I suspect I’m not the only person with a list of pet peeves, but I am the only person with access to a full page in this otherwise excellent magazine on which to give vent to those peeves. So don’t say you haven’t been warned.


{1} There’s been a lot of talk and excitement and press, locally and nationally, about the burst of new buildings within the Twin Cities cultural community this past year or so. And rightly so, because the new or improved facilities for the Walker Art Center, the Guthrie Theater, the Children’s Theatre Company, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Minneapolis Central Library make up a cultural physical-plant expansion probably unequaled in any other city in America.

But what irritates me is that they were all designed by out-of-town architects. We have some outstanding architects living here and designing structures all over the world, but the decision makers for these local, high-profile projects apparently felt that bringing in “big names” would result in either more publicity and fundraising capability, or in a better building. We’ll never know for sure, but I’d be willing to bet we would have done as well—or better—using local talent. What a shame!


{2} College football is fun and exciting; it builds cohesiveness and spirit within the student body, and among alumni and the community, and it’s financially important to the university. What I don’t understand is the rationale for the “big name” coach. I had nothing personal against Glen Mason, the Gopher’s previous coach. I never even met him, and, of course, I wish the new coach, Tim Brewster, great success. But I just don’t understand the point of paying coaches vast sums for mediocre results. (Hey, it’s been 40 years since we won a Big Ten championship!)

I suppose this sounds ridiculous, but there are plenty of high school coaches around and they probably make $50,000 a year. If we had hired one of them—Eden Prairie’s Mike Grant, for example—maybe he wouldn’t do any better than Glen Mason, but one never knows! We’d save almost a million dollars a year in the process of finding out, and I’d bet the games would be just as exciting, and maybe more so.


{3} I just don’t understand the nonsense that Wall Street smarties have foisted on American business. So many companies are afraid to invest in ideas, procedures, technologies, and new concepts, or make bold moves that could pay big dividends in the future and strengthen the company’s long-term position. They’re afraid to do it because the professional investors and managers seem to care only about this quarter’s earnings. 

It’s so shortsighted, in terms of building and guiding a company toward greater stability, greater flexibility, and greater opportunity, to not take advantage of the creative vision of the CEO and his or her team. The standard argument in favor of gigantic CEO compensation packages is that the company needs to be competitive in the marketplace in order to attract the very best talent. But the very best talent seems to have its hands tied too often because of the Street’s apparent lack of understanding and acceptance of long-term investment.

The great advantage of privately owned companies is that they don’t have to kowtow to the demands of the too-often shortsighted, misguided investor community.


{4} Some sessions of the Minnesota Legislature are better and some are worse, but they all seem to end up with a rush to complete important business and pass major bills at the very end. Legislators are, for the most part, bright, sensible people. Why don’t the leaders of both parties get together at the start of the session, draw up a list of priorities, agree to deal with only those issues, and pass appropriate bills before discussing the less important issues? In our businesses and in our lives, we all try to deal with major issues first, but at the legislature, too often really important bills are left to the last. Easily fixable.