Blaze Pizza, Farmer Boys, Mike's Red Tacos, HigherMe Experts Discuss Recruitment, Retention
At the Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit in San Diego, a panel of franchise leaders from Blaze Pizza, Farmer Boys, Mike’s Red Tacos, and Edible Brands discussed how people, not technology, drive profitability. They emphasized rapid candidate communication—responding within 24 hours—to win talent, and highlighted that retention hinges on competitive pay, strong onboarding, and a lived‑out culture. The speakers also stressed the importance of selecting franchisees and multi‑unit managers who align with brand values and can sustain long‑term growth. Overall, the session offered concrete tactics for building resilient, high‑performing restaurant teams.
AI Will Boost Productivity. But First It Will Drag the Economy Down.
Artificial intelligence promises double‑digit margin gains for asset managers, but firms are currently experiencing a short‑term productivity decline as they integrate AI alongside legacy processes. Early adopters, such as a $20 billion investment fund, saw memo‑writing time balloon from 10 to...
From Fairness to Inclusion: 3 Habits for Managing Diverse Teams
The Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) urges Singapore managers to translate the Workplace Fairness Act and fair‑employment guidelines into daily habits that promote inclusion. It outlines three practical habits—getting to know individuals beyond assumptions, seeking diverse...
Crealis Reshapes Operations
Closures producer Crealis Group has unified its eight brands—Enoplastic, Sparflex, Le Muselet Valentin, Rivercap, Maverick, Pe.Di, Supercap and Corchomex—under a single group name, allowing customers to place orders through one local contact. The commercial organization has been restructured under chief...
DSV Cuts in Texas as Talk Mounts of Further Restructuring Ahead
DSV Contract Logistics filed a WARN Act notice indicating it will lay off 391 employees at its Wilmer, Texas distribution center. The cuts follow the loss of a major customer contract, prompting a complete cessation of operations at the site....
Burger King’s 60,000-Worker Hiring Push Reflects the Reality of Running a Tech-Enabled Restaurant at Scale
Burger King announced a hiring drive for up to 60,000 employees across its roughly 6,500 U.S. restaurants. The push follows a multi‑year modernization effort that introduced redesigned layouts, a unified technology stack, and AI‑enabled headsets for staff. Digital ordering channels...
The Rise of Supermanagers: 7 Negative Impacts and 5 Fixes
The flattening of corporate hierarchies has produced a surge of “supermanagers,” front‑line leaders now overseeing an average of 12.1 employees in 2025, up from 10.9 in 2024, with some managing 20 or more. Gallup and Owl Labs data show that...
How HR Can Create a Successful Change Management Strategy
Chief HR officers must lead change initiatives by crafting a step‑by‑step strategy that minimizes disruption. The process starts with articulating the change’s purpose, then appointing a senior sponsor, establishing a robust communication plan, and preparing for employee resistance. By coordinating...
WPP Taps Estée Lauder’s Anne-Isabelle Choueiri as Chief Transformation Officer
Advertising giant WPP has hired Anne‑Isabelle Choueiri, formerly SVP of transformation at Estée Lauder, as its chief transformation officer. Reporting to CEO Cindy Rose, she will lead the execution of the three‑year “Elevate28” turnaround plan aimed at returning the company...
Automating Financial Operations for Faster, Safer Financial Reporting
South African firms are adopting MoData’s integrated Record‑to‑Report suite—Accurate, Adra and Cadency—to automate reconciliation and accelerate the financial close. The automation cuts manual reconciliations by up to 90% and reduces month‑end close time from 10‑11 days to 5‑7 days. The...
Tyton Partners Elevates Five Leaders to Drive Strategic Impact and Operational Scale
Tyton Partners announced the promotion of five senior leaders, elevating Catherine Shaw and Shlomy Kattan to Associate Partner roles, Natasha Janson to Vice President of Market Research, and Christian Lehr and Mats Penberthy to Managing Directors. The moves expand the...
New Central Management for Selfridges, KaDeWe and Co
Central Group, the Thai conglomerate behind Selfridges, de Bijenkorf and KaDeWe, is overhauling its European leadership. The company has created a shared executive team for the region, appointing Pierluigi Cocchini as CEO of Europe. The new structure is designed to...
