Dear Chairman

                
                
Introduction
IN 1966, WILLIAM SHLENSKY finally snapped. A long-suffering shareholder in a well-known public company, he had endured more than a decade of financial losses and noncompetitive performance. The company was a venerable institution, almost a century old and once the pride of all Chicago. But over the course of the previous thirty years, while its younger competitors harnessed technology to revolutionize the industry, the company hunkered down in its ivy-walled fortress. The president and CEO was one of Chicago’s most famous businessmen, but he was also a stubborn traditionalist. “Baseball is a daytime sport,” he insisted.1
Bill Shlensky’s father had given him two shares in the Chicago Cubs when he was fourteen years old. It was a cruel gift that was more than just a lifetime of fruitless sports fandom; it was a bitter lesson in corporate governance. Over the next fourteen years, the Cubs never finished in the top half of the National League standings. In fact, they placed either second to last or last in half of those years, and managed only one winning season.