Business stories worth a read this week, curated by Jason Maywald:
- AFR.com – Five ways to stop meetings being a waste of time
Poking fun at meetings is the stuff of Dilbert cartoons – we can all joke about how soul-sucking and painful they are. But that pain has real consequences for teams and organisations. We interviewed one executive who described stabbing her leg with a pencil to stop from screaming during a particularly torturous staff meeting.Such complaints are supported by research showing that meetings have increased in length and frequency over the past 50 years, to the point where executives spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in them. The supposed solutions are usually discrete: establish a clear agenda, hold your meeting standing up, delegate someone to attend in your place and so on. - TheAustralian.com.au – Housing boom to flow onto smaller capitalsMacquarie Group’s new chief economist, Ric Deverell, said Australia’s capital cities outside Sydney and Melbourne could begin to benefit as more workers moved out of the highest priced cities in Australia and net migration started to pick up.
Prices in the two major cities have remained resilient despite ongoing forecasts that residential housing could crash as a result of the steady increases in values.
- SMH.com.au – Home sales jump while house prices remain flat
Home sales have increased across all but one of the capital cities in the past seven days, marking the busiest week for auctions since the end of May, while home prices remain flat virtually across the board.There were 2759 auctions held across the combined main capital cities in the week to September 24, up from a revised 2510 the previous week, preliminary figures from property data group Corelogic show. - News.com.au – Will Uber’s London ban affect us?LONDON’S transport authority made headlines earlier today after it banned Uber from the global city — but could Australia be next?
Transport for London refused to renew Uber’s licence to operate in the British capital, arguing that it demonstrates a lack of corporate responsibility with implications in public safety and security.
- NYTimes.com – 68 things you cannot say on China’s internetBEIJING — Song Jie, a writer in central China, knows what she can and cannot write in the romance novels she publishes online. Words that describe explicit sexual acts are out, of course. So are those for sexual organs. Even euphemisms like “behind” or “bottom” can trigger censorship by automatic software filters or a website’s employees.
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Jason Maywald is a highly experienced legal and transactional advisor in the insurance and medical assistance sectors.