Real leadership is never a matter of mere formal authority. Leaders are effective when other people acknowledge them as such–by listening seriously to their ideas, valuing and following their suggestions for action, and turning to them for advice. Opportunities to lead aren’t limited to times when you have formal authority over a particular team or […]

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Tsingtao's Chairman on Jump-Starting a Sluggish Company

In 1995 Jin Zhiguo was put in charge of the Hans Brewery, a fresh Tsingtao acquisition. On his first day there, he found a financial statement on his desk that said, “Daily production: 1,000.” Not bad, he thought. But then he learned that the number referred to bottles, not cases—and this at a company employing more than 1,000 people. Although it was a moment of “great disbelief,” Jin says that such underperformance wasn’t unusual then for Chinese businesses: The government determined production plans, and few managers paid attention to customer needs or traditional marketing.

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Amazon Is Not Invincible

The publishing group Hachette has been in a public fight with Amazon for the last month; Amazon wants Hachette to cut its prices on books and e-books. Most people think Amazon has the upper hand, since books not available there are almost invisible, and since Amazon’s book business is just a fraction of its overall revenue.

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Netflix Just Quietly Added the Best Revenge Thriller of 2023

The Equalizer 3 came and went in 2023, but it’s rightfully become one of the streamer’s top movies.You’d be forgiven for missing Denzel Washington’s return to the big screen in 2023, as the third and supposedly final installment of the Equalizer franchise hit theaters amid a historic Hollywood shutdown. Save for the myriad posters of Washington smoldering in shadow as Robert McCall, The Equalizer 3 didn’t have much in the way of promotion. With both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America on strike, Washington was unable to promote the film.

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Your Company's Secret Change Agents

Some business problems—lackluster performance, escalating costs, interdepartmental conflict—persist no matter how hard companies try to fix them. Why? Most leaders impose top-down change tactics—importing outside experts or “best” practices, which never generate the grassroots enthusiasm essential to drive enduring transformation.

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Is China preparing for a war over Taiwan, or has the west got it wrong? Here are the indicators

At a time when Russia has been making gains in Ukraine and the Middle East appears to be on the brink of further regional conflict, a China-US military stand off is the last thing the world needs.At first glance however, it might appear that China is preparing for a long-term conflict with the US over Taiwan, the self-governing island of 24 million people, which the mainland claims.

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Misinformation: how fact-checking journalism is evolving -

Peter Cunliffe-Jones is a member of the advisory board of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), based at the Poynter Institute, founder of the fact-checking organisation Africa Check, and was senior advisor to the Arab Fact-Checkers Network (AFCN) in 2023. “Fake news” loves a crisis. It’s clear now that false information has played a role in recent events around the world from divisive elections to the COVID pandemic to the conflict roiling Israel and Gaza.

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'Caring as much as you do was killing you'. We need to talk about burnout in the arts

Since COVID-19, concern has grown about burnout in the arts and culture sector. However, burnout isn’t a new problem for artists. As one arts worker told me in a 2019 interview: the level of burnout in this industry is pretty shocking […] the idea that [burnout] even exists is a running joke […] we’re all overworked and constantly tired.

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'We don't know what tomorrow will bring': how climate change is affecting Fijians' mental health

It’s unlikely any region of the world will escape the effects of climate change. These include increasing temperatures, more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as bushfires and floods, rising sea levels, and more. But some areas, like the Pacific Islands, are likely to experience disproportionate effects from advancing climate change. Pacific island nations are uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise, coastal erosion and cyclones of escalating intensity.

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Using your phone at work can help to balance your home life - new research

You might not think twice about using your phone while you’re at work. Maybe you need to send a quick message to a family member or a friend, or catch up on the news. Then there’s that dental appointment which needs to be booked – and while you’re at it, you may as well get the online grocery shopping done. It’s all very convenient, and means plenty of domestic tasks can be crossed off the to-do list while you’re on company time. And it appears to be widespread. One survey suggests that employees use their phones for personal reasons for more than two hours during the average working day.

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Five years on the road in Africa: how Lerato Mogoatlhe became a travel writer

South African journalist Lerato Mogoatlhe set off for three months in west Africa. She ended up drifting across the continent for five years. In 2019 she wrote a book about her travels, called Vagabond: Wandering Through Africa on Faith. As a scholar of, among other areas, African travel writing and mobility, I chatted to Mogoatlhe about travelling solo, queer and black.Janet Remmington: In reflecting on the book, you write that your first encounters with countries that would become the story of your life “started with literature and music”.

