I was walking down the street with my partner in Londons Camden neighborhood on Wednesday night when we saw an ad that said, This app was designed to keep you hooked.
A finger could be seen tapping Instagrams app icon above a claim reading, 45% of teens say they spend too much time on social media.
In theory, this was all straightforward messaging, but the ads final note in the corner threw us: From Meta, logo and all.
We turned to each other in confusion, trying to make sense of it. The ad looked so professionally designed that we wondered, could Meta Platforms, a company that has repeatedly denied responsibility for its users mental health, be advertising it?
[Photos: Mad Youth Organise]
No. In short, Instagram and Facebooks parent company has done nothing of the sort. Instead, the ad is from Just Treatment, a U.K.-based health justice group started in 2017.
The organizations latest campaign is Mad Youth Organise, a push to improve accessible, quality mental health care for young people.
The ad we saw was one of eight that activists have plastered guerrilla-style across London, Just Treatment told Fast Company.
A similar design to the one we saw features a photo of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiling. If you feel worse, its working, it says.
Other ads are plastered with statements such as Our anxiety is exploited by Meta and Were more lonely with Meta. Each includes a statistic to back up these claims.
The campaign launched Wednesday and included a group of young people blocking Metas London office with another ad that bluntly stated: The youth mental health crisis, sponsored by Meta.
The individuals involved in the protest believe social media has pushed them into mental health crisis, according to Mad Youth Organise.
Young activists whove lived with adverse mental health have run and designed the entire campaign, Just Treatment says.
Alongside Meta, Mad Youth Organise has also targeted TikTok. One sign reads, Eating disorders start on TikTok, while another says, Misery starts on TikTok.
Both also cite a statistic claiming 46% of teens feel social media makes them have a worse body image.
Fast Company has reached out to Meta and TikTok for comment. We will update this post if we hear back.
What does the Mad Youth Organise campaign want?
Mad Youth Organise is pushing for a Big Tech Tax, a 4% tax on tech companies earning over 500 million ($663 million) globally.
The money raised would be put toward funding youth mental health services. Its also insisting that Big Techs social media monopoly be severed, among other demands.
How bad is social media for young people?
Its no secret that social media has been shown to cause adverse effects. A high-profile social media trial in the U.S. held closing arguments on Thursday: TikTok, Meta, YouTube, and Snap have been accused of knowingly designing products that are both addictive and harmful to young peoples mental health.
These social media companies have all taken the same approach to these accusations: Deny. Deny. Deny.
TikTok and Snap previously settled with the plaintiff, identified only by her initials KGM. She claims that early social media use made her addicted to technology and exacerbated her depression and suicidal thoughts.
However, this is the first of a consolidated group of cases for over 1,600 plaintiffs, including families and school districts.
Research has consistently found evidence of social medias harm to young peoples mental health.
A 2025 survey from Pew Research found that 48% of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 believe social media sites have a mostly negative effect on their age group. This figure is a significant jump from the 32% who felt the same in a 2022 survey.
Participants also listed social media as the most negative influence on teen mental health (22%), higher than bullying (17%), pressure and expectations (16%) and school (5%).
Young Minds, a U.K.-based charity for young peoples mental health, reports that 34% of young people feel trapped on social media sites. Meanwhile, 22% report receiving distressing content on social media at least weekly.
Shares in the preeminent graphics software company Adobe Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) are dropping significantly in premarket trading this morning following the companys Q1 2026 earnings results.
Yet it’s not the earnings themselves that are driving ADBE stock lower. It’s an announcement from the companys CEO, Shantanu Narayen, who said he plans to exit the role he has held for over 18 years. Heres what you need to know:
Whats happened?
On Thursday, Adobe announced the results of its first quarter for fiscal 2026. And for all intents and purposes, the results were of the caliber that would normally make investors happy:
Total revenue of $6.4 billion (up 12% year-over-year)
Diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $6.06 adjusted
Total annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of $26.06 billion
As noted by CNBC, for the quarter, Adobes total revenue and EPS figures exceeded investor expectations. The LSEG analyst consensus was that Adobe would bring in total revenue of $6.28 billion and achieve an EPS of $5.87.
But if Adobe beat expectations, why is the stock down significantly this morning?
Longtime boss is saying goodbye
The main reason Adobes shares are in the red this morning is that in addition to the companys earnings results yesterday, the Photoshop maker also announced that its long-running CEO, Shantanu Narayen, will be stepping down from the role.
Without a doubt, the departure of Narayen is a loss for the company. As the departing CEO said in his resignation letter, Narayen has worked for Adobe for 28 years and led the company in the chief executive role for over 18 years.
Narayen, who is 62, first became CEO in 2007. Adobe shares have grown more than 542% over that period, although they are down considerably since 2024.
During Narayen’s 28-year tenure at Adobe, the companys workforce has grown tenfold, going from 3,000 to 30,000 employees. Its revenue has grown from less than a billion dollars annually to more than $25 billion.
Perhaps most critically, under Narayens chief executive tenure, Adobe transitioned from a company that primarily sold one-time software licenses to one that is now primarily subscription-based.
While that move was not always popular with Adobes customer base, it has built a foundation for the recurring annual revenue the company now relies on.
