Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines – Week 265

Extractive summaries of and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Week 265 |October 7-13, 2022

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Shaping Section : Ideas and forces shaping economies and industries

A new macroeconomic era is emerging. What will it look like?

The Economist | October 6, 2022

For months there has been turmoil in financial markets and growing evidence of stress in the world economy. You might think that these are just the normal signs of a bear market and a coming recession. But, as the Economist’s special report this week lays out, they also mark the painful emergence of a new regime in the world economy—a shift that may be as consequential as the rise of Keynesianism after the second world war, and the pivot to free markets and globalisation in the 1990s. This new era holds the promise that the rich world might escape the low-growth trap of the 2010s and tackle big problems such as ageing and climate change. But it also brings acute dangers, from financial chaos to broken central banks and out-of-control public spending.

The ructions in the markets are of a magnitude not seen for a generation. Global inflation is in double digits for the first time in nearly 40 years. Having been slow to respond, the Federal Reserve is now cranking up interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s, while the dollar is at its strongest for two decades, causing chaos outside America. If you have an investment portfolio or a pension, this year has been gruesome. Global shares have dropped by 25% in dollar terms, the worst year since at least the 1980s, and government bonds are on course for their worst year since 1949. Alongside some $40trn of losses there is a queasy sense that the world order is being upended as globalisation heads into retreat and the energy system is fractured after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  All this marks a definitive end to the age of economic placidity in the 2010s. 

What on earth comes next? One immediate fear is of a blow-up, as a financial system that has become habituated to low rates wakes up to the soaring cost of borrowing.  To understand why, look beyond the hurly-burly to the long-term fundamentals. In a big shift from the 2010s, a structural rise in government spending and investment is under way. Ageing citizens will need more health care. Europe and Japan will spend more on defence to counter threats from Russia and China. Climate change and the quest for security will boost state investment in energy, from renewable infrastructure to gas terminals. And geopolitical tensions are leading governments to spend more on industrial policy. Yet even as investment rises, demography will weigh ever more heavily on rich economies. As people get older they save more, and this excess of savings will continue to act to depress the underlying real rate of interest.

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. For months there has been turmoil in financial markets and growing evidence of stress in the world economy. You might think that these are just the normal signs of a bear market and a coming recession. But they also mark the painful emergence of a new regime in the world economy—a shift that may be as consequential as the rise of Keynesianism after the second world war, and the pivot to free markets and globalisation in the 1990s. 
  2. This new era holds the promise that the rich world might escape the low-growth trap of the 2010s and tackle big problems such as ageing and climate change. 
  3. But it also brings acute dangers, from financial chaos to broken central banks and out-of-control public spending.

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Topics:  Global Economy, Recession, Inflation

The China Bubble Is Losing Air But Won’t Burst

By Tom Orlik | Bloomberg Businessweek | October 6, 2022 

Is China’s economic miracle over? 

Amid the host of potential losers, spare a thought for the author who—in 2020—published a book with the provocative title China: The Bubble That Never Pops.  In the two years since,  that thesis has undergone an extreme stress test. Some might say it’s failed. In the second edition of this book, the writer of this article and the author of this book take a different view. Yes, the air is coming out of the China bubble at a faster pace. But no, it’s not going to pop.

To explain why, let’s start with the pandemic. In September 2020, President Xi declared that his country’s response “once again proved the superiority of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.” Two years on, with the rest of the world open for business while Chinese cities are still subject to punishing rolling lockdowns, it’s China’s critics in the West who’ve succumbed to a similar case of hubris.  Who’s right?  China’s exit from Covid Zero will render the final verdict. 

Let’s move on to real estate. For more than a decade, analysts have warned that excesses in borrowing and building have pushed China’s property sector onto an unsustainable trajectory. The consequences are now hitting hard, with property sales and construction tumbling, a slew of defaults from builders, and a mortgage strike that threatens repayment of 1.6 trillion yuan ($245 billion) of loans. China bears—delighted their stopped clock is finally showing the right time—are rushing to declare victory.  It’s often noted that real estate accounts for about 30% of China’s gross domestic product.

How about the “common prosperity” agenda? Xi’s campaign to close the gap between China’s haves and have-nots has touched every facet of the economy.  Critics see those moves as reflecting the pathologies of China’s single-party system—paranoid autocrats moving against the entrepreneurs who threaten their control of the economy. Policies that shift income from owners of capital to workers and families will end up stunting growth, they argue, making all Chinese worse off. Reflecting that pessimism, the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index, a bellwether for the country’s tech sector, has tumbled almost 70% from its February 2021 peak.

