Lessons on Resilience for Small and Midsize Businesses
Summary: Despite unprecedented challenges, many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) around the world have shown remarkable resilience and capacity to reinvent themselves. Many of the actions taken by the most effective large companies are mirrored (albeit on a smaller scale) by higher-performing SMBs. Leading firms in both size categories had the financial resilience, organizational capabilities, and strategic focus to continue to invest and adapt throughout the crisis. Most notably, they accelerated digitization, reorganized and reskilled for operational efficiency, and became more agile.
^ADJ: Key takeout: businesses that heed the lessons from this crisis are well positioned to weather the next one.
How to Calculate Risk Based on Where Your Profits Come From
If most midsize companies have a formal risk management process, why did so many fail even in pre-pandemic years? The problem is that risk heat maps — many companies’ primary tool for assessing risk — have fatal deficiencies.
The risk heat map process looks at big, blunt risks (like sales force effectiveness and potential hurricanes), but doesn’t clearly identify the more granular and immediate risk elements that threaten profitability and possibly survival, especially in today’s fast-changing markets. The good news is that transaction-based profit metrics greatly increase your risk management effectiveness.
The Comparison Trap
You know those people who have more than you—money, acclaim, looks, whatever? The spike of envy they trigger is natural, and social media is primed to amp it up. But in a world where followers and likes can seem like rock-solid proof of a person's worth, you don't have to take the bait.
^ADJ: I love the quote “seek connection, not comparison” along with “cultivate joy” for others.
Decision Fatigue: Don’t Squeeze Out Every Bit Of Your Attention
As we get down to work, our mind is flooded with thoughts – should I respond to that email I got last night or a message from my boss, how about a cup of coffee, why not start the project I have been avoiding this entire week or maybe just a quick catch up on the meeting I missed yesterday…
Tracking "Dark Ships" with New Satellite Technology - Global Investigative Journalism Network
The ocean is vast and challenging to monitor. Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) alone total almost 137 million square kilometers (53 million square miles) of open water. Challenges in monitoring and enforcement often pave the way for illicit activities, such as smuggling, piracy, illegal fishing, and human trafficking. Crimes on the high seas are becoming increasingly sophisticated, endangering lives and undermining regional safety and economic growth, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.