Martin “Marty” H. Singer is Chairman and CEO of PCTEL, which develops antenna, scanning and other solutions for wireless networks.  Before PCTEL, Singer served as President and CEO of SAFCO Technologies, another wireless communications company.  He was also a Vice President and General Manager at Motorola and held senior management and technical positions at Tellabs, AT&T and Bell Labs.  With a Vanderbilt Ph.D in experimental psychology, Singer is a trained thinker.  He will share this space with other distinguished executive thinkers, who will offer occasional musings from “the corner office.”

By Marty Singer

In our personal lives, we seem to have no problem peering into the future.  Let’s say that you and your spouse are thinking about buying a house.  My guess is that you’ll talk seriously about what type of space and location you might need for the next 10 years.  You probably thought or are thinking about whether you need a place that accommodates your plans to have or expand your family.  If you’re my age, you might be thinking about your knees in 5 or 10 years and the advantages of first floor master bedrooms.

This decision, like so many others that we make as we move through life, is one that is made from the future.  You don’t focus on your current situation and plan from that vantage point.  Instead, you place the decision squarely in the future.  You ask questions about what you should do today in the context of what you believe to be true or close to the truth about the future.  You don’t claim to know the future, but you actively reduce uncertainty in your decision by constraining it with conditions that you borrow from a story you tell yourself about your future.

Making decisions about today’s actions in the context of a specific future applies, for example, to graduate school choices.  Hopefully, young graduates don’t apply to Law School because it’s a sensible, incremental step from majoring in Political Science or Public Policy.  One would hope that those who compete to get into decent schools and struggle through a demanding curricula do all of that in the service of a future practicing law or, even better, working in a specific area for which a law degree is essential to success.

I’m not sure exactly what happens when people walk through the looking glass doors of their companies, but something changes.  Planning is often reaction, not proaction; and large organizations seem satisfied with incremental nudges.  A product is polished, a system marginally improved, or a market is expanded.  Risk and uncertainty are factors—and with good reason.  There are a lot of horror stories about what happens when companies stray from what they know best and venture into uncharted waters.  On the other hand, staying within one’s wheelhouse does not imply an absolute commitment to incremental change.

In “The Art of the Long View” Peter Schwartz describes how Shell Oil Co, in the 1980’s, faced a business threatening decision about investing billions of dollars in off-shore drilling platforms.  The economic parameters surrounding energy demand, the relative inelasticity of the market, and the unavailable reserves in the former Soviet Union led many oil companies to invest in these platforms. They concluded that increased manufacturing costs could be passed onto consumers.

The Shell planning team, however, thought it worthwhile to construct alternative views of the future.  Once they developed these alternatives stories, they examined the potential investment in the context of those different futures.  In one of those futures, the Soviet Union unraveled and oil fields became available to the western world.  They also imagined a future in which the oil cartel weakened and prices became more elastic and highly correlated with normal rules of supply and demand.  When they asked themselves whether the off-shore drilling investment made sense in that future, it did not.  That future became their official future, they kept their money in their pockets, and waited for competitors, who were cash-strapped because they had invested billions, to divest oil rights in order to manage their cash flow.

Planning should involve rigorous story-telling, stories based on data and that posit certain leading indicators that companies can track.  Some time ago at my wireless network solutions company, PCTEL, we came across an interesting fact.  Ninety percent of the cellular infrastructure built to handle cellular voice and data traffic has been deployed to handle outdoor traffic.  Today, 90 percent of the traffic is indoors.  Data, rather than being really mobile, is portable.   People surf the Internet from their desks with their smart phones.  In addition to email, we communicate, inside buildings, with text messaging.

The burgeoning indoor traffic, we reasoned, would demand not only a huge surge in extending the cellular infrastructure indoors but would require off-loading to other wireless systems, such as WiFi.  We imagined this future and made investments—organic efforts and acquisitions—that were constant with a story that we told ourselves about the future.  We have hedged our bets with smaller investments in tangential areas but for the most part we have attempted to execute an internally consistent strategy:  We have taken several actions that amplify our presence in the indoor, wireless market.  All of the votes are not yet in, but it appears that the investments that we made in the context of a future that we imagined will work out for our company and our investors.

Even more dramatic was our decision to abandon the old analog modem business (remember those screeching dial-up modems?) and to allocate our time and capital to wireless communication equipment and software.  The founders of PCTEL invented a software-based modem, or “soft modem” to reduce the costs of connectivity.  It was a great idea at the time.  A stand-alone 56 kbps analog modem in 1997 cost $250.  By using the PC’s existing processor and memory, the new PCTEL soft modem sold for $27 – an order of magnitude decrease.  In 2003, however, that same modem sold to DELL for $2.35 and to the Taiwanese mother-board manufacturers for $1.85.

We looked into the future and asked questions about the cost of connectivity and what might influence it.  We saw a future for software connectivity tools and antennas and test equipment.  We did not see a robust future for modems – analog or otherwise.  We reconstructed PCTEL over the next six years (roughly 2002 -2008) so that we had meaningful investments in wireless technologies and products.  We converted our modem business to cash and royalties.  If we had committed to incremental change only, we might have fielded the best 25-cent modem in the world and gone out of business.

Imagining a future that’s quite different from the current environment does not require a company to jettison its legacy products or distinctive competencies.  Instead, it is a commitment to constrain the almost unlimited degrees of freedom in investment choices, and force competing interpretations about the future.  When companies do this—rather than depend upon only what they can touch, feel, and see in the present—they can apply their legacy skills to new possibilities.

