Author: Charlotte Gill

ICF awards JK Organisation for its coaching excellence

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Founded more than a century ago, JK Organisation is one of India’s largest industrial groups. With a diverse portfolio of companies responsible for the manufacture, distribution, sale and service of products including tyres, paper, cement, industrial supplies, and agricultural and dairy products, JK employs more than 22,000 individuals across India and around the globe.

As India continues its emergence as a global economic power, JK’s leaders are seeking ways to retain the organisation’s legacy of excellence while adapting to a dynamic operating environment. In 2008, JK’s senior decision-makers adopted coaching as a strategy for talent development, leadership enhancement and change management.

In recognition of JK Organisation’s exceptional use of coaching, the International Coach Federation (ICF) awarded it the 2014 ICF International Prism Award. The Prism Award honours organisations that have achieved the highest standard of excellence in coaching programmes that yield discernible and measurable positive impacts, fulfil rigorous professional standards, address key strategic goals, and shape organisational culture.

While most of JK’s leaders are in their 50s, the average age of an Indian citizen is 27

Coaching culture
Prior to 2008, JK’s legacy of excellence was premised on a directive management model. “The senior employees have all grown up in the culture of expecting instruction from their bosses”, explained ICF Professional Certifed Coach Alan Meyne. Innovation and initiative were expected to come from the top down.

However, the demands on Indian organisations are changing. While most of JK’s leaders are in their 50s, the average age of an Indian citizen is 27. Managers and leaders need skills and strategies to negotiate this generation gap in order to unleash their direct reports’ potential, promote innovation, retain top talent, and ensure JK’s continued success.

JK’s coaching culture addresses this need. “A coaching culture is visible in the behaviour of people”, said Meyne. “It’s a way of looking at people and treating each other. When we describe a coaching culture, we’re describing a learning culture that is respectful and that values people’s potential and promotes innovation. The significant breakthrough was in influencing the leaders’ mindset about people development.”

From the beginning of the programme, leaders who received Executive Coaching took what they had learned to their interactions with direct reports and peers, applying coaching skills to performance conversations, and making a greater effort to nurture innovation and personal responsibility within their teams.

Returns on expectations
As coaching evolves at JK, the organisational and individual impacts are appreciable. Within the four JK companies where coaching is used most frequently, leaders have reported improved performance, profitability and employee retention. Since 2008, revenues have grown by 105 percent, employee satisfaction has increased by 16 percent and attrition of high-potential employees has decreased by two percent (from an all-time high of 7.1 percent).

Leaders receiving Executive Coaching have reported a high return on expectations, particularly in the areas of stress management (with one client reporting a 60 to 65 percent decrease in stress during and after coaching), management skills, role transitions, self-confidence and enhanced teamwork. The positive impacts go beyond the office walls: coaching clients also report enhanced communication and relationships with their spouses, children and extended families.

As coaching continues to expand at JK, the programme’s architects say they are optimistic about the future of the initiative and the organisation. “We believe that people have the potential to do wonders at work, and coaching taps into that potential”, said JK’s President of Corporate Human Resources, ICF Associate Certified Coach Dilep Misra. “Coaching has provided a common language that is gaining popularity in the workplace as it creates new learning and sets people up for success. Asking powerful questions, facilitating the process, putting them in charge: it’s all a way to get them involved in the organisation’s day-to-day decision-making process, make them a success in their area, and make them a success in achieving the target.”

Deezer plans for IPO as music-streaming competition heats up

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Music-streaming service Deezer has announced plans to list on the Paris stock exchange by year’s end in order to keep pace with new and old competitors. Active in over 180 countries and with six million paying subscribers to its name, Deezer plans for an IPO should hand the service some added marketing clout as it looks to establish a bigger name for itself in the music-streaming market.

Founded by 23-year-old Daniel Marhely from his Paris bedroom in 2007, most of Deezer’s customers are based in France

The move follows a major funding round earlier this year by Spotify, which yielded $500m and underlined the company’s hard-earned market leadership. The Stockholm-based company boasts over 20 million subscribers and 75 million active users, and fresh competition from Apple Music and Tidal has done little so far to shrink its user base.

