There are more than 30.000 different banks worldwide, and they hold unbelievable amounts of assets. The top 10 banks alone account for roughly 25 trillion US-Dollars. Banks are, in essence, in the risk management business. People keep their money in banks and receive a small amount of interest. In turn, the bank takes this money and lends it at much higher interest rates. So banks take funds that savers don't use and turn them into funds society can use to do things like buying houses or growing businesses.

Traditional banks 

The main problem with banks nowadays is that many have abandoned their traditional role as providers of long-time financial products in favour of short-time gains that carry much higher risks. For example, back in 2008, banks like Leeman Brothers gave credit to nearly anyone who wanted to buy a house, putting the bank in a risky position. It led to the collapse of the housing market in the US and parts of Europe, causing stock prices to plummet, eventually leading to a global banking crisis.

The problem with traditional banks

Today, other models of providing finance are gaining ground fast. For example, new investment banks charge a yearly fee and do not get commissions on sales. This motivates them to act in the best interests of their clients or credit unions. They provide the same financial services as banks but focus on shared value instead of maximising their profits. Their goal is to help members create opportunities, such as starting small businesses, expanding homes and investing back into communities. They are controlled by their members, who democratically elect the board of directors.

Investment banks are gaining in popularity

<ul><li>Credit union systems range from a few members to organisations with hundreds of thousands of members. They focus on benefits for their members, which influences the risk that credit unions are willing to take. </li><li>Crowdfunding platforms enable people to get loans from large groups of small investors, circumventing the bank as a middle man.</li><li>Micro lending. These platforms offer microloans to businesses and personal people who previously could not access the money they needed.</li></ul>

Other finance models

Banks are a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. We all kind of know that they do stuff with money we don’t understand, while the last crisis left a feeling of deep mistrust and confusion. We try to shed a bit of light onto the banking system. Why were banks invented, why did they cause the last crisis and are there alternatives? OUR CHANNELS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ German Channel: https://kgs.link/youtubeDE Spanish Channel: https://kgs.link/youtubeES HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT US? ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ This is how we make our living and it would be a pleasure if you support us! Get Merch designed with ❤ from https://kgs.link/shop Join the Patreon Bird Army 🐧 https://kgs.link/patreon DISCUSSIONS & SOCIAL MEDIA ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Reddit: https://kgs.link/reddit Instagram: https://kgs.link/instagram Twitter: https://kgs.link/twitter Facebook: https://kgs.link/facebook Discord: https://kgs.link/discord Newsletter: https://kgs.link/newsletter OUR VOICE ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The Kurzgesagt voice is from Steve Taylor: https://kgs.link/youtube-voice OUR MUSIC ♬♪ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ 700+ minutes of Kurzgesagt Soundtracks by Epic Mountain: Spotify: https://kgs.link/music-spotify Soundcloud: https://kgs.link/music-soundcloud Bandcamp: https://kgs.link/music-bandcamp Youtube: https://kgs.link/music-youtube Facebook: https://kgs.link/music-facebook The Soundtrack of this video: http://epicmountainmusic.bandcamp.com/track/banking http://soundcloud.com/epicmountain/banking http://www.epic-mountain.com Help us caption & translate this video! http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_panel?c=UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q&tab=2

Stashed ideas

Banking Explained – Money and Credit

People who are successful in big hierarchical organizations are promoted again and again until they reach a level of incompetence.  Then they never get promoted again and are stuck there for life.

The Peter Principle

People will advance in their careers because they have high skills in a specific task. But when they are promoted, these skills are often irrelevant to the new job. For example, a sales rep may be able to sell well, but when they are promoted to sales manager and don't receive training, they may not have the necessary skills to manage other people and might even be despised by their team. As a result, they may work harder to compensate for their lack of skills.

How the Peter principle work

Lawrence Peter and Raymond Hull first introduced the Peter Principle in 1969. Since then, it has been often discussed in the area of leadership. In 2018, researchers analyzed sales workers' performance and promotion practices and found that high-performing sales reps were more likely to be promoted, regardless of their managerial potential which led to high costs to the businesses.

