: If ethanol can juice cars topping 200 mph, it can get the rest of us to the mall. Up to now, Indy 500 cars raced with methanol, as clean-burning as ethanol but with a lower Btu-per-gallon content. So the new mix means more power. Lady and gentlemen, start your corn-fueled engines. By Alex Halperin BLOGSPOTTING Location, Location curbed.com WHY READ IT The gossipy real estate site run by Lockhart Steele (of media blog Gawker.com) follows the market from East Coast to West, and beyond. NOTABLE POST "Look at the above McMansion...in Yep, there is a growing appetite for SoCal-style living within our favorite superpower's borders.... The neighborhoods are 'designed by Southern California architects, with model homes decorated by Los Angeles interior designers....' No word yet on whether the new communities include air pollution, crippling traffic and scary Botoxed housewives." FASHION Down The Postpartum Runway Once, new mothers unable to squeeze into their pre-pregnancy clothes wore sweatpants and oversize shirts. Now, some maternity-wear designers are offering clothes for the just-had-a-baby body. Babystyle.com has launched a Transition Collection. Japanese Weekend Maternity, based in San Francisco, has introduced a small in-between line. And the niche has attracted a real heavyweight: celebrity maternity-wear designer Liz Lange, who dressed Sarah Jessica Parker and Gwyneth Paltrow during their pregnancies. Lange's line, called 4th Trimester, features stretchy, slimming fabrics. The collection has already received a boost from high-profile customers like Tracey Stewart, Jon Stewart's wife, who wore a custom-made 4th Trimester gown to the Oscar ceremonies in March. The postpartum lines, says Wendy Liebmann, a New York retail consultant, address the "sense of desperation" some new mothers feel about their bodies -- the need "to feel pretty again." By Louise Lee WEB WORLD Dearth Of The Salesmen Mammas, let your babies grow up to get Web ad gigs. With the online ad business up 30%, to $12.5 billion last year, a labor crunch is raising salaries and recruitment efforts. Clark Kokich, president of Avenue A/Razorfish (AQNT ) in Seattle, the No. 1 Web ad shop, says pay for some jobs -- such as creating ads or measuring their impact -- has risen as much as 20% from 2005. And openings abound: Boston's Digitas (DTAS ), an online ad shop with a staff of 1,500, advertised to fill nearly 100 positions in April alone. T3, an Austin (Tex.) interactive-ad agency also is struggling to fill openings. "I've kind of gulped at a few salaries, but I'm willing to pay," says President Gay Gaddis, who adds that not long ago a freelancer turned down a creative director job at T3 paying $150,000 to $200,000 a year. One reason for the shortage is that making Web ads can require high-level tech knowhow. Rich-media ads involving flash animation or video, for instance, call for math, programming, and design skills. Gaddis says she stopped by a cubicle recently where two employees were using calculus to program video game ads. "It's hard to do both -- left-brain and right-brain," she notes. Buying online ads and crunching impact-measurement data (a skill in high demand) require sophisticated quantitative approaches as well, one reason Web advertisers and site publishers also are vying for candidates. "There are dollar signs in the sky," says Randy Wagner, marketing chief for Cendant Travel Distribution Services, which owns Orbitz.com, a big Web advertiser. Piper Jaffray (PJC ) media analyst Safa Rashtchy says labor issues are the top barrier to the online ad industry's further growth. Beyond paying higher salaries, agencies are responding by moving some jobs to where the talent is, by dropping some smaller clients, and by amping up training. "If you can find the people," says Kokich of Avenue A/Razorfish, "you can find the revenue." By Timothy J. Mullaney MANAGEMENT Who Moved My Superego? Since this month marks the 150th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's birth, we asked psychologist Gretchen Schmelzer of global consultancy Teleos Leadership Institute to comment on Freud's legacy in organizational psychology. Is there a Freudian component to today's management theories? In leadership consulting, yes, since there's a recognition of the unconscious process. We try to uncover unspoken assumptions about leadership to make the "unconscious conscious." We say "to make the invisible visible," because you can't sound like a therapist. Do you encounter CEOs who fit Freud's personality "types"? Narcissists, say? Of course. Narcissism is not necessarily a hindrance to being a good leader for a while. But business is run today in a more matrixed way, so leaders will need relational skills, like empathy, to succeed in the long run. What about employee-motivation programs? Most tend to be behavioral-cognitive. They would be more effective if the unconscious-process piece were added. If you take a strict behaviorist approach, you don't have the piece that explains why people aren't staying on track. So they're mostly about rewarding certain behaviors? Yes, as if we were all pigeons.
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