Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
When Brian Doubles became CEO of Synchrony in 2021, a global pandemic had upended the way companies thought about work. Remote options became ubiquitous, and many employees, when possible, were given the tools they needed to do their jobs from anywhere. Now, even as other financial services companies and banks have issued return-to-office mandates, Doubles is making a different bet: Stamford, Connecticutbased Synchrony allows its more than 20,000 employees to work from home or in a company facility (or a mix of both) with in-person gatherings for training, leadership meetings, innovation sessions, and culture-building events.
The decision appears to be paying off. Turnover is down, job applications are up 30%, and this year Synchrony climbed to No. 2 on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, up from No. 37 in 2021.
The recognition caps four years of key gains for the company, which is the nations largest issuer of private-label credit cards. In June, Synchrony announced it would power a new credit card program with Walmart, winning back business the company lost to rival Capital One in 2018, and adding to a roster of clients that includes Lowes, Verizon, and Amazon. Last year, the company reported net interest income of $18 billion, an increase of 26% from 2021. Since Doubles became CEO, the stock has risen more than 60%, outperforming the S&P 500. (Disclosure: Synchrony was a sponsor of the recent Fast Company Innovation Festival.)
Synchronys growth comes despite some headwinds in the world of consumer credit, which former Synchrony parent General Electric helped popularize when it started financing appliance purchases in the 1930s. (GE completed the spin-off of its credit business in 2015.) Store-branded cards once dominated credit card issuance. Now, as big brick-and-mortar retailers such as JCPenney and Macys have contracted, store credit cards account for just 4% of purchase volume in the U.S. Well-heeled consumers, meanwhile, are opting for rewards cards such as American Express Platinum or Chase Sapphire Reserve, while more cash-conscious Gen Z consumers finance purchases using buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) products.
Productive paranoia
Synchrony is well placed to respond to changes in the business and economic landscape thanks to a reorganization Doubles executed upon becoming CEO. Though the company was posting strong financial results as consumers returned to pre-pandemic spending, Doubles restructured the business to expand and diversify its customer base; he also created a growth organization and combined the technology and operations to accelerate new product development.
I have a productive paranoia, and I think the best time to embark on a big change like that is from a position of strength, he says. The intent of the reorganization was to bring innovation to market fasterto anticipate what our partners need from us before theyre asking us for it. For example, rather than creating a dedicated solution for every enterprise customer (Synchrony calls them partners), the company now develops a standardized product and scales it across hundreds of customers, making customized tweaks in the later stages.
Leaders say bringing teams together has given different departments fluency in their counterparts work, leading to faster digital tool development. When I go inside our P.I. [program increment] sessions, which is how agile teams operate, I cant tell whos from technology and whos from credit, Max Axler, chief credit officer, says of the cross-departmental group that works on PRISM, a proprietary system that makes underwriting and credit decisions.
PRISM is a case study in harnessing Doubless productive paranoia. Synchrony changed a process that was working just fineSynchrony has always been expert at underwritingand took it to new levels. Today, PRISM can assess an applicants creditworthiness in a six-second window while theyre checking out at a store, using 9,000 data points, up from about 100 in 2018. It was a big message to the organization that we were going to completely redesign the credit platform, Doubles says, adding: It gave other teams permission to rethink everything they were doing as well. Even if its working, rethink it.
Because PRISM looks at more variables to make credit decisions, Synchrony says it has been able to extend cards to people who previously might have been rejected because of their credit scores alone. And many of those consumers become especially loyal customers: Synchrony says these customers use their cards as top-of-wallet payment methods, driving repeat purchases. (Synchrony makes money when consumers borrow and pay interest on credit cards it has issued.)
Winning back Walmart
Even as Synchrony has been seeking new sources of revenue, including its own buy-now-pay-later offering, investors and analysts are cautiously optimistic about the financial impact of returning customer Walmart. (Before the companies parted ways in 2018, Walmart accounted for about $10 billion, or 19%, of Synchronys retail card balances, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.)
Doubles didnt offer much detail about the renewed relationship other than touting the benefits of the new card, especially for Walmart+ subscribers, who pay a membership fee for perks like free delivery and shipping, among others.
In a September report recapping a meeting with Synchrony executives, Bank of America Securities senior payments analyst Mihir Bhatia noted that management expects the partnership to be accretive to growth and profit margins, and characterized company leaders as palpably more excited about a deeper collaboration with Walmart, including store displays and online promotion of the card. If Walmart is invested in the partnership and pushes the product and creates an interesting value proposition, customers will respond to that and get the card, says Bhatia, who has a buy rating on Synchrony stock. If more people get the card, more people spend money on the card, more people borrow on the card, and thats good for Synchrony. (The report also paraphrased management saying pure-play BNPL competitors are having a limited impact on Synchronys growth, and noted that Synchrony has introduced its own BNPL offering.)
RTO outlier
For all its technological and operational gains, Synchrony is still best known in some circles for its flexible work arrangements. But it wasnt always a remote-work champion. Pre-pandemic, we were a 99% in-office culture, says DJ Casto, chief human resources officer at Synchrony. This was a big fundamental change and a big trust exercise with our workforce.
A company survey showed that moe than 85% of employees wanted a remote option, prompting the company to permanently adopt a policy that lets everyone work from home or in the office, or for many, a combination of the two, provided they live within commuting distance of a Synchrony office and come in from time to time. In contrast, many Wall Street investment banks and competitors such as JPMorganChase have mandated in-office days. It is worth noting that because Synchrony doesnt have any physical bank branches, which arent needed in the credit card business, the company is able to offer hybrid work to hourly and salaried workers alike.
Were trusting our employees to still give 110% even though were not monitoring how much time theyre spending in the office, Doubles adds. I remind our team all the time that the hybrid work model is a privilege, and we have to earn it every day. We have to earn it by running a successful business thats growing.
To ensure accountability and employee engagement in a hybrid workforce, Casto says the company emphasizes the importance of ongoing one-on-one meetings between employees and managers with significant focus on coaching versus managing. Indeed, the company has embedded coaching throughout the organization. All of Doubless executive leadership team members have coaches, and Casto is working to make coaching available to a wider group of employees, including high-potential folks or people trying to work through complicated problems. The company also offers wellness coaches to all employees.
Listening to employees drove Synchronys approach to work. Doubles says he also leans on active listening to help him run the business. You have to listen to your employees, he says. Theyre going to tell you whats working and whats not working. And if theyre telling you whats not working, you have got to act on it fast, and they have to feel you acting on it.
Is your team remote or back in office?
What is your companys remote-work policy, and has it improved employee engagement? Send your experiences to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id like to share some of your insights in a future newsletter.
