Shared office provider, WeWork, has filed paperwork to enable it to list its shares on the US stock market as it seeks further funds for expansion.

Founded in the US in 2010, WeWork is already London and New York's largest private office occupier.

But it has yet to make a profit, with losses last year doubling to USD1.9 billion.

The firm's business model is based on short-term revenue agreements and long-term loan liabilities.

Ratings agencies have given it a "junk" or risky credit score because it has borrowed heavily to fund its expansion.
​
Despite this, the firm - which operates in 600 cities globally - was valued at some USD47 billion by private investors when it raised fresh funding in January.

​Source: BBC, UK

Salary guide for accounting and finance professionals in Malaysia 2018 / 2019:

Source: Kelly Services, Malaysia

A simple explanation of machine learning (ML). You don't need a Phd or even a degree to use ML, just use it.

Response and ability. Good leaders get people to believe in them. Great leaders inspire people to believe in themselves.

We’ve been hearing the statement “Health is wealth” since our childhood. However, not all of us are acquainted with its literal meaning. It means that no matter how wealthy you are, if we are not healthy, there is nothing we can cherish in life.
​
People are suffering from overweight, obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart diseases, kidney problems and so many other unknown problems. Most of these problems occur because of our lifestyle.

Here are 5 tips to stay healthy (and wealthy):

1. Eat well (eat everything in moderation)
2. Sleep well
3. Exercise, exercise, exercise
4. Breath fresh air (spend more time outdoor)
5. Drink lots of water

Digital disruption is much more than an abstract concept promoted by analysts and vendors; it is now a reality for most organizations.

More than one-third of executives in a recent Forbes Insights/Treasure Data survey say they are being directly affected by competition from digital and data-savvy players in their markets.

What does it take to embark on a data-driven disruption journey? Here are some ways to get started:

1. Creating new markets or leveraging the power of information to offer solutions in new ways.

2. Be the disruptor.
The best way to fend off disruptors is to become the disruptor. Shift their business models using data-driven products and services, or by linking up with digital-savvy players.

3. Surface your data assets.
With the influx of data that an increasingly digital world creates about customers, access to clearly organized, consolidated data is crucial. Think of ways to create entirely new products or services through new channels.

The most likely form of disruption is through the actual monetizing of information technology.

​The disruption that is radically reshaping today’s markets, as well as creating new ones, is driven by data, with the goal of enriching the customer experience, and delivering goods and services on demand without so much as a hiccup in supply chains or response systems. To accomplish this, data needs to move fast, seamlessly and be accessible.

As Holger Hürtgen and Niko Mohr, of McKinsey, recently put it:

Those organizations leading the way and digitally disrupting their markets have learned to employ customer data in new and innovative ways not simply to be disruptors, but to provide superior customer experiences.

​Source: Forbes Insights (click on image to read more)

He is more popular on social media than Madonna or Oprah Winfrey, but you might never have heard of him. Kai-Fu Lee has become the face of Chinese tech, his name synonymous with a country itching to take on the world.
​
Lee spent his formative years helping charter a path of innovation for companies such as Microsoft and Apple, but it was when he spearheaded a failed attempt to bring Google to China that everything changed for him. Lee left Google in 2009, to set up his own venture capital fund, Sinovation Ventures.

Lee's new book, AI Super Powers, was published in September.

Here is a good summary of the future of AI according to Lee:

In his first internal management strategy speech since being named Jack Ma's successor, Alibaba Group Holding chief executive Daniel Zhang Yong reminded managers in the company that key performance indicators (KPI) should never be the sole reason to do something.

Zhang reminded employees that the company's dream is to create value for the customers they serve.

He also exhorted employees to do their best to meet their own expectations, instead of caring what others think, and not give up when they meet resistance or obstacles – especially when it came to new business models and innovative projects that have not been tried before.
​
“Many of our businesses have been the same for over 10 years, and if we keep doing things the same way today, or five years later, then Alibaba won't have a future,” Zhang said, adding that his greatest fear was that Alibaba would become like a “robot on loop”.

Data Studio, Google’s free data visualization and reporting product, is out of beta and now generally available.

This move signifies our continued commitment to helping teams identify and share insights from their data, so they can take steps to improve business outcomes.

