 |
|
|
|||||
When you reach the role of manager in an organization (particularly for the first time), you have often been there a while. Chances are, youre managing people who had roles like the one you had before you started to supervise others. The rhythms and routines of work are familiar. Despite your feelings of closeness to team members on the front lines, you’re likely to forget three key issues that can hamper your ability to succeed. These factors can be a particular problem when working with people who are new to the organization. Now youre one of ‘them’ When you become a manager, you dont feel much different than you did before your promotion. In fact, when you first step into that managerial role, you may feel less confident about going to work and doing your job than you did when you were a successful individual contributor. When you head to work, youre probably going to see most of the same people you used to work with closely. Only, something is different. You have suddenly gone from being one of us to being one of them. Thats rightnow youre on the management side of things. You may very well want to be friends with all of your superviseesparticularly because you may have been close to many of them before getting your new role. But, your responsibilities will make it difficult to have the same relationship with the front-line team as you did before, because you also have to give them assignments and evaluate their performance. It’s easy to forget the way you used to view management before you entered into that role. There are big information asymmetries Once you move into a leadership role, you are privy to a lot of information about what is happening across the organization including discussions of strategy and new initiatives. Much of this information isn’t spread to the front lines of the organization, and is often not relevant to the daily work of individual contributors. That means you need to become more effective at talking with people who do not share some of the knowledge you have. You may have to explain more of your references and remind yourself of the likely state of information of the people who report to you. In addition, while Im not a huge fan of organizational secrets, there are times when you become aware of information that is not supposed to be shared more widely. There are often good strategic reasons for a company to withhold some information from all employees until it can be communicated broadly and with a consistent message. It can be difficult to avoid spilling the beans, but you have to practice having knowledge other people might want to know, but cant hear yet. New people are still learning A common problem for many people who have developed some expertise is returning to the beginners mind. It can be difficult to remember how little you knew before you were steeped in the processes, jargon, and lore of the organization. As a manager, a significant part of your role is coaching new people. That means reminding yourself what it is like not to know anything about how the organization works. Early on, you may find that what’s wrong with new employees is that they do not have basic knowledge of how to do their jobs or how the organization functions. Remember that you probably had no clue how to do your job when you first started. What makes people so smart is not that we come preloaded with lots of understanding of how to do tasks, but rather that we are so effective at learning from others effectively. So, give your newest employees some grace. Give them a chance to adapt to their new environment. Teach a lot. Create a team where people want to let you know all the things they dont yet understand. It’s much easier to teach someone who owns the gaps in their knowledge than to have to ferret out the holes in your employees knowledge that they are reluctant to reveal.
Category:
E-Commerce
On April 2, in an event he called “Liberation Day,” President Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced a long list of reciprocal tariffs his administration planned to impose on trading partners around the world. It would be remembered, he said, as “the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.” Some small American businesses saw the tariffs much differently. Vestaboard, a five-year-old California startup that makes customizable split-flap displays, looked at the tariffs and decided it had to radically change its business plans. Production of its flagship device, which is manufactured in China and retails for $3,500, was paused, and the company put an indefinite halt on a major R&D effort for a lower-cost product it was banking on to diversify its market. Instead of pursuing an ambitious project, Vestaboard’s CEO and founder Dorrian Porter found his 25-person company scrambling to figure out whether it would have to find another countryand a whole new chain of suppliers and factorieswhere it could get its products built. “My main thought was, how do I eliminate every risk that’s within our control as a business,” Porter says. “We knew we had to change manufacturers. I couldn’t really eliminate that if we wanted to keep making Vestaboard.” [Photo: Vestaboard] But abandoning the R&D efforta project that aimed to turn Vestaboard’s train station-inspired fixed width display boards into a modular system