Recent content from Lee Schafer
Schafer: Thrivent executives have hard conversations about race
It turns out that it's not elitist or corporatist to believe that businesses will do better if they find a way to include everybody. It's common sense.
Schafer: For Red Wing entrepreneur, 'make the world a better place' isn't an empty phrase
Susan Langer's start-up is called Live. Give. Save., but this is business, not philanthropy.
Schafer: Staying the same has made Minneapolis investment firm new
Traditional, even old-fashioned, precisely describes Minneapolis money manager Compass Capital Management. Yet it is also growing.
Schafer: 10 years later, financial crisis remains a puzzle
A commentary by two savvy economists shows something new and important to say about the financial crisis even 10 years later.
Schafer: Foxconn's economic impact study fails to show the math
What the people of Wisconsin need is a cost-benefit analysis to answer questions. What they got was Foxconn's economic impact study.
Schafer: Co-founder CEOs often need to step aside
Clay Collins' transition from co-founder and CEO to chairman of the board of the fast-growing Minneapolis company Leadpages could not have been managed any better.
Schafer: High income tax may aggravate Connecticut's budget problems
Connecticut's individual income tax collections have slid, recently coming in far below what had been forecast and lower than had been collected last year.
Schafer: Chaos in health care not scaring off investor
The latest healthcare and health insurance reform proposal collapsed in Washington this week, about when the Minneapolis health benefits company Gravie Inc. announced its latest…
Schafer: Sky-high pay packages have many searching for good explanations
It turned out to be a bad idea to look for research papers that explain why big companies routinely pay their top executives well into…
Schafer: St. Paul Ford plant site rhetoric exaggerates the risks
A decision about the master plan is still a long way off, but at least we know one thing now: Opponents are willing to talk nonsense about it.
Schafer: Business wisdom is seldom truly new
Another one of life's dreams ended, that of closing a career by writing a terrific management book.
Schafer: Wage hike will reshape dining experiences in Minneapolis
With Minneapolis charging ahead with a $15 per hour minimum wage last week, Minneapolis restaurant owners are already well down the road to figuring out a new model for the table service segment of the local industry.
Schafer: Minnesota's Lake County looks for exit on broadband project
One of the biggest projects to bring broadband to rural areas of Minnesota has reached a crossroads.
Schafer: Minneapolis small business owners would lose under $15 minimum wage
What's really missing from the conversation about a higher city-mandated minimum wage, one mayoral hopeful said, is a clear understanding of who it is that will be paying more.
Schafer: With Whole Foods deal, Amazon doing what it set out to do
The online retailer's ambitions should be no surprise to its competitors, including Target.
Schafer: Many in Minnesota are learning the hard way about investing in RUSNs
There’s a kind of investment available in the market called a renewable, unsecured subordinated note. When the pros talk about them it sounds like “Russians,”…
Schafer: How you can tell if a hand is in the till
The right approach for management is not to completely give up on trusting employees. Instead it's to trust and verify.
Schafer: Bubble spotters are mythical creatures, and the Fed can't pop them either
Prices for houses are generally back to where they were during the housing bubble that preceded the financial crisis a decade ago. What’s worse, flipping…
Schafer: Comedian had wiser words for graduates than Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, is fabulously wealthy and successful, but also not quite educated.
Schafer: Tricky valuations at center of Lunds case
The district judge in Minneapolis who ruled that Kim Lund was owed $45.2 million by Lunds & Byerlys for her share of this well-known grocery…
Schafer: Does General Mills need to get out of the yogurt business?
General Mills sales haven't been growing, and one big reason is slipping sales in the U.S. yogurt business.
Schafer: Buffalo Wild Wings CEO deserved a better send-off
A sharply fought shareholder contest like the one that came to a head Friday at Buffalo Wild Wings is so rare it can be difficult…
Schafer: Social trends portend dire future for brick and mortar
There's so much bad news about retail that it's becoming ho-hum. But few of the articles even hint at a cyclical slump to explain what we're seeing. It's now clear it's not cyclical.
Schafer: Employee ownership could be answer to exit of baby boomer owners
The deal-making crowd is understandably excited about the fees to be earned in helping baby boomers sell their businesses on their way into retirement. None…
Schafer: Ownership is more than owning shares — just ask Buffalo Wild Wings
The campaign over board seats and control of Buffalo Wild Wings is a good illustration.
Schafer: Ten K Solar's downfall reflects industry trends
One obvious conclusion — management must have run this company into the ground — doesn't seem at all fair.
