Ive read a lot of books on building a culture at work. A lot of the advice is well intentioned but to me overly complex. A 20-step framework is a lot harder to live by than a simple operating principle. Culture is something people feel and live more than implement.
Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in his book What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture, Its not the values you list on the wall. Its not what you say in company-wide meetings. Its not your marketing campaign. Its not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do.
For me, culture is created through actions. Its the choices leaders make every day that shape how people experience their work. Words can motivate, but actions are what transform. I feel strongly that culture lives in daily behavior, in the decisions that happen behind closed doors, and in the examples leaders set. When those actions dont match the message, culture starts to crumble.
At its core, culture is the outcome of how people treat one another. You can read an organizations culture in the everyday interactions between team members, customers, partners, and other stakeholders, notes Dan Pontefract, a leadership strategist and award-winning author of six workplace culture books. Good or bad, culture is contagious. When people observe respect and generosity, that behavior spreads. But when they see apathy, ego, or petty power plays rewarded, the culture will inevitably corrode. Wherever you look, culture is an outcome, and it becomes the core of how that organization operates.
When Leaders Dont Live Their Values
You probably remember when Uber experienced its explosive growth in the early 2010s. CEO Travis Kalanick was known for being bold and disruptive, in more ways than one. The companys innovation at all costs mantra fueled success, but behind the scenes the culture was the opposite.
Despite all the values-based talking points emphasizing customer obsession and empowerment, employees defined the culture as toxic, with high levels of burnout, ruthless competition, and ethics issues. People complained about long hours, fear-based leadership, and a lack of trust and accountability. In 2017, former engineer Susan Fowler went public with her experience, describing a workplace filled with harassment, fear, and silence.
Ubers culture didnt fail because it lacked values. In fact, it listed many of them on its website that sounded like ones you read about as best practices in Harvard Business Review. Actually, it failed because those values werent real because they werent practiced. What leaders said and did were two totally different things. Eventually Kalanick was fired and the company had to rebuild its culture from scratch.
When Leaders Do Live Their Values
Microsoft is a different story. When Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the companys culture was competitive and closed off. It was struggling to innovate and it was losing touch with its people, trying to operate in an industry that required constant change. Nadella knew that the strategy wasnt the big issue, the culture was.
Instead of rolling out a new list of corporate values, as CEOs tend to do in grand fashion, he focused on improving behavior. Uncharacteristic for a tech exec, he talked about empathy, curiosity, and growth, and then he modeled them. Nadella openly shared his own learning journey and encouraged people to learn from mistakes. He talked about taking the company from a know it all culture to a learn it all culture. He created space for collaboration and growth instead of competition and fear.
The shift is attributed to Microsofts dramatic increase in revenue and success in cloud computing and AI. Employee engagement improved, innovation returned, and Microsoft regained its energy and purpose. The company became known for its empathy-driven leadership and ability to adapt. Nadella didnt just talk about culture, he lived itand people followed.
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Culture isnt what you say in meetings; its what people see you do that matters. If I tell people to say no to meetings but I attend every meeting, people will live in fear of my words. If I tell people to challenge the status quo and they see me actively questioning assumptions, theyre much more likely to do it themselves. When your actions reflect your words, trust grows. When they dont, it fades fast.
Kevin Bishop, director of talent development at LinkedIn, believes culture is one of the most important things an organization can focus on. Culture isnt static, he says. Its a living, evolving force shaped by our daily choices and actions. If were not intentional, it can drift away from our values and become a liability rather than a strength.
Are your actions aligned with your words? Do you practice what you preach when it comes to team culture? Ask yourself these questions:
What words would I use to describe my teams culture? How am I demonstrating those words every day?
What word would my team use to describe our culture?
How am I empowering my team to succeed?
How am I removing barriers instead of creating them?
If youre brave enough, this is a great exercise to do with your team to shape the culture you want, together.
Leading by Example
Culture isnt a set of beliefs. Its a set of choices. Every day, your team watches what you do and learns from it. Thats what defines your culture. If your actions reflect your values, people will trust you. If they dont, theyll stop listening. The best leaders understand this simple truth: Culture is not what you say, its what you do.
At a factory in Austin, a startup recently finished its first prototype: a row house it plans to replicate in cities nationwide to help with the housing shortage.
Row housesnarrow, multistory homes that share walls with neighbors on each sideare ubiquitous in older neighborhoods from Brooklyn to San Francisco, but arent commonly built now. The American Housing Corp., wants to bring them back.
Row homes are an underbuilt category in the United States, says Riley Meik, cofounder and CEO of the American Housing Corp. The company has developed a kit of parts that can be quickly manufactured, shipped to building sites in dense urban neighborhoods, and assembled, helping shrink construction costs. While the price of an American Housing Corp. row house will vary, some of the first row houses in Austin will sell for around $750,000.