of magnetic “bits”still stung. After Trump’s Liberation Day pomp, Porter began to think about how he could still keep his company growing. Vestaboard had just come off its biggest quarter ever, with $3.3 million in sales, but the chaotic rollout of Trump’s tariffs made Q2 and beyond almost impossible to predict. For a startup like Vestaboard, which is backed by $15 million from about 200 customers-turned-investors, bracing for an economic storm could only last so long. “That kick-started a process for us to say, well, what can we do with what we have?” says Porter. “What if we didn’t have to change our whole marketing approach to go mass market? If we didn’t have to change our whole software to launch something, what could we do?” In about four weeks, the company came up with a workaround product that hits closer to the lower price point the company had been working toward, while also hewing to its already established supply chain and manufacturing process. The new product is the Vestaboard Note, which is essentially a smaller version of the company’s flagship display, having a grid of 45 characters to the Vestaboard’s 132. Prices start at $899. Porter calls it the “Tariff Edition of a Vestaboard.” Though he acknowledges that making a smaller version of the company’s main product is not exactly a groundbreaking innovation, given the circumstances it does qualify as a creative pivot. It’s also an example of the stifling impact Trump’s tariffs have had on small businesses. Creating a new product during a time of such uncertainty meant that Vestaboard had to work around significant limitations. The Vestaboard Note was a feasible concept because it could be produced in almost the same way as the company’s main product. “Our supply chain stays substantially the same, our manufacturing process stays substantially the same, our software stays substantially the same,” says Porter. “[It was] a period of great creativity, trying to live within the constraints of this massive new risk we face as a business.” [Photo: Vestaboard] Much remains unclear about the tariffs for small businesses like Vestaboard, which currently rely on China as a manufacturing partner. Trump’s proposed revival of American industry is a pipe dream for companies that actually need to get things manufactured. “The reality is electronics are not buildable in the U.S. at any kind of cost that the consumers are willing to accept,” Porter says. “The supply chain for electronics has been completely built out in China over the last 25 years. You’re now seeing some assembly start to occur in places like Vietnam and other countries, but even in those cases a lot of your electronic components are still going to come from China . . . they are the best in the world at producing things like this.” So, for the time being, Vestaboard will continue to be produced in China. Porter says the company plans to restart production this summer, with both the original Vestaboard and the Vestaboard Note coming from its usual suppliers and manufacturers. The tariff-inspired research the company did into new production options is still in its back pocket, though, with a viable alternative in Southeast Asia. Porter says the company will be watching the evolving state of tariffs to see whether it will need to pull out of China and go with Plan B or a murkier Plan C. “We are still evaluating alternatives that might bring it closer to home, but even in those circumstances, it would most likely not be the United States,” Porter says.
Category:
E-Commerce
When Sky Kurtz set out to grow produce in the desert via vertical farming in 2016, laying the groundwork for what became Dubai-based ag-tech startup Pure Harvest Smart Farms, People thought we were crazy,” he says. I was fearful, I would never get off the ground. But Kurtz’s came at a time when the UAE was beginning to take the idea seriously and companies like Pure Harvest began cropping up. Over the past nine years, though, Pure Harvest Farms has become one of the sector’s biggest players. It has raised more than $450 million in funding, according to market analysis company PitchBook, and grows an array of crops that includes tomatoes, green vegetables, and berries in temperature-controlled facilities. With farms strategically located throughout the UAE, the company boasts the capacity to produce over 12 million kilograms of crops annually. Despite the competition, Pure Harvest has distinguished itself as the dominant player in the countrys indoor farming sector. Unlike other ag-tech companies which were designed for temperate climates, Pure Harvest developed technologies specifically built to withstand the harsh climates of the Middle East. Unlike other ag-tech companies that focus on niche produce and cater to premium markets, Pure Harvest sells a wide range of produce and supplies to major supermarket chains across the country. The UAE has rapidly become a global hub for ag-tech innovation, attracting diverse companies from around the world: U.S.