Founded by (then) 23-year-old Daniel Marhely from his Paris bedroom in 2007, most of Deezer’s customers are based in France – which, according to chief executive Hans-Holger Albrecht, is the reason why the company will list in Paris. The company received €100m in funding in 2012 from Access Industries and Idinvest, although the IPO “gives us more flexibility going forward and more access to financial markets,” according to Albrecht, speaking in an interview with the FT.

The introduction of both Apple and Google to the music streaming business means that companies without the financial muscle of major technology giants must look elsewhere for financing. The task of securing investment is made to seem all the more important given that music streaming has not yet shown itself to be a particularly profitable endeavour. Again according to Albrecht, the company’s annual revenue will surpass the €750m mark by 2018, and in doing so break even on a monthly basis.

Apple Store suffers major cyber attack

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Apple’s iOS App Store has suffered its first major cyber attack as it was shown that hackers had embedded a malicious code into its systems, urging developers to use a counterfeit version of Apple’s software when creating an iOS or Mac app. The electronics giant announced September 20 that it had started work on the process of uprooting the malicious program, after the attack was reported by a number of cyber security firms and found to be affecting hundreds of thousands of devices, mainly in China.

Hackers have recently shifted their attention onto developers, in the hope that doing so might allow them to circumvent security systems

Hackers have recently shifted their attention onto developers, in the hope that doing so might allow them to circumvent security systems and infect software by more legitimate means – in this case by way of legitimate apps. The success of the so-called XcodeGhost program could well prompt like-minded attackers to employ similar methods in the future; although Apple has said that it’s working alongside developers to ensure the same issue doesn’t reoccur.

According to Palo Alto Networks, prior to the incident only five malicious apps had found their way past Apple’s stringent app review process. The firm exposed 42 new iOS malware and reported that 225,000 iPhone accounts had been hacked. However, preliminary investigations conducted by Tencent show that “there has been no theft and leakage of users’ information or money, but the WeChat team will continue to closely monitor the situation.”

The attack is small enough that sales of Apple products are unlikely to suffer much in the way of lost sales, although the issue is a major source of embarrassment for a firm that, up until this point, has escaped the worst of a growing cyber security threat.

Cortana: the not-so-intelligent PA embarrasses Microsoft CEO

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, looked uncomfortable at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco after his “clever personal assistant”, Cortana, chose to have a minor malfunction at the event.

Nadella was attempting to show off the productivity tools of Windows 10 and decided that he would ask the siri-esque assistant to help him do so.

The auditorium filled with laughter, much to the embarrassment of Microsoft’s CEO

“Show me my most at-risk opportunities,” Nadella asked Cortana.

But rather than coming back with a drop down list of meaningful information about Salesforce’s riskiest ventures, Cortana chose to search Google asking, “Show my to buy milk at this opportunity”.

The auditorium filled with laughter, much to the embarrassment of Microsoft’s CEO, but he calmly held his composure and tried again.

This time round the so-called intelligent personal assistant opened up the ‘Reminders’ application, causing Nadella to express his obvious frustration.

“Oh, come on!” cried Nadella, “one last try.”

But rather than it being a case of third times a charm, things just got worse, with Cortana deciding that it had had enough of being asking the same question over and over, offering up nothing at all.

It was at this point Nadella admitted defeated.

“No, this is not going to work,” he concluded.

After the slight mishap, the demonstration continued without a hitch, but Nadella didn’t call on his not-so-glamorous assistant for help for the remainder of the presentation.

For those looking to see the blunder for themselves, the action starts at the 10:30 mark in the video above.

Facebook at Work is coming to your office

Posted on by Charlotte Gill

Facebook plans to penetrate the corporate world with a professional version of its site.

Titled ‘Facebook at Work’, the new creation may look, feel and work in a similar fashion to normal Facebook – but is designed to help employees communicate with one another. The company hopes that others worldwide will be keen to adopt it.

A pilot programme for the work-oriented version of the site was launched at the beginning of this year. Businesses like the Dutch beer manufacturer Heineken and the massive Latin American online retailer Linio were among those trialling the service.

It is imperative that the work-based application is able to increase productivity, rather than lower it

Many employers prefer employees to refrain from excessively browsing Facebook during work hours – meaning it is imperative that the work-based application is able to increase productivity, rather than lower it. However, the pilot programme seems to have quelled those concerns.