Could it be worse? Sure. But remember that bets on the coming collapse of China are hardly new and—so far—haven’t paid off.  A correct reading of China’s history reveals not a country that never encounters crises, but rather a country that frequently encounters and overcomes them.

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. Is China’s economic miracle over? Covid-19 lockdowns, a real estate meltdown, and a crackdown on entrepreneurs add up to a lot of downers. The latest forecasts show growth for 2022 at risk of sliding below 3%, well short of Beijing’s 5.5% target.
  2. If China is in for a hard landing, the consequences would be cataclysmic: for the financial system and economy, crisis and recession; for the ruling Communist Party, a shift from legitimacy based on prosperity to control underpinned by repression; for global markets—already reeling from the war in Ukraine and the US Federal Reserve’s rate hikes—a shock that rivals 2008’s Lehman moment.
  3. But remember that bets on the coming collapse of China are hardly new and—so far—haven’t paid off.

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Topics:  China, COVID-19, Global Economy, Inequality, Recession

The Chinese surveillance state proves that the idea of privacy is more “malleable” than you’d expect

By Zeyi Yang | MIT Technology Review | October 10, 2022

It’s no surprise that last week, when the Biden administration updated its list of Chinese military companies blocked from accessing US technologies, it added Dahua. The second-largest surveillance camera company in the world, just after Hikvision, Dahua sells to over 180 countries. It exemplifies how Chinese companies have leapfrogged to the front of the video surveillance industry and have driven the world, especially China, to adopt more surveillance tech.

Over the past decade, the US—and the world more generally—have watched with a growing sense of alarm as China has emerged as a global leader in this space. Indeed, the Chinese government has been at the forefront of exploring ways to apply cutting-edge research in computer vision, the Internet of Things, and hardware manufacturing in day-to-day governance. This has led to a slew of human rights abuses.  At the same time, the state has also used surveillance tech for good: to find abducted children, for example, and to improve traffic control and trash management in populous cities.

As Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin argue in their new book Surveillance State, out last month, the Chinese government has managed to build a new social contract with its citizens: they give up their data in exchange for more precise governance that, ideally, makes their lives safer and easier (even if it doesn’t always work out so simply in reality). 

But to sell this to its people—who, like others around the world, are increasingly aware of the importance of privacy—China has had to cleverly redefine that concept, moving from an individualistic understanding to a collectivist one.

The development of surveillance technology has always been a global effort, with many American companies participating.   Some of these companies have stopped working with China or have been replaced by Chinese firms that have developed similar technologies, but that doesn’t mean China has a self-sufficient surveillance system now. The supply chain for surveillance technology is still distributed around the world, and Chinese tech companies require parts from the US or other Western countries to continue building their products. 

This means the West can still try to slow the development of the Chinese surveillance state by putting pressure on industry.  But results will depend on how much political will there is to uncover the key links in surveillance supply chains, and to come up with effective responses.    But China won’t be the only country with the potential to become a surveillance state. It can happen anywhere, they warn, including countries with democratic institutions. 

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. Dahua, a Chinese company is the second-largest surveillance camera company in the world which sells to over 180 countries. It exemplifies how Chinese companies have leapfrogged to the front of the video surveillance industry and have driven the world, especially China, to adopt more surveillance tech.
  2. Over the past decade, the US—and the world more generally—have watched with a growing sense of alarm as China has emerged as a global leader in this space. This has led to a slew of human rights abuses.  At the same time, the state has also used surveillance tech for good.
  3. But China won’t be the only country with the potential to become a surveillance state. It can happen anywhere, they warn, including countries with democratic institutions.

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Topics:  Surveillance, Technology, Security, Privacy

Strategy & Business Model Section

A better way to build a brand: The community flywheel

By Kabir Ahuja et al., | McKinsey & Company | September 28, 2022

How are market leaders building and activating brands in the 2020s? To understand today, we must first look to the past.  We have shifted from ‘megaphone’ ” to our ability to connect with consumers in their communities enabled by technology and our improved understanding of consumer behavior.  Betwee these two extreemes technology and data helped unlock personalization, the ability to target based on customer demographics and needs.