-based Plenty plans to open a vertical farm in Abu Dhabi by 2026 whereas AeroFarms launched the worlds largest indoor vertical farm in Abu Dhabi in 2023. As companies from abroad come to the UAE, Pure Harvest is expanding its vision. It’s currently in the midst of raising at least $100 million to expand operations into Singapore, Morocco, and Kuwait, and an initial public offering is possible in the coming years. I think the world has woken up that the problem that Pure Harvest Smart Farms is solving is acute and it is here now,” Kurtz says. Adapting to the regions weather Global demand for efficient indoor food production globally is surging, given climate change disrupting traditional agriculture as water sources dry up and temperatures rise. In the United States the Colorado Riverresponsible for irrigating 15% of the nations farmlandis drying up rapidly. Meanwhile, across the Horn of Africa, prolonged droughts are responsible for more than 23 million people experiencing severe hunger. The Middle East, particularly the UAE, experiences brutal heatwaves, with less than 1% of the land suitable for agriculture. This makes the country heavily dependent on food imports, with over 80% of its food coming from abroad. Producing locally not only reduces the costs and carbon emissions associated with transportation but also makes the UAE less reliant on imports. The UAE is making huge strides to advance agri-tech in the country with an ambitious aim to improve hydroponic farming and source 70% of produce from local farms by 2025. This push toward local food production gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, which severely disrupted global food importsand what ultimately accelerated Pure Harvests success. When COVID stopped travel, places that relied on the bellies of airplanes to move food around suddenly woke up to the fragility of their food supply chains, says Kurtz, adding the pandemic prompted governments and markets into supporting agri-tech companies that produce efficiently and locally. Agri-tech companies like Pure Harvest Farms benefit from a unique geographical advantage in the UAE: Around 80% of the worlds population lives within an eight-hour flight of Dubai. This ideal location places them at the heart of a vast consumer base. You know that expression: skate to where the puck is heading. We are building a company where the world’s population is growing . . . so we sit in a wonderful market position where there’s huge tailwinds, says Kurtz. Beyond its strategic location, one key reason Kurtz chose Abu Dhabi as the base for Pure Harvest Smart Farms was his conviction that if the company could succeed in producing food in the harshest environments in the world, where temperatures can soar to 125° Fahrenheit, it would prove the credibility and capability of his company to produce food anywhere in the world. With ambitions for worldwide expansion, Kurtz aimed to first prove that the technology could thrive in such extreme conditions. “If you think of the problem of climate affecting food, resource scarcity, water scarcity, whats worse than the Middle East? Kurtz says. I mean, this is literally ground zero.” Another factor making UAE an attractive hub for Pure Harvest was the countrys funding for startups trying to solve the region’s pressing issues. When I first came out trying to pitch people on, you know, I had a PowerPoint, a pile of dirt and the promise of what we were going to build, says Kurtz, recalling that initial support came from the Mohammed bin Rashid Innovation Fund, which provided a $1.5 million loan. The Abu Dhabi Investment Office has played a pivotal role by offering significant financial support through grants. Indoor farmings growing scope Pure Harvest is no longer the only player in indoor farming. It has spearheaded a growing sector that now includes companies like Below Farms, which leverages temperature controlled indoor environments to produce over 120 tonnes of premium mushrooms annually. Below Farms leverages controlled-farming environments in the UAE to grow premium mushrooms in the desert, with a capacity of 120 tonnes annually. Beyond efficiency, Bronte Weir, founder of Below Farms, emphasizes that indoor farming can produce food of superior quality compared to traditional methods. He notes that vegetables start losing their nutrients at an increasing rate after harvest, and when they are exported and consumed days later, they “are not going to be as good as when it’s harvested 100 or 50 kilometers down the road.” Below Farms mushrooms are currently purchased by severl fine dining restaurants across the UAE such as Emirates Palace and Atlantis. Mushrooms, in particular, have a short shelf life and are extremely perishable due to their high-water contentwhich Bronte says makes local production especially advantageous. We’re harvesting pretty much straight into the kitchen,” he says. At Pure Harvest, the company has has begun getting creative about how to expand its offerings. It has launched a line of all-natural strawberry preserves and tomato sauces, made from surplus seasonal produce, an effort to turn potential food waste into premium products. Kurtz says the company’s growing ambitionand goal of becoming a household brand in the next 50 yearsgoes hand in hand with responding to the world’s growing need to get creative about farming. It’s becoming a global dialogue about how are we going to secure the future of food in a world that will have nine and a half billion people,” he says, “that is not making more land, and where water security is now becoming a crisis.”
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||