• Patience you must have, my young padawan
• Brands are doing business as usual, but is that wise?
• Forecasts are out, dashboards are in

Patience you must have, my young padawan

My dad passed away when I was eight. After that, my childhood turned into a scramble and I grew up in a world where nothing was ever really where it should've been.

Kind of like a game of chess where the board was made of flowing water and the pieces made of smoke that evaporated as soon as you tried to move them.

Not surprisingly, I think a good mentor is worth their weight in gold.

Someone who can do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

If you're lucky, you'll find one in your parents or a friend. If you hit the jackpot, you'll find a professional mentor that will guide you, help you, take you under their wing and nurture your career quest.

I spent the bigger part of my youth searching for a father-figure. And I was lucky enough to find several people who taught me a great deal about life as well as business.

I know from experience that a good mentor can set you on a strong path to success. And that a bad one will do the opposite. Research agrees.

I'm saying this because most corporate mentorship programs are broken.

It's bad enough that mentors are routinely chosen based on their professional skills alone.

Even worse: they're left without any formal support or training. And this is to the detriment of the mentor as well as the mentee.

These researchers have put together some invaluable advice and a case study on improving the quality of corporate mentorship programs:

1. Train your mentors in functional skills. Listening, affirmation, feedback, networking, role-modelling and collegiality are some of the skills on this list.
2. Select new mentors who naturally demonstrate foundational abilities. Personal integrity, empathy, self-awareness, good judgement and an inclination towards always pursuing the mentee's best interest.

And don't wait for your company to start a formal program if you don't have one. Use this research to become a better mentor yourself.

Being a mentor is your chance to be a Yoda to someone else's Luke Skywalker.

Brands are doing business as usual, but is that wise?

Twice this year, Twitter asked a thousand users in the UK what tone of voice they expected from brands.

The results were insightful.

In the first round of responses from March, people were feeling lost and expected brands to use an informative tone and provide accurate information.

The results from June show that people want brands to be more caring and supportive.

For so many people the world has been turned upside down.

Twitter also identified a series of behaviours through analysing billions of tweets. These included:

• increased willingness to talk about mental health
• supporting communities
• embracing a slower pace of life

• How can you use a more empathic, emotionally intelligent and supportive tone of voice?
• In what ways you can support your community and where can you make the most impact?
• How are you going to balance between caring and supportive brand comms without compromising tactical campaigns?

Forecasts are out, dashboards are in

I always set extra time aside for reading content from McKinsey.

Not just because it's always great content, but because it's my business school crush. And it's a great way for me to stick my head from under the bushes and get a better lay of the land.

Last week they published three separate reports on retail, CPG and consumer sectors.

Each includes invaluable insights on the current state of the three sectors.

But the message in all three reports is the same.

Recovering from 2020 and navigating a path forward means that executives will have to manage several priorities simultaneously:

• tracking changing consumer preferences
• identifying micro pockets of growth to prioritise for future plans
• adjusting commercial strategies
• and becoming more agile to pursue opportunities.

The climate that's been completely reshaped, until Q2 2021 at least.

And forecasts alone can be severely underserving you.

In the months to come, agility and ingenuity are going to be the saving grace of SMBs.

Dashboards can give you a much-needed handle on the metrics and insights that describe what’s really happening on the ground.

Dashboards can help you reduce waste, manage risk and zero in on driving initiatives that deliver growth.

As the world is recovering from the shock and the 'new normal' emerges, this advice for business leaders from McKinsey’s senior partners will tell you how to gear up and get ready for recovery.

Here's to you having a great week!