The First Berserker: Khazan Studio Neople Announces Restructure of Dev Teams
Neople, a Nexon subsidiary, announced a reorganization of its development teams as The First Berserker: Khazan moves into its final phase. The company emphasized that the shift is a strategic reallocation of talent, not a layoff, and will support live‑service...
The Operations Leader's Guide to Navigating Red Sea Disruption
The Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes have forced vessels to detour around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10‑14 days to transit times and driving up freight rates and surcharges. Capacity has tightened, blank sailings have risen, and supply‑chain...
![[Guest Post] Chris Rowe: Co-Dev Without the Culture Clash](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://mcvuk.com/wp-content/uploads/Chris-Rowe-portrait-Copy.png)
[Guest Post] Chris Rowe: Co-Dev Without the Culture Clash
Chris Rowe argues that AAA studios can avoid costly culture clashes by keeping a small, high‑performing core team and scaling through phased co‑development rather than bulk hiring. He recommends building a solid prototype over 6‑12 months, then adding external specialists...
How GenAI Fixed Withholding Tax at Scale, Improved Processes
A global agribusiness handling withholding tax certificates across Latin America replaced a manual, spreadsheet‑driven process with a cloud‑based automation platform powered by generative AI. The new stack ingests emails, extracts data from varied Spanish PDFs, validates against the on‑prem ERP,...
The Contact Center Is Dead: Long Live the Operations Layer
The traditional contact‑center model built around ticket handling is being replaced by an operations layer that prioritizes rapid problem resolution. Vendors like Salesforce are leveraging their customer‑data ownership to sell end‑to‑end AI‑driven workflows, while specialist providers argue their front‑line expertise...
What Is Cognitive Automation? 5 Examples to Transform Your Business
Cognitive automation augments traditional workflow tools with AI capabilities such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, allowing systems to interpret unstructured data and make decisions. Unlike rule‑based robotic process automation (RPA), it learns patterns and adapts over...
How to Scale Production With the Right Adjustments at the Right Times
Scaling volume machining requires timing adjustments to the data the machine provides. The first part should be used only to validate the setup, correcting gross errors and chatter while ignoring subtle deviations. Between parts two and ten, a small population...
U.S. Companies Are Wasting Millions of Dollars Each Year Paying Middle Managers to Do Low-Value Work, New Research Shows
SafetyCulture’s fifth Feedback from the Field report finds U.S. frontline middle managers lose an average of 33 days per year to low‑value tasks such as endless meetings and duplicate data entry. The wasted time translates to roughly $6,400 per manager,...
Paving the Road for AI Agents: Interview with Factory CEO Matan Grinberg
Factory CEO Matan Grinberg outlines his company’s strategy to commercialize autonomous AI agents that can execute complex tasks across enterprise workflows. He highlights recent product releases that integrate large‑language models with real‑time data APIs, enabling agents to retrieve, analyze, and...
Introducing Slack CRM: Conversational Customer Management for Small Businesses
Slack announced Slack CRM, a native Salesforce‑powered customer‑management tool built directly into the Slack interface. The solution lets small teams capture leads, update deals, and log support interactions through conversational commands to Slackbot, eliminating the need for separate CRM tabs...
What Is Scrum? Roles, Values, and How It Works
Scrum remains the dominant Agile framework, with 63% of Agile teams naming it their primary method, according to the 17th State of Agile Report. The framework structures work into short, time‑boxed sprints of two to four weeks, guided by three...
Q&A: How Lebanon’s Aviation Chief Keeps Beirut Airport Open Amid Iran War Chaos
Amid the US‑Israeli war on Iran, Beirut’s Rafic Hariri Airport remains operational despite daily Israeli strikes near the city. Captain Mohammed Aziz, head of Lebanon’s Civil Aviation Authority, says Middle East Airlines (MEA) is the sole carrier still flying, operating...
