"It's about the ability to go on a trip ... and not worry about anything other than your business,'' says Bill Rinehart, CEO and founder of DUFL, a "virtual valet'' that will sort, clean and ship your wardrobe to and from wherever you're traveling for work. The communication of strategy and its execution comes in different shapes and forms: from individual conversations during objective setting over group interactions around the Balanced Scorecard, and from intranet postings to writing a memo regarding a strategy shift.В But they all serve one purpose: to get the strategy into theВ heads, heartsВ andВ handsВ of the people. . Get control of your money with Dave Ramsey's simple budgeting software.
Buy AutoCAD. The Decline and Fall of Fund Managers (Jason Zweig, Wall Street Journal) – As Vanguard approaches $3 trillion of AUM and index and ETF funds continue to gather assets, widely regarded industry guru Charles Ellis is declaring the world of stock-picking as dead and that active management is no longer able to earn its keep. Expanding upon the theme in a recent article for the Financial Analysts Journal, Ellis points out that as fund managers have geared up with sophisticated analytical tools, electronic trading, and instantaneous access to news, the competitive environment for active managers is grinding down the available alpha and leading to "a mutually assured destruction of outperformance" as the market gets more efficient and harder to beat. The trend is arguably exacerbated by the current low-return environment; while typical 2% fund expenses weren't perceived as a big deal in the 1980s and 1990s when equities averaged 18% annual returns, with stocks averaging just 4% annually since 2000, even a 1% fee is a significant chunk of the return. Skeptics do point out that if "too many" rush into passive funds, the markets may become less efficient again and active could see a resurgence. And notably, Zweig concedes that even with their rising popularity, it's still unlikely that all investors will index; some will never stop hoping to find the next Warren Buffett, and some managers will beat the market over time (perhaps by skill though many probably by luck alone) even in the hypercompetitive environment (notwithstanding the fact that few investors have figured out how to pick those managers ahead of time). But Zweig's conclusion is perhaps the most striking – that it may be time to get out of the business of managing investments and into the business of managing investors, where the decline of fund managers may align with the rise of financial planners. The very fact that O'Leary occupies the centre of the conversation reminds me of something the late historian Tony Judt wrote: "We have substituted endless commerce for public purpose and expect no higher aspirations from our leaders." For O'Leary, there is no higher aspiration than wealth. If making money means creating freedom, and politicians are wasting our money, that means they're essentially taking away our freedom. Kevin O'Leary, freedom fighter? How far could the brand be extended? "Look," he says. "I can leave, or I can fix it. I think I can fix it." .