How CEO's Spend Their Time

Ever wonder how the boss spends his or her time (in truth, you probably don’t care). But some people do….

In a brand new study, Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria (who work at a tiny place called the Harvard Business School) studied the calendars of 27 CEOs over a three month period.

And here's what they found:

You didn't think we'd just tell you, did you? Nope—, here's a quiz to see how well you know how a CEO spends her time (answers at the bottom of the story).

1) How many hours a week do CEOs work, on average?

62.5

75

80.5

90

2) How many hours a night do CEOs sleep, on average?

4.6

5.9

6.9

8.1

3) CEOs spend nearly three quarters of their time at company HQ: True or False?

4) Fill in the blank: On average, CEOs spend 72% of their total work time ________.

- writing/replying to emails

- in meetings

- playing Farmerama

Answers: 1) 62.5 hours,  2) 6.9 hours  3) False (47%)  4) in meetings

POP QUIZ: Can you identify this building?

Michigan Central Station in Detroit.

It's been abandoned since 1988, but today, we get a glimpse of its bright future:

Ford Motor Corporation bought the building in May, and it's announcing its ambitious plans in a celebration this morning.

The company, which also bought up nearby properties, will eventually occupy 1.2 million sq ft in the station's neighborhood (called Corktown). The Corktown campus will be "an innovation hub for Ford's vision for the future of transportation."

Michigan Central Station is more than a building—it's a symbol of Detroit's rise and fall...and current renaissance. For Ford to come in and open it again is a really exciting moment for the city.

“I’LL TAKE THREE TO FIVE FOR FIFTY DOLLARS” - A seven-time “Jeopardy!” winner who taught history at a small Michigan college faces up to five years in prison for sneaking into the email accounts of other professors, administrators and students.

Stephanie Jass, who taught at Adrian College in southern Michigan, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Lenawee Circuit Court to a charge of unauthorized computer access. Her sentencing is scheduled for July 20.

Authorities said Jass logged into other people’s email accounts without permission over a four-day period last year after the college reset everyone’s passwords and assigned everyone the same temporary password. Another professor learned what Jass had done and told school officials.

State police wrote in a report that the professor told a detective that Jass had a document that listed “notes and comments and problems” of faculty members, according to the Jackson Citizen Patriot.

The 48-year-old Jass, of Tecumseh, was later fired.

“Privacy rights are a fundamental principle of our American democracy and Adrian College stands with those who protect these rights,” the school said after Wednesday’s plea.

Jass’ seven-episode “Jeopardy!” winning streak in 2012 was a record at the time for a female contestant. It was later broken.

Defense attorney Raymond Correll said in court Wednesday that he intends to seek a delayed sentence which would push back Jass’ sentencing to see how she follows bond conditions set by a judge, according to the Daily Telegram of Adrian. Good luck with that.

HAPPY HALF YEAR: Congress officially sent the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to Trump's desk six months ago today — and you can probably expect both commemorations and denunciations of that fact throughout this week.

As we've noted here before, it's going to take quite awhile to make a full accounting of the tax law. (And even then, we'll bet that the two parties might still find stark differences of opinion about just how much of a success the TCJA has been.)

POLITICS 101 - Days until the 2018 election: 139.

Upcoming election dates — June 26: Colorado, Maryland, New York (congressional), Oklahoma and Utah primaries and Mississippi and South Carolina primary runoffs.

"How California's Primary became a giant scam.''  The California governor's race was once ballyhooed as a proving ground for Democratic Party ideas in the Trump era, a blockbuster contest in which Democrats would not only pick the chief executive of the nation's most populous state, but begin to shape the party's agenda heading into the 2020 presidential primary.

-- Instead, it has devolved into a king-size flop. One day of the primary election here, the leading candidates sit largely indistinguishable on issues of substance, with little evidence of any intra-party, values-laden clash.

-- Rather, election day will culminated a contest that has morphed into a bizarre exercise in gaming California's unusual, top-two primary system. Confronted with a primary in which the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation, supporters of the leading Democrats in the race, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, focused their attention on elevating one of two lesser-known Republican candidates in an effort to manipulate the election's outcome.

-- In a state where Republican registration has cratered — it now hovers at about 25 percent statewide — Newsom has a far greater chance of defeating the leading Republican, John Cox, than Villaraigosa. So the lieutenant governor has aired advertisements highlighting Cox's conservative credentials for Republican voters to bolster his chances of finishing second.

