Long ago, a buddy told me I lacked chutz-pah. There was no denying it. Yet even as I began marching down the far slope of middle age, I never relinquished dreams of self-improve-ment. A good thing, because the other day I stumbled upon the perfect role model to help boost my chutzpah quotient. He is Thomas Usher. If the name rings no bell, it may be only that he works far from such centers of nerviness as Wall Street, Hollywood, or Silicon Valley. Usher is ceo of usx, the Pittsburgh parent of U.S. Steel and Marathon Oil. He aims by yearend to recast the steel and oil units as sepa-rate, independent companies. Share-holders are tentatively set to vote on the plan on Oct. 16. usx declined to havernUsher or his fellow direc-tors go over it with me. Luckily, a preliminary proxy statement gives plenty of details, enough for me to have been able to distill these Seven Habits of Truly Shameless People:.
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