We want to let you know about a new business podcast: Call In: Helping leaders navigate today’s cancel culture.
The bi-weekly show addresses one of the most important (and least understood) issues – diversity, equity & inclusion – translating today’s DEI headlines into actionable guidance for any leader.
Given today’s cancel culture, the ability to confidently exercise inclusive leadership is imperative. For business leaders, the question becomes not why it’s necessary, but rather how should inclusive leadership be demonstrated — in ways that advance business, support employees, and engage other stakeholders like customers and the media?
Each episode addresses noteworthy DEI business issues in the news and offers specific tips on how business leaders and employees can understand "when to call in and when to call out."
Topics include:
Navigating bias in a hybrid workplace
Should employers take action on employees’ negative behavior outside of work — if those activities go viral on the internet?
Can cultural holidays be celebrated at work?
Are women managers burning out?
How men can still mentor women
CEO interviews explaining “empathetic leadership”
Visit the website to learn more, or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Call In is sponsored by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which is committed to a more diverse and inclusive future.
The World
A relentless surge in U.S. inflation reached another four-decade high last month, accelerating to a 7.5% annual rate as strong consumer demand collided with pandemic-related supply disruptions. The consumer-price index in January reached its highest level since February 1982, when compared with the same month a year ago. That put inflation above December’s 7% annual rate and well above the 1.8% annual rate for inflation in 2019 ahead of the pandemic. The so-called core price index, which excludes the often volatile categories of food and energy, climbed 6% in January from a year earlier. That was a sharper rise than December’s 5.5% increase and the highest rate in nearly 40 years. (Wall Street Journal)
European view: Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, said raising interest rates immediately would do little to fix the problems causing high inflation today and would only “stall the economy”. Lagarde said the ECB needed to “analyze very carefully how high energy prices affect other prices” before deciding whether to accelerate its plans for removing the ultra-loose monetary policy that has supported the economy during the pandemic. (Financial Times)
Rate watch: As the Treasury yields hit 2%, analysts said the inflation figures indicated the Fed would need to move rapidly this year to pull back extraordinary stimulus provided during the pandemic to prevent inflation from rising higher still. “The Fed is deeply behind the curve on inflation. There is no other story at this point,” said Tim Duy, chief U.S. economist at research firm SGH Macro Advisors. While some analysts and one Fed official floated the prospect of raising interest rates before their scheduled meeting, the central bank is unlikely to take such a step. It last did so in April 1994, a period when the Fed was only beginning to provide more guidance to markets about its policy intentions. (Wall Street Journal)
Banks: Citi forecasts Federal Reserve to raise rates by 50 basis points in March. Goldman Sachs now predicts the Fed will hike rates seven times in 2022, up from the five hikes they expected earlier. (CNBC, Bloomberg)
How we got here: If you missed it, listen to our Working Capital Conversation podcast with Christopher Leonard, who has the inside story on the Federal Reserve – and he tells it masterfully. His book “The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy,” is a clear telling of Fed policy over the last 15 years and the key personalities behind it. (Podcast)
Russian and British foreign ministers exchange barbs after frosty Moscow meeting: Russia’s foreign minister has described a two-hour meeting in Moscow with his British counterpart as “disappointing” and “a dialogue of a mute person with a deaf person” as European countries continued to struggle in their diplomatic effort to prevent a Russian attack on Ukraine. Speaking to the press, Sergei Lavrov said Liz Truss’s delegation had come “unprepared.” (Financial Times)
Canada should use federal powers to ease the growing economic disruption caused by the blockage of a vital U.S.-Canada trade route by protesters opposed to coronavirus mandates, U.S. President Joe Biden's administration said. (Reuters)
Ontario is preparing fines, possible seizure of trucks to reopen Windsor bridge, as the Ontario government said it has effectively frozen all donations made to the trucker convoy through GiveSendGo. (Globe and Mail)
Authorities in Paris and Brussels said they will try to stop convoys from entering both cities, potentially thwarting plans for staging in Europe the type of demonstration that has paralyzed Ottawa and closed Canada’s busiest border crossing into the U.S. Paris police said in a statement that convoys en route to the French capital from across the country will not be able to enter the city for planned rallies this weekend “because of a risk to public order.” The mayor of Brussels, where several groups planned to converge on Feb. 14, announced that a procession modeled on Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” would not be allowed in. (Washington Post)
More people arrived outside New Zealand's parliament, as protesters calling for an end to a vaccine mandate and tough COVID-19 restrictions refused to end their demonstrations despite arrests by the police. It's been four days since several thousand protesters, inspired by truckers' demonstrations in Canada, occupied the parliament lawns in the capital Wellington, and blocked surrounding streets with their trucks, cars, camper vans and motorcycles. (Reuters)
Macron restarts France’s ‘nuclear adventure’ with plans for 6 reactors. Atomic energy is central to plan to meet net zero carbon emissions, the French president says (Financial Times)
