Connect the Dots: Seeking Dream-Makers

Thanksgiving marks a time for family and friends, a time to reflect on all we have and to give thanks for all the blessings we’ve been given.

On a broader scale, this can also be a time to dream about what can be – not just for ourselves, but for our community and society as a whole. In our routine-filled lives, we’ve become so accustomed to everyday duties that we’ve forgotten the integral mental exercise of dreaming. Dreaming allows us to transcend present circumstances and see a future of possibilities. Dreaming strengthens us to face today’s challenges and to push forward toward the promise of tomorrow.

So I must ask – where are all the dreamers?

A dream fulfilled can be a wonderful thing, but many of us don’t know how to dream. We dream too small. Often our dreams involve just us. We dream about professional growth, personal accomplishments – everything’s focused on what benefits us alone. But why? What about our obligation to the greater good of society?

If your dreams focus only on you, then you’re dreaming too small.

The metro area needs dream-weavers – visionaries who put themselves at risk to find and fulfill the potential of our community. We need dreamers dissatisfied with things as they are, dreamers who refuse to be mired in the present, dreamers who understand we’re here for a greater purpose.

During this time of thanks, I ask each of you to dream anew. I challenge you to dream how our community can be better off. The metro area needs, more than ever, individuals committed to the elevation of the greater good. How will your dreams help resolve the challenges we face in addressing crime, economic disparity, drug addiction? How will your dreams help make the metro area a better place to live and work?

Unfortunately, for many of us, dreaming ends when we wake. Although life’s demands may jar you from slumber, let your dreaming continue. I hope you will do your best dreaming while awake – for all of us.

Dr. Benjamin Ola. Akande is the senior advisor to the chancellor and director of the Africa Initiative at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as former president of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He has a Ph.D. in economics and previously served as dean of the George Herbert Walker School of Business & Technology at Webster University.

Connect the Dots: The Convenience Revolution Has Arrived

St. Louis’ own globally renowned customer service expert and New York Times best-selling author Shep Hyken and I just returned from a one-week corporate and people engagement visit to Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy.

Hyken was a hit because he successfully connected with the wide demographic of the public, including young, newly minted university graduates, the business leaders from health care to government and even politicians.

His message throughout the engagement was commitment – how to deliver a customer service experience that disrupts the competition and creates fierce loyalty. That’s the focus of his recently published book The Convenience Revolution.

His message to the thousands of people he met on this, his second visit to Africa’s most populous nation, was to use customer service as a competitive advantage. So how can you disrupt your competition and maybe even an entire industry? The answer: Be convenient!

Hyken stressed that whether you’re trying to out-service a competitor or disrupt an entire industry, creating less friction and being more convenient for your customers should be your strategy. When you raise the convenience bar, you create the next level of amazing customer experience. And when you do, your customers will reward you with their money, their loyalty and their referrals. That’s the advantage of joining the “convenience revolution.”

Hyken used the example of “convenience stress.” There’s a reason convenience stores are called that – they’re convenient! Customers who shop at such stores know the selection is smaller and the prices are often higher, yet they still come in droves because of the ease of purchase.

How about the minibar in your hotel room? That’s convenient, too, but it comes at a cost. After all, the same $5 Coca-Cola in the hotel’s minifridge can be bought down the hall from a vending machine for just $1.25. Yet even with that can of Coke being four times more expensive than one available a short walk away, hotels are restocking minibars every day.

“What is the one takeaway from your new book?” I ask Hyken, and he says, “Our customers are smarter than ever. They know what good service is. They know what convenient service is. Companies like Amazon have taught them, and now they expect it from every company they do business with. It’s simple: Customers will choose to do more business with the people and companies that are easiest – as in most convenient – to do business with.”

Hyken’s new contribution to the customer service literature is perhaps his best – ever. I suggest you pick it up and engage your organization in a conversation. I’m confident the results will be evident quickly.

Dr. Benjamin Ola. Akande is the senior advisor to the chancellor and director of the Africa Initiative at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as former president of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He has a Ph.D. in economics and previously served as dean of the George Herbert Walker School of Business & Technology at Webster University.

Connect the Dots: No Promises

The mercury’s rising, birds are singing, flowers are blooming – yet it seems each hour of each day, the media smother us with details of a seemingly dysfunctional world, one marked less by hope and optimism and more by confusion, controversy and chaos.

Nationally, the first quarter of 2018 alone involved the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. Tales of sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood and in Washington, D.C., bombarded us. Almost daily turmoil and turnover embroiled the White House staff, while special counsel Robert S. Mueller III continued to investigate potential Russian tampering in U.S. elections. Add to all of that the ongoing battle over immigration regulations, a missile scare in Hawaii, budding trade wars, a roller-coaster stock market and ongoing planetary environmental concerns.

With almost daily violence on our own area streets, of course, the local front scarcely remains immune to bad news, which also has included gubernatorial constroversies, the sale of Express Scripts, Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto and St. Louis’ drop from the top 20 largest U.S. cities – all in all, enough to make one crawl back into bed and hide under the covers.

Of course, we can’t do that. Life goes on, and frustrated and depressed though we may be by current events, we must carry on.

