business

Have you ever noticed that in business, every manager, director, VP, and C-level person honestly believes that strong teamwork makes for a strong work environment and business? However, have you also noticed that this type of teamwork rarely happens? Why is this? I think it's by design. We are still products of the Industrial Revolution, like it or not, and as such have not figured out how to actually run businesses as an organization of true teams. Do NFL, NBA, or my favorite, soccer teams, operate by forming a huge organization with lots of individual players all playing different games? Not if you are talking about the TEAMS that play the games, but even in these organizations there are a lot of individuals playing their own games against no direct competitors - physical therapists, marketers, managers, etc. And yet, this structure is perpetuated throughout modern businesses.

This talk from author Dan Pink (I don't know much about him yet) seems to be right on the money (or lack thereof)!

I had no clue that Visa was 1) not already a publicly traded company, and 2) that they were going to become a publicly traded company today, however; apparently they are and they did. According to the Financial Times article about Visa's record-breaking IPO today, the strong performance of Visa's business helped propel them to a $56B+ market cap, but is this good for the economy in the long run?