City KPI Benchmarks: How Your Government Compares | ClearPoint Strategy Blog
ClearPoint Strategy analyzed strategic plans from 225 U.S. local governments, revealing that the average city tracks roughly 1,900 elements—154 objectives, 820 KPIs, 416 initiatives, and 390 milestones. Initiative completion is low, with a 17.2% finish rate and 61.3% of cities...
SALTO WECOSYSTEM Launches Salto Americas, Taps Bill Wood to Lead
Salto WECOSYSTEM has reorganized its Western Hemisphere operations into a single Salto Americas region, consolidating the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America under one framework. Bill Wood, who has led Salto North America since 2016, was appointed...
Rising Costs Are Forcing a Structural Reset in How Hotels Operate
Rising labor, energy and tax pressures are forcing hotels worldwide to overhaul staffing, service and pricing models. In the U.S., operators cut housekeeping frequency and adopt mobile check‑in; European hotels face similar labor‑driven efficiency moves. Rate hikes meet traveler resistance...
Third-Generation Leader Guides Volvo Truck, Plant Evolution
Volvo Trucks North America poured $400 million into a comprehensive overhaul of its New River Valley plant in Dublin, Va., ahead of the launch of the latest VNL long‑haul and VNR regional‑haul models. Serial production of the revamped VNR began in...
When the Storm Hits: What Hurricane Katrina Still Teaches Federal Leaders About Continuity of Operations
Federal leaders still draw critical continuity lessons from Hurricane Katrina, where a New Orleans courthouse manager relied on preparation, relationships, and resourcefulness amid collapsed infrastructure. The article distills four decisive factors—redundant communications, supply‑chain resilience, rapid reconstitution at alternate sites, and technology readiness—backed...
People-Led, Tech-Powered: Walmart’s AI Job Shift
Walmart, employing over 2.1 million associates, is rolling out a "people‑led, tech‑powered" AI strategy that embeds generative‑AI tools across scheduling, inventory and customer service. The retailer frames AI as an augmentation layer that frees staff for higher‑value tasks rather than a...
ClearPoint vs Envisio: Best for Local Gov? | ClearPoint Strategy Blog
ClearPoint Strategy and Envisio are the two leading SaaS platforms for local‑government strategic planning. Envisio, priced around $20,000 a year, offers a clean UI and quick public dashboards ideal for small towns with a single plan. ClearPoint serves a broader...
OpenClaw Is Dead — Long Live OpenClaw
Anthropic notified the author that OpenClaw, a Claude‑based personal assistant, would become a metered service, pushing daily costs to $25‑$50. To avoid the expense, the author shifted to OpenRouter, routing calls to the cheaper Kimi 2.5 model, while still retaining Claude...
OTA Dependence Is a Margin Structure—Not a Channel Choice
Hotel operators often treat OTA reliance as a distribution problem, but the article argues it is fundamentally a margin structure. Because OTA commissions erode profitability, tactical fixes like rate incentives or paid media only provide short‑term relief. Discounting to win...
Starbucks, Target and Dave & Buster’s Are Investing in Employees to Try to Boost Customer Experience
Major retailers Starbucks, Target and entertainment chain Dave & Buster’s are turning to employee‑centric investments to lift customer experience. Starbucks introduced quarterly bonuses tied to satisfaction scores, while Target pledged $1 billion for in‑store upgrades and expanded associate benefits such as...
Manager Engagement Is Slipping — and Affecting AI Use, Gallup Finds
Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report shows global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, with manager engagement dropping from 31% to 22% between 2022 and 2025. The decline is linked to slower AI adoption, as employees who...
GoPro Is Cutting Nearly a Quarter of Its Workforce (and AI Isn’t the Reason)
GoPro announced it will lay off 145 of its 631 employees, roughly a 23% reduction, in a third restructuring wave over two years. The cuts, costing up to $15 million in severance, stem from a 37% year‑over‑year revenue decline rather...
How Automation Is Helping Grocers Improve Fresh Food Logistics
Grocers are deploying integrated automation that combines storage, handling, sequencing, and picking into a continuous flow, dramatically speeding fresh‑food distribution. The systems enforce FIFO and FEFO rules, cutting spoilage while boosting storage density up to 50 percent to accommodate expanding...
