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Since the Industrial Revolution, rich countries have mostly grown faster than poor ones. The two decades after around 1995 were an astonishing exception. During this period gaps in GDP narrowed, extreme poverty plummeted and global public health and education improved vastly, with a big fall in malaria deaths and infant mortality and a rise in school enrolment. 

Today, however, those miracles are a faint memory. As the Economist reports this week, extreme poverty has barely fallen since 2015. Measures of global public health improved only slowly in the late 2010s, and then went into decline after the pandemic. Malaria has killed more than 600,000 people a year in the 2020s, reverting to the level of 2012. And since the mid-2010s there has been no more catch-up economic growth. Depending on where you draw the line between rich and poor countries, the worst-off have stopped growing faster than richer ones, or are even falling further behind. For the more than 700m people who are still in extreme poverty—and the 3bn who are merely poor—this is grim news.

To judge what has gone wrong, first ask what previously went right. In the poorest countries education and (especially) health have depended on donors writing big cheques. But even if aid has curbed disease, it has not unleashed sustainable growth. Likewise with pro-market technocrats in the IMF and the World Bank. Western institutions were most involved in Africa and Latin America, where growth has been patchy and has varied with commodities prices.

Critics of the “neoliberal era” conclude that globalisation therefore failed. However, the most successful liberalisations came from within countries, rather than in response to donors’ advice. In the 1990s global convergence was powered by a few big successes: China’s rapid growth after it opened up under Deng Xiaoping, a similar—albeit less spectacular—process in India after reforms dismantling the “licence Raj”, and the integration of countries in eastern Europe into the global market economy after the fall of communism. All that amounts to a powerful endorsement of capitalism.

Just as the rich world did not make convergence happen, it is not to blame for the stalling of development today. It is true that the West’s efforts are as flawed as ever. The IMF and World Bank are juggling promoting reform and development with fighting climate change, and are caught in the middle of the power struggle between America and China, which is making it fiendishly hard to restructure poor countries’ debts. Aid budgets have been squeezed, hurting global public-health campaigns. Cash has been diverted from helping the poorest to other causes, such as greening power grids and helping refugees. Of what aid money remains, much is wasted rather than being spent after careful study of what works. The “Sustainable Development Goals”, by which the UN judges human progress, are hopelessly sprawling and vague.

The biggest problem, though, is that home-grown reform has ground to a halt. With some notable exceptions.   The world’s leaders are more interested in state control, industrial policy and protectionism than the examples of the 1990s—and it is no accident that such policies boost their own power.

Late last year, Bryan Lourd, the chief executive officer of Hollywood’s largest talent agency, was surveying the damage. The entertainment industry, his home of roughly four decades, seemed to be shrinking. The movie business was struggling to recover from the pandemic and multiple labor stoppages. Cable TV was speedily collapsing. Execs at Disney, Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. had sought out mergers, cut staff and funneled billions of dollars into new streaming services—Max this, Plus that—that were losing money. Wall Street, which had encouraged the spending, was losing hope; Lourd, who represents movie stars such as Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson, was dismayed.

When times are lean, Hollywood tends to keep faith that it’s one hit away from a turnaround. But many executives and filmmakers have begun to wonder if their industry is entering permanent decline. And many others turned to other professions permanently or partially – only the time will tell.

It’s not just Hollywood, either. Macroeconomic factors related to the pandemic—inflation leading to higher borrowing costs, low unemployment leading to a talent scarcity, stagnating sales—have caused disturbances elsewhere. The video game industry has fired nearly 12,000 people this year. Podcasting has suffered through years of spending cuts after not growing as fast as the tech giants anticipated. Attendance at theme parks and concerts has plateaued in the aggregate, despite some notable exceptions. 

And yet the doom and gloom can’t obscure that people have never spent more time or money on entertainment. While they’ve moved on from specific formats, they’ve never lost interest in pop culture.  Worldwide, the amount of time people spend staring at screens is at an all-time high, as are revenues for almost every sector of the entertainment business.

“What remains an absolute truth is that when people are served what they want, the business is profound. They haven’t lost interest and will pay a premium for great entertainment. The consumer is there for great content. 

The media industry has already solved the biggest hurdle in any business: getting customers to want its product. The challenge is how to deliver it. The internet has made it easier for anyone to produce and distribute their work; YouTube ingests hundreds of hours of video every minute, while Spotify Technology SA adds thousands of songs a day. Some companies, such as Netflix, have figured it out. Others, like Disney and Comcast Corp., are still noodling. Still more will fail because they can’t adapt. 