Narayen has long been a respected figure at Adobe, and within the broader tech industry, so it’s no surprise that his announced departure is having a negative effect on Adobes stock price.
Narayen says he will stay on as CEO until Adobes board appoints a new one, at which point he will remain as Chair of the Board at Adobe.
Adobe investors cant shake AI anxieties
Another element to Narayen’s departure that is likely causing investor jitters is that he is stepping down at a time when Adobe has never been more vulnerable.
Narayen successfully navigated Adobe through the largely iPhone-driving death of its core Flash technology in the early years of his tenure as CEO.
But now the company arguably faces an even more critical flashpoint. As AI tools become more advanced, investors are increasingly worried that they threaten the very foundations of Adobes business models.
If an AI chatbot can generate a photo on demand, investors worry that customers will find less value in its stock photo service. And if AI can make edits and enhancements to photos and graphics simply by using natural language prompts, will fewer future creatives find less value in the companys Creative Cloud software?
To be fair, the AI threat isnt a problem unique to Adobe. In the first part of this year, software companies of all stripes have been hit hard by investor worries that AI chatbots and their increasing capabilities will negatively impact enterprise and commercial software solutions.
And while Adobe itself is of course embracing AI tools in its own products, the planned departure of the companys beloved CEO at this critical time in the industry is making a lot of investors nervous today, as is evident by the companys plunging stock price.
Adobe shares crash on CEOs planned departure
As of this writing, in premarket trading, ADBE shares are down over 7.5% to $249.31 after yesterdays announcement of Narayens upcoming exit. The companys shares ended yesterday down 1.43% to $269.78.
But even before todays steep drop, Adobes shares have had a bad year. As of yesterdays close, ADBE shares had lost nearly 23% of their value since the year began.
Looking back over Narayens tenure as CEO, Adobes share price has had a stellar run.
In December 2007, when Narayen became chief executive, ADBE shares were trading around the $42 range. By 2021, the companys shares had peaked at nearly $700.
But, particularly since 2024, the companys shares have declined significantly, as fears over AIs impact on legacy software companies have grown.
Those fears are now something that Adobes next CEO, whoever that may be, will have to effectively manage.
Being seen is a fundamental human need. We all can recall a moment when we truly felt “seen” by someone for who we are, and how good and empowering it made us feel. When this happens, it deepens our sense of belonging and makes us more connected to our work, and to others. And today, with so much of our attention being scattered and superficial, being truly seen is as surprising as it is refreshing.
Research supports this: a sense of social belonging is one of the strongest predictors of engagement and performance at work. According to Deloittes Global Human Capital Trends report, 79% of organizations say that creating a sense of belonging is important or very important for their success. However, only a small percentage feel equipped to make it happen. This needs to change, now. Because when people feel seen, they feel validated, appreciated, and engaged. And thats where leadership truly begins.
According to Nina Bressler, Global Head of Service Academy at Hitachi Energy, Every time we see someone fully, not just their role but in their humanity, we have the experience of learning and growing together. People lean in, share what they know, and risk showing what they dont. In that mutual recognition, performance becomes a natural outcome of belonging.
A Personal Story: The Power of Sawabona
In the Zulu language, theres a greeting I love that captures this sense of belonging. Its Sawabona. It means I see you, but it’s much deeper than that. Its not just an acknowledgment or a greeting; its an affirmation of someones existence and humanity. The response to Sawabona is just as powerful: Ngikhona, which means I am here. This exchange conveys mutual respect, and sets the tone for meaningful connection and authentic interaction.
For years, I sat on a leadership advisory board within the intelligence community, made up of accomplished experts across a variety of fields. We always sat at the boardroom table, putting our heads together to urgently tackle the high-stakes issues that needed our input. The pressure to perform was always stressful, and the environment felt as intimidating as it was inspiring.
But one day, the mood changed.
The chairwoman of our board, Renee, began our meeting with Sawabona, she said. This was definitely different from the typical call to order and reading of the agenda, and people were seemingly caught off guard. We all then said the response: Ngikhona, I am here. And immediately, people smiled. Not just because it was a little awkward, but because it was so human.
This exchange set the tone for the entire meeting. It was a kind acknowledgment of each persons presence, and importance. That single act of recognition created an atmosphere where we could show up genuinely and engage deeply, not just as experts but as humans with unique experiences, values, and stories.
Why Sawabona Matters for Your Team
At work, we forget the power of seeing each other fully. I know Im guilty of this, because I get, well, busy. We all focus on tasks, deadlines, and outcomes, but better outcomes happen when people feel seen as themselves.
Research from BetterUp found that when employees experience a strong sense of belonging, organizations see:
75% fewer sick days
56% improved job performance
50% lower turnover risk
These kinds of results are worth the risk of an awkward moment, in my opinion, no?
Sawabona is rooted in the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which emphasizes both interconnectedness and mutual care. I am because we are speaks to the understanding that our individual worth is shaped by our connection to others.
When we see each other, we strengthen the bonds that foster collaboration, innovation, and shared purpose. If you want your team to thrive, fostering a sense of Sawabona is key. Leaders who do this are recognizing people for who they are, not just what they produce. When you honor someones existence and humanity, you unlock their potential.
