by business-insider – Dennis Green– For retail in 2018, there was really only one word that was on everybody’s lips: Amazon. Just a mere mention of the online shopping giant sends other companies into a flurry of speculation — whether Amazon competes directly or not. It’s easy to see why: Amazon is seeing incredible growth […]

By reuters — BEIRUT: Lebanon’s finance minister has said the heavily indebted country is in a state of economic crisis and warned it faces becoming a financial crisis, as politicians struggle to form a new government, state media reported. Nearly eight months since parliamentary elections, Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has been unable to bring Lebanon’s […]

While having a long-term career plan is important, there are times when a rethink might be needed. For instance, if your job is impacting your wellbeing or it no longer gives you a sense of pride, then it might be time to reassess. Your reputation is also a factor. If you find yourself developing a […]

by bloomberg.com — by Chris Hughes — It irks investors in America, and now it’s irking them in Europe too. The U.S. stock market’s permissive attitude to initial public offerings that give founders super-voting rights is the subject of an international campaign. Rightly so. The U.S. new-issues market is the de facto standard setter for the rest of the world. Undemocratic voting structures are an unwelcome export. The “one-share, one-vote” principle is fair and gives outsiders some sway to hold management to account. True, Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s stock price has thrived with dual-class shares giving its founders control. But it’s the exception.

Shares in Snap Inc., Altice USA Inc. and Blue Apron Holdings Inc. have performed terribly since going public in 2017. The controversies swirling around Facebook Inc. raise questions about whether founder CEO and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg’s dominant position still benefits the company. Of course, no one is forcing investors to buy a stock with imbalanced voting arrangements. And removing super-votes would usually leave incumbent management with a controlling stake still. The tech companies argue that “founder control” supports long-term investment decisions. Index providers are creating separate indices that exclude stocks with bad voting structures. But academic research backs up fears that inequitable structures become a liability more often than not. It would be better if stock exchanges cleaned up the market overall.

Carlos Ghosn, the ousted chairman of Nissan, with his daughters Nadine, left, and Caroline. He also has another daughter, Maya, and a son, Anthony.CreditCreditGhosn Family

Mr. Ghosn in 1996 with, from left, Caroline, Anthony, Maya and Nadine. The family was living in Greenville, S.C., at the time, but the children consider Tokyo their hometown.CreditGhosn Family

Anthony, Nadine and Caroline, right, with their father in Tennessee in 2015. Referring to his life in a jail cell, Caroline Ghosn said, “Every detail we learn is heartbreaking.”CreditGhosn Family

by nytimes.com — By Amy Chozick —  The children of Carlos Ghosn, the jailed auto executive who oversaw an alliance that sold more than 10 million cars a year, believe accusations of financial misconduct against him are part of a revolt within Nissan against exploring a possible merger with Renault. Caroline Ghosn, the eldest of Mr. Ghosn’s four children, said that when she saw Hiroto Saikawa, the chief executive of Nissan, condemn her father during a televised news conference after his arrest, she suspected that Nissan’s investigation was rooted in opposition to proposed changes to the Nissan-Renault alliance and “the merger my dad was setting up.” “For Saikawa to so adamantly denounce someone who had been his mentor and then immediately without any benefit of the doubt condemns him?” Ms. Ghosn, 31, said in a phone interview. An entrepreneur, she had awakened hours before that briefing to the news that her father, who was Nissan’s chairman and Renault’s chief executive, had been arrested on suspicion of violating Japan’s financial reporting laws. She and her sister Maya Ghosn, 26, do not have direct knowledge of their father’s business discussions, but both said watching Mr. Saikawa address the national news media had cemented their belief that internal company dynamics were at play.

Mr. Saikawa told the reporters that one problem with the alliance was that “the top of Renault is concurrently serving as the top of Nissan with 43 percent of shares.” In the future, he said, the company would “look for a more sustainable structure.” “Wow,” Caroline Ghosn said. “He didn’t even waste a breath. He didn’t even try to cover up the fact that the merger had something to do with this.” Maya Ghosn, who works in philanthropy, agreed. As Mr. Saikawa was “talking about the alliance, it was clear to me that there was way more associated with it,” she said. “My gut reaction was that this was bigger than the accusations against my dad.” The interviews were the first time since the arrest that the sisters, now living in San Francisco, have spoken publicly about their father, who was deposed as chairman of the board of Nissan after creating an empire that included Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi.

