Mario Cavolo

BY SERENA NG AND JOANN S. LUBLIN at WSJ online...

American International Group Inc. is preparing to pay its outgoing general counsel Anastasia Kelly several million dollars in severance after she resigned over federal pay curbs, according to people familiar with the matter.

AIG determined that its top in-house lawyer was entitled to the money under the company's severance plan, whose terms say certain executives can resign and collect severance if their pay is reduced significantly, the people said. The move comes amid recent scrutiny of Ms. Kelly's actions ...

...Hey, if you're going to cut my pay, then I'm going to quit instead and receive several million in SEVERANCE pay? Wow...Whoa...I'm...Speechless...Disgusted...Raped...Oh, yea, I filed this one under the Leadership category since it's self-serving corporate and government leadership that's screwing everyone with outrages like this...Cheers, Mario

In my executive coaching or other corporate team session work over the years, I have often found myself running brainstorming sessions with key executives to help them more clearly define and move beyond their current issues, identify conflicts, issues, etc. I've always been a stickler for asking effective questions and the list below represents the model of questions that I use to get the job done right. If a company calls for a facilitated brainstorming session, that usually means there are serious issues to identify and clarify for immediate attention. The right questions presented in the right way insure the session gets results. Keep in mind that in a brainstorming session, these questions typically need to be answered by every participant in the room, in writing and/or during open discussion. As a bonus, the questions have been translated into Mandarin too. Cheers, Mario

Model for Effective Brainstorming Sessions on the next page.

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Book Title: First Break All The Rules, author Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

There exists a plethora of "what do great "xyz" people do" type books on the best seller lists these days...again, mostly disappointing rehashes of what we already know. You should go to the cafe/bookstore, and jumping to the table of contents, take 20 minutes to scan and catch their main points because too often busy, productive people will find buying and reading them cover to cover tediously unnecessary. We read too many books and get that "I learned absolutely nothing new" reaction. Even worse, "I KNOW where the author got THAT part from". This is NOT one of those books.

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Many thanks to our sponsors and organizers as Shanghai's first Catalyst To Change event held 18 sharp minded people riveted together for a day...5pm hit us all faster than a speeding bullet and onward we went to 5:30 still wanting to discuss more...highlights of the day were dissecting Lincoln's Gettysburg address which revealed crystal clear why that speech is considered one of the world's finest; In a nutshell Lincoln used a very specific set of emotionally moving majestic words combined with the simple use of repetitive phrases in 3's. As most of you know, repetitions, especially repetitive phrases such be delivered in sets of three; finally we wrappe up the day by viewing Al Pacino's masterful speech at the church funeral in the movie City Hall, another masterful combination of emotion, clarity and use of repetition...do check it out on youtube and share your comments...

Heaps of gratitude to sponsors and partners American Airlines, Globally Green Energy Consortium, Shanghaiexpat, Shanghai Business Review, and organizers KBC China and 4inGroup.

Look for more coming up in Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong...the recession be damned, people need answers...

Mario