What Determines a Company's Performance? Shape of the CEO's Face! All a matter of how wide your head is!

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What Determines a Company's Performance? Shape of the CEO's Face!

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2011) — Believe it or not, one thing that predicts how well a CEO's company performs is -- the width of the CEO's face! CEOs with wider faces have better-performing companies than CEOs with long faces. That's the conclusion of a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

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Elaine M. Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her colleagues study how top management teams work. But they have to do it in indirect ways. "CEOs and top executives don't typically have time to talk with researchers or take batteries of tests," she says. "Our research has primarily been at a distance." They've analyzed the content of letters to shareholders and looked at things like how a CEO's educational or personal background affects how well his or her company does. Wong and her colleagues, Margaret E. Ormiston of London Business School and Michael P. Haselhuhn of UWM, wanted to look at another aspect of CEOs – their faces.



Looking at faces isn't as crazy as it might sound. Several studies have shown that the ratio of face width to face height is correlated with aggression. Hockey players with wider faces spend more time in the penalty box for fighting. Men with higher facial width are seen as less trustworthy and they feel more powerful.

"Most of these are seen as negative things, but power can have some positive effects," Wong says. People who feel powerful tend to look at the big picture rather than focusing on small details and are also better at staying on task. She and her colleagues thought that feeling of power might also be correlated with a company's financial performance.

Wong and her colleagues based their analyses on photos of 55 male CEOs of publicly-traded Fortune 500 organizations. They only used men because this relationship between face shape and behavior has only been found to apply to men; it's thought to have something to do with testosterone levels. They also gathered information on the companies' financial performance and analyzed shareholder letters to get a sense of the kind of thinking that goes on at those companies.

CEOs with a wider face, relative to the face's height, had much better firm financial performance than CEOs who had narrower faces. "In our sample, the CEOs with the higher facial ratios actually achieved significantly greater firm financial performance than CEOs with the lower facial ratios," Wong says.

Don't run out and invest in wide-faced CEOs' companies, though. Wong and her colleagues also found that the way the top management team thinks, as reflected in their writings, can get in the way of this effect. Teams that take a simplistic view of the world, in which everything is black and white, are thought to be more deferential to authority; in these companies, the CEO's face shape is more important. It's less important in companies where the top managers see the world more in shades of gray.

Provided by Association for Psychological Science (news : web)

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Post-Jobs Apple: New research shows Cook will do fine

Performance as CEO all a matter of how wide your head is

By Brid-Aine Parnell •

Forget about your Ivy League/Oxbridge/Harvard business school education, your connections or how many millions in personal funds you can plough into the business: the one thing you really need as a CEO is a big face, at least according to a new study to be published in journal Psychological Science.

Elaine M Wong of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her colleagues analysed photos of 55 male CEOs of publicly-traded Fortune 500 organisations and found that chiefs with a wider face, relative to face height, had much better firm financial performance that those with narrower faces. (And if you're wondering why this only applies to male CEOs, it is because the whole fat-face thing only works with men – apparently it has something to do with testosterone levels.)

According to Wong and her team, launching this study wasn't completely out of left field, because previous studies had shown big-featured guys were more prone to aggression, seen as less trustworthy and felt more powerful – and they thought these attributes could be a winning combination for CEOs.

Good ratios: Rory Read,
CEO of AMD

"Most of these are seen as negative things, but power can have some positive effects," she said.

Obviously, the Reg couldn't help a little completely unscientific application of these conclusions considering the two new CEOs in the techie stable: Tim Cook at Apple and Rory Read at AMD.

AMD is looking good with Read, since although he's not really got a big face, he hasn't really got a very long face either, so the width-height ratio is probably good.

But Cook is definitely sporting some height there and with those slimly-defined cheekbones, could Apple be in trouble? But no wait, he's practically Jobs' face twin, they're both rocking that lengthy angular look, and Jobs seemed to do OK. Could it be that the concept is not infallible?

Steve jobs (left) and Tim Cook. Separated at birth?

Well, actually, it could. Wong's team found that the way top management felt could interfere with the effect of the head honcho's huge countenance. Teams that took a simplistic view of the world, in which everything is black and white, are thought to be more deferential to authority, so the CEO's face-shape-mojo worked. Big heads are less important in companies where the top managers see the world in shades of grey. ®

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Mother of all scams - Many fall for Bukit Aman scam, Syndicates clone caller IDs of enforcement agencies

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Many fall for Bukit Aman scam

By AUSTIN CAMOENS austin@thestar.com.my 24/8/11

PETALING JAYA: We have heard of the Nigerian 419 scam, the AL-Globo lottery scam, but the Bukit Aman scam must surely be the mother of all scams.
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A syndicate posing as police officers from Bukit Aman has been ripping off unsuspecting victims of hundreds of thousands of ringgit by claiming that they are being investigated for alleged money laundering.

