As we count down to the last days of the year, we are looking ahead to what may be one of the next big work trends of 2026: shift sulking.
Read on to find out what it is, and what to know about it heading into the new year.
What is shift sulking?
“Shift sulking is the moment when hourly workers arrive already depleted because the conditions surrounding their workunpredictable schedules, inconsistent hours, and rising demandsare simply unsustainable,” says Silvija Martincevic, CEO of Deputy, a workforce management platform for hourly workers.
“Because millions of shifts run through our platform every week, Deputy sees this deep-seated strain in the data well before it makes headlines,” Martincevic adds.
According to Martincevic, if you look closely the next time youre at the grocery store, coffee shop, hospital, or convenience store, youll see it. And it’s not hard to spot: workers stretched thin, managing difficult customers and understaffed teams.
The difference between a worker who feels supported and one whos simply trying to get through the day is written on their face, she says.
What, if anything, does this tell us about the current state of the economy?
“[At a time when] 31% of U.S. workers report feeling detached, ‘shift sulking’ is a clear reminder that the strength of our economy is inseparable from the stability of the shift worker,” says Martincevic. “Thats not simply a retention challenge. Its a productivity challenge that limits our collective potential.”
According to data from Deputy, in states where stable scheduling is the norm, frontline worker happiness reaches 98%, compared to just 60% where it’s unpredictable.
And companies should be paying attention to this data, as studies show engaged workers perform better.
Why shift sulking may be one of the big workplace trends of 2026
In today’s 24/7 gig economy, more Americans are doing shift work and taking on multiple jobs, or so-called poly-employment, to make ends meet as they grapple with rising costs and higher inflation.
“We dont see shift sulking as a temporary issue; its the human cost of deeper structural friction in todays labor marketand all indicators point to it intensifying in 2026,” Martincevic says. “Businesses are operating leaner, asking teams to deliver the same output despite tighter staffing and volatile demand. That pressure falls squarely on the frontline.”
According to Deputy’s Better Together report, while AI can automate tasks and improve visibility, technology alone wont solve the problemthat demands structural change that gives workers what they want: predictable schedules, balanced workloads, and transparent communication.
When Calvin McDonald was appointed CEO of Lululemon in 2018, the activewear brand was a cult brand. But it had the potential to become a retail giant.
Chip Wilson founded Lululemon in Vancouver in 1998 as a yoga brand. When he left the CEO role in 2005, the company was generating $80 million a year. In the decade that followed, Lululemon grew steadily, boosted by the broader athleisure trend. But it was McDonaldwho previously spent five years delivering double-digit growth as CEO of Sephora Americaswho transformed Lululemon into one of the biggest clothing companies in the world.
Over the course of his seven-year tenure, McDonald more than tripled the company’s annual revenue from $2.6 billion in 2018 to $10.6 billion in 2024. (Revenue is expected to hit $11 billion this year.) He led the company’s global expansion to 30 countries; international revenue alone is now $3 billion. And he helped Lululemon become known not only for activewear, but also for apparel you could wear to the office.
Now, McDonald is on his way out. Last week, at Lululemon’s earnings call, the company announced that it was looking for a new CEO with experience in “growth and transformation“. This comes after Lululemon’s growth slowed to 10% last year from 19% the year before. There are many reasons for the company’s recent troubles, from product missteps like a widely-panned Disney collaboration to U.S. tariffs to weaker consumer spending. All of this has led Lululemon’s stock to tumble over the past two years. (Lululemon declined to comment for this story.)
But McDonald’s track record suggests that he would have been capable of steering Lululemon back to growthand the company may ultimately regret its decision to let him go.
Wilson wanted McDonald Out
What’s clear is that Lululemon’s founder, who stepped down from the role of CEO in 2005, wanted McDonald out.
Wilson has famously tried to stay involved with his company, even though he no longer has an official position. In 2013, he was forced to give up his role as board chairman after saying Lululemon’s clothes don’t work for “some women’s bodies,” which was perceived to be body-shaming. Wilson continued to make controversial comments. Last year, he drew backlash after he criticized Lululemon’s “whole diversity and inclusion thing,” adding that “you’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.”
In response to the outcry, Lululemon issued a statement distancing the company from its founder, and McDonald spoke to Fast Company about how much Lululemon had changed since Wilson’s departure.
But Wilson still has powerful influence because he remains the company’s largest individual shareholder, owning roughly 9% of shares. In October, Wilson took out a full page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal outlining everything he felt was wrong at the company. Wilson wrote that Lululemon’s troubles boil down to the fact that he is no longer leading the company and has been replaced by CEOs who “speak Wall Street.” Since Wilson no longer has a seat on the board, it’s unlikely that his perspective directly affects management’s decisions about the company’s future. But the ad created a lot of buzz, and may have accelerated the decision to find a new leader.
McDonald’s Missteps Don’t Define His Tenure
To be fair, Wilson made some reasonable points in his write-up. It’s true that McDonald has taken some wrong turns in his quest for growth. There was his decision to go beyond Lululemon’s expertise in apparel and enter the fitness market. In 2020, it spent $1 billion on acquiring the smart exercise device Mirror; three years later, Lululemon stopped selling the device and fired 100 employees working on this part of the business.
Then there was what Wilson describes as the “wildly inappropriate” Disney collab. One of Lululemon’s strengths has been how judicious it is about collaborations, setting it apart from the collab-happy fashion industry. Its rare partnerships with designers have been elevated and interesting, such as the 2017 collab with Central Saint Martins and the 2019 collab with the edgy designer Roksanda Ilinčić. By comparison, last year’s Disney collab seemed like a naked cash-grab. Its current capsule collection with the luxury L.A.-based grocery store Erewhon similarly feels like an effort to tap into a short-term trend, rather than focus on the well-designed classic garments that consumers love.
But these mistakes don’t define McDonald’s leadership. He’s also focused on product innovation, which has always been the key to Lululemon’s success. In 2022, after years of development, Lululemon launched its own footwear line, which has been successful. As culture has moved beyond athleisure, he’s directed Lululemon’s designers to produce chic clothinglike blazers and trousersthat can be worn to the office, including the bestselling men’s ABC pant and women’s Daydrift trouser. And the company has continued to develop new fabrics, while leaning into the ones that customers love, like the buttery Nulu material in Lululemon’s best-selling Align leggings. Earlier this year, after acknowledging that some customers felt “fatigue” with the product assrtment, McDonald promised to double down on design.