“We’re a modern company,” José María Pertusa, CMO at Linio tells Recode. “We actually expect them to use social media. That’s the way we acquire most of our customers anyway.”

There is a massive market at the moment for interoffice communication tools that provide a quick and easy alternative to email. Facebook at Work will directly compete with the likes of Slack, a San-Francisco based start-up that created a piece of chat software that consolidates all office correspondence in one place. The service is a massive hit and already boasts over a million daily users.

The interoffice application could face stiff competition from Facebook at Work because so many people are already familiar with the original version, which is used by more than 1.4 billion people every month, according to statistica.

“If somebody comes into the company, they know how to use this tool from day one,” explains Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite in an interview with Recode. “So training cost is zero. That’s important.”

Google offers free training to digitally-hungry SMEs

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Google’s ‘Digital Garage’ – a new online learning platform – is helping UK-based SMEs get relevant digital training and skills to help their businesses grow.

In today’s world, companies without a strong online presence find it difficult to compete with rivals, so the search firm is offering its services and expertise for free in a bid to help bring small business owners up to speed.

Google’s online platform and pop-up training camps will teach SMEs how to use everything from social media to managing their own website

Google’s online platform and pop-up training camps will teach SMEs how to use everything from social media to managing their own website. They will even learn how to utilise search advertising, so that their products and services reach the right people.

“It can be easy to think that technology is just for start-ups, but we know it can bring real growth to all businesses,” said Eileen Naughton, Google’s Managing Director for UK & Ireland. “So with fewer than 30% of SMEs having an effective online presence we’re working to help jumpstart the other 70%.”

“At a time when there is pressure for the UK to boost productivity to contribute to real wage increases, we believe Google can be a real growth engine that helps deliver these gains,” she added.

Google recently set-up one of its pop-up digital garage’s in Birmingham, which provides SMEs with face-to-face assistance in getting to, grips with digital technologies.

“It’s vitally important that small businesses here in the Midlands can compete in the digital age,” said Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in a statement. “So I’m delighted to see a project like The Digital Garage bringing skills to small businesses and entrepreneurs across the region and acting as a growth engine for our digital economy.”

“All the evidence clearly indicates that businesses with a strong online presence grow faster, have access to wider markets and generate new jobs more quickly. So this programme stands not only to benefit businesses individually but also to provide a real benefit for the wider economy,” he added.

Goldman Sachs launches new encrypted messenger service

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Symphony, a new messaging tool for financial institutions, launches at The Lanesborough Hotel in Hyde Park, London. The messaging service, developed by Goldman Sachs, claims to be a “secure, cloud-based communications service.”

For years most banks had used a messaging feature through the Bloomberg LP terminal. However, following the 2013 Bloomberg snooping scandal, which saw reporters from Bloomberg News allegedly told, according to the New York Times, “to use the terminals to get an edge in the competitive world of financial journalism,” Goldman Sachs began to develop an alternative messaging system. Information on Goldman Sachs itself was confirmed to have been accessed by at least one Bloomberg reporter.

Goldman Sachs, along with a number of other financial institutions acquired the encrypted messaging service Perzo, turning it into a suitable messaging system for the world of finance. The acquisition and investment totalled $66m. Backers of the new service include JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, and Nomura.

As the service makes use of end-to-end encryption messaging, there have been concerns that it would make it easier for banks to hide messages and information from the eyes of prying regulators. However, New York State’s Department of Financial Services recently reached a deal with Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Bank of New York Mellon, in which, reports Reuters, they have “agreed to retain a copy of the four banks’ chat messages on the Symphony system for seven years. The banks will also store duplicate copies of the decryption keys for their messages with independent custodians.”

China’s dominant taxi-app provider invests in Uber rival

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As competition between different ride-hailing and taxi app services heats up, the philosophy governing Didi Kuaidi seems to be “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” According to The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese taxi-app company, which is Uber’s largest rival in the Chinese market, has invested an undisclosed amount in US firm Lyft, itself the biggest rival to Uber in the US.

