https://www.economist.com/news/business/21735594-if-they-are-save-firm-general-electrics-bosses-and-board-need-far-better-information-ges
3 replies (most recent on top)
The Economist magazine turned into a liberal rag written by college kid interns years ago. No better than Newsweek was...is? Nobody cares. 160 year history of the 'newspaper' may not be much longer without objectivity.
I thought the article was too general but at the end this nail was hit on the head,
"Today, after much toil, the people running these firms know whether, say, loans in California or trading in India make sense.
This does not happen naturally. If neglected, financial reporting becomes a hostage to internal politics, with different constituencies claiming they bring in sales, while arguing that costs and capital are someone else’s problem. Mr Flannery is a numbers guy who wants to slim GE to its profitable essence. But he is trapped in a financial construct that makes it hard to pursue that mission intelligently. Until he re-engineers how GE measures itself, he will be stumbling about in the murk."
GE has no way to asses itself after a decade of small lies.
And given that we have no real analytics capability to speak of (other than in our marketing materials, of course), the problem of lacking reliable information and analysis will not be fixed soon. Flannery's slides from November called out that the healthcare IT analytics team can't even figure out how to generate revenue. Brilliant!!