Imagine that you pull up to a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. You step out of the car and walk into the lobby, where the staff greets you by name and ushers you to an elevator. Upstairs, another staff member brings you coffee just the way you like it, minutes after you arrive. A barber is on hand to give you a fresh shave before an important Zoom call, and afterwards, you drop by a caviar tasting thats happening in the shared lounge.
Amid an interior of travertine, green marble, and glass, a dedicated hospitality team and concierge service wants to make sure clients dont waste time with the little frictions of everyday life. This sanctuary might sound like one of Manhattans luxury members-only clubs, but in fact, its a new kind of coworking space that caters to the 1% of workers.
Industrious Reserve is a high-end coworking space meant for CEOs and business leaders. Its supposed to give the prestige of Park Avenue and the quiet luxury of a private club, according to marketing materials. Its designed for leaders with all-remote teams, or with home offices in other cities, who will now have a place to hold court.
What we observe in our business is that people want a private club experience, but they also want their own office, says Industrious President Anna Squires Levine, whose firm was recently bought by real estate services giant CBRE. Just this morning, I had a private equity executive tell me this is the product Ive been waiting for. I do not want to sign my own 10-year lease. Why would I do that? Then I have to build it and manage it and figure out the Wi-Fi for 10 years. I want somewhere I can show up and feel like a boss.
[Photo: Industrious Reserve]
The first location of Industrious Reserve, a high-end coworking space meant for CEOs and business leaders, will open soon inside the fifth and sixth floors of Manhattans Lever House, a famous modernist skyscraper. Reserve access starts at $7,000 a month per person, $9,500 if it includes one of the 44 private office suites (monthly membership costs for other Industrious locations in New York City vary between $399 and $1,700.)
The new corner office
The Reserve offering represents a significant departure from the classic corner office layout for corporate leadership, a design for status and hierarchy that reached its apex shortly after the International-Style Lever House opened in 1952. As much as its a story of service firms finding new ways to cater to increasingly wealthy clienteleafter all, theres no shortage of private club space or budget for high-end office amenitiesit also speaks to the changing role of a modern CEO and their workspace.
[Photo: Industrious Reserve]
Corporate leadership needs to showcase accessibility, transparency and cultural presence, says Todd Heiser, principal and co-managing director of Genslers Chicago office. But that doesnt mean having the face of the company operate out of the lunchroom, or like many famous tech leaders, flipping open a laptop and sitting with the rank-and-file.
What Heiser says leaders desire nowand Reserve seeks to provideis a place to work in close collaboration with the trusted team that makes a modern business function, almost like a capitalist situation room.
[Photo: Industrious Reserve]
In a world that requires lightning-fast decision-making, CEOs want proximity; they want to be able to assemble the executive team in minutes and work in a space that fosters faster alignment. Heiser pointed to Logan Roys office on Succession or Rebeccas office on Ted Lasso as examples of leadership spaces that were both characters in their own right and typically open for rapid-fire meetings with advisers. One real-world example, the new HQ for Hyatt, includes space for leadership to quickly huddle, assemble, and lead team meetings outside of a stiff boardroom.
The Capitalist Situation Room
In the 1950s, office designers, influenced by notions of hierarchy and congruence theory, laid out workspaces to cleanly delineate hierarchy. Meanwhile, with todays more open plan and collaborative design, the workplace power dynamic is dramatically demonstrated by access, says Heiser. It helps that shrinking office footprints also means axing luxurious private offices. Gensler found one in five workers today doesnt have assigned seating, though execs do tend to have a reserved spot in most offices.
As opposed to the classic corner officelong a symbol of hierarchy and corporate powerthis new functional layout thats emerging more post-pandemic displays the leadership style of todays LinkedIn CEO. Employees read leadership spaces like cultural text, says Heiser. The layout, the openness, the adjacency all tell people what the organization values. It actually comes clearly from the top.
[Photo: Industrious Reserve]
Reserve, in both its name and lofty privacy, communicates exclusivityits a considerable expense to joinbut it also gets described as the type of space where a leader can collaborate with a team. Levine spoke about the design, by the in-house team at Industrious, as a fusion of physical, technological, and experiential, trying to create a turnkey experience for execs while also creating a sort of townhouse on Park Avenue vibe. The feeling of intimacy should be akin to a secret, top-floor, light-filled brownstone in the middle of New York, says Levine.
[Photo: Industrious Reserve]
What sets Reserve apart, argues Levine, is the dichotomy; leaders can enjoy an intimate private office to meet with advisers, offering that connection to their top staff, as well as a semi-public spacemembers and guests only in the clubfor socializing for larger gatherings. Its a space for using time impactfully, being in the bunker with trusted advisers, and being the best version of yourself.
Compared to the gigantic floorplates of modern high-rises, the Lever House is slim and elegant; in the afternoon, the sunlight from the window hits the middle of the floor.
[Photo: Industrious Reserve]
So far, membership interest has come from private equity firms, venture firms, hedge funds, and high-end retail and fashion shops. Levine says its either firms with big headquarters elsewhere who want a Manhattan outpost, or smaller, super distributed teams seeking a central meeting place.
Levine expects the small handful of drop-in memberships and private offices to be snapped up well before the space opens in the spring, and Industrious plans further expansions of the concept in pinnacle cities such as Singapore, Tokyo, and Berlin.
It takes a very special building and a very special landlord partner to make it happen, says Levine. We like to be thoughtful and methodical about the way that we expand so we know we can do it with a high degree of execution.
Saks Global, owner of luxury retail chains Saks 5th Avenue and Neiman Marcus, has announced the closure of most of its discount outlet stores, Saks Off 5th and Last Call.
The store closures come weeks after Saks Global announced that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Heres what you need to know about the store closures, including a full list of the locations being shuttered.