-- "Nobody even cares who wins," said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic strategist in Sacramento. "It's about who comes in second.

CANDIDATE	PARTY	VOTE	PCT.
Gavin Newsom	Democrat	1,613,120	33.8%
John Cox	Republican	1,249,248	26.2
Antonio Villaraigosa	Democrat	631,033	13.2
Others		1,280,449	26.8

4,773,850 votes, 100% reporting (21,486 of 21,486 precincts)

Percent voter turnout = 35.1%

DOW DROPOUT - General Electric will drop out of the Dow industrials next week, a milestone in the decline of a company that once ranked among the mightiest of blue chips and was a pillar of the U.S. economy. It will be replaced by drugstore retailer Walgreens Boots Alliance, the latest sign of the rise of the global consumer economy and the post crisis boom in debt issuance that has fueled a global deal-making frenzy. The decision to drop GE, an original member of the Dow that has been a part of the 30-stock index continuously since 1907, marks the latest setback for a conglomerate that once was the most valuable U.S. company, but has been hit hard in recent years by the unraveling of its finance business and competitive problems. GE shares have tumbled 55% over the past 52 weeks, erasing more than $100 billion in wealth.

TWITTER JOINING S&P 500 — Twitter has made it into the S&P 500. S&P Dow Jones Indices said Monday that the social media company will replace Monsanto on its index of top US public companies. The company's stock jumped more than 3 percent after hours following the news. Last week, the Justice Department approved the sale of Monsanto to Germany's Bayer, so long as the merged agrochemical company divests approximately $9 billion in businesses and assets. Bayer said Monday that the deal was worth $63 billion.

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Danny Aiello (85) Brooklyn, N.Y.; Jody Bomba …happiness and health in retirement;  Sir Paul McCartney (76) London, England; Kathleen Turner (64) Hilton Head, S.C.; Brian Wilson (76) Laguna Beach, CA.

CALIFORNIA TROUBLES? - On the surface, four-term Gov. Jerry Brown, 80, seems to have fixed the state: a $6 billion budget surplus, 3 million new jobs, and real action against climate change. But dig deeper and problems abound: The highest income tax rates in the country. ... A system so dependent on capital gains that when the inevitable next recession hits, we’ll plunge into fiscal catastrophe. ... If the nation catches a cold, California’s budget gets typhoid fever. ... A nearly $1 trillion gap between the retirement promises politicians made to public workers and the funding available to cover them.

The biggest problem of all is an affordability crisis that drives people out. Despite the good times, more people are leaving than moving in.

McKinsey recently ranked California as having the worst quality of life in America.

$600K – For the first time on record the average selling price of a home in California (state wide) is now $600,860. Good Lord, I have to get out of here….

State/Region/County	May-18	Apr-18		May-17		Price MTM% Chg	Price YTY% Chg	Sales MTM% Chg	Sales YTY% Chg
CA SFH (SAAR)	$600,860	$584,460		$550,230		2.8%	9.2%	-1.8%	-4.6%
CA Condo/Townhomes	$474,400	$476,010		$440,940		-0.3%	7.6%	8.5%	-2.0%
Los Angeles Metropolitan Area	$530,000	$515,000		$485,000		2.9%	9.3%	12.6%	-5.6%
Inland Empire	$360,000	$360,000		$340,000		0.0%	5.9%	7.6%	-5.0%
S.F. Bay Area	$1,088,000	$1,025,890		$935,000		6.1%	16.4%	17.3%	2.1%

COLLEGE CHRONICLES - Catholic University's Board of Trustees approved a plan to trim faculty by 9 percent, and potentially lay off full-time professors.

WHEN ADJUNCTS UNIONIZE - What happens after adjunct faculty members form unions? In The Chronicle Review two professors at Notre Dame de Namur University, in California, examine 35 collective-bargaining agreements around the country to see what the adjuncts gained. The results range from major achievements, such as pegging adjuncts' pay to 80 percent of tenure-track professors' salaries on one campus, to smaller things, such as greater access to office space and reimbursement for classroom expenses. But collective bargaining made little progress for adjuncts in three areas: true pay parity with colleagues on the tenure track, inclusion in shared governance, and stemming the overreliance on part-time, contingent faculty members.