Read more: winning workplaces
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Adam Grant on how to build a winning workplace
Over the past three decades, a wealth of research has shown that psychological safetythe perception that it is safe to speak up and take risks without fear of embarrassment, rejection, or retributionis one of the most consistent and important predictors of leadership competence and team effectiveness. As one of us (Amy Edmondson) has illustrated in The Fearless Organization, when team members trust that their voice will be heard and valued, they are more willing to take the kinds of interpersonal risks that innovation requires.
Unsurprisingly, this matters enormously in todays organizations. Whether the challenge is developing a new product, responding to a shifting market, or solving a stubborn customer problem, innovation rarely emerges only from top-down decree. Instead, it tends to bubble up from people on the ground, with people feeling the freedom to test ideas, share half-formed thoughts and, especially, point out problems others would prefer to ignore (just consider the impact of an employee highlighting a deficient company process to their boss, versus pretending everything is fine, just in order to avoid being reprimanded). Without psychological safety, those behaviors are stifled, and teams end up playing it safe; choosing caution over candor, and conformity over creativity.
The leaders role in creating safety
Decades of evidence also highlight that leaders play an outsized role in creating the conditions for psychological safety. Simply put, a managers behavior sets the tone for what is acceptable, expected, rewarded, and sanctioned in a team.
Leaders who foster safety tend to do several things. First, they model curiosity and openness, asking questions, inviting ideas, and showing genuine interest in different perspectives. Second, they are also good at sanctioning bad behaviors, making it clear for everyone that dismissiveness, ridicule, or hostility have no place in the team. Third, they tend to build trust by admitting their own fallibility. That is, when leaders acknowledge that they dont have all the answers, they encourage others to contribute, which is a critical enabler of team and organizational performance in an age in which knowledge and expertise are likely shared among employees rather than concentrated in those who are in charge. Finally, these leaders encourage smart risk-taking: allowing room for small experiments, tolerating failures, and helping the team learn from them. In short, leaders create safety when they challenge themselves and others to confront reality and engage with each other in honest, respectful ways.
As these behaviors imply, psychological safety is not about comfort. Rather, it is a platform for productive discomfort: the kind of discomfort that fuels innovation, learning, and growth. And leaders are the architects and engineers of this climate.
Why ‘just being yourself’ threatens safety
As one of us (Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic) illustrates in a forthcoming book, Dont Be Yourself: Why Authenticity is Overrated and What to Do Instead, it has become fashionable to tell leadersand othersto just be yourself or to bring your whole self to work. The idea is seductive: after all, who wouldnt want to work in a place where they can express themselves freely, without external pressures or obligation to align their behavior to a corporate norm, and perhaps even celebrated for expressing their unedited and unfiltered self? But here lies a dangerous misconception. In fact, your authentic or whole self also includes the undesirable, unprofessional, and dark side dimensions of your character. As a comprehensive review of this topic highlights, self-expressions may be experienced and perceived as authentic, and yet reduce ones influence if they irritate, anger, or overwhelm others. In that sense, you are better off bringing your best self to work; save the rest for your family, with whom we sympathize for having no escape! Psychological safety is not built through unfiltered self-expression; instead, it tends to require the opposite. Leaders who want to build safe environments for learning and innovation must resist the temptation to bring their whole self to work. Rather, they must make an effort to cultivate and express the best possible version of their professional self, namely the self that is devoted to the greater good, to developing others, and to working hard to achieve meaningful goals.
In any of these cases, bringing your whole self may feel liberating for the leader, but it comes at the expense of the teams ability to contribute without fear. Psychological safety demands that leaders filter, regulate, and elevate their behavior: an aspiration that is quite distinct from unedited authenticity.
Consider four ways in which whole self leadership can obstruct safety:
Unfiltered emotions: A leader who vents every frustration, irritation, or passing mood risks creating a volatile climate. Teams end up tiptoeing around the leaders emotions instead of focusing on the work.
Biases and prejudices: Everyone harbors biases, but airing them under the guise of authenticity is toxic. Expressing stereotypes or discriminatory views (however sincerely held) undermines trust and risks excluding essential voices.
Radical candor taken too far: Brutal honesty about every thought or judgment may feel authentic, but it can humiliate others. Safety requires candor, yes, but also tact, empathy, and timing. Even Ray Dalio, one of the most famous champions of radical transparency, acknowledges there must be some limits to unfiltered honesty. He says, “if someone shows you a picture of their newborn child, you dont tell them ‘thats an ugly baby.’
Self-centeredness: Leaders who insist on prioritizing their own needs, quirks, or values above the teams mission confuse the purpose of leadership. Leadership is about enabling others, not indulging oneself. Indeed, with power comes responsibility, and with great power comes great responsibility. The only people who want absolute power without any responsibility are narcissistic or psychopathic megalomaniacs who end up being toxic or destructive leaders.
Why others, too, should bring their best, not their whole, selves
The same principle applies to employees who are not formal leaders. While leaders carry the heavier responsibility, every team member contributes to the climate. A workplace cannot function if being yourself means failing to consider how ones actions affect others.
Imagine a software engineer who insists on interrupting colleagues because thats just how I am. Or a salesperson who justifies aggressive, competitive behavior as authentic. Or someone who loves cracking jokes that make some people laugh but are offensive or hurtful to others. At some point, the right to be fully oneself collides with the obligation to create space for others. Teams thrive not because everyone is indulging their idiosyncrasies, but because members align around a shared mission and adapt their behavior to make collective work possible.
The goal is thus not to suppress individuality but to channel it productively. The healthiest teams encourage employees to bring their best selves: the part that is curious, constructive, and committed to learning. Our best selves make an effort to understand others and to collaborate effectively even with those who dont think like us. This professional version of yourself can still come across as authentic, because it is an authentic part of who you are, but it requires developing adequate social skills and an empathetic mindset to strengthen safety rather than undermine it. This is not always easy, but its important for helping to advance the mission of the organization. So, by all means, seem authenticby being a positive influence on others and harnessing a reputation for adding value to the team. Embrace the aspiration to have an authentic self that is admirable and worthy of followers.
Authenticity and safety: a nuanced relationship
As we have tried to illustrate, the relationship between authenticity and psychological safety is not simple. At their best, they reinforce each other: when people feel safe, they are more likely to be authentic, and when leaders model thoughtful authenticity, they reinforce safety. But without boundaries, both concepts can be distorted into their opposite.
Authenticity without self-awareness becomes selfishness. Safety without accountability for impact becomes permissiveness. The real challenge for leaders is to hold the tension between the two, to create an environment where people can speak up candidly yet still regulate themselves in service of the teams goals.
This requires negotiation, experimentation, and repair. Teams must talk openly about what behaviors support or undermine safety. Missteps will happen; what matters is how they are handledsuch as, with humility, apology, and renewed commitment. Karl Poppers famous paradox of tolerance is instructive here: if you want a tolerant society, you must be intolerant of intolerance. The same logic applies in organizations. If you want psychological safety, you must be unwilling to tolerate behaviors that erode it.
