When Jack Welch took the helm at General Electric in 1981, it marked the beginning of a new era. Corporations would no longer coddle workers, but would slash costs, close factories and focus on increasing shareholder value. By 1999 he had increased revenues from $26.8 billion to nearly $130 billion and in 2000 he was named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine.
Yet all the success belied serious problems rumbling underneath the surface. As David Gelles explains in, The Man Who Broke Capitalism, Welch increased profits largely by “financializing” the firm and operations suffered. Under his successor, Jeffrey Immelt, GE collapsed and was removed from the Dow index.
Yet while Welch’s rise marked a new era of shareholder capitalism, the new CEO at GE, Larry Culp has taken a different turn. He invests in workers, distributes authority and has refocused the firm on improving manufacturing productivity. The result has been one of the most dramatic turnarounds in industrial history, perhaps signaling a larger shift.
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Journalist and Puck co-founder Tina Nguyen has been doing the rounds to promote her new book, The Maga Diaries, that chronicles her rise through, as well as her retreat from, the right-wing media ecosystem. What she describes is a carefully constructed culture that identifies, indoctrinates and then promotes ultra-conservative media personalities.
Yet these efforts are prone to failure. As MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues have shown, in their effort to create homophily, these types of echo chambers undermine critical thought by creating filter bubbles and diminishing access to information, which makes it hard to be relevant to a wider audience.
The truth is that lasting change is always built on shared values. We can’t just preach to the choir. We need to venture out of the church and mix with the heathens. The best way to identify shared values is to listen to those who oppose what you’re trying to achieve. If you only interact with those who agree with you, you are undermining your own efforts.
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There’s a great, although perhaps apocryphal, story about Franz Kafka and a little girl. The relatively unknown author—he wouldn’t achieve great fame until after his death—met a young girl who lost her doll. Kafka helped her look for it, but to no avail. The doll was lost forever and the girl was heartbroken.
But then Kafka told her a story. The next day he brought her a letter from the doll. “Please do not mourn me, I have gone on a trip to see the world.” Kafka would bring her letters telling her of the doll’s adventures. He eventually bought her another doll and gave it to her with another note that said, “my travels have changed me.”
As the story goes, after Kafka’s death the girl found another letter hidden in the replacement doll that said, “Everything that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.” We can’t all write like Kafka, but with a little bit of knowledge and some practice, we can all learn to tell stories that give meaning and purpose to our messages.
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When people like to tell stories of historic corporate missteps, the story of Xerox and the Macintosh is near the top of the list. As the tale goes, the corporate giant spent a fortune to create all the technology that the famous computer was based on, but failed to market it and let Steve Jobs steal it out from under them.
But that version leaves out important context. Yes, Xerox did create the technology. It was also true that Steve Jobs, while touring the company’s research facility, understood that he could use it to make a revolutionary consumer product. But it wasn’t a blunder. Steve Jobs was there because Xerox had invested in Apple at bargain prices, not because they were tricked in some way.
The story has deeper implications, because the myth of Xerox’s blunder influences how firms invest in technology. The truth is that Xerox’s research strategy was visionary and incredibly successful. In fact, it likely saved the company. So rather than looking at the story of Xerox and the Macintosh as a cautionary tale, we should see it as a model to replicate.
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In 2004, I joined a KP Media, the leading news organization in Ukraine, where I would become Co-CEO. In the runup to the presidential election that year, the opposition candidate for president, a technocratic reformer named Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned by pro-Russian agents. He survived, but his face was permanently disfigured.
In that moment, the once mild-mannered banker was transformed into an inspirational leader. His opponent, an almost cartoonish thug named Viktor Yanukovych, tried to falsify the election. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians poured into the streets to protest in what came to be known as the Orange Revolution.
It was very much an awakening. That was the moment when Ukraine, although not yet ready to turn away from Russia, began to insist on its independence and freedom, something that Vladimir Putin wasn’t willing to respect. It was also a turning point for me. It would permanently change how I saw the world and how it works. Here are four things I learned.