From left: American Housing Corp. founders Riley Meik, Bobby Fijan, Harris Rothaermel, and William Davis [Photo: The American Housing Corp.]
The U.S. is actually good at building single family homes on the outskirts of townyou look at the numbers that Lennar or D.R. Horton does, they are building over 150,000 homes a year,” Meik says. “But they are never going to build in the cities where people already live and want to live.
The challenge of the missing middle
Meik, an engineer who previously cofounded a rocket company, started thinking about housing during a stint at SpaceXs former headquarters near Los Angeles. On his way to work, passing through single-family neighborhoods, he looked at the houses and wondered why more of them werent starting to be replaced with duplexes or fourplexes. Like many cities, large swaths of the greater Los Angeles area had zoning laws for years that restricted construction to single-family homes. Then a 2021 state law that changed that, allowing lots to be split for duplexes. Still, few developers were building the projects.
[Image: The American Housing Corp.]
Meik knew that building more missing middle housingbuildings like row houses that are bigger than apartments but smaller than single-family housescould help begin to fill the enormous housing shortage in cities like L.A. I started tweeting about it, and saying, Its legal. Why arent we doing it? he says.
He connected with his eventual cofounders online. We met just kind of screaming into the voidthis is a problem that needs to get solved in this country, and we want to work on it, he says. That brought us all together. It’s something we’ve all been obsessed with for a very long time. So it wasn’t hard to convince each other that we should jump off into the deep end together and build this thing.
They saw that a challenge for missing middle housing was the cost of construction. There were probably hundreds of projects that I was seeing where someone had the approvals in hand, they were fully cleared, but the construction costs were too high and they couldnt start the project, Meik says.
[Photo: The American Housing Corp.]
Shrinking construction costs
To help reduce costs, the startup turned to prefab construction. The concept isn’t newbuilders have been making housing parts in factories since Sears houses were shipped on trains in the early 20th century. Basic manufactured homes, formerly known as mobile homes, now often look more like conventional houses but cost significantly less. Other startups have tried to scale up prefab construction for apartment buildings, backyard guest houses, or higher-end homes. Some have failed spectacularly, like Katerra, which raised more than $2 billion before going out of business.
[Photo: The American Housing Corp.]
To avoid one of the pitfalls that some other builders have faced, the American Housing Corp. designed all of its components to fit inside stndard shipping containers so that they can be moved cost-effectively. The shipping containers can travel affordably by rail, rather than on a truck, from the factory to a city. I think one of the things that has held back prefab to date, specifically volumetric modular, is it is incredibly expensive to ship those modules, Meik says. They’re oversized loads, and you get into the tens of thousands of dollars per module to ship them. We can be at less than $5,000, all-in, to ship a unit from Texas to California.
[Photo: The American Housing Corp.]
Factories can be expensiveKaterra spent $150 million on one before it closedand if they need to be built near each market, it makes the product uneconomical. (Cosmic, another startup that has been rebuilding homes in the L.A. area after the 2025 wildfires, takes a different approach to this problem, building low-cost microfactories at each site.)
[Photo: The American Housing Corp.]
The American Housing Corp. designed a new kit of partsfrom floor and wall panels to fully assembled kitchens and bathroomsthat can be built in an automated factory and then shipped to a site for quick assembly. The core materials, like steel and fiberglass reinforced cement panels, are more common in automotive or aerospace than housing, he says.
Designing a system for multistory homes was a challenge. “I think most people thought we were crazy for choosing to build a three-story home as our first,” says Meik. “The structural engineering, assembly process, and equipment required are completely different than building something as simple as a backyard home. But we believe that the only way to solve the housing crisis is by building missing-middle housing at scale. And we felt that row homes were the obvious choice.”
[Photo: The American Housing Corp.]
A new manufacturing model
The company started building a minimum viable factory last summer to begin testing its manufacturing process, and then started building a prototype house. They deliberately took it slowlydesigning and building one floor, learning from it before building the second floor, and then refining the process again before building the third floor.
As the team experimented with the first house, the total manufacturing time took weeks, but as it begins operations, it will move much more quickly. The company is now planning a new factory that aims to build one home per day. Right now, the early factory is churning out building parts that are being sent to Intertek, a certification company, for testing. After certification, the company plans to begin building homes in its first factory this year, while the new, larger factory is under construction.
[Photo: The American Housing Corp.]
When the parts are delivered to a building site, theyre designed to be assembled with a crane in days. All of this shrinks costs enough that projects can pencil out, Meik says.