Whats happened?
Yesterday, Saks Global said it would close a majority of its discount outlet stores. While Sak Global is best known for its high-end luxury department store chains, Saks 5th Avenue and Neiman Marcus, the company owns several other retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Off 5th, Last Call, and Horchow.
The company has now announced that two of these retailers will be hit by store closings.
The first is Saks Off 5th, the companys outlet store chain, which sells discounted apparel and accessories for shoppers on a budget.
The company also announced that it will close all its Last Call stores. Last Call is the discount outlet chain originally owned by Neiman Marcus, which Saks Global acquired for around $2.7 billion in 2024.
Why are Saks Off 5th and Last Call stores closing?
Saks Global is closing these locations as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, which the company filed for earlier this month.
The goal of the bankruptcy is to strengthen the foundation of our business and position it for the future, Saks Global CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck stated earlier this month.
Over the past several years, the company now known as Saks Global has become saddled with debt, driven by factors affecting many retailers, including reduced sales, declining foot traffic, increased online competition, and inflationary pressures.
But the companys debt problems also increased significantly after it acquired competitor Neiman Marcus in 2024.
This weeks announcement of store closures doesnt come out of the blue. Earlier this month, when Saks Global announced it was filing for bankruptcy, the company said it was evaluating its operational footprint to invest resources where it has the greatest long-term potential.
That evaluation has now led to the closure of a majority of its Saks Off 5th and all of its Last Call stores.
Saks Global now says the store closures are the result of a thorough review of its off-price business.
Which Last Call stores are closing?
Saks Global has confirmed that all of its remaining Last Call stores will close. This encompasses five locations in three states. Those locations are:
California
Desert Hills Premium Outlets (Cabazon, CA)
The Outlets at Orange (Orange, CA)
Florida
Sawgrass Mills (Sunrise, FL)
Texas
Grapevine Mills (Grapevine, TX)
San Marcos Premium Outlets (San Marcos, TX)
Which Saks Off 5th stores are closing?
Unlike its Last Call stores, Saks Global will not shutter all of its Saks Off 5th stores. However, the majority of the stores will be closing.
The company says that 12 Saks Off 5th locations will remain open, while the other 57 locations will close. Those 57 locations are spread across 18 states. Here is the full list of Saks Off 5th stores that are closing:
Arizona
Glendale, AZ
Phoenix, AZ
Scottsdale, AZ
Tucson, AZ
California
Cabazon, CA
Camarillo, CA
Costa Mesa, CA
Livermore, CA
Beverly Connect, Los Angeles (West), CA
Milpitas, CA
Palm Desert, CA
Petaluma, CA
Ontario, CA
San Diego, CA
Woodland Hills, CA
Conneticuit
Clinton, CT
Stamford High Ridge (Stamford), CT
Florida
Destin, FL
Ellenton (Tampa), FL
Tampa (Lutz), FL
Naples Park Shore (Naples), FL
Orlando, FL
Orlando (Vineland), FL
Georgia
Atlanta (Woodstock), GA
North Atlanta (Woodstock), GA
Hawaii
Ala Moana (Honolulu, HI)
Hawaii (Honolulu, HI)
Illinois
Aurora Chicago (Aurora), IL
State Street (Chicago), IL
Northbrook, IL
Rosemont, IL
Massachutses
Boston (Somerville), MA
Wrentham, MA
Maryland
Clarksburg, MD
Arundel (Hanover), MD
Minnisota
Eagan, MN
Navada
Las Vegas N (Las Vegas), NV
Las Vegas S (Las Vegas), NV
New Hampshire
Merrimack, NH
New Jersey
Bridgewater, NJ
Elizabeth, NJ
Shrewsbury, NJ
New York
Deer Park, NY
Eastchester, NY
Greenburgh, NY
Riverhead, NY
North Carolina
Charlotte, NC
Mebane, NC
Ohio
Columbus, OH
South Carolina
Hilton Head (Bluffton), SC
Charleston, SC
Texas
Cypress, TX
Dallas Park (Dallas), TX
Grand Prairie, TX
Katy, TX
San Antonio, TX
Sugarland, TX
In addition to the above Saks Off 5th closing locations, Saks Global also announced that the retailer’s website, Saksoff5th.com, “is winding down operations.
When do closing sales begin?
Saks Global says Saksoff5th.com online closing sales will begin today, Friday, January 30.
Physical store closing sales will begin on Saturday, January 31.
The company says that gift cards to these physical retail stores will continu to be accepted, but only until Saturday, February 14th.
Gift cards for saksoff5th.com will only be accepted until Friday, February 13th.
All merchandise purchased during the closing sales is non-returnable or exchangeable.
