Talking about the weather never gets old, even in corporate boardrooms.

Take the Polar Vortex. For many companies last winter, it was the go-to excuse for poor performance. Makes sense if you are cancelling thousands of flights or selling motorcycles, but selling products online? Debatable.

There’s a tug-of-war happening in today’s business technology environment, between traditional IT roles and end users of technology. The recent scandal over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of private email service and home server instead of IT resources approved by the organization perfectly highlights the struggle, which is fundamentally centered on how companies get the most from their technology and their IT departments.

Incidents and events once considered local issues are spilling over borders and having global repercussions.

With sanctions lifted and a massive stockpile waiting, Iran is ready to flood the market with more oil. But the ramifications to an already deflated price per barrel are global in reach.

As I write this, a Bloomberg headline screams “Global Stocks Fall as China Moves Unnerve Markets,” which is certainly not the first bearish piece we’ve seen over the past few weeks. This challenging environment reinforces the importance of seeking new ways to grow and to enter new markets (see our recent InSights article for some thoughts on how to tackle this).

It’s the time of year again when experts everywhere get out their crystal balls and predict what’s to come in the year ahead.

They measure historical trends, tap into reams of data and try to sound very smart. While many of their insights seem credible, some leave us scratching our heads. Certainly we will all use our smartphones more.

My partner at HighPoint, Sumeet Goel, addressed the issue of poor written communication in a recent blog post. It got me thinking about our reliance on technology, particularly the effects of messaging and email.

The question of leadership style has been recently addressed in the business pages as well, and it’s easy to see parallels between Trump’s brusqueness and the corporate culture at Amazon highlighted in a recent New York Times cover story. Some would argue that the approach taken by Jeff Bezos of Amazon is too harsh. But given his enterprise’s success, perhaps there is some merit to his “articles of faith” that demand excellence, candor and unerring commitment.

Today’s customer journey has become an increasingly complex maze for marketers to follow, with multiple entry points into the purchasing cycle and new influences that can detract them from reaching the end point. Customers can simultaneously bring their digital shopping experience in-store, share product insights on social media and compare competitor’s products across physical and digital channels.

Merger activity is at a fever pace this year, on pace to hit new record levels. But are many of these deals doomed to fail, driven more by fear than coherent strategy? Overcoming market pressures to pursue M&A activities that are both strategic and successful in driving business results takes more than simple due diligence. You need to understand the pitfalls along the path, have a strategy for success and a playbook that helps to guide the process.

A recent chat with my colleagues about our kids turned into a great lesson about building resonant brands. I’d mentioned my daughter’s recent obsession with everything Ivivva – the Lululemon spinoff brand for tween girls – and one of the folks around the table suggested the company must be losing out on a lot of brand equity by going with the “Ivivva” brand, instead of calling itself “LuluKids.”