Steering a $10 Billion Brand
In his ad, Wilson laid out a strategy for Lululemon to bounce back. He says the company needs to put product and brand back at the center, empower creative leadership rather than merchants looking at spreadsheets, and focus on designing for the women who dictate culture, rather than follow it. All of this is good advice, and Lululemon’s next CEO should take note. But it is also insufficient because it fails to recognize the scale of the company that Lululemon has become.
Much of Lululemon’s growth in recent years has come from its global expansion, which McDonald has steered. Mainland China has now become the company’s second largest market after the United States. Creating a brand and products that resonates across so many different markets is no small task, and it is something that Wilson never had to tackle.
The growth of this international business has been crucial to Lululemon’s continued growth, particularly because American consumers are curbing their spending. President Trump’s tariffs, which have increased the price of goods and inflation, are causing many Americans to tighten their belts. In September, Lululemon said that changes in the U.S. tax code would add roughly $240 million in expenses.
And yet Lululemon’s overall revenue is continuing to grow, thanks to the strength of its international markets. In its third quarter, Lululemon’s international revenue had grown by 33% while its U.S. revenue had declined by 2%.
McDonald has masterfully transformed Lululemon from a brand that made pricey yoga leggings into a global fashion powerhouse. With his departure, Lululemon is losing a leader who knows the company well and has a track record of driving growth. The new CEO will have big shoes to fill. And the world will be watching where McDonald lands next.
Like many people, I use AI for quick, practical tasks. But two recent interactions made me pay closer attention to how easily these systems slip into emotional validation. In both cases, the model praised, affirmed, and echoed back feelings that werent actually there.
I uploaded photos of my living room for holiday decorating tips, including a close-up of the ceramic stockings my late mother hand painted. The model praised the stockings and thanked me for sharing something so meaningful, as if it understood the weight of them.
A few days later, something similar happened at work. I finished a long run, came home with an idea, and dropped it into ChatGPT to pressure test it. Instead of analyzing it or raising risks, the model immediately celebrated it. Great idea. Powerful. Lets build on it.
But when I ran the same idea by a colleague, he pushed back. He challenged assumptions I hadnt seen. He made me rethink pieces I thought were settled. And the idea got betterfast.
That contrast stayed with me. AI wasnt critiquing me. It was validating me. And validation, when its instant and unearned, can create real blind spots.
We Are Living Through a Validation Epidemic
We talk endlessly about AI hallucinations and misinformation. We talk far less about how AIs default mode is affirmation.
Large language models are built to be agreeable. They reflect our tone and adopt our emotional cues. They lean toward praise because their training data leans toward praise. They reinforce more often than they resist. And this is happening at a moment when validation is already a defining cultural force.
Psychologists have been warning about the rise in validation-seeking behavior for more than a decade. Social platforms built around likes and shares have rewired how people measure worth. The American Psychological Association (APA) reports sharp increases in social comparison among younger generations. Pew Research shows that teens now tie self-esteem directly to online feedback. Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a growing pattern of validation dependence, which correlates with higher anxiety.
Weve created an environment where approval is currency. So is it any wonder we would gravitate toward a tool that hands it out so freely? But that has consequences. It strengthens the muscle that wants reassurance while weakening the one that tolerates frictionthe friction of being questioned or proven wrong.
AI Makes Us Faster. It Does Not Make Us Better
Im not anti-AI. Far from it. I use it every day, and I work in an industry that depends on smart, data-driven judgment. AI helps me move faster. It informs my decisions and expands what I can consider in a short amount of time. But it cannot replace the tension required for growth.
Tension is feedback. Tension is accountability. Tension is reality. And reality still comes from human beings.
The danger isnt that AI misleads us. Its that it makes us less willing to challenge ourselves. When a model praises our ideas or mirrors our emotions, it creates a subtle illusion that were right, or at least close enough that critique isnt needed. That illusion may be comforting, but its also risky.
Weve seen what happens when agreement is prized over challenge. NASAs Challenger launch decision is one of the clearest examples of groupthink in modern history. Multiple engineers raised concerns, but the pressure for consensus won and tragedy followed. Kodak offers another lesson. It pioneered digital photography but clung to its film-era assumptions, even as the market moved in a different direction. As Harvard Business Review has long noted, cultures that suppress dissent make worse decisions. When disagreement disappears, risk accelerates.
Great Leaders Arent Built on Validation
The best leaders I know didnt grow because people agreed with them. They grew because someone challenged them early and often. Because someone said, I dont think thats right, or more boldly, Youre wrong. They learned to welcome productive resistance.
AI wont do that unless we demand it. And most people wont demand it because it feels better to be affirmed. If were not careful, AI becomes the worlds most agreeable colleaguequick with praise, light on critique, and always ready to reassure us that were on the right track even when were not.
Great ideas need resistance. So do organizations. So do we.
AI can accelerate our thinking. But only people can sharpen it. Thats the part of this technology we should be paying closest attention tonot what it knows, but what its willing to tell us. And what its not.
When the U.S. government cut funding for local news stations, the Knight Foundation moved quickly to help stabilize a rapidly eroding industry. President and CEO Maribel Pérez Wadsworth unpacks the evolving roles of philanthropy and government, and why philanthropic organizations must learn to move at the speed of the news cycle.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
The Knight Foundation has focused on promoting and preserving local news and journalism and local communities for decades. This year, that mission has come under unprecedented attack with big funding cuts for public media, lawsuits by President Trump against CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times. Is this what you signed up for when you took on this job 18 months ago? I mean, how prepared were youwas the organizationfor this kind of seismic shift?
Well, no, I can tell you, it’s not what I signed up for. I don’t think anybody could have quite contemplated the things we are focused on in 2025. But that said, I’ve spent my entire career fighting for journalism and fighting for the First Amendment. So from that perspective, this is yet another part of that journey.