The company also plans to act as a developer, working with partners to buy land on empty lots in dense neighborhoods, so that it can handle the entire process. “Our biggest learning from other [prefab] companies is that in order to have full control of what you build and how you build it (and truly be able to innovate in the way homes are built), you need to be both the prefab company and the real estate development firm,” Meik says. “Vertical integration has given us the freedom on the engineering side to redesign the home from the ground up in order to make it mass-producible in a factory setting. We don’t use two-by-fours, drywall, or hammers and nails. Our homes are designed to be built with machines.”
Using density to lower housing costs
For consumers, the biggest reason that the homes can be more affordable is density. Land is the most expensive thing in the areas that we want to build in, Meik says. So the only way that we can really decrease cost for the end customer is by fitting as many homes on a certain piece of land as we can.
The humble tripod is an unheralded but essential part of any film or photo shoot. It’s the key to making shots level and pans smooth, and as a piece of equipment it’s seemingly about as simple as can be, with three legs and a mount at the top. But as any photographer or filmmaker knows, setting up a tripod properly can involve dozens of moving parts, clamps, pivots, and adjustments.
A new tripod system from Italian camera equipment maker Manfrotto turns this setup into a single fluid motion.
[Photo: Manfrotto/Layer Design]
The Manfrotto Ones unique design allows for all three of its legs to be deployed simultaneously, extending out to the desired length in concert, each locking in place with a single lever. Thanks to a ball-based hub at the top of the tripod, the camera can be leveled in another single motion. And a custom-designed mount makes it possible to swap out cameras within seconds.
[Photo: Manfrotto/Layer Design]
The idea was to adapt this essential piece of gear to the way content creators are blending their media types. It’s increasingly common for content producersfrom social media amateurs to film and photography prosto quickly move from still cameras to mobile phones, toggle between photo and film, and alternate between horizontal and vertical frames.
Designed by the London industrial design studio Layer, the Manfrotto One tripod was reconsidered from every angle to be easier to use and more adaptable to dynamic conditions. “Much of the brief was around quickness,” says industrial designer Benjamin Hubert, founder of Layer. “You’re quickly moving or panning a camera, then you’re able to snap it off and do some handheld shots, and then [you can put the camera] back on and quickly reset the height or the angle of the setup. It’s those transitional elements that allow for speed of use and as frictionless interaction as possible.”
Seeing the One as a once-in-a-decade flagship product, Manfrotto has made an eight-figure investment in this new platform. It’s partly an effort to meet changing user needs, but also to stay ahead of the competition. “They’re seeing a lot of people enter the space, a lot of inexpensive products, a lot of commodity, a lot of things out of China and other parts of the world,” Hubert says. “They needed to move the needle and create something that was a big step forward.”
[Photo: Manfrotto/Layer Design]
Designing a new tripod
Despite the seemingly simple makeup of a tripod, it’s a highly complex piece of equipment, and redesigning it to function quickly was far from straightforward. Manfrotto reached out about two years ago to Layer, known for its conceptual and product work ranging from airplane seats to wheelchairs to cryptocurrency wallets to dog toys. Hubert and his team broke the tripod down to what ended up being hundreds of individual components and reconsidered what made them work smoothly.
“All the adjustment levers, all the attachment points, all the joints, everything is there because it has to be there from a functional point of view,” Hubert says. “Managing all of that noise and that amount of elements became one of the biggest challenges.”
[Photo: Manfrotto/Layer Design]
After churning through hundreds of prototyped components and narrowing them down to a series of viable options, Layer presented its designs as a kit of parts, with interchangeable elements and a shared logic. Combining the best bits, they dialed in on what became the One.
Prioritizing how quickly the tripod could unfurl and how easily users could swap cameras on and off, Layer’s design focused on the size and placement of its key levers, making sure they could be manipulated almost effortlessly. The designers rethought th tripod’s conventional telescoping legs and created a system for the legs to extend both up and down from a central shaft, allowing the length to be controlled by a single lever. And rather than hiding parts or masking the functional elements of the tripod, Layer opted to accentuate the most critical moving parts in its overall form factor. “It’s like a skeleton constantly on display,” Hubert says.
With the Manfrotto One tripod system’s retail price starting at $499, this may not be the gear for the average TikTok user. But the Ones clever design and adaptable use may even have amateurs looking at their old tripods with an unexpected level of scorn.
The record-breaking Falcons Flight roller coaster starts out slow, but don’t be fooled. Seconds into the ride at the new Six Flags Qiddiya City in Saudi Arabia, passengers are jolted into a high-speed journey that ascends mountainsides, passes through dark tunnels, and then does it all over again.
The ride reaches a height of nearly 640 feet, lasts for nearly 3.5 minutes, and travels more than 2.6 miles. It’s the largest, longest, and fastest roller coaster in the world, reaching peak speeds of about 155 mph. To make it, a European design and manufacturing company used the most powerful electro-magnetic propulsion system on the market.