Schafer: Polaris is thinking aggressively with Indian brand
Polaris Industries has made a big effort this year in a sport so obscure that even ESPN doesn’t televise it, sponsoring a team in the…
Schafer: How to make better decisions every day
The wisdom presented at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School came from Kathleen Vohs.
Schafer: When robots do the work, is it time for a guaranteed income?
Last of an occasional series on the future of work. An experiment is underway in northern California to see what happens if every month people…
Schafer: Sloppiness brings down a champion of integrity
Getting taken to a golf tournament might be no big deal in a lot of industries, but founder Jeff Slocum always said his firm would be above that sort of thing.
Schafer: Brenton's fruitless quest for an engineer indicative of the tight workforce in robotics
Here's a company designing and building automation equipment to replace human labor with the big problem of not being able to hire enough human labor.
Schafer: Divesting should be about economics, not popularity or size
As a decision by Portland, Ore., shows, once support builds for getting rid of investments based on what someone thinks of the underlying business, it's not all that easy to decide where the line gets drawn.
Schafer: Twin Cities experts focus on keeping the customer satisfied
Minneapolis marketing consultant Dan Wallace thinks the Twin Cities might have a top "cluster" of thought leadership in managing a better customer experience. He makes a good point.
Ousted from his own start-up, entrepreneur turns setback into lessons for others
Entrepreneur Thompson Aderinkomi is best known for co-founding and then getting fired as CEO of a high-profile start-up company, RetraceHealth. Not that getting canned has…
Schafer: Twin Cities shopping centers need more than stores, as Maple Grove is finding out
If city councils like Maple Grove's aren't prepared to see retailing spaces get turned into something else, like a Portillo's hot dog restaurant, then they should expect to see a lot more empty space.
Schafer: Wells Fargo CEO didn't take 'run it like you own it' mantra to heart
Just about any great management practice can lead to terrible results if the implementation gets thoroughly bungled. Wells Fargo & Co. just proved that. A…
Schafer: Odds are long for retailers that file Chapter 11 bankruptcy
By the estimate of a Credit Suisse analyst, nearly 9,000 stores will close this year, many more than in the worst year of the Great Recession.
Boomers are discovering an often forgotten deadline on 401(k) distributions
The government wants people to start taking money out of their retirement accounts so they can tax them. And it set April 1 as the annual turning point for retirees.
Schafer: Fairview's new CEO sees perfection as the goal
A quick read through the background of any new CEO an organization recruits from the outside provides a pretty good indication of the direction the board thinks it needs to go.
Schafer: Minneapolis firm's Robot Fear Index shows little fear
So why publish an indicator of how much many of us fear the future with the technology of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, robotics and virtual reality?
Schafer: Why Surdyk's Sunday liquor sales stunt is assault on rule of law
Jim Surdyk's decision to open his liquor store in Minneapolis on a Sunday months before it was legal to do so was a far Âbigger act than just selling some wine and beer.
Schafer: Fun Is Good team serves up lessons with dose of humor
Emily Stuckenbruck, a 34-year-old college dean, will be in St. Paul next week to tell an audience how younger and older people can more easily…
Lee Schafer: Even 'experts' don't get GDP
No one should conclude that big trade surpluses or a shrinking trade deficit actually are what cause economic slowdowns. They aren't.
Ex-Target exec jumps into a tough situation at Uber
As Target's chief marketing officer, Jeff Jones stepped out with candid comments and advice during the company's rough patch in 2014. Now, as the new president of Uber Technologies, he's dealing with an even bigger corporate crisis.
Lee Schafer: Target's price-cut jargon is not fooling investors
The leaders of Target ought to at least consider ditching the use of the term price investment. Their institutional shareholders know exactly what this retail…
Schafer: R&D isn't dead, it's broken
No one should have been surprised when the Office of the Legislative Auditor found the Minnesota research-and-development tax credit to be a net drain on…
Schafer: Manufacturing job losses, yes, but gains for trained Minnesota workers
Here's one of the ironies in looking ahead at how the nature of work is going to change — manufacturing may actually be a bright spot.
Schafer: Creating jobs takes a lot of hard work
Not that long ago a chamber president like Matt Kramer of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce would join with just about everybody else…
Schafer: Lunds & Byerlys learning about the cost of equity amid sibling legal battle
The owners' capital in a family business only looks like it doesn't cost anything. That can be a tough case to make with owners.
Schafer: Housing bond pool in Minnesota evaporates
But the need for affordable housing in Minnesota hasn't.