Is it harder right now? Absolutely. Are the fights coming across a lot of dimensions that we couldn’t have anticipated? Absolutely. But this is what the Knight Foundation was set up to do since it started its work 75 years ago. So while we’d all rather be able to pace ourselves a little bit more, I think the moment demands urgency, and it demands focus, and it demands clarity of purpose. The First Amendment is what makes all the rest of our democracy possible, so we have to defend that.
When Congress stripped $500 million in funding for public media this summer, part of the critique was that publicly funded media had become partisan, that it wasn’t always impartial. I mean, is there a fair critique in there about that?
I think that you’ve seen trust eroding in a lot of institutions, and as the country and the world becomes increasingly polarized and dependent on their own echo chambers for information, I think absolutely, trust is a problem, and inherent in that is a concern about bias.
The truth of the matter though is when you look at study after study, public media, particularly local public media stations, are still among the most trusted institutions by Americans. People believe in their local newsrooms. They trust their neighbors to report on their communities. The vast majority of these cuts did not impact, say, NPR at a national level or PBS at a national level. While the rhetoric around the cuts and the perceptions of bias centered on those entities and NPR in particular, the cuts in effect barely affected NPR but are devastating to the local stations, especially in huge swaths of the country that are primarily rural, what today we might say are in red states. That’s who’s impacted by these cuts.
As this bill was being debated in the Senate, Alaska experienced a significant earthquake. And had it not been for one small public radio station, a lot of Alaska would not have even known that they were under tsunami warnings.
And these concerns about news deserts, like apps like Facebook and Nextdoor and other ways that we’re sharing information these days, they can’t or don’t really fill that space.
No, they absolutely don’t fill that space. I mean, we’re on all these platforms. We know the kinds of information that is shared there. It is certainly not what any of us would call trusted, verified information. It’s not reliable. And let’s not forget that for a lot of the country, we still struggle with reliable broadband access. The stations most at risk represent some 40 million to 50 million Americans.
When these cuts went through, the Knight Foundation, alongside some other funders like the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, you jumped in to fill some of the gap. I know you put in a $10 million cash injection. How did that come about?
It was a meet-the-moment-urgently proposition. And let’s be clear that philanthropy doesn’t necessarily always move at the speed of news, but it was really important, because this was an imminent loss of funding and dollars that had already been appropriated, that these stations were counting on, in some cases for upwards of 30% to even 70% or more of their annual budgets. So very significant, very dramatic.
We had to move quickly, and it was great to see some key partners come to the table with us. We did $10 million to help lead the Public Media Bridge Fund that is being run by the Public Media Company. And today, just 11 weeks later, we’re at almost $60 million raised. That is nearly unprecedented for philanthropy to have moved that quickly.
That said, it’s not the long-term solution. This will help to stabilize the stations that are most at risk. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be loss of programming. That doesn’t mean that every single station will survive necessarily. But hopefully it buys the necessary time to think through the transformation of the overall system, what kinds of changes need to be made, from governance of public media to some consolidations that are no doubt necessary. But we need to buy the time, because the rug got pulled out from under them.
Some local radio and television stations, as you mentioned, they are shuttering, they are cutting back. Is the hope that you can bring them back, or does the focus need to be on, “Hey, let’s preserve the stations that are still alive that are the stronger ones”?
Well, right now, it’s a matter of truly preserving access to local news and information and community. So the prioritization around these funds will be prioritizing those stations that are, say, sole servers in their communities, that absolutely provide local news and information in addition to some of the other programming. But preservation is clearly important. The loss of these stations would represent a significant setback.
We have some, what, almost 2,000 so-called news deserts in the country today. So these stations would create that many more all over the country. But this has to be a phased approach. Right now it’s stabilized to ensure that we preserve something to transform, and then we need to get into the serious work of what does it look like for sustainability.
Sometimes I think that if public media is no longer supported by the government, is public media the right term or is it just media?
It’s a great question. At that point, you’re right, it’s just media. And so I think that will be part of the thinking going forward.
I have to believe, and maybe it’s just the hardwired optimist in me, that we will see a rational rethinking of the federal funding picture, specifically for stations in more vulnerale areas, in smaller communities where you don’t necessarily have a huge population base to self-fund these stations or a big business community that can help underwrite the cost of these stations. But where people still understand that there is a true vital role played by these stations in their communities in terms of being connective tissue, in terms of having the issues, the people, the things that are important to the community really front and center. So my hope is that we will see some level of federal funding coming back, even if it’s more targeted to the stations that would be more dependent on public funds to continue to exist.
For the Knight Foundation, obviously, you’re committed to freedom of the press and local news, but that’s part of a pledge to support local communities overall, right? I mean, it’s sort of linked together.
It is. And we think it’s foundational. To us, reliable local news and information is really a central force for good in communities. People see one another, they connect with one another, they have a common fact base to rally around. And so for a community to thrive, that’s table stakes.
An increasing number of companies are finding the much-promised financial gains of implementing artificial intelligence in the workplace have been slow to materialize. But that isnt stopping many CEOs from spending even more on AI in the coming year.
A new study from advisory firm Teneo finds that 68% of CEOs will increase their AI spending next year. A growing number, however, are aware that they need to start showing returns on that investmentand an important part of their job is convincing shareholders to remain patient.
“As efforts shift from hype to execution, businesses are under pressure to show ROI from rising AI spend,” the company wrote. “Large-cap CEOs are seeing solid returns on current programs, particularly across administration, internal efficiency, and customer-facing applications. However, 84% of these CEOs predict that positive returns from new AI initiatives will take longer than six months to achieve. In contrast, investors are pushing for faster impact: 53% expect positive ROI in six months or less.”
To date, less than half of the AI projects have generated returns that exceed the cost of the programs, according to 350-plus public-company CEOs surveyed by Teneo.
Teneo’s survey comes on the heels of a Gallup study of AI use in the workplace, which showed a big spike in 2025. The percentage of U.S. workers who used AI on at least an occasional basis jumped from 40% to 45% between the second and third quarters of 2025. (In the second quarter of 2024, that number was just 27%.)
Power users of AI were on the rise in that study as well, with 10% of the respondents saying they used the technology daily in the third quarter, up from 8% at the end of the second quarter. A year ago, that number stood at just 4%.