Their latest victim is an elderly woman who lost about RM260,000.

Relating the ordeal, the woman who only wanted to be known as Margeret, in her 60s, said she received a phone call on Aug 18 from a man claiming to be a police inspector from Bukit Aman.

She said the “officer” told her that she was being investigated by the Hong Kong police over dealings with two drug dealers there.

“The officer told me that if I did not cooperate fully with police investigations, I would be extradited to Hong Kong to face charges for the offence,” she told The Star yesterday.

Margeret said the officer then passed to her the number of a senior police investigator in Hong Kong to verify the matter.

“I called the number given and a man claiming to be a police officer warned me that I was being investigated together with 28 other people for alleged dealings with drug dealers there,” she said, adding that the man told her to cooperate fully with the police here.

She said she then received another call from a senior police inspector in Bukit Aman who asked her to transfer all her money into an account provided by them.

“They said this was to help them verify that the funds were not linked to drug dealers in Hong Kong,” she said, adding that she transferred a total of RM260,000 from five separate banks to the police here.

Margeret said the officer told her to transfer any additional funds she had to facilitate police investigations failing which she would be arrested.

“I told them that I had an additional RM128,000 in a fixed deposit account in Temerloh, but I could not withdraw the money until the next day.”

Fearing something was amiss, she lodged a police report with the Mentakab police.

Federal Commercial Crimes Investigations Department (CCID) deputy director Deputy Comm Datuk Tajuddin Md Isa said police were investigating the case and appealed to the public to contact Bukit Aman to verify the calls.

 Syndicates clone caller IDs of enforcement agencies

By AUSTIN CAMOENS and RASHITA A. HAMID newsdesk@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Syndicates are using special technology to dupe unsuspecting victims into believing they are being called by real law enforcement agencies.

The Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is used to replicate phone numbers of the police, Bank Negara and other government agencies.

“The victims do not know they are being duped as the caller ID is identical to the real number of the relevant authority,” Federal head of CyberSecurity and Multimedia Investigation Division Asst Comm Mohd Kamaruddin Md Din told The Star, referring to reports on the Bukit Aman scam.

VoIP is a family of technologies, communication protocols and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet.

The modus operandi of the syndicate involved in the Bukit Aman scam was to tell victims that they were being investigated by Hong Kong police for money-laundering activities.

“The syndicate then tells the victims that they must transfer all their savings into an account which is provided by the syndicate in order to verify that the funds are not linked to any cases,” ACP Kamaruddin said, adding that victims were told the money would be transferred back to their accounts once Bank Negara had completed investigations.

He said there had been 76 such cases reported nationwide amounting to losses of more than RM3.05mil between January and June this year.

ACP Kamaruddin advised the public to immediately contact the relevant authorities if they received such calls.

He said there had been a total of 367 cases involving bogus police, bank and government officials between January and June this year, resulting in losses of more than RM10mil.

“Last year, there was a total of 996 cases amounting to about RM17.4mil in losses,” he said, adding that in most cases the money could not be retrieved as the syndicates operated from outside the country.

Ex-colonizers aid Libyan Rebels Assault on Tripoli 'planned weeks ago';No easy transition, rebuilding after Gaddafi

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Assault on Tripoli 'planned weeks ago'

Details emerge of rebel and Nato plans to oust Gaddafi, involving bombing, sleeper cells and special forces squads
By Richard Norton-Taylor and Dominic Rushe

'Nato played a big role in liberating Tripoli.' Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
 
Details of the rebel uprising in Tripoli are emerging, showing weeks of careful planning by rebels and their international allies before they seized the Libyan capital.

Rebel leaders had been hoping that the people of Tripoli would rise up against Muammar Gaddafi, but after a bloody crackdown crushed local opposition they began planning their own revolt.
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British military and civilian advisers, including special forces troops, along with those from France, Italy and Qatar, have spent months with rebel fighters, giving them key, up-to-date intelligence and watching out for any al-Qaida elements trying to infiltrate the rebellion.

More details emerged yesterday of how Nato forces helped Libyan rebels storm Tripoli. "Honestly, Nato played a very big role in liberating Tripoli. They bombed all the main locations that we couldn't handle with our light weapons," said Fadlallah Haroun, a military spokesman who helped organise the operation, according to the Associated Press.