Uber has pinpointed China as a key market for its operations

Uber has pinpointed China as a key market for its operations. In June, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote a letter to investors claiming that “Simply stated, China is the #1 priority for Uber’s global team. After launching in Beijing nine months ago and now currently operating in 11 Chinese cities, Uber recently announced its intention to up that figure by 100. “When we started this year, we were about one percent market share,” Kalanick said, reports The Verge. “Today, nine months later, we’re looking at about 30 to 35 percent market share.”

However, it has faced stiff competition from Didi Kuaidi, the dominant taxi-app in China. The backing of Uber’s rival Lyft on its own turf by the Chinese taxi service, however, can be seen as part of a global alliance of such businesses against Uber. Softbank Capital is an investor in both Lyft and Didi Kaudi and has also recently invested in other Uber rivals such as 250m in funding to Southeast Asian GrabTaxi and $210m in India’s Ola in 2014.

The Asian taxi-app market is also seeing a wave of consolidations. Didi Kuaidi is itself the result of a merger between Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache in early 2015, while Ola acquired TaxiForSure for $200m in March. “There is definitely more consolidation coming. Taxi apps are growing at an exponential rate, so it’s smart to take out candidates before they can steal market share,” Bradley Gastwirth, CEO at US advisory firm ABR Investment Strategy, told CNBC.

Artificial plant leaves to turn sunlight into natural gas

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A group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a way to turn sunlight into liquid fuel. The team, led by Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry at Berkeley and co-director of the school’s Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute, have created an artificial plant leaf which is able to turn sunlight into methane – the main component of natural gas.

The research is part of attempts to mimic plant photosynthesis whereby plants turn sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars

The research is part of attempts to mimic plant photosynthesis whereby plants turn sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars. This synthetic photosynthesis, however, aims to replicate this process to produce liquid fuels such as methane.

The science behind the breakthrough, which was detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, makes use of nanoscale semiconductors and genetically-modified bacteria. According to Alan Brown of Kavli Foundation, writing for Live Science, “The system uses long, nanoscale filaments to turn sunlight into electrons, which bacteria use to convert carbon dioxide and water into butanol fuel and more complex molecules such as acetate, a chemical building block, and amorphadiene.” Effectively, nanotechnology is used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, and in turn the hydrogen is transformed into methane by genetically modified bacteria.

The use of both nanotechnology and bacteria means an integration of both hybrid inorganic and biological systems were put to use. In a roundtable discussion on the new breakthrough, Yang told the Kavli Foundation that “one purpose of this experiment was to show we could integrate bacterial catalysts with semiconductor technology. This lets us understand and optimize a truly synthetic photosynthesis system.”

Thomas Moore, another roundtable participant and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University, speculated on the future potential the technological poses for human energy use. “Burning fossil fuels is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than natural photosynthesis can take it out,” he claimed. “A system that pulls every carbon that we burn out of the air and converts it into fuel is truly carbon neutral.”

A diagram of the experiment
A diagram of the experiment

General Electric secures Alstom deal

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After months of wrangling, General Electric’s proposed €12.4bn acquisition of French energy firm Alstom has been given the green light by the European Commission – which formally announced its approval at a press conference held on September 8.

The decision to acquire Alstom is part of GE’s strategy to refocus the business on industrial units and move away from financial services

European anti-trust regulators had expressed concerns that the merger would damage competition and lead to market distortions for gas turbines. The EU also demanded assurance from GE that it would not raise its prices for gas turbines if the acquisition went ahead. The deal was accepted after eight months of discussions and a series of concessions promised by GE. One clause in the agreement includes the sale of some of GE’s maintenance assets and patents to Italian rival Ansaldo Energia.

The decision to acquire Alstom is part of GE’s strategy to refocus the business on industrial units and move away from financial services. Alstom will enable GE to increase its industrial business profits from 50 to 90 percent of its annual revenue. Moreover, according to Forbes, GE expects cost savings of around $3bn from the merger, around 40 percent of which will result from shared general and administrative expenses.

In line with its new industrial business model, GE also tried to sell its appliances arm to Electrolux for $3.3bn earlier this year. However, the deal was brought to a halt following a lawsuit that was filed by the US, again due to concerns about market competition.

