Weekend Digest: The good (and bad) leadership, ‘counter Trump,’ and cancer ‘moonshot’ edition
by January 16, 2016 8:09 am 129 views
TV PREVIEW
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock, which airs Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Channel 7.
Conner Eldridge. The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in his first major television interview. Where does he stand on the issues? Why is he challenging incumbent Sen. John Boozman? How would he conduct his business, if elected?
Gov. Asa Hutchinson is on air in the Big Apple. What did the governor do in New York City and could it pay dividends for Arkansas?
And, it was quite a week in politics. Our roundtable discussion will focus on the latest GOP Presidential debate, a controversy in Iran, the Powerball lottery, and the governor’s first year in office. TB&P contributors John Burris and Jessica DeLoach Sabin are guests.
Tune in to Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock on KATV Ch. 7, Sunday at 9:30 a.m.
DIFFERENT THINGS LEADERS DO TO MAKE THEM GREAT
There are six things, according to Forbes.
Great leadership can be a difficult thing to pin down and understand. You know a great leader when you’re working for one, but even they can have a hard time articulating what it is that makes their leadership so effective.
There are six critical things that great leaders do that really stand out. Any of us can do the same.
Learn what they are at this link.
HOW SOME MAJOR COMPANIES ENGAGE IN TEAM-BUILDING
“It’s not what you think,” for companies like Uber and Facebook, says Forbes.
“Interested in learning how the most innovative companies engage in team-building today, I caught up with the inspiring Jenny Gottstein, 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and creator of The Go Game, a new interactive and creative approach to team-building.”
After 10 years and 10,000 games, Jenny and her team have refined the art of engaging engineers, marketing teams, lawyers and everything in between. Jenny shared what the top companies today are doing to build their teams.
The interview is here.
THE TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT OF GOOD (AND BAD) LEADERSHIP
We know that emotions are contagious. We know that behaviors are contagious.
We wanted to know how such “social contagion” affects leaders. We already know that good leadership creates engaged employees and that leaders influence a variety of outcomes such as personnel turnover, customer satisfaction, sales, revenue, productivity, and so on. But if you’re a good leader, do you make the people around you more likely to become good leaders as well? And which behaviors are most readily “caught”?
Find out at this link from Harvard Business Review.
THE REAL PRICE OF OIL IS EVEN LOWER THAN YOU THOUGHT
With oil prices “the lowest in a decade” Americans saved on average more than $600 last year. But even with this windfall, analysts say “in real terms the collapse is even deeper.”
West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, sank below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since 2003. Actual barrels of Saudi Arabian crude shipped to Asia are even cheaper, at $26 — the lowest since early 2002 once inflation is factored in and near levels seen before the turn of the millennium.
Slumping prices are a critical signal that the boom in lending in China is “unwinding,” according to Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
But what is blunting even lower prices at the pump? Follow this link for the complete story from Bloomberg Business.
HOW DID NIKKI HALEY DO?
Well. The Washington Post says the South Carolina governor “cemented her place in the national spotlight Tuesday,” when she gave the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) Less well-known. She made a bit of a splash last year as she advocated for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state house in Columbia. She’s been regularly mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick later this year despite being a fairly anonymous governor from a relatively small state. She’s got conservative bona fides, she’s a good speaker, and she’s a woman who is the daughter of immigrants. All she needed was a big platform to meet the country.
On Tuesday, she got the platform – though the size is yet to be determined.
What she said was unconventional and well-received. Could it help catapult her into a VP nomination?
Get the details at this link.
OBAMA TURNS HIS BACK ON CONGRESS
POLITICO reports, “President Barack Obama still has a year left in office but his final State of the Union address felt like an early wave goodbye to Capitol Hill.”
The 5,400 word speech included just four direct asks of Congress: more money for combating malaria, a new authorization for waging war on the Islamic State, an end to the embargo against Cuba and approval of a sweeping trade deal with Pacific Rim countries.
Republicans took note of the sparse shopping list. More about the GOP’s response to the speech can be found here.
WHO IS THE ‘COUNTER-TRUMP?’
National Journal says, “The new speaker (Paul Ryan) offers the clearest contrast to the presidential front-runner’s confrontational vision of the Republican future.”
On Friday night in Rock Hill, about 80 miles north of here, Donald Trump roused a raucous overflow crowd with impassioned populist attacks against a dizzying array of targets. The next morning in Columbia, House Speaker Paul Ryan wowed a reserved but still overflow crowd at a forum on conservative thinking about poverty with a dizzying array of policy proposals and his impassioned insistence that the party must address the problems of the poor.
Ryan has avoided direct conflict with Trump, apart from condemning the billionaire’s proposal to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S. But with Jeb Bush faltering in the presidential race, and Marco Rubio moving toward a darker message, Ryan emerged from Saturday’s forum as the national Republican leader offering the sunniest contrast to Trump’s belligerent vision of the party’s future.
Read more about that “contrast” by clicking this link.
THE ‘MOONSHOT’ TO CURE CANCER
Fast Company reports, “One item in President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address this week overshadowed all the others: the announcement of a massive “moonshot” effort, led by Vice President Joe Biden, to cure cancer.”
Such a bold proclamation naturally begets a few questions, and the government started answering them today in a call with reporters by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
So how would it work? Find out at this link.
BOWIE’S FINAL MESSAGE
“In the video for David Bowie’s “Lazarus,” released last week, the mythic singer and rock ’n’ roll shape-shifter, ever thin but bordering on gaunt, is blindfolded and writhing in a hospital bed,” says the New York Times.
“Look up here, I’m in heaven,” he sings. “I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.” In the end, a shaking Mr. Bowie retreats backward into a darkened armoire.
“Mr. Bowie, who in his 50-year career reimagined the worlds of pop music, art and fashion, told very few people about the cancer that preceded his death on Sunday, at 69, a year and a half after his diagnosis. Even those working closely with him on a sudden burst of new projects were surprised to learn he had been dying.”
At the same time, it turns out, he was telling everyone through his art.
Read the full story at this link.
CHIP KELLY RESURRECTS
Fired by Philadelphia, Chip Kelly is the new head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers on Thursday hired Kelly to become the organization’s seventh head coach of the past 15 years.
This seems like a great fit for this west coast innovator, who catapulted Oregon to heights never seen. But can Kelly ever duplicate his success in college? We’ll see.
Go to this link from Comcast SportsNet, for more on how Kelly was selected.
HOLIDAY HITS
OK the holidays are in the rear-view mirror, but aren’t you just a bit curious about which products won the season?
We were too.
Click this link for “The 25 Products that Won the Holiday Season,” from AOL.