Macromegas #9
Hi friends,
Happy Friday!
Useful Knowledge
Best articles I read over the past few weeks that can help you understand the world better around strategy, macroeconomics, finance, and economic history.
Can you predict a company's performance based on CEO quantifiable characteristics?
It turns out that you can:
being a Founder CEO has the most positive performance impact.
having a large board has the most negative performance impact.
having a busy board has a slightly negative impact.
Read the academic full paper here: CEO tenure and firm value
What economic productivity potential remains largely untapped today?
This essay looks at technological or social improvements that have not yet realised their potential. We can hopefully expect to reap those disruptive benefits in the next decades.
My personal scientific intuition fo against the author's statement that "We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Innovation is getting harder because we did all of the low hanging fruit.", but the rest is solid thinking.
Read the essay here: 21st Century Dissatisfaction
To be read with Betting on Things That Never Change if you enjoy a nice mental wine-cheese pairing.
Personal Growth
Can you make yourself (or your employees) more creative?
John Cleese's answer is yes. And he answers it in the most entertaining, funny, and generally brilliant way.
A 35-minute video recording I watched quite some time, but 100% timeless.
A short teaser on how to prevent creativity in the workplace:
ban humour
focus on negative criticism
foster constant urgency and stress
Hope no one can relate.
Listen to his (fun) recommendations there: John Cleese on Creativity In Management
How to spend your "free" time
An apology of mindful leisure. If you are familiar with the Ancient Greek philosophy of leisure/education, this will resonate.
Very pleasant writing as well, as standard with David Perell:
"The well-lived life is granted to those who shatter the chains of nihilism, and instead see both work and leisure time as gifts to embrace. Sloth is evil, for time is the very essence of life, and only in the afterlife does the clock stop ticking.
Nobody thinks they’ll get old, but everybody does. The Western World’s fixation on work leads us to evaluate ourselves on achievement rather than on how meaningfully we spend our time. As we move through life, we should swing between the discipline of work and the fullness of leisure. But in both cases, we should remember the scarcity of time and never kill it."
Read David's essay here: Don't Kill Time
If you think I am doing great at helping you understand the world, making you reflect, or even just entertaining you positively, please forward to 3 of your friends/colleagues who might enjoy this as well. Your help means A LOT!
If you don't think I do, please let me know by hitting "reply" - I want to learn why and improve.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and talk to you next week,
V
PS: as usual, if you have questions, comments, suggestions, or ideas to explore, feel free to write: simply hit "reply".