Since introducing Data Studio as a beta in 2016, we’ve improved the stability of the product and added many key features. We’ve seen millions of people use Data Studio to transform their data into powerful stories that surface key business insights.

Companies like AirAsia Group are using Data Studio to help with cross-platform reporting and collaboration between teams. "Data Studio helps to keep AirAsia data flowing through the organization,” says Nikunj Shanti, Chief Data Officer, AirAsia. “Data democratization is the key for future efficiencies within the airline and the integration between Data Studio and BigQuery data sources help ensure that everyone has a single view. The platform has rapidly evolved in the last 12 months, and we’re able to sunset existing production and ensure we have a single platform for data dashboard and ad-hoc visualization."

Today’s announcement of general availability comes on the heels of many product updates based on beta user feedback. Most recently we announced a number of new features that enhance the way you can experiment, combine, and share your data visualizations using Explorer, Data Blending and the Report Gallery.

We remain dedicated to our community and have developed capabilities like community connectors, which allows you to connect to your many different data sources, and custom report templates, which enables you to build custom reports and easily share your solutions. Features like these have helped grow our ecosystem and make Data Studio more impactful for more people.

Data Studio’s mission is to empower people to identify and share insights from their data, whether it’s a marketer surfacing information about which of their advertising channels is most effective, or a business analyst tracking performance metrics.

​We look forward to continuing to explore that mission alongside our community of users and collaborators. And as we invest in platform stability and advanced features, you'll be able to focus on what matters, the growth of your business.

​Source: Google Data Studio

Admiral Bill McRaven was in charge of the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. What he said was truly breathtaking.

McRaven released a short, direct statement, one that will certainly be very polarizing, but that is also a truly stunning example of leadership.

The 7-word headline: "Revoke my security clearance, too, Mr. President."

A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

This is truly one of the most stunning and sudden direct challenges to a sitting president.

But setting aside that political disagreement, McRaven's actions here are an astonishing example of trying to lead, at a potentially large personal cost. Here's why it works.

1. He's direct
McRaven's entire statement is 230 words. He gets right to the point, and there is no misunderstanding in his message. Effective communication is an important part of leadership.

2. He has credibility
McRaven is no longer in uniform, but his reputation is the main reason his message might resonate far and wide.

3. He sacrifices
McRaven doesn't offer bromides or call for people to rise up. Instead, the only thing he asks Trump specifically to do is to all him to make the same sacrifice that McRaven says other people are making. That's a powerful message.

4. He surprises
Like most members of the military, Admiral McRaven was careful not to reveal his political beliefs while he was in uniform. ​In fact, it is surprising to see him coming out and making such an overt, public statement against the president like this.

5. He offers a way out--and a challenge
By the time you get to the last sentence of McRaven's message, there's already a lot of energy spent, but his last line is amazing: "The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be."

This is tough language, but it's interesting for what it's not. McRaven isn't demanding that Trump apologize, or reverse his decision, or resign. Instead, he's challenging the president and offering him a way out.

​Source: Bill Murphy Jr, Inc.com

It pays to know your team players. Can you differentiate the productive and destructive people in your team?

Data blending or creating relationship with multiple data sources is one of the most useful features in reporting.

By default, charts in Data Studio get their information from a single data source. Blending lets you create charts based on multiple data sources, called a blended data source. For example, you can blend two different Google Analytics data sources to track the performance of your app and website in a single visualization.
​
Blending can reveal valuable relationships between your data sets. Creating blended charts directly in Data Studio removes the need to manipulate your data in other applications first, saving you time and effort.

Deloitte just published a large-scale survey of Millennial employees (and 1,844 Gen-Z workers) that revealed critical gaps in skill development. 

In the study, respondents listed job skills they felt were essential and how well they felt their employer fared in helping them develop those skills. 
​
Here's where the four biggest gaps are, and how to start closing them:

1. Interpersonal skills
2. Confidence and motivation
3. Critical thinking
4. Innovation and creativity

So help close these skill gaps and maybe you'll stop-gap the outflow of young talent. 

Source: Inc.com

Here’s the dilemma: In a competitive, complex, and volatile business environment, companies need more from their employees than ever. But the same forces rocking businesses are also overwhelming employees, driving up their fear, and compromising their capacity.