Despite its challenges, Hollywood is not in its final act. Here are their five main reasons: streaming is a great business … once you stop hemorrhaging cash; people don’t mind sitting through ads to save some money; a new creative class is thriving; Hollywood and Silicon Valley have maybe, finally, figured out how to work together; and If the music industry can make money, so can anyone.

Sales of new electric vehicles in Germany have plummeted, dropping nearly 37% in July 2024 from the same month one year ago.  One of the main reasons traces back to mid-December 2023, when the German government gave less than one week’s notice before ending its subsidy program for electric vehicles. The program had given drivers small grants (up to around €6,000) toward the purchase of new battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars.

It’s not just Germany ending these subsidy programs, either. Sweden and New Zealand have also scrapped their schemes and seen a resulting slowdown or drop in sales. This all comes at a time when the world needs to dramatically ramp up efforts to move to zero-emissions vehicles and pull fossil-fuel-powered ones off the roads to address climate change.

Experts are now cautioning that ending these support systems too soon could jeopardize progress on climate change. As EVs continue to enter the mainstream, the question facing policymakers is how to decide when the technology is ready to stand on its own—something that will likely vary in each market.

The end of German EV subsidies came too early, says Peter Mock, regional lead for Europe at the International Council on Clean Transportation. Most manufacturers are still far from the emissions targets they’re expected to hit by 2025. The sales slump for EVs raises questions about whether manufacturers will be able to hit those targets on time, and some in the auto industry are loudly raising doubts over whether the targets are feasible at all.

Germany’s EV market is in an early, somewhat delicate place. Battery-electric vehicles made up just over 20% of new-vehicle sales in Germany before incentives ended in 2023. This point, Mock explains, falls at what many economists call the chasm separating early adopters (who are often willing to spend more) from majority customers.

Take Sweden, which ended EV incentives at the end of 2022. The country saw an immediate slump in its sales from December 2022 to January 2023, but the market has roughly leveled out. One reason: The transition there was significantly farther along, with roughly 35% of new vehicles sold being battery-electric in August 2024. If you lump in plug-in hybrids, the share of plug-in vehicles is nearly 50%. Because the market was farther along, there’s not as much concern that the country will see a major stall in moving toward zero-emissions vehicles from fossil-fuel ones, Mock says.

One potential way to address concerns about subsidy cost is to pair them with fees on the incumbent technology. These are sometimes called feebate programs, and they work by adding a fee to a high-emissions vehicle while providing a subsidy for a low-emissions one, Mock says. 

The German government is already taking steps to improve its falling EV sales. In early September, the government agreed on measures that would allow companies to deduct part of the value of electric vehicles from tax consideration.

Organizational health is a moving target. Leaders at today’s healthiest organizations don’t run them the same way that the C-suite did in 2003, when McKinsey launched the Organizational Health Index (OHI).  McK created the index to help organizations gain vital insights into whether they have the right practices in place to drive sustained performance. In the two decades since then, OHI research has consistently shown that the best predictor of long-term performance is organizational health: how well organizations align around a common vision, execute their strategy, and renew themselves over time.

Since 2003, McKinsey has regularly upgraded the OHI to reflect advances in organizational science and changes in the state of organizations.   Six key shifts that emerged from the data and why they matter for leaders trying to build healthy organizations in a rapidly changing world. 

The OHI measures organizational health through nine dimensions of organizational effectiveness, or outcomes: direction, leadership, work environment, accountability, coordination and control, capabilities, motivation, innovation and learning, and external orientation.  Within each of those nine outcomes are a range of practices, or behavioral manifestations of how leaders run an organization, that drive overall health. The authors expected that they would expand current concepts and add several new ones, which led to the number of measured practices growing from 37 to 43. This process revealed several fundamental and dramatic shifts in the management practices that drive organizational health. The six notable changes we observed were related to purpose, authoritative leadership, decision making, employee experience, technology and digital capabilities, and sustainability.  In essence, the world has changed, and the OHI captured those changes, loud and clear.

Six actions leaders can take to adapt to these changes are: to create a common purpose, show your employees the ‘why’; authoritative leadership is obsolete; navigate uncharted territory with facts and data, not intuition; help employees be at their individual best every day; spend on technology only when there’s a strong business case; and act responsibly.