Dish’s bid has the Sprint board of directors in a quandary. On April 25 the board announced that it formed a special committee to “carefully evaluate” the Dish offer to acquire the company. What’s to consider? Well, as you might know, Sprint also has been presented with a $20.1 billion offer from Japan’s SoftBank for 70% of the company. That deal is currently under review by the Federal Communications Commission, whose decision is expected by the end of May.

I get it. With shareholders in mind, Sprint’s board has much to ponder. But outside the boardroom, one thing is certain: A deal that creates a bigger Sprint is best for you and me. Right now, Sprint is a distant No. 3 in wireless to AT&T and Verizon. Yes, there are millions of passionate Sprint customers across the country, but the truth is the U.S. wireless market is basically a duopoly. AT&T and Verizon control more than 65% of the market. They are the only providers who can effectively bundle nationwide wireless phone service with TV and broadband Internet service. And that means they can do pretty much as they please when it comes to pricing and programming.

If Dish succeeds in buying Sprint, it would create a formidable third competitor. Here’s why: Sprint (along with wireless Internet player Clearwire) jointly own loads of spectrum. For those who aren’t wireless nerds or engineers, think of spectrum as the air space over which carriers use different frequencies to transmit bits of data—cell phone calls, radio broadcasts, etc.  Now, Sprint’s high-speed wireless network, which utilizes the spectrum, is frankly, rather puny compared to the high-capacity 4G networks its competitors are rolling out.  Dish, in particular, has some of its own spectrum.  So, if Dish could combine its broadband spectrum with that of Sprint and Clearwire, the combined company would have potentially one of the industry’s largest spectrum portfolios, and could then build one of the strongest 4G networks in the nation.  And that, my friends, could lead to a truly viable new competitor to AT&T and Verizon.

Also, let’s not forget Dish’s TV service. If the deal goes ahead, Dish and Sprint could quickly offer TV, broadband and mobile bundles—just like its larger integrated telecoms Verizon and AT&T. Given the rise in mobile TV content by the likes of ESPN and CNN, a Dish-Sprint combo could launch exclusive video services through its mobile network.

With all these synergies and the boon in wireless airwaves the Dish deal dangles (not to mention more cash) the satellite provider’s bid seems like the better deal. But let me add that a Dish deal would saddle Sprint with debt—some $9 billion, in fact. SoftBank’s alternative bid, on the other hand, is relatively debt free. And SoftBank, with its deep pockets, brings a significant cash infusion for Sprint.  The combined company could use that cash to acquire the spectrum it desires.

The point is, either deal gives us what we as consumers want: a fresh plate of wireless, Internet and television services. So, here’s hoping Sprint’s board and telecom regulators get on with it.

In Chicago recently, Sheryl Sandberg was holding court with a handful of women professionals during a private reception of the Economic Club. Within minutes, she would be whisked away to address some 1,500 additional executives who were gathered Thursday, March 28 in the Chicago Hyatt’s grand ballroom. What were the chances that I (a man) could get her attention—even for a few moments, when she was so immersed in conversation with these women? I approached, careful not to bombard my way into a group clearly bonding over shared female experiences. Sandberg deftly turned her attention toward me, somehow not offending these women, while also welcoming me. She smiled warmly and extended her hand. We shook and then talked momentarily about leadership and diversity before she was tugged away by officials carting her to her next destination.

The obvious occurred to me: Sandberg is about equal opportunity. I was an interested person whose gender was irrelevant. Yes, her emphasis is on equal opportunity for women. Her popular new book, Lean In, is focused on gender imbalance in the workplace and society overall. She spoke to us in Chicago, as she often does around the country, about things we can do to address this imbalance, such as fair and equitable mentorship and sponsorship of women at work. So, it would be disingenuous to ignore me, even as Sandberg spoke among a group of women. That would be hypocritical for a person whose message is based on the importance of equality. I was impressed. For me, Sandberg joined a list of extraordinary and personally influential women, who have become effective leaders: My mother (a high-school principal), my wife (a supply chain executive), two of my managers (one at BusinessWeek and another at The Oregonian, who were among the best I’ve ever had). We need more women like them in leadership roles. To understand Sheryl Sandberg’s take on why, check out the TED video above  … and  lean in!

By Russell Reynolds & Associates with Roger O. Crockett

Val Ackerman, former WNBA President, discusses women in leadership, how to succeed in a male-dominated industry, and the leadership development benefits of sports.

For a glimpse of Val Ackerman’s views on leadership, watch the video interview by clicking the video box.

Valerie “Val”Ackerman served as the founding President of the Women’s National Basketball Association from 1996 to 2005. From 2005 to 2008, she served as the first female President of USA Basketball, which oversees both the U.S. men’s and women’s Olympic basketball programs. During her tenure, the programs notched a record of 222-23, including gold medal performances by the U.S. men’s and women’s basketball teams at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. She currently is the U.S. representative to the International Basketball Federation, an adjunct professor of sports management at Columbia University and a sports consultant.

Ackerman was generous in praising several men, including NBA Commissioner David Stern, for their mentorship over the years. She even told me during our interview that she owes as much or more of her success to hard work rather than sheer smarts. Maybe so. But it doesn’t take long, when talking with Ackerman, to discern that she is one smart human being. It’s no easy task for a woman to achieve her level of success and in the male-dominated world of sports.  Read the edited transcript that follows

AN EDITED TRANSCRIPT

CHAPTER 1 – “Not everybody wins.”