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Gigantic solar farms of the future might impact how much solar power can be generated on the other side of the world

The Sun’s energy is effectively limitless. While resources such as coal or gas are finite, if you are able to capture and use solar power it doesn’t prevent anyone else from also using as much sunshine as they need. We know that solar power is affected by weather conditions and output varies through the days and seasons. Clouds, rain, snow and fog can all block sunlight from reaching solar panels. On a cloudy day, output can drop by 75%, while their efficiency also decreases at high temperatures.

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Trump's arguments for immunity not as hopeless as some claim

Former President Donald Trump’s claims of immunity from criminal prosecution will be argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Jan. 9, 2024 – on an interlocutory appeal from his trial for election interference. His arguments have been rejected by a district court judge, and the Supreme Court has declined to weigh in – for now. Commentators have described his immunity arguments as “frivolous” and “absurd.” But such accounts underestimate the arguments’ weight and at times misconstrue them.

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Service dogs play vital roles for veterans, but Canada's lack of standards makes travel and access difficult

Considering this difference alone, it is easy to see why there is a need for service dog standards in Canada. Standards are generally agreed upon rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results. Basically, they offer guidance, just like a recipe to make dog biscuits would! An example of a standard for service dogs is requirements for their selection, training, safety and welfare.

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TK major trends to expect from CES 2025

Here we go again: CES (aka the Consumer Electronics Show) officially kicks off tomorrow, running from January 9–12. The world’s largest consumer electronics show returns to Las Vegas to set the technology trends for the year.Last year, BMW trotted out its mesmerizing color-changing i Vision Dee electric car, we got a glimpse at wireless TVs, and we checked out the weird world of AR smart glasses and VR headsets for your face.

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From South Asia to Mexico, from slave to spiritual icon, this woman's life is a snapshot of Spain's colonization - and the Pacific slave trade history that books often leave out

Jan. 5, 2024, marked 336 years since the passing of an extraordinary woman you have probably never heard of: Catarina de San Juan.Her life reads like an epic. Born in South Asia during the early 17th century, she was captured by the Portuguese at age 8 and sold to Spaniards in the Philippines. Spanish merchants then traded her across the Pacific to Mexico, where she became a free woman and a spiritual icon, famous in the city of Puebla for her devotion to Catholicism. As a scholar of colonial Latin America, I believe she deserves to become a household name for anyone with even a passing interest in Asian American history or the history of slavery.

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Battle of the Somme: new research shows detonating a massive mine under German lines too early led to a British slaughter

The Battle of the Somme began on July 1 1916 with a spectacular explosion under Hawthorn Ridge – a fortified German frontline position west of the village of Beaumont Hamel in northern France. The footage of the explosion remains one of the best-known pieces of film from the whole conflict.Almost 60ft below the surface, British miners of the 252 Tunnelling Company had hand dug a gallery for more than 900 metres through chalk and packed it with 40,000lbs of ammonal explosives. It was one of 19 mines placed beneath German front positions that were detonated on July 1 1916, to mark the start of the offensive.

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Nikki Haley Seeks an Iowa Surge as the Last G.O.P. Moderate in the Race

“All the fellas are giving me so much attention,” Nikki Haley told supporters over the weekend in Iowa, on her second-to-last campaign swing before the caucus. Haley was referring to former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, both of whom were devoting more and more time to attacks against her. “She likes the globe,” Trump said of Haley. “I like America first.” Late last week, I came to Iowa to see whether Haley could gain enough momentum to make Trump feel threatened, or at least knock DeSantis aside. “If they’re lying, they’re losing,” she said. She seemed to welcome the attention. On Saturday, Haley travelled by plane from one Iowa town to the next; I followed as fast as I could in a rented Nissan.Haley had come to a vineyard in Indianola to argue that her brand of moderation—a return to normalcy, an end to the chaos—could beat Joe Biden in the general election. New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, walked into the packed room and introduced Haley with a story about how he had run a ski resort before he became governor. Since endorsing Haley last month, Sununu has served as Haley’s warm-up guy and affable interlocutor on the trail. He told the audience that they should expect “customer service out of government.” A Haley flack wearing Vineyard Vines held up two fingers—two-minute warning—trying to get Sununu to wrap up his riff. Haley walked out in flare jeans, smiling and oh-hi! waving as “Eye of the Tiger” blasted. She asked who was seeing her for the first time. When more than half in the room raised a hand, she paused and, reassured, launched into her classic town-hall speech.

