NYTimes: “BYD’s sales, over 80 percent of them in China, have grown by about a million cars in each of the past two years. The last automaker to accomplish that in even one year in the American market was General Motors — and that was in 1946, after G.M. had suspended passenger car sales during the four preceding years because of World War II. “BYD’s growth is unlike anything the industry has seen in many decades,” said Matt Anderson, curator of transportation at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Based in Shenzhen, the hub of China’s electronics industry, BYD has shown how Chinese carmakers can tap the country’s dominance of electrical products. No company has benefited as much from China’s embrace of battery-electric cars and plug-in gasoline-electric cars. These vehicles together make up 40 percent of China’s car market, the world’s largest, and are expected to be more than half next year.”
Rahm Emanuel: “Before I arrived in Tokyo as ambassador two years ago, a number of foreign policy experts cautioned me that Japan moves slowly. They urged me to find a virtue in patience when dealing with the government — which I knew would be tricky for someone like me who has zero patience. I needn’t have worried. Two years later, one thing is clear: The experts didn’t know much about the new Japan. No one predicted that this would be an era of Japanese transformation, a time when the Japanese surprised nearly everyone with what they can and will do.”
McKinsey: “For decades we’ve seen companies’ fortunes rise and fall based on their ability to react to, and recover quickly from, geopolitical shocks, technological advances, economic uncertainty, competitors’ bold moves, and other disruptions. Amid this volatility, which these days is accelerating rather than abating, many have a hard time staying the course. But some continue to survive and thrive despite the challenges. Why do these companies manage to succeed, year after year—operationally, financially, and otherwise—while others don’t? Twenty-plus years of proprietary McKinsey research tells us that one of the main reasons is organizational health. Organizational health refers to how effectively leaders “run the place”—that is, how they make decisions, allocate resources, operate day to day, and lead their teams with the goal of delivering high performance, both near term and over time. Organizational health comprises three elements: how well the entire organization rallies around a common vision and strategy, how well the organization executes its strategy, and how well the organization innovates and renews itself over time.”