President Donald Trump said he plans to announce his choice for chairman of the Federal Reserve on Friday morning, a long-awaited decision that could set up a showdown on whether the U.S. central bank preserves its independence from the White House and electoral politics.For the past year, the president has aggressively attacked Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term as the head of the U.S. central bank ends in May. Trump maintains that Powell should cut the Fed’s benchmark interest rates more drastically to fuel faster economic growth, while the Fed chair has taken a far more judicious approach in the wake of Trump’s tariffs because inflation is already elevated.“I’ll be announcing the Fed chair tomorrow morning,” Trump told reporters Thursday night as he went into a screening of the documentary “Melania” about his wife. “It’s going to be, somebody that is very respected, somebody that’s known to everybody in the financial world. And I think it’s going to be a very good choice. I hope so.”Trump stayed relatively cryptic about his pick. His search was led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with four known finalists: Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor; Christopher Waller, a current Fed governor; Rick Rieder, an executive with the financial firm BlackRock; and Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council. Trump previously suggested Hassett was the frontrunner, only to recently say that he wanted him to remain in his current post.Trump did say on Thursday night that “a lot of people think that this is somebody that could have been there a few years ago,” fueling speculation that he had chosen Warsh, who was a finalist in the 2017 search for Fed chair that led to Powell’s selection.Tensions between Trump and the central bank had been steadily mounting as the president used the renovation costs of the Fed’s headquarters to further lambaste Powell, a campaign that resulted in the Fed getting subpoenas from the Justice Department earlier this month. The Fed chair took the rare step of issuing a video statement in which he said, “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”Trump has long teased his Fed choice while saying his nominee would slash interest rates that influence the supply of money in the U.S. economy, the rate of inflation and the stability of the job market.On the cusp of Trump’s announcement, Powell might have the ability to block him in an effort to ensure the Fed preserves its credibility by staying away from political considerations.While his term as chair ends in roughly three months, Powell’s term on the Fed’s board of governors runs through 2028 and he could choose to remain in that post, likely blocking Trump’s ability to have his nominees control the majority of the seats on the board. Of the seven Fed governors, former President Joe Biden picked three of them in addition to renominating Powell to a second term as chair.If Powell stays on the board, he could also create a small procedural hurdle for Trump’s ability to nominate someone new to the board. This would mean Trump would either have to choose an existing board member as chair or replace Stephen Miran, who is on leave from his job as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers to fill a term as governor that technically ends on Saturday. If Trump chooses to replace Miran, he could name someone new to the board.At a Wednesday news conference, Powell declined to say whether he would leave the board. But he did offer some advice to any successor about balancing the need for independent judgment with public accountability.“Don’t get pulled into elected politics don’t do it,” Powell said. “Another is, that our window into democratic accountability is Congress. And it’s not a passive burden for us to go to Congress and talk to people. It’s an affirmative regular obligation.”
Josh Boak and Darlene Superville, Associated Press
Hello, and welcome back to Fast Companys Plugged In.
When Amazon announced this week that its shutting down Amazon Go, its 8-year-old chain of cashierless convenience stores, the news did not come as a shocker. Almost two years ago, the company shuttered all its Go stores in San Francisco, along with some locations in New York and Seattle. Another round of closures came in 2024. Now its going from a few stores to no stores, a footnote given that the same day brought the news that Amazon is laying off 16,000 people across the company.
Having shopped at the Amazon Go near my San Francisco office almost 200 times, I counted myself as a fan. Even back then, though, it felt like the company either didnt understand what it had created or had already lost interest. The piece I wrote when the San Francisco stores closed felt like an obituary, even though other locations remained in business.
I said at the time that regardless of what happened to Amazon Go, I hoped startups would pursue the goal of freeing us from the drudgery of waiting in line to pay for stuff. One I mentioned in that piece, Grabango, folded the following year. Reportedly, the expense and complexity of equipping stores with its technologywhich, like Go, involved a bevy of cameras using AI to keep track of shoppers and the products theyd plucked from shelvesplayed a part in its demise.
I should note that cashierless retail is not entirely dead. Amazon is still working on the Just Walk Out technology that powered the Go stores, which it makes available to other retailers. Some of its Whole Food Market stores continue to offer a variant of the tech in the form of smart shopping carts called Dash Carts, which it recently upgraded. Startups that remain in the game include Zippin, whose Go-like technology is widely used at sporting and concert venues, and Mashgin, which eliminates the need to configure an entire store with cameras by having shoppers place items on a tray for AI-assisted checkout.
The one place Ive encountered checkout-free shopping lately is at airports, where Ive bought items using both Amazons and Mashgins platforms. My experiences were positive. Lets be honest, though: It isnt tough to improve on airport retail in its traditional form.
Cashierless checkout surviving for niche applications would be a dramatic reversal from the days when the first Amazon Go stores opened and I wondered whether human-dependent checkout was on its way to becoming as quaint as sales transactions involving someone eyeballing price tags on items and laboriously punching keys on a cash register. Maybe it will someday. But surely not in this decade, and I wouldnt bet on the one after that.
Why is that? Along with the cost of the tech, theres the question of how well it works at all. In 2023, The Informations Theo Wayt reported that Amazon had 1,000 people in India reviewing transactions from its stores, and that 70% of sales required a human in the loop. That made it sound like the main thing the company had achieved was to remote-control the checkout process rather than eliminate it. It was also a reminder that shopping in Amazon Go stores involved being monitored by cameras, giving the whole process a Big Brother vibe.
Amazon disputed details of Wayts report. And the fact that considerable human labor was required to train the Just Walk Out AI doesnt mean it would be so forever. Still, the more you know about how technology of this sort works, the more daunting it soundsespecially in the context of retail, a business that has traditionally been resistant to experimentation and long-term thinking.
Back when I was popping into my neighborhood Amazon Go several times a week, I thought of what it was doing as being centered on making my life slightly better. Ultimately, though, retail technology is not about direct customer satisfaction. Its about increasing sales. Making shoppers happier is only one way to accomplish that, and probably not the easiest one.
In 2018, my colleague Sean Captain wrote about Standard Cognition, which had opened a 1,900-foot demo cashierless shop in San Francisco and had plans to help retailers take thousands of stores cashierless in just a couple of years. That didnt happen. Now known as Standard AI, the company has pivoted away from grab-and-go toward using cameras to understand what shoppers actually see and respond to, its website says. Our proprietary models continuously track awareness, engagement, and conversion to prove media impact, refine promotions, and optimize performance across every in-store placement.
Standard AI is not performing facial recognition or otherwise associating this data with specific identifiable individuals. But even in anonymized form, the idea of being monitored as I shop for the purpose of maximizing sales makes me wince. The companys sitewith close-up imagery of shoppers contemplating products, overlaid with stats Standard has collected about themdoesnt help. (Yes, I am aware that club cards have long tied shoppers to purchases, and that online shopping has always been a minefield when it comes to merchants spying on customers.)