Roger Crockett:  Val, I think you and I both agree that organized sports lay a foundation for success later in life. What is it about team sports that translate into leadership skills in the professional arena?

Val Ackerman:  You know I can personally attest that if you play sports early on, whether it’s at a youth level, at a high school level, or at a collegiate level, there are things that you take away from that, things that come back and help you in a positive way later on in life–in any number of professions. I had the privilege of playing intercollegiate sports at the University of Virginia at a time when women’s sports at the college level were really just getting off the ground. For me to be on the women’s basketball team was like taking a class because of the things I learned. But also, the fact that my team didn’t do so well early on forced me to have to deal with failure and adversity and picking up and moving on the next day. I think that lesson, the lesson of how to respond to defeat, is really one of the most powerful lessons that sports can teach because not everybody wins. You have winners, of course, but you also have losers, and the losers have to sort of figure things out for the next go around.

CHAPTER 2 – “College sports is one of the best leadership training grounds.”

Roger Crockett:  You also serve on the Board of the Knight Commission, an organization that’s focused on academic performance and policy at the collegiate level. What do you feel it is about the necessity for a good education that translates into leadership skills?

Val Ackerman:  College sports in our country are kind of at an interesting time because in the cases of certain sports, in particular, Division 1 football and Division 1 men’s basketball, they’ve become very much commercial enterprises. The overwhelming majority of intercollegiate athletes make their livings in something else. So for them it’s really, really critical that college sports be in perspective, and so the Knight Commission is one of several groups out there that I would say are really pushing the balance perspective.  Trying to make sure through their advocacy of the values of intercollegiate athletics, that things be kept in perspective, that schools don’t spend too much, that athletes aren’t asked to do too much and that in the end it’s the educational mission that comes first.  For me, having been a student athlete myself, I couldn’t believe more strongly in that mission.

Roger Crockett:  Do you feel like the schools are doing a good enough job in managing that balance, that they’re producing leaders outside of sports the way that they should be?

Val Ackerman:  I think the leaders in college sports now are more challenged than ever before—whether they be university presidents or whether they be athletic directors or whether they be coaches—because in certain conferences and at certain schools the pressures to win are extraordinary. So these are people who have to respond to these pressures, but at the same time because they’re in the higher education business they have to keep in the forefront of their minds what they’re doing to keep the educational mission upfront and not let it be completely subsumed by the athletic temptations. Because the student athletes that come out of these programs for the most part tend to be very, very well equipped.  I mean many are great jugglers.  If you’re playing lacrosse at the University of Notre Dame and you go through the experience of being an athlete there and going through classes there, when you come out of that if you’ve got a great GPA and you’ve accomplished whatever you can accomplish on the playing field, you’re going to be in pretty good shape just because of what you’ve learned and the kinds of experiences you’ve had, and what it means for your resume to have had that experience.  So I think college sports remain one of the best training grounds for leaders that we have in this country.

CHAPTER 3 – A female pioneer: Succeeding in a male-dominated industry.

Roger Crockett: Val, your leadership extends well beyond just women’s basketball.  You’ve worked in the front office of the men’s pro league, the NBA, and you’re President of USA Basketball.  Those are male dominated arenas.  Do you feel like you’ve been something of a pioneer in those areas?

Val Ackerman: I’ve probably been a bit of a pioneer in the sports business world.  When I started at the NBA my first job in sports was as a staff lawyer for the National Basketball Association.  There were really very few women who were working at a senior level in sports.  When I came in my mentors were, for the most part, men in the business: people that I came to know, came to respect greatly for their leadership skills, their experience, their smarts.  There were very few women to look up to and that made at times for a lonely experience, particularly when I had children because there weren’t any women I could talk to, to say, “Hey, how does this work?”  “How can I come back and work full-time and have a small child at home?”  [I lacked] the moral support that you often get from other women in the work place who are experiencing the same thing.  So I would say that was probably the hardest part for me, figuring out the work-life balance.  But I will say that it’s changing.  There are more women than ever working in sports.  It’s a very desirable profession for men and women alike.  I have met some of the most talented people I know who happen to be women who work in the sports business now. They are smart, they’re energetic, they’re leaders and I think some will go on to do really big things.  I have found that to be successful as a woman in the sports business takes a certain thickness of skin.  You have to be really good at what you do.  You have to roll with things at times and have a sense of humor.  You have to know at times when to pick your spots.  I think the women who are really good care deeply about sports.  They have that passion that people have when they talk about sports, and so there’s an authenticity about the reasons why they’re doing it.

Roger Crockett: Were you, or do you think that women are today, held to a different standard so that you had to perform differently or that perhaps you were judged differently?

Val Ackerman: It’s hard for me to really say whether there’s a double standard for women or not.  I never really kind of looked at it that way or thought because I was a woman I had to do something different.  I always just thought that I do things differently.  I tend to be someone who prepares thoroughly.  I don’t always think I’m the smartest person in the room because I’ve dealt with some very, very smart minds both when I worked on Wall Street and then when I went into the sports business.  So, I tried to compensate for that by coming in feeling very prepared.  So, that for me has been an advantage.  I’ve always been a reasonably hard worker. That really comes in handy in the sports business because for all the glamour that it’s perceived to have, the reality is it’s a very hard business to work in.  It’s very, very demanding. The hours are rough, people work very hard in the business. If you don’t work hard you can bet that there’s somebody who wants your job who’s going to work twice as hard as you to get that job.  It’s a travel intensive business. You can’t call into the Super Bowl, you have to show up.