It’s no wonder that so many C-Suite leaders are focused on how to build higher performance cultures. The irony, is that building a culture focused on performance may not be the best, healthiest, or most sustainable way to fuel results. Instead, it may be more effective to focus on creating a culture of growth.
​
A culture is simply the collection of beliefs on which people build their behavior. Learning organizations, Peter Senge’s term, classically focus on intellectually oriented issues such as knowledge and expertise

Building a growth culture requires a blend of individual and organizational components:

1. An environment that feels safe, fueled first by top by leaders willing to role model vulnerability and take personal responsibility for their shortcomings and missteps.

2. A focus on continuous learning through inquiry, curiosity and transparency, in place of judgment, certainty and self-protection.

3. Time-limited, manageable experiments with new behaviors in order to test our unconscious assumption that changing the status quo is dangerous and likely to have negative consequences.

4. Continuous feedback — up, down and across the organization – grounded in a shared commitment to helping each other grow and get better.

A performance culture asks, “How much energy can we mobilize?” and the answer is only a finite amount. A growth culture asks, “How much energy can we liberate?” and the answer is infinite.

Read more here.

How do you change a mind?

Rely on objective facts and statistics. Develop a strong case for your side, back it up with hard, cold, irrefutable data, and voila!

It doesn’t work.

The mind doesn’t follow the facts. Facts, as John Adams put it, are stubborn things, but our minds are even more stubborn. Doubt isn’t always resolved in the face of facts for even the most enlightened among us, however credible and convincing those facts might be.

If facts don’t work, how do you change a mind, whether it’s your own or your neighbor’s?

1. Give the mind an out

We’re reluctant to acknowledge mistakes. To avoid admitting we were wrong, we’ll twist ourselves into positions that even seasoned yogis can’t hold.

The key is to trick the mind by giving it an excuse. Convince your own mind (or your friend) that your prior decision or prior belief was the right one given what you knew, but now that the underlying facts have changed, so should the mind.

But instead of giving the mind an out, we often go for a punch to the gut. We belittle the other person (“I told you so”). We ostracize (“Basket of deplorables”). We ridicule (“What an idiot”).

2. Your beliefs are not you

We all tend to identify with our beliefs and arguments. This is my business, This is my article. This is my idea.

When your beliefs are entwined with your identity, changing your mind means changing your identity. That’s a really hard sell.

A possible solution, and one that I’ve adopted in my own life, is to put a healthy separation between you and the products of you. I changed my vocabulary to reflect this mental shift. At conferences, instead of saying, “In this paper, I argue . . .,” I began to say “This paper argue.”

This subtle verbal tweak tricked my mind into thinking that my arguments and me were not one and the same. It was no longer personal. It was simply a hypothesis proven wrong.

3. Build up your empathy muscle

Humans operate on different frequencies. If someone disagrees with you, it’s not because they’re wrong, and you’re right. It’s because they believe something that you don’t believe.

The challenge is to figure out what that thing is and adjust your frequency. If employment is the primary concern of the Detroit auto worker, showing him images of endangered penguins (as adorable as they may be) or Antarctica’s melting glaciers will get you nowhere. Instead, show him how renewable energy will provide job security to his grandchildren. Now, you’ve got his attention.

4. Get out of your echo chamber

We live in a perpetual echo chamber. We friend people like us on Facebook. We follow people like us on Twitter. We read the news outlets that are on the same political frequency as us.

This means our opinions aren’t being stress tested nearly as frequently as they should.

Make a point to befriend people who disagree with you. Expose yourself to environments where your opinions can be challenged, as uncomfortable and awkward as that might be.

Strongly believe in an idea, but be willing to change your opinion if the facts show otherwise.

Ask yourself, “What fact would change one of my strongly held opinions?” If the answer is “no fact would change my opinion,” you’re in trouble. A person who is unwilling to change his or her mind even with an underlying change in the facts is, by definition, a fundamentalist.

In the end, it takes courage and determination to see the truth instead of the convenient. But it’s well worth the effort.

Source: Ozan Varol

If you think all CEOs are Ivy League educated individuals who set their eyes on the C-suite at a young age, you're mistaken. According to Elena Botelho and Kim Powell, authors of the book "The CEO Next Door," "Even the most impressive CEOs often didn't start out knowing they were destined for greatness."