How to Bring Sawabona to Work
Incorporating Sawabona into your team culture isnt about using the phrase as a token gesture. Its about showing everyone mutual respect and authentic connection, even in small ways. Heres how to start:
Show Up Fully Sawabona means showing up, not just physically, but emotionally and mentally. That means you dont just show up and sit in the room; be engaged. When people feel their presence is valued, theyre more likely to show up as their best selves.
Practice Active Listening The foundation of Sawabona is truly listening. So, be attentive, ask thoughtful questions, and seem understanding.
Celebrate Individuality Everyone on your team is unique. Their perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds shape what they bring to the table. Take time to acknowledge what makes each person special. Let that perspective add to new ideas and solutions.
Create Space to Share People need to feel safe to express themselves. Create an environment where your team can give ideas, voice concerns, and add to the conversation without fear of judgment or rejection.
The Radical Power of Being Seen
The act of being seen is alarmingly radical in a world that frequently treats people as a means to an end. Sawabona rejects the transactional nature of work to focus on a deeper, more authentic human connection. Because people arent just cogs in a machine. Theyre individuals with worth, complexity, and unique contributions.
As a leader, its your responsibility to create an environment of support, because your success depends on it. Sawabona is a practice that says, I see you for who you are, and I value your presence.
Next time you gather your team, start by greeting them with Sawabona, and watch how it transforms the way you work, collaborate, and connect.
SEO Tags: Sawabona, Ubuntu leadership, team engagement, mutual respect, leadership culture, active listening, team empowerment, empathy at work, authentic leadership.
Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Companys Plugged In.
On March 9, Jay Graber stepped down as CEO of Bluesky. She will become the social networking platforms chief innovation officer, while Toni Schneider, a venture capitalist and former CEO of WordPress parent company Automattic, joins Bluesky as interim CEO. (I may be the last person left who also associates Schneider with Oddpost, an impressive browser-based email client he co-created way back before Gmail existed.)
Graber explained her decision as stemming in part from a desire to turn the CEO role over to someone who can help scale up the platform. From November 2024 to January 2025, as Elon Musks role in Donald Trumps reelection prompted many Twitter users (including me) to hatch exit strategies, Bluesky added 10 million users. That turned out to be the peak of the networks boom, at least so far; 10 million users is also how many its added in the past 12 months. Its still growing, but not at the torrid pace that will get it to hundreds of millions of people anytime soon.
If I had invested in Blueskywhich Schneiders venture firm, True Ventures, hasId want to see it grow far larger. As an individual user, however, I find it quite pleasant at its current size. Maybe even cozy, in a way Twitter had stopped being long before Musk trashed it. (I also enjoy the even tinier Mastodon.) Should Bluesky ever get ginormous, I hope it manages to retain the intimacy that it kindles today.
But Im less curious about the future of Bluesky the social network than I am about the technology behind it. Called AT Protocol, its responsible for organizing all those users and posts so that the right people see the right stuff at the right time. And unlike the comparable infrastructure in place at behemoths such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, its open. Anyone can create their own social network based upon AT Protocol, or remix an existing one (such as Bluesky) by tweaking its algorithm or other attributes. Users can preserve their personal social graphs even if they use several otherwise distinct networks based on the protocol.
When I first talked to Graber in December 2023, Bluesky wasnt yet fully open to the public, and had just 2.3 million members. She seemed as excited about AT Protocol as Bluesky itself, and told me she saw it as a potential antidote to social-media toxicity, moderation problems, and general user dissatisfaction with how the people who operate social networks do their jobs. If you didnt like Bluesky as Graber managed it, you could switch to a version of the service powered by a different algorithm, or a wholly independent social network running AT Protocol. You wouldnt even have to do so much as create a user account.
From both a technological and cultural standpoint, thats a way more grandiose goal than simply building a social network thats bigger and better than Twitter. As someone who loved Twitter until I didnt, I found it immensely appealing. Who wouldnt want more control over their social presence? But a little over two years later, it remains a vision more than reality. Indeed, Bluesky has a festering reputation in some quarters as an obnoxious liberal bubble unwelcoming of other perspectives, which might not be a problem if people were remastering the network or creating new alternatives based on its technology.
AT Protocol was hardly dead on arrival. There are hundreds of applications that use it, from Instagram and TikTok alternatives to a stock portfolio tracker to an app that puts Bluesky on your Apple Watch. Many are intriguing in their own right. But most are satellites revolving around Bluesky and its community, which was not the original idea.
Even when I spoke to Graber in 2023, the possibility of an open social protocol changing everything was not exactly new. Mastodon, which turns 10 on March 16, is powered by ActivityPub, a standard with goals similar to AT Protocol. Meta incorporated a measure of ActivityPub support into Threads (kinda, sorta)and its not clear how invested the company is in going further.
Even more to the point, Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has long said that he regrets that Twitter ever became a company. Instead, he contends, it should have been an open protocol all along. Toward the end of his time there, he channeled that belief into incubating two such protocols. One became Bluesky; the other is the lesser-known Nostr, whose homepage cheerfully acknowledges the challenge it faces with the tagline An open social protocol with a chance of working.