The Peter principle research

The Peter Principle argues that people who have success in big hierarchical organizations are promoted until they reach their own "level of incompetence”. Here they are often stuck for life. Let´s look at the story about David and Diana, two graduates, who first met at a sales training. They were so proud to have gotten a job in which they could actually help people. Little did they know, that they had joined one of the most dangerous organizations in modern America. A special thank you to our patrons: Avigail, Badrah, Cedric Wang, Eva Marie Koblin, Denis Kraus, Don Bone, John Zhang, Julien Dumesnil, Mathis Nu, and all the others!!! You keep us going! If you want to join us, visit http://www.patreon.com/sprouts Read the entire script here. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle#The_Peter_Principle https://www.nber.org/papers/w24343 http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/Papers/pdf/00-04.pdf https://igormroz.com/documents/netflix_culture.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sackler https://drugabuse.com/oxycodone/history-statistics/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/ http://documents.latimes.com/oxycontin-press-release-1996/

Peter Principle: When People Get Promoted Into Maximum Incompetence

Yes, the brain-numbing exhaustion that sets in after too many hours on video calls is a unique form of terrible. But there’s a caveat that doesn’t get mentioned enough: Zoom fatigue is also a bit of a convenient scapegoat. As more organizations begin to navigate the unfamiliar world of remote work, it’s entirely possible—and maybe even likely—that meetings that are terrible on Zoom are also terrible for the people in the room.

Meetings Are Exhausting, Virtual Or Real

The main reason that people are fatigued is that they’re sitting in a lot of bad meetings.If you’re not engaged and can’t be inclusive, that’s the main reason for the fatigue.A shift to hybrid work can simply mean a change of venue for the meeting burnout people have long been feeling, as they move from conference room to Zoom room—or it can be a new opportunity to engage a fatigued audience.

The Reason For The Fatigue

Reconsider the meeting not as an endeavour with a single leader, but as a team sport. With two facilitators—one who joins remotely and is responsible for the online space, and one who joins in person and facilitates live—hybrid meetings can combine the best of both worlds into sessions that allow for greater collaboration. All it takes is some thoughtful planning.

Rethinking Meetings

Start by planning meetings with intention. What is the purpose of this time? What deliverables should you have by the end of the meeting? Who needs to be there to accomplish those tasks? Who’s best suited to facilitate, and who will handle what?Craft your agenda so that the remote facilitator opens the meeting and leads the first section, to set a precedent that makes it harder for in-person attendees to dominate the conversation.

Initiating The Meeting

During the meeting itself, a key responsibility of the remote facilitator is to ensure the conversation flows evenly between the two spaces. If time allows, kick things off with a check-in question: When everybody speaks within the first few minutes, everyone is more inclined <a href="https://www.charterworks.com/priya-parker-art-of-gathering-return-to-workplace/">to contribute</a> later on.

During The Meeting

Throughout the meeting, the two hosts can trade off the responsibility for sparking discussion, while each paying special attention to their respective realms. With activity taking place across physical and virtual spaces, it’s challenging for one person to be good at and focused on projecting, sharing, and facilitating while also monitoring this new input.Having eyes on each space allows for more focused attention to the non-verbal cues that signify how a meeting is going.

The Ongoing Meeting

As with pretty much everything about hybrid work, team meeting leading is going to take some practice and refinement to get right. After each meeting, co-leaders can measure success by fielding an engagement survey. Make sure to break out answers by remote and in-person attendees, so you can identify any gaps between their respective experiences.Overall, leading a good hybrid meeting across digital and physical spaces comes back to the same principles that make meetings successful in either space alone: creating an inclusive environment where all participants have equal opportunity to engage.

After The Meeting

Lead Your Hybrid Meetings as a Team Sport

A promotion is one form of recognition, but it does not inherently make you a leader. Neither does being a manager. Or coming in early, getting facetime with the C-suite, crushing your KPIs, or having “lead” in your title. Many “leads” do not lead and many people without the title do. While promotional milestones can signify leadership, they don’t by default.