However, many of us believe the stereotype that an "iconic CEO is powerful and patrician, a bold, charismatic extrovert with a flawless resume," write the researchers. This makes us falsely assume that we are not "CEO material." To the contrary, ordinary people can also become CEOs, note the authors, as long as they have the necessary traits.

Four simple behaviors can turn everyday people into powerful CEOs: decisiveness, engaging for impact, relentless reliability and adapting boldly.

1. Make quick decisions

Successful CEOs are decisive and are 12 times more likely to be high performers.

Steve Gorman, the former CEO of Greyhound, exemplifies why this trait is so crucial. When Gorman took over Greyhound in 2003, the business was losing money, according to the study. In addition, its parent company, which had just come out of bankruptcy, was ready to shut the doors on the company.

For four months, Gorman listened to his top execs create and dismiss plans to save the company but eventually he had enough. Among the many piles of data his team analyzed was a satellite map of the U.S. and Canada, which showed where all the nation's lights were concentrated (a reflection of population density). Unsure if his plan would work, he immediately set out to reshape Greyhound bus routes around these heavily populated regions. His strategy worked.

By the time he left Greyhound in 2007, the company reported $30 million earnings and was eventually sold for twice its 2003 value.

​The authors explain that Gorman was able to "push forward" not because he knew his plan would work but because he realized that a potentially bad decision was much better than no decision.

2. Get people to buy into your idea

To be a successful CEO, you must engage those around you and inspire them to deliver results, according to the authors. But it's not as simple as being nice or getting people to like you. In fact, nice CEOs can be a drag on an organization because they focus more on being agreeable than getting workers to deliver quality results, say the researchers.

To effectively persuade people to buy into your ideas, the authors say to do three things:

a. Translate your vision and goals and be clear about your intent.

b. Understand the emotional, financial and physical needs of the people who will help you deliver results.

c. Establish everyday routines and habits to build relationships, which translate into action and eventually business results.

3. Deliver consistent results

CEOs who consistently deliver results and successfully execute plans are seen as reliable, according to the researchers. Once a CEO is known for their reliability, their odds of getting hired double.

"In business, reliable and competent people are cherished," write the authors. "Employers and clients are more apt to take risks on them and more apt to give them opportunities."

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson did just that when he created Virgin Australia, the country's second largest airline. The decision to launch this airline was actually the brainchild of his employee Brett Godfrey, who Branson immediately took a liking to because he was personable, detail-oriented and hardworking.

"[I] saw how he dealt with people in a personable manner and got the best out of them," Branson writes in his latest autobiography, "Finding my Virginity."

The billionaire was so impressed by his employee's work ethic that when Godfrey suggested creating an airline company in his home country of Australia, Branson bit. In 2000, Virgin Australia officially entered the aviation market with Godfrey as CEO ( a position he held until 2010).

4. Adapt to the circumstances

"To get to the top, aspiring leaders have to learn to navigate the uncharted," write the authors. They point to Kodak, Blockbuster and Borders as companies that failed because their leaders didn't adapt.

​Their analysis also found that the CEOs who excel at adapting feel comfortable being uncomfortable. These execs understand that discomfort comes with change and learning. Furthermore, adaptable CEOs can let go of the past and focus on the future, much like Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

Source: Ruth Umoh, CNBC

Raising fund? Pitching? Listen to what she has to say ...

If any work disciplines can offer us a window to the future, Financial Planning and Analytics (FP&A) is certainly one of them. In an environment where your speed to move can make the ultimate difference to your company, it’s no accident that financial forecasting is now at the cutting edge of change in today’s business world. And indeed, future business success may lie with those who embrace these changes sooner rather than later.

Faced with a post-Millennium atmosphere of uncertainty and rapid change, accurate forecasting – and the ability to reforecast at pace – has gained huge currency for business leaders. Add to this the influence of automation tools on traditional accountancy roles, plus the growing need for top-line expertise in reading and disseminating our vast quantities of data, and you have a sector at the centre of the action when it comes to change. Michael Page recently sat down with one of FP&A’s thought leaders to plot five factors driving change in today.