The leadership imperative
In the end, creating psychological safety is less about leaders revealing their whole selves and more about leaders taking responsibility for the selves they bring. The leaders task is not self-expression but stewardship: creating the conditions where others can do their best thinking, experimenting, and learning.
That is the paradox of safety and authenticity at work. To build trust, leaders must be human, vulnerable, and real. But to sustain safety, they must also regulate, filter, and discipline their impulses. The same is true for peers. Authenticity is valuable only when it is paired with accountability to others.
Leaders who grasp this nuance will build workplaces where people feel free to speak up and take risks, but not free to disregard the collective mission. That balance, between authenticity and responsibility, between freedom and accountability, is the real foundation of psychological safety.
While most museums have some kind of storea place to buy a postcard or mug and help their respective institutions squeeze a few more bucks from its visitorsfew are actually outstanding places to shop. The notable exception is MoMA.
The MoMA Store has become a brand in and of itself to the point where there are shoppers who know the acronym and logo but not necessarily the history behind them. And while retail has helped MoMA gain name recognition, the museum wants it to become a more effective ambassador for the flagship art institution. The recent renovation of MoMA’s SoHo design store, which recently reopened after months of renovations, exemplifies this new approach.
We’ve been thinking beyond revenue and contemplating our reach and how our retail business can connect people to the larger institution and to its mission of connecting people around the world to the art of our times, says Jesse Goldstine, the general manager of MoMAs retail operations, who joined the museum in 2015. This rolls up into the biggest pivot in the business since Ive been managing retail at MoMA, which is the shift in strategy from the typical exit-through-the-store model to retail as a point of entry for the institution.
[Photo: MoMA]
Between online sales, brick-and-mortar shops, and licensing, MoMAs retail endeavors generate more than three million transactions annually (MoMA declined to share sales figures). To put that figure into context, the museum welcomed 2.7 visitors during between 2023 and 2024. MoMA says at least 7% of museum visitors learn about the institution through merchandise. Recently, MoMA has been ramping up its licensing partnerships with brands like Lego, New Era (for cobranded Yankees and Mets hats), and Nike (for cobranded tube socks). Additionally, more than half of MoMA Stores revenue is driven by brick-and-mortar stores.
Because the shop might be the first time someone engages with MoMA, the institution saw an opportunity to strengthen a connection to the museum itself. See an Aalto vase in the shop, then head to Midtown to see an archival example. Part of his shift has to do with the nature of SoHo and how the design store, which opened in 2001, relates to the neighborhoods visitors.
When people come to 53rd Street, they know what MoMA is, they understand the brand, Goldstine says. They likely are walking out of the museum and into one of our retail locations. In SoHo, not necessarily. They may have grabbed a cup of coffee and saw a cool thing in the window. They may be excited about the MoMA hoodie that they’ve seen on TikTok or Instagram and want to go purchase it, but they don’t understand who we are as a business.
[Photo: MoMA]
A store that channels a museum
To strengthen the connection, MoMA Design Store now looks a bit more like a museum. Working closely with Peterson Rich Officethe Brooklyn-based architecture firm behind Galerie Perrotins downtown outpost and the Mets forthcoming retail and dining renovationthe shop reconfigured its layout to accommodate the strategy.
First off, its much easier to see inside the store. Before, MoMA Design Store used its storefront for vitrine-like displays in each window. They looked attractive, but blocked longer interior views. Now, the windows are unobstructed and instead look into a spacious, gallery-like space in the front of the store, which will feature products from the museums collection plus exclusives and special pop-ups. (Its also a flexible area that can be emptied out for events and talks to seat 50 people.)
They also installed deep, built-in cabinets along the storefront at window height, which offers a space where furniture is displayed sparingly, like sculpture. Perforated metal shelving acts as a back wall for the storefront gallery as well as a secondary threshold into the shop.
[Photo: MoMA]
A more controlled entry sequence into the store is another shift for the experience. Instead of two doors at the corner of Spring and Crosby, theres now one entrance on Spring. The architects shifted the door over a few feet so that its on a central axis and offers a sightline to the back wall, which is the site of a new rotating mural commission from a contemporary artist. The first is by Nina Chanel Abney and will be up for a couple of years.
Overall, PRO emphasized whats necessary for function but kept its interventions minimal. Sustainability concerns (why use more material than you need to or rebuild something thats perfectly sound?) alongside architectural philosophy influenced the renovation. The stores original design by 1100 Architects was celebrated when it debuted in 2001 and involved covering p the 19th-century buildings industrial detailsthink mirrored panels over cast-iron columns and an illuminated drop ceiling over pipes and air ductsbut didnt serve the new business strategy.
It was the spirit of the time, says Miriam Peterson, who founded PRO with Nathan Rich. There was almost a fight against history and old things or this attitude that in order to have a point of view about what it means to be contemporary, you have to erase or obliterate whatever it is that was there before.
PRO removed most of the aughts-era interventions (the only feature they kept was the concrete stair leading to the basement, where home goods and children’s departments are). They wanted to make the shop feel spacious and heighten the feeling of being in SoHo, playing up the features that are distinct to the building. You cant squander the history of New York, Rich says.
[Photo: MoMA]
Refreshingly, the redesign is not intended to be an Instagrammable experience, which has influenced so many SoHo flagships as of late. Its still, at its heart, a very good place to shop.
Youll still be able to find exclusive products that MoMA Stores merchandisers and buyers source from all around the world and that have all been curator approvedincluding Kermit-green expandable suitcases from the Korean brand Rawrow, painterly tumblers from the century-old European glassware company Ichendorf, and retro-style Bodum coffee makers plus perennial bestsellers like perpetual calendars, ceramic Anthora cups, and prismatic acrylic side tables. However, there are 30% fewer SKUs on the floor, a strategy that gives merchandisers more space for storytellingthis includes iPads with video demonstrations of electronics, like projectorsplus breathing room for each product. (Anyone whos braved the crowds on weekends or around the holidays will likely appreciate more space to move around.)
The redesigned store and strategy behind it also speaks to shifts in how people want to shop. Consumers are interested in spending money at places that align with their values. Its easier than ever to find attractive, stylish products online and there are countless outlets now with aesthetics similar to MoMA Store. However, none of them have the same history and connection to art.
In the past, it might have been that the museum lent credibility to the store’s inventory, but the relationship is more reciprocal now. On their way out of the store, visitors will notice a screen near the door that advertises the current exhibitions in the museum. The train uptown to see them is just two blocks away.
Since our return from Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, we have been dissecting the World Economic Forums Future of Jobs Report 2025. The WEF surveyed more than 1,000 companies from 22 different industries across 55 countries to attempt to predict and paint a picture of what work will look like in 2030.
The encouraging news is that there are projected to be 170 million new jobs globally by 2030; however, 92 million jobs are expected to be eliminated due to AI automation. That is a net gain of 78 million jobs by 2030. To get a true understanding of why and how this shift will occur, here is a look at the story beneath the story.
