business – understand-culture

Planning habits

Andrew D. Huberman (born 1975, in Palo Alto, California) is an American neuroscientist and tenured associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine who has made contributions to the brain development, brain plasticity, and neural regenerationand repair fields.

https://youtu.be/B8aXidTUnJc

Much of his work is focused on the visual system, including the mechanisms controlling light-mediated activation of the circadian and autonomic arousal centers in the brain, as well as brain control over conscious vision or sight.

Huberman has been credited with coining the term “Non-Sleep Deep Rest” (NSDR), referring to practices that place the brain and body into shallow sleep to accelerate neuroplasticity and help offset mental and physical fatigue.

Done is Better Than Perfect

Done is Better Than Perfect: Perfectionism is no friend in addressing geopolitical challenges that impact the German economy.

German companies’ ability to perfect processes or products is unique in the global market and lends any export with a Made in Germany stamp a certain level of cachet. But this perfection comes at a cost in global economies that are increasingly oriented toward fast-paced industries and cutting-edge technology: it takes an enormous amount of time to achieve.

In a tech-focused world where the most successful new companies do the opposite of what has made German firms successful for so long—moving fast and breaking things, as Facebook would like us to believe—several geopolitical factors add to the headwind.

How emergency preparedness can save your business

What is a business continuity plan? SAP’s global HR value advisor, Chiara Bersano, has a unique perspective on the question. In 1999, she was working for a global company that operated a factory in Izmir, Turkey, when a devastating earthquake ultimately left more than 17,000 dead and 250,000 homeless. Her company’s employees, however, fared better than most.

So, what is contingency planning? If you ask Bersano, it’s creating an emergency-response framework that results in retaining a healthy, motivated, dedicated workforce during and after crises.

“The power of relationship building from a crisis is extreme,” Bersano says. “It’s building a relationship based on trust with the employees.”

‘We are in a gas crisis.’ Germany raises emergency level.

New York Times. June 2022. Germany’s economy minister triggered the second stage of a contingency plan a week after Russia cut back on gas to Europe, sending prices soaring and raising fears of shortages.

Germany warned residents and businesses on Thursday that the country was in a natural gas crisis that could worsen in coming months.

“The situation is serious, and winter will come,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, told reporters at a news conference in Berlin. He said the government had triggered the second stage of its three-step energy gas plan; the next stage would permit the government to begin gas rationing.

“Even if you don’t feel it yet: We are in a gas crisis,” he said. “Gas is a scarce commodity from now on. Prices are already high, and we have to be prepared for further increases. This will affect industrial production and become a big burden for many consumers.”

Be prepared when ‘what if?’ happens.

Natural disasters. Power outages. Mechanical failures. Events like these may be rare, but if they happen your business could be at risk, potentially costing you millions in lost sales and productivity. In today’s complex world a simple checklist won’t do when ‘what if?’ happens.

Only a thorough contingency plan ensures you have properly assessed your risk and have the right backup systems and strategies in place to activate on a moment’s notice. Trane can help. Our experts work closely with you using a strategic, multi-step approach to identify, prioritize and mitigate the risks you face. You get an action plan to safeguard your critical operations and peace of mind knowing that you’re prepared.

“Firms will go bust”

The Guardian. April 2022. Firms will go bust’: Germany prepares for a future without Russian gas.

In Germany, they call it “Day X”. Businesses up and down the land are making contingency plans for what is seen as a growing likelihood that Russian gas will stop flowing into Europe’s biggest economy.

“It would be a disaster – one which would have seemed almost unthinkable just two months ago, but which right now feels like a very realistic prospect,” the owner of a hi-tech mechanical engineering company in western Germany said. The firm produces everything from battery cases for electric cars to train clutch systems.

The speaker did not want to be named, or for his company to be identified, in part for fear, he said, of appearing to support Russia’s war by making the case that if the gas is turned off, his century-old business “will likely not survive”.

But he says he is in a deep quandary and feeling very vulnerable, as he is not only heavily reliant on gas – the cost of which has already soared – but also on metals such as nickel and aluminium, much of which comes from Russia.

10 Traits of Highly Agile Companies

June 2021. Gallup. Among all the bad news recently is this positive discovery: German companies are perhaps becoming much more agile.

In fact, Gallup’s Agility Index shows an eight-percentage-point increase — from 9% in 2019 to 17% in 2020 — in German workers who strongly agree their company has the right mindset, tools and processes to respond quickly to business needs.

What is business agility

Business agility refers to rapid, continuous, and systematic evolutionary adaptation and entrepreneurial innovation directed at gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. Business agility can be sustained by maintaining and adapting the goods and services offered to meet with customer demands, adjusting to the marketplace changes in a business environment, and taking advantage of available human resources.

In a business context, agility is the ability of an organization to rapidly adapt to market and environmental changes in productive and cost-effective ways. An extension of this concept is the agile enterprise, which refers to an organization that uses key principles of complex adaptive systems and complexity science to achieve success. Business agility is the outcome of organizational intelligence.

What makes Germans so orderly?

BBC. 2020. For centuries, Germany has been synonymous with order. So how can a rule-abiding nation also have an anything-goes spirit?

In the nearly four years I’ve lived in Germany, that woman’s reprimand was just one of many examples I’ve experienced of Germans strictly adhering to the rules in the name of preserving Ordnung (order). Because in Germany, as the famous expression goes, “Ordnung muss sein” (“there must be order”). In fact, this proverbial saying is so well-ingrained in the German psyche that it’s become a cultural cliché for Germans around the world, and a way of life for them at home.

Orderly, yes. But slaves to rules? No.

25 year career plan

Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses the 25 year plan he developed while a student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and why you should veer away from such plans. Cook spoke as part of his class reunion at the school.

The journey was not predictable. The only thing you can really do is prepare. Ebb and flow. Lots of things change. Have a North Star. Find your journey.