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Year 9 is often seen as the 'lost year'. Here's what schools are trying to keep kids engaged

Josh Ambrosy is on the board of Outdoors Victoria, the state not-for-profit peak body. He runs professional development sessions related to Year 9 programs and other middle years curricula.Each year in Victoria, thousands of students disengage from school between the start of Year 9 and the end of Year 12.

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Apple Vision Pro Finally Has an Official U.S. Release Date

We can all finally stop wondering when Apple Vision Pro will come out. Apple announced this morning its $3,499 “spatial computer” headset will launch in the U.S. on February 2. Pre-orders start on January 19 at 8 a.m. ET / 5 a.m. PT. Also confirmed: Apple Vision Pro ships with 256GB of storage.Per Apple’s press release, Apple Vision Pro will be available “at all U.S. Apple Store locations and U.S. Apple Store online.”

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New analysis unlocks the hidden meaning of 15,000-year-old rock art in Arnhem Land

Rock art is one of the most intriguing records of the human past – it directly represents how our ancestors viewed their world. This provides a fundamentally different perspective compared to other archaeological items, such as stone artefacts.Our work concerns the Red Lily Lagoon area. This part of western Arnhem Land contains an internationally significant record of humanity’s past, including Australia’s oldest archaeological site.

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How often should you wash your sheets and towels?

Associate professor, Clinical and Health Sciences, University of South Australia Everyone seems to have a different opinion when it comes to how often towels and bed sheets should be washed. While many people might wonder whether days or weeks is best, in one survey from the United Kingdom, almost half of single men reported not washing their sheets for up to four months at a time.

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Indonesia is one of the world's largest democracies, but it's weaponising defamation laws to smother dissent

Associate Director, Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, The University of Melbourne Two former coordinators of one of Indonesia’s most prominent human rights organisations have escaped conviction in a defamation case brought by a powerful government minister. While their astonishing acquittal is welcome, the case marked a bleak new low for freedom of expression in one of the world’s largest democracies.

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The U.S. Is Reaping the Benefits of Low Unemployment

With the Labor Department having released its December jobs report last Friday, we now have a complete picture of 2023, and it’s a very encouraging one. During the course of the year, the U.S. economy created 2.7 million jobs, taking total non-farm employment to 157.2 million. That means there are about 4.9 million more people working than there were in February, 2020, when the spread of COVID-19 accelerated, and about 14.3 million more than there were when Joe Biden entered office in January, 2021.Since it’s an election year, the figures will inevitably be parsed from a partisan perspective: In the first three years of the Biden Administration, more than twice as many jobs were created as during the equivalent period in the Trump Presidency. As I’ve pointed out before, the big stimulus package, which a Democratic-controlled Congress passed at the start of the Administration, undoubtedly helped to bolster demand and hasten the recovery from the pandemic in the labor market, which is now virtually complete. But the benefits of strong job creation and low unemployment go far beyond political bragging rights. Simply put, they greatly improve the welfare of countless Americans, including some of the neediest ones. In many ways, indeed, keeping the jobless rate low and the labor markets tight is the most effective and cost-efficient welfare policy there is.

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Canada's Impact Assessment Act must be both Constitutional and ensure a sustainable future

Behind closed doors in Ottawa, Canadian government officials are drafting amendments to their advanced but controversial 2019 Impact Assessment Act, the country’s main tool for assessing major projects that can include big dams, pipelines and mines.It’s a difficult assignment. For practical and political reasons, they need to work quickly. But they face a longstanding dilemma — how to respect Canada’s venerable Constitution while also applying new knowledge and acting on new imperatives.