4 factors reshaping the global workforce
Four disruptive forces driving the next chapter of work stood out in the WEF report:
AI and automation will continue to permeate the globe. By 2030, 86% of companies anticipate that artificial intelligence will have a significant impact on their operations. The scale and speed of this shift are unprecedented.
Economic pressure is growing. Half of employers say rising costs are forcing them to rework their business models by looking at ways to cut costs while increasing revenue and production. How? AI and automation are the fastest and surest ways.
The green transition is accelerating. As companies pursue their own climate goals, demand will surge for renewable energy engineers, sustainability consultants, and carbon auditors.
Demographics are shifting. Developed countries are aging at an accelerated rate, while developing nations are sending their younger populations into the workforce. This shift is creating opportunities in several regions worldwide.
AI creates new business models, opportunities, and industries
Every technological revolutionfrom electricity to the internetsparked fears of obsolescence. But each wave created more jobs than it destroyed. Take the internet: In the 1990s, critics predicted a massive increase in unemployment and economic destruction. Today? The commercial internet alone supports 28.4 million jobs and drives 18% of the United States GDP.
It created new career paths that didnt exist before, like social media managers and DevOps engineers. Whole industries were created: software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, cloud computing, e-commerce platforms, and the creator economy. Every technological advancement in history has led to a net increase in employment.
AI is following the same pattern, and were at the edge of the job creation phase. Consider the rise of ChatGPT. Behind every AI tool is a multidisciplinary team of humans.
Machine learning engineers designed and implemented the algorithms. Data scientists and data engineers cleaned, curated, and labeled massive datasets. AI ethics experts are working to ensure responsible and fair AI use. Infrastructure architects built the cloud systems that scale these models globally. Every AI tool you use required dozens of specialists to make it work. The more AI gets deployed, the more humans we need to build, maintain, and improve these systems. Its continuous work that requires human expertise.
Jobs that are growing versus those disappearing
As organizations navigate these times of change, there are multiple areas in which they should focus. To best prepare for the future and set a company up for growth, they must start building a deep team that relies heavily on big data specialists, AI and machine learning engineers, fintech developers, software engineers, and environmental and renewable energy specialists.
Conversely, some roles will decrease significantly in number or disappear altogether. If there are people at a company who hold these roles, they need to be reskilled or upskilled if there is a desire to save on recruiting and training costs. Administrative assistants can be almost completely replaced via AI for handling scheduling and initial call response. Accountants and auditors at the entry to mid-managerial level can be replaced by software and AI. Additionally, graphic designers who create emails, internal and external company documentation, and presentations will also be phased out. Upskilling or reskilling is crucial for individuals currently in those roles.
Irreplaceable skills
In the World Economic Forum report, employers anticipate that 39% of workers’ core skills will change by 2030. Essentially, the tasks you were hired to do, and the skills you possess that qualified you for and secured your job, may become obsolete in five years.
So what skills are rising in demand? Think of technical skills like proficiency in AI and big data, as well as cybersecurity. No matter the industry, the future will favor those who can think critically, collaborate effectively, and learn continuously to solve problems.
AI will continue to automate repetitive and mundane tasks, so AI and automation will almost exclusively handle frontline traditional grunt work. In these times of generational workforce shifts, the talent and skills of resilience and adaptability will become increasingly necessary to maintain relevance and demand for your services.
The jobs of tomorrow
To envision what new jobs will be created, you need to think about the problems and challenges that will be created by increased reliance on AI. AI will create more than it replaces, albeit in different roles and skill sets. As digital transformation continues to accelerate, companies will begin to staff up in roles such as software developers and UX designers, focusing on individuals who possess the skills to bridge the gap between technology and the businesses’ needs.
As medical science advances, the life expectancy of the population continues to increase, which is expected to drive demand for careers in healthcare, particularly in eldercare. As the population ages, the demand for doctors, nurses, and in-home caregivers will increase.
This is the way of things. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance; experience design; and supply chain resilience were not recognized as distinct job categories 10 years ago. What new jobs will exist and be in high demand over the next five to 10 years?
The age of endless preparation and flexibility
Unless you plan to retire within the next 18 months, you cannot rest on your current skills. AI and automation will likey displace some jobs, possibly including yours. But massive opportunities will open for people who are willing to adapt. Be a student of your industry and develop an understanding of how it is evolving. That will put you in a position to increase your skills and remain a vital part of your field.
Individuals’ futures are in their own hands. We all have to ask ourselves: Will I let the future happen to meor will I create it?
If you listen to the CEOs of elite AI companies or take even a passing glance at the U.S. economy, its abundantly obvious that AI excitement is everywhere.
Americas biggest tech companies have spent over $100 billion on AI so far this year, and Deutsche Bank reports that AI spending is the only thing keeping the United States out of a recession.
Yet if you look at the average non-tech company, AI is nowhere to be found. Goldman Sachs reports that only 14% of large companies have deployed AI in a meaningful way.
What gives? If AI is really such a big deal, why is there a multi-billion-dollar mismatch between excitement over AI and the techs actual boots-on-the-ground impact?
A new study from Stanford University provides a clear answer. The study reveals that theres a right and wrong way to use AI at work. And a distressing number of companies are doing it all wrong.
What can AI do for you?
The study, conducted by Stanfords Institute for Human-Centered AI and Digital Economy Lab and currently available as a pre-print, looks at the daily habits of 1,500 American workers across 104 different professions.
Specifically, it analyzes the individual things that workers actually spend their time doing. The study is surprisingly comprehensive, looking at jobs ranging from computer engineers to cafeteria cooks.
The researchers essentially asked workers what tasks theyd like AI to take off their plates, and which ones theyd rather do themselves. Simultaneously, the researchers analyzed which tasks AI can actually do, and which remain out of the technologys reach.
With these two datasets, the researchers then created a ranking system. They labeled tasks as Green Light Zone if workers wanted them automated and AI was up to the job, Red Light Zone if AI could do the work but people would rather do it themselves, and Yellow Light (technically R&D Opportunity Zone, but Im calling it Yellow Light because the metaphor deserves extending) if people wanted the task automated but AI isnt there yet.
They also created whats essentially a No Light zone for tasks that AI is bad at, and that people dont want it to do anyway.
The boring bits
The results are striking. Workers overwhelmingly want AI to automate away the boring bits of their jobs.
Stanfords study finds that 69.4% of workers want AI to free up time for higher value work and 46.6% would like it to take over repetitive tasks.
Checking records for errors, making appointments with clients, and doing data entry were some of the tasks workers considered most ripe for AIs help.
Importantly, most workers say they wanted to collaborate with AI, not have it fully automate their work. While 45.2% want an equal partnership between workers and AI, a further 35.6% want AI to work primarily on its own, but still seek human oversight at critical junctures.
Basically, workers want AI to take away the boring bits of their jobs, while leaving the interesting or compelling tasks to them.