I wish the best for everyone behind AT Protocol, ActivityPub, and Nostr, but I cant help but wonder if the failure of the relatively small number of people interested in this stuff to coalesce around one protocol helps explain why progress has been so slow. (As computer scientist Andrew S. Tanenbaum waggishly put it in the 1980s, The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.) Its as if the companies that made browsers had never agreed on the shared technological underpinnings that let us use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or any of innumerable other options to explore the same World Wide Web.
For now, I am attempting to stay active on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, though its hardly a cakewalk. Openvibe, the app I used to post to all three, has become so unreliable lately that Ive mostly given up on it. Flipboard CEO Mike McCue tells me that he wants to add crossposting to Surfa wildly ambitious app, still in closed beta, that weaves ogether the entire internet into user-curated feedsbut is still figuring out how to do it well.
The only long-term solution involves all of these networksplus Twitter, Facebook, and many others yet to be bornsettling on a protocol so universal that they all just work together, without 99.9% of us needing to stop and wonder why. Im realistic about the daunting odds of this happening, but I havent given up. And I hope that Bluesky wont eitherregardless of where it goes under new management.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on fastcompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
More top tech stories from Fast Company
MacBook Neo review: niceness on a budgetApple’s long-awaited laptop is even cheaper than the pundits expected, and still feels like a Mac. Read More
Phoenix has lived with Waymos longer than any U.S. city. Here’s what its mayor learnedMayor Kate Gallego talks about working with Waymo, redesigning cities for autonomous vehicles, and why robotaxis may reshape everything from parking to public transit. Read More
GoFundMe launches AI fundraising coach to help people raise more moneyThe new tool drafts campaign messages, suggests titles and photos, and guides users on how to share their fundraiser. Read More
This new foldable phone may have upstaged Apple in the ‘zero-crease’ warOppo’s Find N6 isn’t fully creaseless, but it’s close. Read More
OpenAI’s delayed ‘adult mode’ underscores the challenges of age-gating AIA lot is riding on OpenAI’s ability to separate older ChatGPT users from younger ones. Read More
The uncomfortable valley: Microsoft Teams emoji faces have got to goThey don’t make the digital workplace more casual. They make it uncomfortably weird. Read More
As of yesterday, March 12, hundreds of thousands of innovators, disruptors, and leaders began descending on Austin for SXSW. If you search “Tech and AI” in this years schedule, youll find 185 results. Thats more than double the 80 AI sessions in 2024, the same year I wrote a Fast Company op-ed about how women have spent decades building the intellectual foundation of AI while receiving almost none of the credit. It was also the year that companies with at least one female founder raised $38.8 billion in venture capital funding which is a 27 percent increase from the year prior, but still not close to the high point in 2021 with a raise of $62.5 billion.
Two years later and the gapboth in acknowledgement and investor fundinghasnt closed. However, something else is happening and its worth paying attention to.
There is a new wave of women who refuse to wait for the AI industry to become “fair” and “equal.” They are building their own companies, on their own terms, with a more authentic and purpose-driven design mentality. Its not general-purpose AI; its gender-purpose AI.
An important distinction
Before you roll your eyes, the distinction matters more than you might think. By 2030which is now only four years awayAI wont just enhance companies’ business models. According to IBM, it will be the business model. Right now, that business model is being built unsurprisingly by male-dominated teams for general audiences. The truth is technologyas an industry and a conceptwas never built for women. It was not built to prioritize or accommodate our visions.
But that is changing. A new class of female leaders in AI is disrupting this model and demanding more room for gender-purpose AI and less patience for the influx of male-dominated teams building general-purpose tools. This is the year we move beyond celebrating their presence and start backing their vision with real investment.
One of those women is Rana el Kaliouby, co-founder and general partner of Blue Tulip Ventures, who will deliver a keynote at this years conference titled “Why the Future of AI Must Be Human Centric.” She has spent more than two decades humanizing technology. As co-founder of Affectiva, she pioneered the field of Emotion AI, which reads human feeling through facial expression and vocal cues, and now as co-founder and general partner of Blue Tulip Ventures, she literally puts her money where her mission is and invests in early-stage startups building ethical AI that is good for people. The word “good” is subjective. But for too long, its been defined by the people building the problem, not solving it.
The problem is also being solved by women like Valerie Chapman, CEO and co-founder of Ruth AI, an AI-powered career advancement platform. Last month, Valerie asked Sam Altman at an OpenAI builder town hall how AI can be used to fix the $1.6 trillion gender wage gap. His response was that AI should be an equalizing force in society and like Valerie pointed out in her recent op-ed, when AI is designed with intention, it can close the gap and its time to build it.
What’s next
As a fellow female founder helping brands understand and utilize AIas a topic and technologyin their comms strategies, heres what this shift tells me about where we are headed in 2026.
1. Male tech leaders want AGI. Female tech leaders want gender-purpose AI. The second is more inclusive.
When women build AI, they tend to ask different questions in the design and development stage. Questions like who is this actually for and who will benefit from these capabilities? The truth is artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is at least 10 years away and the race toward the “holy grail,” as Big Tech has coined it, should not hold as much power and influence as it does. Gender-purpose AI is a race toward something more rewarding and meaningful: relevance. What a conceptthat we could have more technology that works for the people it claims to serve.