The phrase “effective corporate governance” may conjure up the image of a full board of directors sitting around a table, but committees are where most of the real work of the board happens. Committees are the small groups whose work remains out of the spotlight; they are where people have the opportunity to ask questions, trade-offs can be considered, actual debate happens, and recommendations are formulated to be presented to the entire board.  But not all committees are highly effective. So, what sets the effective apart from the ineffective?  Five distinct ways to ensure that board committees reach their full potential.

1. Help new nonexecutive directors find their voice.  One shared experience for directors of all backgrounds is the anxiety of participating in meetings as a new board member — hoping to make a positive impression with the rest of the board, or at least to avoid making a bad first impression.  It is equally important to set clear expectations for each director about what work is expected from them on each committee in which they participate and to officially invite them to voice their ideas and concerns. This clarity is particularly important in helping new NEDs feel comfortable questioning existing policies and procedures and worry less about potentially offending existing directors.
2. Facilitate the success of NEDs from underrepresented populations.  The most successful boards develop their NEDs by moving them into committee chair roles. Women and other minority NEDs particularly benefit from being asked to chair a committee early in their service, which raises their status among members of the full board, draws them into the center of board work, and accelerates their contributions.
3. Use ad hoc committees to address specific issues.  Boards make decisions on broad strategic issues. Sometimes these concern a very specific situation that demands effort, detail, and time to resolve and is incompatible with the normal pace and frequency of board meetings. Where there is acute time pressure on a major issue, boards can create ad hoc committees.
4. Bring in outside experts.  Diversity of information and perspective is always relevant for board work. The challenge is that, given the limited number of participants in committees, gathering a broad range of perspectives can be difficult. It is likely that there will be topics that require attention in which no board member is an expert — such as AI, sustainability, or government regulations — in which case, external input is required.
5. Evaluate committee functioning.  Boards should be evaluated regularly. Most regulators recommend an internal evaluation every year and an external evaluation every third or fourth year. These evaluations typically cover boardroom culture, relationships among members and management, the effectiveness of the board’s policies and procedures, the level of challenge the directors offer to the executive team, the quality of meeting discussions, and the quality of decisions.

Whether evidence comes from an outside study or internal data, walking through it thoroughly before making major decisions is crucial. Too often predetermined beliefs, problematic comparisons, and groupthink dominate discussions.  Five common pitfalls leaders make in interpreting analyses are:

1. Pressure-Test the Link Between Cause and Effect.  Will search engine advertisements increase sales? Will allowing employees to work remotely reduce turnover? These questions are about cause and effect—and are the kind of questions that data analytics can help answer. In fact, research papers have looked at them in detail. However, managers frequently misinterpret how the findings of those and other studies apply to their own business situation. When making decisions, managers should consider internal validity—whether an analysis accurately answers a question in the context in which it was studied. They should also consider external validity—the extent to which they can generalize results from one context to another. That will help them avoid making five common mistakes:
2. Conflating causation with correlation. Even though most people know that correlation doesn’t equal causation, this error is surprisingly prevalent.  To understand causality, delve into how the study in question was conducted. For instance, was it a randomized controlled trial, in which the researchers randomly assigned people to two groups: one that was subjected to a test condition and a control group that was not? That’s often considered the gold standard for assessing cause and effect, though such experiments aren’t always feasible or practical.  Researchers who don’t have access to planned or natural experiments may instead control for potential confounding factors—variables that affect the variable of interest—in their data analysis, though this can be challenging in practice.
3. Underestimating the importance of sample size.  Small sample sizes are more likely to show greater fluctuations. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, in their canonical work on biases and heuristics, found that most people got the answer wrong, with more than half saying, “About the same.” People tend to underappreciate the effect that sample size has on the precision of an estimate. This common error can lead to bad decisions.   When evaluating effects, it can be helpful to ask not only about the sample size but about the confidence interval. 
4. Focusing on the wrong outcomes. In their classic 1992 HBR article “The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance,” Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton opened with a simple observation: “What you measure is what you get.” Although their article predates the era of modern analytics, that idea is more apt than ever. Experiments and predictive analytics often focus on outcomes that are easy to measure rather than on those that business leaders truly care about but are difficult or impractical to ascertain. As a result, outcome metrics often don’t fully capture broader performance in company operations.  It’s also important to make sure that the outcome being studied is a good proxy for the actual organizational goal in question.  Some company experiments track results for just a few days and assume that they’re robust evidence of what the longer-term effect would be. With certain questions and contexts, a short time frame may not be sufficient. 
5. To really learn from any data set, you need to ask basic questions like, What outcomes were measured, and did we include all that are relevant to the decision we have to make? Were they broad enough to capture key intended and unintended consequences? Were they tracked for an appropriate period of time?
6. Misjudging generalizability. Business leaders make missteps in both directions, either over- or underestimating the generalizability of findings.  When you’re assessing generalizability, it can be helpful to discuss the mechanisms that might explain the results and whether they apply in other contexts. You might ask things like, How similar is the setting of this study to that of our business? Does the context or period of the analysis make it more or less relevant to our decision? What is the composition of the sample being studied, and how does it influence the applicability of the results? Does the effect vary across subgroups?
7. Overweighting a specific result. Relying on a single empirical finding without a systematic discussion of it can be just as unwise as dismissing the evidence as irrelevant to your situation. It’s worth checking for additional research on the subject. Conducting an experiment or further analysis with your own organization can be another good option. Questions to ask include, Are there other analyses that validate the results and the approach? What additional data might we collect, and would the benefit of gathering more evidence outweigh the cost of that effort?