A chef, for example, would probably love for AI to help with coordinating deliveries from their suppliers or messaging diners to remind them of an upcoming reservation.
When it comes to actually cooking food, though, theyd want to be the one pounding the piccata or piping the pastry cream.
The wrong way
So far, nothing about the studys conclusions feel especially surprising. Of course workers would like a computer to do their drudge work for them!
The studys most interesting conclusion, though, isnt about workers preferencesits about how companies are actually meeting (or more accurately, failing to meet) those preferences today.
Armed with their zones and information on how workers want to use AI, the researchers set about analyzing the AI-powered tools that emerging companies are bringing to market today, using a dataset from Y Combinator, a storied Silicon Valley tech accelerator.
In essence, they found that AI companies are using AI all wrong.
Fully 41% of AI tools, the researchers found, focus on either Red Light or No Light zone tasksthe ones that workers want to do themselves, or simply dont care much about in the first place.
Lots more tools try to solve problems in the Yellow Light Zonethings like preparing departmental budgets or prototyping new product designsthat workers would like to hand off to AI, but that AI still sucks at doing.
Only a small minority of todays AI products fall into the coveted Green Light zonetasks that AI is good at doing and that workers actually want done. And while many of todays leading AI companies are focused on removing humans from the equation, most humans would rather stay at least somewhat involved in their daily toil.
AI companies, in other words, are focusing on the wrong things. Theyre either solving problems no one wants solved, or using AI for tasks that it cant yet do.
Its no wonder, then, that AI adoption at big companies is so low. The tools available to them are whizzy and neat. But they dont solve the actual problems their workers face.
How to use AI well
For both workers and business leaders, Stanfords study holds several important lessons about the right way to use AI at work.
Firstly, AI works best when you use it to automate the dull, repetitive, mind-numbing parts of your job.
Sometimes doing this requires a totally new tool. But in many cases, it just requires an attitude shift.
A recent episode of NPRs Planet Money podcast references a study where two groups of paralegals were given access to the same AI tool. The first group was asked to use the tool tobecome more productive, while the second group was asked to use it to do the parts of your job that you hate.
The first group barely adopted the AI tool at all. The second group of paralegals, though, flourished. They became dramatically more productive, even taking on work that would previously have required a law degree.
In other words, when it comes to adopting AI, instructions and intentions matter.
If you try to use AI to replace your entire job, youll probably fail. But if you instead focus specifically on using AI to automate away the parts of your job that you hate (basically, the Green Light tasks in the Stanford researchers rubric), youll thrive and find yourself using AI for way more things.
In the same vein, the Stanford study reveals that most workers would rather collaborate with an AI than hand off work entirely.
Thats telling. Lots of todays AI startups are focusing on agents that perform work autonomously. The Stanford research suggests that this may be the wrong approach.
Rather than trying to achieve full autonomy, the researchers suggest we should focus on partnering with AI and using it to enhance our work, perhaps accepting that a human will always need to be in the loop.
In many ways, thats freeing. AI is already good enough to perform many complex tasks with human oversight. If we accept that humans will need to stay involved, we can start using AI for complex things today, rather than waiting for artificial general intelligence (AGI) or some imagined, perfect future technology to arrive.
Finally, the study suggests that there are huge opportunities for AI companies to solve real-world problems and make a fortune doing it, provided that they focus on the right problems.
Diagnosing medical conditions with AI, for example, is cool. Building a tool to do this will probably get you heaps of VC money.
But doctors may not wantand more pointedly, may never usean AI that performs diagnostic work.
Instead, Stanfords study suggests theyd be more likely to use AI that does mundane thingstranscribing their patient notes, summarizing medical records, checking their prescriptions for medicine interactions, scheduling followup visits, and the like.
Automate the boring stuff is hardly a compelling rallying cry for todays elite AI startups. But its the approach thats most likely to make them boatloads of money in the long term.
Overall, then, the Stanford study is extremely encouraging. On the one hand, the mismatch between AI investment and AI adoption is disheartening. Is it all just hype? Are we in the middle of the mother of all bubbles?
Stanfords study suggests the answer is no. The lack of AI adoption is an opportunity, not a structural flaw of the tech.
AI indeed has massive potential to genuinely improve the quality of work, turbocharge productivity, and make workers happier. Its not that the tech is overhypedweve just been using it wrong.
Everlane made waves for being among the first brands to eradicate virgin plastic from its supply chain. In 2019, after years of work, the startup managed to switch out new plastic with recycled plastic, largely made from discarded water bottles. It began incorporating them into jackets and fleece sweaters and bodysuits.
It was a big step towards sustainability, since recycled polyester has a lower carbon footprint and diverts plastic from landfills. In the years that followed, many other brands on the marketfrom H&M to Pradafollowed in Everlane’s footsteps, but it didn’t solve the bigger problem of what happens when people decide to get rid of their recycled garment.
But unless a recycled polyester jacket is further recycled at the end of its life, it will end up in a landfill. Since plastic does not biodegrade, but break into microplastics that will end up in our waterways and food chain.
“We challenged ourselves to think, What does leading sustainability look like today?” says Alfred Chang, Everlane’s CEO, who joined a year ago. “We need to think beyond recycled fabric, to trying to make clothes that are, as much as possible, fully recyclable afterwards.”
Today, Everlane launches a puffer jacket called Everpuff that can be recycled back into a garment at the end of its life. It is designed to be durable and easy to mend, but also easily taken apart so all of its component partsfrom the polyester exterior to the inner down fill to the hardwarecan be recycled. It’s part of Everlane’s broader vision to make the rest of its product line fully circular.
The Challenge of Fabric-to-Fabric Recycling
For decades, environmental activists have urged societies to transition away from a linear economy, where natural resources are used to make products that will eventually be discarded at the end of their life. Instead, they argued we should move towards a circular system, where products are kept in the economy for as long as possible (through mending and resale) then recycled back into new products. This process would vastly reduce humans’ reliance on natural resources, and cut down on the greenhouse gas emissions used to extract those materials from the earth.
The fashion industry has talked about circularity for a long time, but until now, brands have tended to focus on extending the life of the garment by repairing them and creating secondhand sites. Recycling old garments into new ones proved a challenge because the technology to do so was still in its infancy. But Chang says that over the last few years, Everlane has been tracking how the recycling industry has been evolving. “We’re trying to understand where opportunities like when it comes to the infrastructure and investments in recycling,” he says.
Fabric-to-fabric recycling is much more sophisticated than it was just a few years ago. Over the last few years, Everlane has focused on sourcing recycled fibers. For instance, it has partnered with Circ, which transforms fabrics made from polyester and cotton blends into recycled polyester and lyocell fabrics. It also partners with Manteco, an Italian mill which recovers wool fibers and turn them back into wool fabric.