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'Persona 3 Reload' Brings Back a Beloved Classic Feature It Desperately Needs

Video game remakes are all the craze these days, and it's not hard to understand why. Every remake brings a beloved classic back to life with gorgeous new graphics and a plethora of quality-of-life improvements that make old and creaky games feel new. 2023 was a banner year for remakes with the likes of Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 showing just how good they can be and 2024 isn’t any different. But Persona 3 Reload — a remake of the 2006 Atlus RPG — is bringing one improvement over its original release that will make this classic more stylish than ever.The elevator pitch for Persona 3 Reload is that it is a remake of the original 2006 game bolstered by the latest console generation’s technology and graphics. That means it looks and plays better — even if they aren’t bringing over some fan-favorite content from later Persona 3 releases. One feature that Persona 3 Reload is lifting from Persona 5 is gorgeous animated cutscenes.

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Research: We Make More Virtuous Choices When Using Pen and Paper

As digitalization becomes the norm, more and more decisions that used to be made on paper are now being made via digital devices. And to be sure, this trend has many benefits — but the authors’ recent research suggests that it could also be causing people to make less virtuous choices. Specifically, a series of studies with participants across the U.S. and China found that people are less likely to choose the virtuous or responsible option when making a decision on a digital tablet than when using paper forms, menus, or other decision-making materials. This is because using paper makes a decision feel more real and thus more representative of the decision-maker as a person, ultimately making them more likely to make a virtuous choice. Of course, using paper doesn’t make sense in every context, but this research suggests that at least in certain situations, it can be an effective way to push employees, customers, or community members to make more-virtuous decisions.

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Freedom of thought is being threatened by states, big tech and even ourselves. Here's what we can do to protect it

The idea of free speech sparked into life 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece – in part because it served a politician’s interests. The ability to speak freely was seen as essential for the new Athenian democracy, which the politician Cleisthenes both introduced and benefited from.Today, we debate the boundaries of free speech around kitchen tables and watercoolers, in the media and in our courtrooms. The right to freedom of thought, however, is more rarely discussed. But thanks to the growing influence of social media, big data and new technology, this “forgotten freedom” needs our urgent attention.

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Sunscreen: why wearing it even in winter could be a good idea

Sunscreen has taken centre stage in many skincare routines, especially among those hoping to prevent visible signs of ageing. But while it makes sense to wear sunscreen every day in the summer when the sun’s rays are most powerful, many may wonder whether there’s any benefit of wearing sunscreen daily in the winter months.The sun’s radiation can reach us during all times of the year. This means that in both summer and winter, we are exposed to infrared radiation, as well as UVA and UVB rays.

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Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter

In the just published Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter, Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, co-author of Nudge and the HBR article “Making Dumb Groups Smarter,” examines why groups so often fail in making decisions and identifies new mechanisms for collective problem solving and decision making.

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'Cli-fi' might not save the world, but writing it could help with your eco-anxiety

The consequences of climate change weigh on all of us, especially as we face an El Niño summer, with floods and fires already making themselves felt in the Australian environment.But even outside of being directly effected, there is evidence that mere awareness of climate change can be detrimental to your mental health and wellbeing. Terms such as “climate change anxiety”, “eco-anxiety” and “solastalgia” are regularly used to describe the negative emotional states created by thinking and worrying about climate change and environmental destruction.

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'Ahsoka' Season 2 Has a Disappointing Update -- But There's a Silver Lining

The Star Wars franchise gained a whole new galaxy in Ahsoka, which saw the Clone Wars protagonist reunite with old friends from Rebels to face off against Grand Admiral Thrawn. But, just as Thrawn and Ezra Bridger returned to Star Wars’ primary galaxy while Ahsoka and Sabine Wren found themselves stranded in the new one, the season sputtered to an anti-climatic end. Will these storylines ever continue, or is Ahsoka doomed to be another one-season spinoff, like The Book of Boba Fett? Rosario Dawson doesn’t have answers yet, but we have had confirmation that someone from Ahsoka will return to our screens.

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How liberal conspiracy theories can be just as destructive as their extremist counterparts

Liberal commentators frequently condemn conspiracy theories that threaten public safety. The US mainstream media exploded in 2016 when an armed man harassed diners in a Washington DC pizzeria, allegedly because he subscribed to the QAnon online conspiracy theory claiming that a Hillary Clinton-connected paedophile ring was operating from the restaurant. British media reacted similarly in 2020 to a man who destroyed a 5G mast for fear it was spreading COVID-19. Yet criminal as these actions were, their negative impacts were limited.