CHAPTER 4 – The “slow process” of elevating women to executive ranks.

Roger Crockett:  Can you talk a little bit about where women are in the international scene when it comes to leadership positions?

Val Ackerman:  The good news I think in global sports is that women are really showing up and performing.  If you look at the Olympics in London this past summer, there were record numbers of women competing across the board.  Team USA had more women than men making up their total roster.  You saw women from Middle Eastern countries, which had never before been allowed to compete in the Olympics, now being allowed to compete for the first time by their home countries. So, women are becoming more of a force on the playing surfaces.  That’s the good news.  What needs to happen in a bigger way is for women to be represented in the executive ranks of national Olympic committees, in the US national governing bodies, in the ranks of international sports organizations that facilitate the opportunities for women at all levels to play in sports.  That’s frankly been a slow process.  The US has been a leader in this.  We really are a beacon in terms of representation of women in sports, whether as athletes, whether as administrators, whether as coaches.  You name it, the US is really out front.  I give Title IX a lot of the credit for that.  That has opened up so many doors and created so many ripple effects.  Other countries tend not to have a Title IX. So, for them they have to counter the lack of opportunities, not with legislation like we did, but they have to break through cultural barriers.  They have to get the funding.  And there have to be sympathetic men who open the doors for them, and that tends to be a much slower process.

Roger Crockett:  You’re something of what I’m going to call an entrepreneur, having launched successfully the WNBA league.  What skill set, Val, do you feel is necessary for launch leadership, regardless of gender?

Val Ackerman:  I was very fortunate.  I feel like I was in the right place at the right time to help lead the launch of the WNBA.  At that time, the early 90s, women’s basketball was really getting off the ground in the US.  It was being televised widely, there were great rivalries building.  The launch was unique in that we weren’t a mom and pop trying to do this.  We were a launch within a larger organization because we had the NBA behind us in every imaginable way.  We were looking at what had worked and didn’t work in the NBA and other sports, and adjusting accordingly, in terms of the model that we used to launch the league, the way we marketed it, things that we required of the players.  Our motto was, “If the NBA could start all over again from scratch based on everything that it’s learned in the last 30 or 40 years what would it do differently?”  It was the answers to those questions that became the foundation of the WNBA.

CHAPTER 5 – Good leaders excel under “incredible pressure.”

Roger Crockett:  Well it sounds like your experience is similar to a lot of leadership or CEO positions in other industries.  How do you feel leadership is different in professional sports than it is business or academics?

Val Ackerman:  I think the leadership skills in professional sports in many respects mirror the kinds of traits that are needed for success in other professions: The ability for good leaders, great leaders, to communicate well; to inspire, to link action to ideas because many great ideas die on the vine.  You need good leaders to bring them into being.  The ability to make good decisions is a leadership skill that cuts across any profession.  What I think makes professional sports different is the visibility of the field.  If you make a mistake and you’re a leader in a prominent sports organization, it’s going to be in the newspaper the next day.  So, there’s incredible pressure to get things right and to minimize damage if you don’t get things right.  So there’s a public relations element to big time sports in our country that dictates what kinds of skills leaders need to be successful.  As any sports leader knows, if fans go away everything changes.  All bets are off.  It’s all about can the market support this?  And that really comes down to a sports organization’s relationship with its fans.  Good leaders recognize what that means, and they recognize why that’s important, and they work very hard to preserve that connection.

John Challenger is CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., a Chicago-based outplacement and consulting firm, which assists displaced workers in securing re-employment. Under Challenger’s leadership the firm also provides executive coaching and advises organizations on corporate change. Challenger served on the labor human resource committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2002. He also has delivered major economic addresses before the World Future Society, the Ethics Officers Association and leading business executives in Japan.

Challenger’s breadth of knowledge on the economy and workplace issues has made him a widely sought media spokesperson on corporate and economic issues. With the stock market and the housing market showing strong improvement, but unemployment remaining stubbornly high, Challenger paused from business in his downtown Chicago office to dig into the numbers and answer five questions about the unemployment picture and the economy overall. Here are edited responses:

1. There’s considerable debate about our national unemployment figures. Does the monthly data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reflect the truest picture of our employment situation?

Challenger: The unemployment rate of 7.7% (in February) doesn’t count people who have looked in the last month. If you add in the number of unemployed and those that have looked in the last year, but not last month, and those working part time for economic reasons—meaning they want a full-time job but haven’t found one, or their hours were cut back. That unemployment rate is 14.3%, down from 15.0 a year ago.  They’re both real rates. This second figure is often called the “under-employed” rate, and some people use this number as truer picture of the unemployment rate.

Q: So the under-employed rate is twice as high. Other segments of the population are worse off as well, right?

Challenger: Yes. The unemployment rate is 6.8% for whites, but 13.8% for blacks, 9.6% for Hispanics and 6.1% for Asians. Forty percent of people that make up the unemployment rate make up the long-term unemployed—people out of work more than 6 months. In total, we have 12 million people who are out of work, and 8.1 million who are working part-time for economic reasons. Another 2.6 million people are not counted as unemployed because they have not looked in the last month. There are far too many people unemployed.