52% of voters said they support a proposal that would allow the WTO to pause COVID-19 vaccine patent protections in a bid to shore up production of the shots in lower-income countries, up slightly from 48% who said the same in May 2021. India and South Africa launched the waiver push in 2020, arguing it would help bridge gaps in global vaccine access by enabling lower-income countries to make their own COVID-19 shots, and WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the group aims to make a decision by the end of February. Scientists in South Africa have already developed a copy of Moderna Inc.’s vaccine that could begin human trials this year, after Moderna and Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE declined to share their recipes. (Morning Consult/Politico poll)
Economy
Americans' satisfaction with the government's regulation of businesses and industries has fallen eight percentage points to 28%, the lowest point since 2016 when Gallup first began tracking this measure annually. Dissatisfaction is at a new high of 60% and includes 29% of U.S. adults who prefer less government regulation, 18% who favor more and 13% who are dissatisfied but say it should remain about the same. (Gallup)
Cisco’s EVP and general manager of Security and Collaboration, Jeetu Patel, spends much of his day thinking about virtual EQ as he helps businesses navigate the hybrid workplace via Webex’s various initiatives. Patel’s top tips for upping our virtual EQ in meetings: 1) Make sure everyone has a seat at the virtual table and feels they’re able to participate in providing ideas at the right time in a meeting. 2) Create a human connection rather than a transaction. 3) Avoid multitasking in virtual meetings. 4) Show up early to meetings to engage with colleagues. 5) Virtual icebreakers: They’re no longer just for orientation. 6) Don’t stick to your agenda. (Protocol)
Sequoia’s invisible hand: How Roelof Botha became one of the most powerful people in venture capital. Few know the man who’s transforming one of Silicon Valley’s top VC firms. Here’s what founders and other insiders think of him and his plan to upend the traditions of VC. (Protocol)
Forget the office—Salesforce is making a wellness retreat for workers: In the work-from-home era, the ranch is the tech company’s new corporate-culture epicenter. The software giant signed a multiyear booking agreement for a 75-acre retreat set among the redwoods in Scotts Valley, Calif., to create an employee work-and-wellness center for its nearly 70,000-person staff. Salesforce plans to use the property 70 miles south of San Francisco to onboard new hires and conduct off-site team meetings for social bonding and leadership training, said Brent Hyder, chief people officer. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
MoviePass 2.0 plans summer relaunch with credits, theater partnerships but no unlimited movies. But that’s not the real headline: MoviePass will also be integrating PreShow, an advertising platform that will make use of facial detection technology to make sure a customer watches an opted-into ad, in exchange for additional credits. During a demo, a video served up automatically paused when the system detected the viewer had looked away, requiring direct attention in order to complete the transaction for the credit. A MoviePass rep confirmed that this works through the front-facing camera on a phone. (Cnet)
As data centers grow, engineers at Meta, Google, and other companies worry about the reliability of ever-smaller chips and hardware failures with unclear causes. As the tiny switches in computer chips have shrunk to the width of a few atoms, the reliability of chips has become another worry for the people who run the biggest networks in the world. There is growing anxiety that as cloud-computing networks have become larger and more complex, they are still dependent, at the most basic level, on computer chips that are now less reliable and, in some cases, less predictable. (New York Times)
Media:
The Washington Post plans to add 70 newsroom positions in 2022, including nearly 20 health and wellness roles and 20+ focused on climate and extreme weather. (Wall Street Journal)
The Athletic co-founders explain why they sold to The New York Times in their first post-deal interview. Tl;dr: Being part of The New York Times’ bundle is key to the company’s future growth. (CNBC)
NBCUniversal is finalizing a plan that would drastically change its partnership with Hulu, shifting high-profile programming to its own Peacock streaming platform. Starting this fall, new episodes of shows like “The Voice,” “Saturday Night Live” and “American Auto” would no longer be available on Hulu soon after they air as a result of that plan, they said. NBCUniversal has taken many steps recently to strengthen Peacock, which has struggled to establish itself in a crowded environment. The move would also be the latest indication of the changing relationship between Hulu’s co-owners—Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal—which went from streaming partners to direct competitors in recent years. (Wall Street Journal)
Reddit said it's adding new features to its live audio product, a sign that the social media site is experimenting with giving users more ways to chat about different topics. The company, which could go public as soon as March, unveiled its live audio chat product, Reddit Talk, nearly a year ago in April. Now Reddit said it'll start highlighting live audio chats at the top of home feeds as part of a test. The feature could make it easier for users to find live audio chats. Users will also be able listen to recordings of Reddit Talks and participate in the chats on the web version of the social media platform. Reddit Talk users will be able to use text and emojis during a live audio chat as well. (Cnet)
Joanna Stern: Let’s face it, LinkedIn might be the best social network right now. CEO Ryan Roslansky lays out new features arriving on the professional networking platform — including a no-politics button and live video and audio events. (Wall Street Journal)
Smart Links
Yale and Princeton dining halls face food shortages and fewer staff. (Bloomberg)
Apple plans AirTags updates to reduce stalking. (MacRumors)
Airlines face unexpected safety issue in pandemic: More bird strikes. (Wall Street Journal)
A handy trick to zoom in and out of Google Maps: Simply double tap to control zoom with a slide up or down. (The Verge)
Want to raise a Super Bowl quarterback? Name him Joe. (Wall Street Journal)