SUMMER TRAVEL - Fueling Prices:  Jet-fuel prices have surged more than 50% over the past year, pushing carriers to raise fares and Delta Air Lines to cut its profit expectations. The nation’s No. 2 carrier said it could take six to 12 months to recoup the extra fuel costs via pricier tickets. Fuel is again the single-largest expense for most airlines, accounting for about a quarter of operating costs. The recent run-up in prices echoes the 2009-11 jump, which first spawned stand-alone surcharges on many international flights. Investors are edgy about the impact of fuel prices on airline profits. Airline shares were mixed last week, with those of Delta, which bought an oil refinery in 2012 to minimize volatility in fuel costs, down 1.5%.

TEMPERATURE - Every area of the globe has warmed since instrument records began in 1880, NASA data shows.

The planet isn't warming equally, however — the fastest temperature increases are taking place at the poles. That Arctic, for example, is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe, melting sea ice, glaciers and permafrost.

Due largely to human emissions of greenhouse gases, there is virtually no such thing as a cooler-than-average year on Earth anymore. (The last cooler-than-average month was 30 years ago, in December 1984).

PERSONAL FINANCE  -  Rule of 72—Ditch the TI-89 (calculator) and use this simple method to calculate how long it'll take your investment to double. How? Just divide 72 by the fixed annual return and you'll get a rough estimate of how many years it'll take to 2x.

Ex: With a 6% return, your money will double in...(72/6)=~12 years.

MARKET WEEK – Raking in $180 million at the domestic box office, Incredibles 2 set a record for the highest grossing opening weekend for an animated movie. What'd it pass? Finding Dory, which topped $135 million in 2016.

Brushing off its recent flop—Solo: A Star Wars Story—Disney has built up a cinema power house.

It's got brands: Lucasfilm (Star Wars), Marvel, Pixar, Disney.

It's got money: Nine of the top 10 highest grossing domestic box office weekends belong to Disney.

It's just getting started.

Disney agreed to a $52 billion (all stock) deal for a chunk of Fox's media assets. If it goes through—Comcast laid down a competing $65 billion (all cash) offer last week—Marvel would finally meet Fox's X-Men. Then consider the potential for live-action Disney remakes.

The bull market is facing its next test. U.S. corporate earnings growth looks poised to slow from a blistering pace, posing a new challenge to a long bull market that is already contending with an uncertain global economic outlook.

SWAMI’S WEEK TOP PICKS –

MLB Game of the Week – Saturday June 23; Seattle Mariners (46-27) vs. Boston Red Sox (49-25). Two playoff bound American League teams collide in Fenway, Red Sox win 6 – 3.

World Cup Soccer (Football)  – Group Winners: A - Uruguay | B - Spain | C - France | D - Croatia | E - Brazil | F - Germany | G - Belgium | H - Colombia

Group Runners-Up: A - Egypt | B - Portugal | C - Peru | D - Argentina | E - Costa Rica | F - Mexico | G - England | H – Senegal

Belgium to win over Spain in the Final on July 15 in Moscow.

Season to Date (17 - 11)

DRIVING THE WEEK – House will continue its immigration fight against the backdrop of rising outrage over family separations at the border with the administration taking a myriad of positions on the issue (Trump says separations are not White House policy while Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior advisor Stephen Miller say they very much are). This one is going to come to a head because the creation of new detention camps and images of children being ripped from their parents and held in cages is not a tenable situation for anyone ...

President Trump on Monday meets on immigration issues with Sens. Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)... Trump on Tuesday delivers remarks at the National Federation of Independent Businesses' 75th anniversary celebration and attends a House GOP conference meeting on immigration ... He holds a MAGA rally on Wednesday in Duluth, Minn. ...

Senate Finance this week marks up the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act ... SIFMA/Clearing House prudential regulation conference on Tuesday at 7:45 a.m. features remarks from Senate Banking Chair Mike Crapo, OCC's John Otting and FDIC's Jelena McWilliams, among others.

Next Blog: Summer Reading and lollygag.

Until next time, Adios

Claremont, California

June 20, 2018

#VIII-30-372

CARTOON OF THE WEEK – The New Yorker, Mike Twohy

RINK RATS POLL –

What is Transformational Leadership?

____ Working to change the system.

____ Minimize variation of the organization.

____ Bringing in the right-handed relief pitcher in the ninth inning.

____ Solving challenges by finding experiences that show old patterns do not fit or work.

____ All of the above.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH – " It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do, we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." – Steve Jobs

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