Up To The Minute: The Latest Thought Leadership On Digital Transformation, Business Adaptation, And Startups

What Is: Up To The Minute?  

A thought leadership showcase. A wealth of knowledge. Your new weekly go-to source of insight from voices big and small across a wide range of industries. Here at Minutes, we know how tough it is to keep up with Seth Godin’s latest copywriting tips, what Gary Vaynerchuk is currently preaching to millions of aspiring entrepreneurs, and Jay Baer’s hot new take on influencer marketing. And the big names aren’t the only ones offering great insight, either. That’s why we’ve decided to dig up, collect, and share the best recent thought leadership in one place.

1. A group of four executive programming experts and corporate leaders: “If people lack the right mindset to change and the current organizational practices are flawed, digital transformation will simply magnify those flaws.”

According to HBR, a mind-boggling $900 billion of $1.3 trillion invested in digital transformations last year was wasted, put toward ineffective strategies. Apparently, not enough companies can differentiate between creating the possibility for optimization and actually gaining efficiencies. There’s a common, unsurprising culprit here: It’s a people problem. Put simply, if people within your company either don’t want to or don’t know how to use all the new tech you’ve invested in, it’s all for naught.

Five lessons to be learned on that in Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology.

2. Author and speaker on executive management and leadership Jesse Sostrin: “Confidence is the scaffolding on which you stand. Its height determines your outlook, as well as the goals you’re willing to reach for. But like any temporary platform, it can be dismantled or built up quickly.”

Confidence is key—especially for company leaders. This considered, Sostrin urges you to better recognize and react to what he calls “the dip”: a drop in confidence. He illustrates how to turn a loss of confidence into a positive, growth-inducing situation instead, and discusses a method aimed at recalibrating your confidence, ultimately building resiliency.

Read more here: How to regain your confidence when it falters.

3. Author, business coach, and public speaker Jason Forrest: “We create these centers of inner security around everything in our lives: our job, our boss, our family, our peers, our culture.”  

When the going at work gets tough, a strong belief in self can help keep you productive—and sane, says Forrest. Feeding off the previous share, this piece also touches on confidence, and how a lack of it can become a toxic force in our professional lives. Here, though, Forrest touches on the importance of a steadfast inner voice and differentiating a healthy self-image from an inflated ego.

More on that in How to Survive and Thrive in a Stressful Toxic Work Environment.

4. Tech company CEO and co-founder Mark McClain: “Change is unarguably a ‘when, not if’ in business. Yes, change can cause sleepless nights for any business leader, but it’s also incredibly important and the foundation of innovation, growth, and opportunities.”

Is your company built to weather the inevitable changes ahead? And will looming changes be good or bad for your business? It’s important to differentiate potentially damaging change from progress as your company scales, says McClain. He pulls from his professional experience, helping you to avoid creating communication silos, rupturing company culture, or outgrowing your workforce’s skillset in The art of adaptation: what business leaders need to know.

5. Founder, author, and investor Maynard Webb on striking investment and incubator deals as a founder: “make it a win-win for everybody” and “ask if there’s room to negotiate.”

Here, Webb takes on two separate founder questions in his weekly Fast Company column. These founders have both found themselves on the receiving end of a pair of seemingly good offers: one an investment proposal, the other an incubation opportunity. But both founders wisely choose to check in with Webb, who expertly explains why they may or may not be genuinely “good” deals in Two founders are offered “good deals.” Guess which one our columnist likes.