The fact that so much has happened in so short a time supports the belief that we live in a world of no guarantees. At an event a few years ago, the late management and leadership guru Warren Bennis addressed the challenges people face in such a world. Bennis shared six points he once found on a company’s bulletin board, which speak to today’s U.S. corporate culture:

• We can’t promise you how long we’ll be in business.
• We can’t promise you that we won’t be bought by another company.
• We can’t promise that there will be room for promotion.
• We can’t promise that your job will exist until you reach retirement.
• We can’t promise that the money will be available for your pension.
• We can’t expect your undying loyalty and we are not sure we want it.

Bennis’ overarching point? In the current dynamic, corporations no longer make the kinds of promises they once did. So how do workers develop the psychological fortitude, leadership and managerial skills needed to navigate this perilous landscape?

Some may find Bennis’ perspective yet another sign of today’s societal decay. I myself find it refreshing and realistic, though. True, employees (especially millennials) may face a very complicated business environment of no promises. But recognizing no guarantees while retaining realistic expectations marks the first step in dealing with chaos and change. With change as the only constant, we can plan accordingly and remain open to new ideas and new directions. As the late, great Stephen Hawking told us, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

Adapting to change in a chaotic world that offers no guarantees will require not only intelligence but also patience, persistence and creativity – qualities on which our society was built. And I’m confident such qualities remain our path to better days ahead.

I take joy in seeing young people expressing their anti-gun views openly, loudly and nationally. I marvel at the strength of the #MeToo movement and the courage of women to speak up for their rights. I marvel at the technological achievements our country consistently delivers, perhaps best symbolized by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s red Tesla rocketing into space.

Finally, I look forward to the warmth Mother Nature and our own good natures likely have in store for us. As local weather shows, there are no promises or guarantees – but there’s always hope.

Dr. Benjamin Ola. Akande is the senior advisor to the chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis and former president of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He has a Ph.D. in economics and previously served as dean of the George Herbert Walker School of Business & Technology at Webster University.

Connect the Dots: The Joyride’s Finally Slowing

Appeared in the Ladue News by Benjamin Ola Akande, March 22, 2018

The resurgence of the stock market has much to do with confidence in it – confidence that continued to grow following Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election in November 2016.

But truth be told, the strategy that laid the groundwork for this remarkable ride actually originated with former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, a scholar of the Great Depression who unleashed a dramatic assault to address the 2008 Great Recession.

That assault began with the Fed cutting short-term interest rates to historical lows of 0.15 percent in January 2009. The essence of the strategy involved keeping short-term interest rates as close to 0 percent as possible to enable the U.S. economy to recover. And so it was for the next six years. In addition, the Fed bought long-term bonds and mortgage-backed securities over a 10-year period, peaking at a value of $4.4 billion in January 2018.

Perhaps the strategy can be nicknamed “the Bernanke” because it involved a relatively new monetary position, specifically designed to entice investors to stop buying bonds and to start purchasing equities and investing in real estate. It worked – as household wealth increased, leading to more consumer spending – and it also paved the way for the economic recovery we all are enjoying today.

The stock market awoke as the value of equities owned by the average American increased upward of 45 percent between 2011 and 2013. The net worth for households increased by $10 trillion in just 2013, so imagine the consequential impact on the S&P 500, which increased by more than 200 percent between 2009 and November 2016. But then the “Trump bump” happened, with the stock market increasing an additional 100 percent, now totaling 300 percent in the aftermath of the election.

Yes, the market has benefited from a higher level of confidence perhaps attributable to the election and Trump’s presidency. However, the price/earnings (P/E) ratio just before the election already exceeded historical averages by 49 percent. And now the Fed is expected to curtail the availability of easy money that fueled these good times. Given this sensitive balancing act, I myself suspect the Fed will get the job done without plunging the economy into another recession.

Not everyone on Wall Street agrees, though, which explains why we saw the Dow Jones industrial average fall 1,597 points in a single day. This panic-type selling originated from a fear that the Fed, under the leadership of its new chairman, would reverse the long streak of tepid inflation and that low interest rates will abruptly end.

The panic quickly subsided, though, and the market’s losses have been halved, although daily volatility remains. Rising yields mean higher borrowing costs for companies, and that may push the Fed to raise interest rates more rapidly, which would adversely affect stock prices. Some economists contend the stock market rise resembles a mountain climber scaling a steep slope – at some point, the “mountain climber” slows and maybe even descends a bit to regroup and regain strength, before continuing to climb.

Of course, as important as the stock market remains as an indicator of how the economy is doing, it alone doesn’t indicate economic prosperity and continued growth. Consider, for instance, these factors:

• The U.S. gross domestic product has been expanding at an annual pace of more than 3 percent after inflation for three straight quarters.
• Average hourly earnings rose to $26.74 in January, a 2.9 percent increase over the past year.
• The labor market participation rate has been around 63 percent for the past four months.

Given those positive trends, I would advise long-term investors not to panic. Market corrections of 10 percent or more frequently occur. This isn’t the time to undo your entire investment strategy.

Dr. Benjamin Ola. Akande is the president of BOA Consulting and former president of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He has a Ph.D. in economics and previously served as dean of the George Herbert Walker School of Business & Technology at Webster University.