It’s one thing to talk about the value of ESG, and another to make it part of how you do business. It’s the latter that you’ll be judged on.    As Cynthia Dow of Russell Reynolds told participants at the recent Vanguard Forum for General Counsels, regardless of promises, “the thing that external sta...

Crises come to even the best run organizations, and every leader — whether in management or on the board — needs to know how to react.    At the recent Vanguard Forum for General Counsels, we asked participants what they’d do in the fictional case of a beauty company facing a crisis. The company, th...

Now that we know vaccine mandates don’t lead to mass resignations, many more employers are taking the plunge. But there are still better and worse ways to do it, and there’s still a risk of alienating large numbers of employees, and driving some away.   John Moore, the CEO of Atria Senior Living, de...

ESG isn’t new, but for years it seemed more like a laudable goal than a business imperative. That’s obviously changing, and the mounting pressure to demonstrate ESG bona fides is pushing leaders to broaden their definition of success.   Brent Wood, the CFO of EastGroup Properties, ran into this pres...

Businesses and government leaders have been fighting vaccine hesitancy in a lot of ways these last few months, with varying degrees of success. Even as mandates have become more popular and shown promising results, the marketing challenge has remained:   How do you persuade as many people as possibl...

Like any move worth making, joining a board involves challenges and risks.   One of the big challenges, as Ken Banta pointed out in a recent conversation with Mark A. Pfister, is in how you present yourself, particularly when you’re coming from the C-suite.   Being a board member, or a board applica...

Most of us have felt frustration and anxiety this summer, as the early success of the vaccine rollout gave way to widespread hesitancy and the rise of new variants.   When Ken Banta asked Kristi Sorbello Frank and Viq Pervaaz about leading through this period, they agreed: it’s crucial for bosses to...

Joseph LaRosa has thought a lot lately about both leading and lawyering under pressure.    Joe is General Counsel of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which has been going full-bore for more than a year as it developed, tested and sought approval for its now-famous antibody cocktail for treating COVID.   H...

A few weeks back, we shared ideas for navigating the minefield of vaccine policy from Art Caplan, one of the country’s leading bioethicists. Art had valuable advice on countering misinformation and recognizing your power to influence behavior, among other things.   But on an issue like this, leaders...

In early August, Ken Banta launched the Vanguard Vaccination Project in partnership with Glenna Brooks and Sherry Fox of Global Vaccination Advisors. Ken, Glenna and Sherry leveraged their leadership expertise — and their skills at asking the right questions of other experts — to produce a tool kit ...