Latest Commonplace post is about scrubs and maestros:
Conversation
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But would a Malone-clone in 2021 be playing the "real" game? Malone existed during the "cult of shareholder value", but those days are long past...
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Yes this is something that I’ve been thinking about as well.
The ‘rules’ of business really arise as an ‘ecology of strategies’ used by market participants. So it’s likely that whatever works today would(?) be more ESG influenced?
And that this is better for the world?
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Hmm... in my experience very few CEOs think about maximizing shareholder value or their personal wealth. They care mostly about their status amongst their peers. A trivial example, growth rate is often higher status than profitability
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That's something I view the Cowen/Collison "progress studies" thing as trying to influence - making things that benefit the world become higher status, as an effective lever on C-level decisions
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Oh, I like this a lot.
Point taken about status being about other things, not necessarily shareholder returns — Malone is lionised now because of his returns, but I wonder now if his motivations were consistently about that.
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(To be clear: I think he WAS one of the rare CEOs who put shareholder value above the institutional imperative, but your saying this reminds me that he originally structured the Liberty deal as a way to make money for himself. Who knows what evil lurks inside the hearts of men?)