Much has changed since Amazon Go was a novelty. AI is now everywhere in our lives, and the list of areas where its impact is potentially transformative is almost literally endless. I still like the concept of grab-and-go shopping. For now, however, it seems most useful as a case study in why technology that workskinda, in certain circumstancescan fall so short of working as a real-world business.
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,
From the outside, it looks like a generational standoff.
Baby boomers are retiring earlier than expected, frustrated by workplace change, technology shifts, and growing tension with younger colleagues. At the same time, Gen Z talks openly about quitting jobs that feel misaligned or draining. Many leaders interpret this as a clash of values. Older workers cannot adapt. Younger workers lack commitment. The data tells a more complicated story.
New research from Clari and Salesloft, conducted in partnership with Workplace Intelligence, surveyed 2,000 U.S. sellers and sales leaders across industries. The study found that 19% of baby boomers are planning to retire early because they are tired of dealing with Gen Z at work. At the same time, 28% of Gen Z respondents said they are actively searching for a role where they will not have to interact with baby boomers as much.
The cost of that friction is not abstract. The research estimates that generational conflict is costing organizations roughly $56 billion each year in lost productivity, driven by miscommunication, burnout, and uneven adoption of new technologies like AI.
On its own, that data suggests a workplace pulling itself apart.
But another study complicates the narrative. Research from Southeastern Oklahoma State University, based on a survey of 1,000 employees, found that 71% of Gen Z workers are staying in a job or career longer than they want simply because they do not know how to leave. Nearly half say they are actively transitioning toward something new, while 68% report that their employer has no idea they are planning a change.
Taken together, these findings reveal something leaders often miss.
Baby boomers are leaving because they can. Gen Z is staying because they do not know how not to.
This is not a motivation problem. It is a clarity problem.
A shifting environment
For many boomers, the workplace they are navigating today barely resembles the one they mastered. AI tools, shifting communication norms, and changing definitions of productivity have disrupted identities built on decades of experience and institutional knowledge. When those changes arrive without context or support, frustration grows. Early retirement becomes less about age and more about opting out of an environment that no longer feels coherent.
Gen Z is facing the opposite challenge. They entered a workforce defined by constant change, but very little guidance. Career paths are opaque. Loyalty feels risky. Advice is often abstract. While they are often labeled as eager to quit, the reality is that many are stuck in roles they have already outgrown, unsure how to move on without harming their future.
AI has intensified this divide rather than resolving it. For example, the same Clari and Salesloft research found that 39% of Gen Z would rather be managed by AI than by a baby boomer, while 25% of boomers say they would prefer working with AI over a Gen Z colleague. This preference is less about technology being superior and more about predictability. In environments where expectations feel unclear or inconsistent, AI can appear easier to work with than people.
The leadership factor
That is where leadership enters the equation.
Engaged empathy is not about lowering standards or avoiding difficult conversations. It is about understanding how different generations experience the same systems and responding with clear, actionable communication. Without that effort, organizations allow frustration to turn into disengagement.
For Gen Z, engaged empathy shows up as explicit career navigation. Not platitudes about growth, but concrete conversations about skills, timelines, and options. Many young employees are not afraid of hard work. They are afraid of making irreversible mistakes in a system that rarely explains the rules.
For baby boomers, engaged empathy means recognizing that resistance to new tools is often rooted in identity, not stubbornness. When experience feels discounted rather than translated, trust erodes. Leaders who intentionally connect new technologies to existing strengths reduce defensiveness and preserve institutional wisdom. However, none of this works without clarity.
High-performing organizations do not assume alignment across generations. They create it. They explain what success looks like now, how it is measured, and how employees at different stages can contribute and grow. They introduce AI as a shared resource rather than a silent evaluator.
Boomers retiring early and Gen Z wanting to quit are not signs that work is fundamentally broken. They are signals that employees are responding rationally to unclear systems and inconsistent leadership.
The solution is not fewer generations in the workplace. It is leaders willing to practice engaged empathy and communicate clearly enough that fewer people feel the need to escape in the first place.
Last year was a brutal one for layoffs, with large cuts coming from Amazon, UPS, Microsoft and Verizon. And as things get rolling for 2026, it’s looking like this year won’t be any less uncertain for workers.
This week has seen a slew of sizable job cuts from a wide variety of companies. As of Thursday morning, more than 61,650 positions have been eliminated.
The actual number is likely a fair bit higher as many of the companies announcing layoffssuch as Shopify, Expedia, and Vimeodid not release the number of jobs that were impacted.
Dow Inc. was the most recent well-known company to announce cuts. On Thursday, the chemical maker said it would do away with 4,500 positions as part of a streamlining operation it calls “Transform to Outperform.”
The company says it plans to rely more on artificial intelligence and automation in the months ahead. Those layoffs represented approximately 12% of the company’s workforce.
Dow was hardly alone this week, though. The staff trimmings are occurring at tech and tech-adjacent companies around the world and are adding up fast. Here are some other notable reductions in staff that have been announced this week.
Pinterest
On Monday, social media platform Pinterest filed a notification with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it was planning “a reduction in force that is expected to affect less than 15% of the Companys workforce.”
With an estimated workforce of 5,200 people, that puts the layoffs between 700 and 800. The company said it plans to utilize AI to fill many of those roles.
Nike
The footwear giant confirmed plans to lay off 775 employees in the U.S., the third year in a row that it has cut jobs. Nike said it would rely on automation to handle the duties of those workers.
United Parcel Service (UPS)
During an earnings call with analysts on Tuesday, Brian Dykes, chief financial officer of UPS, revealed plans to reduce operational hours at the delivery giant by 25 million, which will result in 30,000 workers losing their jobs.