A promotion doesn't make you a leader

The career ladder plagues nearly every type of workplace, from structured corporate environments to the nebulous world of startups.The truth is that success is not linear, and your career path is unlikely to be either. When you take away the pressure of climbing the ladder, you give yourself room to experiment, explore, and develop both personally and professionally. Most importantly, you open the door to leadership opportunities outside of simply getting a promotion.

Climb down off the ladder

To truly step into a leadership role, you have to be willing to speak your mind, push back, and ask tough questions. If the sound of that makes your palms sweat, fear not. You don’t need to be outspoken, loud, or “pushy” to share your ideas. You just need to be willing to get a little uncomfortable, at least at first.The best leaders ask good questions — of both themselves and others. They don’t do anything just because “it’s the way it’s always been done.” And they aren’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers to create change and move forward.

Don’t accept the status quo

On a very basic level, being a leader is about your relation to other people within an organization. It’s impossible to lead while flying solo — your connection with your team defines you as a leader. So, a surefire way to develop and demonstrate your leadership skills is to stop thinking so much about what you need to do to get to that next step, and start thinking about how you can help others reach their potential.

Focus outward

Good leaders don’t pretend to have all the answers, and they’re not afraid to address their weaknesses. Acknowledging and revealing your blind spots does not make you unfit or inept. It makes you human and accessible. Know when you need help, and ask for it. Own up to your mistakes, promptly and publicly.If you want to get a head start on leadership, practice vulnerability. It pairs well with confidence, self-awareness, and sincerity.

Expose your blind side

Leadership exists in so many forms — and it doesn’t require a fancy title, a lofty pay raise, or even permission.Don’t wait for someone to tell you when it’s time to be a leader. You have the tools you need to practice within your role right now.

Don’t wait for an invitation

Aspiring young leaders often confuse climbing the corporate ladder with leadership. But not all managers are leaders and not all leaders are managers.

Getting Promoted Isn’t the Same as Being a Leader

Burnout is more than a bad day or a busy week—it’s about ongoing, compounding factors that make your work environment so draining that no amount of positive thinking or good nights’ sleep can pull you out of it. 
The impacts of burnout are serious, even from a purely financial perspective. According to an influential WHO study, burnout costs us a staggering one trillion dollars in lost productivity every single year. It’s also a major driver of employee turnover; in one survey of senior HR leaders, nearly half shared that burnout was responsible for 20-50% of their annual resignations.

Burnout in the workplace

Reasonable expectations are key to creating a sustainable remote-work culture that brings out the best in everyone, and that starts with clarity. 
Leaders should draft policies that get rid of all ambiguity around how, when, and where employees are expected to work. That’s how you avoid worker confusion and anxiety, or worse, the ‘always on&#39; culture that’s a recipe for burnout.

Prioritize Clarity

Employees aren’t machines—they’re real people who have lives, loved ones, and personal responsibilities. That’s why to beat burnout, distributed teams should be led by compassionate, human-centric policies that support employee health and happiness. 
That could include programs to help working parents manage childcare, or regular check-ins to assess employee satisfaction and workload. These kinds of steps will both reduce employee stress, and help managers proactively stay aware of their teams&#39; needs.

Create A Culture of Empathy

Just because you’re working remotely doesn’t mean your job is flexible. Rigid, overly-controlling policies, such as monitoring employees’ computer activity during office hours, make it harder for people to manage their own needs, taking away autonomy and contributing to workplace stress. 
While some level of time synchronization is necessary, if leaders can keep an open mind towards what tasks can be completed asynchronously, they’ll find that a little flexibility goes a long way towards creating an agile, responsible remote team that enables everyone to function at their absolute best.

