Being a Catalog CEO is Hazardous Duty
CEOs can be dismissed for a variety of reasons, of course. The most common one is a company’s poor financial performance. While in the past a board of directors may have been more content to ride out a downturn in profitability, these days boards increasingly demand immediate results. Environmental factors certainly set the baseline of performance, but they’re largely outside management’s control. Should the CEO be held accountable for these external influences, too? Must the CEO control all the profit drivers of the business, no matter how external or market determined they are?
Hamilton Davison has been the President & Executive Director of the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) since its founding in April 2007. Prior to this, he consulted for an educational services start-up, created a specialty card and gift retail chain and grew it to more than 150 stores, was CEO of the oldest and third-largest greeting card publisher and manufacturer, and started an oil and gas exploration business. Mr. Davison’s involvement in postal affairs started in 1992 with his service on the Greeting Card Association’s postal affairs committee. He became chair and directed the litigation and witness team charged with protecting the GCA subclass against virtually every other mailer, helping bring his association from its nadir (losing a rate case appeal at the Supreme Court) to an established force in postal policy that was routinely consulted on all important postal policy issues. He championed and sold the Forever Stamp to many including proposing it to the Chairman of the Board of Governors.