The cuts come as the company winds down its long-standing partnership with Amazon.
The Home Depot
The Home Depot confirmed plans Wednesday to lay off 800 workers, including 150 at its Atlanta headquarters.
“Were simplifying our corporate operations to better support our stores and our customers,” a spokesperson for the home improvement retail chain told Fast Company. “These changes include a reduction in roles associated with our store support center . . . This was a difficult decision, and were focused on doing the right thing and supporting associates who were impacted.”
Amazon
Just months after laying off 14,000 workers last fall, Amazon on Wednesday said it was eliminating another 16,000 jobs. And the company did not rule out additional cuts in the months to come (though it said none were currently planned).
“Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm where we announce broad reductions every few months,” wrote Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon. “Thats not our plan. But just as we always have, every team will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed, and capacity to invent for customers, and make adjustments as appropriate.”
Other companies laying off workers
Beyond the cuts this week, January has also seen notable workforce reductions from Autodesk (1,000 workers), Ericsson (1,600 employees), Meta Platforms (1,500 people), and ASML (1,700 staffers), according to job cut tracking sites Layoffs.fyi and trueup.
Savings and productivity gains that come with AI and automation will almost certainly be pointed at by companies that lay off workers as layoffs in 2026 continue, but several businesses that have decided to become AI-first workplaces have come to regret the move.
Two years ago, Klarna Group instituted a hiring freeze as it embraced the notion that AI could do the work of hundreds of employees. Last May, however, it reversed course, saying it might have been too ambitious with its AI goals.
Meanwhile, language learning platform Duolingo saw its push to embrace AI attacked on social media. Shares of Duolingo are down more than 61% over the last 12 months.
Its Friday afternoon. Your inbox looks like a battleground, your calendar is a collage of back-to-back calls, and the strategic plan you built last quarter already feels outdated. Youve spent the week reacting, extinguishing fires, and juggling unexpected demands you didnt plan for. Youve been busy, but not necessarily productive. Youve managed the chaos, but you havent had space to lead through it.
This is the trap many leaders find themselves in today. Our attention is consumed by the urgent, leaving almost no cognitive room for the deep thinking, creativity, and strategic foresight that leadership requires. Working harder isnt the answer. Neither is downloading yet another tool.
Under time pressure and limited mental bandwidth, leaders tend to fall back on fast, intuitive shortcuts that erode decision quality in complex situations. What leaders need is a simple operating system reset: a weekly practice that converts disruption into insight and momentum.
From Extinguishing Fires to Using Their Heat
In nature, fire isnt only destructive; its regenerative. Giant sequoias, for example, rely on the heat of a forest fire to release their seeds. Flames clear the underbrush, enrich the soil, and make way for new growth.
High-performing leaders work the same way. Instead of viewing disruption as something to resist, they learn to harness its heat. They recognize that crises, customer surprises, shifting priorities, and unexpected wins all contain valuable signals about how the world is changing and where opportunity sits. Some fast-moving organizations have formalized reflection into their operating rhythms. For example, Spotifys engineering teams have publicly described the use of agile retrospectives to turn surprises into learning.
Taking time for a short weekly reset can help leaders capture those signals. Set aside 18 minutes at the end of each week to pause, asking yourself three deceptively simple questions and sitting with each for six minutes.
1. What must I clear away?
Every ecosystem needs deadwood cleared before new things can grow. Your work is no different.
Look back at your week and ask yourself:
What assumption I held on Monday was proven wrong by Friday?
What meeting, process, or habit is creating drag instead of value?
Which zombie project is still consuming time or budget despite having no strategic future?
The goal here is subtraction. Leaders tend to underestimate how much cognitive clutter weighs them down. Clearing it ruthlessly creates room for better decisions and more ambitious ideas.
2. What did this weeks disruption teach me?
Once the underbrush is cleared, you can see what nutrients remain. Disruption is information. Your job is to extract meaning from it.
This is benefit-finding: the discipline of intentionally looking for insight in unexpected places.
Consider:
What surprising customer comment, employee concern, or performance issue taught me something important?
Where did our team get an unexpected win, and what were the conditions that enabled it?
What new skill, workaround, or capability emerged that might be worth formalizing?
This step shifts you from reacting to events to learning from them in real time. It builds future intelligence, the ability to read signals and adapt ahead of the curve.
3. What is one bold move I can take?
Reflection without movement creates stagnation. Regeneration requires action.
Choose one consequential decision, not a long list:
What is the single conversation that will unlock progress next week?
What experiment is worth running?
What important decision have I been avoiding that I will now make?
Choosing just one forces focus. It ensures you enter Monday intentionally. Its a shift from managing the week to shaping it.
Lead the Future, One Week at a Time
Taking a weekly reset isnt a productivity hack; its a leadership discipline that helps you step above the noise and recalibrate your direction.
In an era defined by constant change, the leaders who thrive arent the ones who avoid disruption. Theyre the ones who know how to convert it into insight, energy, and action. They learn to use disruptions to leap forward.
This discipline becomes even more important in a world shaped by accelerating AI adoption, geopolitical volatility, climate-driven shocks, and continual shifts in customer expectations, as highlighted in recent global risk assessments from the World Economic Forum. Leaders who thrive build regenerative capacity, the ability to clear noise, extract meaning, and act decisively through practices like the weekly reflection tool. Research on adaptive leadership consistently shows that learning-oriented organizations are better at turning change into innovation. This 18-minute ritual is how you start. By clearing space, extracting meaning, and choosing one bold move each week, you reclaim your agency in a world that constantly pulls you into reaction.
Disruption isnt going away. But with the right rhythm, you can stop being managed by it and start using it as fuel for your next breakthrough.
