Insights

I stole that line from a client I was working with in Orlando last week.   This particular client is a global pharmaceutical and manufacturing company in the animal health space. We were about to kick off a leadership session with their top 100 leaders, all focused on...

In the 1990s, a group of high-earning professionals formed Workaholics Anonymous. A founder of the group said, “No matter how much work I did, it was never enough.”  Sound familiar?  This addiction is one we collectively share. It goes beyond an addiction to work—it...

A friend of mine once described working at Amazon as “building a rocket ship while being pushed off a cliff.” Back then, the company’s obsession with innovation made that intensity feel exciting. But today, Amazon’s attempt to reignite that startup energy feels less...

We’ve been sold a lie about leadership.  We’ve been told that great leaders take control. That they set the vision, enforce accountability, drive engagement, and build culture through sheer willpower.  But here’s the thing: Culture can’t be controlled. It can’t be...

I just got off the phone with the CEO of a global corporation with a $75B market cap who was expressing a common challenge: her team needs to learn how to collaborate now more than ever. The old rules of leadership, where silos were merely inefficient, no longer...

AI has gone from public enemy number one to the golden child of innovation in record time. Just look at this week’s AI summit in Paris. JD Vance made his first major policy speech there, declaring that the U.S. is going all in on AI and urging other countries to...

Everyone gets selective about their outrage. We see it in politics, in business, in culture—everywhere. But what separates outrage that leads to meaningful change from outrage that’s just noise? Accountability. Take the federal government. The Trump administration,...

Not long ago, the middle manager was the linchpin of the corporate world. They juggled project management, performance tracking, and resource allocation while ensuring their teams stayed on track. Today, those responsibilities are increasingly being handed over to...

For the past year, I’ve been wrestling with a nagging feeling that the stakes in my life aren’t high enough. It’s not that things are bad. They’re not. In many ways, life and work are going well. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’m not risking enough or...

Raise your hand if you’ve worked for a company that insisted on referring to employees as “partners” or “team members.” I’m looking at you, Starbucks. When I’m doing keynotes, about 15% of the time, I’m instructed not to say “employees.” This is a management choice to...

Change is inevitable, but resilience is a choice. Patagonia, once celebrated for seamlessly blending work, play, and purpose, now faces an identity crisis as it navigates operational and cultural upheaval. Recent decisions to streamline operations, cut jobs, and ramp...

As 2025 approaches, the workplace is set to experience seismic shifts. From navigating political changes to embracing cutting-edge technology, organizations face both challenges and opportunities. Here are the top predictions for workplace trends in 2025 and how...

As we head into the final weeks of the year, this newsletter kicks off a special series: 2025 Workplace Trends. These are the ideas shaping how we’ll work next year and beyond—starting with something that’s equal parts fascinating and terrifying: AI-powered empathy. ...

Guess what—skills and knowledge aren’t enough anymore. In a world where everyone has access to the same information and where technical expertise is a given, what’s going to set you apart?  The answer is mindset. Specifically, an accountability mindset. Whether you’re...

Imagine this: It’s May 1, 2028, and across the country, industries grind to a halt. Not just one union, not just one company, but hundreds of thousands of workers across sectors and industries standing together in one of the largest coordinated labor movements the...

As Amazon and Starbucks begin enforcing return-to-office policies, CEOs everywhere are asking if bringing employees back will save their company culture. I recently sat down with NBC’s Christine Romans for a segment on Nightly News with Lester Holt, tackling this very...

I’m working on a report that should be released by the end of the year on “CEO Chatter” (working title – if you have a better suggestion, send it to me).  Our senior partners and I travel the world chatting with CEOs about their challenges, vision, and transformation...

Let’s talk about a common complaint I hear across companies: “You’re not visible enough.” Someone can be a top performer, hitting all their goals, but somehow, if they’re not front and center with leadership, it feels like they’re not making the mark. Why is there this obsession with visibility? It’s a phenomenon that has been magnified by remote work, where being on Slack, speaking up in meetings, and generally being “seen” is often misinterpreted as a measure of performance.

The port strike isn’t over; it’s on pause for the next few months. And the biggest sticking point which puts your business in danger has yet to be agreed upon.   This has been a battle about two issues: wages and automation. The wages part has been settled thanks to...

As the mother of a seven-year-old, I will remember today. Today is the day that the most powerful woman in AI, Mira Murati, left her post as CTO of OpenAI, and the company announced its plans to transition to a for-profit entity. This is a critical moment for humanity...

As we near the end of the calendar year, the question on everyone's mind is: will we see salary increases in 2025? With economic uncertainty lingering, it’s tough to gauge what’s ahead for compensation budgets. To help us cut through the noise, I spoke with Tom...

I recently had the opportunity to interview Joshua Rhett Miller, Chief Investigative Reporter at Newsweek, about his cover story, "Resilient Economy 'Feels Very Untrue' to Many Americans." While the economic indicators suggest a soft landing for the U.S. economy, many...