In The NEWS

Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> Sony's PlayStation division to lay off 900 employees, roughly 8% of its workforce after missing its sales target for the PS5 console (More) | Disney's film production president Sean Bailey steps down after 15 years (More)

> Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan headline 2024 Outlaw Music Festival Tour; see full list of performers and concert dates (More)

> Spotify generates $4.5B for independent labels and artists (More) | Sean "Diddy" Combs accused by male music producer of sexual assault, now the fifth such lawsuit against Combs (More)


Science & Technology
> OpenAI asks judge to dismiss key part of New York Times copyright infringement lawsuit, accusing the news organization of "hacking" ChatGPT to produce copyrighted results (More) | See case background (More)

> Hearing live music triggers more brain activity in regions responsible for processing emotions than recordings of the same song, MRI study suggests (More)

> Researchers find striped marlin communicate with each other by changing the shade of their stripes during high-speed hunting; discovery sheds light on the evolution of predatory group behaviors in fish (More)


Business & Markets
> US stock markets close mixed (S&P 500 +0.2%, Dow -0.3%, Nasdaq +0.4%) as investors await this week's inflation data (More)

> Macy's to close 150 underperforming namesake stores, or about 30% of its total stores, by 2026; company expects to add new locations of higher-end department store Bloomingdale’s and beauty chain Bluemercury (More)

> Apple cancels decadelong project to develop autonomous electric vehicle, pivots to artificial intelligence (More) | Financial Times launches new investment arm for media and technology companies, makes first investment in future-of-work startup Charter (More)

SOURCE:  1440 News

Cost of Goods Sold or Manufactured

What is involved in the cost of goods sold or manufactured?

• Direct Labor
• Indirect Labor
• Cost of Materials
• Cost of Storing Materials
• Overhead Costs like
• Electricity
• Gas
• Water
• Telephones
• Office Supplies
• Building Maintenance
• Maintenance Supplies
• Equipment Purchases
• Quality Control
• Training

Two areas of which you may not be aware are Quality Control and Training...

Training

1. Employees must be training on company policies and procedures including safety standards and sexual harassment.
2. Employees must also be trained in how to operate any machines they are using and how to maintain and repair those machines.
3. Employees must be trained in simple math in order to make the calculation that are part of machine operations.(Because these employees did not learn algebra I and II in high school, the industry must do what the school systems did not do)
4. Statistical Process Control classes need to be taught to employees so that quality products can be made with reliability.

Quality Control

According to government regulations, all companies are required to make sure that they produce a quality product that is ultimately sold to the general public.  Ralph Nader was originally responsible back in the 1960s for this happening.

Without quality control, the public has no guarantees that what they are buying is actually reliable and works the way it is supposed to work.

If a company is 99.9% accurate, it is still producing 1500 out of spec parts per million.

How many of those out of spec parts would you like to have in the automobile you are riding in or the washing machine you are using?

Those 1500 parts have to be found and pulled out of production so that they are not inadvertantly sold.

SO...  if the high schools do not do their jobs with teaching students, then that burden and cost falls on industries and companies...  which causes them to increase their prices...

AND...  if our federal government imposes rules and regulations on our industries and companies for whatever reason, then that costs money which is then passed on to the consumer.

DON'T FORGET...  when employees demand more money, those increased costs are passed along to the consumer as well...

If a company pays an employee $50,000 a year, it ultimately costs that company $150,000 in benefits which include insurance, retirement, holidays, vacation and sick leave.

AWARENESS IS KNOWLEDGE

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Global Signs of Recession

New York - CNN Business — Around the world, markets are flashing warning signs that the global economy is teetering on a cliff’s edge.

The question of a recession is no longer if, but when.

Over the past week, the pulse of those flashing red lights quickened as markets grappled with the reality — once speculative, now certain — that the Federal Reserve will press on with its most aggressive monetary tightening campaign in decades to wring inflation from the US economy. 

Even if that means triggering a recession. And even if it comes at the expense of consumers and businesses far beyond US borders.

There’s now a 98% chance of a global recession, according to research firm Ned Davis, which brings some sobering historical credibility to the table. 

The firm’s recession probability reading has only been this high twice before — in 2008 and 2020.  READ MORE...

Twitter's Poison Pill

Twitter does not want to become a plaything of the world’s richest person.

So on Friday, it turned to a tried-and-tested corporate defense mechanism invented in the 1980s — the heyday of the corporate raider — to block a potential takeover attempt by Elon Musk and buy its board some time.

The mechanism, known as a poison pill, has a simple intention: to make it less palatable for a potential buyer to pursue the target company if the buyer accumulates shares above a certain threshold. 

In Twitter’s case, if Mr. Musk bought more than 15 percent of the company, Twitter would flood the market with new stock that all shareholders except Mr. Musk could buy at a discounted price.

That would immediately dilute Mr. Musk’s stake and make it significantly more expensive for him to buy the company. Mr. Musk currently owns a little more than 9 percent of Twitter’s stock.