Last Saturday, more than six million people held their breath as Alex Honnold took his first step up Taipei 101. The Free Solo climber, who went on to ascend Taiwans tallest building without the safety of a rope and harness, drew crowds all around the building, as well as on Netflix, where the ascent was live-streamed as part of a show called Skyscraper Live.
Some of these people had likely already watched Honnold scale the 3,000-foot rock wall of Yosemites El Capitan. But for many, the climber’s ascent up a man-made structure was likely an introduction to an altogether different kind of climbing: not on the face of a cliff, but the side of a building.
This type of sport is called buildering (from bouldering, to climb boulders) and it has been happening for more than a century.
Taipei 101 [Photo: Eagan Hsu/Unsplash]
From rock to concrete
For decades, the ultimate challenge for climbers was nature itself. Modern rock climbing took shape in the late 19th century, when alpinists ventured beyond traditional mountaineering and onto steeper, more technical cliffs. By the mid-20th century, climbers embraced free climbing, meaning they relied on their hands and feet to move upward while using ropes only as a safety backup in case of a fall. Then, in the ’70s and ’80s, free-soloists like John Bachar pushed the sport to its extreme, stripping away the rope entirely and turning every move into a high-stakes commitment.
Now, buildings are the next challenge, says 70-year-old American climber Dan Goodwin, who has climbed a dozen buildings, including the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, and Millenium Tower in San Francisco.
Today, more than half of the worlds population lives in cities, and the majority of climbers train in gyms. They get out of the gym and what are they looking at? High rises, says Goodwin. But climbing a building isnt the same as climbing the face of a mountain. With rock climbing, every move is different, but climbing a building calls for repetition, which Goodwin says attacks the muscle. Hips cramp, shoulders start to burn: It gets real quick, and I want to start educating people about how dangerous it is.
Dan Goodwin climbs Simon Bolivar Tower in Caracas, Venezuela, before a large crowd for television company Venevision. February, 1982. [Photo: Private Collection]
A brief history of buildering
The thought of scaling the face of a building may send the average person into a tizzy, but people have been climbing buildings for almost as long as there have been buildings to climb.
The earliest documented example dates back to 1901, when British alpinist Geoffrey Winthrop-Young anonymously published The Roof-Climbers Guide to Trinity College, mapping the architecture of the campus as a series of climbing routes. Some decades later, human flies like George Polley and Harry Gardiner scaled buildings in cities like New York City and Boston.
Dan Goodwin climbing the CN Tower in Toronto, 1986. [Photo: David Cooper/Toronto Star/ Getty Images]
By the 1980s and 90s, buildering had entered mainstream with televised (not live) ascents by SpiderDan Goodwin, and French climber Alain Robert, who went on to scale the Empire State Building, with no rope, and the Burj Khalifa with a safety rope and harness. (While Roberts was the first to ascend Taipei 101, Honnold was the first to do it rope-free.)
Over the course of those years, buildings have changed drastically. According to Youngs original guide, buildings with good holds featured recessed window frames, narrow chimneys, and continuous parapetsarchitectural quirks that made climbing easier.
With the advent of steel and concrete construction, many of these features disappeared in favor of sleek glass curtain walls, and climbing buildings became so much harder that some climbers have resorted to aids like suction cups and sky hookssmall devices that help climbers hang off tiny edgesto scale smooth facades.
Goodwin was one of those climbers. In 1981, he climbed Chicagos Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower) using suction cups and sky hooks. As climbers, we would prefer relying on our physical strength than on a suction cup, he told me. I almost died because of my suction cups.
But architecture dictates everything, as Goodwin put it, and the tower had no suitable hand or foot holds. Plus, the climber had recently been issued a challenge he had to rise to.
In 1980, a fire engulfed the MGM Grand fire in Las Vegas and killed 85 people after smoke spread rapidly through the building. Goodwin was deeply affected by the fire, and as he watched firefighters struggle to reach people trapped on upper floors, he argued that climbers could be trained to scale skyscrapers during emergencies. When a local fire marshal dismissed the idea and challenged him to climb a building himself, Goodwin took it literallyand went on to climb the Sears Tower, then the tallest building in the world. That conversation changed my life, he says.
Goodwin, whose memoir, Untethered, is set to come out in the spring, went on to climb over a dozen buildings around the world, including the CN Tower in Toronto, which he climbed in 1986twice in the same dayusing only his hands and feet. The hardest climbs, he said, were those with slick glass that called for suction cups. The easiest were buildings with clearly defined features.
Taipei 101, with its stacked, bamboo-like segments and decorative dragon heads, fits into the latter category. So many beautiful handhold features, he says.
Alex Honnold on top of Taipei 101. January, 2026.
The next era of buildering
Perhaps these complications are the reason why, after more than 100 years of existence, the sport today remains dominated by just a few big namesfrom legacy figures like Robert and Goodwin, to younger climbers like the 26-year-old George King, who famously climbed The Shard in 2019 before base jumping off the top, and Honnold, whose career focused on rock climbing before he took on Taipei 101.
British skyscraper climber George King as he leaves HM Prison Pentonville in north London on January, 2020, on his release from imprisonment after free-climbing the London skyscraper, The Shard. [Photo: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images]
Today, the buildering community remains small. In fact, according to Andy Day, a climber and photographer who wrote a paper on buildering in 2017, to call it a community would be generous. Its a more niche, sub-cultural level of interest, he says, noting interest has largely ebbed and flowed over the years.
The discipline required to do what someone like Alain Roberts or Alex Honnold do is just so unique that its not going to happen very often, he told me, adding, with a laugh, that there are enough well-equipped gyms serving hot coffee to keep climbers satisfied.