Workers said they’re using AI to consolidate information or data and to generate ideas, with a slightly lower number using it to learn new things or automate basic tasks. A small percentagejust 9%said they use AI to make predictions.
Teneo’s survey finds that the most successful AI strategies have been in the marketing and customer service spaces. More complex applications, such as security, legal, and human resources, have not yet lived up to the technology’s potential.
That’s not surprising, says Ryan Cox, global head of artificial intelligence at Teneo. More complex uses will need to be rolled out at a slower pace.
The first wave of AI returns came from easy efficiency wins. The next wave is about rewiring core processes that inevitably have a longer, bumpier ROI curve, Cox says. These use cases are higher risk and have greater potential impact. You dont rush them to market; you treat them as strategic change programs with board-level oversight, not experiments.
Despite events like the November layoffs at Verizon, where 13,000 workers lost their jobs as part of a strategic shift towards AI, CEOs feel fears that increased AI usage will result in job losses are overblown. Some 67% told Teneo they expected the technology to increase their entry-level head countand 58% said they expected it would result in more senior leaders coming on board.
As a result of this bullishness on AI, some 87% of the CEOs Teneo spoke with said they believed their organizations are prepared for future technological disruption. However, they cautioned, future leaders will struggle to keep pace with tech advancements, meaning agility and creativity will become the most important skills for future CEOs.
That enthusiastic attitude extended beyond the world of AI, also. Optimism about the economy was remarkably strong, given the uncertainty of this year, with 73% of CEOs and 82% of the 400 institutional investors surveyed saying they expected the global economy to improve over the first six months of 2026. (Mid-cap CEOs were much more bullish on the market than large-cap ones.)
The tiny Fiat Topolinoabout the length of a cargo bike and half as long as an American SUV or pickupis the kind of car tourists stop to photograph as a cute curiosity in Rome or Milan. The electric car only travels 28 miles an hour, and its designed for dense European cities. But it also only costs around $10,000, and Fiat is now betting that Americans are ready for something this tiny.
The company recently announced plans to bring the car to the U.S., shortly after Trump said that he wanted to help bring similarly tiny kei cars to the U.S. from Japan. Theres a strong argument that smaller cars are better for society: Theyre more affordable, more efficient, take up less space, and theyre safer for pedestrians and other vehicles in a crash. (Uncharacteristically, Trump noted that “really cute” kei cars can be electric and are fuel efficient, shortly after his administration started the process to roll back fuel efficiency requirements.) But for the smallest microcars to be more than a niche category, a lot would have to change.
Growing interest in smaller rides
For years, the conventional wisdom has been that Americans love giant vehicles. Ford F-Series trucks have long been the bestselling vehicles; SUVs are more popular than cars. But size preferences are slowly starting to shrink. Compact SUVs now outsell larger SUVs. Sales of midsized trucks are growing faster than full-sized trucks. Compact car sales are also growing.
Automakers push bigger vehicles because they make more money on them, partly because of loophole in fuel efficiency regulations. But as consumer cost concerns grow, buyers are moving in the other direction. I think that its certainly not baked into our DNA to like big cars, says Ben Crowther, policy director at America Walks, an organization that advocates for smaller vehicles to make streets safer for pedestrians and others on the road. Its the result of several decades worth of marketing. But where I think I see the tipping point being is that small cars are more affordable. Right now, the average cost for new cars is around $50,000. Thats easily someones salary. That cost is inflated because vehicles are oversized.
[Photo: Telo]
Telo, a startup making a small electric pickup thats roughly as long as a Mini Cooper and cheaper than a typical gas truck, says that its seen strong interest in its first model, which will hit the market next year.
Jason Marks, Telos CEO, says that its also noteworthy how much demand there is for kei cars and trucks. Right now, the U.S. only allows the Japanese vehicles to be imported when theyre at least 25 years old, under regulations aimed at classic cars. But despite the restrictions, kei trucks are the largest class of vehicles being individually imported to the U.S., with around 7,500 arriving last year. These are vehicles the size of golf carts, with well over 100,000 miles on them, that cant go 60 miles an hour, and only about 17 states legally allow you to drive them on the highway, says Marks. And theyre still this desirable.
Telos offering is very different than a kei truckthe Telo MT1 can haul as much as a regular passenger truck, it can be driven anywhere, and its designed with modern safety features including sensors, unlike 25-year-old kei cars, which typically dont even have airbags. Still, the interest in kei cars illustrates the appetite for smaller cars in general. And though kei cars and microcars like the Topolino face challenges in adoption, theres also room for them to become more widespread with more support.
Kei cars versus microcars
In Japan, kei carsshort for keijidosha, meaning “light automobile”originated in 1949 as part of Japanese industrial policies to rebuild the country’s auto industry when most people couldnt afford larger vehicles. The cars have to stay under 11 feet long and have small engines. They’re allowed on Japanese highways, but have reduced safety features.
[Photo: Paul Esch-Laurent/Unsplash]
They’re still very popular in Japan, and also popular in countries like India, where Suzuki’s tiny cars have dominated the auto market for decades. But even current models likely wouldn’t meet safety requirements in the U.S., and adding those features would jack up costs. Take the example of the Honda N-Box, a bestselling car that costs around $12,000 to $15,000 and has a fuel efficiency of around 50 miles per gallon.
“The Honda N-Box does not have airbags, it does not have ABS, and it does not have some of the features that you would typically require under the current regulations in the United States,” says Aditya Ramji, an economist at UC Davis who focuses on energy, transportation, and electric mobility. “That means that the moment I add those requirements and made this vehicle compliant, the price of the $12,000 N-Box now will become $22,000 straight away.” That’s similar to the cost of the Toyota Corollamaking it unlikely that an N-Box could compete under current regulations.
[Photo: Honda]
In theory, the DOT could create new standards and certification requirements benchmarked to those that have been in place in Japan for decades, and make it more feasible to import new kei cars. That process would take time. (Trump’s post on Truth Social saying “I have just approved TINY CARS to be built in America” did not actually constitute approval.)