2. I thought the economy was showing signs of improvement. Is there a silver lining?

Challenger: The long-term unemployed rate was at 42.3% a year ago. It came down to 40.2% in February. And in January it was down to 38.1%. The number of long-term unemployed has come down to 4.8 million, from 5.4 million a year ago. There is also a dramatic difference in unemployment based on education. If you have a college degree, the unemployment rate is 3.8 %, well below the national average of 7.7%. But if you don’t have any college experience, unemployment is 7.9%, slightly more than the national average. And if you have no high school degree it’s 11.2%. So education really makes a huge difference in employment.

3. Speaking of education, we know cuts in education are on the rise in places like Chicago, and in cities across the nation. How is this affecting the economy?

Challenger: To have a healthy economy you need to have a strong pipeline of young people who are coming up through the education system with skills and knowledge that are the fuel for business growth. There’s no question when the school systems are not graduating kids with the kind of core education that makes them job worthy and gives them the grounding for productive working lives, that damages the communities and the businesses in those communities. Cities thrive on populations of productive people, and if young people are not being prepared to live productive working lives the economy suffers. So, in Chicago, for instance, the unemployment rate has been rising from 9.5% a year ago to 9.9%.

4. Well, we know the federal government and municipal governments are continuing to make cuts. So, what do you anticipate for the rest of 2013?

Challenger: The cuts from the federal government are going to slow the economy down. When you have an economy that is struggling the federal government often stands in. With the fiscal cliff and now the sequester cuts, things are different now. Tax increases will do the same thing. It will take money out of people’s pockets. The economy thrives on that spending.

5. Lastly, what industries look strong and which ones create cause for concern?

Challenger: Nationally some of the areas growing jobs are healthcare, which has been a consistent strong area of growth. That area has seen an increase of 32,000 net new jobs from January to February. Technology was up 20,000 net jobs. And construction was up 48,000 in February. This is a real sign that the housing market has passed the bottom and is now turning up. Retail was up 24,000 jobs. When the recession hit it caused such a precipitous drop that it’s been a slow return back. But there are signs that the economy is accelerating some.

The illustration shows these housing residents wallowing in cash inside a two-story home above the headline, “The Great American Housing Rebound.”  The subhead: “Flips. No-look bids. 300 percent returns. What could possibly go wrong?”

Well, what went wrong was Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s editorial judgment. The cover image is, in fact, insensitive and discriminatory for its hint of minstrelsy—an ugly American musical tradition in which white entertainers painted on black faces and thick red lips to lampoon African Americans as a dim-witted, buffoonish, happy-go-lucky people. Blacks, and Latinos, however, do not look like the wide-eyed, fat-lipped characters on the cover. Presumably, Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s editors were attempting to be provocative. But the magazine is not a comic strip with license to exaggerate for a laugh.

So, the cover rightly has been widely criticized, not only by readers of color and liberal-minded people of all races, but by media analysts as well. As Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum wrote, “It’s hard to imagine how this one made it through the editorial process.”

He and others have noted that race has been a key backdrop to the subprime crisis. But in illustrating a story about real estate “flips,” no-look bids and high returns, Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s cover flips reality on its head. While the cover depicts people of color flush with cash, the opposite was true of the housing crisis. African Americans and Latinos were disproportionately impacted by the predatory lending practices of banks during the subprime crisis of a few years back. The Pew Research Center published a report demonstrating that the bursting of the housing bubble caused far greater damage to the black and Latino communities than the mainstream. Despite this, Bloomberg BusinessWeek depicts them swimming in loot, as if they’re going to create another bubble.

The inaccuracy makes the cover more than insensitive. It makes it inaccurate. For journalists, nothing is worse than the accusation of wanton inaccuracy. It implies immorality—that there is a disregard for the ethics of journalism. As Roy Peter Clark, respected educator at the Poynter Institute of media studies, has said: “We cannot tolerate the creation of stereotypes, composite characters, improved quotations, rearranged facts…Good [journalism] is not just a veneer to coat the facts. It is not style without substance. It is clarity, relevance, humanity and hard work.”

Of course, editors always push the envelope between cover art that attracts eyeballs (and ultimately sales) and journalistic accuracy. Bloomberg Businessweek Editor-in Chief Josh Tyrangiel has developed a reputation for edgy covers. (One popular cover image for an airline industry merger story depicted two airplanes having sex.)  It’s a reputation that clearly contrasts the more conservative style of the BusinessWeek yours truly spent more than 13-years working for. That magazine earned a reputation for solid journalism as it won multiple National Magazine Awards (the industry’s Pulitzer). Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to compare the old BusinessWeek with the Bloomberg version. Lord knows, the old version had its flaws too. Old or new, there generally is a system of checks and balances to ensure that cover art is neither inaccurate nor excessively insensitive.

Perhaps the editors assumed that because they hired a Latino artist to draw the image, they were, uh, covered. Andres Guzman, born in Peru but based in Minneapolis, was commissioned by Bloomberg Businessweek for the illustration. “I was asked to make an excited family with large quantities of money,” Guzman wrote on his Tumblr page before the controversy erupted. “I simply drew the family like that because those are the kind of families I know,” he explained in a follow-up statement provided by Bloomberg Businessweek. “I am Latino and grew up around plenty of mixed families.”

