15 minute read
Christian Louboutin Debuts Charitable Shoe Collaboration with Idris and Sabrina Elba
from DAWN
Christian Louboutin, Sabrina and Idris Elba Shot by Adama Jalloh © Adama Jalloh
Walk a Mile in My Shoes Season 1 © Julien
Vallon THE FIGHT FOR racial equality and social harmony is ongoing, but in the eyes of actor Idris Elba and his wife, Sabrina Elba, there is always hope. The pair collaborated for the second time on a collection with their longtime friend and legendary designer Christian Louboutin titled Walk a Mile in My Shoes.
While their fi rst collection was born from a unanimous feeling of anxiety, anger, and sadness over the country's racially charged hate crimes, this one came from a place of joy and positivity for the progress we've made and the change that is to come. "I loved how organic it was," Sabrina tells BAZAAR. com. "It was really three friends coming together to just like, 'What do we do? How do we give back?' It was such a beautiful conversation at a time when you just wanted all your friends around you having that kind of conversation, because it was hard to talk about it. It was painful to talk about it, and Christian was so warm at a time when I was feeling really low and Idris was feeling low."
By Rosa Sanchez
The capsule collection includes shoes printed with handmade illustrations featuring national fl owers that symbolize the Elbas' cultures: the protea fl ower of Somalia (where Sabrina's family is from), the cotton tree of Sierra Leone, and the desert rose of Ghana (both places where Idris has roots). "In the fi rst one, at the time that we started, we were angry," Sabrina says. "I think everyone was a little bit angry and felt like something needed to be done and some change needed to be made, and it brought us together to create something beautiful, but it was inspired a little bit by frustration. And I think for this one, it's so great to be able to celebrate not only the success of the fi rst collection, but also feeling like there's been a little bit of progress."
All proceeds from the collection, which launched June 15, will go to six grassroots organizations from around the world chosen by the designer and the Elbas, related to education, the arts, and youth empowerment. They are as follows: AfriKids, an organization that protects children in northern Ghana; Elman Peace Centre, Somalia's fi rst community-based disarmament and reintegration program for youth being co-opted into armed groups; The Raining Season, which provides resources for vulnerable and orphaned children, as well as impoverished families in Sierra Leone; CASA 93, a fashion school in Brazil that off ers free education to teens with few resources; Immediate Theatre, which involves London's communities in creative projects that inspire well-being and positive change; and Art Start, a U.S.-based organization that uses the creative process to nurture the voices, hearts, and minds of historically marginalized youth.
With their fi rst collection, which launched in 2021, the trio raised almost $2 million. "It's important to give what you can how you can. Everyone can do something," Sabrina says. "I feel like there has been a trend and a bit of performative activism, unfortunately, so I think what this collection is doing is hopefully setting a bar—it's not just about righting a tweet, you really need to put the work in."
Idris agrees. "I think there's defi nitely a consciousness among people that have the platform to say, 'You know what? We're privileged, we have this opportunity, let's do something about it,'" he says.
Sabrina and Idris— "a secret sneaker drawer" who used to sketch out shoe designs as a kid— created two original styles for the collection inspired by their backgrounds. The colorful Maryam wrap sandal (which is also off ered in a heel version) is a tribute to Sabrina's mother and Somalian heritage, while the chunky white 2002SL sneaker (which also comes with a painterly red and blue Celebration print on the sides) is named after Idris's country of origin and his daughter Isan's date of birth. "I think from a design perspective, we wanted to be positive and shed some light on what we've done and what we've achieved. This felt more celebratory and not from a place of darkness," Idris tells BAZAAR. "We continued to work with classic Christian Louboutin silhouettes and off ered two from-scratch designs that we're very proud of—a little bit of an expansion of the fi rst collection—and we thought about summer, we thought about the colors, we thought that we still want people to feel that genuine consumer consciousness of, 'Hey, I would like to contribute,' while at the same time wearing something that makes them feel good."
This time around, the duo, along with Louboutin's talented design team, reincorporated the fl ower motif they introduced in their fi rst collection in a very diff erent way. The fi rst designs showcased the yellow strelitzia, known as the "freedom fl ower," which from the side can look like a bird taking fl ight. Sabrina says it was meant to represent "the struggle of the time." But the Season II fl orals, while still "rooted" the way Idris says the collection "is rooted in the struggle," are sunny and cheerful
In My Shoes from page 9
with the hope of better days. "I think Black Lives Matter, the conversations around race, and the inequality that the whole world is feeling are continuing, and the importance levels out; we still believe in the cause, but there is a version of that same storytelling and activation that leans toward the positive, leans toward vibrancy and growth," Idris says. "We want people to remember where this collection came from and where it was born from, but we also want to remind ourselves, 'Hey, man, we can go forward. There's positivity. There's light at the end of the tunnel.'"