Twitter said its plan would be in place for just shy of one year. The tool will not stop the company from holding talks with any potential buyer, and will give it more time to negotiate a deal that Twitter’s board believes best reflects the company’s value.  READ MORE...

Snowflake

NEW YORK, March 3 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Snowflake’s (SNOW.N) melting market capitalization reflects investors’ overly lofty expectations. Its share price fell by nearly a fifth on Thursday even though the $65 billion data warehouse firm said fourth-quarter revenue doubled. 

A solid business, with cash from operations easily covering capital expenditures, means slight missteps present a valuation conundrum, not an existential threat.

Fast growing firms are hard to value, but the market’s ardor read more is cooling. Snowflake thinks revenue will rise by two-thirds next year, to $1.9 billion. 

Now assume sales grow 50% annually for five years and the company will enjoy a net margin of 35%, like Microsoft (MSFT.O). On the same earnings multiple, the company would eventually be worth around $140 billion. 

That’s exuberant, but Snowflake was worth about this much in December. If growth is 20%, it will eventually be worth only a third as much on the same multiples.

Snowflake will continue to thrive. The same might not be true of other highfliers, such as electric-car makers like Lucid (LCID.O), which are burning cash. Without highly valued stock to issue, missteps could prove deadlier. (By Robert Cyran)

African Tech Giant JUMIA

It could not have got off to a much better start for Jumia's historic stock market listing. The hoopla on the day it became the first Africa-focussed tech firm to list on the New York Stock Exchange was massive.

International media took note and investors piled in, its share price rose more than 70% in value on the day but the excitement would prove to be short-lived.

"In our countries where we operate there are 700 million people and last year we served more than four million consumers" co-chief executive officer Sacha Poignonnec told the BBC on the floor of the stock exchange.

When I sat down to speak with his co-CEO, Jeremy Hodara, in September the firm had had a humbling few years. Share prices plummeted and came back, backers had bailed out, and it had withdrawn from trading in three of the fourteen countries it was operating in - and that's not to mention reports of fraud lawsuits in New York courts and a public relations disaster over its identity.

But the promise of millions of consumers newly connected to the internet has not gone away and neither has interest in Jumia which is still by far the largest e-commerce company focussed on the African continent - although its management and much of technical expertise is based outside of Africa.

IMAGE SOURCE,JUMIAImage caption,The promise of deliveries to more than a billion consumers in Africa drove interest in Jumia


By 2030, consumer spending across Africa is expected to reach $2.5tn. Jumia still sells goods in 11 of those countries. It operates a marketplace where thousands of other businesses sell goods on its platform and has a finance arm, Jumia pay, so customers can go about their shopping, pay utility bills and order pizza, all without leaving the Jumia's platforms.  TO READ MORE ABOUT JUMIA, CLICK HERE...

Dead Reckoning

DEAD RECKONING is the navigational process of calculating
current position of some moving object by using a previously determined position, or fix, by using estimations of speed, heading direction and course over elapsed time.

ADVANTAGE:  it can be a highly accurate way of moving from one point to another if done carefully over short distances, even where few external cues are present to guide the movements.

In other words, we can forecast where we might be in 3 months by using the clues and cues of where we are now which has been determined by dead reckoning, but, if we were to push farther out into the future and even if our forecasted predictions were based and predicated upon the past for the last 20-50 years, there is still no guarantees that they will continue in the same direction forward unless the future has already been PREORDAINED or PREDETERMINED which we all know is simply not possible at all...  given our current levels of knowledge and technologies...  however, is that really true?

The speed of light is very fast and it takes about 8.5 minutes for sunlight to reach the earth... so, the light of our present is really from the sun's past.  And if, we were living on the sun, the earth would be 8.5 minutes ahead of us...  therefore, we could see into our future...  however, at this moment living on the sun is theoretically impossible and probably highly improbable given how hot it is.

But, the concept of seeing into our future is theoretically possible...  so, our future can be seen as being preordained and/or predetermined...  it is just that we are not in a position to take advantage of that.  Yet, if we could, then it would also be possible to see into our future more than 3 months, possibly more than 3 years, highly likely more than 3 decades, and quite feasible more than 3 centuries or more.

RIGHT NOW:  we are simply in a position where all we can do is make predictions like:

1.  China using its military and economy one day to control the world

2.  North Korea becoming a nuclear power and using it against South Korea and Japan

3.  Russia reclaiming all those countries that the USSR lost once its government dissolved

4.  Larger cities like SEATTLE, WA increasing and sustaining waves of crime and violence now that police department have been defunded

5.  Our country bordering on financial collapse (or printing up more money) due to the wealthy hiding their money so that it cannot be taxes to pay for everything

6.  Changing our government from being a Democratic Republic to that of a Socialist Nation

7.  To seeing race wars spread like wildfire across the continent when in reality they are wars between the wealthy and those who live in or close to poverty

How Do You Do... What They Tell You... You Gotta Do?

This is one of the biggest complaints that I have about the College/University Educational System in America especially in the area of BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION.