Ok, so Guzman seems to be a bit naïve regarding the complexities of diversity in America. But it wasn’t his job to approve the illustration for print. In my magazine experience, illustrations, like articles, go through a guillotine of editors. Several drafts are done before a final is settled upon. During my days at Businessweek, I was asked more than once not just whether an article or illustration met our high journalistic standards for accuracy, but whether it also passed a de facto racial sensitivity test.

I don’t know whether the current editors of the magazine asked the same questions. Tyrangiel issued a statement saying, “Our cover illustration got strong reactions, which we regret. If we had to do it over again, we’d do it differently.” Well, we hope so, Josh. The magazine’s reputation depends on it.

In 1972, when Al Green topped the R&B charts with “Let’s Stay Together” and Black Americans were defining contemporary style with wide lapels and even wider bell bottoms, John H. Johnson set a mark of his own. The founder of Johnson Publishing Company, which published the monthly lifestyle magazine Ebony, built what was the first and only black-owned building along Chicago’s renowned Michigan Avenue. That 11-story tower, with its distinctive latticed exterior and vibrant interior design, became the symbol of success in black business nationwide. Ebony is no longer published in that building, but the Johnson Publishing empire lives on, now led by daughter Linda Johnson Rice.

That’s worth celebrating. After all, let’s not forget that some 50% of businesses with fewer than 500 employees fail within just five years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Two-thirds go under within 10 years. To borrow from the autobiography written by its founder, Johnson Publishing is “succeeding against the odds.” This year will be the company’s 71st. Neither Ebony nor Jet, Ebony’s weekly sister magazine, have quite the same the influence they once had. They each have been reconstituted and repackaged in an effort to contend in a finger-snap-fast digital age. Meanwhile, the company’s Fashion Fair Cosmetics business, a prestige cosmetics brand for people of color, continues to thrive across the globe.

Indeed, the only way to last in this ever-shifting business environment is for a business to remake itself. To keep the doors open for 20 years or more, it’s required that businesses adjust. In Chicago alone, several have adapted with the times. Besides the Johnson Publishing business, there’s Oprah Winfrey’s famous Harpo Productions, founded 27 years ago in 1986 and now producing TV shows via its recently launched OWN network. Also, Ariel Investments (formerly Ariel Capital Management) remains the nation’s largest black-owned mutual fund after 30 years. Capri Capital, a global private equity real estate investment firm with over $3.7 billion in assets, is celebrating 20 years in the business—the real estate business! And Larry Hollins, founder and chief of executive search firm, The Hollins Group, is enjoying his the 25th year of business.

Hollins started his business in March of 1988, while he was in his early 40’s, with just three employees, including himself. He’s employed 62 people over the years and currently has 12 on staff. It’s those people that he credits for the company’s success. “I always felt I had to have people smarter than me,” he says. “I would be driven by what they knew, and they would be motivated by me. That combination made it work.”

Here are snapshots of a few more major black-owned businesses across the country that have stood the test of time:

ACT-1 Group
This staffing and human resources firm was founded by Janice Bryant Howroyd, one of the nation’s preeminent female entrepreneurs. Launched in 1978 and headquartered in Torrance, Calif., ACT-1 is the nation’s largest woman- and minority-owned employment services firm, with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

World Wide Technology Inc.
David Steward founded this tech services company in 1990, and he’s been on a tear ever since. Revenue is now more than $3 billion, as demand from the public and private sectors soared for this Maryland Heights, Mo. firm’s technology products and consulting services.

CAMAC International
In 1986 Kase Lawal, the Nigerian-born chairman and CEO of CAMAC founded his company in Houston to explore, develop and operate oil properties. It now has annual revenue of about $1.5 billion.

MV Transportation
This Fairfield, Calif. company, is one of the nation’s largest privately held passenger transportation contracting firms. Founded in 1975 by husband-and-wife team Alex and Feysan Lodde, it pulls revenue of more than $700 million annually.

Such behavior is absolutely reprehensible coming from a company president, as Hundley was. Looking at the incident through the lens of corporate leadership, it’s clear this drunken executive acted in a manner terribly unbecoming of an employee—any employee, let alone a top-level manager. If you somehow missed the story, an FBI court affidavit says the accused, Joe Rickey Hundley, an aerospace executive based in Hayden, Idaho, was on a Feb. 8 Delta Air Lines flight sitting next to Jessica Bennett and her young son. Bennett, like Hundley, is white, but her 19-month old adopted boy is African-American. Bennett told FBI agents that as the plane began its descent her boy started crying (which babies typically do), and that’s when Hundley rudely told her, “shut that N—-r baby up.”  Then Hundley, according to court documents, slapped the baby in the face, scratching him below his eye.

Most people are appalled that a 60-year-old man would slap a baby, particularly one that’s not his. It’s inexcusable. But there’s an opportunity for a different sort of teachable moment here. No one should rise as high as Hundley did inside a company without fully understanding and abiding by what I call cultural ethics. You’ve heard of business ethics, right? Those are the standards and rules that govern employee behavior. For example, some companies have rules stating they should not use child labor. They should not unlawfully use copyrighted materials and processes. They should not engage in bribery. Such rules are often written in a company’s code of ethics. For employees, these rules establish guidelines they can follow to distinguish between “right” and “wrong,” and direct people toward the “right” choice. Often, there’s a business ethics training workshop required of employees.

