Every day I talk to myself. Some days it’s a happy soliloquy of self congratulations for a task accomplished or a relationship strengthened. Other days it’s just wallowing in failure, doubting my talent, feeling old and decrepit. The monologue in my brain is ever shifting, which is a good thing for somebody whose body chemistry is a bit screwed up. In a few days I “get to” have brain surgery. Yes, I “get to” because I need it quite badly and there is a very good chance it will make my life a lot better on the other side. I…
Author: Lloyd Graff
General Motors is doing more than just making a $500 million investment in Lyft, the ride sharing competitor of Uber. It also appears to me that GM is doing more than just hedging their bets about the future of car ownership and usage. The company has named its new venture “maven,” which I find both interesting and ironic. “Maven” comes from Yiddish. It means a person who really knows his stuff by accumulating a vast amount of information in a given area. For instance, someone who really knows shoes, boots and sandals could be called a “footwear maven.” By hiring…
Recently I read The 50th Law, the biography of the famous rapper, 50 Cent, written by Robert Green and Curtis Jackson (also known as 50 Cent). On April 24, 2000, right before 50 Cent was supposed to release his debut album and finally make it in the music industry, he was shot nine times by a gangster with a grudge against him. His music label immediately canceled the record release because they were afraid of the negative press. Making matters worse, his vocal chords were damaged by one of the bullets, altering his voice. But 50 Cent refused to give…
I was surprised by some of the outraged comments on my blog about the sale of Doosan to a private equity firm and changes in the machinery market which have affected the company. I wrote stuff that was available on the street for the people in the machine tool industry. There was some inside info I gleaned from reliable sources which gave the piece a newsy flavor. I’m happy I wrote an article that was not all common knowledge. My blog also will never be a vehicle for public relations releases. Today’s Machining World has a space for official company…
Hiring good people for your business or organization is one of the most difficult tasks in management. I think a lot of the problem stems from not really knowing what we are looking for and the job candidate not knowing how to explain what he or she is providing. I recently read a brief blog by Seth Godin, one of the most insightful practical philosophers of our day. He made the argument that we should hire for “resilience.” How easily do you bounce back from a disappointment? He calls it a skill, one that is more valuable than most. I’m…
Doosan is a mess. The signs of Doosan’s current struggle are striking, even to a machinery dealer far from its Korean home. Beautiful 3 to 4-year-old machines are being auctioned off in Texas, Singapore and China with more to come. The word came down days ago that Doosan Machine Tools is being sold to private equity firm, Standard Chartered of England, which has a strong recent history of doing deals with the Doosan Group. The deal is for $1.2 billion, well under the $1.7 billion asking price. The machine tool division is one of the gems of the Doosan Group…
American football has had a fascinating evolution over its century-plus existence. The Real All Americans, by Sally Jenkins, illuminates the story of the game through the lens of Carlisle College, the school founded by Richard Henry Pratt in 1879 to assimilate American Indians into modern American society. Carlisle will always be associated with football for its legendary star player Jim Thorpe, considered one of the greatest all-around athletes ever, but there is much more to the school’s place in football history than Thorpe. American football was born in the late 1800s. The sport was mainly comprised of competitions between Ivy…
GM is buying a $500 million stake in car sharing service Lyft General Motors is making tons of money in an 18 million car year. The company has $25 billion socked away. And their stock price stinks – straight as a string for years as they coin money. On Monday, they announced they were investing $500 million in the distant #2 ride sharing firm, Lyft. With the funding Lyft has a valuation of less than 10% of the $62 billion of industry leader Uber, but with GM President Dan Ammann joining the board, and the former #3 entrant in the…
This piece is really two articles. The first is the one I ought to write—the politically correct, optimistic, let’s start the New Year off right and knock ‘em dead blog. The second blog is about what I’m really feeling at the moment as I get ready to embark on the year—my concerns about the known and unknown challenges that scare me more than I’d like to admit. The optimistic Lloyd sees a blank slate of opportunity in 2016. Last year is history. The export killing rise of the dollar is mostly behind us, oil has taken its hit and can’t…
Practical financial lessons are rare in school, and lately I’ve been noticing the lack of sophistication and street smarts that my fellow 30-something friends have about money. Many of my friends have given up hope that they can live any other way but in debt and paycheck to paycheck, and have accepted their situation as permanent. They don’t talk about it too much, but I see a heavy cloud hanging over them. These are my peers and my friends – some of America’s struggling and under-employed 33-year-olds, with $34,000 of student loan debt, an annual salary of $24,000, and a…