From the Harvard Business Review:
Our research also pointed to six leadership skills where practice was particularly important. These are not mysterious and certainly aren’t new. However, the leaders we talked with emphasized that these fundamental skills really matter. 

Aspiring leaders should focus on practicing these essential basics:

1. Shape a vision that is exciting and challenging for your team (or division/unit/organization).
2. Translate that vision into a clear strategy about what actions to take, and what not to do.
3. Recruit, develop, and reward a team of great people to carry out the strategy.
4. Focus on measurable results.
5. Foster innovation and learning to sustain your team (or organization) and grow new leaders.
6. Lead yourself — know yourself, improve yourself, and manage the appropriate balance in your own life.

SO...

first of all, these are not Harvard's ideas or suggestions but the suggestions from several already successful business executive...

second, "How to implement" must be assumed.

SO AGAIN...  we have this nice list from a prestigious educational organization and we return to work and decide that we are going to implement right away...

Note...  key words will be highlighted

NUMBER ONE:  Shape a vision that is exciting and challenging for your team. 

I know how to shape a vision because I looked it up on the internet.  VISION means:  the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.

HOW TO WRITE A VISION STATEMENT

Tips for crafting your vision statement

1.      Project five to 10 years in the future.
2.      Dream big and focus on success.
3.      Use the present tense.
4.      Use clear, concise, jargon-free language.
5.      Infuse it with passion and make it inspiring.
6.      Align it with your business values and goals

Source:  www.businessnewsdaily.com

Now, I have a whole lot of other factors to consider first in order for me to become a good leader and have no idea how long all of this is going to take...  and, if I have the time...  patients...  and money to pay my workforce to keep working while I learn to become a leader to them and/or for them.

OF COURSE...  this has been exaggerated to make a point.   And, I attended GRADUATE SCHOOL for two years where I received an MBA from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC and while my professors gave me many pieces of valuable information and many tools, they never really told me how to implement any of those ideas and tools (although one cannot really implement a tool) other than VIA CASE STUDIES where we read about how others did it, and were either successful or not successful hoping that by OSMOSIS we would become enlightened.

WHAT WORKS FOR ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK FOR ANOTHER...  I learned that concept before I took my first step into Graduate School.

A LEADER LEARNS through EXPERIENCE not through BOOKS...

A STRATEGIC PLAN for example, is easy to write by one person and can be done over a weekend.  It is slightly more difficult to write, if one has to work with half a dozen managers or so and could take several weeks.  It becomes quite a formidable task to complete in an aligned fashion when one includes the inputs from the supervisors and workers that report to those half a dozen managers and could take 6-9 months to complete, perhaps longer...  and, if by some wild chance a STRATEGIC PLAN is eventually completed...   it is damn near impossible to IMPLEMENT unless the entire day of several people is focused on making sure that everyone does what the STRATEGIC PLAN says that they are going to do...  OTHERWISE THE STRATEGIC PLAN WILL NEVER BECOME IMPLEMENTED 100 PERCENT...

But, the College/University textbook authors don't share that tidbit of knowledge with you...

If you have read this far...  then you should completely understand the title of this article.

Final Question:  Why do we think that a LEADER should always be OUT IN FRONT of the team?

POWER... WEALTH... INFLUENCE

IN MOST COUNTRIES...  the freedoms that Americans take-for-granted do not exist in other countries...  and for that, we should consider ourselves lucky...  but, therein lies the problem because most Americans make no considerations at all in this regard; instead, they are controlled and ultimately influenced by those who have POWER and/or WEALTH.

• 20% of Americans are wealthy
• 60% of Americans are average
• 20% of Americans are poor

Then we have,
1% of the whole are extremely wealthy
while
1% of the whole are extremely poor

STATISTICALLY, we have a perfect bell-shaped curve...

On the far left-hand side of our diagram are the 1% wealthy whereas the 1% poor are on the far right-hand side.  On either side of the middle "-2 to +2" we will find the 60%.  From the center to the right, wealth gradually increases and to the right, wealth gradually decreases.

From the model, we can also conclude that WEALTH, POWER, INFLUENCE gradually increase from the center out to the left and gradually decrease from the center out to the right.

ALL AMERICANS BELIEVE VERY STRONGLY...  that they have free will and make their own choices...  but, that is simply not true...  If you don't have wealth and power, then your free will and choices are influenced and controlled by those who do have wealth and power.

However...  and, this is your right, you may not believe this to be true, especially since everyone makes choices all the time some of which influence one's life and one's life direction substantially; but, those choices are still influenced indirectly by wealth and power whether you realize it or not.

You drive the speed limit when there is a cop in sight...  that is power
You pay your taxes each year...  that is power
You receive a salary from your employer...  that is wealth and power
You are regulated by medicine...  that is wealth and power
You do what your supervisor tells you to do...  that is power
You obey the lifeguard at the beach...  that is power
You are quiet in Church...  that is power
You make monthly debt payments...  that is wealth and power
You control the choices your children make...  that is power