African Elephant in the Room

Did Africa Escape Covid?

Wednesday, March 23, 2022 - The Day's Most Fascinating News from Dave Pell

Current Edition About Wednesday, March 23, 2022 Share Edition      1 AFRICAN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM In the movie Blood Diamond, Leonard DiCaprio explains that things can often work differently in Africa, using the acronym, T.I.A. This is Africa. Let's tweak that slightly for today's lead: This is Ambiguous. When the pandemic first hit, we were overwhelmed with stories of how bad things would get in Africa. "Into Year Three of the pandemic, new research shows there is no longer any question of whether Covid has spread widely in Africa. It has." But the death numbers have been remarkably low. Is it because of the relatively young population? Is it because of the climate or time spent outdoors? Is it because the deaths just aren't being reported? Whatever it is, solving the mystery could go a long way towards helping us solve the mysteries of Covid itself. NYT (Gift Article): Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa's Low Death Rates. + NextDraft Live: I'll be in discussion with DJ Patil (America's first Chief Data Scientist) at the Commonwealth Club in SF on April 18. If you're local, join us in person. If not, join us online. Tickets here. Share with      2 MAD PROPS "I don't think Americans fully understand what's been fed to Russians about the U.S. and the West for literally the past decade. It's been an information war — a totally one-sided information war — and it has been waged so fully and artfully that it's made a lot of what's happening now preemptively possible." WaPo: Americans may be greatly underestimating the impact of 10 years of Putin's propaganda. That propaganda is all about playing the victim card via phony claims of the West's desire to destroy the Russian way of life. (Sound familiar? It's all connected.) + Evan Neumann: US Capitol riot suspect gets asylum in Belarus. "The 48-year-old first settled in Ukraine, before reaching Belarus where he asked for asylum - claiming he faced 'political persecution' in the US." (See above parenthetical.) + "Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport." (See above parenthetical.) + "Putin faces a dangerous question with destabilizing consequences for the West and the world beyond: How does he want to lose this war? What more of Russia's treasury, economy, and people—and, not least of all, his own political power—is he willing to risk to either grind down Ukraine or preserve his hold on the country he's led for nearly a quarter-century? Meanwhile, half a world away, Biden faces his own, fraught choice—how to punish and defeat Russia without risking a war he's clearly chosen not to fight and hold the line on American aid in the face of popular and political pressure to escalate." Garrett Graff in Wired: Putin, Biden Face a Dangerous Choice: How Does Russia Want to Lose? + So far Putin has answered the question of how he plans to lose: In the worst way possible. That's true for his own soldiers. AP: 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops dead in Ukraine. And, of course, it's even more true in Ukraine. NYT: Russia's Attacks on Civilian Targets Have Obliterated Everyday Life in Ukraine. + U.S. image soars across NATO countries. (I can't imagine what changed their minds...) + Biden is on the way to Europe for a NATO summit, Ukraine has retaken some territory from Russian troops, NATO is sending more troops to eastern Europe. Here's the latest from BBC. + I'll be donating $20K to three worthy organizations fighting for truth and safety in Ukraine and Russia later this week. I'll report back with the details. In the meantime, wear the new NextDraft colors proudly and be a part of the effort. Share with      3 COMPUTER SCREENING "Artificial intelligence algorithms are everywhere in healthcare. They sort through patients' data to predict who will develop medical conditions like heart disease or diabetes, they help doctors figure out which people in an emergency room are the sickest, and they screen medical images to find evidence of diseases. But even as AI algorithms become more important to medicine, they're often invisible to people receiving care." The Verge: Here's How an Algorithm Guides a Medical Decision. + NYT: Brain Implant Allows Fully Paralyzed Patient to Communicate. Share with      4 RENTAL HEALTH From WaPo (Gift Article): Rent-a-stranger: This Japanese man makes a living showing up and doing nothing. "Their near-silent lunch lasted about 45 minutes. Shirai ordered her favorite dish and intermittently asked questions. She shared memories of her marriage and showed him a photo from the wedding. He nodded and gave curt answers, sometimes a dry laugh. He never initiated conversation." (This is exactly how my wife would describe a lunch with me.) + Vice: I Get Paid to Go on Fake Dates With People to Prepare Them for Real Ones. Share with      5 EXTRA, EXTRA Madeleine Albright: "As secretary of state, she played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999. 'My mindset is Munich,' she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis." Madeleine Albright, the first female US secretary of state, dies at 84. Albright's most recent book could not be more on point. Fascism: A Warning. + Graham Crackers: This week has again proven that SCOTUS confirmations should be viewed as hearings to determine who should still be allowed to remain a senator. The low point so far (maybe, that's a bold statement) was Racist Baby Ted Cruz asking Jackson if she thinks babies are racist. Today, Lindsay Graham is trying to beat Cruz's asinine-ism by harassing Jackson about the Kavanaugh hearings. Why? Because he already badgered her about religion yesterday. (The absence of a lightning bolt striking Lindsey Graham is all the evidence you need that there's no god.) Here's the latest. + Ash Tray: "While the Australian media has already described this as a 'shock announcement,' it is anything but. Even as Barty was dominating the Australian Open in January, rumors whipped through the players' lounge that she might gather the trophy and mic-drop retire. Here was a player who had already previously retired as a teenager, mostly for the simple reason that tennis no longer held joy for her." SI: Ash Barty's Abrupt Retirement Confirms Her Evident Authenticity. (She's loaded, she's already a legend in Australia, and rumor has it, she's pretty good at golf. Also, she's won exactly three majors, making it an Ash Tray!) + Yachtzee! Bored Ape Yacht Club creator raises $450 million to build an NFT metaverse. (This month we've learned that $450 million isn't much for a yacht.) + Okta Gone?: "A hacking group that previously took responsibility for attacks on Nvidia and Microsoft claimed Monday that it had compromised Okta, which provides 'single sign-on' identity services to thousands of companies." + Shit Doesn't Just Happen: "Russia and neighboring Belarus are among the world's top suppliers of crop