2. The gender wage gap will not close with more women working in tech. It will close when more women are building tech.
Representation matters every month, not just during Black History Month, Womens History Month, or International Womens Day. Women deserve representation in the very tools and technologies they depend on. With almost 78 million women in the American workforce, this is a demographic that has earned our time, attention and investment.
3. Investment in gender-purpose AI means nothing without investing in the women who will build tomorrows innovations
The increase in female founded and funded VC companies is a great step in the right direction. But the progress pipeline matters just as much if not more. We need more mentorship programs, technical education, access to capital for first-time female founders who have the vision but not a seat at the Big Tech table. To ensure we double down on gender-purpose AI as an industry, we have to prioritize and support the women who want to build what comes next.
4. The milestones for women in AI arent just on stage. They are in hallways and in boardrooms.
When women lead AI companies, th product looks different. Canadian computer scientist Joy Buolamwini pioneered Gender Shades in 2018, which piloted an intersectional approach to inclusive product testing for AI and exposed racial and gender bias in Microsofts, IBMs, and Amazons facial recognition systems and insisted they change. Rana built technology that reads human emotion because she believed machines should understand people, not just process them. These are real-world use cases that prove that whoever builds the technology determines what the technology does and who it serves.
In 2026, women wont be waiting for “the next big thing” because they will be the ones behind it. They will be the ones building the technology that addresses what male leaders have not addressed: equity, inclusion, and a redefinition of “good” that finally reflects what 51% of the world wants, needs and deserves. Its time the other 49% joined us.
Usually the epitome of good humor, my friend was seething. She had devised a zany and creative marketing idea for her firm. Securing the budget, designing a content strategy, hiring a creative agency, and then doing all the related work had consumed Alex and her team for a full six months. This was on top of their already demanding jobs.
And then the unthinkable happened.
Before the idea was announced, one of my coworkers, a PR guy, shared the ideamy ideawith the CEO and CMO. I watched her pace around my kitchen, her face getting redder and redder. While he didnt exactly say hed done the work himself, how he talked about it made it seem like it was all his.
Did you tell anyone, go to your manager? I asked.
Alex stopped her pacing. I did, and he said, When youre creative, people will steal your ideasyou should just get used to that fact.
As we talked, I could hear that under Alexs anger was something elsecuriosity. About what this all meant. About what she could have, or should have, done differently.
Was she the problem? Did she need to figure out how to play the game better?
Was the PR guy the issue?
Or her boss? And if it was her boss, did she need to quit?
Those were the wrong questions.
Its not you or them. The problem lies in the norm of tolerating bad behavior. When workplaces say, Creative ideas get stolen, harm becomes a given, not a choice.
Ideas get stolen because theres no accountability.
To be clear, sometimes an idea is just in the air, and two or more people come to it around the same time. And oftentimes, we create ideas together. Im not talking about those moments.
Im talking about when its fully apparent what is happeningidea theft, where one party takes credit for the work of othersand how that theft is tolerated. Research shows that knowledge workers are keenly aware of idea theft; nearly one-third report having had it happen to them.
Work often treats idea theft as no big deal.
But the cost is real.
Integrity is lost when ideas are disconnected from their source. The depth of the concept or the completeness of the thinking is lost. Downstream decisions are made without the rootedness of the original inspiration.
Theft demotivates the next idea. When ideas are stolen regularly, idea generation shuts down because no one volunteers to be violated.
And Alexs boss was right about one thing: Alex will certainly create more ideas. People create when they feel safe enough to imagine something new. Thatby definitionis why regulating bad behavior matters.
The idea that was stolen? It became one of the firms most successful efforts that year. It inspired the companys next ad campaign and even a Super Bowl spot.
But they didnt have any follow-up to this one-off success.
Why?
Because they no longer had Alex.
The Counterintuitive Insight: We Can Take Care of Our Commons
Most of us are taught to stay quiet. Dont make a scene. Go along to get along.
And when someone crosses a linesteals credit, dominates meetings, dismisses ideaswe assume someone in authority will fix it. But that assumption hides a deeper truth: the rules of our workplaces are not enforced by leaders alone. They are enforced by what we tolerate together.
In 2009, political economist Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics for proving something that ran against decades of economic orthodoxy.
Before her work, economists widely believed in the tragedy of the commonsthe idea that when a resource is shared, individuals will inevitably overuse it and destroy it. The only solution, it was thought, was top-down control: private ownership or government regulation.
Ostrom proved otherwise.
She showed that communities, left to their own devices, often devise highly sophisticated systems of shared managementsystems where consequences dont come from a distant authority but from the group itself.
The people who depend on each other can also hold each other accountable.
Her work wasnt about office politics. But it applies.
Every team shares something. It might not be water or grazing land.
But trust. Energy. Credit. Voice.
And just like natural resources, these intangible goods are depleted when people act only in their own interests at the expense of shared interests.
When a manager takes all the credit. When someone interrupts constantly. When emotional labor always falls on the same shoulders.
What Ostrom teaches us is that we dont have to live inside that dynamic.
We can protect shared goodsnot with permission from the top, but through practices we design ourselves. Through consequences we create and apply together.
Shared spaces survive when the people inside them protect them.
Change the Norm
When something harmful happens at work, our instincts split: ignore it or wait for someone in charge to handle it.