In 2001, EU regulators blocked GE’s acquisition of Honeywell International for $45bn to the outage of US executives. GE pushed hard to prevent history from repeating itself, ensuring that the investigation continues, with two extensions granted earlier this year. Some experts argue that a softer approach and the offer of significant concessions led to GE’s success this time around.

Iceland offers itself as a data centre hub

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Since Iceland’s catastrophic crash in 2008, the country has kept itself in financial isolation from the rest of the world, maintaining strict capital controls as it gradually recovers. Over the past year, Iceland has become one of Europe’s top performers in terms of growth – which has led to it starting the process of lifting capital controls and re-joining the international financial community. In a bid to attract foreign capital and boost growth further, Iceland is now trying to make a name for itself as a hub for data centres.

By highlighting its access to cheap and renewable energy, the tiny island hopes to attract big players from around to world to locate their data storage warehouses there

By highlighting its access to cheap and renewable energy, the tiny island hopes to attract big players from around to world to locate their data storage warehouses there. Given the huge consumption of electricity required for such facilities, which continues to rise as power-hungry data centres proliferate around the world, Iceland’s proposition is certainly attractive to international companies.

Despite Iceland’s formidable energy capacity, which exceeds the country’s needs by five times, exporting is difficult and costly due to the country’s remoteness. With around 75 percent of its energy mix from hydropower, and a sizeable portion from geothermal sources, Iceland’s energy hook has the sustainable angle also as it promises to reduce the carbon footprint of companies that set up their data centres in the country.

Iceland has five large data centres at present, including a 44-acre campus in Keflavik in which its highest profile client, BMW, is located. The government hopes to attract more multinational companies through recently introduced tax incentives and programmes, such as ‘Invest in Iceland’.

“When BMW said they paid 83 percent less for operating their data centre on Iceland than in Germany, it (interest) really picked up,” Einar Hansen Tomasson, an Invest in Iceland representative, told Reuters.

Attracting foreign capital is the last piece to the puzzle for Iceland’s impressive economic recovery, the step that will enable it to fully move on from the 2008 crash. By tapping into its abundant energy resources, and playing into current trends – namely the need for big data centres and the desire for sustainability – Iceland is onto something that may well lay a whole new course for its financial future. It didn’t succeed as a financial centre, but it seems that Iceland will have far better luck as a data hub instead.

Emerging markets to blame for sluggish global output

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The rate of growth in global manufacturing output has fallen to its lowest level since April 2013, according to the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing PMI. The results are the weakest experienced by the global economy in 28 months, while the pace of new business has remained close to recent lows. As the report noted, “Manufacturing production increased for the thirty-third successive month in August. However, the rate of expansion was the weakest since April 2013, as the downturn in emerging markets accelerated and growth slowed in the developed world.”

The Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and Germany are all cited as having the fastest rates of output

The survey is a composite index, compiled by J.P.Morgan and Markit in association with ISM and IFPSM. Through the use of 10,000 purchasing executives in over 30 countries, it covers 89 percent of world manufacturing output. The index for global manufacturing fell to 50.7 in August 2015, the lowest level since July 2013. Further, the average for 2015 so far stands at 51.3, down from the annual average of 52.3 for the whole of 2014.

The Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and Germany are all cited as having the fastest rates of output, along with the US which, the report writes, “due to its large relative size, was also a significant contributor to the latest increase in global manufacturing production, despite growth in the nation easing to a 19-month low.” The eurozone is also said to have seen an acceleration in output to 15-month high.

The countries providing a drag on the world output are China, France, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Greece and Brazil. These are primarily emerging markets, which, despite once being seen as the engine of world economic growth, have faced increasing economic trouble in 2015, including rising sovereign debts, commodity price collapses and currency slides. Some emerging markets such as Vietnam and India, however, have provided pockets of growth.

In terms of manufacturing employment, a twenty fifth successive month of growth was recorded in August, although rate of growth came close to stagnation. Employment in the US rose, although at its lowest level in 13 months, while the eurozone saw a four month high in employment growth. Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Vietnam and Eastern Europe all also registered a rise in manufacturing employment, while China, the UK, France, Canada, South Korea, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Malaysia, Austria, and Greece saw cuts.