1. Speed and Simplification

Larysa Melnychuk, CEO and founder of the International FP&A Board, spends much of her time these days in discussion with the world’s leading CFOs about the changing world of financial analytics, financial planning and analysis.

She notes that in an environment of unprecedented “black swans” and “perfect storms” in our global financial market, business leaders are now more aware than ever of the need to move fast: “Situations that we never expected would happen, have happened in real life. Obviously in the business environment, this is one of the biggest reasons why financial analytics has changed,” she notes.

Combine this pressure-cooker environment with the arrival of newer and cheaper Cloud-based systems that are easily managed within a finance department, and you have an environment ripe for change. “In this dynamic business environment, it’s not possible to use the old, very detailed and static methods we used,” notes Melnychuk, who is based in the United Kingdom. As a result, the landscape for financial analytics is now more forward-looking and speed conscious than ever.

2. Find Your Key Drivers

In an increasingly complex environment, the ultimate goal is to understand in the simplest way, how a business makes its money. “We’re talking about simplification beyond the incredible level of detail that we had before,” notes Melnychuk. “It’s all based on key business drivers that are very important to identify – it’s about the 20% of drivers that explain 80% of the results.”

She notes that while many managers claim to know these key drivers, the reality of our big data world is that some drivers become less sensitive over time, while others prove less reliable. The ideal key drivers process should be part of a company’s business intelligence project, she notes. “It should be automated: and the drivers should be checked often, through analytical automation.” Likewise, it is also important to pay attention to both internal and external drivers, she notes.

Yet are many companies in the world currently doing this? “I would say not many,” she notes. “Definitely leading companies have started – and this is on the agenda of many companies.”

3. Tough Roles to Fill

Increasingly, she says modern FP&A teams require three distinct roles (as per Mark Gandy’s model). The first is the Architect who builds the driver-based model. Next comes the Analyst, who can track its progress. And ideally, a third role, that of a business-partner, or Communicator. “It’s difficult to find these three people in one role,” Melnychuk notes from her own experience as an FP&A director. “Analysts and Architects can be introverts, and not so comfortable going to the business to communicate it. I’ve seen this a lot.”

As such, it tends to be a tough job to fulfil: “Around 70% of UK CFOs, and 80% of US CFOs, say that FP&A roles are the most difficult to fill.” While in traditional accountancy, being qualified and examining past financial history was once sufficient, this is no longer the case. “In FP&A it’s different. We’re seeing the emergence of big data, from which you have to analyse these key drivers.”

4. Rapid Reforecasting

In an environment of sudden and intense market change, being able to identify and simplify your business drivers can provide an invaluable chance to move fast against competitors. “It’s dependent on the visibility of their data, and the ability to drill down and make decisions very quickly,” Melnychuk notes.

She takes the example of a sudden market interruption, a so-called black swan event. “With traditional planning models and traditional hires, you needed four-to-seven months to reforecast. But with this new generation of systems, models and people, you can probably do this in a couple of hours – almost in real-time.” One New York based banking group she spoke with, had reforecasting down to a fine art. “At the moment, it’s less than 36 minutes, while previously it used to be more than three weeks. This is an indication of how the world’s changed,” she notes.

“And why? It’s because traditional line-by-line forecasts were replaced by driver-based planning model that is implemented through system. Just 36 minutes and it’s done – and the quality of this forecast is quite good as well. So this is a good example of how much this can achieve.”

5. Future role replacements
​
Melnychuk anticipates a realignment ahead in terms of job roles within finance departments, as some traditional roles become replaced by new ones. “Fewer traditional accountants will be needed, and more combinational skills, especially with this data management, analytical and business-partnering will be needed,” she predicts. “I can see a time when data scientists work together with FP&A. And it is already happening in some leading analytical organisations”

Leading companies already enlist data scientists to identify, for instance, the one driver responsible for 60% of their forecasting. Melnychuk notes that effective driver-based planning can save teams a lot of time and effort: “You don’t need a lot of data, or to spend a lot of time. But to identify those key drivers really can help you to very quickly and very effectively build your plans and different scenarios for the future.”

“There will be this new work for analytical people, because they will start from different levels of analytics, and they will go forward. So it’s very motivational for good analytical talent to be at such organisations.”