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In 2012, when Marco Rubio was gearing up for a run at the Presidency, he sat for an in-depth interview with the magazine GQ to bolster his image. “I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow,” he proudly declared. “I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that.”
The attitude belies dangerous ignorance. The big bang is not just a theory, but a set of theories, including general relativity and quantum mechanics that underlie modern technologies such as computers, GPS satellites, lasers and solar cells, just to name a few. Our economy literally could not function without them.
As Vannevar Bush famously wrote, “There must be a stream of new scientific knowledge to turn the wheels of private and public enterprise.” Yet today we get “alternative truths” and book bans. Make no mistake: truth matters. History shows when we abandon the quest for discovery and design narratives to suit our preferences, the consequences tend to be severe.
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There was big news in Somalia a few weeks ago. The country’s President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, had passed enough reforms to qualify for debt forgiveness by the IMF and the World Bank, re-enter the global financial system and join into the East African Community, an important regional block.
Yet few noticed. With war raging in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as complete disarray in the US Congress, progress in a troubled country in the Global South doesn’t warrant much attention. While the global economy—especially in the US—seems to have recovered from the shock of the pandemic, I can’t remember when there has been so much chaos.
Last year I wrote that we would see a shift of focus from disruption to resilience and that’s largely been true. It’s hard to imagine anyone would argue for shaking things up more than they are now. The question for 2024 is what comes after? It’s fairly clear that a new world order is emerging, but not at all clear what it will look like. Our future lies in the balance.
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My friend Stephen Shapiro does not like New Year’s Resolutions. “According to our study, only 8% of Americans say they always achieve their New Year’s resolutions,” he writes. “The way it seems to work now, setting a New Year’s Resolution is a recipe for defeat. It has come to be one of the nation’s most masochistic traditions.”
He suggests that we replace resolutions with broader themes by thinking seriously about what we want to achieve in the year ahead and what we want to focus on. What do we want to do more of and what do we want to do less of? What will make us happier and more productive? A good theme should feel empowering not guilt ridden.
I find the same can work in reverse. By reflecting on the year that has passed, certain themes arise and my ritual of going through my top posts of the year is a great way to reflect. When I look back on what I wrote and what people read, it helps reveal things about the past year that weren’t obvious in the thick of events. Take a look and see what emerges for you.
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I mark time through books because books define the zeitgeist. They reflect not only the wisdoms being received, but the questions being asked. We go to books not only for answers, but to sharpen our own inquiry. Last year’s list featured books about Ukraine (and this year’s list includes a great one too).
So perhaps it’s not surprising that this year’s list is especially heavy on change. We’re going through a lot of it and clearly there’s a lot still to come. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely puts stress on the system. Certainly, we are living in an age of great peril and there’s a level uncertainty that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before.
If we’re going to make it through we need to understand change, how to make it, how to adapt to it and how it happens. There are no easy answers. Change isn’t something you ever really master, but it is something that you can build skills to deal with more effectively. My hope is that some of these books can help you on your path. They certainly helped me.
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In the small town of Alamogordo, New Mexico in 2002, a plan was hatched to pass a no smoking ordinance. The wife of a City Council member, a strong no-smoking advocate, orchestrated the campaign. She recruited activists from the next town over, twisted arms and, in a show of force, pushed for a quick vote. It failed.
Compare that to a similar effort in El Paso, Texas around the same time. The central advocate in this case was not anybody with great clout, but a student on an internship assigned to do research on the issue. As he quietly gathered facts, he became a local authority, spreading what he learned. The ordinance passed by a vote of 7-1.
People often say that change has to start at the top, but that’s not really true. Change isn’t top-down, nor is it bottom up. It emanates from the center of networks. Ironically, the way you get to the center is by connecting out to small groups, loosely connected and uniting them with a shared purpose. To really drive change, you can’t overpower, you need to attract.
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