Microcars like the Fiat Topolino fit into a different category under U.S. regulationssomething the DOT calls a “neighborhood electric vehicle” or NEV. The cars are restricted to speeds of 25 miles an hour. In most states, they’re only allowed on roads with speed limits up to 35 miles an hour. Some states require extra safety equipment, like windshield wipers. But airbags aren’t required. Because of the limitations, it’s a niche market.
Some experts are skeptical that demand of either kei cars or neighborhood electric vehicles could significantly grow. “Generally speaking, it is difficult to imagine a scenario that could significantly shift the personal vehicle market in a direction that would result in widespread adoption of very small cars in the United States,” says David Bunch, a management professor emeritus at UC Davis who has studied consumer choice in vehicles. The main exception, he says, could be highly urbanized areas like New York or San Francisco.
[Photo: Fiat]
The safety challenge
Both kei cars and neighborhood electric vehicles struggle with consumer concerns about safety. Still, Ramji argues that tiny vehicles could be relatively safe in urban commutes even without the current suite of required safety features, as they travel at relatively low speeds.
The growing suite of safety features on other modern cars, including sensors and automatic braking, also helps. “I think the trend that well be seeing as the fleet turns over and more of these vehicles have safety features, it means that you dont need the full armor of an SUV or a pickup truck because your car, and everyone elses car on the road is actively working beyond just the driver to avoid that collision,” says Crowther.
If more of the tiny cars were in use, it would also mean fewer pedestrian deaths: If a person is hit by a small vehicle, they’re much more likely to survive. That’s both because there’s less force in a collision and because low cars hit the body lower than a large truck or SUV that can fatally strike someone in the head or chest. And small cars are also less likely to damage other vehicles in a crash. The paradox, of course, is that people are more likely to choose cars that protect themselves, not others on the road.
“The notion of ‘safety benefits’ of smaller cars has long been problematic, because they must share the road with larger vehicles, and in a ‘contest’ the larger vehicles win,” says Bunch. “That is, smaller cars are by definition less safe in an environment with mixed vehicle sizes.”
Can microcars grow?
Even with the challenges that exist, there could be room for more tiny cars in the U.S., especially in dense cities. Demand isn’t guaranteedthe tiny Smart Fortwo was taken off the American market in 2019 due to low sales. But some policy changes could support growth. For example, a city could offer cheaper parking permits based on vehicle size, since tiny cars don’t take up as much valuable curb space. States could choose to allow neighborhood electric vehicles on more roadsor, to boost safety, could lower speed limits on more routes.
Better urban design would also help. “To have neighborhood electric vehicles, you really do need to have a better mix of land uses, which we don’t see in most suburban settings,” says Kara Kockelman, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. “In these planned developments, a grocery store is off of a much higher speed street.” If it was possible to drive at a low speed to run errands or commute to work or school, tiny cars could become a more viable option for more people. (Of course, it would also be easier to bike in that scenario.)
[Photo: Nissan]
Both microcars and kei cars could be useful as a second car for short commutes, says Ramji, and that could potentially help unlock a new urban market for EVs. It’s not likely that the current administration will intentionally do anything to promote electric cars. But creating new regulations that allow kei cars could also theoretically boost EV sales. One popular current kei car, the Nissan Sakura EV, has around 110 miles of range and costs $16,000 or $17,000far less than most EVs on the U.S. market.
“Maybe this is an opportunity in the U.S. to think about how the small car segment can fundamentally serve the electrification narrative and really come in strategically leapfrogging that ecosystem and looking at urban EVs as opposed to gas cars in the mini car segment,” Ramji says.
Here we go again! For the third time within a quarter century, the Warner Bros. studio assets have been acquired for more than $70 billion. Since I commented very sharply on the first two, lots of people are asking me my thoughts on the just-announced purchase of Warner Bros. by Netflix. I provide my response in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here.
Third Time Lucky?
The first of these mega deals was in 2001 when AOL bought Time Warner in a deal that valued Time Warner equity at $166 billion. (While it was more of a merger than a takeover, it was technically structured as an acquisition). The next one was in 2018 when AT&T bought Time Warner for $85 billion. Both deals routinely make lists (like this one) of the worst takeover deals in business history.
The AOL Time Warner deal cratered almost immediately as the market realized that AOL was largely worthless, which was confirmed when AOL was spun off for a mere $3 billion in 2009. The selling shareholders initially thought they got an awesome deal because Time Warner shares were valued at a massive 70% premium over the preannouncement price. However, the payment was in what turned out to be wildly overvalued AOL stock. In the end, Time Warner shareholders gave up 55% of their companyworth about $55 billion based on preannouncement value of Time Warnerin exchange for an asset worth $3 billion. As a combination, AOL Time Warner was a disaster, but the shareholders of AOL made off like bandits.
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In the AT&T Time Warner deal, AT&T learned not long after the dust had settled that this was a disastrous acquisition and, a mere three years later, sold the Time Warner assets to Discovery for $43 billiona massive discount. As I have pointed out before, that is the equivalent of the AT&T executives holding a bonfire of $38 million of shareholder cash every day for three consecutive years.
On December 5, 2025, Netflix reached an agreement to acquire the Warner Bros. assets for $72 billion. Of course, we dont know yet how it will turn out. The first two deals destroyed over $50 billion of value for Time Warner shareholders and over $40 billion for AT&T shareholders, respectively. The hope is that this will be third time luckybut the track record around the transfer of Warner Bros. assets hasnt been good thus far.
Deeply Flawed Strategic Rationales
I knew the first two deals were doomed from the outset because the (so-called) strategic rationale for both was deeply flawed.
The stated strategic logic of the AOL Time Warner combination was that AOL would benefit competitively in the internet access business, in which it was then the market leader, by having proprietary access to Time Warner content. Sounds great!
But the logic just doesnt track. Time Warners value was based on its ability to broadly distribute its content. Content creation is a fixed cost business. Creators invest an enormous amount in creating the content and then to amortize that fixed cost, they strive to sell their content to as many users as possible.
AOL led in the internet access business with 30% market share at the time. One of two things could have happened after the combination. First, Time Warner content could have given AOL a meaningful advantage over its competitors. That would have validated a key tenet of the rationale. But had that happened, the other 70% of the market would have boycotted Time Warner content because it was helping their competitor, which would have sabotaged the business model of Time Warner. Alternatively, Time Warner content may not have been able to move the needle on AOL advantage over its competitors, invalidating the entire premise of the combination.