Prior to the attack, rebels smuggled weapons into Tripoli and stashed them in safe houses. Local revolutionaries were told that protests would begin after the Ramadan evening prayers on 20 August, a day that coincidentally marks the anniversary of the prophet Muhammad's liberation of Mecca.

Rebels organised a flotilla of boats from the town of Misrata in an operation dubbed Mermaid Dawn. Tripoli's nickname in Libya is mermaid or "bride of the sea". As sleeper cells rose up and rebel soldiers advanced on the city, Nato launched targeted bombings – methodical strikes on Gaddafi's crucial communications facilities and weapons caches.

An increasing number of American hunter-killer drones provided round-the-clock surveillance.

Covert special forces teams from Qatar, France, Britain and some east European states provided critical assistance, such as logisticians, forward air controllers for the rebel army, as well as damage-assessment analysts and other experts, a diplomat at Nato's HQ in Brussels told AP.



Foreign military advisers on the ground provided real-time intelligence to the rebels, enabling them to maximise their limited firepower against the enemy.

To boost morale, US officials passed along snippets of intercepted telephone conversations in which Libyan commanders complained about shortages of food, water and ammunition, the New York Times reported. US officials told the paper that the rebel seizure of the oil refinery at Zawiya last week may have been the campaign's real turning point, cutting off Tripoli's fuel supplies.

As the regime collapsed, Gaddafi's aides called several Obama administration officials, including the American ambassador, Gene Cretz, and Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state to try to broker a truce, according to the Times. Officials said the calls were not taken seriously.

As rebel forces broke through the frontlines and approached Tripoli, locals were inspired to join them. The surge also forced government troops into the open, allowing allied warplanes to strike.

Gaddafi's forces attempted to hold off the rebels on Sunday by trying to outflank the rebels and recapture Zawiya. But Nato warplanes bombed the convoy before it could reach the city as part of a series of attacks on Gaddafi's forces, including bombing raids on bunkers set up in civilian buildings in Tripoli in an effort to ward off allied attacks.

The western advisers are expected to remain in Libya, advising on how to maintain law and order on the streets, and on civil administration, following Gaddafi's downfall. They have learned the lessons of Iraq, when the US got rid of all prominent officials who had been members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party and dissolved the Iraqi army and security forces.

The role of Nato is likely to continue to be significant. Its work could include humanitarian aid and logistical support for the UN. "The biggest caveat was 'Don't consider anything that would involve Nato forces on the ground'," said an official.

The North Atlantic Council, Nato's decision-making body, had agreed that any role for Nato had to "satisfy the criteria of a demonstrable need, a sound legal basis and wide regional support", said Nato spokeswoman Oana Lungescu.

Nato will continue to deploy strike aircraft, spy planes and unmanned drones over Libya but will not put any troops on the ground to help the transitional council maintain law and order, alliance officials made clear last night.

If any international organisation were to take on the task of a stabilisation force, it would be the UN, they said. "It is a classic case for blue helmets," said one official.

The North Atlantic Council has set out "political guidelines" for military planners who are now drawing up options. "Nato will help the UN if asked," said an official.There are many Nato countries that could work on the ground, given the extensive experience of post-conflict stabilisation in the Balkans. No Nato government official wants to compare Libya with Iraq or Afghanistan.

Nato aircraft flew 20,121 sorties, including 7,587 strike sorties, over the past five months, the alliance said yesterday.

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No easy transition, rebuilding as Libya braces for new era after Gaddafi

(Xinhua)

A picture of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi lies in trash as a Libyan stands guard outside the airport in Tripoli on August 24, 2011. (Xinhua/AFP)
CAIRO, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Despite fierce fighting between Muammar Gaddafi's forces and rebels in some areas of capital Tripoli and the unknown whereabouts of Gaddafi, Libya is set to brace for a new era after the rebels have claimed control of most of the country with the help of NATO's military operations.

The opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) is preparing to move its headquarters from Benghazi to Tripoli. More countries have recognized the legitimacy of the NTC and offered to help rebuild the war-shattered, oil-rich country.

It is a fact that the Gaddafi leadership has substantially crumbled, although the battle in Libya has not been completely over.

Analysts say Libya faces a tough road ahead in its political transition and reconstruction. Among the top challenges are the restoration of stability and power transition. Some even fear the post-war Libya may become another Iraq or Somalia.

STABILITY

Libya's rebels have offered a reward of two million Libyan dinars (about 1.3 million U.S. dollars) for anyone who turns in Gaddafi. The opposition says they will bring them to justice if they are captured alive.

On Wednesday, heavy fighting continued in some areas of the capital between Gaddafi loyalists and the rebels, While Gaddafi vowed death or victory in the fight against the "aggression."

