Australia's Falling Competition Cost $2,000 a Person, RBA Finds
If competition had not dropped, productivity and therefore output would have been 1% to 3% higher due to resources being better allocated across firms in the economy, the RBA's Jonathan Hambur and Owen Freestone said in a research paper released Thursday. This equates, at the upper end, to around A$3,000 ($2,000) per person, they said.
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Why Empathy Is The Operating System For Change
Work is changing—fast. AI is rewriting task loads. Org charts are flattening and reforming. Markets are in constant flux on any given day. And humans are feeling it. These humans are working in your organization and are responsible for ensuring your success. Gallup's latest global snapshot shows 'only 21% of employees were engaged in 2024, manager engagement fell to 27%, and just 33% of employees say they're 'thriving' in life overall' — and disengagement alone 'cost the world economy an estimated $438 billion' last year. That's not a soft-skills problem; that's an ROI and productivity problem. Meanwhile, headlines boast a 'back to toughness' posture among organizational leaders—mandates, cuts, and less patience for 'feelings.' As Business Insider reports, some leaders are rolling back pandemic-era empathy practices, pushing return-to-office and cost controls despite evidence that productivity gains are coming 'in part from AI efficiencies.' Employees will remember how they're treated at this moment. And when employees are not seen, heard, and valued, engagement, innovation, and productivity suffer.. Here's the hard truth: All of this transformation is about classic change management. And change management is human management. When bringing people along on any change, this requires getting back to human essentials: listening, collaboration, and empathy. Empathy isn't coddling; it's a strategic tool that keeps people whole, focused, and performance-focused while you rewire the plane mid-flight. And no, organizations cannot outsource that human capital work to AI. Consider two more realities: What Empathy Looks Like in Practice (and Why It Works) 3 Moves Leaders Can Make This Quarter 1. Implement Empathy Practices That Scale Start every change sprint with a 'context + care' brief: what's changing, why it matters to customers, what it means for jobs, and where people can get help. Make manager 1:1s non-negotiable (15 minutes, weekly) with two prompts: 'What's blocking you?' and 'What's one change I can make to help this week?' Track participation and themes; publish quick wins. These rituals boost perceived care and reduce friction in adoption. When empathy is modeled, acknowledged, and rewarded, it sets the tone for everyone that this is how success happens here. 2. Invest in Training for 'EPOCH' Skills—Especially for Managers Run micro-labs on empathy interviewing, decision transparency, ethical judgment with AI, and constructive dissent or feedback. Tie completion to manager goals; assess via behavior checklists (e.g., 'names the tradeoff,' 'offers rationale,' 'invites counter-evidence,' "solicits other viewpoints'). Assess if engagement and well-being are on the rise in teams led by trained managers, who have previously shown the sharpest declines. Then you know that the training is working. 3. Measure What Matters: Engagement + Wellbeing in the Same Dashboard Pair your engagement pulse with wellbeing indicators ('thriving,' 'struggling,' 'suffering,' burnout risk, perceived organizational care). Segment by role and change exposure; intervene fast where thriving is low and change is high. Treat spikes in 'struggling' as an early-warning signal for missed deadlines, high turnover, and declining quality. Bottom line: AI, shifting generations, competitive pressures, and volatile markets aren't going away. Your sustainable advantage is a culture where people - especially your managers - feel respected, informed, and equipped to adapt. That's not 'being nice.' That's how to fortify your team to win.
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Trump is open to doing business with Russia. That could be tricky
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are heading to Alaska for pivotal talks that could unlock a long-sought peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. A peace deal, or a simple thawing of relations between Moscow and Washington, could also pave the way for what, until recently, seemed fanciful to most American companies – doing business with Russia. 'I noticed (Putin's) bringing a lot of business people from Russia, and that's good,' Trump said aboard Air Force One on Friday. 'I like that, because they want to do business, but they're not doing business until we get the war solved.' Anton Siluanov, Russia's finance minister, and Kirill Dmitriev, a senior economic negotiator and head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, are among those attending the talks with Putin. 'If we make progress, I would discuss (business opportunities), because that's one of the things that they would like; they'd like to get a piece of what I built in terms of the economy,' the US president told reporters. But restarting business with a country that the West has largely turned into a diplomatic and economic pariah via sanctions will be no easy feat. Here's why: After Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Western companies left Russia en masse in protest. Since then, more than 1,000 global companies have either voluntarily exited or curtailed operations in Russia, according to a list compiled by the Yale School of Management. Household US names like Apple (AAPL), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Mastercard (MA) were among those who left, yet there have been some holdouts continuing to do some business in the country. The scale of the corporate exodus means there are simply fewer American companies in Russia to generate new business opportunities than before the war. Meanwhile, Chinese firms including automakers and tech companies have filled the gap left by their Western counterparts. Russians have also turned to copy-cat versions of American brands. For example, Stars Coffee emerged after Starbucks (SBUX) exited in 2022, adopting an audaciously familiar logo of a woman with a star above her head. So, if Western companies did return en masse, would Russian consumers welcome them? Western sanctions have focused on hitting Moscow where it hurts: limiting the revenues it can collect from its massive exports of oil and natural gas. Last year, those revenues accounted for 30% of Russia's federal government budget, according to an analysis by The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Oil and gas revenues remain 'the single most important source of finance for the state coffers,' wrote Vitaly Yermakov, a senior research fellow at the Institute, in the February report. The European Union, once a top Kremlin customer, has banned all seaborne imports of Russian crude oil, and whittled Moscow's share of its natural gas imports delivered via pipeline to about 11% last year, from more than 40% in 2021. The bloc still imports Russian liquefied natural gas via sea tankers. But Russia has adapted, re-routing its barrels of oil to alternate customers, like India and China. According to Vortexa, an energy data firm, Russia now accounts for 36% of India's crude oil imports and is the country's top supplier. Trump has recently threatened to impose punishing tariffs on countries that continue to buy Moscow's barrels to discourage the trade and force Putin – by economic necessity – to the negotiating table. 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Janis Kluge, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told CNN in February that the United States wouldn't be able to re-admit banned banks to the network without cooperation from the EU because SWIFT is based in Belgium. Corruption has also worsened from already high levels. In 2021, nonprofit organization Transparency International put Russia in 136th place, tied with Liberia, in its ranking of 180 countries and territories for their perceived levels of public sector corruption. (A lower ranking indicates a higher level of corruption.) But, by 2024, Russia had slid further down the Corruption Perceptions Index to 154th place, tied with Azerbaijan, Honduras and Lebanon. American businesses contemplating a return to, or reinvestment in, Russia may then ask themselves: Would it be worth it? CNN's Kit Maher and Lauren Kent contributed reporting.