nutrients, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has only added to the global run-up caused by supply snags and output woes." Bloomberg: Coffee Farmers Face ‘Mega Emergency' as Fertilizer Costs Soar. (I always figured coffee consumption and fertilizer creation were a circular market.) Share with      6 BOTTOM OF THE NEWS "Known as jimmies, jazzies, freckles, nonpareils, or hundreds and thousands, among other names, these specks of corn syrup and coloring are a convenient solution for bakers looking for fuss-free decoration. Planted on frosting, bloomed in batter, crusted atop cookies, or scattered on toast, the nutritionless, mostly flavorless, tiny doodads that mimic absolutely nothing found in nature provide outsize comfort with egalitarian underpinnings. And they aren't going away anytime soon." We've Underestimated Sprinkles. + Machu Picchu: Inca site 'has gone by wrong name for over 100 years.' Share with      Thanks, Dave Pell Managing Editor, Internet Subscribe Store Current Share Archives NextDraft 600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 You are receiving this because you signed up for Dave Pell's Next Draft newsletter. If you'd like to stop receiving these emails, simply unsubscribe. No hard feelings. 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Share this email Share this email on LinkedIn   Share this email on Twitter   Share this email on Facebook   ON LEADERSHIP How new CEOs get a handle on the job Carolyn Dewar We interviewed 67 CEOs for our new book, CEO Excellence (which I wrote with Scott Keller and Vikram Malhotra), and many of them said they were surprised at how ill prepared they felt when they stepped into those shoes. And these are the cream of the cream! We looked at 20 years of data on more than 2,400 public-company CEOs to find the very top performers. These top execs went in thinking they knew what to do, but when we asked them to look back, almost all of them said that they were surprised by what the job actually was and what it took to do it well. By the time you become a CEO, you've already had really big jobs—you have set strategies, figured out teams, managed organizations, overseen really big P&Ls, directed a region or product. But there is just nothing like being a CEO. Bill George of Medtronic put it really well: "You think you're ready, but you've really only been a COO before. Until you're a CEO, you don't see all the pieces." One part of the surprise is that you have so much more to do that needs doing all the time. There are so many elements to the job, both internally and externally, and you must be on top of all of them all of the time. The breadth and the complexity of the role are unique, you're doing it under more scrutiny than ever, and your decisions have more ripple effects than ever. And it can be lonely. Many people have written that this happens because you are elevated and have no "team" of peers. But Microsoft's Satya Nadella told us that it's more fundamental than that. He described it as a problem of information asymmetry. No one else sees everything that you see—not your organization or your board. You see the strategy, the organization, the internal and external stakeholders—all of that—and the intersections between them. You are the single point of integration for all of it. That's what can be really lonely. All the external stuff is so new and challenging. For example, once upon a time CEOs might have come into the job thinking that they just had to manage the relationship with the board, keep it at arm's length, and let the members do their thing. But these excellent CEOs have discovered that this isn't true at all. They learn how much the board can really help the business. Getting that out of a board takes a lot of time: you want to help the board evolve so that it has the right talent to advise a changing business; you have to give the directors the information they need to see the full context; you have to be radically transparent with them. That takes time. Then there are the new external issues that were never part of the standard CEO remit: climate events, employees' vaccination status, or whether to enter or leave certain countries because of geopolitical concerns. Absolutely nothing that you've done prepares you for these kinds of exogenous emergencies, which seem to be happening more and more. And CEOs are expected to take a stand and have a point of view. What is the work that no one else is equipped to do? What are the things that only you can do? In other words, CEOs don't have time to do the many things they've never done before, which they now have to do constantly. It's become a superhuman job, and it isn't going to get any easier. That's why the book tries to focus on six key mindsets the best CEOs develop. These mindsets seem critical to helping new CEOS succeed despite all this complexity.  I want to note one crucial mindset: the best CEOs come to understand that they should concentrate on the things that only they can do. What is the work that no one else is equipped to do? What are the things that only you, as the ultimate point of integration, can do? Those need to be the focus of your time. Everything else must be pushed out to others because there just aren't enough hours in the day.  I mention that one because it's an example of why I love to study and work with CEOs. Their experiences can inform what all businesspeople do—even people who never aspire to be a CEO, right? Any leader, at any position, wants to think boldly, reframe what could be possible, allocate important resources to the efforts he or she thinks are most important. Getting your team right, working with your stakeholders: these are all just good things for anyone to do. And this idea of focusing on what only you can do? That seems to resonate for so many people I talk to. The lessons of CEOs apply widely.  ABOUT THE AUTHOR Carolyn Dewar is a senior partner in McKinsey's Bay Area office. MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR The CEO moment: Leadership for a new era Challenged by the global pandemic, CEOs have made four shifts in their leadership that hold great promise for both companies and society. More → A master class from the world's best CEOs What if the world's highest-performing CEOs held a master class to share the skills and practices that have driven their success over the years? More → IN TWO WEEKS Lareina Yee on the metaverse Is the metaverse a passing fancy or a serious opportunity? Companies are asking the question. Follow our thinking This email contains information about McKinsey’s research, insights, services, or events. By opening our emails or clicking on links, you agree to our use of cookies and web tracking technology. For more information on how we use and protect your information, please review our privacy policy. You received this email because you subscribed to our McKinsey Quarterly alert list. Manage subscriptions | Unsubscribe Copyright © 2022 | McKinsey & Company, 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10007