Everywhere I travel, I hear the same refrains: "We need more regulation," or on the flip side, "If we hadn't deregulated, we wouldn't be in this financial mess."

It looks like the White House is of this mind-set. Citing Wall Street for helping to create a "culture of irresponsibility," President...

The owner of a McDonald's franchise made news recently by opening an eco-friendly restaurant in Cary, N.C. It has energy-efficient refrigerators, low-flow toilets, tables made from sunflower seeds and even recharging stations for electric cars.

This McDonald's is surely going green. But that doesn't make it sustainable.

To many people,...

Everyone is asking the same questions: Have we hit bottom yet? When will the recession end? When will things go back to the way they were?

As a chief executive, I'm as eager as anyone to put the recession into the past. A growing economy benefits everyone. More importantly, there...

Years ago, I heard about an unusual doughnut vendor in New York City. During the morning rush, instead of calculating the correct change for every customer, he put a pile of coins on the counter of his pushcart and asked people to pay what they owed, and make change for...

Like many of you, I have followed the recent headlines related to Pope Benedict XVI's call for a "return to ethics in the global economy." I've been seeing this thinking in many arenas, and I was meaningfully struck by his desire to see business reconnect with values in...

Lots of attention has been paid to the sentencing of Bernard Madoff, and rightfully so. There are no words for his actions. He was epic in his perfidiousness. His behavior was monstrous.

But when we talk as business people about the times we are living in, we do...

At first glance, money management giant Mellon Bank Corp. (now the Bank of New York Mellon), the British alternative rock band Radiohead, and my company, LRN, would appear to have little in common. But we've all been on a TRIP. (TRIP is an acronym to articulate how Trust...

By converting from a command-and-control disciplinarian to an inspirational head football coach, the New York Giants' Tom Coughlin led his team to an improbable Super Bowl victory last year. Coughlin's success signals the value of embracing an inspirational approach to leadership in the 21st century.

Despite an impressive win-loss...

Rethinking the emotional and monetary value of trust

Conventional wisdom holds that the economy is suffering from declining consumer demand, insufficient business investment and the high cost or unavailability of credit.

Government and business leaders need to understand the problems run deeper. I believe that the global economy has been...

Should JetBlue's industry-leading Customer Bill of Rights be grounded? With the holiday season upon us, I was reminded of what air travel was like last Valentine's Day, when many of us fell out of love with the airline industry. On that cold February morning, a series of severe storms roiled...

Three months ago, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey revealed in a company FTC filing that from 1999 to mid-2006, he participated in an online stock discussion board under a pseudonym. During that time, according to the company's admission, he made some strong and, some might say, disparaging, comments about Whole...

One thing jumped out at me during Apple's latest customer relations challenge. Charting the consumer and public reaction of consumers to Apple's iPhone price cut, the Los Angeles Times quoted Jonte Richardson, a 36-year old filmmaker, who said:

It feels like you're being punished for being brand-loyal. If...

Education at the primary and secondary levels has always been rules-based: raise your hand, get a hall pass, obey the dress code, show your work, double-space, check your chewing gum at the door. As much as we hated them (and who didn't grow up hating all those rules?), schools have...

Barry Bonds just made the number. It was a big number, one of baseball's great records: the most home runs ever hit by a human being. In general, this would be big news. Almost every pursuit of a major baseball record like this has commanded rapt national attention.

Yet surprisingly,...