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By KyoungHee Choi COVID-19 FOCUS: How South Korea has come up with innovative ways to control COVID-19 to reduce the length of business interruptions and associated business parallels and applications to help you navigate this Black Swan event? The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a daily topic of discussion and news. From its roots in Wuhan (China), it quickly spread across Asia and then took a quick foothold in Iran, South Korea and Italy. From there it started spreading rapidly across Europe and North America without recognizing borders and affecting individuals across all walks of life and cultures. Now, people are monitoring the

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By Eric Michrowski As we navigate through this Black Swan event, I keep being reminded of a book that had captured my attention in my youth. Joseph Conrad’s "Typhoon" presents the story of Captain MacWhirr, a practical leader of few words, and Jukes, a youthful sea mate, as they sail a newly built ship across the South China Sea. Soon into the voyage, the barometer begins to fall rapidly. As the vessel advances into the storm, the savage ferocity of the winds, torrential rains and tempestuous seas begin to attack the ship with incredible force, nearly destroying it. The Captain maintains course. When

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By Eric Michrowski The COVID-19 Black Swan event has provided a unique opportunity for brands to demonstrate how they live their values, particularly as it relates to Customers. Some brands have stepped up and demonstrated their customer-centricity in challenging times. Others have tried to pursue profit over Customer loyalty. If history repeats itself, these early actions will have a lasting impact on future profitability. There is no doubt that companies need to manage their finances in order to weather this storm. But those that do that while also taking care of their Customers are most likely to prosper in the future. Let me

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By Martin Royal I wrote about what sets apart effective change leaders in a previous blog post, namely their ability to frame the change effort and build the capacity of the team to implement and sustain the change. For the most part, this assumes that leaders are engaged in a planned, thoughtful and deliberate change effort. Sometimes, the change effort is not so deliberate and comes knocking at our door unexpectedly. COVID-19 has driven many leaders into a crisis mode and into an involuntary change effort, that many are unprepared for. Whether it is a planned or unplanned crisis, the fundamentals to

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By Eric Michrowski The COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly becoming a topic of urgent executive dialogue in the US and Canada as the rate of infections is rapidly growing and spreading within the community. As the landscape is swiftly evolving, several large gatherings and sporting events have been cancelled and the markets have responded wildly. Many businesses have responded swiftly and proactively while others with global footprints had to immediately respond in January with the first signs of an outbreak in China. Others are working through their strategies at this moment. There is little doubt that the impact will be profoundly felt economically

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By Kyoung Hee Choi I believe creativity is something that you can learn and not something that you were simply born with. Creative people tend to be more curious, innovative and intuitive; values that are essential to the success in any career or business. Creativity is not a choice but rather an essential skill that will help advance your career and business. Almost everything can be digitized; but not creativity. Creativity and Innovation are some of the most important differentiators in a rapidly changing and evolving world where disruption has become a fact of life. So how can we train ourselves to

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