Over the holiday weekend, I used some of my downtime to watch the totally engrossing and very well-produced docudrama on Apple TV called “WeCrashed.” WeCrashed is the dramatization of the rise and fall of WeWork and founder Adam Neumann. If you don’t know the story, WeWork was a “unicorn.” Unicorn is the term used in the venture capital industry to describe a startup company with a value of over $1 billion.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend in the United States. A time of year when the school year ends, the summer begins, and for many businesses, there is just one month left in the 2^nd quarter and the first half of the year.

As many Americans get ready for the long weekend and the chance to get some well-earned downtime with family and friends, the storm clouds of a significant recession are formulating on the summer’s horizon. By definition, a recession is two consecutive quarters where the gross domestic product (GDP) contracts. The GDP is the sum of all outputs of products and services consumed by an economy. The drivers of the coming recession will be easy to identify as they typically are the function of multiple factors. The recession of 2022 is going to be driven by staggering inflation, the ongoing supply chain disruptions, the continued global COVID pandemic, and the hot spot geopolitical issues that rise up every week.

Many business leaders will take the easy way out and start cutting budgets to make up for lost revenues. By doing this, they will be able to point to the fact that they still made their profit numbers. But, at what cost to the future? Great, you cut Sales, Marketing, and R&D expenses in the short term, but what is the impact in the long term?

I am leaving the ATD 2022 Conference in Orlando with many thoughts swirling through my head. It was great to see clients, friends, and colleagues again live and in person. There really is nothing like it. There was a wonderful moment at the #transperfect party where you could feel the energy and sense of human happiness. The ability to socialize and network was great, and you could really feel the pent-up demand after three years away.

But, the universe has changed since the last ATD in 2019. The digital transformation is ongoing, fueled by the pandemic as a catalyst and it is clear that the training delivery model has changed forever. Advantexe’s prediction is that there will be much more training and it will be 15% live, 25% blended (live + virtual), and 60% virtual.

Babies and disadvantaged adults with special needs around the world are suffering because of the worst shortage in baby formula since the invention of formula. The reasons driving this crisis is a modern-day business case study that can be best understood through the lens of business acumen. This blog explores the baby formula crisis based on the skills of effective business acumen and offers the opportunity to develop some key learnings that can be applied back to other similar situations. I have tried my best to make this discussion apolitical, and present insights without jumping into the negative and divisive partisan politics many are trying to make this issue about.

As the baby formula shortage drags on, and as the data becomes more available, it becomes more obvious that there are a lot of things that went wrong to reach this point of crisis. And yet again, the US health system is both a victim and aggressor. But, at the end of the day, it is humanity that is suffering and will pay the ultimate price.

Most Business Leaders are trying to lead in an environment that nobody has ever seen before. There are no patterns or best practices. The combination of being in a global pandemic at the same time there is accelerating inflation, global supply chain shortages, environmental issues, the “great resignation,” employees working remotely, and a despot leader in Russia threatening to start World War III is presenting leaders with unprecedented challenges.

One of the areas our Advantexe clients are seeking help in is helping develop environments and cultures of psychological safety in the midst of all this chaos. Psychological safety is defined by a workplace climate enabled by emotional intelligence that allows people to take risks, learn from mistakes, give candid feedback, and innovate. When your environment is not psychologically safe, people tend to keep ideas to themselves out of fear of being ridiculed, they don’t give candid feedback, and because they fear for their job, they enter into self-preservation mode. None of that is good for business.