KACHARAGADLA

Carefully identifying and properly developing the next generation of leaders is by far the most consequential decision for any family business founder, owner, or leader. However, all over the world — from the Americas to Asia, from Europe to Africa — many family business leaders are quick to assume that some of their children or other relatives would never become great successors. Most consider only one person (will he or she make a great CEO?), rather than thinking of many key family members and the multiple critical potential roles they can play. What’s more, even among those leaders who want to conduct rigorous assessments of the entire next generation’s capabilities, most don’t know what they should focus on, and many wait until the eleventh hour to ask the crucial questions. Consider the CEO of a family-owned business in Buenos Aires who called me in as a consultant. The executive, who was in his seventies, began our first meeting by leaning forward and saying to me, in

The great secret of business families that achieve tremendous wealth and hold onto it for generations is that they persistently promote the entrepreneurial spirit that led to their initial success. That drive — a combination of ambition, sheer will, and the willingness to take calculated risks — is integral to long-term success, particularly in challenging times. One third-generation family CEO we know recently delivered a powerful message to his teenaged next generation when he said, “In times like this, a lot of companies will go bankrupt. But, because we’ve always run our family business on the tenets of entrepreneurial drive and diversification, our family business will survive this crisis and be in a position to prosper in the long term. Learn from this experience and think about what you can do as an entrepreneur.” This is valuable advice, not just for the younger generation as they grow and develop as individuals, but also for the future of the family businesses in gen

A culture conducive to innovation is not only good for a company’s bottom line. It also is something that both leaders and employees value in their organizations. In seminars at companies across the globe, I have informally surveyed hundreds of managers about whether they want to work in an organization where innovative behaviors are the norm. I cannot think of a single instance when someone has said “No, I don’t.” Who can blame them: Innovative cultures are generally depicted as pretty fun. When I asked the same managers to describe such cultures, they readily provided a list of characteristics identical to those extolled by management books: tolerance for failure, willingness to experiment, psychological safety, highly collaborative, and nonhierarchical. And research supports the idea that these behaviors translate into better innovative performance. But despite the fact that innovative cultures are desirable and that most leaders claim to understand what they entail, they are

Copying is perhaps the strongest force in the world. We are so predisposed to copy that it infiltrates our most innovative institutions, even the self-proclaimed hub of innovative thinking, Silicon Valley. Of course, those of us in Silicon Valley don’t call ourselves copycats, we call ourselves disrupters. When Clayton Christensen first popularized the disruption concept back in 1997, the idea was novel and interesting. But what Christensen originally called disruptive innovation has now been shortened to just disruption and the oversimplification is profound. I hear pitches every month from start ups wishing to destroy the economics of some existing industry. Hidden— frequently well hidden— inside these pitches is the implication that the invisible hand of the economy will reallocate resources so that we will all be better off and enjoy a more efficient world after the carnage. It doesn’t always happen that way. Jack Dorsey and I cofounded Square back in 2009 with the init

Air pollution levels are on an all-time high and while we don’t need indicators to prove this you can still check out these apps to stay updated with detailed information. To stay up to date with the AQI levels in different parts of the city here’s a list of apps users can download and install.  Air Quality | Air Visual Air Quality app provides historical, real-time and forecast air pollution data. Users can get an updated list of air pollution forecast for the entire week. This app also shows the weather forecast and information like temperature and humidity. Users can also track live monitoring of key air pollutants, health risks for sensitive conditions and more.  Download Air Quality | Air Visual: Android , iOS .  Air Quality Index BreezoMeter Air Quality Index BreezoMeter app provides real-time air quality information at street, block and country levels. It also offers notifications for changes in outdoor air quality for different locations that users can sel

The future of work looks grim for many people. A recent study from Forrester estimated that 10% of U.S. jobs would be automated this year, and another from McKinsey estimates that close to half of all U.S. jobs may be automated in the next decade.  The jobs that are likely to be automated are repetitive and routine. They range from reading X-rays (human radiologists may soon have much more limited roles), to truck driving, to stocking a warehouse. While much has been written about the sorts of jobs that are likely to be eliminated, another perspective that has not been examined in as much detail is to ask not which jobs will be eliminated but rather which aspects of surviving jobs will be replaced by machines.  For example, consider the job of being a physician: It is clear that diagnosing illnesses will soon (if not already) be accomplished better by machines than humans. Machine learning is spectacularly effective when data sets are available for training and testing, which is the ca

On August 19 the Business Roundtable issued an open letter titled “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” One of the preeminent business lobbies in the United States, the Business Roundtable (BR) includes the CEOs of leading U.S. companies from Apple to Walmart. Sandwiched between the spare title and 181 signatures was a one-page declaration that ended as follows: “Each of our stakeholders is essential. We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities, and our country.” On its own, this sentence is indistinguishable from the anodyne commentary that fills the annual reports of many Business Roundtable members. For those actively following this topic, however, it represents a very public rebuke of the Milton Friedman worldview that guides business decisions behind closed doors. Friedman, the renowned University of Chicago economics professor, penned a famous 1970 New York Times essay, “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to In