But silence has a cost.
It makes us complicit in what we ache to change.
Monica Lewinskydragged through the mud of a scandal she didnt create alonecalls on us to be upstanders: people who dont just stand by, but stand up. Who see cruelty and choose courage. Who see harm and refuse to treat it as normal.
Research shows that when bystanders step in, bullying stops within secondsproving that empowering peers to act can cut bad behavior in half.
What we allow becomes the rule of the room.
When someone steals an idea, and no one says anything, the norm survives.
When someone names itcalmly, clearlythe rule changes. But lets be clear: This isnt work any of us do alone.
If bad behavior is tolerated, it grows. When it meets consequences, it stops. Bad behavior isnt mysteriousits simply a crime of opportunity, repeated when no one intervenes. This is not a personal problem. Its a social problem. Its up to those who see it to actto create the consequences. Not just to protect the harmed, but to stop the harm from spreading.
Behavior doesnt change because people suddenly become better.
It changes because someone names whats happening and refuses to treat it as normal. When you do, you wont do it alone. Another person will join in. And then another. Until teams decide, we can be clear, fair, and firm with each other. That our shared space is worth defending, protecting.
Let yourself run toward that danger, not away from it.
Adapted from the book Our Best Work: Break Free from the 24 Invisible Norms That Limit Us, by Nilofer Merchant. Copyright 2026 by Nilofer Merchant. Reprinted by permission of Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
During an end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree last year, the Department of Defense (DoD) dropped some dough on new Herman Miller furniture.
The DoD spent $60,719 for chairs from the Michigan furniture manufacturer last September, according to the report from the watchdog group Open The Books, including at least one $1,844 Aeron Chair, the brand’s popular, ergonomic, fabric-meshed office chair.
The Herman Miller purchases were just a small fraction of the record $93 billion detailed in the report, which was more than the DoD has spent in a single month since the group’s data goes back to 2007. For Herman Miller, its share was peanuts, considering the company is the longest holder of a federal government contract for office furniture, at more than 40 years. (Herman Miller did not respond to a request for comment by publication.)
The DoD goes on an annual spend-it-or-lose-it buying spree every fall no matter the president or party, Open The Books found over a decade of tracking it. The group called on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to rein in the use-it-or-lose-it approach the agency takes to its budget. Instead, 2025’s spending was a record.
While some line items highlighted in the report seem like clear attempts to run up expense reports before the time runs out, like $98,000 on a Steinway & Sons grand piano and $2 million on Alaskan king crab, office furniture purchases at least make practical sense.
With nearly 3 million military and civilian employees, the DoD is one of the largest employers in the U.S. That’s a lot of butts in seats, which means a big budget for chairs and other office furniture. Open The Books found furniture purchases spike 564% every September over the monthly average across the other 11 months of the year. Last year, the DoD spent $225.6 million on furniture in total.
Herman Miller’s parent company MillerKnoll had obligations of more than $15 million in the last fiscal year, and the DoD makes up 80% of its awarding agencies. In the past, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent nearly $250,000 on Herman Miller furniture for a conference room refresh, according to Open the Books, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spent $284,000 on Herman Miller furniture for its conference center.
For defense officials looking to set up an office, Herman Miller offers DoD-approved options for everything from desks, carts, and lockers to nurses’ stations, pharmacies, and labs. This isn’t the kind of workplace interior design work that Ikea was built to handle. For Herman Miller, though, its volume of government sales isn’t what it used to be.
Federal spending records since 2008 show MillerKnoll’s transactions peaked during former President Barack Obama’s administration, with obligations totaling more than $174 million dollars in 2010, a figure that dropped to a low of more than $12 million in 2023.
While the DoD might not be as loyal a customer as it once was, Herman Miller has found other government work elsewhere. The company says it’s one of the largest furniture suppliers to state and local government agencies.
Here is a number worth sitting with: 295%.
That’s how much U.S. app uninstalls of ChatGPT surged in a single day last month, after OpenAI struck a deal with the Department of Defense that its rival Anthropic had publicly refused to sign. In the same 24-hour window, Claude’s downloads jumped 51%. By that evening, Anthropic’s app had climbed to No. 1 on the U.S. App Store, leapfrogging 20 apps in under a week.
One values-driven decision. One weekend. A measurable transfer of market share.
Most of the coverage framed this as a political story. It isn’t. Or at least, not only. It’s also a brand loyalty story. And it tells us something important about the category war that’s actually being fought in AI, one that has very little to do with compute power.
The Switching Cost Nobody Is Naming
Brand strategists understand switching costs intuitively. In banking, insurance, enterprise softwareanywhere the friction is highemotional and values-based factors end up doing as much heavy lifting as product performance. The category with the highest rational switching cost often becomes the category where trust matters most.
AI is moving toward that same dynamic, faster than most people are ready for.
An AI platform doesn’t just perform tasks. It accumulates context. It gets to know ushow we think, our shorthand, our working rhythms. For enterprise users in particular, this depth compounds quickly. The longer a business embeds an AI platform into its workflows, the higher the exit cost becomes, not just technically, but cognitively, culturally, and even emotionally.
