COURSE CONNECTOR

 ARTICLE SUMMARIES AND QUESTIONS

"C-Suite Strategies: The Colvin Interview: Joel Klein," pp. 51-56: Joel Klein may have seemed an unlikely candidate for the job when New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg tapped him to be chancellor of the New York City school system in 2002. After all, his background was in law (in the Justice Department under President Clinton) and business (as CEO of Bertelsmann's U.S. operations). But in a city as large as New York, the chancellorship is as much a chief executive's job as any other. Klein oversees the country's largest public school system, with 1.1 million students in his charge, and wields more power than most others in his position elsewhere, thanks to a landmark 2002 law that was just renewed for another five years. Klein has delivered impressively: test scores have improved, graduation rates have risen, and the racial and ethnic achievement gap has narrowed. Yet perhaps most astoundingly, Klein has made headway in fundamentally reforming the deeply entrenched culture of public education, from a seniority-based, politically driven system to a performance-based, accountability-driven system. While Klein admits there is still plenty of work to do, his efforts to introduce principles of competition essential to business to the education world has yielded real progress. 

This article profiles New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein, whose business smarts and passion for education are helping improve New York’s public school system.

Discussion Questions:

1. According to Joel Klein, in what way is education a "disaggregated service" in the U.S.? How does that threaten U.S. global competitiveness?

2. What unit does Klein believe matters most in determining whether a school will succeed? How has Klein helped to empower principals in New York’s schools during his tenure as chancellor?

3. What is Klein's opinion of teachers unions? Why does he think that unions ultimately will get on board with his accountability-based system?

"It's Clutch Time for Fritz Henderson and GM," pp. 64-72: Humility. It's an unfamiliar emotion at General Motors, the 101-year-old automaker that hovered at the apex of American business for decades. After collapsing into bankruptcy earlier this year following 30 years of stumbling, GM is eating some serious crow. At the head of the table sits Fritz Henderson, a 25-year veteran of the company who took over as CEO in March. What distinguishes Henderson from every former GM chief is that he is the first to get his job from the U.S. government, now the majority owner of GM with a 60.8% ownership stake. He's also leading the company from a decidedly different position than many of his predecessors did — that of underdog. The post-bankruptcy GM is leaner than ever, accounting for less than a fifth of U.S. car sales, and by the end of the year Henderson will have swept out 450 of the company’s 1,300 executives, including a dozen of the highest ranking. Characterized as unusually efficient and decisive, Henderson may prove to be the right leader for a company on the brink. If he can just maintain the humble mind-set that has settled over GM, he'll have a much better chance of succeeding.

Students examine the challenges faced by General Motors and its intrepid CEO, Fritz Henderson, in an uncertain future.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson feel that the company should take more risks? What does he think will encourage speedier operations at GM?

2. How is the GM that Henderson led out of bankruptcy on June 10 different than the GM of the past decade? What factors do you believe will be most critical to GM's long-term success moving forward? Explain.

3. Some business analysts have expressed their concern that Henderson has been immersed in GM culture for too long to make necessary changes at the company. Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

"Motorola Gets in the Game," pp. 82-84: Forty years ago, when Neil Armstrong delivered his famous "giant leap for mankind" line from the surface of the moon, the words carried back to Earth on a Motorola radio. The former undisputed king of all things wireless, Motorola's star has fallen since then. The company ceded its standing as the No. 1 provider of wireless phones to Nokia in 1998, and while it scored big in 2004 with the ultra-thin Razr, it has failed to produce another hit since. Further, Motorola's handset sales have plunged 68% since 2006 because it simply hasn't been in the game in the most important sector for any device maker: the fast-growing market for web-browing smartphones. That is about to change. Motorola has pinned its hopes on Sanjay Jha and the brand new multimedia phone he is bringing to market — the Cliq, powered exclusively by Google's Android operating system. Jha, who joined Motorola as co-CEO from wireless chip maker Qualcomm in 2008, introduced the Cliq at a mobile industry conference in September. Though some tech blogs slammed Jha's presentation as short on gee-whiz details, the final judges will be consumers. If Cliq and subsequent phones click with customers, Motorola's stock could be back on the rise.

In this article, students read about Motorola's co-CEO Sanjay Jha and his fight to return the struggling company to relevance in the cellphone market.

Discussion Questions:

1. What makes Sanjay Jha unique as an engineer? Why did Motorola CEO Greg Brown seek Jha out? Why did Jha agree to accept his offer? What experiences in Jha's 14 years at Qualcomm best prepared him for his role at Motorola?

2. Why did Jha have to shelve his plans to spin Motorola's handset division off as a separate stock? What options did he present to Motorola's board of directors in January? Do you think he will be able to make good on his promise? Explain.

3. In what area is Motorola unable to compete with Apple? How did the company circumvent this obstacle in order to provide expanded services to its customers?

"The World's Toughest Job?" pp. 120-126: Col. Gen. Khodaidad rarely has a good day. As minister of counternarcotics in Afghanistan, a country that has experienced breakneck growth in drug trafficking over the past eight years, he is fighting an uphill battle to say the least. Khodaidad has one of the cleanest civil service records in Afghanistan, where officials throughout the government are implicated in the $4-billion-a-year drug industry. Yet in the face of government corruption and bigtime traffickers who cozy up to Taliban insurgents, Khodaidad is essentially powerless. The Taliban used the Afghan drug trade to finance their rise and rule until they were toppled in 2001. After that, Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon focused primarily on counterterrorism, believing drugs to be a police matter. The only problem was there was no functioning police force in Afghanistan at that time. Sensing an opportunity, Afghans of all stripes lined up to cash in on the drug trade. Today, Afghanistan is the source of 93% of the world’s heroin. That’s bad news not only for Khodaidad but for all of us. With $400 million landing in the pockets of the Taliban and their supporters each year, America’s nation-building and counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan could be doomed.

Students take a closer look at the war being waged by Afghanistan’s drug czar against the heroin traffickers who fund the Taliban.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does Thomas Schweich, a former State Department official in Afghanistan, believe Col. Gen. Khodaidad's appointment as minister of counternarcotics was a sign that Afghanistan's leadership does not really want to solve the country's drug problem? Do you agree? Explain.

2. Why is it so difficult to persuade Afghan farmers not to harvest poppies? How are the drugs trafficked? As a form of alternate currency, what are they typically exchanged for?

3. Why does Richard Holbrooke characterize Western policies against the narcotics trade in Afghanistan as a failure? How are these policies beginning to change?