Mr. Ghosn, 64, was arrested on Nov. 19 as he arrived in Tokyo for a board meeting. He was later charged with underreporting his compensation for several years in securities filings and has been detained in Tokyo. Nissan’s internal investigation of what it calls “substantial and convincing evidence of misconduct” has taken on global dimensions, encompassing teams of compliance people who have tried to secure potential evidence at residences used by Mr. Ghosn, including an apartment in Rio de Janeiro. “Our own investigation is ongoing, and its scope continues to broaden,” the company said in a statement Friday, suggesting that Mr. Ghosn’s legal problems could deepen. His family maintains he is innocent. Like Mr. Ghosn, Greg Kelly, a Nissan board member, was indicted on financial misconduct changes. Nissan was indicted, too, and said it would review its compliance procedures. Asked to respond to the Ghosn daughters’ claims — that animosity about a potential merger drove Nissan’s investigation — Nicholas Maxfield, a company spokesman, said: “These claims are baseless. The family would never have had any reason to be privy to discussions related to the future of Nissan and the alliance.” “The cause of this chain of events is the misconduct led by Ghosn and Kelly,” Mr. Maxfield said. “During the company’s internal investigation into this misconduct, the prosecutor’s office began its own investigation and took action.” (Asked specifically whether a merger had been discussed, Mr. Maxfield said a previously announced six-year plan had called for “additional synergies and further convergence among the member companies.”)

by abouther.com —Nadine Labaki recently became the first Arab female filmmaker to make an Oscars shortlist. Her film, “Capharnaüm,” was included in the list for the Best Foreign Language film category. While 87 countries submitted entries for the category, just nine films made the cut. And her feat could lead Labaki, who is also an […]

by learningsolutionsmag.com — What if the robots were coming—not to take our jobs, but to help us do our jobs better? Virtual assistants, cropping up in homes and offices everywhere, already use AI (artificial intelligence) to automate mundane tasks. As cognitive computing evolves, natural language processing engines improve, and areas of AI are combined into new and creative applications, the ways that AI can boost performance on the job are innumerable. Rather than displacing human employees, these technologies could increase employee efficiency and improve productivity.

Chatbots take over repetitive tasks

Asking a phone or smart speaker to look up information, send a text or email, or set a timer is second nature to many people. In the office, smart assistants, on phones, tablets, or laptops, can arrange meetings, connect participants in conference calls, and send messages. In customer service, chatbots are ubiquitous, managing phone call routing and simple problem solving, and chatting with customers online—saving time that humans can spend on addressing the more challenging issues that arise. Chatbots have made inroads in eLearning as well, providing coaching, repetitive learning drills, training reinforcement, task reminders, and other services to new and experienced employees. These verbal assistants might be ready for a promotion, though; some chat-based tools already offer a deeper level of aid.

AI engine assists with onboarding

Universities across the US are turning to chatbots to assist with their equivalent to new employee onboarding: helping new students navigate the admissions process and get acclimated to college, which includes completing a raft of paperwork and administrative processes. In Artificial Intelligence Across Industries: Where Does L&D Fit, Guild research director Jane Bozarth describes AI-based tools that assist students with coursework and answer common questions. Many students never realize their “helper” isn’t human. Similarly, corporations are increasingly turning over some repetitive onboarding tasks to AI-based support tools. Companies that hire large numbers of employees can automate processes like reminding new employees to fill out a range of forms, teaching them about safety regulations and company policies, and getting them registered for various benefits. AI-based performance support can bolster training as well, with targeted quizzes, reminders, and questions. New Comcast sales reps get help from a chatbot to bolster the training they receive during ride-alongs with more senior employees, for example. The mobile training sends the new hires open-ended questions; they discuss their responses, and their observations from the day, with their managers or mentors.