That is, there was zero probability of the strategic success of the combination, which I described in this Harvard Business Review piece.
On AT&T Time Warner, the rationale was owner economics, a concept I hate in the general case, as I discuss in this piece, and my antipathy applies in spades to this case. The idea was that by buying Time Warner, AT&T gained the advantage of owner economics. Rather than buying content from outside providers and having to pay a profit-margin premium for it, AT&T would get it from Time Warner at costimproving the (owner) economics of AT&T. Yup, that would be true. But then all the business Time Warner would have with its giant customer, AT&T, would be at zero profit, thus tanking the profitability of Time Warner, ensuring that its value would never be close to the $85 billion for which it was purchased.
Days after the merger, I pointed out this logical flaw to Fortune reporter Jeff Colvin, who had called me for my opinion, and I predicted that: a) the acquisition would be an unmitigated disaster; b) would be divested within five years; c) at a price half of the acquisition price; and d) would cost AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson his jobpredictions that Colvin confirmed in an article at time of divestiture. The only thing on which I was (slightly) wrong is that I predicted AT&T would salvage 50% of the purchase priceit was 50.6%.
Both illustrate what I call the Impossibility Theorem, which describes a situation in which for the logic to hold, two things must be true, but if one is true, the other cant possibly be. For example, if AT&T does benefit from owner economics, Time Warner cant maintain its value. If Time Warner can maintain its value, AT&T cant benefit from owner economics. Not understanding the Impossibility Theorem cost shareholders roughly $100 billion across these two acquisitions.
Netflix-Warner Bros.
This all begs the question, is this just another Warner deal based on a fundamental strategic fallacy? No, it is not. There is no insane argument about owner economics or vertical integration. This is a plain, old-fashioned bulk-up move. With the acquisitionof Warner Bros., Netflix bulks up in its two core businesses: content creation and content streaming.
Netflix started in media content distribution and led by pioneering internet streaming, becoming the dominant player in that arena. It distributed the content created by the traditional major players in that space, such as Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., etc. However, during the 2011-2015 period, all the new streaming players, including Netflix, started spending aggressively in content creation of their own. As a result, Netflix is now a major player in both content streaming and content creation.
However, in streaming, Netflix is no longer the sole dominant player. Based on recent numbers, Netflix still has the biggest U.S. subscriber base with 81 million. But Amazon is close behind with an estimated 75 million. Disneys Hulu has 64 million. But if you combine the three Disney streaming platforms (Hulu with 64 million; Disney+ with 55 million; and ESPN+ with 25 million), it is far ahead of Netflix with 134 million streaming subscribers. Globally, Netflix leads with 302 million subscribers to Disneys 221 million (combined) and Amazons estimated 200 million.
But with the Warner acquisition, which includes its HBO Max service, Netflix jumps slightly ahead of Disney in the U.S. (139 to 134 million) and dramatically widens its global lead with 430 million to Disneys 221 million and Amazons 200 million.
This is simple straightforward bulking up in Netflixs core streaming businessovercoming its scale deficit in the U.S. and extending its scale advantage globally. That is a simple and powerful strategy logic.
In content creation, Netflix was a big part of the dramatic transformation by which the players that have entered content creation since 2011 now make up 50% of the estimated content creation spend. But prior to this deal, Netflix was a mid-tier player in that game, spending an estimated $17 million in 2024 compared with Comcast-Universal at $37 million or Disney at $28 million. However, adding in Warners $14 million makes Netflix one of the top tier content creators.
To the extent that scale matters in streaming and content creationand I think it doesthe strategic logic of this makes lots of sense, in stark contrast to the previous two trades of Warner Bros. assets.
The Rub
When the AOL Time Warner and AT&T Time Warner deals were announced, there was huge uproar in the press over antitrust concerns. Would the vertical integration hurt consumers? Would AOL and AT&T become dangerously dominant in their primary markets because of their ownership of Warner content? I didnt worry for a second because regulators dont have to protect consumers from mergers that are going to crater and I knew both deals were destined to fail miserably. Regulators only need to worry about mergers that are likely to succeed!
And they should worry about this one.
The Netflix press release is quite something. It makes two claims aimed specifically at potential antitrust concerns. Bold-type callouts claim that the combination will: 1) Offer More Choice and Greater Value for Consumers, and 2) Create More Opportunities for the Creative Community. I understand why companies do this kind of thing. Netflix would love to have readers be insipid enough to believe these two things because that would suggest there are no antitrust problems about which regulators should be concerned.
The problem is that both claims are flat out false. When you reduce the number of major competitors by one, you do not provide more choice or greater value for consumers. If you buy the competitor and leave it alone, at best, you provide the same choice and the same value. But to leave it alone is not why a company pays a huge takeover premium to buy a competitor.
And when you reduce the number of major industry players by one, you do not provide more opportunities for suppliers to that industry. You reduce by one the number of customers who compete for their services.
I can totally understand why Netflix wants to reduce competition from other streamers and other content creators. In streaming, it started with a near monopoly but has lost its lead in the U.S. market and is no longer far ahead globally. Getting rid of one major streaming competitor and bulking up makes lots of sense. In content creation, when all the new players entered, including Netflix itself, they created a bonanza for content creation talent. It has never been a better time for talent, as exemplified by Shonda Rhimess $450 million production deal with Netflix. Bulking up to have more buying power over content talent, plus eliminating one major content competitor makes total sense.
But dissimulating about it? Not a good look.
Practitioner Insights
You will be fed all sorts of ridiculous so-called strategy logic on a regular basis. It can be vertical integration, owner economics, or having one less competitor will deliver more choice for consumers. Some are the product of utter cluelessness, others fundamental dishonesty. Sometimes somebody else (like me) will help you expose the logical fallacies.
Other times, you will be on your own. For those times, it is important to practice your critical eye for strategy logic. When you read or listen to someone espousing a strategic logic, practice interrogating it. Dont just accept it. Instead, take it under advisement and ask whether there is a better, more profound logic to explain the situatione.g. Time Warner shareholders were about to be taken to the cleaners by AOL shareholders, owner economics is a fraudulent concept that will cost AT&T shareholders dearly, and Netflix isnt motivated by consumer choice or creative community welfare but rather by increasing its scale and reducing competitive intensity in its core businesses.
