Avoiding Fake Digital Transformations | Inside The SPAC Gold Rush | Target CEO Brian Cornell's Blockbuster Year

Plus: Never Make A Big Decision Without A Woman At The Table—And Other Lessons From Cosmetics Billionaire Leonard Lauder

Ah, the bliss of the short Thanksgiving week. Annually the holiday-season kickoff, this year, of course, the usual joyful anticipation of friends and family gathering together is tempered by fears of spiking Covid-19 cases (and its seemingly related hoarding: searches on Amazon, Walmart and Target found no Bounty paper towels in stock; Boxed.com came in clutch). But with the rise in cases comes daily the news of coronavirus-vaccine advancements. With the world’s roadmap still unclear, C-suite executives are working to close out 2020 even as they look forward to 2021, finding pockets of success in adaptation. This week be sure to check out, if you haven’t already, Forbes Senior Editor Steven Bertoni’s breakdown of Target CEO Brian Cornell’s strategy to double-down on investment in stores and employees, leading to soaring sales (clearly of, among many other things, paper towels).

We hope you can regard this week and its holiday as a chance to take a breather and appreciate friends and loved ones, even if from afar, finding inspiration in the opportunity of innovation and resilience in the direst of circumstances.

This digest of Forbes content is your weekly touchpoint as you negotiate internal, external and cultural factors. We hope you find it useful, and let us know what else you’d
like to see here.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Comings & Goings

In January, Patti Poppe will take the reins as the new CEO of California utility company PG&E. The former head of Michigan’s CMS Energy, Poppe will have the difficult task of pulling PG&E from its current death spiral. 

After serving as co-CIO of oil giant Hunt Consolidated for six months, Stephen de Campos will assume the role in full in January.

Connection & Collaboration

WPP, the British advertising and communications giant, is combining a few of its biggest operations under two banners. The merger of Grey and AKQA (soon to be known as the AKQA Group) will combine Grey’s creative energies with AKQA’s technical know-how, streamlining WPP’s business, while folding Geometry into VMLY&R will create a “creative commerce company.”

The barrier between corporate finance and IT is steadily eroding. In an interview with Forbes Senior Contributor Jeff Thomson, Blue Yonder’s CFO Sue Savage weighs in on how finance professionals are increasingly working with big data, automation and software.

As the pandemic has accelerated many companies’ adoption of digital infrastructure, it’s also made “innovation” a buzzword for those looking to imitate actual dynamism. How can you tell the difference? Consider how the board sees the company.

By The Numbers

$65 billion

The amount raised by special purpose acquisition companies in 2020.

SPACs, publicly-held shell companies that form to take promising private companies public, have been dominant on Wall Street this year, but are they all that they’re cracked up to be?

Talent & Culture

Do your hiring plans for 2021 involve recruiting employees with technical expertise? With tech workers in high demand, it may be worth investing in upskilling your current workforce, rather than competing for fresh talent.

Leaders aren’t only found in the C-suite. The skill of leadership, or being able to critically and collaboratively analyze and execute, can be fostered at all levels of an organization.

The ongoing reckoning over social justice playing out across the U.S. has led many businesses to reevaluate their own cultures and practices. Too often, these efforts are siloed in human resources departments or with diversity consultants. Instead, embrace them from the top down.

The CxO Profile

Across Forbes