Though Saudi Arabia just killed plans for the Line, its futuristic 150-mile-long city, it now holds records at its park, including the world’s tallest inversion on a roller coaster and the world’s tallest pendulum ride.
[Photo: Six Flags Qiddiya City]
Falcons Flight holds the speed, height, and length records for roller coasters, according to Intamin Amusement Rides, the Liechtenstein-based company that designed it. Founded in 1967, the company’s work spans from monorails in Moscow to an observation tower in Argentina, and includes what it claims was the world’s first giant drop ride in 1995. It says its newest roller coaster is part of “a commitment to pushing boundaries.”
Intamin’s linear synchronous motors (LSM) drive system gives Falcons Flight an edge in terms of engineering. LSMs use electro-magnetic propulsion to move the ride forward through permanent magnets on the coaster train and electromagnets on the tracks. That’s different from other methods, like an old-school chain lift pulled by a motor, or a hydraulic launch. With LSMs, a moving magnetic field pulls the train forward.
LSMs debuted on two Intamin-designed ridesSuperman: Escape From Krypton at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California, and the Tower of Terror II ride at Dreamworld in Australia, both of which opened in 1997. Today, it’s a popular way to build roller coasters because it’s more efficient and cheaper to run. It’s also super fast.
Intamin says Falcons Flight was was always intended to break records; the bird-shaped trains were designed to be aerodynamic, with windshields “engineered to pierce through the air,” not to mention save riders’ eyes from all that wind.
The Six Flags Qiddiya City opening late last year came after the November closure of Six Flags America just east of Washington, D.C. Six Flags announced later that month that more closures are forthcoming for underperforming parks. The Quiddiya City park is its first outside the United States.
At the 2026 Detroit Auto Show, the spotlight quietly shifted. Electric vehicles, once framed as the inevitable future of the industry, were no longer the centerpiece. Instead, automakers emphasized hybrids, updated gasoline models and incremental efficiency improvements.
The show, held in January, reflected an industry recalibration happening in real time: Ford and General Motors had recently announced $19.5 billion and $6 billion in EV-related write-downs, respectively, reflecting the losses they expect as they unwind or delay parts of their electric vehicle plans.
The message from Detroit was unmistakable: The U.S. is pulling back from a transition that much of the world is accelerating.
That retreat carries consequences far beyond showroom floors.
In China, Europe, and a growing number of emerging markets, including Vietnam and Indonesia, electric vehicles now make up a higher share of new passenger vehicle sales than in the United States.
That means the U.S. pullback on EV production is not simply a climate problemgasoline-powered vehicles are a major contributor to climate changeit is also an industrial competitiveness problem, with direct implications for the future of U.S. automakers, suppliers, and autoworkers. Slower EV production and slower adoption in the U.S. can keep prices higher, delay improvements in batteries and software, and increase the risk that the next generation of automotive value creation will happen elsewhere.
Where EVs are taking over
In 2025, global EV registrations rose 20% to 20.7 million. Analysts with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence reported that China reached 12.9 million EV registrations, up 17% from the previous year; Europe recorded 4.3 million, up 33%; and the rest of the world added 1.7 million, up 48%.
By contrast, U.S. EV sales growth was essentially flat in 2025, at about 1%. U.S. automaker Tesla experienced declines in both scale and profitabilityits vehicle deliveries fell 9% compared to 2024, the companys net profit was down 46%, and CEO Elon Musk said it would put more of its focus on artificial intelligence and robotics.
Market share tells a similar story and also challenges the assumption that vehicle electrification would take time to expand from wealthy countries to emerging markets.
In 39 countries, EVs now exceed 10% of new car sales, including in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, which reached 38%, 21%, and 15%, respectively, in 2025, energy analysts at Ember report.
In the U.S., EVs accounted for less than 10% of new vehicle sales, by Embers estimates.
U.S. President Donald Trump came back into office in 2025 promising to end policies that supported EV production and sales and boost fossil fuels. But while the U.S. was curtailing federal consumer incentives, governments elsewhere largely continued a transition to electric vehicles.
Europe softened its goal for all vehicles to have zero emissions by 2035 at the urging of automakers, but its new target is still a 90% cut in automobiles carbon dioxide emissions by 2035.
Germany launched a program offering subsidies worth 1,500 to 6,000 euros per electric vehicle, aimed at low- and middle-income households.
In developing economies, EV policy has largely been sustained through industrial policies. In Brazil, the MOVER program offers tax credits explicitly linked to domestic EV production, research and development, and efficiency targets. South Africa is introducing a 150% investment allowance for EV and battery manufacturing, giving them a tax break starting in March 2026. Thailand has implemented subsidies and reduced excise tax tied to mandatory local production and export commitments.