With Everpuff, the company take back the jacket at the end of its life and transform it into a new garment. It has partnered with Debrand, a company that can disassemble the garment, separate out the polyester, down, and hardware, then send each of these components to be recycled.
Katina Boutis, Everlane’s senior director of sustainability and sourcing, says that the company’s designers partnered closely with Debrand to create a jacket that would be as easy to recycle. For one thing, they made it from as few materials as possible. The exterior is made entirely of recycled polyester while the interior is made entirely of recycled down; since these are mono-materials, they are far easier to transform back into polyester and down. They also designed the jacket without any complex stitching, so it is easy to take it apart with Debrand’s machinery.
“We’re working with real innovators in this space, getting feedback about what challenges them in their operations, so we can create a product that isn’t just good for the customer but considers the entire lifetime of this product,” she says.
Designing for Durability
While this puffer can be turned back into a new puffer, Change points out that it is still important for the customer to wear it as long as possible. After all, it still takes a lot of resources to manufacture and recycle a product. “To be truly sustainable, we need to be thinking about how long a garment will be in circulation,” he says. “We want to offer guarantees and repairs to ensure the product can be kept for a long time. We’re also thinking about how it can be resold or passed down to another wearer.”
The Everpuff is the first Everlane product to come with a lifetime warranty that will allow the customer to receive a free repair (or replacement of the jacket if the damage is beyond repair). Customers can also pay for additional repairs. To create this program, Everlane partnered with Tersus Solutions, which has expertise in repairs.
Everlane also partners with Poshmark on a resale program called Re:Everlane, which allows you to more easily resell an Everlane item. The system automatically adds the style name, fabric content and original price, lower reducing the burden on the reseller.
“A lot of circularity comes down to education,” says Boutis. “We want to create a ecosystem that allows our products to have a second or third life, before taking it back when it’s truly time for it to be retired. We’re trying to tell this story in a fun, creative way to keep people engaged.”
The big question now is whether consumers really care about sustainability. At a time when politics and the economy are volatile, eco-friendly consumerism may not be a priority. Chang acknowledges that there are many other things consumers are worried about right now, but he says Everlane is trying to make the case the sustainable clothing offers immediate benefits to the customer, such as durability and the absence of toxic chemicals. “A lot of investments we put into sustainability equates to a better-made product,” he says.
And ultimately, Change believes the pendulum swings back and forth. Eventually a time may come when consumers do care about the state of the planet, and when that happens, Everlane will have a clear edge. “We’re trying to have a sharp position in the marketplace, to show that this brand matters,” he says.
Anyone who’s visited a contemporary art museum in the past 75 years has almost certainly encountered the artwork of Alexander Calder. His delicately balanced mobiles and swooping steel sculptures are mainstays of American abstract art.
But in most of those museums, from the Whitney to Pompidou Centre to the Reina Sofia, Calder’s pieces haven’t had their intended presentation. For artworks that are meant to move or be moved through, Calder’s kinetic works and supersized sculptures are often given the default museum treatment of being static, separate from visitors, or both.
A new art space in Calder’s birth city of Philadelphia aims to correct that. Calder Gardens is a unique, artist-specific building complex and garden that’s meant to give people views and experiences of Calder’s works as the artist, who died in 1976, intended.
[Photo: Iwan Baan/Calder Foundation]
Designed by the architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the center’s cavernous galleries and outdoor areas have been shaped and proportioned to let Calder’s kinetic mobiles move slowly in the natural airflow of the building, and to allow visitors to walk through and around his large-scale sculptures, or “stabiles,” in the changing hues of year-round open-air daylight.
“The pieces transform as you move around them and through them and with time,” says Jason Frantzen, a partner at Herzog & de Meuron who led the design team.
This is only part of what makes Calder Gardens a unique space. “It started without a very clear description of what the project should be. It was more of a description about what it shouldn’t be, which is a conventional museum,” says Frantzen.
Calder Gardens is a project of the Calder Foundation and overseen by the Barnes Foundation, which operates its own world class art museum nearby. Both entities stress that this new art space is not a museum, but a place where visitors can have evolving encounters with an ever-changing selection of Calder’s works. That sets a different tone for visitors accustomed to the traditional museum experience, but perhaps more importantly for the architects who designed it.
[Photo: Iwan Baan/Calder Foundation]
“They didn’t want the conventions of a museum to dictate our thinking about the space,” Frantzen says.
Calder Gardens is both a building designed to showcase the varied works of an influential artist and an all-seasons perennial garden designed by the eminent landscape designer Piet Oudolf. Known for designing the gardens on New York’s High Line and in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Oudolf’s approach revolves around planting for every season, and embracing the seasonal changes seen within each plant species. The landscape design is intended to be a changing background for a changing slate of Calder works that will be displayed there.
“We wanted to put people into an environment where they could really experience Calder in a different, non-museological way. And then from an urban perspective to bring people out of the city and to create an escape where they could really appreciate the art in a different kind of environment,” Frantzen says.
[Photo: Iwan Baan/Calder Foundation]
Inside the museum
Calder Gardens’ site certainly is different. Despite being located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, one of the most famous grand boulevards in the U.S., the plot Calder Gardens was built on was far from bucolic. Wedged between a sunken expressway and wide surface streets, the site had little ingrained charm. Even with its close proximity to the Barnes Foundation, the Rodin Museum, and, farther up the parkway, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the site was disconnected and overlooked. “This piece of land was sort of a leftover,” Frantzen says.
But the architects saw it as more than just a space for urban infill. Herzog & de Meuron chose to zag away from the institutional standards of its neighbors on the parkway, instead coming up with a more reserved building that almost disappears into the ground. “We immediately knew it should be something more related to the landscape, more an extension of public space on the parkway,” Frantzen says. “And then when it came to Calder’s work, we wanted to create something that wasn’t somehow imitating his work in any way.”
Visitors approach the building through the garden and encounter a long metal wall interrupted halfway through with a pitched roof overhanging a wooded entry. The wall serves to block noise from the highway behind the building, but also is polished to reflect the colors of the garden. Inside, past the lobby and coat check, stairs descend into the galleries, which take on winding, curving, and sometimes tunnel-like appearances before opening up into large and double-height rooms.
[Photo: Iwan Baan/Calder Foundation]
There are 10 galleries overall, including two that are fully outdoors, but also sunken into the site. Some house mobiles and stabiles, while others will show lesser-known two-dimensional works and smaller-scale wire sculptures from early in Calder’s career. There’s even a small hole carved into the wall of a stairway offering a porthole view to another suspended work.
The building mixes the darkness of the underground with carefully managed daylight streaming in through openings in the building and in the depths carved into the site for the sunken galleries. “Each one of these spaces has its own completely different conditions, its own specific light, its own scale, which just means that the variety of work can all find its own home in a relatively small series of gallery spaces,” says Frantzen.