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Ive tried them all. A fancy planner, perfect workout routines, ambitious ways to read more, and writing rituals to get more done. I did the research. But what ultimately worked is something called the kaizen incremental method.
An idea is from Japanese manufacturing, of all places. It means continuous improvement. The practice of tiny actions. A step so small your brains resistance (a built-in fight-or-flight response to big, scary changes) doesnt even bother to fight it. I use the kaizen approach as a backdoor to building new neural pathways. Im not forcing change; Im gently guiding my brain into new habits, one step at a time.
Thats how I started writing almost every day. I opened my laptop and started putting thoughts down at the same time daily. I didnt aim to write a whole page. Just ideas down. After a few weeks of the same practice, writing things down became easy. Not effortless. But the resistance was not the same. Thats the kaizen advantage.
You work with your psychology, not against it.
Big goals
Youve probably tried the new year, new me approach to life. You start the year with big goals. And big motivation. But most people dont even make it through to March. Whats helped me is tiny but consistent routines, rituals, and behaviours. It doesnt matter what time of year. I focus on stacking good actions. The kaizen approach feels like nothing. Until suddenly it feels like everything. The easier a behavior is to do, the more likely the behavior will become habit, writes B.J. Fogg in his book, Tiny Habits.
Kaizen matches how you live. Say you want to read more. The old way: Ill read 50 books this year! You buy a stack, stare at it, and feel behind by February. The Kaizen way: Ill read one page before bed. One page. Youll often read more. But on the worst day of your life, one page is still a victory. Youve kept the habit alive. One tiny bit of progress at a time.
You read one or two pages of your favorite book daily. A year later, youve finished more books than ever. You save $50 a month. One day, youve built an emergency fund. You start by tidying one drawer. Eventually, your whole space feels clean. Theres no one massive win. Just small wins stacking up. When you want big results, small steps feel insulting. You want to sprint. You want the outcome that means everything. You want proof that youre serious.
Direction is everything
But being serious means not stopping. The secret is in the consistency, not the intensity. A 1% improvement, repeated, is compound interest for your life. Do the math: 1% better every day for a year, and youre nearly 38 times better by the end. Life isnt that linear, but the direction is everything. Youre moving forward, not stalling out in a cycle of ambition and guilt. Youll doubt it at first. I did. It feels too small, too insignificant. One page of reading is nothing! But nothing is sustainable.
Youre playing the long game.
You cant overhaul your entire life every January. You will burn out and feel frustrated. Youll feel like you failed when really, its your system that failed. Small steps are not a compromise. Theyre a sustainable life strategy. Make your system too easy to fail. Pick the smallest version of the thing you want. If the goal is to write, maybe you start with one sentence a day. Yes, one. Whats the point? The goal is not to overwhelm your brain. Convince yourself its too easy not to try. The more you practice, the greater the chance of it becoming a habit.
Make it repeatable
If you need willpower, its too big.
Keep score. Tiny wins feel bigger when you can see them. Can you quantify your results? Show your wins to yourself. And let yourself feel proud. Seriously. Celebrate the tiny stuff. Your brain loves reward signals. Over time, your small steps evolve. You dont have to force it. Momentum does the heavy lifting.
Kaizen doesnt just help you change. It changes how you see yourself. When you repeat every day, even in tiny ways, you stop seeing yourself as someone who tries. You start seeing yourself as someone who does. And that transformation is everything. Big change looks impressive, but small, consistent action builds identity. They build trust in yourself. They build a life that doesnt fall apart the minute motivation fades.
If you want a change that can last in the next few months, something that sticks, try smaller. Way smaller. The path to significant change isnt broken resolutions. Its tiny, steady progress. Just pick an area of change. A tiny habit you can sustain. And start small. Pick one thing you are likely to do. Something that wont tell your brain its a big deal. Kaizen is the discipline of consistency.
You dont need a new version of yourself to pursue things too overwhelming for your brain to sustain. What you need is just todays version, willing to take one small, almost silly step. Significant change is not an event you schedule. Its a practice. Youre not breaking yourself down to build something new. Youre just guiding yourself, kindly, in a better direction. Take that goal you are pursuing. Now, make it smaller. Smaller still. Until you think, Oh, I could do that right now. Then do it. And trust that tiny start with all your heart. Its the smartest, most human way forward youve got.
For many office workers, the typical lunch hour is a sad desk lunch of a sandwich or slop bowl supplemented by a rotating schedule of snacks. According to a poll conducted by Yahoo and YouGov, half of employed Americans regularly eat at their workstations.
And now theyre sharing it all on TikTok.
Office snack content is hooking viewers online with captions such as WIEIAD (what I eat in a day) and what I ate at my 8-4, featuring office workers time-stamped eating schedules. Employees post montages of their morning coffee and breakfast of choice, followed by a time-lapse video of a variety of snacks and beverages consumed at their desk. Some videos have voice-overs, some have light jolly music, and others keep it monotonous, complete with keyboard ASMR.
And if the workers employer offers free food (certainly a step above your tuna on rye in a brown paper bag), theyre sharing that, too.
Rating everything I ate at the office today, one TikTok creator who works at the tech company Carta posted. First, she helps herself to free coffee, followed by a Cocojune yogurt with blueberries. For lunch, she shows a plate of chicken katsu and a range of beverages, including a lime Diet Coke and a Spindrift. The day ends with a protein bar. Her content frequently racks up hundreds of thousands of views. In a separate video, she provided a close-up of the snack selection, due to popular demand. My show is on, one user commented. Another wrote that theyd love to see how much money this saves you eating at work every day.
A day of office lunches may not sound like thrilling source material for social media, but clips of what people are eating at work are an extremely popular content niche. There are more than 1.1 million videos on TikTok with the hashtag #wieiad, varying from corporate snack selections to what workers pack for their lunch from home.
Why these mundane videos are oddly satisfying to watch, whos to say? For some, it may serve as inspiration; for others, it can give a sense of a companys workplace culture and perks. Perhaps we are simply nosy creatures.