Brands and retailers, from digital natives to legacy organizations, require new tools to capture this opportunity. Many models are competing to define how to think about this new world, but one stands out: the community flywheel.

The community flywheel has five elements: First, know what consumers your brand appeals to and what communities they are a part of. Second, pick just a few “hero products” that truly encapsulate the value of your brand to allow you to cut through the digital noise. Third, support and bring to life these hero products with exciting and authentic brand and customer stories. Fourth, feed the community with content to engage with, and spur brand advocates to generate their own. Finally, make it easy to transact, both offline and online. Brands that excel at all five elements—in addition to harnessing agile ways of working, core marketing technology, and analytics, which are key enablers—generate a fast-spinning flywheel, in which brand advocates generate conversation, engagement, and sales.

Getting and keeping the flywheel spinning requires companies to shift how they work and invest capital. Companies will need to make an initial investment to fire-start the community, but this investment typically can decrease over time as the community of advocates builds. As for ways of working, two are essential to get the flywheel to spin: Use cross-functional teams to test, learn, and scale; and invest in the right tech stack.

To measure the success of their efforts, companies should track their progress across the five levers and additional two ways of working that the community flywheel comprises. They should also adjust their profit-and-loss (P&L) expectations . P&L will evolve as the company sets the community flywheel in motion, and it is therefore critical that the company not only reset P&L expectations but communicate the changes throughout the business.

The rise of digital and social channels has fundamentally changed how brands think about brand building, product development, and marketing. In this environment, building long-term loyalty is both the greatest challenge and biggest opportunity that brands face. Activating a brand through the community flywheel enables brands to stand out, establish an emotional connection with the community, and build the long-term loyalty needed to thrive in the digital era.

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. The “big idea” in 2020s marketing is community—reaching consumers in the communities they are a part of and helping them express community membership by participating in your brand.
  2. Brands that excel at this use five reinforcing techniques—know your communities, make your brand story talkable, zoom in on hero products, fuel the conversation across channels, and make transactions effortless—to encourage the development of a community flywheel.
  3. This methodology is well suited to the fast feedback cycle of cross-functional agile teams and doesn’t require extensive marketing technology investment ahead of demand; it thereby enables rapid growth, provides a high return on investment at low risk—and encourages energized high-performing teams.

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Topics:  Strategy, Business Model, Online-community

16 Coach-Recommended Methods To Improve Client Acquisition

Forbes Coaches Council | Forbes | Oct 12, 2022

To successfully seek out and win the business of prospective clients, all service-based businesses must have a plan and a willingness to learn from trial and error. In the world of professional coaching, consistently bringing in new clients requires the fine-tuning of marketing strategy and a thorough understanding of the audience.

As experts in their industry, the members of Forbes Coaches Council have experimented with and learned firsthand which efforts are worthwhile to improve client acquisition for their businesses. 16 members explore measures they have taken to bring in new clients and how those strategies worked. 

  1. Use Quizzes To Attract New Leads. Quizzes are very popular in attracting new leads, and when the quiz is niche, it’s very good at revealing specific consumer needs, fears and desires that we then use in our messaging.
  2. Focus On The ‘Contact-To-Contract’ Ratio.  Most businesses track KPIs to judge performance, yet a key indicator that is missed when looking to improve client acquisition is the “contact-to-contract” ratio. This is the measurement of outbound conversations started (input) to the number of clients acquired (output).
  3. Go Back To Basics.  It’s so tempting to focus on new stuff, but more often than not, the tried-and-tested approaches still work—we just forget to take them. Whatever your method is, go back to it with renewed determination and do it with passion.
  4. Identify Your Ideal Target Client.  Identify your ideal target client based on need, size, engagement size, geography, type of entity, role in the business and other psychographic factors (personality, behavior and more). Knowing your ideal target clients allows you to describe them well to referral sources, use their language in marketing and engage in activities within the groups, publications and digital platforms they frequent.
  5. Focus Only On Activities That Directly Result In Clients.  Focus on activities that result in new clients include asking for referrals, speaking and writing. Be selective about who you work with—seek out ideal clients. Create a touchpoint system that accelerates value. And be disciplined about time.

