Grateful

Several months ago I took a productivity course. It was a well intentioned effort to improve productivity by learning the processes and best practices of the world’s most productive people.

As a writer and observer, I learnt much more. I learnt about the “maker” and “manager” schedule. I learnt about the importance of scheduling time for creativity and writing. I learnt about establishing a discipline in doing certain things that would eventually turn into routine or habit.

My promise at the end of the course was one related to gratitude. I wanted to establish the practice of being grateful and therefore I proposed to chose one person in my LinkedIn network to thank every Friday.

Despite my greatest of efforts I didn’t manage to meet my  goal (yet!). But it did have surprising consequences and helped me be more aware of gratitude in general.

In a world of “me” it is nice to be grateful and to express gratitude – whether or not it is part of a habit forming exercise or not.

Thank you to you – my blog followers – for years of reading, of support and of encouraging me to explore the next market or horizon.

I am truly grateful.

-EMC

Savvy Saturday August 5, 2017

Never have a meeting where two pizzas couldn’t feed the entire group.

This is Jeff Bezos’ (Amazon) ‘two pizza rule’ and his secret to productive meetings.  If the goal of your meeting is to be productive, you need to focus on less – not more.  Meaning, don’t invite more people than it would take to feed with two pizzas.

-EMC

Global Competitiveness – Why we should care

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has published its 2013-2014 Global Competitiveness Report. You can find the report here in a number of languages. How did the Latin American region fare and why should we care? Let’s take a look at what “competitiveness” is and its relation to doing business.

The WEF explains:

We define competitiveness as the set of institutions,

policies, and factors that determine the level of

productivity of a country. The level of productivity, in

turn, sets the level of prosperity that can be earned by

an economy. The productivity level also determines the

rates of return obtained by investments in an economy,

which in turn are the fundamental drivers of its growth

rates. In other words, a more competitive economy is

one that is likely to sustain growth.

Competitiveness is based on a number of factors; economists have studied for hundreds of years what makes an economy able to foster growth and sustain it. The competitiveness landscape, as revealed in the WEF’s report, is important to business because it provides insight into what drives productivity and prosperity in 148 economies. It helps us understand how our investments will do and what we might want to look out for so we can mitigate against it. It tells us what challenges or “wins” we might expect when doing business in the studied economies.

In an upcoming blog post I will highlight the findings related to competitiveness in the Latin American region.

Enjoy the rest of the week!

EMC