To overcome bias, business leaders can invite contributors with diverse perspectives to a conversation, ask them to challenge and build on ideas, and ensure that discussions are probing and draw on high-quality data.  Encouraging dissent and constructive criticism can help combat groupthink, make it easier to anticipate unintended consequences, and help teams avoid giving too much weight to leaders’ opinions. Leaders also must push people to consider the impact of decisions on various stakeholders and deliberately break out of siloed perspectives.

Reflecting on where you are relative to where you want to be can reveal one’s unmet needs and desires, but actually changing your behaviors and adopting the new habits and mindset needed to get there can be challenging. Many coaching clients come seeking support to transform aspirations into actionable strategies after a period of self-reflection, which, while instrumental in providing inspiration and motivation, must be followed up with action to achieve real personal or professional growth.

Members of Forbes Coaches Council share their experiences how they help their clients create action plans to reach the goals they uncover through deep self-reflection. 

1. Start With A Clear Vision.  According to  Dr. Courtney to drive meaningful change, self-reflection must be followed by strategic action.
2. Define Macro And Micro Goals.   Philippe for his clients define macro and micro goals, breaking those down into goals that take no longer than two weeks to achieve. This, coupled with a coaching session every two weeks, creates momentum and an accountability system that allows people to progress toward their goals. The sessions also act as a sounding board where we identify obstacles as soon as possible and draw up action plans to tackle them. 
3. Do Both The ‘Inner’ And ‘Outer’ Work.  According to Kelly reflection and assessment likely illuminate the high-level outcomes desired. Next is to do both the “inner” and “outer” work around the desired change. Examine the “inner” work needed: What are you afraid of? What do you know about yourself? Have you been in this place or doing this thing before? And what obstacles do you imagine you will create for yourself? Then, consider the “outer” work: What does this change require from others in your life, and are they on board? What practical things (for instance, setting up a business may require setting up a new legal entity and a website) do you need to do or hire someone to do? What obstacles do you anticipate that will come from others? Working through these questions will set you up to create your action plan. 
4. Leverage Key Questions And Tools.  Barbara believes that guiding a client to set an action plan is a collaborative process. It starts with asking key questions: Where do you want to be? What should it look like? What’s blocking you now? From there, the action plan begins: What’s the first step to make this a reality? What has held you back before, and how can you overcome it now? One tool to use in this process is a “clarity/contrast” worksheet, which asks, “What do you dislike about your current situation, and what would you like it to look like?” This helps identify the problem and the desired direction. The “be x do = have” concept is another powerful tool, encouraging clients to consider who they want to be, not just what they want to achieve. This approach supports not only task completion, but also personal growth, which aligns their actions with their goals. 
5. Plan And Follow Up Step By Step.   Rick recommended six steps to ensure success. Step one is to get focused. Precision is critical—define your goal with 4K clarity, understand the purpose driving you and test your belief in the goal and your ability to achieve it. Step two is creative thinking. Break free from old patterns. Explore new ideas, methods and collaborators to unlock untapped potential. Step three is critical thinking. Evaluate which ideas are worth pursuing. Step four is to build the plan. Define what needs to be done, by whom and when. Step five is to review and reflect. Regularly assess and adjust your plan. Step six is taking ownership. Are you truly committed? A simple “yes” or “no” will reveal whether you’re ready to succeed or if it’s time to reassess.
6. Help Them Identify Their Ikigai.  According to Aurelien, to guide a client in setting an action plan for true personal or professional change, he starts by helping them identify their ikigai—the intersection of what they love, what they’re good at, what the world needs and what they can be paid for. We explore their lifelong strengths and passions, aligning them with opportunities to bring value to others.

