Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
Masayoshi Son talks about WeWork, Vision Fund and Softbank under siege Forbes (reading time: 18 minutes)
It was reported this week that the SoftBank Vision Fund lost $17 billion dollars (billions with a B). You would imagine that their current challenges (pandemic, WeWork) would deter Masayoshi San but it doesn’t appear that way. This piece in Forbes details how the iconic Japanese businessman is thinking about the future and putting the past challenges behind him.
Taleb: The Only Man Who Has A Clue Naked Capitalism (reading time: 23 minutes)
I’m an unabashed fan of Nassim Taleb. Despite being a bully on Twitter, his books and thinking are world-class. I was surprised when he started tweeting about the Corona virus and its dangers back in January. He and two co-authors published a paper in late February about stopping the spread of the virus. This post details a concept that we’ve been explored lately, complex systems. Preventing to asymmetric threat (like a global virus) requires a knowledge of probabilistic thinking and precautionary principles.
Is your organization—and leadership style—adaptive enough for this moment? Aimee Groth, The Ready (reading time: 7 minutes)
The current crisis has revealed that organizations need to be more resilient and adaptive to their environment. A company’s entire operating system needs to be rehauled. One of the ways to do this is with self-management. This is an excellent that demystifies the concept. Leadership and trust are all essential components for an effective self-managed organization.
COVID and forced experiments Ben Evans (reading time: 9 minutes)
This is a brilliant post by Benedict Evans. We are *all* online now and this forced experiment of being confined at home has forced everyone to questions their assumptions. We’ve seen 10 years of changes in a few weeks. We don’t know how much of this will stick around long term but we are seeing a great acceleration of previous trends. Many past conventions will likely go away.
How to Shape Your Future Athena Jones (reading time: 11 minutes)
Fear is overtaking our ability to imagine with optimism.
It’s cool to see a branding agency developing great thinking about shaping the future. The post some great insights on how to move along five dimensions; powerlessness -> control, pessimism -> optimism, prediction -> imagining, time as an anchor -> time is irrelevant and telling -> feeling. I enjoyed the aspect of pushing towards change and changing your mindset.