Official Richart Ruddie Blog - Internet Entrepreneur

Top New York Times Stories from 2022

Here are some really great stories handpicked from the New York Times editors looking back on 2022. This is copied and pasted from the morning newsletter.

 

Good reads

Whales rarely sing more loudly than war.

In the fight for finite reader attention, big stories win: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Queen Elizabeth II’s death and rare protests in China. But this news, while important, can overshadow good stories — about whales passing their songs to each other across oceans, lyric poetry at M.M.A. fights or the fading art of embalming.

So like we have in years past, the Morning team asked editors around the Times newsroom for the articles, podcasts and videos that didn’t get the attention they deserved this year. These are their selections.

Enjoy these 25 stories:

The world’s longest-running tattoo business draws saints in Jerusalem. Try the “joy workout.” Raccoons are like high school students: The shy ones come out ahead in the long run. Motorcycles race at impossible angles on a carnival’s Wall of Death. (We loved these photos.) A case for falling back in love with the Walkman. “I believe in Jesus, guns and babies”: More than 100 Republican midterm ads used firearms to galvanize voters. A poetry festival celebrating a fading language drew stadium-size crowds in India. New York City officials released a video on how to survive a nuclear attack. It was poorly received. YouTubers are highlighting the vanishing role of Black people in horse racing. These charts show how far the Supreme Court has shifted to the right. Rock climbing is drawing tourists to Malawi. A professor spreads the hashtag #yes2meat, pushing back against climate science. The meat industry is funding his work. A police chief is pushing to take over a public library in a central California farming town.

Car redesign has changed Formula 1. The owners of the celebrity-packed Carbone in New York are trying to replicate their restaurant’s success on (almost) every continent. He set aside just 30 minutes for his first meeting with a woman who, unknown to him, was an Ethiopian princess. This year, they married.

A stainless steel fence is a status symbol for some Asian homeowners in New York. The Daily Wire is trying to turn Nashville into a Hollywood for conservatives. Hundreds of school counselors describe how the pandemic has gripped children with anxiety. Is Hollywood regressing after its #MeToo reckoning? A Black community thrived for decades despite segregation and economic hardship. Could residents rebuild after a wildfire? Listen to conversations with Afghan girls about life under Taliban rule.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote an Appalachian elegy — hillbillies not included. This is what it’s like to navigate the internet with limited vision. Soft launch your relationship on social media.

Free SEO Tool Term Suggest Replaces Uber Suggest

Uber Suggest was a tool that allowed you to check out and see what drop down terms in Google's Autocomplete populate with. Now that tool is gone (I think Neil Patel bought the domain but I'm not sure) there is a new one from Joe Hall that popped up called Term Suggest: https://termsuggest.com/ it allows SEO experts to research all of the drop down suggestions and what terms you can target.

Another great tool is Surfer.

How To Master Superior Management

The Ivy's weekly series sends over a recap of great advice for real life practice and psychological thought patterns. Below are the notes and advice from this weeks series on mastering superior management skills broken down into 5 easy to read points.

 

1. How can you elevate performance and decision-making across your organization?
   A successful strategy in today’s business landscape requires managerial behavior that is different from what is traditionally taught. It used to be that if you are the manager or leader, you make all the important choices because you’re the boss; you do strategy, and then other people execute. Yet, in reality, there is no difference between strategy and execution – both requires good choices to be made. 
   
   Nowadays, a CEO or manager in any sizable organization simply isn't going to be able to make all those important choices. There are important choices at every level. The most important thing you can do as a leader is to make clear A) the overall strategy B) what choices you will be personally responsible for, and C) “chartering” your colleagues for the choices that they will be responsible for to ensure the overall strategy is met. In short, successfully chartering a strategy requires you to make sure your people own the choices that will feed and support your strategy. 
   
   When I was working on improving Rotman’s EMBA program, a tool I relied on was to ask the people working under me to write, in their own words, what goals and actions they thought they needed to execute on to achieve our overall strategy. My number two, Beatrix, translated my strategy vision into her own thinking and style–that gave me a lot of important information. If there was no trail of breadcrumbs between what she wrote and what was in my mind, then I would need to fix that problem, but if it was close enough, then that to me was a success; she’s giving herself her own set of instructions based on what she heard from me and I agree. Procedurally, this is a very effective way to manage talent. Decision making is aligned at every level with the strategy, and people are empowered to interpret it and make decisions on their own.
    
2. Does your organization’s strategy pass the can’t/won’t test?
   When designing a strategy for your organization, you must A) decide what playing field you're going to play on as a business and B) how you’re going to be distinctive on that field–how you’re going to be the best. You have to have a very clear view of where you can win with your business model.
   
   Your strategy choice must pass what I call the “can’t/won’t test”–meaning your competitors simply can’t or won’t match what you’re doing. In other words, they could do it, but they won’t because they have a conflict of motives. For example, they won’t get into that distribution channel because it’d be channel conflict for them. Or they can’t match you because they lack critical ingredients to be successful. If you don’t have a definition of where you’re playing and how you are going to be distinctive and best in-class, then you might as well not have a strategy.
    
