• “THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF LEADERSHIP is managing the emotions that come with strong responsibilities, especially making tough calls and handling conflicts, often avoided because it’s easy to get stressed, take matters personally and react emotionally with defensiveness, outbursts or harsh emails.”  But opting to avoid those situations is usually a mistake, since maintaining employee Trust is a critical factor in worker motivation & retention, and their respect always dependent on behavior patterns & consistency. Workers can feel blindsided by behaviors like: ”(1) ‘Calling them out’ in front of peers; (2) Changing schedules/ job descriptions/ responsibilities without warnings; (3) Not correlating advancement or compensation with performance evaluations; (4) Appeasing them what they want versus need to hear, almost always viewed as ‘promise breaking’ – e.g. saying I’ll get back to you, but not doing so, or feigning agreement… Actions speak louder than words, and inconsistency or misalignment (like not enforcing policies or different standards for different people, or failing to follow through on purported ‘urgencies’) will cause workers to lose faith in the  integrity of their leader.” DCG have decades of experience in this area. Let us help.  [SMARTBRIEF – 10/4/21]
  • TRANSFORMATIVE TECHNOLOGIES (LIKE ELECTRICITY) HAVE ALLOWED FOR BIT-BY-BIT DEVELOPMENT of inventions and gadgets, at linear growth rates, through the 20th In recent decades, inventions have “more than speeded up innovation by exponential growth rates, and now pose drastic challenges for businesses, governments & society… Digitization in computers and artificial technology have accelerated growth in solar cells, batteries, genome-editing, augmented reality, 3D manufacturing, online businesses, electric cars and urban farming, as well as, unfortunately, online misinformation, cybercrime and warfare… Experts now  debate whether technology may be entering a ‘stagnation’ state and becoming harder because the most graspable advances have been made, along with whether new innovation aims to deepen understanding of existing science rather than exploring fresh terrain.” Either way, continuing disruption in business is inevitable and strategic planning is essential. Let DCG help; call for courtesy consultation. [ECONOMIST – 10/16/21]
  • THE DISRUPTIONS OF MOST LIKELY MAGNITUDE WILL INCLUDE: (1) Transportation – with autonomous vehicles, planes, rockets & cargo ships; (2) Blockchain infrastructure – for financial transactions, with cryptocurrency replacing bank credit cards, asset management, and eventually cybersecurity; (3) Medicine – personalized based on genomic profile, with gene manipulation for customized & disease-free embryos; (4) Living Robots – machines made with biological tissue, manipulating cells into task-handling organisms; (5) Lab-grown production – of everything, including foods and construction & fabrication materials, effectively replacing nature; (6) Education – unique data & experiences delivering skills and degrees to minimize physical schooling and on-the-job training; (7) Mixed Reality – overlying physical items into virtual & augmented environments, evolving to (8) Alternate Reality, essentially internet 3.0 which interacts with the ‘metaverse.’ Buckle up. [THOMAS FREY – 10/7/21]
  • THE FORECASTS & PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMES, published nearly five centuries ago, have so far over 70% accuracy. The French astrologer “calculated stellar & planetary bodies relationship to earth” to predict air travel, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the rise of Hitler (he called Histler) and WWI, atomic bombs, radiation sickness, assassination of ‘The Great Man’ (JFK?), terrorist attack on the ‘great New City (NYC?), and a biological weapon pretty similar to Covid and an asteroid just missing the earth (which happened last year).  His further Prophecies, in the form of poems, include: “solar storms causing major destruction on earth and leading to wars, conflicts & famine; collapse of the Catholic Church after its secrets are revealed; Muslims taking over Europe; and the third Antichrist being born in 2021, likely in an Arab country full of political unrest who, after a 27-year war, will ‘annihilate unbelievers with dead and captive blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth’… Just another quack who threw wacky ideas out into the wind, hoping that some would stick in the distant future?” If not, some exciting times ahead. [DEFINITION.ORG] 
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

        FinCen, the financial crimes investigation unit of U.S. Treasury, announced last week that during the last decade “outgoing Bitcoin transactions potentially tied to Ransomware payments” approximated $5.2 billion. Cybercrime is real and growing. DCG can help.

       Technology impacts ALL businesses, even “old N.Y. mobsters who reportedly fear handing over reins to phone-obsessed, soft millennials. According to a former made-member of the Colombo family, seasoned mob bosses are reluctant to make ‘made’ men out of millennials who, having grown up in the suburbs rather than city streets, they worry lack the street smarts and ruthlessness of their predecessors, as well as being too obsessed with/ attached to technology.  Court records even show one associate completely eschewing the code of silence while threatening a union official over extortion collections — all in easy-to-prove incriminating text messages, one saying: ‘Hey this is the 2nd text, there isn’t going to be a 3rd.”    [LBN EXAMINER – 10/17/21]