Both Sabrina and Idris say it was a truly humbling experience to work with their friend, and they already can't stop wearing the shoes they created together, but the best part, Idris says, is getting to see what their eff orts have produced.
After the launch of their fi rst collection, Sabrina visited an organization they partnered with in Somalia and Idris visited one in Syria, the Be Rose Foundation. "I called Sabrina and I was like, 'Yo, I 'm in tears,'" Idris recalls. "I literally had 17 women from that small village who brought to me the fruits that they had grown in their land that they didn't have before. They said, 'This is for you, Mr. Elba, because we're in abundance now. You changed our lives, thank you so much.'" He said that with their help, the organization also set up a food program to give kids breakfast, "something that you and I may overlook—and these kids were describing to me what it meant to have breakfast, what it meant for their concentration, their grades, their home."
Ultimately, Sabrina says, it's not only partnerships such as this one that can help make a real change for struggling communities, it is also us— consumers. "We need to understand how powerful our decisions are. When you're shopping anything,
it really is like a vote, it's as powerful as a vote," she says. "You need to put your fi nances and your taste and whatever it is behind things that you support. It's really powerful to be a consumer, and I embrace that power."a conference table at the competitor’s offi ces; they even placed the competing company’s logo on the conference room wall! Bubbly drinks were passed around and each person was asked to toast the shortcomings of the new product. Instead of ideating how we might beat our competitors, we can simulate it by imagining how they would critique our best work.
Ideas abhor isolation. The intended audience for our ideas is seldom just ourselves. The process by which we bring our ideas to life requires hearing from many diff ering perspectives to give them shape, shine, and shelf life. https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestylebuzz/christian-louboutin-debuts-charitable-shoecollaboration-with-idris-and-sabrina-elba/ar-A AYC yOw?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=42252796831c406a9 3a5042534cb8ba3
Image credit: https://us.christianlouboutin.com/ Offi cial_Site/Shoes
G oogl e ’s CEO , Sundar Pi c ha i , U ses this 4- Word Rul e t o Me a sure S uc ce s s. I t’s the Be st I’ v e Se e n Yet
Source: Inc.com
ONE OF THE MOST important jobs of every leader is to defi ne how you measure success. You’ve probably heard the phrase, you get what you measure. More importantly, you get what you reward.
If you reward your team for success, they will try to do more things like whatever it was that got them the reward. So, be careful about what you measure, and be careful what you reward. Get it wrong, and your team will probably fail.
This all seems obvious, but in truth, it’s pretty complicated. The reason is that the way most leaders defi ne success misses one of the most important points. In an interview at Stanford
University’s “View from the Top,” Google’s
CEO, Sundar Pichai, explained it like this:
You have to encourage innovation… You know, one of the counterintuitive things is companies become more conservative as they grow. You have a lot more cash, you have a lot more resources but, you know, companies tend to become more conservative in their decision-making.
As a result, Pichai says his job is “encouraging the company to take risks and innovate and be okay with failure–and reward eff ort, not outcomes.”
That last part is really important. In fact, those four words are one of the most important lessons for every leader. As Pichai points out, that can be diffi cult since “people tend to reward outcomes.”
Here’s why it matters:
If you only measure people on outcomes, they will do whatever it takes to avoid negative outcomes. They’ll play it safe and fall back on whatever they already know that works. They’ll keep giving you exactly what you’ve always gotten, nothing more or less.
The thing is, avoiding a negative outcome is not a great measure of success. Avoiding negative outcomes doesn’t lead to greatness.
On the other hand, if you want people to work really hard, reward them for that. If you want people to take risks, try new things, and come up with new ways of doing things, incentivize them for their eff ort.
Those things don’t always lead to what we think of traditionally as success. Sometimes they are messy. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes the eff ort will cost you a lot of money. The point is, that’s not necessarily a bad thing if what you’re trying to do is build something new.
If you’re trying to do something worthwhile, you’re going to fail a bunch of times anyway.
You’re going to break things and you’re going to fi gure out how to put them back together. You might as well encourage people to learn from it all and reward them for their eff ort.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean you don’t expect a lot from your team. It doesn’t mean outcomes don’t matter. It just means that the outcome you’re looking for might be less obvious than a 5% increase in your stock price year over year.
It really comes down to the type of culture–and, ultimately, the type of company you’re trying to build. If what you want are incremental growth and a small but consistent increase in quarterly earnings, that’s fi ne, but don’t expect anything revolutionary to happen.
