As more and more people remove their masks and emerge from the past 2 years, it is becoming cliché to use words like, “disrupted”, “unprecedented”, and “unparalleled” when describing the next new normal. Yes, everything has changed, and we are now all settling into new patterns of living, working, exercising, and enjoying amazing entertainment at home through digital systems that provide superior enjoyment. The quality of shows and movies to watch at home is truly unprecedented and if you have a great work-life balance, you can carve out some solid downtime to relax and enjoy some of these amazing forms of entertainment with family and friends. There is truly nothing better than binge-watching the Mandalorian of a Friday night with your kids.

I had an interesting predicament today that raises the potential of “alternative” forms of content that potentially rivals enjoying these great shows. At 2 pm this afternoon, I was triple booked, and it was a real predicament. It happed because I gave that time slot out as part of a list of alternatives and before I knew it, I was triple booked. Lesson learned. Luckily, I was able to attend one of the meetings live and then requested my teammates running the other meetings to record them for viewing later.

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The participants going through a virtual workshop featuring our new Coaching business simulation were having a hearty debate about the results from one of the complex scenarios. “I don’t know if that is still the best practice anymore, so I am going to disagree. I have found out the hard way that you better be very careful these days about giving strong feedback to people because they might just quit on you.”

It was an interesting conversation among 26 participants and the conclusions were evenly split. Half the group felt that everything in the business world has changed and because of the great resignation, too many leaders are tolerating poor performance instead of providing coaching and feedback that could cause employees to quit. The other half of the group said if an employee wanted to quit, they are going to quit regardless of getting negative feedback for poor performance.

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Economists, business leaders, individual contributors, and consumers are once again starting to worry about the potentially devastating impacts of inflation. As many businesses focus on building Business Acumen skills as a core competency to help them grow, Advantexe has developed this blog post for business professionals to understand the impending implications of inflation and some of the things they should be thinking and doing about it in this volatile business environment.

What is the root cause of inflation?

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to that question as this, like many other economic factors, has become too politicized. The simplest answer that I can provide is that inflation results from an increase in production costs or an increase in demand for products and services. The situation we find ourselves in today is a result of both these things happening simultaneously. Throw in the threat of World War III and at the very least the economic uncertainties of the global economy, you have a recipe for potentially devastating inflation.

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It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the business world. With the continued impacts of theglobal pandemic and the continued impacts of the global supply chain issues, the last thing we needed was the threat of World War III starting because Vladimir Putin has paranoid visions of “The West” invading Russia. But here we are…

People are on edge more than they have been in the last few years and the edginess is already making its way into the business environment. Last week I conducted a series of customizing interviews for several new business simulations we are building in the areas of Coaching and Resolving Business Conflicts and wow, did I get an earful from several senior-level leaders sharing their insights about the capability gaps of today’s managers.

“I don’t get it. Companies spend literally billions of dollars a year on training, and I am wondering why my managers still have no idea what to do,” shared one leader at a global pharmaceutical company. He continued, “We have all these courses like LinkedIn learning, but when it comes down to it, the managers, especially the new ones, avoid the hard conversations and decisions at all costs to the detriment of the business and their careers.”

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How can the Beatles and Mel Brooks, who started their careers in the 1950s, and had long  careers through multiple decades, provide insights into breakthrough innovation in 2022?

Over the past few weeks, I completed watching and reading three epic and fascinating pieces of entertainment; The Beatles Get Back on Disney+ a video chronology about the Beatle's last concert, “All About Me” a book by comedian Mel Brooks that chronicles his life in show business, and Paul McCartney – The Lyrics, an incredible book written by McCartney that provides the most intimate insights and details about the origins of more than 150 of his most influential songs. At first glance, you most likely wouldn’t think there are a lot of similarities between the four lads from Liverpool and a funny little kid who grew up in Brooklyn, but the more I watched and read, the more parallels I saw, and most importantly the more lessons about world-changing breakthrough innovation I learned.

How is it that Mel Brooks at 95 years old and Paul McCartney at 80 still have relevance and are still performing their crafts all these decades later? Because they are relentless innovators!

The video series and books shed interesting light on what it takes to be a breakthrough innovator and as I watched and read, I took notes on what truly differentiated them. I think the five primary similarities stand the test of time and are great insights for leaders and individual contributors looking at what it takes to create breakthrough innovation in 2022 and beyond.

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