• ALL BUSINESSES, BUT ESPECIALLY SMALL & FAMILY-RUN ORGANIZATIONS, ARE FACING THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE to moving-forward in over a century, requiring reset of strategy & values in the context of ‘Next Normal.’ To survive, Leaders need to “confront the reality of their competitive environment and the hidden barriers” that often torpedo even well-organized businesses, the most common being: (1) Unclear values and conflicting priorities to guide behavior – particularly with regard to resources allocation; (2) Conflicting understandings as to what strategies entail, typically evidenced by “meetings spent on information sharing & short-term operational details (aka ‘Death by PowerPoint’) rather than resolving constructive conflict, with real decisions getting made outside the room”; (3) Leaders “getting lost in operations details versus directing resolution of contesting views,” generally when they have aversion to confrontation; (4) Failure to focus on Leadership Development, by unwillingness to sacrifice high-potential managers for challenging new assignments & career paths which maintain & retain talent; (5) “Inadequate honest communication from lower levels to senior managers.” Let DCG guide your team, before your reality check bounces[HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW -6/22/20]
  • “SOCIETY IS LOSING THE BATTLE AGAINST DISINFORMATION ONLINE. With the rise of sophisticated hyper-realistic ‘deepflakes,’ there are people who now believe you can kill the Covid virus by blowing a hairdryer down your throat, or by drinking silver or bleach. You can see a direct connection between the nonsense online and people’s actions…and the scale at which the internet can be carpet-bombed with fake profiles is scary – the most outrageous, sensational, conspiratorial content is the most attractive…and the public is so gullible, so easy to manipulate, so fast to assume the worst in people we disagree with… Deepflakes are not a fundamentally new concept, just part of an evolving landscape of misinformation. The threat is not so much the day-to-day, low-level fake news, the conspiracies, lying, cheating, stealing. It’s going to be the one video two days before an election that goes viral… The stakes have never been higher for the country and the world.” [FUTURISM.COM – 6/25/20]
  • THE ‘WORLD HAPPINESS REPORT’ is compiled by researchers at Oxford and London School of Economics based on annual Gallup surveys conducted in 160 countries covering 99% of world population, and ranks the self-reports of how City Residents evaluate the “quality of their lives, based on which factors they feel matter most to themselves.” Some 4.2 billion people live in urban areas, comprising mostly “younger, more educated & liberal people, more likely to be in professional & service jobs, with higher incomes and living standards, and less likely to have kids,” projected to comprise 70% of global residents by 2050. The latest Rankings (https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/cities-and-happiness-a-global-ranking-and-analysis/), measuring how positively city-dwellers currently feel about their subjective well-being, found 17 of the 20 top-ranked cities in Scandinavia, Australia & New Zealand, and other three being Tel-Aviv, Dallas & Washington DC. The next dozen do include eight more American cities, in order: Houston, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, New York & Los Angeles.
  • THE CONTROVERSIAL NEW YORK TIMES ‘1619 PROJECT’ “propagates a popular narrative, which has taken hold among many in media, politics & education, to link the foundational origins of the American experiment not to the context of our 1776 Revolution but to 1619, the year that enslaved Angolans arrived on the shores of colonial Jamestown, Virginia. In this view, all of America’s current institutions, public attitudes, economics and social structures — and the alleged horrors and woes therein — are a result of slavery, including the dismal state of today’s prison system, traffic congestion, prevalence of obesity & diabetes, even for capitalism itself… But reality is that slavery practices existed on the African continent and were present among the indigenous people of America as well… America’s founders fully recognized that slavery was incompatible with the ideals of freedom, but understood that unifying the colonies in opposition to the British monarchy necessitated a compromise on slavery — which was, by that time, a central part of the economies of the five southernmost colonies. Thus, viewing America’s foundational impetus as solely a product of slavery lacks nuance and historical perspective.” [TOWNHALL.COM – 6/25/20]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:And the wisdom of Comedians on ‘Political Correctness’: https://biggeekdad.com/2020/06/the-wisdom-of-comedians/

    One-minute summary on the hypocrisy and absurdity of today’s chaos, from a bright teenager’s perspective:  https://twitter.com/TONYxTWO/status/1275051388431667200

      America has become a nation that has lost its collective mind!  Somehow it’s Un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America./ People who have never owned slaves should pay reparations to people who have never been slaves./  Inflammatory rhetoric is outrageous, but harassing conservatives is virtuous./ Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate must go through rigorous vetting, but illiterate Central-American gang-bangers who jump the fence are welcome in ‘sanctuary’ cities;/ $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for ‘free’ health care to illegal aliens is not;/  Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, but others not held responsible for their illegal actions today./ Criminals are catch-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it’s a violation of THEIR rights./ And pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us ‘racists’?!  [INTERNET ANON]