In China, the EV industry has entered a phase of regulatory maturity. After a decade of subsidies and state-led investment that helped domestic firms undercut global competitors, the governments focus is no longer on explosive growth at home.
With their domestic market saturated and competition fierce, Chinese automakers are pushing aggressively into global markets. Beijing has reinforced this shift by ending its full tax exemption for EV purchases and replacing it with a tapered 5% tax on EV buyers.
Consequences for U.S. automakers
EV manufacturing is governed by steep learning curves and scale economies, meaning the more vehicles a company builds, the better it gets at making them faster and cheaper. Low domestic production and sales can mean higher costs for parts and weaker bargaining power for automakers in global supply chains.
The competitive landscape is already changing. In 2025, China exported 2.65 million EVs, doubling its 2024 exports, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. And BYD surpassed Tesla as the worlds largest EV maker in 2025.
The U.S. risks becoming a follower in the industry it once defined.
Some people argue that American consumers simply prefer trucks and hybrids. Others point to Chinese subsidies and overcapacity as distortions that justify U.S. industry caution. These concerns deserve consideration, but they do not outweigh the fundamental fact that, globally, the EV share of auto sales continues to rise.
What can the U.S. do?
For U.S. automakers and workers to compete in this market, the government, in our view, will have to stop treating EVs as an ideological matter and start governing it like an industrial transition.
That starts with restoring regulatory credibility, something that seems unlikely right now as the Trump administration moves to roll back vehicle emissions standards. Performance standards are the quiet engine of industrial investment. When standards are predictable and enforced, manufacturers can plan, suppliers can invest in new businesses, and workers can train for reliable demand.
Governments at state and local levels and industry can also take important steps.
Focus on affordability and equity: The federal clean-vehicle tax credit that effectively gave EV buyers a discount expired in September 2025. An alternative is targeted, point-of-sale support for low- and middle-income buyers. By moving away from blanket credits in favor of targeted incentivesa model already used in California and Pennsylvaniagovernments can ensure public funds are directed toward people who are currently priced out of the EV market. Additionally, interest-rate buydowns that allow buyers to reduce their loan payments and green loan programs can help, typically funded through state and local governments, utility companies or federal grants.
Keep building out the charging network: A federal judge ruled on January 23, 2026, that the Trump administration violated the law when it suspended a $5 billion program for expanding the nations EV charger network. That expansion effort can be improved by shifting the focus from the number of ports installed to the number of working chargers, as California did in 2025. Enforcing reliability and clearing bottlenecks, such as electricity connections and payment systems, could help boost the number of functioning sites.
Use fleet procurement as a stabilizer for U.S. sales: When states, cities and companies provide a predictable volume of vehicle purchases, that helps manufacturers plan future investments. For example, Amazons 2019 order of 100,000 Rivian electric delivery vehicles to be delivered over the following decade gave the startup automaker the boost it needed.
Treat workforce transition as core infrastructure: This means giving workers skills they can carry from job to job, helping suppliers retool instead of shutting down, and coordinating training with employers needs. Done right, these investments turn economic change into a source of stable jobs and broad public support. Done poorly, they risk a political backlash.
The scene at the Detroit Auto Show should be a warning, not a verdict. The global auto industry is accelerating its EV transition. The question for the United States is whether it will shape that futureand ensure the technologies and jobs of the next automotive era are in the U.S.or import it.
Hengrui Liu is a postdoctoral scholar in economics and public policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Kelly Sims Gallagher is a professor of energy and environmental policy and director of the Climate Policy Lab and Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The only constant in life is change. This truth is as salient today as it was when the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus posited the idea centuries ago. Its a truth that most modern leaders know firsthand, especially when it comes to culture. Culture is in constant flux. Emergent ideas are introduced to an organizationbe they new technologies or nascent philosophieswhich catalyze new imaginations and result in new ways of work. However, the question isnt if things will change but how and when? So, we sat down with the former CMO of McDonalds North America, Tariq Hassan, for this weeks episode of the From the Culture podcast to talk about cultural change and how leaders can best navigate it.
As Hassan poetically puts it, every organization is haunted by the ghosts of cultures past. These are the existing conventions of an organization that were once introduced and integrated into its operating system but linger about even after a leader departs. Some were advantageous in the moment but perhaps soured over time. Others were likely rejected at first glance but eventually revealed themselves to be useful. These cultural contributions can be edifying or detrimental to an organization. Therefore, its incumbent upon new leaders to identify which ghosts should be summoned and which ought to be exorcised.