Definitely, fleeing Gaddafi will not give up easily. No one could predict what he will do next amid fears of the possible use of chemical weapons. The rebels believe the final victory relied on the capture or killing of Gaddafi. Sirte remains under control of Gaddafi's troops. Thus concerns arise as to how long the battle will last between Gaddafi and the rebels.

These are key factors to affect the opposition's urgent agendas such as power transition and restoration of normalcy for citizens' life.

"Speaking about the future of Libya after Gaddafi, it is very difficult to predict any scenarios of situation," Akrm Houssam, researcher with the Cairo-based National Center of Middle East Studies in Egypt, told Xinhua.

"But what I can assure is we would not see any kind of stability or peace in Libya after Gaddafi, because I think the militia belonging to Gaddafi will continue some kind of civil war with the rebels. We will see another kind of conflict between the two fronts, " said Houssam.

"Some tribes supporting Gaddafi still refuse what the rebels do. I believe they will continue their resistance," he said. The members of these tribes inside Gaddafi's army may return to their tribes and form some small militia.

He warned of a repetition in Libya of what we had happened in Iraq after the disbanding of Saddam Hussein's troops after the 2003 war. Remnants of Saddam's army are believed to be behind some terrorist attacks leading to the fragile security situation of Iraq.

To make pro-Gaddafi tribes part of a new political process and include government troops into the new army to be built will help stabilize the situation, according to analysts.

But if pro-Gaddafi figures are punished, instability will prevail for some time, they predict.

"The change of a regime and society will not be a stable process. It is normal that more conflicts will come," said Hoda Regheb, professor of political science at Cairo-based Misr International University, in an interview with Xinhua.

One of the biggest challenges for the new government will be how to overcome tribal conflicts, said Regheb. She said it was genius for Gaddafi to keep all the tribes under his power for decades.

As is the similar case with Tunisia and Egypt whose presidents were toppled by protests earlier this year, security vacuum poses another threat to post-Gaddafi Libya. In Egypt, the lack of security and a sharp increase of various crimes after the fall of ex-President Hosni Mubarak have affected the country's pillar tourism industry and citizens' daily life.

It is urgent to establish professional police forces to protect citizens in Libya, said Sayed Mustafa, professor of political science at Cairo University, in an interview with Xinhua.

Foreign ministers of the Cairo-based Arab League countries stressed Wednesday the necessity to speed up actions for the stability, security and peace in Libya. In a statement, the ministers called on all the Libyan powers to adhere to tolerance and avoid revenge.

Meanwhile, the NATO has said it would not send ground troops to post-Gaddafi Libya. Both the NTC and the Libyan people will be against the presence of foreign troops, said Mustafa.

TRANSITION AND REBUILDING

The rebel NTC chairman Abdel Jalil has said the country would have legislative and presidential elections in eight months. A democratic government and a just constitution will be established. To ensure a smooth transition, the NTC needs to overcome a number of political and social challenges.

"We have now a fully destroyed state, a state without institutions, government, stability or peace. The transitional council will deal with these problems," said Houssam.

"Especially, the transitional council is a group of some contradictory fronts. Whether the transitional council will remain united is the question, " he added.

Houssam wonders how the transitional council deals with al- Qaida which challenges Libya. Al-Qaida members united with others to overthrow the Gaddafi leadership. But after Gaddafi leaves, it will be hard for them to remain united on how to rule the nation, he said.

Libya is a typical tribal society. "To have a centralized government is very difficult," said Regheb. She warns of further collapse of the country if a federal government is formed.

Analysts hold that a federal state is possible for Libya. But the rights of oil will be bargained as the known oil reserves are located in certain areas, said Shady Abdel, another political analyst in Middle East studies. In Iraq, the regional or central governments have been negotiating the rights to export oil or make oil deals.

"Up till now, there has been no much agreement among Libya powers as to the political system, whether it is parliamentary or presidential, federal or not federal," Adel told Xinhua.

A key oil producer in Africa, the restoration of oil production will be vital to the rebuilding of the economy of the country with a population of around six million.

Western powers, European countries in particular, will pour more investment into the country, especially in the oil sector, say analysts, who believe the oil interests are the major reason behind the military intervention. So far, some Western powers have pledged aid to Libya.

Similar concerns are raised in this respect. The economic rebuilding needs stability. In Iraq, fragile security featuring frequent terrorist bomb attacks have hindered the pace of rebuilding eight years after the war.

If the political stability is achieved in Libya, economic rebuilding will be easier, said Adel.

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