There’s a name for this: the relational cost. It’s the switching cost nobody in the AI conversation is actually naming. And in any high-switching-cost category, the brand questionwhat does this company stand for, and do I trust iteventually becomes the definitive one.
Operationalizing Values Is Not the Same as Talking About Them
The consumer response to the DoD news didn’t come out of nowhere. It was the visible payoff of a positioning strategy years in the making.
Anthropic has been making a consistent, operationalized argument about what kind of company it isand backing it with choices that have visible cost. The Claude Constitution is a publicly available, inspectable training framework. Not a mission statementa framework. Anthropic’s Economic Index analyses AI adoption across sectors and positions the company as a participant in the difficult societal conversation about AI’s impact on employment, not just a product vendor. These are category-shaping moves, not PR.
The market had been registering these signals quietly, long before last month. Independent analyses suggest Claude holds 32% of enterprise AI usage, significantly disproportionate to its 3.5% consumer footprint. Enterprisesmore deliberate, more risk-averse, more consequentially exposed to AI failurehave already been choosing Claude at scale. That gap between enterprise and consumer adoption isn’t a coincidence. It’s a trust premium.
The Cost of Caring
It’s easy to have values when they cost you nothing. For Anthropic, these came with a $200 million price tag.
Thats the suggested value of this contentious Pentagon contract. Furthermore, the supply-chain risk designationa label the Trump administration has now formally applied, and which Anthropic is challenging in courtthreatens hundreds of millions more across broader government contracts. This damaging designation, historically reserved for foreign adversaries like Huawei, has never before been applied to an American company.
That is a real commercial cost, not a hypothetical one. But what looks like a ceiling from one angle looks like a moat from another.
In the weeks since the dispute went public, Anthropic’s revenue run rate has nearly doubledfrom $9 billion at the end of 2025 to almost $20 billion today, according to Bloomberg. The government closed a door. The market opened several more.
That is not a coincidence. That is what trust, operationalized and defended under pressure, looks like as a growth strategy.
So What Does This Mean for Your Business?
The question that should be on the table in every leadership meeting right now: which AI platforms are you building on, and have you thought seriously about what that association means for your brand?
AI platforms are no longer neutral infrastructure. They carry values, make visible choices, take public positions. The AI your business relies on is becoming part of your brand. When a platform’s ethics come into questionas they periodically and inevitably willthat exposure travels upstream to every company in its orbit.
This creates both a risk conversation and a strategic opportunity. Evaluating AI partners on trust and values criteria, not just capability benchmarks, is the kind of decision that looks obvious in hindsight and prescient in the moment.
The Brand Codes Are Being Written Now
Early positioning in emerging categories hardens fast. The companies that define what a space stands for, not just what it does, shape expectations for years. We saw it with social media, with streaming, with fintech. In each case, the brands that defined the category’s values, not just its features, built loyalty advantages that capability alone couldn’t disrupt.
AI is at that moment. The conversation about what kind of category this is going to be is happening now, in public, in real time.
Stop asking which AI is most capable. Start asking which AI your business can afford to be associated with. Because our whirlwind romance with AI is fast turning into something more serious; committed, often exclusive, long-term relationships where platform loyalties get more embedded and more entrenched by the day.
Choose carefully. Credibility compounds faster than compute. The data is already proving it.
At a time when mainstream brands live in fear of getting dragged into a contentious political landscape, theres something curiously benign, almost feel-good, about Florsheimgate.
If youve somehow missed it, this particular instance of an involuntary pop-culture brand cameo came about following press reports this week that President Donald Trump has become an enthusiastand de facto brand ambassadorfor Florsheim dress shoes, gifting pairs to cabinet members and media allies. The upshot is that less-than-$150 Florsheims have become the hottest and most exclusive MAGA status symbol, according to The Wall Street Journal.
But more to the point, administration insiders who dont find the brand hot in the slightest, and would likely prefer more luxurious footwear, are sticking with the shoes Trump gives themeven, weirdly, if they dont fit. This naturally caught the attention of MAGA critics, who promptly lit up social media with mockery of the 79-year-old presidents taste and allegedly Stalinesque bullying of his compliant minions.
And this included some collateral damage for the venerable, and some might say dowdy, Florsheim. But really, even the inevitable dunking (what a dated mall brand!) seemed good-humored. Florsheim, one Bluesky user wrote. When a Gift From Wicks n Sticks Just Isnt Enough. Others added comments like florsheim didn’t go out of business in like 1978? and Florsheim shoes? Man, that guys brain really is stuck in the 80s and Ok I give. Whats Florsheim. And of course plenty of memes.
I get the feeling well be discussing Florsheim shoes today.— (@sundaedivine.lol) 2026-03-11T10:18:31.168Z
Funny, but well short of a dangerous brand backlash. Nobodys demonizing Florsheim-wearers in general, putting out videos of shooting up loafers, or organizing a grassroots brand-oppo campaign on behalf of Vuitton loafers.
To the contrary, it seems, at worst, to be a short-term, almost charming free publicity reminder to those who dont know that the brand is still aroundand, apparently, thriving. Turns out, Florsheim enjoyed record wholesale sales of $92 million in 2025, according to parent Weyco Groups most recent earnings release and call earlier this month, demonstrating resilience in a declining market for non-athletic brown shoes.
