Michael Chevy CastranovaMichael Chevy Castranova is business editor at The Gazette. He's been instrumental in a number of start-ups of business newspapers and magazines, and is the author of the 2002 book, "A Perfectly Logical Explanation." |
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On Topic: You just can’t trust your memory
Before you read too far into today’s column, you should go to YouTube to watch Daniel Simons’s video. You’ll find it by searching for “selective attention test.” The narrator will instruct you to count how many times players wearing white pass a basketball. Easy peasy. But the trick — and you knew there was one [...]
On Topic: Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” looks at “likable” leaders
It’s not such a surprise that Margaret Thatcher turns up in the chapter on success, likability and women leaders in Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, “Lean In,” is it? During her tenure as Great Britain’s so-far only female prime minister, Thatcher, who died April 8, was reviled by detractors — and she had an abundance of [...]
On Topic: Gender roles, Martha Stewart and Gloria Steinem
The photo is a surprise. The black-and-white print itself, part of a collection of photos my mother has begun sorting, is still in pristine condition despite its age, and it shows my maternal grandmother standing up behind the wheel of an industrial-strength tractor. She’s smiling broadly, for all the world like Gene Autry astride his [...]
On Topic: Second Acts for Jeffrey Skilling and J.R. Ewing
Even if you don’t love it when art and life conspire to mirror each other — sometimes in a rather scary, mocking way they have when they get together, like a pair of old college drinking buddies — you’ve at least got to give them their due, and nod. That was the case in April [...]
On Topic: Mr. Selfridge, the showman who remade retail
It isn’t simple happenstance that the theme music for “Mr. Selfridge,” the eight-part drama running on Iowa Public Television’s “Masterpiece Classic,” sounds for all the world like a big, bold Broadway musical. The music, as with the man upon whom the more-or-less true-to-life tale is based, is intentionally showy and brash. Every day is opening [...]
On Topic: Whole Foods CEO says the right decision isn’t always easy
Back when I worked in Chicago, I rented the first floor of a house in Oak Park, about eight miles west and an elastic 30 minutes to an hour by persnickety railroad to the nation’s third-biggest city. In the short walk between my house and the train station was what could be a golden triangle [...]
Leading the Way: Organizational change can be managed
Change is inevitable, suffering is optional. Organizational change is often an overwhelming challenge for business leaders. The need for change — or changes — may be the result of market shifts, economic environment, technology advancements or changing work force skill-set demands. But what does a leader do when all of this happens within a brief [...]
On Topic: Why what happens over there is important over here
Warren Buffett, the business oracle of the 20th century and, so far, of the 21st, more than once has professed a love of newspapers. And, as his company, Berkshire Hathaway, continues to pocket a clutch of publications here and there around the country, he has remarked that newspapers should stick to what they — theoretically [...]
On Topic: Brain mapping, marketing and The Walking Dead
I admit I’ve arrived late to the zombie party. “The Walking Dead,” a television series on AMC that’s based on a graphic novel (“adult” comic books with nicer binding), features new episodes on Sundays, repeats on other days, and older showings in black-and-white later in the week. (The season finale is Sunday evening.) And right [...]
On Topic: What have we learned from big banks?
Let the record show that more fun-loving rascals from JPMorgan Chase were back, a little more than a week ago, trying to look all chastened and grown-up, in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Douglas Braunstein, Chase’s ex-chief financial officer, and Ina Drew, former chief investment officer for the mega bank’s trading [...]