'The System's Broken': Minn. EMS Faces Staffing Gaps as Calls Surge
Hennepin County’s EMS is operating below minimum staffing levels even as 911 call volume climbs 26% to nearly 100,000 annually. Union records show shifts with fewer than nine paramedics on duty when over two dozen are required, and a February...
How Food Manufacturers Are Rethinking Product Assortments
Food manufacturers are trimming product assortments, cutting low‑velocity SKUs to focus on high‑margin items that drive growth. Large corporations are accelerating SKU reductions, while smaller firms remain cautious due to uncertainty about opportunity costs. Executives highlighted the distinction between "good"...
Your Launches Are Late Because Your Cadence Is Wrong
Product launches often slip because teams lack a disciplined cadence that surfaces problems early. The article outlines seven concrete strategies—monthly milestone commits, quarterly design‑build‑buffer gates, biweekly risk reviews, quarterly skip‑level syncs, a hard‑coded six‑week launch buffer, annual planning with market...
Learning Logs: Five Practical Tips
Learning logs are emerging as essential tools for capturing team insights, especially in multi‑year, multi‑stakeholder projects. NPC notes many logs devolve into unwieldy spreadsheets, but five practical tips can make them usable. Clarifying purpose, assigning ownership, reducing entry friction, documenting...
The Pros and Cons of Stretch Goals
Stretch goals—exceptionally ambitious targets set beyond normal expectations—are gaining traction among CEOs seeking rapid growth. Proponents argue they spark innovation, elevate performance, and can lift revenue by pushing teams beyond incremental thinking. Critics warn that overly aggressive goals may fuel...
Psychological Safety as a Six Sigma Metric: Why Fear Is the Ultimate Defect
The article argues that fear has become the most critical defect in modern organizations, eclipsing traditional Six Sigma issues like late deliveries or code bugs. It proposes treating psychological safety as a Core Critical-to-Quality metric, integrating it into every DMAIC...
Where AI Agents Fit in Nonprofit Workflows (And Where They Don’t)
Nonprofit leaders face chronic budget limits and staff burnout, prompting interest in AI agents that can automate routine tasks without adding headcount. Defined as autonomous software that perceives, reasons, and acts, these agents go beyond chatbots by executing multi‑step workflows...
What’s Stopping the 4-Day Workweek?
The authors of *Do More in Four* argue that a four‑day workweek can boost employee wellbeing while preserving, or even enhancing, productivity, especially as AI tools improve efficiency. OpenAI’s recent policy paper recommends piloting a four‑day week as an “efficiency...
What the Best Private Equity-Backed CEOs Do Differently
Private‑equity‑backed CEOs operate under compressed timelines, yet more than half fail to meet value‑creation targets. A two‑year study of 75 interviews uncovered 53 “super‑performer” CEOs who delivered an average 6.2× multiple on invested capital—about double the industry norm. These leaders...
DFIR Backlogs, Burnout And Cognitive Fatigue: The Silent Operational Risk
Digital forensic units are confronting expanding case backlogs that extend beyond operational delays, imposing a hidden psychological burden on investigators. The sustained cognitive demand and exposure to traumatic material generate decision fatigue, increasing the risk of errors and lowering evidence...
Email Is the Productivity Bottleneck Nobody Talks About
Professionals spend an average of 28% of their workweek handling email, often drafting messages that take five to ten minutes each. General‑purpose AI like ChatGPT requires extensive prompting and editing, limiting its time‑saving potential. Dedicated AI email tools such as...
Stopping Power: The Leadership Skill that Separates Modern IT Leaders
Modern IT leaders are judged on their ability to halt misaligned projects, a skill dubbed “stopping power.” Research shows two‑thirds of top‑performing firms involve tech chiefs in strategy and 80% say their duties have broadened, with many now managing a...
Why the Federal Government Needs to Stop Obsessing over Process
Federal managers are increasingly judged on process compliance, but this focus is creating an administrative paradox that hampers program effectiveness. The GAO reports that Americans forgo over $140 billion in benefits each year because of burdensome paperwork, highlighting how procedural rigor...