Zedo is a small business, but from a corporate culture perspective it is run like the most advanced Fortune 500 firm, with minute attention paid to training, teamwork, and an eye toward attracting and retaining key talent garnered from everywhere. At a recent team meeting, the morning was spent having each employee draw the major incidents of his or her life on a timeline, assigning them a value ranging from +10 to -10. Each person in the room had to explain his timeline, and by the end of the morning, people had pointed out the major positive and negative events in their lives. Their early problems encompassed going to many different schools as members of military families, their experiences of parental separation and divorce, their triumphs and tragedies in high school and college, and the sets of choices that led them from working in restaurants to playing top 40 hits on radio stations, to coming to the U.S., to finding Zedo. Some of the charts looked like electrocardiogram … [Read more...] about Overcoming Corporate Culture Challenges When Your Company Spans The Globe
Indian refugees
WhatsApp and Facebook’s ultimatum to users reveals a privacy disaster
If brands do want to use your newly collected information to target you on Facebook, there are a lot of ways this can go wrong. Businesses may now be able to use information such as your transaction history and profile photo to send ads that are “more relevant.” Most modern targeting systems in this space often make use of a field of artificial intelligence called deep learning, where many behavioral features can strongly correlate to race, gender, or socioeconomic class. If WhatsApp Business allows brands to use your profile photo or chats for targeting, it’s possible that the skin color of your profile photo or the nuances of your chat style may allow them to inadvertently infer sensitive information about you, resulting in a different and potentially harmful experience between people of different genders or race. … [Read more...] about WhatsApp and Facebook’s ultimatum to users reveals a privacy disaster
This new service lets you earn rewards points for offsetting your emissions
Here’s how it works: new users can sign up to one of the three subscription plans, priced according to your estimate of your carbon footprint; you can determine that figure by using a specially designed calculator on the website, powered by data from authorities like the World Bank and the World Wildlife Federation. Collias and his co-founder, Jacob Wedderburn-Day, say 85% of the revenue from the subscriptions will fund UN-certified sustainable projects around the world. Then, you’d earn reward points depending on your chosen plan, and also by referring friends and employers. If businesses sign up, and link their employee accounts, everyone under that account will earn more points. … [Read more...] about This new service lets you earn rewards points for offsetting your emissions
The U.S. is more divided than ever. Your business could be the bridge
Looking ahead, brands should plan to transition from vague, catch-all statements—be they in support of a nonpartisan unity or general voting advocacy—to more specific forms of civic engagement, ideally backed by years of work in those chosen areas. Leaders of ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s say they had to speak out after the the killing of George Flloyd and the Capitol riots; their statements are an extension of their core values, supported by years of anti-racist work at the grassroots level. Customers, meanwhile, have rewarded the brand with loyalty: parent company Unilever saw at-home ice cream sales climb 26% in the second quarter of 2020. … [Read more...] about The U.S. is more divided than ever. Your business could be the bridge
A 5-point plan for becoming the best mentor you can be
While I was in high school, I was an ambitious student with a serious vision for my future. The daughter of Vietnamese refugees, I was quickly learning that my parents would not be able to guide me to where I needed to go, whether educationally or financially, to achieve my goals. As my friends’ parents cheered them on at extracurriculars that would help them get into college, I often could not get a ride to mine. I spent my summers working 12-hour shifts at KFC (with a night shift at Hollywood Video) to save for a car to get me where I needed to go, and tuition when the time came. Simply because of the family I was born into, my pathway was littered with roadblocks as I battled between what I needed to achieve my dreams, and what my parents believed to be true–or in many cases, didn’t understand. … [Read more...] about A 5-point plan for becoming the best mentor you can be