Well, I think such codes of ethics ought to be updated to reflect the global environment we live in. Hundley’s company, Unitech Composites and Structures, may be based in racially homogeneous Hayden, Idaho, but it does business with such global giants as Honeywell and Boeing, both of which have large and diverse company cultures. Unitech also does business with the US Army, another extremely diverse organization. If Unitech’s president hurls racial slurs at a baby, it’s frightening to think what he and his executive team might say about the African-American officials representing its multicultural global customers.

“We are taking this matter seriously,” Al Haase, president and chief executive officer of AGC Composites Group, said in a statement. Unitech is a division of AGC. Hundley was first suspended and then fired from the company, in accordance with the company’s personal conduct policy.

But AGC better not stop there. I would hope its leaders aren’t content with dismissing one bad apple, and then turning the other way. Because, let’s be real, it’s quite likely there’s much more rotten inside those corporate walls. I bet AGC needs comprehensive cultural ethics training as much as Lance Armstrong needs Liar’s Anonymous. In a country where the President is black, the Secretary of State was a woman, and middle-aged white moms lovingly adopt black babies, how can any responsible business employ people who demonstrate no cultural sensitivity? In a multicultural marketplace where China, India, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are all essential markets for any major company serious about growth, leadership must train its workforce to be both culturally aware and ethical.

I remember speaking with the former CEO of AstraZeneca, one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies about this issue. David Brennan explained how important it was to have racial and cultural diversity among its leadership in order to excel as a global company. “It’s important from a leadership perspective to try to create an environment where people feel that they can make a contribution, or they can bring up a point, or they can suggest something to be done in their way of doing it and not have a group of people reacting negatively because that’s not the way a bunch of Western white guys would do it,” he told me.

That’s precisely why I hope the folks at AGC Composites, and plenty of other companies around the nation, use the offensive actions of one drunken executive to reassess the cultural reality within their own organizations.

Tim Cook, Apple

Its tough following in the footsteps of a legend. But that’s where Cook finds himself. So far it’s been a turbulent ride, and 2013 is emerging as a pivotal year. The Apple iPhone’s dominance in smartphones is under siege by Samsung’s Galaxy line, and new entries by Microsoft and Blackberry will only make things tougher this year. That’s one reason investors have taken a bite out of Apple (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!). Apple’s shares were trading in the mid-$400 range in January, stratospheric by most standards but more than a 30% drop from Apple’s high of $705 per share in September 2012. Despite announcing strong quarterly earnings in January, the bellwether’s stock still slipped 12% in what was its largest single-day loss since 2008.

The erosion caused Apple to fall behind Exxon as the most valuable company in the world in market cap, and left Cook scrambling to explain to employees and investors what’s up. Over the years, Apple has excelled by targeting the high-end and earning loyalty with elegant and innovative products. But that high-end is becoming saturated, and rivals are taking share with lower-priced devices. Most experts believe Apple must carve out new territory among the mainstream. And Cook best start cracking the innovation whip. Apple has relied on incremental updates to its existing lines, while rivals introduce attractive new features. To re-accelerate growth and reinvigorate the stock, Apple needs to launch new products–and, as in the days of old, create new markets.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!

After just six months at the controls, the former Google star led Yahoo to an upbeat quarterly performance, increasing revenue for the first time in four years. She pumped life into the search business, revamped the e-mail service and redesigned Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing app. Fans attribute the good news to “Marissa Magic”.

But she’ll have to perform many more tricks this year, especially in the critically important digital ad space. Yahoo’s advertising business is flagging. It holds just an 8.4% share of display ads, down from 15.5% in 2009. And the slump has occurred despite an industrywide surge in total digital ad spending. Furthermore, Yahoo has yet to execute on a legitimate mobile strategy. With a whopping 700 million monthly users, it remains one of the largest audiences on the Web. But in 2013 investors will expect Mayer to turn those users into sustainable profits.

Jim McNerney, Boeing

His aircraft maker is reeling from faulty batteries that caused the grounding of its newest plane, the 787. The cause of the smoking batteries is currently under investigation by U.S. and Japanese regulators. Although Boeing recently reported strong fourth quarter profit, the company said it’s waiting on the results of the investigation before projecting whether the battery problems would have a significant impact on its earnings in 2013.

Boeing passed Airbus in 2012 to retake the worldwide lead in aircraft deliveries, after losing that title in 2003. Its new planes, which are not being delivered for safety reasons, are key to maintaining that lead. The planes are considered the most technologically advanced jets on the market, with lightweight carbon composite structures and new engines that combine to reduce fuel consumption by 20% from older planes. McNerney, who knows Boeing has to snuff out the source of the smoke and fire, said in a statement that fixing the battery problems was the company’s “first order of business for 2013.”

Thorsten Heins, Blackberry

After months of delay, his company finally unveiled a new operating system and a new line of phones, and changed the corporate name from Research in Motion to Blackberry. Heins hopes the new 10 series will help make Blackberry competitive again. But it arrives long after Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones by Samsung and others have come to dominate the smartphone market–leaving Blackberry with a measly 4% market share.

The new phone is definitely impressive, with all the features touch-phone users love. But there are holes too. It lacks a button to take users back to a home page, forcing users to swipe across the screen from different directions to summon features or menus. Heins says a version with a physical keyboard will be arriving soon. But with all of the previous delays, it’s hard to believe anything the company says. And even a phone with a fantastic new qwerty keypad might not be enough to give Blackberry the boost it needs to be competitive with the iPhone and Android phones. Heins will need to hit more home runs–and quick.

