Wasting time brainstorming

Brainstorming exercises can be a terrible idea. Giving workers alone time could yield more innovation than getting everyone in a room, research shows. Pitfalls include blabbermouths with mediocre suggestions and introverts with brilliant ones that they keep to themselves. The ethos of brainstorming — reserve judgment and build on what others say — is better applied to polite conversation at a dinner party than to key decisions in a conference room. Plenty of people have always bemoaned brainstorming. Companies like Alphabet’s Google try to encourage innovation by letting workers spend part of their work time building on their own ideas for what could benefit the business. Shopify and Wayfair have slashed meeting times, part of the working world’s re-examination of checking in, touching base and catching up in the hybrid era. Microsoft research shows that many people spend the equivalent of an entire workday in meetings every week.

(Adapted from “Office Brainstorms Are A Waste of Time,” by Callum Borchers, published on May 18, 2023, by The Wall Street Journal)

Managing overworked teams

Is your team overextended? Try focusing everyone’s disparate attention and efforts in the same direction to become more collectively powerful. Here’s how. 1) Emphasise overarching goals — not missed opportunities. Even if people have many responsibilities, it’s easier to cope when the objective is clear. Also, accept that your team needs to say no to some new opportunities that might arise. Workers are already on edge: Don’t make it worse by introducing unnecessary stressors. 2) Make over-commitment transparent — but don’t valorise busyness. Great leaders create a forum for direct reports to share their priorities with peers so people can spot overlaps, competing demands, and ways to help each other. Because it’s easy to lose track of others’ work when they’re out of sight, holding this discussion frequently is especially important for hybrid teams. But make sure the focus is on problem-solving ways to channel employees’ attention rather than on celebrating folks who are swamped with work.

(Adapted from “Is Your Hybrid Team Losing Steam?” by Heidi K. Gardner, published by the Harvard Business Review)

Eroding value of Twitter

Twitter is now worth just one-third of what Elon Musk paid for the social-media platform, according to Fidelity, which recently marked down the value of its equity stake in the company. Musk has acknowledged he overpaid for Twitter, which he bought for $44bn, including $33.5bn in equity. More recently, he said Twitter is worth less than half what he paid for it. It’s unclear how Fidelity arrived at its new, lower valuation or whether it receives any non-public information from the company. Fidelity first reduced the value of its Twitter stake in November, to 44pc of the purchase price. Twitter has struggled financially since Musk took over. After saddling the company with $13bn of debt, Musk’s erratic decision making and challenges with content moderation led advertising revenue to decline by 50pc, Musk said in March.

(Adapted from “Twitter Is Now Worth Just 33% of Elon Musk’s Purchase Price, Fidelity Says,” by Aisha Counts and Tom Maloney, published on May 31, 2023, by Bloomberg)

Stepping into the trenches

There’s something of a trend among high-profile executives championing ambitious plans for change — they’re stepping down from their perches and into the trenches of the business. Before he assumed his role, Laxman Narasimhan, the new CEO of Starbucks, spent several months doing all sorts of things inside the company. He said it was startling to learn how hard it could be to pair the proper lid with the proper cup. Meanwhile, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently decided to spend time as a driver himself. These stories are an important reminder that one of the great risks for change leaders is that they get so immersed in crafting disruptive business models that they become isolated from those who truly make the business go.

(Adapted from “CEOs, Step Into The Front Lines Or Risk Losing Touch,” by

Bill Taylor, published by Harvard Business Review)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 5th, 2023