Calder Gardens will be curated by the Calder Foundation, which intends to constantly bring in new works to the space, moving artworks around and offering visitors a changing view of Calder’s extensive portfolio. For the architects, the challenge was to create a space that could hold them all and create the right conditions in which they can be appreciated. “The word early on was almost like a chapel,” says Frantzen. The intent is that it’s “a place where you can go and you can experience a piece in a very kind of contemplative setting.”
The rise of artificial intelligence in recent years, along with the surge in AI-generated online content, has given more credibility to a decades-old conspiracy theory known as the Dead Internet Theory. It holds that most of the content we encounter online isnt actually produced by living humans but by lifeless bots.
AI is increasingly turning the once-fringe theory into a reality, but even today, at least one of the participantsthe living, breathing observer browsing the web on the other side of the screenis still usually a real, sentient being.
Yet this may not be true for much longer. Thanks to AI systems increasing reliance on a technology known as headless browsing, artificial intelligence is becoming a primary consumer of the internet. And if that happens at scale, the internet will truly be a land of the unliving.
Heres what you need to know about headless browsing, a term youll likely hear increasingly often in the years ahead.
Headless browsing is nothing new
Nearly every web browser youve ever usedwhether its Google Chrome, Apples Safari, or even Microsofts old Internet Exploreris a traditional visual browser. It features a graphical user interface (GUI), which includes buttons, tabs, scrollbars, and, of course, a large window that displays content (i.e., a website) that you can see. You navigate a visual browser mainly by clicking with your mouse cursor on hyperlinks or other buttons on a web page. If the web page requires you to enter text, such as in a form, you click in the text entry field and use the keyboard to type your characters.
But for decades, another kind of browser has existed: the headless browser. A headless browser has no graphical user interface (GUI). It has no window that displays a webpage and does not support pointing and clicking with a mouse cursor.
Instead, a headless browser processes a website’s content by reading its code directly. It interacts with the site, such as clicking on a link to go to the next page or entering text into a form, all through direct interaction with its code.
Since humans are visual creatures, its clear why GUI browsers are the primary way most of the world accesses the internet. So then, what are headless browsers used for?
Historically, they have been tools for web developers, as enterprise proxy provider Oxylabs explains. Because every graphical user interface element on a webpage has corresponding code, an automated program designed to help devs find errors on a website running through a headless browser can interact with that website just like a person wouldbut much faster since no visual interface needs to be displayed. The traditional benefit of headless browsers is that websites become more stable and reliable because headless browsing allows errors to be found relatively quickly.
But human developers arent the only ones using headless browsers anymore.
Headless browsing in the age of AI
Once a tool for web developers and other programmers, headless browsers are now being employed by new userswho dont have heads at all. Increasingly, artificial intelligence systems are the primary users of headless browsers.
AI browsers, such as Perplexitys Comet, use headless browsing to scan websites to carry out your prompts quickly. For example, when you prompt an AI browser for a list of the capitals of the 50 United States, the browsers AI will read the content of numerous websites via headless browsing to quickly retrieve the answer.
But headless browsing goes beyond letting AI scan a website to retrieve information. As artificial intelligence systems evolve from being simple answer bots to becoming personal assistantsknown as AI agentsheadless browsing is also being utilized by these agents to interact with websites on your behalf, performing tasks like clicking links, checking boxes, or even adding items to your shopping cart.
A large part of why an AI agent can perform tasks you prompt it to do so quickly is due to headless browsing. For example, say you prompt an AI browser to order the ingredients you need to make Thanksgiving dinner from multiple grocery websites. The browsers AI agent isnt actually perusing grocers websites through any visual interface and then clicking on Buy Now buttons to find and add items to your shopping cart. Its using headless browsing to read and interact with the websites code directly.
But while headless browsing makes AI more efficient and versatile, theres a negative side to AIs use of it, particularly if youre a website or one of its advertisers.
An internet where AI is the main user, not humans
As more people turn to agentic AI and AI browsers, these AI systems will utilize headless browsing to visit websites and carry out tasks assigned by humans. This means that AI has the potential to be the primary type of user that is visiting a website. And there are already signs of this happening.
A report from the AI monetization platform TollBit last month showed that, for the most recent quarter, human traffic to the websites that TollBit monitored declined by 9.4%, while AI traffic continued to rise. And its rising a lot. In the first quarter, TollBit found that 1 out of every 200 visitors to the sites it monitors was AI. By the second quarter, AI visitors accounted for 1 out of every 50 visitors. Thats a fourfold increase in less than a year.
TollBits report goes on to note that when AI agents visit a website, the website often has no way to tell that it’s an AI and not a human being. Thats terrible news for companies, which rely on web advertising to pay the bills. Advertisers sell things to human beings, and if advertisers can no longer trust whether a website knows precisely how many actual people are visiting it, they likely arent going to spend their limited ad dollars on that site.
For what its worth, an executive at an unnamed large digital publisher told Digiday that they believed headless browsing does not currently pose a major issue for publishers. However, they noted that if big players in the AI space, such as OpenAI or Google, adopt the technology for their AI agents, headless browsing could become a significant concern.
And if headless browsing does become the norm, it also means that the Dead Internet Theory could take on an expanded meaning. No longer would the phrase be used to signify only an internet where human beings do not make the majority of the contentbut where the majority of the browsing is no longer done by humans either.
If you ride along a bike path in the U.K. city of Leeds and approach a street, the traffic light can automatically turn green for youor stay green if you’re already midway across.
The city is one of a growing number testing technology that uses sensors, anonymous data, and AI to make it easier to cross streets. Made by a company called VivaCity (known as Viva in the U.S.), the sensors can detect cyclists and pedestrians from more than 200 feet away. In some cases, someone on a bike might not need to stop at the corner. Pedestrians can keep walking without breaking their stride. (Cities can choose to program traffic signals to give cyclists either a shorter wait or full priority.)
Traditionally, most traffic signals force people who arent in cars to push a beg button and waitor risk their life to cross while the lights still red. If automated sensors exist, theyre typically just for cars.
[Image: Viva]
At the moment, a lot of traffic signals don’t detect cyclists, says Matt Shaw, head of product at VivaCity. If they’re really basic, they operate on a fixed time schedule, so it will just rotate 30 seconds at a time. Or they might have vehicle detection, so they know if a car’s approaching, but they don’t know if a cyclist is. Wires embedded in the pavement can detect metal, but often miss bikes.
VivaCitys technology also analyzes direction, so the automatic walk sign isnt triggered if a pedestrian is just passing by without intending to cross. It also counts the number of people waiting, so cities can choose to use a formula to change the light faster if more people are waiting. Most traffic controllers now have no idea if it’s one pedestrian or a hundred, says Shaw. If you’re in New York City and somebody pushes the button, you’ve got no sense of how many people are waiting.