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How Will I Know
According to Hassan, a trained strategist turned C-suite executive, culture should evolve but also remain static. This dynamic might seem paradoxical on the surface, but it is empirically supported by the literature. Famed anthropologist Grant McCracken refers to this as fast and slow culture. Slow culture consists of the deeply held beliefs and assumptions of an organization that inform how we do things around here. Fast culture, on the other hand, is a reflection of the organizations beliefs in a contemporary context, based on the realities of today. They both exist at the same time but change at different rates.
Slow culture moves at a glacier pace, if at all. This is the static nature of culture that Hassan argues is the anchor of an organization that keeps it stable. Fast culture is far more temporalthe evolving parts of Hassans cultural calculus. When considering change, new leaders must distinguish between the fast and the slow, which parts must be revisited (the fast) and which should be reinforced (the slow). This is where reenvisioning comes into play for the CEO and executions become contextualized for managers.
Three Ideas
To navigate these complexities, Hassan offers three recommendations. First, leaders must approach change with great humility. This means realizing that someone was there before you who helped get the organization to where it is today. As good as you may be, you cant enter the company thinking Everyone here is incompetent and only I, alone, will save it. Doing so is to ignore the cultural conventions that ushered in its past successes or, worse, it may lead you to erroneously mistake them for the lingering conventions that may have prevented the organization from thriving. Discerning the differences is key.
Secondly, Hassan suggests adopting a curious mindset. As a leader, hes far more infatuated with questions than he is with answers. Questions invite other members of the organization who have experienced previous cultures to contribute to the exploration of change. It allows leaders to brain surf the institutional knowledge that already exists and leverage the endowment effect so that members of the team feel a sense of ownership in the change. That way, they are a part of the change as opposed to the change happening to them.
Lastly, Hassan emphasizes the importance of empathyself-aware perspective taking. Considering the kaleidoscope of meanings the world presents to our collective sense; having more perspectives provides a vivid picture of the organizations reality, which helps you, as a leader, lead change more effectively. This, as Hassan notes, is not only true of business culture but also of culture more broadly. And thats spot-on. Things arent the way they are; they are the way that we are, to paraphrase famed French-born author Anas Nin. And if that is the case, then understanding the multiple perspectives of the organization is critical to truly understanding the organization itself. Without this understanding, how can you effectively lead change?
Check out our full conversation with Tariq Hassan on the From the Culture podcast, where we explore the inner workings of organizational culture with the leaders who lead them.
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Most professionals spend their days focused on performance, deadlines, deliverables, and doing good work that gets noticed. Thats normal. But theres an overlooked truth about work (and life, really) that doesnt show up in job descriptions or KPIs. Work feels better, and often goes better, when its shared.
Shared in the human sense: letting someone in, acknowledging others, and enjoying progress together instead of alone.
That idea comes through clearly in a story Oprah Winfrey often tells about growing up in Mississippi and learning an early lesson from a candy bar.
Im telling you, if you do something to make someone else happier, its almost like it comes back to you exactly 100-fold. . . . I learned for myself, even as a little kid, that the candy bar tasted better if I had somebody to say, Isnt this good? . . . All things in life get better when you share it, and when you do something for someone else, the benefit comes back to you as well as to them. Thats where I get my great joy.
Its a simple story. Now, lets apply it to the workplace, where we spend the majority of our waking hours. Because most of us miss it.
Work isnt meant to be a solo sport
When people keep everything to themselvesideas, credit, stress, winswork becomes transactional and isolating. Thats a bummer by my book, and Ive been in these dreadful offices before. But when workers share, even in small ways, something shifts in the atmosphere. Trust grows. Energy increases. People feel less alone in the grind.
So, what does this look like in everyday work?
Sharing builds connection without extra effort
You dont need a team-building exercise to create connection. Sharing context on a tough project, looping someone in early, or simply saying, Heres what Im working on, helps others feel included. It builds community. Inclusion, even informal inclusion, reduces friction and misunderstandings.
Shared credit strengthens collaboration
Calling out a colleagues contributionespecially when you dont have todoes more than make them feel good. It signals praise, respect, loyalty, and fairness. People are more willing to help when they know their effort wont go unnoticed.
Helping others improves your own work
This is the part Oprah points to that people often underestimate. When you support and serve someone elseby offering feedback, time, or encouragementit benefits you in many ways. It helps reinforce cultural values like empathy, generosity, and servant leadership.
I would wager that most meaningful work moments for you may have involved other people. Those times when you were tasked to solve a problem together, laughing after a stressful meeting, and celebrating a small win. Work satisfaction rarely comes from achievement alone. It comes from achievement thats witnessed.
None of this requires a title, authority, or permission. And its free.
Ill leave you with a few ways to share with peers and colleagues on the fly, starting today:
Share information instead of guarding it.
Say thank you out loud; dont just think it.
Invite someone into a win instead of claiming it.
Check in when someone looks overwhelmed.
Include others in daily decision-making.