By Vivian Yee and Hwaida Saad — nytimes.com — BEIRUT — The Iranian cultural attaché stepped up to the microphone on a stage flanked by banners bearing the faces of Iran’s two foremost religious authorities: Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the current supreme leader. To the left of Ayatollah Khomeini stood a twinkling Christmas tree, a gold star gilding its tip. Angel ornaments and miniature Santa hats nestled among its branches. Fake snow dusted fake pine needles. “Today, we’re celebrating the birth of Christ,” the cultural attaché, Mohamed Mehdi Shari’tamdar, announced into the microphone, “and also the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.” “Hallelujah!” boomed another speaker, Elias Hachem, reciting a poem he had written for the event. “Jesus the savior is born. The king of peace, the son of Mary. He frees the slaves. He heals. The angels protect him. The Bible and the Quran embrace.” “We’re celebrating a rebel,” proclaimed a third speaker, the new mufti of the Shiite Muslims of Lebanon, the rebel in question being Jesus.

The mufti, Ahmed Kabalan, went on to engage in some novel religious and political thinking: Christians and Muslims, he said, “are one family, against corruption, with social justice, against authority, against Israel, with the Lebanese Army and with the resistance.” The proclamations from the stage were applause lines — perhaps against the odds, given that the audience at the Iranian-sponsored event on Saturday consisted mostly of observant Shiites from the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut. Occasionally, the crowd chanted praise for the Prophet Muhammad. When a pair of Iranian bands flown in for the occasion began playing Assyrian and Persian Christmas carols, the audience clapped along. From its founding as an independent republic, Lebanon has walked a tightrope, not always successfully, with its Muslim and Christian populations making up most of the country’s 18 officially recognized sects. Sign up for The Interpreter Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub. Nearly 30 years after the end of a civil war in which Beirut was cloven into Muslim and Christian halves connected only by a gutted buffer zone, Lebanese from all different sects now commonly mingle every day at home, at work and in public. But few seasons frame the everyday give-and-take of religious coexistence quite like Christmas time in Lebanon.

By Dave Gershgorn — qz.com — Microsoft has a real shot to end the year as the most valuable public company in the world. That wasn’t the case a year ago, and it would have seemed absurd five years ago, when the company was being leapfrogged by burgeoning behemoths like Amazon and Google. The last time Microsoft […]

By Lars Schmidt fastcompany.com —  There was a time not long ago when “getting HR involved” generally meant diffusing an employee relations issue. Twentieth-century HR was all about control, enforcing compliance around hiring, training, development, performance, talent management, culture, holiday parties, facilities, and more. The HR function was generally reactive rather than strategic. Times have changed. The rise of 21st-century HR has given birth to a new breed of HR executive, with a much broader skill set, who is leading the transformation of what’s possible in the field and reinventing HR as a data-driven strategic function critical to an organization’s success. This shift removes some of the us versus them friction that framed HR as an outlier to the business functions and embraces a new approach based on partnership, accountability, and shared outcomes. You can trace the tipping point of this shift back to the creation of one particular position: the HR business partner role. Rather than keeping HR isolated as a centralized team, this model embedded HR practitioners inside the business functions they support, allowing them to integrate more deeply into business units. These embedded relationships allowed HR executives to have a much clearer view on an organization’s health, turnover risks, and culture shifts–enabling them to be more proactive in addressing challenges and developing people strategies more closely aligned with the organization’s mission and goals.

Contemporary HR is more focused on providing strategic value to drive business outcomes. The focus is less on control and ownership, and more on understanding and aligning the people strategy to business goals, supporting and empowering the employees to do their best work. Here is a look at several organizations with HR practices that reflect this shift in approach.

Square

In ultra-competitive Silicon Valley, the battle for talent is legendary. If hiring, talent development, and retention aren’t priorities for the executive team, you have little chance of success. Few know this better than Bryan Power, a veteran HR executive who led global people teams at Google, Square, and Yahoo. Early in his career, Power worked for a product executive at Google who assigned strategic HR outcomes to each of his direct reports–hiring to one person, talent management to another, employee communications to a third, etc. This created a structure that made each leader accountable for the development of the global organization. Later, at Square, Power implemented a similar ownership mentality as the company designed programs and built processes to scale out of the startup phase. Like most fast-growing tech companies, Square had many new managers who were quickly expanding into leadership roles for the first time. Power understood that their success would be largely driven by his team’s ability to get them trained as managers as quickly as possible. He also understood that for these new managers to take this development challenge seriously and invest the right amount of time and commitment, it had to be driven by the top. So Power and his team enlisted the company’s top executives including Square’s CEO and key members of the executive team to teach manager training modules. “When managers think of these people challenges as their own issues to resolve, rather than issues for HR to solve,” Power says, “that ownership and accountability transforms the organization.”