If, however, you want to build a team that is willing to do hard things, reward them for their
eff ort. Reward them when they try and fail, and when they learn and succeed. Ultimately, that’s the best possible outcome anyway. https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/07/googles-ceosundar-pichai-uses-this-4-word-rule-to-measuresuccess-its-the-best-ive-seen-yet/ Source: https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/googlesceo-sundar-pichai-uses-this-4-word-rule-tomeasure-success-its-best-ive-seen-yet.html Image credit: formationsdirect.com
What We Learned in Studying the Most Eff ective Founders
By Martin Gonzalez, Josh Yellin Source: Google
STARTUPS FACE MANY existential risks, from their fi nances to their technologies. But there is one risk which some research indicates is the biggest of all: 55% of startups fail because of people problems, according to researchers at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago. What do you do when the team argues over the direction of the company, how cash is spent or how much equity is fair? How do you fi re a loyal friend who’s not up to par with industry expertise? How do you get your team to work as hard as you do?
We led an eff ort at Google for Startups to assess the leadership capabilities of more than 900 startup founders, CEOs and CTOs across more than 40 countries to build one of the deepest and broadest sets of data on founder capabilities ever assembled. Our goal: put the most eff ective entrepreneurs under a microscope to understand their best leadership strategies.
We’ve summarized our fi ndings in The Eff ective Founders Project report, which contains detailed analysis, references from the most robust research done on these people issues and, most importantly, practical tips. Here are our seven key fi ndings :
Treat people like volunteers.
Whether they’re fresh graduates or experienced, world-class talent, the best people want to do great work for a challenging, meaningful mission. Inspiring your team with purpose gives you a chance to hire and retain the best talent; for example, many talented engineers want a unique challenge, rather than another old project that just wants to crowd out the market.
Protect the team from distractions.
While CEOs are often seen as distracted by new ideas, the best ones create focus and clarity on what really matters. But we understand this is diffi cult: when a startup is fi nding its way, everything can feel like an opportunity, making it hard to keep the team focused. Set clear goals and priorities to build momentum for your team. This in turn fuels better performance and morale. It’s also important to create some kind of closure ritual for when great ideas go to the graveyard.
Minimize unnecessary micromanagement.
While our data shows micromanaging can be helpful in certain situations, the most eff ective leaders aim to delegate work in order to grow both themselves and their businesses. Our data suggests micromanaging can be a major derailer, especially for CEOs. Recognize which teammates need to be closely supervised, and which you can empower to make good decisions and operate independently.
Invite disagreement.
Our data suggests founders consistently undervalue inviting opinions that are diff erent from their own, while cofounders and teammates rate it highly. Yet some studies have shown that though it might not always feel that way, disagreement among diverse teams actually leads to more eff ective outcomes. In turn, that could mean more innovative and inclusive products.
Preserve interpersonal equity.
Violated expectations are the main source of confl ict among cofounders. Our data suggests many founders keep track of their cofounder’s duties, but unknowingly defi ne expectations for themselves more minimally. The most eff ective
cofounders openly discuss and document what they expect from each other and constantly check for what we call “interpersonal equity.” Do both of you feel expectations are fair? Is what you give and receive in return fair compared to your cofounders? Keep pace with expertise. - While you can’t be an expert in everything, leaders need to know enough about each role to hire the right people and help develop their team. 93% of the most eff ective founders have the technical expertise to eff ectively manage the work, and make time to stay ahead of their industry.
Overcome discouragement.
While most people would expect self-confi dence to grow with time, our data suggests the most eff ective founders are not nearly as confi dent as the least eff ective founders are. This observation aligns with what is known as the Dunning-Kruger eff ect, where overconfi dence at the start of the journey helps founders get started, but discouragement and self-doubt set in soon after. That in turn can give you the inner challenge you need to reach further. For some, that self-doubt comes as a setback. If that’s you, remember it is likely a signal of growth, and not of inevitable failure. Seek out a support system, focus on the positive, and know how to ask for help when they need it.
Head to startup.google.com to download the full Eff ective Founders Project report—and avoid the pitfalls of the most common people problems. https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/ entrepreneurs/eff ective-founders-project/ Image credit: purepng.com
African Union Procurement and Trade Apps
The African Union (AU) is a steward of public funds and therefore both AU and its suppliers must adhere to the highest ethical standards, both during the bidding process and throughout the execution of a contract .
The AU Procurement Division under the Administration and Human Resource Management(AHRM) is responsible for the for the acquisition of a wide variety of goods, works and services for the AU Headquarters, AU Organ,Peace Support Mission, Regional Representative Offi ce, Specialised and Technical Agency and Liaison Offi ce etc.
Visit the Bids/Procurement pages of the AU website to review open bids - https://au.int/en/ bids.
Visit Google PlayStore or iPhone xxxx to install the AU Procurement app on your devices.
The AfCFTA Hub brings together the AfCFTA Secretariat, national governments and major private sector innovators in a unifi ed digital framework known as the “AfCFTA Hub Network” (https://www.afcfta.app). Sign up for an account to gain access to a growing range of features, modules and platforms bundled seamlessly into one Super-App. Explore this AfCFTA Digital Ecosystem - use what you need to get what you want. Wherever you are in Africa, we have got your back. Register your business to take advantage of access to the 41 countries that have ratifi ed the AfCFTA Treaty.
