Shop Talk Podcast: Update from Honda's Todd Mittleman on Green Cars

We talked to Todd Mittleman of Honda last spring about Honda's environmentally-focused cars, the Civic GX natural gas vehicle and the FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle (which, at the time, had not yet been released).

Well, a lot has changed in a year. The FCX is now out, and that's the least of the news since then. People have reined in spending in many ways, not least of which is their utter reluctance to purchase a car from any manufacturer.

So how do green vehicles fit into Honda's strategy now? We brought Todd back for another discussion. Podcast file: todd-mittleman-mar-2009 (21:37).

Highlights:
0:25 Description of Civic GX and FCX Clarity
4:15 Positioning of "green" vehicles in current economic climate
8:20 Does the US government's support of alternate energy help the GX and Clarity?
10:45 Positioning of the new hybrid Insight versus the GX
14:17 More on the FCX Clarity
15:50 First customer feedback on the Clarity

(Photo: the Honda FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle)

Shop Talk Podcast #17: Sydney Finkelstein on "Think Again"

I recently finished "Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You" and it is my favorite business book of the year so far. Sydney Finkelstein and his co-authors, Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell, systematically dissect why we sometimes make and carry through terrible business decisions--whether it's a poor acquisition decision, an ill-fated product redesign, or even deciding to park our money with Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford. Even better, they let us know how to create structures that identify possibly faulty decisions in order to avoid them or, at minimum, monitor their outcomes carefully so bad ones can be reversed as quickly as possible.

Syd is a clear, engaging speaker, and was a delight to have on the podcast. Listen in for a 20-minute lesson on how we decide and how we can decide better. The podcast file is here.

Summary:

0:33 - Why studying decisions gone wrong is interesting and useful

1:05 - How our brain's evolution impacts sound decisionmaking

2:35 - Has the complexity of our businesses outpaced our brain's ability to keep up?

3:38 - Four red-flag conditions indicating possible faulty decisionmaking

8:03 - Decision-affecting attachments to people, ideas, things

9:20 - Important decisionmaking process safeguards

For more information, you can access a web site with more resources about "Think Again."