Be careful what you wish. That old aphorism was a huge favorite of one of my bosses, and he used to repeat it time and again. The current woes of the airline industry bring it to mind. You may recall that, a mere decade ago, many airlines were complaining that they couldn't handle the volume of traffic back then. Now they have their wish. Demand has cratered, and many carriers have been pushed to the wall financially. Current news reports indicate that air traffic is relatively weak this Thanksgiving season, as people choose either to drive or to stay home.

How have the airlines responded to falling demand? By raising prices, including nuisance fees, a sure-fire recipe for scaring off yet more customers. They are reinforcing a vicious circle, which, for some of the weakest carriers, appears to be a death spiral. If you are involved in making or approving pricing decisions, be careful not to respond to weak demand by killing it off.

One of the traditional symbols of Thanksgiving is the cornucopia, or horn of plenty. This gets me thinking about Critical Few Objectives, a.k.a. CFOs. Too many managers, especially senior executives, do a terrible job of keeping such lists of objectives focused and short. Instead, they have an annoying tendency to add objectives during the year without deleting any. The result is chaos.

When I was a departmental controller, the head of this group attended a weekly staff meeting hosted by her boss. Without fail, each time she'd return breathless, telling me that I had to add at least two more items to our group's CFOs. I'd then ask the same tough question each week: "OK, what comes off the list?" Stunned silence would ensue.

My stock response? "When everything's a priority, nothing is." Indeed. When a list of the "critical few" has metastasized into a 100-item blob, it is beyond comprehension and control. Actually, it never quite got that bad, but without my constant badgering (which was not entirely appreciated, as you might guess), it very well might have.

If you ever become a controller with chief of staff responsibilities attached, beware of unfocused bosses thus prone to mission creep. Attempting to rein them in may be difficult and frustrating, but letting them add indiscriminately to CFOs is a recipe for disaster down the road. This is a big, yet rarely commented-upon, problem in the corporate world.

As a financial professional, you always have to be concerned about possible unforeseen consequences of your actions and initiatives. We've already delved into how improperly-designed incentive systems unexpectedly can promote dysfunctional behaviors. Likewise, risk managers need to worry about whether risk mitigation initiatives, like the construction of safety nets to shield individuals or organizations from catastrophic events, actually promote excessive risk taking.

Curiously enough, the Thanksgiving holiday brings this to mind. How's that? Well, Thanksgiving is notable (or notorious) for its association with football. Recently, there's been a buzz in the media about the prevalence and long-term effects of head injuries in the sport, which appear to be growing despite advances in the protective qualities of football helmets. What to do?

A radical idea appeared earlier this month in a Wall Street Journal article. Since better helmets may be encouraging more dangerous play, some outside-the-box thinkers wonder if American football actually would be less dangerous if there were no helmets. They point to rugby and Australian rules football, both similarly hard-hitting games, but games in which the unhelmeted, unpadded players suffer far fewer serious head injuries. A similar dynamic has afflicted hockey. Over the past three decades, after helmets became mandatory in the pro game, and face protection in the collegiate game, blows to the head have become much more common.

According to a brief blurb in the 11/25 WSJ, the idea that football helmets may be as much a problem as a solution is gaining momentum among mainstream observers, most notably a panel headed by former coach and broadcaster John Madden. This group may recommend that helmets be banned from practices, in hopes that players thus will learn to refrain from inflicting or absorbing even the slightest blow to the head. Also, the panel is considering whether the face guards attached to the helmets used in games should be scaled back in size or eliminated completely.

Something to ponder while viewing the pigskin madness today (or not). Happy Thanksgiving.

If you have a small business, plan to start one, or plan to work in the financial function for one, you may want to read an article in the November 16 issue of Forbes magazine entitled "Is Your Bank Account Safe?" Its sobering subtitle: "If hackers get into a commercial account, you're out the money."

According to the article, federal law places the onus on the banks to protect individual accounts from losses due to hackers. This is of a piece with the well-known $50 dollar limitation on fraudulent charges to a credit card number. However, there is no such legally-mandated protection for business or commercial accounts. Most small business people are unaware of this, and many thus commingle personal and business funds in the same accounts. This can be a very costly mistake, as the article illustrates through an actual case.

Lesson one: never commingle personal and business funds in this fashion. Lesson two: before opening a business or commercial account, conduct detailed due diligence into various banks' policies on protecting such accounts from fraud, and on your possible financial exposure with each. When your business opens an account, be sure to get these policies in writing. Better yet, get legal advice on your ability to hold the bank to its end of the bargain.

Yes, many businesses are shrinking and downsizing. Meanwhile, some are employing shrinks, in the sense of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, to observe the dynamics of individual and group behavior, with an eye towards improving their organizations. This is yet another example of how psychology and related fields are applicable in business and finance.

Years ago, as an undergraduate, I took a course in organizational decision making that was offered by the sociology department. Many of the insights offered in that course appear to be of a piece with what organizational psychoanalysts are doing.

