Public companies chase short-term results at the expense of employees and customers, harming everyone including shareholders. The speaker argues fiduciary duty should include employees and customers, and that caring for workers creates better customer experiences and sustainable value. Young analysts pushing quarterly gains for their own bonuses are the problem.
Chapters
There's nothing wrong with finite games. There's nothing wrong with short-term decisions, so long as it is in the context of the long-term ambitions. The modern-day public company has over-indexed on short-term at the expense of the long-term, and at the expense of the employee, and at the expense of the customer. And if I hear another— if I hear another CEO tell me about their fiduciary duty to the shareholder, they have a fiduciary duty to the customer and the employee. And the big joke, the big joke is if you take care of your employees, They will love coming to work and find solutions and bring their best game every single day. Then they will take care of their customers. Then they will take care of their customers who will love doing business with you. And even if you screw up, and even if there's a cheaper option somewhere else, they choose to do business with you because they like doing business with you. And if you get that formula right, guess who benefits? The shareholder. Yeah. And so I have no problem with being shareholder-focused, so long as you're long-term shareholder-focused. and you are listening to the shareholders who believe in your vision, believe in your company, believe in your systems, believe in your executives, and are with you through thick and thin, and stop taking advice from 27-year-old analysts— Who don't know how to run a business and are forcing you to make decisions for their pay packages. Okay, I'm done.
