 |
|
|
|||||
The beginning of a new year ushers in an ominous day in the NFL: Black Monday, the day when coaches are (typically) most at risk of losing their jobs. Black Monday happens the day after the regular season ends, a time when an especially harsh backward review is cast over the wins, losses, and total misses. The casualty list includes Raheem Morris, who lost his job with the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, January 4; Kevin Stefanski, Pete Carroll, and Jonathan Gannon, each fired on Black Monday, January 5, by the Cleveland Browns, Las Vegas Raiders, and Arizona Cardinals, respectively; John Harbaugh, who was fired by the Baltimore Ravens on Tuesday, January 6; and Mike McDaniel, whose dismissal from the Miami Dolphins was announced Thursday, January 8. In the NFL and other sports leagues, performance metrics could not be more clear-cut and public. So if coaches arent wracking up enough W’s, isnt it just radical accountability to let those who arent performing go? And could the business world learn anything from this? “High-visibility performance management” That kind of slice em and dice em mentality doesnt offer a model of accountability to the traditional work environment outside the sports world, Mario Avila, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Management at Vanderbilt University, tells Fast Company.But it does offer a model of high-visibility performance management that may well serve the upper echelons of corporate America. Conceptualizing performance in the NFL in this way is possible because all eyes are on the field as the game unfolds. And while these KPIs are powerful, and having clear performance indicators are powerful and important, the difference between the NFL and a traditional business is in the corporate sector, Avila also said, where accountability functions differently. A football coach has to consider injuries, rosters, and the patience of ownersfactors that dont cross the mind of a CEO. Therefore, Avila added, accountability is very different. But that doesnt mean corporate leaders cant take from the NFL and Black Monday. The top of the list includes clarity and feedback loops, he explains. Theres a significant amount of clarity of what the KPIs are in a game, and they provide instant feedback loops: are you winning or losing? Are you hitting the right numbers or are the expectations being met? Its highly visible, youre in front of millions of viewers, on display every weekend. A manager at a desk job may not be conducting on-field warfare against 53 opponents, but those same loops persist; after all, most work is about hitting goals and, ultimately, winning. More teamwork lessons than accountability ones Football also offers a lot of lessons about leadership and teamwork, something thats baked into the backbone of the sport, Stephen Master, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Marketing at New York Universitys Stern School of Business tells Fast Company. Sports are about teamwork: its about everyone contributing what they can, and its about culture. Just like in a traditional office environment, if theres someone who is giving off a negative vibe and is a cancer in the locker room, and theyre just not a good teammate thats the same thing you can risk in corporate America, where someone is really only interested in their own achievements and their own personal growth goals. If leadership has incentivized the work experiencefootball players get trophies, corporate workers get bonuses, perhapsthose incentives should be also tied to company performance or division performance, and thats the same thing in any sport, but especially in football, he added. As Master put it, a quarterback on any given team can be the best in the world, but if his offensive line isnt doing their job, the team isnt going to win. The real takeaway If there is one thing corporate leaders should avoid emulating, its the NFLs culture of disposable leadership, which is detrimental to the long-term success of a business, Avila says. Bringing people into an environment where easy firings and mass layoffs run rampantwhere a bad start can cost you your job after barely two seasons on the fieldisnt something businesses should mimic if there are concerns about company morale. Conversations that intersect the NFL and corporate America also raise questions of long-term results vs. short-term gains, Dae Hee Kwak, Graduate Program Director and Associate of Sport Management at the University of Michigan explains to Fast Company. The NFL is built for a 17-week sprint, while a healthy business is built for a 50-year marathon. If you apply NFL logic to a marathon, youll never have enough runners left to finish the race. An environment steeped in fear will do little to encourage those marathon runnersor, perhaps, football coachesto approach their jobs fearlessly, Avila agrees. Incentives about winning now reduce long-term capability building, he said. But when we look at some of our organizations across the country that are the most successful short-term incentives and winning now [mentalities] really distort the behavior. Fear crowds out learning, he continued. Because people are going to start to protect themselves instead of experimenting. Success is built on risk, and you want your people in business to take risk. If you make the environment safe, people will take more risks. If they fear that theyre going to get fired, they will be less willing to take risks, which leads to a decrease in innovation, and a decrease in growth. As endless newspaper and website pages are filled with stories of mass layoffs, perhaps one of the more salient lessons from the NFL is exactly Avilas point: to succeed, workersall workersneed to be encouraged to try something new, and maybe even fail, before they can rise. Radical accountability might be a mainstay in the NFL, but that doesnt mean it truly can be applied to other work environmentsor that it should even be considered. If long-term success is the objective, it likely behooves corporate leaders to let the football coaches do their thingwhile they do their own.