Share credit with the team.
The candy bar tastes better when someone else is there to enjoy it with you. Work does too. This week, intentionally share one thing at workcredit, your help, context, or appreciation. Notice how it changes not just the other persons day but also yours.
By Marcel Schwantes
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister site, Inc.com.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
For two decades, I’ve mentored professionals at every career stage: first as a high school teacher and administrator, and presently as a university professor and corporate consultant. One pattern emerges across every career pathwaythe people who find strong fits for their talents aren’t the ones with the most impressive single credential. They’re the ones who understand how three things work together: Skills. Credentials. Network.
The car mechanic who realized his hands-on skills weren’t enough as cars went digital. So he went to night school and earned his associate’s, bachelor’s, and MBA in four years. During the journey, he took advantage of every professional networking opportunity his job and college offered him. Today he’s a fleet director at a major construction firm.
The product manager who wanted to transition into consulting. She started running experiments online and building an audience for her behavioral design work. That public learning launched her into a consultant role and, eventually, a managing director position at the same company.
The mid-career professional who pursued an online masters degree in data science while aggressively expanding his network. Within two years: book endorsements, podcast appearances, and a transformed career.
Three people. Three different starting points. Same solution: they each tended to the three corners of professional success.
Skills. Credentials. Network. Here’s what each corner means:
Skills: Can You Do the Work?
This is the obvious one, but it’s more layered than most people realize. You need hard skills (can you code, analyze data, design a system?), soft skills (can you communicate clearly, collaborate effectively, adapt to changing circumstances?), and job sculpting skills (can you position yourself effectively through résumés, cover letters, and strategic outreach?).Furthermore, in a world where AI can replicate many technical skills, you need to demonstrate more than competence. You need to show you can apply skills in messy, real-world contexts that don’t come with clear instructions. This comes from years of solving problems and creating possibilities in collaborative, real-world contexts.
Credentials: Can You Navigate Systems?
Yes, the “skills-based hiring” movement is real. But credentials still matter, and not just for the knowledge they represent. A degree signals to employers that you showed up, navigated a complex system, and saw a multiyear commitment through to completion. As one hiring manager told me: “If you finished college, I know you can operate in structured environments, meet deadlines, and push through when things get difficult.” Credentials aren’t just proof of knowledge. They’re proof of persistence and the ability to navigate systems.
Network: Does Anyone Know You Exist?
This is the most overlooked corner and the hardest to measure. Stanford University sociologist Mark Granovetter famously called it “the strength of weak ties”: the acquaintances who know different people and have access to different opportunities than your close friends do. It’s about who knows what you can do, who vouches for you when opportunities arise, and who creates pathways you’d never find on your own. The number of LinkedIn connections doesn’t matter. It’s the depth of contacts and engagements you have with people in your field and adjacent fields that does. Professional associations, internships, alumni networks, mentors: these aren’t “nice to have.” They’re foundational.
Why All Three Matter
Here’s what I’ve seen so many people misunderstand: they’re crushing it in one corner but can’t figure out why their career isn’t clicking. Dazzling skills, impressive credentials, cool connections, yet nothing’s working.
I had one mentee who applied to hundreds of marketing jobs. He had impressive skills but no network and the wrong credentials. No interviews came his way. From where he sat, it was maddening. From the outside, it wasn’t mysterious at all. A strong network may have been able to overcome the credential mismatch, but with neither in place he had to carefully reconsider his next steps.
Meanwhile, often mid-career professionals considering a master’s degree forget to be strategic about all three corners. The best programs aren’t just about the credential. You’re bringing work experience, building new skills, and accessing a powerful alumni network simultaneously. Too often people enter programs with a narrow focus. I’ve seen professionals complete expensive degrees, ace every exam, and graduate with zero meaningful relationships in their cohort. They dont even think about using their student status to land an internship or fellowship at organizations they care about. They paid for one corner and ignored the other two!
Here’s what makes this framework durable: the three corners reinforce each other. When you sharpen someone’s work, you’re building their skills. When you help them navigate complexity, you’re teaching system navigation. When you make introductions, you’re expanding their network. The framework works at every career stage because the fundamentals don’t change.
The world is changing fast. AI disrupts skills, remote work reshapes networks, degree inflation is real. But employers will always need people who can do things well, navigate complexity, and work effectively with humans.
Assess all three corners honestly. Where are you strongest? Where have you been neglecting? Invest there. Your next opportunity won’t come from one thing; it’ll come from understanding how all three work together. And while you can’t control luck, building all three corners means you’re ready when it shows up.