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'FFXIV Dawntrail' Has a Huge Link to 'Final Fantasy IX'

Fan Fest in Tokyo revealed a wealth of new information about Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, including the new Pictomancer job inspired by Final Fantasy VI. That’s not nearly Dawntrail’s only source of inspiration, however, as Final Fantasy IX looks like it could be tremendously important to the expansion. As it happens, the last few years have also seen several rumors about a Final Fantasy IX remake, and Square Enix has certainly shown the classic game a lot of attention lately. One of the big reveals at Fan Fest was Dawntrail’s new Solution 9 zone, a futuristic cityscape that looks like something out of Blade Runner. FFXIV is no stranger to sci-fi, but Solution 9 looks leagues above anything we’ve ever seen, and it’s the name that’s particularly interesting.

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20 Years Later, the Most Ambitious Final Fantasy Game Is Almost Impossible to Play

In 2024 I have finally decided to jump on the Final Fantasy XI bandwagon. And you might ask, “Willa, why are you playing a twenty-year-old MMO when Final Fantasy XIV is right there?” Well, because I think I can play both — and after reading a handful of compelling pieces released around Final Fantasy XI’s anniversary, I can’t not try the game out! So here we are — documenting the start of my Final Fantasy XI journey in 2024. Yes, Final Fantasy XI is a twenty-year-old game. So, I shouldn’t expect the log-in experience to be as smooth as a modern MMO, but I didn’t know how outdated it would feel. The biggest question I have, though, is why it’s so convoluted when the game still gets consistent updates. Surely streamlining the process at some point would have been a good idea. And if you are thinking to yourself that surely it can’t be that bad, well then let me regale you with my tale of installing and logging into Final Fantasy XI for the first time.

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How to maintain a healthy gut microbiome in 2024

Visiting Postdoctoral Scientist, Food Microbiome Interactions, Quadram Institute We all know by now that the pillars of a healthy lifestyle are regular exercise, eating enough fruit and vegetables, a good night’s sleep and staying hydrated. All of these things also support the gut microbiome – all the microbes that live in your digestive system – but there are some extras to consider if you want to optimise your gut health.

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Why is the universe ripping itself apart? A new study of exploding stars shows dark energy may be more complicated than we thought

For the past quarter of a century, scientists have believed “normal” stuff like atoms and molecules that make up you, me, Earth, and nearly everything we can see only accounts for 5% of the universe. Another 25% is “dark matter”, an unknown substance we can’t see but which we can detect through how it affects normal matter via gravity. The remaining 70% of the cosmos is made of “dark energy”. Discovered in 1998, this is an unknown form of energy believed to be making the universe expand at an ever-increasing rate.

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Scramble for the Sahel - why France, Russia, China and the United States are interested in the region

Senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Leeds Beckett University The Sahel, a region 3,860km wide located south of the Sahara Desert and stretching east-west across the African continent, has been a focus of attention around the world recently.

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South Korea's gender imbalance is bad news for men - outnumbering women, many face bleak marriage prospects

South Korea’s bachelor time bomb is about to really go off. Following a historic 30-year-long imbalance in the male-to-female sex ratio at birth, young men far outnumber young women in the country. As a result, some 700,000 to 800,000 “extra” South Korean boys born since the mid-1980s may not be able to find South Korean girls to marry.In most countries, more boys are born than girls – around 105 to 107 boys per 100 girls. That sex ratio at birth (SRB) is a near constant. The gender imbalance is likely an evolutionary adaptation to the biological fact that females live longer than males. At every year of life, men have higher death rates than women. Hence an SRB of between 105 and 107 boys allows for there to be roughly equal numbers of men and women when the groups reach childbearing ages.

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College applications rose in states that legalized recreational marijuana

Colleges in states where recreational marijuana became legal over the past decade saw a significant but short-term boost in applications from top-notch students. They also got more applications overall. Those were the key findings of a new study our team published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Contemporary Economic Policy.In the year that a particular state legalized recreational marijuana, the number of applications for that state’s colleges grew by about 5.5% more than colleges in states that did not legalize. This means that colleges in legal-marijuana states received a temporary boost in applications. We didn’t detect any increase beyond the initial spike. Our results control for school quality, tuition prices and labor market conditions that may affect student application decisions.

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