But “SpiderDan” believes Honnolds live-streamed climb might usher in a new era for urban climbers. I know every climber is going to be walking through cities now and looking at what buildings they could climb, he says.
Honnoldwho kicked off his ascent with a casual nod to the camera and ended it 91 minutes later with a low-key sick!made his climb look like a walk in the park. But Goodwin knows urban climbers need the same regulations as rock climbers, so he is now working on a separate book in the hopes of making urban climbing safer.
We need to come up with standards, and ethics, and rules that govern future generations, he says, because you think youre the only ones right now, but I know other people climbing buildings, and in the next year or two, I wouldnt be surprised if we see fifty to 100 ascents.
Today, thousands of Americans are participating in a general strike. The instructions are simple: no work, no school, no shopping. The aim is ambitiousto pressure the Trump administration to remove ICE from local communities.
The strike is a response to the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota. In the days since, calls for a nationwide shutdown have spread rapidly across social media, shared by activists, nonprofits, and everyday people urging a halt to economic activity. Celebrities including Pedro Pascal, Edward Norton, and Jamie Lee Curtis have amplified the message to their followers.
Some businessesmostly small, independent oneshave heeded the call. Clothing label Misha and Puff, olive oil maker Brightland, and underwear brand Oddobody have all closed for the day, forgoing revenue as a form of protest. “The only thing the Trump administration responds to is the market,” says Polly Rodriguez, founder of the sexual wellness company Unbound Babes, who has shuttered her business for the day. “Our goal is to raise awareness today, link people to other resources, and gather donations for organizations on the ground in Minnesota.”
[Screenshot: The General Strike US]
The Organizers Behind This Strike
Although the strike has been organized in a decentralized way, with no single leader at the helm, many participants have turned to the website and Instagram account of The General Strike US, which offer guidance about organizing a general strike. Eliza Blum, a longtime labor organizer, built the site in 2022, alongside other activists.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a founder,” she says. “We’re very much a non-hierarchical, decentralized network.”
Through her work with Fight for $15, the campaign for a $15 minimum wage, Blum saw firsthand how strikes forced companies and policymakers to pay attention. As the Trump administration pursued what she viewed as increasingly authoritarian policies, she began to see labor as a central tool of resistance.
“When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I hit a personal breaking point,” she tells me. “Protesting in the streets, holding signs, calling our representativesit wasn’t enough. We live in an extremely capitalist society where our greatest weapon is our labor. If working people stopped working, we could shut down the country until our demands were met.”
Other prominent voices have echoed that view. “What does a national civic uprising look like?” Robert Reich, a U.C. Berkeley law professor, wrote in his Substack last April. “It may look like a general strikea strike in which tens of millions of Americans refuse to work, refuse to buy, refuse to engage in anything other than a mass demonstration against the regime.”
The General Strike website calls for people to sign a “strike card,” pledging their participation in future actions. The long-term goal, Blum says, is to secure commitments from 3.5% of the U.S. populationroughly 10.5 million people. The figure comes from research by political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, which suggests that when 3.5% of a population engages in sustained protest, authoritarian governments are likely to collapse.
So far, about 435,730 people have signed the pledge. Once the number reaches 10.5 million, organizers plan to coordinate a nationwide strike. In the meantime, Blum argues that smaller, recurring actions are essential for building momentum.
Reich agrees. “[It will take more than] just one general strike, but a repeating general strike,” he writes. “A strike whose numbers continue to grow and whose outrage, resistance, and solidarity continue to spread across the land.”
Last Friday, hundreds of Minnesota businesses closed as a show of opposition to ICE. For Blum, this was an important turning point. She saw local unions come together with community organizers to work collectively. This local strike had an impact, making headlines in the New York Times and the BBC. “It was the first time, since I’ve been doing this that I saw a general strike actually happen,” she says.
Crowds marching from Scotland to London during the General Strike, 1926. [Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
The History of General Strikes
The term general strike is most closely associated with events in Britain in 1926, when trade unions organized coal miners to walk off the job after mine owners slashed wages and lengthened working hours. Workers across other industriesincluding transportation, printing, and manufacturingjoined in solidarity, bringing large parts of the country to a standstill.
The government quickly intervened, framing the strike as a threat not just to employers, but to the nation itself. Union leaders soon found themselves in direct confrontation with the state, and after nine days, they called off the strike.
“It was a total failure,” says Jonathan Schneer, a British historian whose book, Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 comes out this summer. (Disclosure: Schneer is my father-in-law.) “The coal miners were ultimately left isolated and forced to work under even worse conditions.”
Schneer notes that while todays general strike draws inspiration from the events of 1926, there are also crucial differencesmost notably the level of coordination involved. In England at the time, between a third and half of all workers were unionized, and labor leaders were able to mobilize a significant share of the population. It took enormous organization to pull something like that off, Schneer says.
Nearly a century later, the landscape has shifted. Todays action is being organized largely online, at a moment when labor unions are far weaker than they were in early-20th-century Britain. The United States also has a much larger and more geographically dispersed population. What remains constant, however, is the central role of capitalism in everyday lifeand the idea that halting economic activity can still be a powerful way to command the governments attention. When enough people participate, Schneer argues, the signal is impossible to ignore.
The Demands
For Blum, the fact that the strike isn’t centrally organized is one of its strengths. Like other activist groups that emerged during Trumps second termincluding Indivisibleshe believes organizing works best at the local level, allowing communities to respond to their own conditions. Her role, she says, is less about directing the movement than equipping others with the tools to organize within their own networks.
That decentralized structure also means there is no single, unified set of demands. The General Strike US website lists a wide range of causes worth striking for, from universal healthcare to voting rights. For now, however, participants appear to be coalescing around a more immediate goal: removing ICE from local communities. On social media, posts frequently express solidarity with protesters in Minnesota and call for the abolition of ICE altogether.