Make Working From Home Flexible

Make video meetings work for you. Rather than feeling tiring, redundant or draining, video should make communication faster, easier, and more fulfilling.
<ul>
<li>Step one - keep it short. 30 minutes is a great sweet spot for video meetings. Don’t bump it up to 60 minutes without a really compelling reason. </li>
<li>Next, hide your self-view. Constantly seeing your own face is unsettling and distracting.</li>
<li>You can even take it a step further, and consider audio-only meetings wherever possible. Or, try getting the best of both worlds by saying a quick hello, then agreeing to turn off your cameras when it’s time to get past the chit-chat and down to business.</li>
</ul>

Beat Video Fatigue

While flexibility is great, it’s crucial that distributed teams don’t feel they’re expected to work all the time. Managers should set defined office hours and stick to them—that means not pinging people after (for example) 5pm unless it’s a true, genuine emergency. 
If workers see their manager turning off Slack notifications and not replying to email outside of work hours, they’ll understand that on your team, work-life balance is more than just a buzzword.

Set Clear Boundaries

Boundaries are about more than just work hours. You may have less control over your distributed team’s work environment, but there are still ways to help them create a healthy separation between their work and home spaces. 
These don’t need to be complicated or demanding. Even something as simple as sharing the day’s high and low points on Slack, then signing off together, can really help people mentally clock out.

Support Work and Home Separation

Now that we’re well into our new normal, we have a chance to look at the big picture, and take real, impactful steps to make this distributed way of working healthier, more productive, and more sustainable for everyone. 

6 Ways Companies Can Help Their Employees Overcome Burnout In A Distributed World

Lean thinking is a kind of methodology or management system which eliminates all kinds of waste in order to maximize value.
Lean thinking was first incorporated by Toyota automobiles in Japan and called the Toyota Production System.
The lean approach rebuilt the production process from scratch and helped Toyota become one of the most successful automobile companies in the world.

Lean Thinking

Lean Thinking is based on the following principles: Defining value, mapping the value stream, establishing the flow, pulling work(as opposed to pushing work) and pursuing perfection.The three primary ways that can attune our minds to these principles are:<ol><li>Experiencing the work/activities directly.</li><li>Practising constantly to find solutions.</li><li>Organizing meetings and group studies.</li></ol>One can implement the learnings using any of the tools available to visualize the various stages and flowcharting all the tasks in each stage.

The Five Principles Of Lean Thinking

Lean thinking is a mental framework that helps individuals and organizations achieve greater productivity with less effort. Here’s how to adopt it.

How to adopt lean thinking

Millions of people voluntarily leave a job every month, we still consider it taboo.
Many companies still think that employees will stay for 10, 20, or 30 years if they take care of their employees. But it is a myth. Today's workforce doesn't just show up to pay the bills. They're working toward bigger career goals that will eventually lead them elsewhere.

Employee departures are common

Leadership

And seasons change. When companies react negatively to an employee leaving or take it personally, they do a disservice to that person's work and makes the end of that season seem like a failure instead of an exciting step forward.
Companies have to normalise employees leaving, starting from the top down.

Jobs are seasons

To help normalise departures, establish transparency around the employees' career goals in relation to the organisation's goals.
When a manager regularly zooms out and look at the big picture of what the business needs from the employee and where the employee wants to go in their career, they'll know when the person's career goals are diverging from what the organisation needs.

Talk about the future

Many departures of employees happen when expectations aren't met.
Managers should clarify their expectations of the employee often, such as meeting deadlines or response time to client communication. Employees should also communicate their expectations of the job with their manager, such as not answering email after-hours. If expectations can't be met on either end, there's probably a better fit out there.

Clarify expectations early and often

The point of a manager is to set your employees up for success. If you are an excellent manager, it means that your people will grow out of their current role and be promoted or take a job elsewhere.
To make employee departures a cause for celebration, we need to see them as whole people on their own journeys.

Set your employees up for success

Career

Ways to end the taboo of employee departures

“The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome.”

We never arrive. We work hard to succeed, and then we have to work twice as hard to maintain that success. 
It’s a slow grind. And it starts with our mindset.

The journey is the destination

We all have some type of talent, something that sets us apart from the rest of the world. This can also be a potential trap.
Never just rely on your gift or talent alone. Work on your craft. Investigate your weaknesses and make an effort to minimize them.

Don’t rely on your talent

"One of the paradoxes of life is that the things that initially make you successful are rarely the things that keep you successful.”