Free food at the office has long been a popular perk used to entice employees. In 2022, Meta eventually barred employees from bringing in Tupperware because too many had been stocking up on free food and taking it home with them.
After the pandemic and the end of remote working left many companies seeking ways to entice workers back to the workplace, office snacks and free lunches were among the incentives employers turned to. Because who doesnt love a free lunch? (With the additional benefit for employers of keeping workers at their desks longer.)
A recent change in tax law may throw a wrench in the WIEIAD trend, though: Starting in 2026, meals provided for the employer’s convenience, such as on-site or cafeteria meals, will no longer qualify for a tax deduction, according to professional services firm UHY. Some have suggested the change could apply to office snacks and coffee, too.
Think of all the potential office mukbangs wed be deprived of.
One of Michaels friends told him recently, Im not burned out; Im just feeling empty. She shows up, meets deadlines, and manages to smile in meetings. But her work feels weightless and disconnected from purpose. Shes not alone. Gallups 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found that only 21% of employees worldwide are engaged, and just one in three say theyre thriving. Thats not a blipits a warning signal for leaders and cultures.
When emptiness shows up at work, our reflex is to pathologize: Is this burnout? Do I need a diagnosis? Sometimes, yesclinical conditions require clinical care. However, many of todays struggles are fundamentally philosophical, centered on issues such as purpose, values, identity, and the meaning of life. Those dont always need a medical label; they need better questions.
Why We Need a Different Lens
Disengagement is expensive. Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion annually, nearly 9% of global GDP. Manager engagement is also slipping, dropping three points in 2024, with a ripple effect on teams. The human cost? Teams feel flat, leaders are running on fumes, and organizations are mistaking busyness for progress.
Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke refers to our current moment as a meaning crisisa cultural shortfall in making sense of our lives. That frame helps us see that the emptiness that many feel isnt always a disorder; often, its a signal. Therapy is essential when theres a clinical risk. But when the primary challenge is purposenot pathologyphilosophy can be the right first (or parallel) step.
What Philosophical Counseling Looks Like at Work
Philosophy at work doesnt show up as abstract debates about Plato in the break room. It shows up as structured reflection in moments when leaders feel stuck, conflicted, or unclear. Unlike traditional coaching, which often emphasizes goals and performance, or therapy, which focuses on healing emotional wounds, philosophical counseling creates clarityhelping you slow down to examine the ideas, assumptions, and values that drive decisions.
In practice, this means creating a conversational space where leaders can explore the deeper questions that often remain unaddressed in quarterly reviews or strategic planning sessions. Its not about diagnosing or prescribing. Its about holding up a mirror to how you think, and then gently but persistently asking whether those patterns are serving you. Sometimes, testing your core ideas against a contrary philosophical position helps you change your mind, but it also helps you formulate your idea with better precision and focus. So, a philosophical counseling session isnt about advice. Its an inquiry guided by questions like:
What do you mean by success here? (Define the concept before you chase it.)
Which assumptions are you treating as facts? (Surface the hidden rules youre following.)
What obligations follow from your values? (Tie action to meaning, not mood.)
One VP I worked with felt behind in her career. She wasnt looking to change jobs; she was questioning whether she should. From the outside, her role was a success story: she was leading complex cross-functional work, mentoring future leaders, and shaping long-term strategy. But because her peers seemed to leapfrog into splashier titles, she had internalized the myth that a career only counts if it moves in a straight, upward line.
Together, we explored economist David Galensons distinction between conceptual and experimental innovators: some leaders peak early with bold, disruptive visions, while others build mastery through experience, iteration, and depth. When she looked at her own path through that lens, she realized her current role was giving her exactly what an experimental innovator needsbreadth, autonomy, and repeated opportunities to refine her craft. Her progress wasnt stalled; it was accumulating.
Once she saw her trajectory as cumulative rather than delayed, the pressure loosened. She didnt need a new job; she needed a new narrative. And with that reframing, her energy and her confidence returned.
Another founder I worked with was trapped in performative productivity, equating worth with constant output. After interrogating his deeper purpose, he shifted from chasing vanity metrics to making value-aligned bets. Hiring became more intentional. Product decisions became braver. And his leadership became far more sustainable.
Practical Steps for Leaders & Organizations
The goal isnt to turn executives into armchair philosophers. Its to equip them with tools that help cut through noise, clarify assumptions, and ground decisions in meaning rather than momentum. Philosophers have long been aware of their reputation for getting lost in thought. As Plato recounts in Theaetetus, Thales once fell into a ditch while contemplating the heavens.
Leaders dont need another abstract framework piled onto their already full plates. Philosophical counseling brings philosophy back to the ground, connecting it with everyday problems and offering clear practices that create space for reflection and insight without derailing productivity. When leaders bring this lens into the workplace, they not only strengthen their own claritythey normalize purposeful inquiry across the culture.
Here are some concrete ways to start weaving philosophy into your leadership tool kit and organizational systems:
Run an Assumption Audit. With a partner, list current dilemmas. For each, ask: What must be true for my conclusion to hold? How else might I interpret the facts?
Institutionalize Socratic Stand-Ups. Once a month, replace a staff meeting with a facilitated dialogue on a first-principles question (e.g., What are we optimizing for?) and publish the reasoning behind the decision, not just the outcome.
Offer a Meaning Map workshop. Help leaders chart their values, obligations, and behaviors. If values dont result in better choices, theyre not valuestheyre slogans.
Use AI thoughtfully. Employees increasingly confide in chatbots. Health experts caution against relying on generative AI for mental health, as it lacks safeguards and nuance. Organizations should establish policies and direct people to seek human assistance when needed.
Return-to-office and hybrid work have scrambled the social fabric. However, micro-rituals matter: leave five minutes for human check-ins on Zoom, host optional philosophy salons, or design in-person days around connction. These arent time-wasters; theyre trust builders.
Philosophy provides leaders and teams with a disciplined approach to thinking about what mattersenabling them to act with clarity, rather than merely coping. Your colleague who feels empty may not need a diagnosis. She may need to reorient her thinking by asking more effective questions. And those questions may be the most practical tools we have for navigating the complexity of modern work.