While organizers encourage people to stay home from work and school, the most accessible form of participation is refusing to spend money. A number of small businesses have chosen to close for the day in solidarity, though no major corporations have followed suit.
I am very disappointed in the lack of reaction from companies that are far more powerful and influential than we are, says Melody Serafino, founder of the communications agency No.29, which also shuttered operations. Let me be clear: posting on Instagram and shutting down our business for a day is not brave. Real courage is being exemplified by the people on the ground who are putting their lives at risk.
For Blum, however, this moment is just the beginning. She sees the current action as the first in what she hopes will be a series of escalating strikesand says it is already producing results. In recent days, tens of thousands of people have signed strike cards through her website. There is still a long road ahead to reaching the 3.5% threshold of the U.S. population, but the numbers, she says, are rising steadily.
Movements that reach that level of participation never fail to bring about radical change, Blum says. But it takes time.
Snow has returned to the Philadelphia region, and along with it, the white residues on streets and sidewalks that result from the overapplication of deicers such as sodium chloride, or rock salt, as well as more modern salt alternatives.
As an environmental scientist who studies water pollution, I know that much of the excess salt flows into storm drains and ultimately into area streams and rivers.
For example, a citizen science stream monitoring campaign led by the Stroud Water Research Center in Chester County (about 40 miles west of Philadelphia) found that chloride concentrations in southeastern Pennsylvania streams remained higher than levels recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency not only after winter snowfalls but also in many cases during some summer monthsshowing salt persists in watersheds year-round.
Once there, it can have a profound impact on fish and other aquatic life. This includes a decrease in the abundance of macroinvertebrates, which are small organisms that form the base of many freshwater food webs, and reductions in growth and reproduction in fish.
Increased salt concentrations can also degrade and pollute the local water supply. Working with other researchers at Villanova University, I have measured spikes in sodium levels in Philadelphia region tap water during and immediately after snow melts. These spikes can pose a health risk to people on low-sodium diets.
What local governments can do
In recent years, many state and local governments nationwide have adopted best management practicessuch as roadway brining, more efficient salt spreaders, and improved storm forecastingto limit damage from salt to infrastructure, including roads and bridges.
Roadway brining works by applying a salt solution, or brine, that contains about 23% sodium chloride by weight prior to a storm. Unlike road salt, brines adhere to all pavement and can prevent ice from sticking to the roadway during the storm. This potentially reduces the need for subsequent road salt applications.
The environmental benefits of these best practices, when properly administered, are promising. The Maryland State Highway Administration reduced its total salt usage on roadways by almost 50% by using multiple best practices.
The extent to which these strategies will continue to reduce the salt burden on roads and, by extension, improve the water quality of streams elsewhere will largely depend on political will and corresponding economic investments.
Yet, roads are not the only source of salt to our streams. Recent studies have suggested that the cumulative amount of salt applied to other impervious surfaces in a watershed, such as parking lots, driveways, and sidewalks, can exceed that applied to roads.
For example, one survey of private contractors suggests their application rate can be up to 10 times higher than that of transportation departments.
I do not know of any studies that have been able to determine a household application rate.
How to salt at home
To better understand how individuals or households deice their properties, and what they know about the environmental impacts of deicing, I collaborated with a team of environmental scientists and psychologists at Villanova University and the local conservation-focused nonprofit Lower Merion Conservancy.
In winter 2024-2025, the Lower Merion Conservancy disseminated a survey in a social media campaign that received more than 300 responses from residents in southeastern Pennsylvania. We are completing the analysis to determine a household application rate, but some of our initial findings provide a starting point for engaging households on how to limit the environmental impact of deicers.
One key finding is that only 7% of respondents reported being aware of municipal ordinances regarding deicer use on residential sidewalks.
Of those who applied deicers to their property, 55% indicated they were unsure whether they used them in a way that would reduce environmental harm.
About 80% of all respondents indicated interest in learning more about the environmental impacts of road salt.
Based on these survey results, here are several actionable steps that homeowners can take to reduce their deicer use.
1. Check your local municipal ordinance.
Most municipalities in the greater Philadelphia area do not require deicer use but instead require clearing a walkable pathin most cases, 3 feet widefree of snow and ice within a certain time frame after a storm event ends.
For example, the city of Philadelphia requires this to be done within six hours, the borough of Narberth within 12 hours and Lower Merion and Haverford townships within 24 hours.
Narberth and Lower Merion specify which abrasivessuch as sand, ashes, and sawdustor deicers, like rock salt, can be used if ice persists.
2. Use rock salt and other deicers judiciously.
The recommended amount from conservation organizations is one 12-ounce coffee mug of deicer for every 10 sidewalk squares. Keep in mind that pet-friendly deicers are not necessarily environmentally friendly. Many of these deicers contain magnesium chloride, which is harmful to plants and aquatic life.
Deicers coupled with dyes might be a good choice to visually prevent over-application. They can also temporarily reduce concretes surface reflectivity, thereby increasing its warming effect and enabling melting.
inally, its important to know that many deicers become ineffective at or below certain temperatures. Rock salt/sodium chloride loses its effectiveness at 15 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 9 Celsius), magnesium chloride at 5 F (minus 15 C) and calcium chloride at minus 20 F (minus 29 C). If temperatures are expected to fall below those numbers, it might make sense to skip the salt.
3. Sweep up after.
We have all seen rock salt on sidewalks for days on end, especially when a storm never materializes. If the next storm brings rain, this leftover salt will form a concentrated brine solution that will wash down the nearest storm drain and into a local waterway.
Leftover salt can be swept up and reapplied after the next storm event, saving money and supplies.
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Steven Goldsmith is an associate professor of environmental science at Villanova University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