Financial Times columnist Michael Skapinker offers his own take on why former CEOs such as Jon Corzine generally fail as politicians. Among his observations in the 11/10 issue:

• CEOs are not used to being questioned or shouted down. Thus, they often look dazed and confused when they are.
• Many CEOs are poor speakers who use PowerPoint slides as a crutch. Skapinker notes that even The New York Times has cited Corzine for confused syntax and mumbling.
• Civil servants typically are difficult, if not impossible, to fire. This gives the ex-CEO decidedly less leverage than he or she had over employees back in the private sector.
• Additionally, since government does not go out of business, many civil servants see no urgency in changing their work habits, especially if it involves working harder.

Still, ex-CEOs Carly Fiorina (late of Hewlett-Packard) and Meg Whitman (late of eBay) seem poised to run for U.S. Senator from California and governor of the same state, respectively.

If the Church of England doesn't have enough problems these days, its clergy retirement plan reports that assets equal only 57% of its actuarially-determined liabilities. The annual payout of benefits is running at 1.6% of assets. Projections are that young clergy in their 30s stand to receive pensions that will be less than half what current retirees get. Ouch.

What happened? According to the 11/3 Financial Times, the pension fund's advisors decided to go 100% into equities right around the time that the FTSE 100 index hit its all-time high in 1999. Bad prophets, no profits, if you will. By contrast, according to the article, the typical pension fund in the U.K. has just a bit over 50% of its assets in equities, and many are reducing their exposure.

The Church of England took another big financial hit in the early 1990s when a major British investment company that managed a large portion of the Church's holdings went bust. The resulting cutbacks were severe, and last to this day. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury's diplomatic mission to the Vatican, called the Anglican Centre in Rome, became responsible for its own fundraising. It is now the only embassy funded through direct private donations, and its director is the only ambassador with fundraising in his job description.

When supposedly sleepy or conservative organizations become overly risk-loving, take that as an another indicator of a financial bubble on the verge of bursting.

A bit over a decade ago, I was asked by the president of a nonprofit to serve on a special financial advisory committee that he was forming. We already knew each other, through my support of that organization.

The members of that committee were drawn principally from the financial services industry, and it soon became apparent that the president had convened us mainly, if not exclusively, to develop creative fundraising ideas and to spearhead the organization's next capital campaign. By capital campaign, I mean a special multi-year fundraising effort aimed at augmenting the organization's endowment, rather than funding its current operating budget.

From the word go, I proved to be out of step with both the president and the other members of the committee. For one, I was the only person asking questions about the operating budget and seeking ways to improve operational efficiency. For another, I questioned the ethics of launching a new capital campaign immediately after closing another. Donations had been solicited for the previous campaign with the promise that it was to be the last push of its kind for decades to come. Moreover, that campaign had netted significantly more than its stated goal.

I was not surprised when the president did not ask me to continue when my term expired. Despite my continued strong financial support of the organization, his ire at my independence was still palpable, and he eventually succeeded in alienating me from this organization.

Lesson: if you are recruited as an unpaid advisor to a nonprofit, be sure you understand what level of independent thought will be welcome from you. If you are being brought on board to advance an insider's predetermined agenda, be sure you know what it is and be sure that you agree with it.

The centenary of late management theorist Peter Drucker's birth is being marked in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review. Meanwhile, the recent passing of the man to whom Drucker acknowledged a great debt is getting a modest amount of notice. Longtime Wharton management professor Russell Ackoff died October 29 at age 90, and was the subject of Stefan Stern's "On management" column in the 11/10 Financial Times and of the "Remembrances" feature in the 11/11 Wall Street Journal.

Both articles offers several incisive observations from Ackoff, a sampling being:

• The most dysfunctional organizations are those that are the most efficient at doing counterproductive things.
• "Business schools are high security prisons of the mind."
• The most creative organizations are those most welcoming towards nonconformist employees.
• The less you expect of employees, the less you get from them.
• "Complex problems do not have simple solutions."

The WSJ obituary goes into Ackoff's extensive consulting work for major corporations. He advised GM in the development of the OnStar navigation system. Using computer modeling, a revolutionary approach in 1960, he helped Anheuser-Busch design and implement an aggressive expansion strategy that turned it from a purely regional brand with 7% national market share in 1960 to the dominant national brand with a 40% share by 1990.

According to the WSJ piece, Ackoff credited his undergraduate studies in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania with helping him develop a holistic approach to organizations and systems. I never studied under Ackoff during my Wharton days, but a colleague of mine at AT&T did during the 1970s, and frequently spoke of this experience glowingly.

Providing care for elderly and infirm parents places real constraints on career choices and opportunities open to their children. This is a topic covered in detail in an excellent article, "Caring for an Ill Parent Even as Your Career Calls," in the 11/3 Wall Street Journal.

The article focuses on how these responsibilities limit a caregiver's ability to accept an attractive new position. However, it also offers several case studies about people who were able to negotiate special relocation packages that included their parents. Lesson: if the company values your services highly enough, and if the opportunity is attractive enough for you, don't hesitate to ask for such special consideration.