3. How can you ensure you reevaluate your strategy regularly and course correct?
   A great tool for strategy is an approach I call “What would have to be true?” If you have three strategic options to choose from–we could go left, we could go straight, or we could go right–you ask the question, “What would have to be true for left to be good?” You ask this of each different strategy option. What would have to be true about the industry, customers, our capabilities, our cost structure, our competitors–what would have to be true about all those things for strategy A to be a good idea? Do the analysis for each option, and you will find your optimal strategy path based on your organizational strengths.
   
   Then, take that “what would have to be true” analysis for your chosen strategy, and tack it up on the board in front of your desk. Every morning, come to work and look at the chart and ask yourself, “Are the things that we felt were true when we selected this strategy still looking true?” If the answer is more yes than no, then put it aside and get back to work. If any one of those are not true, then it’s the time to reevaluate your strategy. There’s no definite cadence to when strategy must be reevaluated. Your strategy should stay in place as long as the things that would have to be true for it to succeed continue to be true. That analysis is your canary in the coal mine. It’s the early warning system. It will tell you you’re off track while you still have a chance to modify, and before bad things start to happen. 
    
4. How can you better avoid analysis paralysis?
   Analysis paralysis is a function of not knowing why you’re analyzing what you’re analyzing. Don’t do any analysis until you know what choice you’d make based on how a given piece of analysis comes back. Analysis paralysis happens when you say to some poor junior colleague in the company, “It’s time for strategy, do a SWOT,” and they start analyzing everything under the sun–so you get buried under piles of decks. That’s when you get analysis paralysis, because you didn’t think about the logic of the choice–what would have to be true to make this a good call, and which of the things that would have to be true that may not be true? How can we analyze that one thing? You want analysis to be an inch wide and a mile deep, not a mile wide and an inch deep. Analysis paralysis is not the fault of the analyst. It’s the fault of not thinking about the logic of what you’re actually looking for that will get you stuck.
    
5. How can you future-proof your strategy by creating win-win-win scenarios?
   To be successful going forward, companies need to figure out how to make their business model a win for everyone. If corporations are not taking care of all stakeholders, their ability to operate will become more constrained. The era of having winners and losers is over. This is not to say you should neglect shareholders in the quest to get wins for communities, customers, and employees. Shareholders need to be winners too. If there are some groups that are simply not given a chance to advance, there’s going to be a brighter light shone on that. If every business makes a commitment to find the win-win-win scenario we’ll see a fall in labor challenges, a rise in wages, and a flattening of the maldistribution of income. Increasingly, corporations have to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Fraud Alert Paypal Address

Watch out for a Paypal address if somebody asks you to send funds to: [email protected] please refrain from doing so as this is a fraud account.

2017 - What to Expect

What to expect in 2017? What we learn about predictions by looking back at prognosticators is that nobody has a clue of what will really happen but the best thing we can do is roll with the changes and adapt the best we can.

Why Do We Wait 8 Days for a Bris?

A rabbi was speaking this afternoon at a Bris I was in attendance for and he educated us on some interesting "Bris" facts in case you care to know. The first being that a Bris is supposed to be done during the day and not at night. The reason for that is we want to do it in daylight so when the snipping happens nothing goes wrong and you can see during the day as opposed to when the sun goes down and you can't see.

Bris's are supposed to take place 8 days after the boy is born. There have been arguments for over 2,500 years on why we wait 8 days but the most plausible one is that the baby should experience a full week on his own and at least one Shabbat before being named. The less sound fairy tale explanation was that the "God" created earth over a 7 day period and on the 8th day is when we would take over with our hands. Obviously the earth wasn't made in 8 days and so you can imagine how arguments over the 8 days for the bris come about.

None the less thats the education I received today and here I am jotting it down so I don't forget it.

How Much are you learning from those around you?

It's not just about your mentors but ask yourself how much am I learning from the people around me? The people you surround yourself that inspire you to do the best that you can do and those who you can learn from will make such a difference.

Learn from your core group of friends and those who you surround yourself with.

 

This is why cultures are built in San Francisco of like minded entrepreneurs and start ups, those interested in finance and wall street in Lower Manhattan, and those who you surround yourself if they don't help you to better yourself then you should consider change.

 

Restaurant Tonight - It's Restaurant Roulette With Uber

Thank you for downloading Restaurant Tonight. Our application gives you the opportunity to play Restaurant Roulette to find a restaurant to eat at tonight and you get to ride there with the well known Uber application. Please provide your feedback, questions, or comments below and we will have a support representative reach out to you right away.

 

For those of you who have downloaded the application and given us great feedback I wanted to extend a special thank you. This is a really cool concept that takes the choice out of picking a place to eat dinner at tonight.

Follow the rest of my posts and entrepreneurial adventures here @ my Richart Ruddie Typepad Blog.