The Florsheim brand has a choppy history dating all the way back to 1892. Worn by everyone from Harry Truman to Michael Jackson, its a brand deeply embedded in American consumer culture, a staple brand of the suburban shopping malls heyday. But it also endured a bankruptcy filing in 2002. Its now part of the Weyco Group, whose CEO is Thomas Florsheim Jr., a fifth-generation Florsheim. (Sales of other Weyco brands Nunn Bush, Stacy Adams, and Bogs were down last year, dragging down revenue and earnings for the company overall.)
Weyco did not respond to an inquiry from Fast Company, but CEO Florsheim told The Journal he was not aware of Trump’s orders (and declined further comment).
In the conference call (which predated this weeks Trump fandom news), the CEO was upbeat, calling Florsheim one of the few mens [shoe] brands outside of the athletic category to sustain this level of post-pandemic growth. While the non-athletic brown shoe category has been in secular decline, Florsheim has bucked the trend and gained market share.
Whether thats true or not, the association with Trump seems more like a passing entertainment than a brand controversy. At a moment of profound tension brought on by war and the threat of a new global oil crisis, Florsheimgate didnt land like a point of contention; it was more like comic relief.
In an interesting footnote, Weyco noted in its earnings call that tariff impactswhich CEO Florsheim has groused about in the pastsignificantly affected gross margins in 2025. Those tariffs have since been judged illegal by the Supreme Court, and the company is optimistic about retrieving $16 million from tariff refunds.
Maybe Trumps Cabinet members should keep a spare pair of another brands loafers at the office, just in case Florsheim goes out of fashion at the White House.
For the first time that I can remember, this year I was completely enthralled by the Winter Olympics. In fact, I dont think Id ever watched the Winter Games before, but it really caught my attention this go-round. One event that really stood out for me was the skeleton.
For the uninitiated (like I was just a month ago), the skeleton is a slide-based sport where athletes lie face down, headfirst, on a small slide going 80 mph down an icy, declining slope. On the surface, it doesnt look like it requires much from the athlete but to lie down and hang on for dear life until crossing the finish line.
But upon further inspection, the sport is far more intricate, requiring the athlete to make subtle adjustments with their shoulders, knees, and even their toes to control and steer the sled. The slightest weight shifts can make the difference between first place and last. As if the Olympics werent competitive enough, the margin of error in this event is miniscule.
I was fascinated, particularly about the idea of finding balance. Theres so much talk about work-life balance, work-self balance, and just about any other something-something balance where the two somethings seem to be at odds with each other. To find balance, we make subtle adjustments throughout our days and weeksblocking off time, making time, taking timein hopes of steering our lives and maintaining control of ourselves. However, according to Misan Harriman, balance is less of an act and more of a series of choices that informs action; its not what we decide to do but who we choose to be.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores the inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you arent having.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Listen","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLvojPSJ6Iy0T4VojdtGsZ8Q4eAJ6mzr2h","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91470870,"imageMobileId":91470866,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}}
Raw and honest moments of humanity
Harriman is a photographer, activist, and Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose work has been prominently featured in publications like Vogue, celebrated on awards stages, and widely shared throughout the zeitgeist. His work captures the raw and honest moments of humanityin resistance, grief, joy, and all the many manifestations of our true existence.
Our conversation with Harriman on the From the Culture podcast explored the balancing act of profitability and principle, where he argues that profit at all costs carries a heavy price tag that can cost us our authenticity. We make decisions at work that call into question the integrity of who we perceive ourselves to be outside of the office.
Tech CEOs sell products to schools that they hardly ever let their own children use. Managers treat their subordinates in ways that would anger them if it were something their spouse had to endure. Whether its the way we communicate with peers or manage our presentation of self at work, far too often there is an imbalance between ourselveswho we say we are and how we are. Our inconsistent performances of self not only cause harm in our work but can also cause a crisis of authenticity.
Fittingly, sociologist Erving Goffman likens the theatrical stage to the dynamics of social living, borrowing from William Shakespeares comedy As You Like It, where he writes, All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
Our presentation of self, as Goffman posits, is a choice we make. We decide which character we choose to play in social life. This choice subsequently demands a series of decisions that coincides with said character. The costumery. The script. The mannerisms. The exits and entrances. They are all by-products of the character we choose to play. That is to say, who we choose to be informs how we choose to be.
A choice of character
Through this lens, the balancing act of work-life or work-self is a choice of character and commitment to it. And although we attempt to balance the existence of two characters with adjustments here and there, like the athletes in the skeleton event, these seemingly subtle shifts of self can have tremendous impact. The idea then is to remain true to self, one character that is consistent despite the context. This is, after all, the definition of authenticity.
As Goffman warns, we should pay mind to the mask we choose to wear because if we arent careful, our mask could soon become our face. This means we have agency in the matter. We can decide who we want to be and, therefore, how were going to behave. We have a choice; but when we dont choose, the context will certainly choose for us.
Check out our full conversation with Misan Harriman on the latest episode of From the Culture here on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores the inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you arent having.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Listen","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLvojPSJ6Iy0T4VojdtGsZ8Q4eAJ6mzr2h","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91470870,"imageMobileId":91470866,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}}