And the other recommendations are:

Provide Value At Every Touch Point

Optimize Content And Marketing Messages

Develop A Client Feedback Program

Stay Centered And Be Fully Present

Ask For Constructive Feedback From Clients

Ask Happy Clients For Referrals

Feature Clients In Your Content To Create Social Proof

Create Genuine Connections With Clients

Reach Out To Professional Associations And Attend Networking Events

Have Multiple Centers Of Influence Endorse Your Work

Conduct Market Research Interviews With Prospects

2 key takeaways from the article

  1. In the world of professional coaching, consistently bringing in new clients requires the fine-tuning of marketing strategy and a thorough understanding of the audience.
  2. 16 members of Forbes Coaches Council suggest the following strategies: Use Quizzes To Attract New Leads, Focus On The ‘Contact-To-Contract’ Ratio, Go Back To Basics, Identify Your Ideal Target Client, Focus Only On Activities That Directly Result In Clients, Provide Value At Every Touch Point, Optimize Content And Marketing Messages, Develop A Client Feedback Program, Stay Centered And Be Fully Present, Ask For Constructive Feedback From Clients, Ask Happy Clients For Referrals, Feature Clients In Your Content To Create Social Proof, Create Genuine Connections With Clients, Reach Out To Professional Associations And Attend Networking Events, Have Multiple Centers Of Influence Endorse Your Work, and Conduct Market Research Interviews With Prospects.

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Topics: Strategy, Business Model, Marketing, Customer Acquisition

Leading & Managing Section

A New Social Contract for Teams

By Keith Ferrazzi | Harvard Business Review | September–October 2022 Issue

Companies have traditionally emphasized leadership competencies, not team competencies. In focusing so heavily on what it means to be a great leader, they’ve often lost sight of what it means to be a great team. It’s past time to right the imbalance—to recognize that the transformation of an organization must begin with the transformation of its teams. Leaders and team members must commit to a new social contract to escape mediocre or merely good performance, accelerate innovation, and unleash growth.

Among the author’s findings is that 71% of team members aren’t committed to elevating one another by offering feedback on professional capabilities and business practices and performance. The same percentage don’t believe that their team collaboratively engages in the most important business problems across the organization, while 74% don’t agree that their team is accountable for shared goals. And 81% say that their team is not operating at anywhere near its full potential.

Before you can change the ways in which your team members interact and operate, you need a clear view of how they are functioning right now. Too often members have an unspoken agreement to avoid conflict, stick to their individual areas of responsibility, and refrain from criticism in front of the boss. And they may be willing to take advice only from higher-ups, not recognizing the vital role of peer-to-peer feedback. All that needs to change.

Once your team has committed to a new social contract, it’s time to put the agreed-upon behaviors into use. A few of high-return practices that will help you make the transformation are:  promote collaborative problem solving; keep a partial but constant focus on the enterprise as a whole; the ideas/projects should have a rigorous examination and benefit from the full wisdom of the team; members must feel free to voice their thoughts openly; and every member gets open 360 degree feedback from peers orally, in a transparent, teamwide forum.

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. Companies have traditionally emphasized leadership competencies, not team competencies. In focusing so heavily on what it means to be a great leader, they’ve often lost sight of what it means to be a great team. 
  2. Leaders and team members must commit to a new social contract to escape mediocre or merely good performance, accelerate innovation, and unleash growth.
  3. A few of high-return practices of a new social contract for teams that will help you make the transformation are:  promote collaborative problem solving; keep a partial but constant focus on the enterprise as a whole; the ideas/projects should have a rigorous examination and benefit from the full wisdom of the team; members must feel free to voice their thoughts openly; and every member gets open 360 degree feedback from peers orally, in a transparent, teamwide forum.

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Topics:  Teams, Organizational Performance, Leadership

Supply Chain Leaders, Prioritize These Three Talent Strategy Essentials

By Inge Oosterhuis and Kristine Renker | MIT Sloan Management Review | October 03, 2022

Leaders are hyper-focused on developing overall supply chain resiliency to better prepare for and quickly respond to an ever-growing number of unpredictable challenges. A critical task for success on this front: building flexibility into the talent base.

Staffing the supply chain workforce is a big challenge — in fact, it’s one of the biggest challenges businesses have ever faced. Yet Chief supply chain officers may be overlooking or underestimating three essential elements of their talent strategy.