[Image: Viva]
Unlike standard traffic signals, Viva’s system also knows if someone in a wheelchair or an elderly person with a walker is still crossing. Being able to know if a pedestrians still on the road, and hold the green light for them, is pretty important, he says. (The data collection focuses on privacy; after the AI analyzes the video feed, it deletes it, leaving only the number of people and the path that theyre taking, not their identity. The data cant be used for enforcement.)
In Leeds, the city hasnt yet gone as far as giving cyclists and pedestrians full priority at major intersections. But at certain crossings where bike paths or sidewalks meet a road, the sensors already prioritize people walking or biking. The tech is one piece of a bigger strategy to become a city where you dont need a car, as the city puts it. That also includes improving bus service and building a better network of bike routes and bike parking. Making streets easier to crossand shrinking the time that cyclists or pedestrians waithelps make it a little more likely that people will want to walk or bike.
Some cities are using the underlying data without yet connecting to traffic controllers. In New York City, for example, the Department of Transportation has been using the sensors at some intersections to track trends over time, from the number of bikes or scooters to how fast theyre traveling and the paths that people take to cross the street.
The technology can also track near misses, which lets cities flag dangerous intersections and design interventions, such as changing the timing of signals or banning turns on red at intersections where cyclists have repeated close calls with turning vehicles.
You cant solve the problem if you dont understand where people are cycling, Shaw says.
Headwinds across the business world challenge any leader striving to make an impact beyond shareholder value. Few organizations know this struggle better than the B Team, born out of Richard Bransons drive to elevate the role and responsibility of business in society. CEO Leah Seligmann shares why some leaders are pulling back, where others are pressing forward, and which actions can have the greatest impactfrom climate change to diversity.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
I remember when [the B Team] came onto the scene. It was kind of this wave of business as a vehicle for social good and social impact and environmental impact. Recently, this ethos has been under pressure. I’m curious how surprised you’ve been by that.
I think that the writing was on the wall for a while. But I think the feeling of CEOs is that we really need to re-own the narrative, re-own why we’re doing these thingsbecause they’re good for business, they’re good for our communitiesand get away from a lot of the narrative, the language, and the programs that left people behind.
I get to work for this amazing group of global leaders. Half of them are from the business sector, half of them are from civil society, but their focus is really, How do we transform business? And I think we were all a little shell-shocked, to be honest, at the beginning of the year. When the attacks started happening, to have that happening and have CEOs really scared and unsure of what they can say or what they can do. I think what we’ve been spending the last couple of months on is thinking about how do you retake that and go to the things that you really have license to speak about and get a little bit away from [being] the CEO [who] has to stand up for everything all the time, which really was the place that we were a couple of years ago.
I know you used the word courage a lot, the courage to speak out in the right places, the courage to act. The collective of the B Team is based on the idea that maybe it’s easier to be courageous when others are joining you. But we’re not seeing a lot of collective action these days, aside from fawning dinners at the White House from tech CEOs. How do you make that start to happen?
I think that the appetite to hear a bunch of people speaking out into the wind has really decreased. Those statements were useful. They served a purpose in raising awareness and this idea that sustainability and treating people well could be good for business. At this moment in time though, I think that it rings hollow.
So the courage that we’re really looking for is a different type of courage. It’s more engaged. Figure out what people care about and why they’re worried about it and why what you’re saying isn’t landing, and then go from there. So I think that’s a significant shift. And I don’t want to undermine the idea that it actually takes courage to pause sometimes and to listen and to understand why you’ve missed your mark. That maybe is the hardest type of courage because we’re so wired towards action.
There was a period where the trust for corporate leaders and CEOs was higher than any other figures in public life in a lot of ways, right? Do you have a sense about why that eroded?
I think a big piece of it has to do with the pay gap between everyday working people. That growing inequality makes it really hard to feel like the person that you’ve put so much trust in actually sees your problems and is trying to make your life better.
And so we still see employers and CEOs having high trust with their own employees, but this idea that business as a whole is a trusted institution has really eroded along with all of our institutions. Trust in government, trust in the news and the media, all of these things have been impacted by a crisis of trust.
The B Team recently announced a new strategy initiative. Lots of high-profile business leaders signed on as part of your group, from Marc Benioff at Salesforce to Hamdi Ulukaya at Chobani, and Ryan Gellert at Patagonia. Can you explain what the new strategy is?
I think the biggest piece is the pace. It used to be that you would have one major thing happen and everybody had time to get riled up and create opposition and drive things forward and create coalitions. And now we have multiple times a day things that are coming out that are shifting the landscape, and we need to be much more aware of and able to respond to the context that we’re in.
The long-term goals of the B Team remain the same. How do we catalyze business to be a force for good in the world? But now we’re in a moment where every single day you have massive changes. One world order is ending, but we have yet to define or design the world order that we’re heading towards. And then the last piece is we’re in the middle of this incredible technology revolution. Technology isn’t good or bad, technology is potential. And we have businesses really trying to figure out how they harness the power of AI and minimize the downsides. So what we at the B Team decided is that we needed to get very clear on our values, very clear on our outcomes, and be much more nimble in our approach. And honestly, how can we stop being just a group that does a statement every six months and turn into a group that’s actually catalyzing real change?
We’ve seen companies make climate pledges, not always delivering. We’ve got a U.S. administration that seems actively hostile to climate action. So what do you do?
Most leaders that act on climate see it as in their business interest. Business leaders that stick to the fundamentals of why we have to deal with climate, that doesn’t change with political cycles. The fact that your supply chain is going to be disrupted, that doesn’t shift with who’s in power politically. That’s where we need business leaders to step up and lean in. But also to remember that the reason they got into that game wasn’t because they thought it was going to be a nice PR story; you got into climate because you had to.
I noticed that DEI isn’t particularly prioritized within the new B Team strategy. Was that conscious?
The word itself might not be used, but the B Team is seeking to create workplaces that are open to all people because we have a strong belief, not just that everybody deserves an opportunity, but business thrives when it attracts the best talent. So it’s not a deprioritization.
What does DEI even mean? What value does that acronym give us? I think it covers a huge ground of incredibly rich thinking and work and things that do need to stay in the workplace, but the label DEI just has led to a tremendous backsliding of a vicious unleashing of anti-people rhetoric. So yeah, I think that laguage does need to change.
Many businesses, of course, are not part of the B Team collective. Is there something that those places and CEOs that aren’t part of the B Team have in common?
Our goal was always to be a small group, a group of leaders that we felt were really driving and pushing this agenda. The agenda is meant to be a broad agenda that could invite anyone in wherever they are, but that little cohort of 33 business leaders is not meant to represent everyone.
The group that we have right now, they are in the rooms with so many other coalitions of CEOs and leaders that are trying to do something. And if they can use their role to weave things together, to lift the ambition of those efforts, I see that as success. And . . . ideally, no one would look back and be like, “The B Team did this.” They would be like, “A bunch of people all over the world did these different things,” and we created some positive change in the world. We don’t need credit. We should seek impact. It doesn’t matter to me if the B Team name is ever known.
