CEO Column

I receive Chief Executive, a quarterly magazine that addresses management and leadership issues for business leaders. The summer issue contains an interview with Chester Elton about he and Adrian Gostick’s book, Leading with Gratitude, which I found interesting and will comment on this month.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am the father of three daughters and grandfather of seven grandchildren. Watching grandchildren is different than raising children. However, there are some parallels between children and grandchildren. One is the call I hate to hear: “Pops, watch this.”

Last month I wrote about the Fourth of July, the sacrifices so many people have made to gain and keep our freedom, and the importance of the holiday other than BBQs and cookouts. This month I will continue with the Fourth of July theme but from the angle of BBQs, cookouts, and hamburgers.

By the time you read this the 4th of July will be on top of us. It is the most important and celebrated non-religious holiday in our country. Workers are off, grills are heated up, beaches are full, flags fly, and fireworks are shot. Celebrations go on all day and well into the night.

I spent my 13th summer with cousins in Cincinnati. It was my first time away from home and a great adventure. Also, my hometown, Corinth, Mississippi, was revamping its youth sports programs, and there was no baseball to keep me home that summer.

Twenty years ago, as electric cooperatives formed a national cooperative branding initiative that is now Touchstone Energy, extensive surveys and studies were performed to gauge people’s perceptions and values of electric service. I was surprised people assigned so little intrinsic value to a brand of electricity. The surveys indicated the only other product people associated so little value to product brand was common table salt (I always buy Morton’s, but I don’t know why).

This article was written the week after the failure of the Texas electric grid. Millions of customers had no power for days in freezing temperatures, and many that had power during the outage are now receiving power bills for thousands of dollars.

This month I offer a different format. None of this article is my content or opinion. The article is entirely composed of quotes from President Biden; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer; and Michael Shellenberger, a self-proclaimed environmental activist. President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Schumer should be familiar to you. Michael Shellenberger has been a

During the second and last Presidential Debate, President-Elect Joe Biden said if elected he would transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels. He pledged on the first day of his administration he “would sign a series of Executive Orders with unprecedented reach that go well beyond the Obama-Biden Administration platform and will put us on the right track on climate change.”

In September, The New York Times reported that President Xi Jinping sent a pointed message to the U.S. that China was tightening its climate targets to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.