  1. The rise of cross-supply-chain thinkers. While deep, specialized skill sets in procurement, operations, manufacturing, and logistics will always be important, companies also need individuals attuned to driving important bigger-picture outcomes like greater resiliency, innovation, enhanced business responsibility, and sustainable cost reduction.  One way to build your team’s skills in cross-supply-chain thinking is to implement a system of rotating assignments among the various supply chain departments.  Another way to stimulate more integrated thinking and enhance end-to-end understanding is to create autonomous teams (pods) with representatives from different departments to tackle topics like innovation or sustainability.
  2. The use of AI and machine learning to uncover and develop new skills. Companies across the globe are already using new digital technologies in the supply chain to increase resilience and make faster, better business decisions. But they may not realize how effectively these tools can also help ensure that their human workforce has the right skills. An application called Skills.AI uses AI and machine learning to see how the skills currently associated with a particular role might themselves evolve as the role evolves.  When people self-report their skills, they tend to have a narrow frame of reference. They typically identify, on average, 11 skills for a particular role. AI and machine learning can help identify hidden skills people don’t readily identify as theirs.  By harnessing AI tools to better identify all the skills a person has, and exactly what they need to move to a new role, a company can quickly create more tailored interventions to close the gap. 
  3. The need to embrace all types of workers. As companies broaden their vision of a cross-skilled supply chain workforce, they must engage with every type of talent that contributes to their work. Beyond traditional employees, today’s workforces encompass a larger ecosystem of contractors, gig workers, and more. Companies are also gaining the flexibility to adjust how people work — for example, tapping aging front-line workers to share their hard-earned knowledge so that their skills and perspectives carry forward to a new generation.

To engage talent and ensure that your entire workforce shares a deep understanding of the job changes on the horizon, surface and broadcast the new learning opportunities that digitization continues to create. Offering upskilling options and the opportunities to learn on the job, communicating early and often, and supporting your workforce’s ongoing development are three key ways to keep employees — as well as any unions that represent them — informed and engaged.

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. Leaders are hyper-focused on developing overall supply chain resiliency to better prepare for and quickly respond to an ever-growing number of unpredictable challenges. A critical task for success on this front: building flexibility into the talent base.
  2. Staffing the supply chain workforce is a big challenge — in fact, it’s one of the biggest challenges businesses have ever faced. 
  3. Chief supply chain officers may be overlooking or underestimating the following three essential elements of their talent strategy:  the rise of cross-supply-chain thinkers who are driving important bigger-picture outcomes, the use of AI and machine learning to uncover and develop new skills, and the need to embrace all types of workers that contributes to their work.

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Topics:  Supply Chain, Logistics Management, Personal Development, Strategy

Entrepreneurship Section

35-year-old Canva founder Melanie Perkins got rejected by 100 VCs. Now her $26 billion design startup is ready to take on Microsoft and Google

By Emma Hinchliffe | Fortune Magazine | October 4, 2022

On a September morning in Sydney, Melanie Perkins peers through the double doors of Sterling hair salon in the city’s Surry Hills neighborhood. It’s now bustling with customers in highlight foils and black capes, but 10 years ago the space was where Perkins and then boyfriend, now husband Cliff Obrecht spent nearly every waking moment. It housed the Sydney office of Fusion Books, the yearbook publishing business the couple founded prior to launching Canva, a visual communications company. Today their second business is valued by one estimate at $26 billion, the most of any female-founded and woman-led startup in the world and a sum that has grown the couple’s combined net worth to an estimated $7.8 billion.

The humble origins of Fusion mask the big ambitions Perkins had at the time. Her vision has always been to “build the world’s most valuable company.” That Canva started from its predecessor Fusion’s run-down offices speaks to how diligently Perkins has pursued that goal over the past 10 years. Without technical backgrounds or Silicon Valley resources, the pair first tackled an achievable market—Australian high-school yearbook publishing—before taking on the larger graphic design industry. “We’ve been able to build every brick conscientiously,” Perkins says. The approach has spared Perkins from making mistakes common among startup founders who move too fast—overexpansion, buggy products, balance sheets in the red.

Ten years on, Canva is a towering force in the graphic design space, with 3,200 employees, 90 million users, and an easy-to-use web-based tool that lets users design social media graphics, build presentations for school or the office, and edit videos—and will soon help them do much more. It has become essential for amateur designers and, increasingly, professionals. When VC money was flush, Canva earned the backing of Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Founders Fund. Unlike many other VC-backed darlings, Canva has turned a profit on a free-cash-flow basis every year since 2017, on what is now $1 billion in revenue; it has $700 million in cash on hand. 