Category:
E-Commerce
Days after hitting the market, the new pill version of Novo Nordisk’s wildly popular weight-loss drug will be available through Amazons online pharmacy. Amazon joins telehealth providers, discount prescription stalwart GoodRx, and even Novo Nordisk itself in providing the novel weight-management drug for consumers who want to pay out of pocket. With the introduction of the oral version of Wegovy, the weight-loss drugs that have taken the world by storm will become even more accessibleand more readily available for anyone who can pay out of pocket. The oral version of Wegovy will start at $149 a month out of pocket through Amazon Pharmacy, and will cost $25 a month with eligible insurance coverage. The 1.5-milligram and 4-milligram starter doses of Wegovy are priced at $149 per month, with the higher doses that many people move up to priced around $299. We know there are people who are interested in addressing their weight but have been waiting on the sidelines for a medicine that was right for them, Novo Nordisk marketing and patient solutions SVP Ed Cinca said in a press release. For many of them, that wait is over. Rivals race to market with a weight-loss pill The two companies that introduced the world to the GLP-1 diabetes and weight-loss drugs semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound) in injectionable form have been racing to market with a pill version of their hit drugs. Late last month, Novo Nordisk secured Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval first, beating its rival drugmaker Eli Lilly, which expects its own drug to get the green light in March. The Danish drugmaker was also first to market with the injectable version of its weight-loss drug Wegovy, but it struggled on the production side when a massive wave of demand outstripped supply. That dynamic allowed Eli Lilly to gain ground with its own weight-management drug, Zepbound, and pushed the American drugmakers stock to new heights. In November, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly announced a deal with the Trump administration to make their upcoming weight-loss pills available for $149 out of pocket. Under the terms of the deal, part of the White Houses wider negotiation on drug prices, both companies will be exempt from tariffs on pharmaceutical products for three years. Beyond Amazon Pharmacy, Novos weight-loss pill will also be coming to TrumpRx, the Trump administrations upcoming portal that will connect consumers with drugmakers to lower prices. For many years, Americans have paid the highest prices anywhere in the world for prescription drugsmuch more than other countries for the exact same product, Trump said in a quote featured on the TrumpRx placeholder site. That ends today. TrumpRx is expected to launch in early 2026. Dr. Amazon will see you now If youre confused that Amazon is suddenly a healthcare provider, youre probably not alone. The company best known for its sprawling online storefront and ubiquitous delivery trucks jumped into the prescription drug business in 2020 when it launched its own online pharmacy, which grew out of a previous acquisition of a company called PillPack. In 2022, Amazon expanded its health ambitions by buying subscription-based primary care and telehealth provider One Medical for $3.9 billion. Last month, the tech giant launched a network of drug-vending kiosks, bringing its signature robotic touch to the pharmacy. The drug vending machines, located in some One Medical offices, are a no-footprint answer to major store closures from longtime drugstore companies like Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS. With widespread patient-initiated telehealth and cheaper weight-loss drugs popping out of vending machines, the future of medicine is, for better or worse, looking a lot more like the future in 2026.
Category:
E-Commerce
As President Trump takes even more steps to pull back on climate action, Bill Gates is emphasizing how crucial government policies are crucial to addressing climate change. In his annual year-ahead letter, the billionaire Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist warns that the market alone is not enough to change our climate reality. Without a large global carbon tax (which is, unfortunately, politically unachievable), market forces do not properly incentivize the creation of technologies to reduce climate-related emissions, Gates writes. To stop global temperatures from increasing, we need to replace all emissions-emitting activities with affordable alternatives, Gates says. He particularly calls out industrial emissions and aviation as areas that need innovation. And government policiesin rich countries, he notesare crucial to bringing about that innovation, because unless innovations reach scale, the costs wont come down and we wont achieve the impact we need. Climate change is linked to poverty and health Gatess annual letter comes just a few months after he wrote a blog arguing that the world is too focused on cutting short-term emissions, and that focusing on climate change risks getting in the way of addressing global poverty. That post sparked some backlash from environmental activists and experts who noted that climate and development goals are interconnected. If you look around the world right now, climate change is directly undermining human development goals, poverty eradication, and health goals, Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Fast Company back in October. In his annual letter, Gates said that, If we dont limit climate change, it will join poverty and infectious disease in causing enormous suffering, especially for the worlds poorest people. Climate change will also worsen both those hardships: Experts have long said that climate change exacerbates disease outbreaks and pandemics, and that it is expected to push up to 132 million people into extreme poverty by 2030. ‘Investing more than ever to climate work’ In his October post, Gates said that although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, the biggest problems to poor people are poverty and disease. Understanding this, he wrote, will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people. In his year-ahead letter, though, Gates emphasized climate change as a critical area for the world to focus on. He added that he will be investing and giving more than ever to climate work in the years ahead while also continuing to give more to childrens health. Some of his investments around climate change will use AI. His foundation has committed $1.4 billion to helping farmers adapt to climate extremes, and in his annual letter, he says that with AI, we will soon be able to provide poor farmers with better advice about weather, prices, crop diseases, and soil than even the richest farmers get today. How Trump has devastated climate action The Trump administration has taken multiple steps to inhibit America’s climate progress. Most recently, Trump pulled the country out of a a landmark climate treaty, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Trump has also canceled billions in green energy projects, rolled back Biden-era government incentives for clean technologies, and cut hundreds of millions of dollars from climate and renewable energy research. At the same time, Trump has rapidly increased the governments support of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels, opening new mining leases, loosening coal plant emissions standards, and forcing coal plants that were going to close to keep operating. Trumps actions have devastated multiple climate companies. Even Gatess own climate actions faced a challenging 2025: In March, Breakthrough Energy, a climate group Gates started 10 years ago, laid off dozens in its U.S. and Europe policy teams. But Gates will continue to put billions into climate innovation, he writeswhile also focusing on health and education. And all three of those areas, he notes, can improve rapidly with the right government focus.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||