​Source: Luke Clark

Every day, a small Ant arrived at work early and starting work immediately, she produced a lot and she was happy. The boss, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision. He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce more if she had a supervisor!

So the lion recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as a supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports. The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports. He recruited a spider who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The Lion was delighted with the cockroach’s report and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and analyze trends so that he could use them for presentations at board meetings. So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and recruit a fly to manage the IT department. The Ant , who had been once so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time.

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked. The position was given to the Cicada whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, whom he had brought from his previous department to help him prepare a work and budget control strategic optimization plan.

The department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset. It was at that time the cicada convinced the boss, the Lion, to start a climatic study of the office environment. Having reviewed the charges of running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was much less than before so he recruited the Owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions. The Owl spent 3 months in the department and came out with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded that ” The Department is overstaffed..”

Guess who the lion fired first?

Most people have a certain image in their minds when they think of a founder/CEO.

They picture the boss in the corner office, standing behind her desk, gazing out over the city. They imagine someone calling all the shots, and everyone relying on their insight and wisdom — a visionary who is never wrong. They fear being grilled, berated, and guilted into working long hours — inevitable top-down command-and-control.

When startup founders take this approach today, they fail.

The more involved you are with the day-to-day work, the more difficult it will be for you to scale, and the less likely it is that your company will succeed.

As the founder/CEO, you have one job: Look at where you’re spending your time, then fire yourself from that position.

Here’s what I’ve learned that makes this possible:

1. Perform The Role, Then Hire Someone Better

The best founder/CEOs are jacks-of-all-trades.

Their value doesn’t come from doing one single thing exceedingly well. It comes from being able to perform an array of things fairly well, and then having the awareness to find someone better than them to take over those responsibilities — allowing them to move on to the next most-important role and the next most-consequential hire.

2. Hire People to Help you Hire.

If you’re doing this well, you’ll quickly reach the point where the company will outgrow your own ability to “chair hop.”

Instead of filling one role at a time, you’ll be filling three.

3. Bring Top-Down Context, Not Top-Down Decisions

As the founder/CEO, you are in the single position that can see across roles, across skill-sets, across your market, and across your customer base. That is your unfair advantage. You aren’t better than your team, but you certainly have more context than your team. How can you use this to empower them?

I like to picture my org chart upside-down. They don’t report to me. I report to them. What do they need to succeed at their roles? Context to prioritize. Context to make decisions. Context to know when to push for more resources, or when to make-do.

All in all, so many founders forget that the ultimate goal is to make themselves completely unnecessary to the day-to-day operations of the company.

The irony of course is, as a founder, you’ll never be completely unnecessary to the business. In constantly trying to “fire yourself” from different roles, the company will continue to grow. As it grows, new responsibilities and challenges will arise, and you’ll have to repeat the process of getting people up to speed all over again.

But that’s the point.

​Source: Jeff Seibert. Read more by clicking at the image below.

Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures?

In May, right after he became CEO of Coca-Cola Co., James Quincey called upon rank-and-file managers to get beyond the fear of failure that had dogged the company since the “New Coke” fiasco of so many years ago. “If we’re not making mistakes,” he insisted, “we’re not trying hard enough.”

In June, even as his company was enjoying unparalleled success with its subscribers, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings worried that his fabulously valuable streaming service had too many hit shows and was canceling too few new shows. “Our hit ratio is too high right now,” he told a technology conference. “We have to take more risk…to try more crazy things…we should have a higher cancel rate overall.”
​
Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, arguably the most successful entrepreneur in the world, makes the case as directly as he can that his company’s growth and innovation is built on its failures. “If you’re going to take bold bets, they’re going to be experiments,” he explained shortly after Amazon bought Whole Foods. “And if they’re experiments, you don’t know ahead of time if they’re going to work. Experiments are by their very nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn’t work.”

The message from these CEOs is as easy to understand as it is hard for most of us to put into practice. I can’t tell you how many business leaders I meet, how many organizations I visit, that espouse the virtues of innovation and creativity. Yet so many of these same leaders and organizations live in fear of mistakes, missteps, and disappointments — which is why they have so little innovation and creativity. If you’re not prepared to fail, you’re not prepared to learn. And unless people and organizations manage to keep learning as fast as the world is changing, they’ll never keep growing and evolving.