Slumbering Giants

Consider also a few global giants for which 2013 is a key year. Michael Corbat, became CEO of Citigroup three months ago, when Vikram Pandit suddenly resigned. Corbat, who cut 11,000 jobs in December and announced his management team in early January, is viewed by the board as a better fit to execute Citi’s global strategy in the years ahead. This year will be the first test. Another new CEO, McDonald’s Don Thompson, took the reins last summer. Since then monthly restaurant sales have shown signs of weakness, despite the company’s overall lead in the market. Thompson will have to demonstrate he can jolt new life into the brand and keep growth humming. The same goes for Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald. He came under fire in 2012 by activist investors for moribund growth. Since then McDonald refreshed the corporate strategy and profits have shown signs of improvement. Performance this year will confirm the plan. Finally, will this be the year Steve Ballmer of Microsoft makes the tech giant into a star again? Once dominant, Microsoft has languished amid the glow of Apple, Google, Amazon and others. To catch up, Ballmer launched a slick, new Windows phone and reportedly has set sights on an investment in PC-maker Dell. This could be Ballmer’s last stand.

Burrell talked about the importance of having a mentor to help set us on the right path and keep us there. I couldn’t agree more. No successful business leader achieved success on his or her own. They each had someone who invested in their success and helped guide the way. So what exactly is a mentor? The important thing is to distinguish between a mentor and simply a friend or caring associate. I once asked Dick Parsons, the former CEO of Time Warner and former Chairman of Citigroup, about that distinction. We spoke about his relationship with Vernon Jordan, the Lazard senior adviser and “first friend” to President Bill Clinton. Parsons considers Jordan a friend and adviser on a personal issues. On occasion, if he was wrestling with something at work or a career move, he would call Jordan for his wisdom and ask for his sense of the situation.

A mentor is someone like Ardie Ivy was to me when I was a college senior grappling with how to forge a career. Ardie, a marketing specialist in Los Angeles at the time, took me under his wing. He made my success his personal mission and responsibility. He helped me forge a 5-year plan, the career equivalent to a business plan, only I was the “business”. Ardie was to me as I suspect Nelson Rockefeller was to Dick Parsons, or as former American Express CEO Harvey Golub was to current American Express CEO Ken Chenault.

Besides having a good mentor, here are four additional “habits” I’ve observed in the successful leaders I’ve interviewed over the years:

1) Confidence & Vision: It’s impossible to be successful unless you believe in yourself and actually see yourself being successful. One of the best examples I can think of to demonstrate this is the vision of Tiger Woods. He is widely considered the best putter in the history of golf. Most likely, you’ve seen him at some point over the past 12 years make seemingly miraculous golf shots and putts. He’s made so many, in part, because he never approaches a putt he doesn’t believe he is going to make. Before hitting it, he envisions the ball going into the cup. That confidence and that vision can be applied to a key business decision or your next career move. You have to see yourself on the pathway to success.

2) Goals & Execution: I’ve never met an executive who set goals and executed any better than Ed Whitacre, the former chief executive of AT&T. When Whitacre was CEO of Texas-based Southwestern Bell Telephone Company during the 1990s, he began setting goals to grow the company from a regional force into a national powerhouse. With the help of his executive leadership team, he then went about executing a plan involving acquisitions of other telephone companies. Each acquisition had to generate a certain synergy that would lead to higher profits and greater “scale and scope,” as he used to say. Whitacre acquired Pac Bell on the West Coast, then Ameritech in the Midwest, then Cingular for wireless assets, then AT&T for long distance. Within a decade’s time he had built the biggest and most successful telecommunications company in the country. Whitacre’s career is a demonstration of one of the seven habits documented in author Stephen Covey’s famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Start with the end in mind.”

3) Time Management: Successful leaders don’t waste time. They are masters at accomplishing the tasks before them. That might mean that they come off as curt sometimes. But don’t be offended. They’re simply practicing the art of what I call, “Get ‘er done!” Consider Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald. He manages the world’s biggest consumer packaged goods company, he has a family and he serves on several corporate and non-profit boards. Still, whenever I have sent him an email over the years, he has replied in less than an hour … every time! (His messages happen to be quite courteous as well.) Remember, this isn’t a guy who gets but a handful of emails per day. He’s inundated by them. Nor are mine ever the most urgent. He is simply and impressively efficient at prioritization and performance. It doesn’t hurt that he is a West Point graduate with great respect for discipline and order. Whatever the reason, his behavior underscores the relevance of getting things done swiftly.

4) Hard Work: This might be obvious, but it’s universal among successful leaders. The thing is, hard work is subjective. Most of us might get to the office at 8 am and leave at 6 pm and think we’re working hard. Well, my experience says, think again. I’ve never met a star in business or anywhere that isn’t working around the clock. Did you know that Michael Jordan often went back to the gym to shoot jump shots after his team won a basketball game? Certainly, you’ve heard the stories of San Francisco 49er Jerry Rice running 80 yards to the end zone after catching a 10-yard slant pass … in practice! Well, the same approach applies to work in the office, whatever your vocation might be. In the years that I shadowed Rev. Jesse Jackson as he criss-crossed the country advocating for civil rights on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, he never started his day after sunrise. Not any day.