A few other coaches suggested the following: simplify the implementation, overcome inertia by beginning immediately, do a pre-mortem to anticipate obstacles.

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A business lifestyle that continues to gain in popularity these days is being a social entrepreneur. In the simplest of terms, these are people who seek to generate social value rather than profits, and use traditional business and professional career principles to provide solutions to social issues. On the surface, this sounds like business owners who want to build a nonprofit organization.  Yet the term seems to be more often associated with people who intend to make a profit, but whose work is targeted toward long-term socio-economic change.

Whether the objective is to generate profits or social capital, the common element for all new venture owners is the recognition that there is a problem that needs solving or there is an opportunity to improve the status quo.  The vision is always to be a change agent, to invent and popularize new approaches, and to persuade people to take a leap forward. In every case, this requires a committed ultimate realist with the determination to persist in the face of daunting odds.

Another way to distinguish between the two types of business owners is by identifying what social entrepreneurship is not:

1. It’s not a fundraising strategy for nonprofits. A social enterprise may be profitable or not, but the generation of funds is deemed secondary to success with regard to the environmental or social issues in the vision. Generating funds should not be the highest priority.
2. It’s not about profit before social impact. A social enterprise must be financially sustainable only as a means to an end, which is its social or environmental impact and rate of change. The business owner mission is profit always, social impact maybe.
3. It’s not a new definition for the nonprofit sector. The evident and real purpose of the social enterprise must be to make the world a better place through the operation of a business. This certainly also has the potential to enhance the vitality of the nonprofit sector, but it doesn’t move it to a higher moral plane.
4. It’s not an investment opportunity for business investors. Funding for such an enterprise is more likely to come from philanthropists, government grants, or bootstrapping. Business investors are looking for a high financial return, not social capital.
5. It’s not about entrée into the government sector. So far, the largest source of services and funding for social enterprises and social entrepreneurs has been federal, state, and local governments. Yet the enterprises are not government enterprises, and the process for success makes them good business enterprises.
6. Social entrepreneurship is not socialism. Socialist theory calls for compulsory taxpayer contributions to finance social initiatives, while the social entrepreneur uses the standard business model and innovative approaches to attract customers, fund activities, and accomplish social change.

According to the author, the day after they finished training their staff for the new Ford’s Garage in Gainesville, Florida, a family appeared at the door. They thought we were open because they saw the team in the dining room. We could have told them to come back when the restaurant opened to the public, but instead, we invited them in, and they had a fantastic dining experience. That was in 2022, and they still come in as frequent guests.

That’s just a great story of hospitality. It’s one of the “seven commitments” from their brand philosophy that their Gainesville team beautifully brought to life. By living their vision, they created guests for life, which shows the importance of getting your team on board with your brand philosophy.

A company’s brand philosophy is often called the North Star, after an old-age technique used by early navigators traveling at sea. Like the ancient mariners who first steered their ships by it, you can help your team find their way with a well-thought-out vision that’s communicated to everyone and reinforced every day. It has to be something real, not just a poster on the wall in the break room, and it has to come to life through sharing stories like the Gainesville example.

Their brand’s concept has always been about hospitality and fun. The restaurant was created to evoke a classic American service station, from the Ford Motor Company-inspired logo to the décor and menu; what’s NOT fun about that?  Their goal was to personalize it for their unique vision, so they updated their brand philosophy to what they call “1-4-7”: one vision to “drive a unique dining experience,” four principles (people, products, performance and package, meaning the vibe and spirit), and seven commitments (integrity, quality, hospitality, excellence, teamwork, community and fun).

Now, in every decision they make, whether regarding building design or marketing imagery, they pull out the guide and ask if the new project measures up. Everything they do is put through the brand philosophy funnel.

Coming up with a brand philosophy doesn’t end when you’ve hammered it out and put it in writing. You have to coach your team so they put the ideas to work every day. It’s a constant process. You have to talk about it all the time, work it into team-building exercises, and measure new initiatives against it to make sure you stay aligned.

No matter what industry you work in, a great way to start each morning is to gather your team together as a group.

A brand philosophy must be something the whole team can support. It isn’t directed at guests, but if your team is living it, your guests will feel it in the way they’re treated when they walk through your door. You’ll feel it when they come back to get that positive experience again and again.