Networking with peers

A peer group is a group of professionals who meet on a regular basis to confidentially share their current issues and exchange insights that will help each member grow. Their benefits have been proven by successful leaders and workers for centuries. If you want to form a peer group of your own, take the following steps: 1) Recruit the right members: Try to form a group of six to 10 people with diverse personal and professional backgrounds. Make sure you each respect one another, and are committed to meeting regularly throughout the year. 2) Set guidelines. Agree upon how often you’ll meet, who will organise the agenda for your meetings, as well as who will moderate and keep time. 3) Agree on values. Confidentiality, candour, empathy, and balance are required for your group to establish an inclusive and productive culture. 4) Check in to keep up the momentum. Every few months, ask members for feedback to learn if the group dynamic is still beneficial for each member.

(Adapted from “The Power of Peer Groups (and How to Start One),” by Dan Richards, published by HBR Early Career)

Making ads powerful

If you’re interested in the marketing industry, you can use the ADPLAN framework to create campaigns that will resonate with your intended audience. Here are the six factors: 1) Attention: When thinking about an idea, ask yourself: Is there something interesting that will cause people to stop and notice it? 2) Distinction: You should know what your competition is doing, but don’t just try to beat them. Think about what messaging really aligns with your product or service. The goal is to have a clear voice and image. 3) Positioning: Great ads do more than entertain. 4) Linkage: If your messaging is focused on something else — like a shiny celebrity — consumers may not remember it. Ask: Is the ad really about the product? 5) Amplification: Does the consumer have positive or negative thoughts about your ad? 6) Net equity: Ask yourself if your ad campaign resonates with and reinforces the equity you have already built.

(Adapted from “What Makes Some Ads So Powerful,” by Derek D. Rucker and Tim Calkins, published by HBR Early Career)

India’s IT juggernaut

India has long been seen as the world’s “back office”. Tata Consultancy Services, an IT firm now worth $170bn, undertook its first project for an American client in 1973, reworking the accounting software of a hospital in Detroit. The rise of “global capability centres” (GCC), where multinational companies carry out complex tasks, from design to research, is increasingly making that view out of date. The question is whether GCCs will themselves be superseded, too, as India creates some world-beating global companies of its own. Back-office firms still matter to India. The IT sector is a juggernaut, generating about $250bn in annual revenues, or 7pc of GDP. But GCCs are increasingly important, too. The country now hosts some 1,600 of them. Amazon’s biggest office in the world is in Hyderabad. A fifth of Goldman Sachs’s staff are in India, as are a fifth of the world’s chip designers. New GCCs are opening at a rate of roughly one a week.

(Adapted from “What India’s Clout In White-Collar Work Means For The World,” by The Economist, published on May 23, 2024)

Trump’s truth

Nearly two-and-a-half years after its launch, Truth Social is struggling to hang onto its small US user base, according to new data on the microblogging platform launched by former President Donald Trump’s media company. So far in May, US daily visits to Truth Social have dropped more than 21pc from April, and more than 35pc compared to March, according to digital intelligence platform Similarweb. The site’s average number of monthly visits over the past year — just over 4m from May 2023 to April 2024 — plummeted more than 39pc from the prior 12-month period, from May 2022 to April 2023, Similarweb reported. The traffic has declined even as Trump — the most prominent Truth Social user and the majority shareholder of its parent company, Trump Media — has saturated the national news with coverage of his criminal trial and White House bid.

(Adapted from “Truth Social struggles to grow its US user base, new data on Trump Media app shows,” by Kevin Breuninger, published on May 24, 2024, by CNBC)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, May 27th, 2024