The opportunities for people to worry about hidden meaning have gone up exponentially, because many of us no longer see our managers every day, and because we are all living in a time of great uncertainty. Because of this, leaders need to make sure that their communications are as free of ambiguity as possible, so that all employees who are working remotely can focus on the work itself, rather than worrying about what the boss is thinking.
Uber And Lyft Could Shut Down In California This Week. It May Not Help Their Cause
Uber and Lyft have said they may suspend their operations in California as soon as this week while simultaneously pushing for a referendum in November to exempt them from the law, known as AB-5.
The threats from the companies to halt their businesses came after a California court ordered them to reclassify their drivers as employees instead of independent contractors in 10 days.
Both companies are grappling with sharp revenue declines from the pandemic and have histories of steep losses. Now they risk losing access to a state whose economy is larger than most countries - or else overhauling their business models.
Read the article at CNN Business.
Interest In Electric Pickups Is Growing, With Rivian’s R1T At The Top
According to a July survey of Tweets, interest in electric pickups is growing, and the early leaders — very early, since none of the vehicles in question exists yet — are Rivian’s R1T and the Tesla Cybertruck.
The F-150, of course, has been the bestselling vehicle in the U.S. for decades. An electric version should be available in 2022. The Chevy Silverado, America’s No. 2 seller with an EV model promised by 2025, also failed to make the list.
“We’ll see a flurry of EV pickup trucks rolled out over the next few years,” Cox Automotive senior analyst Michelle Krebs said. “We have no indication of who will buy them. Will traditional pickup buyers suddenly convert to EVs? Or will these EV pickups attract buyers who normally wouldn’t consider a truck? We don’t know yet.”
Read the article at Detroit Free Press.
Kia Blind Spot Monitoring And Crash Avoidance Wins 2020 Autoblog Technology Of The Year Award
Autoblog's editorial staff judged the combination of blind spot monitoring and active blind spot crash avoidance on the 2020 Kia Telluride as the best in the industry.
Kia’s system starts with a traditional blind spot warning light in the side mirror. When equipped with the available head-up display, there’s a second warning light beamed onto the windshield in your line of sight adjacent to other information. This lets you know if there’s a car in your blind spot without even turning around to look.
If all this fails, the blind spot collision avoidance system will attempt to prevent a crash for you. When an approaching vehicle is detected next to or too close behind your vehicle, the system can apply the brakes to the opposite side of the car, dragging it back over into your lane before a collision occurs. It notifies the driver in the dash when this activates.
Read the article at Autoblog.
Don’t Stop: Move Forward with a Customer Driven Mindset
By Laura Jozwiak, Senior Vice President of Sales & Client Relations, Wheels, Inc.
Well, here we are.
It’s five months into the COVID-19 pandemic. And for many of us, we’re working from home and learning new technologies—and using fun backgrounds—to improve our virtual meetings skills. We’re all balancing supporting our customers while adjusting to new routines, such as preparing to balance more remote learning for our kids.
During any period of crisis and stress, our programmed response is flight or fight. I also think of it as “freeze in place” or “move forward.” For this conversation, I would like to talk about moving forward, while keeping the customer driven mindset you’ve cultivated at the forefront.
Let’s go back in time to set the stage a bit.
Ambiguous Times Are No Time For Ambiguous Leadership
The COVID-19 crisis has prompted countless companies to shut their office doors and rethink whether staff need to be in those offices as much as before the pandemic, or even at all.
If remote working is going to work, leaders have to communicate more and be extra vigilant about removing as much ambiguity as they can from their exchanges with staff, particularly in email, in which the recipients don’t have the benefit of hearing the sender’s tone.
Read the article at strategy+business.
