one in five corporate executives are psychopaths

An Australian study has found that about one in five corporate executives are psychopaths – roughly the same rate as among prisoners. 

The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 percent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred.

Nathan Brooks, a forensic psychologist who conducted the study, said the findings suggested that businesses should improve their recruitment screening. 

He said recruiters tend to focus on skills rather than personality features and this has led to firms hiring “successful psychopaths” who may engage in unethical and illegal practices or have a toxic impact on colleagues.

Jonathan Pearlman

"1 in 5 CEOs are psychopaths, study finds." The Telegraph. September 13, 2016

a man's age

You can tell a man's age by the amount he suffers when he hears a new idea.


Marion G. Romney
Marion G. Romney: His Life and Faith by F. Burton Howard. Bookcraft. Salt Lake City. 1988. P.217

let's learn to live with crisis

I want to tell you a story that was brought to me by one of my own Random House authors, Mr. James Michener, who wrote Hawaii, the most successful novel in America since Gone With the Wind. Jim Michener tells about a man who, in 1938, was a very successful Wall Street broker, had a beautiful duplex apartment on Park Avenue in New York, a wife and two handsome children. In 1938 this man said, "I smell another war in the offing. I went through World War I; I do not intend to go through anything like that again." Despite the protestations of his wife and family and his business associates, he sold his business, closed up his apartment, packed up all his belongings and his wife and children, and bought himself a plantation on an island nobody had ever heard of way out in the South Pacific; and he said, "They're never going to get me in World War II." The name of this island happened to be Guadalcanal. It is a true story. This was 1938. In 1964 it is even harder to get away from the world, so let's learn to live with it and realize that we are living in a time of perpetual crisis.

Bennett Cerf 

BYU Speeches, April 16, 1964, p. 3

to-be list

Many of us create to-do lists to remind us of things we want to accomplish. But people rarely have to-be lists. Why? To do’s are activities or events that can be checked off the list when done. To be, however, is never done. You can’t earn checkmarks with to be’s. I can take my wife out for a lovely evening this Friday, which is a to do. But being a good husband is not an event; it needs to be part of my nature—my character, or who I am.

Lynn G. Robbins

"What Manner of Men and Women Ought Ye to Be?" General Conference. April 2011

PowerPoint makes us stupid

PowerPoint has been slowly killing the U.S. military from the inside. As this 2010 article from The New York Times explains, from generals down to frontline officers, America's military staff spend their time making, giving, and listening to PowerPoint presentations instead of, you know, preparing for war.

The money quote from that piece actually comes from none other than Gen. Jim Mattis, who said at the time that "PowerPoint makes us stupid."

For example, PowerPoint reduces everything down to bullet points and inane charts. This "stifles discussion, critical thinking, and thoughtful decision-making," officers in the Pentagon have said.

It's also a huge waste of precious time. Indeed, junior officers are nicknamed "PowerPoint Rangers" for all the time they have to spend making slides. As The New York Times reported: "...when a military website, Company Command, asked an Army platoon leader in Iraq, Lt. Sam Nuxoll, how he spent most of his time, he responded, 'Making PowerPoint slides.' When pressed, he said he was serious."

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

"General Mattis, save the U.S. military. Ban PowerPoint." The Week. January 17, 2017