Fortune November 2020

change for the better

IT IS HARD to change any institution—particularly one as revered as Fortune’s annual ranking of the Most Powerful Women in Business. But in 2020, a year unlike any other, our MPW team concluded that our venerable list would benefit from a crucial tweak. It needed a measure of influence and power that went beyond the company P&L—a sense that the women on this prestigious roster aren’t just great business executives, but also leaders who have used their power and influence to shape their companies “and the wider world for the better,” as Fortune’s Kristen Bellstrom and Beth Kowitt write in their introduction to this year’s package (please see page 65). To be sure, business prowess still takes a front seat, as it has for the previous 22 years we’ve published our…

carol tomé

THIS EDITED Q&A HAS BEEN CONDENSED FOR SPACE AND CLARITY “In the second quarter alone, we had to hire 40,000 people just to get the packages delivered.” FROM CFO TO THE BIG SHOW After 24 years at Home Depot, you walked into a new job in the middle of a crisis. How has UPS been impacted by COVID-19? TOMÉ: So, unlike a lot of companies, the majority of UPSers get up every day and go to work. You know, they put on their uniform, right? They can’t work remotely. You can imagine what we had to go through—just imagine hundreds of thousands of package cars, having to make sure that they’re clean. We’ve adapted pretty well based on all the feedback I get. We have had unprecedented demand come our way. 1 In the…

are we better off than we were four years ago?

BUSINESS. DISTILLED. FORTY YEARS AGO, a 69-year-old candidate for President stood on a Cleveland debate stage 15 feet from the incumbent, turned to the television audience, and asked a question that would seemingly change the race overnight: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” It was Oct. 28, 1980, and opinion polls until then had been suggesting a close contest between the two nominees, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, the Republican, and President Jimmy Carter, the Democrat—with the most recent of surveys splitting down the middle as to who had the edge. But the challenger’s question that evening, posed at the end of a cordial 90-minute exchange, clarified the choice in a flash. The American economy was wilting under the burden of “stagflation,” a portmanteau that roughly translated to…

global giants getting it right

THROUGHOUT the year, in partnership with people analytics firm Great Place to Work, Fortune publishes lists ranking the best U.S. workplaces across a number of categories. In 2020, on the Best Workplaces for Diversity, Millennials, Women, and Parents lists, as well as the Best Workplaces in Technology, tech conglomerate Cisco has ranked among the top eight—and it landed at No. 4 on this year’s domestic 100 Best Companies list. So it should come as no surprise that Cisco tops GPTW and Fortune’s World’s 25 Best Workplaces list this year, for the second year in a row. All 25 companies appearing here received top ratings on GPTW’s surveys of their employees in at least five countries. On average, these firms have offices in 12 different countries and employ 88,000 people worldwide. About half…

a powerful took for trade hawks

THIS SUMMER, when the Trump administration ordered the popular social media app TikTok to sell its U.S. operations, it marked a new escalation in the U.S.-China trade war. The clash also introduced much of the general public, including lip-synching teens and their parents, to a secretive body called CFIUS—the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States—which can block or unwind foreign acquisitions of U.S. assets in the name of national security. CFIUS (pronounced “SIFF-ee-us”) will have final sign-off on a proposed deal to deliver partial control over TikTok to a coalition of U.S. investors and companies, including Oracle and Walmart. Once an obscure nook in Washington’s regulatory labyrinth, CFIUS has grown dramatically in power and influence in recent years, as Congress beefed up its mandate as part of a technological…

plastic surgery sees a ‘zoom boom’

EYE BAGS. DOUBLE CHINS. That inexplicable crease between your brows. If you are like many Americans who have spent hundreds of hours in videoconferences these past few months, your colleagues’ brilliant business ideas aren’t the only things that have captured your attention during meetings. Marie Hayag, a dermatologist and founder of Fifth Avenue Aesthetics on New York City’s Upper East Side, underscores what she calls “the Zoom effect,” explaining she has heard a lot of complaints from new and returning patients about imperfections that were newly noticed while videoconferencing. Among the most requested treatments right now: neuromodulars (such as Botox) targeting fine lines and wrinkles, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy for stress-related hair loss, treatment for “maskne,” and body sculpting. “More patients are working from home and can receive procedures that require…