Quote

Grit represents a combination of passion and perseverance for a specific, long-term goal. 
It means being able to rebound from adversity and it is the greatest contributor to your success.

Passion and perseverance

You reach big goals with consistent baby steps.
You have to give yourself credit for small gains. They build momentum and provide much-needed life lessons.

Consistent small steps maintain momentum

That doesn’t mean you shouldn't make adjustments within your business. 
It means that you have to have trust that your ideas will work.

Trust your vision

You can't think your way to a goal. You have to take action. 
Be willing to take action, even potentially incorrect action, and make it a habit.

Take action toward your goal

In Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else, author Geoff Colvin says, "The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome." Successful entrepreneurs, leaders and other top performers understand that the journey is the destination.

Five Ways To Develop A Winning Mindset

Great innovators are known for risk-taking and experimentation. But optimising needs a different skill-set that relies on refinement and efficiency. It is then rare to find people that can innovate and optimise.
A typical story is that a founder launches a startup, successfully grows it through the initial stages, then gets replaced by a more experienced CEO. However, the best results are produced when exploration and exploitation coincide.

The exploration-exploitation dilemma

<ul>
<li>Exploration: The focus is on experimentation, risk-taking, discovery, and innovation. People who thrive here are more flexible and comfortable with uncertainty.</li>
<li>Exploitation: The focus is on execution, refinement, and efficiency. Successful people are good at weighting options and making optimal choices.</li>
</ul>
Startups are in the exploration phase and change to the exploitation phase when they become mature businesses. It can be a costly mistake when they are unwilling to switch back when needed.

The difference between exploration and exploitation

Many organisations focus on the exploitation of their historically successful business activities while failing to explore new territory to improve their long-term success. Famous examples:
<ul>
<li>Polaroid didn't respond to the transition to digital photography. Another company that fell into this trap is Kodak.</li>
<li>Blockbuster was a home-movie and video-game rental service provider that did not respond to the rise of mail-order and video-on-demand services.</li>
</ul>

Avoiding the success trap

The key to success is to balance exploration and exploitation.
<ul>
<li>Conduct an ambidexterity audit. Consider how much time, energy, and money you are dedicating to exploration relative to exploitation. Ensure that you are not dedicating100% to one or the other.</li>
<li>How easy would it be to switch from exploitation to exploration? Rigid processes and legacy policies can interfere with switching.</li>
<li>You can also add more flexibility to your processes at an individual level based on your current goals.</li>
</ul>

How to cultivate an ambidextrous mindset

Successful leadership is a balancing act between exploration and exploration. Leaders need to cultivate an ambidextrous mindset to avoid the success trap.

The ambidextrous mindset: how to balance exploration and exploitation

The expectation of rewards may decrease the spontaneous interest in the activity to be rewarded. So it’s important to understand what the rewards should be and how they should be awarded to avoid this side effect.Rewards should go beyond the usual healthcare and salary raise to provide a good work environment. The ideal is a corporate culture that recognizes good employees with nice perks and words of encouragement, but also provides a setting where people can grow, be heard, take ownership of their work and feel they have a purpose.&nbsp;

Rewarding To Maximize Motivation

Following years of hard-fought negotiations by labor interests, the minimum wage was recently raised in several U.S. states this year, and the impact has been evident. Not so much an economic impact, or even the social im-pact that will help make life easier for the thousands who have experienced wage stagnation through the years.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Jane K.
@jan_jkk

Banking Explained – Money and Credit

Peter Principle: When People Get Promoted Into Maximum Incompetence

Lead Your Hybrid Meetings as a Team Sport

Getting Promoted Isn’t the Same as Being a Leader

6 Ways Companies Can Help Their Employees Overcome Burnout In A Distributed World

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Jane K.@jan_jkk

Banking Explained – Money and Credit

Peter Principle: When People Get Promoted Into Maximum Incompetence

Lead Your Hybrid Meetings as a Team Sport

Getting Promoted Isn’t the Same as Being a Leader

6 Ways Companies Can Help Their Employees Overcome Burnout In A Distributed World

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Jane K.
@jan_jkk