Schafer: Automation tempers hope for new Iron Range mining jobs
The pro-mining coalition that is pushing the proposed PolyMet ÂMining project in northeastern Minnesota decided to get right to the point — by giving itself the name "Jobs for ÂMinnesotans."
Schafer: Jux Law Firm is a different breed of legal beagle
The Jux Law Firm put on a seminar this week that was anything but the usual law firm event. The topic was traditional enough, picking…
Along the trail, fortunes diverged for Polaris, Arctic Cat
Maybe it's been a long time since anyone's called Arctic Cat and Polaris Industries the Minnesota Twins, but it's not just a clichéd way to describe two local rivals.
Schafer: Some sellers don't buy the New York state of mind
A certain kind of East Coast deal guy can certainly alienate his clients.
Schafer: New tax plan could hobble Target, Best Buy
Big American companies are so good at sidestepping income taxes that many pay nowhere near the statutory rate of 35 percent. One notable exception is…
Schafer: Bill tailored for Xcel cuts PUC out of the process
Nobody needed a deep knowledge of regulatory law to understand a bill introduced at the Legislature that allows Xcel Energy go ahead with an $800…
Schafer: Congress starts complicated process of getting rid of the Affordable Care Act
Don’t feel bad if you can’t predict what’s going to happen to the employer-sponsored health insurance market now that the Affordable Care Act is on…
Schafer: Indian Motorcycle shows the power of a brand
So Indian Motorcycles are a big success after six years in the hands of Medina-based Polaris even as Victory goes out of business — and both were designed and built by the same company. So maybe what's turned out to be a die hard is the Indian brand itself.
Schafer: Rich and poor came together at Macy's
Macy's will still have hundreds of stores open, but its store base is contracting and there's no reason to think that will stop.
Lee Schafer: It's time to figure out your net worth
By now statements from banks and investment companies from the end of last year have arrived, making now a great time for the most useful…
Loup Ventures turns venture capital conventional thinking on its head
"DFJ invests in visionaries who create the future" is the way the venerable Silicon Valley venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson describes what it does,…
U.S. shale oil drillers leaner, meaner after surviving OPEC's ugly price war
The OPEC global oil cartel decided two years ago to put a big chunk of the U.S. shale oil industry out of business. If you…
Schafer: Jeremiah Program has found a way to expand nationally
Expanding outside the Twin Cities not easy for nonprofits.
Schafer: City-owned bank is possible, but it's probably not necessary
The city of Minneapolis is looking into the “possibility” of launching a city-owned bank. But, of course, it’s possible. So is opening a pet shop.…
Schafer: Stock deal brings unexpected cuts elsewhere for some Medtronic shareholders
As a general rule of thumb, an unexpected letter from the Social Security Administration won’t make you happy. That’s if you can even understand what…
Schafer: Health care players still consolidating
The election result of November means that there is a jump ball again in national health care policy, but the big health care players haven’t…
Schafer: In Cook County, simple pleasures suffer from a lack of help
Employers have tried just about every common-sense idea to get and keep people, leaning particularly hard on the option of importing them from abroad.
Schafer: Closing the deal was right move for Datalink
The data storage company Datalink agreed last month to be acquired by an Arizona company called Insight Enterprises for $11.25 per share in cash, about…
Schafer: HealthPartners positioned well for whatever may come
If health care executives had no idea how the market was going to evolve four years ago as federal health care reform kicked in, one of the smartest things to do is what Park Nicollet did, and that's merge with HealthPartners.
Schafer: Keep all that clutter and be thankful for what you have
Decluttering is the fashion, but the joys of living light look different to somebody who never had the money to accumulate a lot of nice things in the first place.
Schafer: 'Minneapolis Plan' would cut odds of a big bank bailout
After the Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms were put in place, the odds of another crisis and taxpayer bailout only slipped to 67 percent. That still seems pretty likely.
Schafer: Win by Cubs shows the value of soft skills
The Chicago Cubs ended a 108-year drought by winning the World Series earlier this month, at the same time giving a little boost to…
Lee Schafer: With Trump as president, it's difficult for businesses to feel at ease
The election of Donald Trump apparently means we should count on a lot more volatility and more uncertainty, too.
Schafer: Settlement doesn't mar fired Northern Oil executive's optimism
You have to admire the sunny attitude of Michael Reger, who was fired in August as CEO of Northern Oil and Gas and who just…
Lee Schafer: Concern about state putting tax dollars into Vikings stadium
Investing in an NFL stadium in downtown Minneapolis is starting to look a little like buying RCA stock in the summer of 1929, gold in 1980 or shares of Apple stock last May.
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