So what’s the right way to be wrong? Are there techniques that allow organizations and individuals to embrace the necessary connection between small failures and big successes? Smith College, the all-women’s school in western Massachusetts, has created a program called “Failing Well” to teach its students what all of us could stand to learn. “What we’re trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning it’s the feature,” explained Rachel Simmons, who runs the initiative, in a recent New York Times article. Indeed, when students enroll in her program, they receive a Certificate of Failure that declares they are “hereby authorized to screw up, bomb, or fail” at a relationship, a project, a test, or any other initiative that seems hugely important and “still be a totally worthy, utterly excellent human being.” Students who are prepared to handle failure are less fragile and more daring than those who expect perfection and flawless performance.

That’s a lesson worth applying to business as well. Patrick Doyle, CEO of Domino’s Pizza since 2010, has had one of the most successful seven-year runs of any business leader in any field. But all of his company’s triumphs, he insists, are based on its willingness to face up to the likelihood of mistakes and missteps. In a presentation to other CEOs, Doyle described two great challenges that stand in the way of companies and individuals being more honest about failure. The first challenge, he says, is what he calls “omission bias” — the reality that most people with a new idea choose not to pursue the idea because if they try something and it doesn’t work, the setback might damage their career. The second challenge is to overcome what he calls “loss aversion” — the tendency for people to play not to lose rather than play to win, because for most of us, “The pain of loss is double the pleasure of winning.”

Creating “the permission to fail is energizing,” Doyle explains, and a necessary condition for success — which is why he titled his presentation, with apologies to the movie Apollo 13, “Failure Is an Option.” And that may be the most important lesson of all. Just ask Reed Hastings, Jeff Bezos, or the new CEO of Coca-Cola: There is no learning without failing, there are no successes without setbacks.

Source: Harvard Business Review, Bill Taylor.
​

Anyone questioning whether financial markets are in a bubble should consider what we witnessed in 2017:

• A painting (which may be fake) sold for USD450 million.

 

• Bitcoin (which may be worthless) soared nearly 700% from USD952 to ~USD8000.

 

• The Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank bought USD2 trillion of assets.

 

• Global debt rose above USD225 trillion to more than 324% of global GDP.

 

• US corporations sold a record USD1.75 trillion in bonds.

 

• European high-yield bonds traded at a yield under 2%.

 

• Argentina, a serial defaulter, sold 100-year bonds in an oversubscribed offer.

 

• Global stock market capitalization skyrocketed by USD15 trillion to over USD85 trillion and a record 113% of global GDP.

 

• The market cap of the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet) increased by more than USD1 trillion.

 

• S&P 500 volatility dropped to 50-year lows and Treasury volatility to 30-year lows.

 

• Money-losing Tesla Inc. sold 5% bonds with no covenants as it burned USD4+ billion in cash and produced very few cars.

Extracts from The Bonfire Burns On

Toys “R” Us, one of the world’s largest toy store chains, has filed for bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest casualty of the pressures facing brick-and-mortar retailers.
 
The company made the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing late Monday night in federal court in Richmond, Va., acknowledging that it needed to revamp its long-term debt totalling more than $5 billion.
 
The retailer, which also owns Babies “R” Us, has struggled to compete with Amazon and stores like Walmart.
 
But the financial plight of Toys “R” Us was exacerbated by a heavy debt load that has weighed on the company for years. The private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Bain Capital, as well as the real estate firm Vornado Realty Trust, purchased the company in a leveraged buyout for about $6 billion in 2005.
 
Toys “R” Us joins a wave of retail bankruptcies this year, including the children’s clothing retailer Gymboree, Payless ShoeSource and rue21, which sells clothing for teenagers. Other retailers have closed thousands of stores and laid off tens of thousands of workers as they try to cut costs and compete with e-commerce.
 
The company said its roughly 1,600 Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us stores around the world would continue to operate “as usual.”
 
“Today marks the dawn of a new era at Toys “R” Us, where we expect that the financial constraints that have held us back will be addressed in a lasting and effective way,” Dave Brandon, the company’s cChairman and Chief Executive, said in a statement.