By Gregory P. Shea – Google employees protest an attempt to silence their activism. Facebook employees stage a virtual walkout. Amazon employees protest over workplace safety, and a company vice president resigns over their firings. Employees at Target and Walmart protest as well. Print and broadcast media struggle with various policies, and prominent journalists resign at the The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. The Washington Post reports on research findings that the COVID-19 pandemic will undermine trust in government for decades.
Isolated data points? Maybe. A sign of the times? Perhaps. Regardless, leaders should take note.
First, leadership is a relationship. No relationship, no leadership. One or more people allow another person to influence their behavior in a manner or direction that the other wishes. That influence can and does come from a wide variety of sources. But regardless of source, no such relationship means no followers, and no followers means no leaders and no leadership. As one Wharton Executive Education participant put it: “We refer to a person who sets the direction for our travel as a ‘leader.’ We refer to a person traveling without followers as ‘a bloke out for a walk.’”
Second, societal and organizational elites have, for decades, chiseled away at their relationship with followers. Systematic shredding of long-standing “do your job, keep your job” cultures in the last 20 to 30 years of the 20th century eviscerated the psychological contract between employer and employee, even as employers complained about the remarkable demise of employee loyalty. Since 1978, CEO pay has increased 1,000%, compared with 11.9% for average workers. CEOs now make 278 times as much as the average worker, up from 20 times in 1965. Trust in government has fallen from about 70% to under 50% over the same period.
Few visible elites paid any appreciable price in the wake of the financial crisis (unlike after the S&L crisis of the 1980s and 1990s), and those who did were frequently seen loading up their wagons with gold before heading out of town and into “retirement.” more>
By Shirish Sankhe, Anu Madgavkar, Gautam Kumra, Jonathan Woetzel, Sven Smit, and Kanmani Chockalingam – India is at a decisive point in its journey toward prosperity. The economic crisis sparked by COVID-19 could spur reforms that return the economy to a high-growth track and create gainful jobs for 90 million workers to 2030; letting go of this opportunity could risk a decade of economic stagnation. A new report from the McKinsey Global Institute identifies a reform agenda that could be implemented in the next 12 to 18 months. It aims to raise productivity and incomes for workers, small and midsize firms, and large businesses, keeping India in the ranks of the world’s outperforming emerging economies.
By Dan Carney – Business data aggregation and analysis site 
By Camille Stewart – For years there have been well documented discussions about the need to expand 
By Prabir Purkayastha – The 
By Anne Hidma, Sebastian Küchler, and Vendla Sandström – Across engineered industries, the explosion in software has increased product complexity by an order of magnitude. Along with rapidly evolving technologies, fast-changing consumer preferences, accelerated product cycles, and the practical realities of globalized operations and markets, R&D departments are under unprecedented strain. As product variation grows and product portfolios expand, updating existing products compounds the already heavy load R&D organizations bear.
By Roger Lanctot – Casual observers of the automobile industry are quick to compare connected cars to “smartphones on wheels.” It’s a simple way of looking at things that makes some sense now that half of all cars produced in the world are made with a built-in cellular modem…or two. It belies the complexity of connecting cars, but maybe it’s an accurate way to look at things now that Google’s Android operating system is on its way to dominating in-dash infotainment systems.
By Áine Doris – As the United States was hit with COVID-19, Congress passed the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act in an attempt to soften the blow from widespread lockdowns and business closures that led to soaring joblessness.
By Timothy Ogden – In many ways, it sounds like a wonderful idea – one army, one continent, one unified command structure. But like most things which are advertised as all-encompassing solutions to a many-faceted beast, implementing the creation of a European Army would be complicated, expensive, time-consuming, and ultimately pointless.
By Zafer Achi and Jennifer Garvey Berger – It’s only natural to seek certainty, especially in the face of the unknown. Long ago, shamans performed intricate dances to summon rain. It didn’t matter that any success they enjoyed was random, as long as the tribe felt that its water supply was in capable hands. Nowadays, late nights of number crunching, feasts of modeling, and the familiar rituals of presentations have replaced the rain dances of old. But often, the odds of generating reliable insights are not much better
