It’s 2022 and the number of women in leadership positions across global firms has reached 31 per cent, and at the current rate, full gender parity is just 132 years away. Similar to the way women who achieved success in the corporate world and other strata of the male dominated society, accomplishments of men and their contribution to society are also celebrated. As the world celebrates International Men’s Day on November 19, the world’s most successful entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Gautam Adani can’t be ignored.
Elon Musk has been in the news for reshaping Twitter with his management style of slashing the workforce by half to address ad revenue loss. His fellow big tech boss Jeff Bezos’ Amazon has fired 10,000 people while the billionaire generously earmarked a part of his wealth for charity. As men are making strides in the corporate world, it’s only apt that men’s day and women’s entrepreneurship day falls on the same date.
Let’s take a look at the accomplishment of the world’s five richest men on International Men’s Day.
Elon Musk’s empathetic management style
Having taken over electric car firm Tesla before pushing out its original founders, Elon Musk is known for his Twitter behaviour, which even resulted action against Tesla for misleading tweets on taking the firm private. But since he took over Twitter weeks back, Musk has been the most honest boss, clearly telling employees to work 12 hours for seven days to avoid getting fired and being upfront about the possibility of Twitter going bankrupt. The man of action and free speech advocate also went on to lay off thousands of Twitter employees, before firing others for questioning him publicly on Twitter. With his successful management style, Elon Musk has now triggered a mass resignation at Twitter with his ultimatum to the staff, and has brought the site to the verge of an outage with ideas of turning off microservices by 80 per cent.
Bernard Arnault’s contribution to fashion
Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Dior are the shining stars among luxury brands, conceived by the creative minds of iconic fashion designers of their time. But they are all now owned by the world’s second richest man Bernard Arnault, who may not have experience as a designer, but had the money from his grandfather’s construction business to acquire an ailing Louis Vuitton. Among his recent struggles, Arnault had to sell a private jet to escape being tracked by climate activists who were calling him out for emissions that his aircraft caused. Earlier this year, workers at 18 factories of Louis Vuitton had to go on strike for reduced work hours and better pay, at Arnault’s firm which accomplished a 19 out of 100 score on preventing labour exploitation.
Jeff Bezos elevating work-life balance
The man behind the top e-commerce firm built his empire from scratch in 1994, and an investment from his parents of just $250,000 in 1995. He went on to build a trillion dollar business, which has started a mass layoff, firing thousands including an Indian woman on maternity leave with her 3-week-old child. While 21 employees of Bezos had penned a letter about sexism and toxic work culture at his aerospace firm Blue Origin, the billionaire remembered to thank his employees who paid for him to fly to space.
Gautam Adani’s rise from scratch
Gautam Adani is the only Indian among top five richest men, and has built an empire which is active in diverse sectors including power generation, clean energy and mining. Despite multiple drug seizures plaguing Adani’s port in Mundra, the firm has continued expansion beyond India’s borders, going on to invest in a port in Myanmar controlled by the country’s military. Adani who seeks to become a major supplier of clean energy and green hydrogen, has also struggled with obstructions to his coal mining operations in Australia from climate activists.
Warren Buffet’s pearls of wisdom
The oracle of Omaha is known for his ability to identify lucrative investments, and his views on women as well. During an interview with CNBC in 2017, the media mogul said that if a woman says no, she means maybe and if she says maybe it means yes, and she’s no lady if she says yes. This was a unique take on women at a time when no means no is being reiterated to raise awareness about consent. This year, a mortgage firm owned by Buffet is also facing allegations of discriminating against Black and Latino people trying to buy houses in Philadelphia.