More recently, as other startups were laying off workers and scaling back expansion plans, Canva held a flashy event in September to announce the launch of professional tools intended to challenge workplace mainstays Google, Microsoft, and Adobe. It was the culmination of a long-held vision. “We had this in our pitch deck back in 2011,” Perkins says. “This was the final pillar.” 

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. In 2007 Perkins, now CEO of Canva a visual communications company was teaching design to fellow college students in her spare time when she grew frustrated with the tools available. 
  2. Design was becoming a bigger part of modern communication—from early social media to work presentations—but the products that helped everyday users master the skill, like Adobe InDesign, were clunky and expensive. There had to be a better, cheaper way. “The question was, could it be us that could create that?” Perkins says now. The answer led to a $26 billion visual communications company – Canva the most of any female-founded and woman-led startup in the world.
  3. Canva is a towering force in the graphic design space, with 3,200 employees, 90 million users, and an easy-to-use web-based tool that lets users design social media graphics, build presentations for school or the office, and edit videos—and will soon help them do much more.  Ready to challenge Microsoft and Google.

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Topics:  Startups, Entrepreneurship, Social Media

6 Ways You’re Thinking Wrong–and What You Can Do About Them

By Woo-Kyoung Ahn and John Hay Whitney | Inc Magazine | October 2022 Issue

“Thinking problems” cause troubles that go far beyond our individual concerns. These errors and biases contribute to a wide range of societal issues, including political polarization, complicity in climate change, and ethnic profiling. They can also come into play for people who run businesses–how they hire staff, interact with their colleagues, and set strategies.  Thinking problems happen because we are wired in very particular ways. Reasoning errors are mostly byproducts of our highly evolved cognition, which has allowed us to survive and thrive as a species.  6 strategies from cognitive psychology can help.

  1. Don’t Be Throttled by Things That Have Always Worked.  Confirmation bias can easily lead us to an exaggerated and invalid view of ourselves. Once we start believing that we are depressed, we may act like a depressed person, making deeply pessimistic predictions about the future and avoiding any fun–which would make anybody feel depressed. And once you start doubting your competency, you may avoid risks that could have led to greater career opportunities, and then, no surprise, your career will end up looking like you lack competency.
  2. Keep in Mind That Examples Are Just Examples.  Whether people are taking tests, or engaging in sports, music, or any other activity, random factors that affect performance always come into play, often giving a result that is better or worse than usual. Those who performed well likely had many random factors aligned in their favor for a stretch. But statistically, it can’t last forever, and it won’t.  And this is where the power of specific examples can be problematic. 
  3. Stop Flipping Out About the Negative.  Many psychological studies have shown that people weigh negative information more heavily than positive information. The negativity bias can affect us so severely that it causes us to make decisions that are blatantly irrational.  One effective method to avoid the negativity bias is to turn the negative frame into the positive frame and see how you feel.
  4. Remember That We Don’t See Things as They Are.  We always have to rely on what we know to make sense of the things happening around us. That means we tend to see the world based on what we already believe. Thus, a benign and useful cognitive mechanism can hurt others by helping perpetuate inaccurate impres­sions based on stereotypes.
  5. Want to Know What I Think? Ask Me.  Our tendency to interpret the things around us in the light of what we already know can also lead us to assume that everybody participating in a conversation would reach the same conclusion, including people who don’t know what we know. Which is why miscommunications are more common than we think, even with those who are close to us.  And the solution is simple: Stop letting others guess what we think and just tell them. 
  6. Imagine Your Future Self When Facing Delayed Gratification.  We tend to discount the value of future rewards more than is justifiable. We also discount the value of things in the future simply because the future is uncertain.  One method that has been shown to work is to think about future events with as much specific detail as we can summon in order to make the future feel more real.

3 key takeaways from the article

  1. “Thinking problems” cause troubles that go far beyond our individual concerns. 
  2. Thinking problems happen because we are wired in very particular ways. Reasoning errors are mostly byproducts of our highly evolved cognition, which has allowed us to survive and thrive as a species. As a result, de-biasing is notoriously challenging.  
  3. 6 actionable strategies from cognitive psychology that can change your thinking and help your team work better are: Don’t Be Throttled by Things That Have Always Worked, Keep in Mind That Examples Are Just Examples, Stop Flipping Out About the Negative, Remember That We Don’t See Things as They Are, Want to Know What I Think? Ask Me, and Imagine Your Future Self When Facing Delayed Gratification.

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Topics:  Problem-solving, Uncertainty, Decision-making

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