What We’re Reading
Here are a few good articles the Collaborative Fund team came across this week.
Trying something new
Coke’s new CEO is asking employees to fail more often by trying new things:
Mr. Quincey said that because the company for much of its 131-year history has been focused on “curating the world’s most valuable brand, a lot of due attention and care was paid to any changes that were made.”
But on smaller, emerging brands, the company needs to be experimenting more, he said. “If we’re not making mistakes, we’re not trying hard enough.”
Propped up
It’s amazing how much of retailers’ profit comes from branded credit cards:
At Macy’s, the money from branded credit cards accounted for 39 percent of the company’s total profit of $1.9 billion last year, up from 26 percent in 2013 … At Kohl’s, the profit from plastic totaled 35 percent, up from 23 percent, over that same period. At Target, it made up 13 percent of total earnings, up from 11 percent in 2013.
Automation
A great look at the other side of the “robots will take all our jobs” argument:
[It’s] Baffling because it’s starkly at odds with the evidence, and misguided because it completely misses the problem: robots aren’t destroying enough jobs. Too many sectors, such as health care or personal services, are so resistant to automation that they are holding back the entire country’s standard of living.
Reading
The reading diet of one investor:
Action
This is good:
If I could choose to be the most knowledgeable person in the world or the most curious, I’d choose the latter without hesitation.
Every interesting thing I’ve done has been a direct result of curiosity. Every professional success has stemmed from the fact that I was curious about more than just my role, but every facet of the organization and everyone else’s job, story, process, and motivations.
Transparency
Why would you want to be a public company?
Being public is about being transparent, accountable, and owning up to the issues and dealing with them.
I think it makes companies better.
If you are losing your biggest customer, you have to tell the world and deal with the consequences.
If you are making a leadership change, you have to tell the world and deal with the consequences. …
Nothing is always up and to the right, even though you might want it to be.
The great companies are the ones that have the guts to bare it all and keep building.
Have a good weekend.