If youre a CEO, entrepreneur, recruiter, or hiring manager, you know how important it is to hire the right people for the right roles. But hiring the right people for the right roles goes way beyond simply attracting the best and brightest of your industry. Just because someone is highly qualified, great at what they do and has impressive experience, doesnt mean they are a good fit for your organization or your culture. If you want your business to thrive in the marketplace, you need to filter out potential employees who may not be a great fit for your organization and attract those who are the most likely to thrive. Here are three ways to attract potential employees who are more likely to fall in love with your brand.
Give candidates a realistic job preview
According to LinkedIn, the biggest concern candidates experience when searching for a job is not knowing what its really like to work at an organization before they apply. If you truly want to give candidates a transparent look at your organization, including the not-so-glamorous side of the role they are applying for, consider adopting Realistic Job Previews as part of your recruitment strategy. Realistic Job Previews (RJPs), as the name suggests, are designed to give candidates a realistic peek behind the curtains of the role they are applying for so they can make well-informed decisions on whether the job is one which they will love and thrive in.
Some companies, like Boston Consulting Group, allow candidates to take a 3D tour of the company and to register for a job simulation. Other companies, such as Marriott, use gamification to give candidates the opportunity to perform the digital equivalents of the tasks they would perform on the job if they are successful in their application. This gives candidates a close approximation of the difficulty level of the jobs they are applying for and can help them decide whether the job they are applying for is a good fit for them.
If you simply dont have the budget for these high-tech solutions, an effective low-tech alternative may be to simply allow candidates applying for a job at your organization to spend an entire day in your workplace shadowing team members in the department they are applying to be a part of and speaking with any of your team members individually or in groupsunsupervised and without any intervention or interruption by any member of our leadership team.
This allows candidates the opportunity to have a truly unfiltered and uncensored view of your business from the perspective of employees without management running interference. Candidates who like what they see will be more likely to apply for (and love) a role at your organization, while those who dont will look elsewhere for employment (saving you valuable time and money). This is RJP in its purest and most transparent form.
Dont worry too much about scaring off candidates with the truth, because when you stop and think about it, if they join your team, it wont be long before they see both your strengths and weaknesses for themselves. Its much better to be upfront with candidates so they can make an informed choice rather than to hide the truth and have your new employees quit after a few months, weeks, or days after they experience your culture for themselves!
Articulate an inspiring purpose
Research by Gallup shows that employees with a strong sense of purpose in the workplace are 5.6 times as likely to be engaged in their jobs compared to those with a low sense of purpose. And research conducted by McKinsey indicated that 82% of employees believe its important for their company to have a purpose. Thats why its important to carefully articulate your purpose in a way that inspires potential employees who are aligned with your purpose to want to work with you.
If your purpose is, for example, to help alleviate poverty, it will attract individuals who love the idea of helping people improve their quality of life. If your purpose is to create technologically advanced products that improve the lives of customers, that purpose will help attract individuals who genuinely love being involved in the process of technological innovation. And, if your purpose is to help preserve the environment, you will attract employees who are passionate about conserving natural habitats.
If your company doesnt have a thoughtfully articulated and documented purpose, take the time to do so right awayit just might help you to attract individuals who will love working at your organization.
Demonstrate that you value career development
If you want your employees to love your organization, let them know upfront what career opportunities they may be eligible for across the organization beyond the role for which they are applying. Deloittes Explore Your Fit initiative does a good job of this by using technology that allows candidates to answer a series of questions about themselves, their experience, and their interests. Based on the responses, Deloitte will provide candidates with a custom digital guide to help them navigate career opportunities within their fit area.
If you prefer a more personal touch, have a conversation with candidates that includes a review of your organizational chart, and what positions they may be eligible for if they excel at the position they are currently applying forespecially if your company has a history of promoting from within the organization. Some companies that value career development have even been known to create custom positions for high performers they want to retain even after they have outgrown the positions they originally applied forsomething you may want to consider if you want to ensure that you retain your top talent, even in roles you may not have previously envisioned.
When employers demonstrate that they value career development, candidates are more likely to have confidence that their work will be meaningful and lead to future opportunities within the organizationhelping them make a more informed decision and more likely to fall in love with the jobs they have applied for.
Of course, there are several other ways to attract employees who will love working for your organization, but these three activities are an excellent way to start the process of having potential employees who will fall in love with their roles in your organization.
Can I say it?
If you have ever scrolled on social media and felt like you joined a conversation halfway through, with no context at all, you are not alone. Over the past few weeks, a type of posting has resurfaced online with the sole purpose of ragebaiting everyone.
It is called vagueposting, and it involves being intentionally cryptic as a form of engagement bait. Common vagueposts include can I say it? without ever saying anything, or insisting you wont like the answer without ever revealing the answer. Or oh thats not What? WHAT?
The practice is not new. The term was originally called vaguebooking, which referred to posting emo Facebook statuses that pandered for attention. One example might be writing worst day ever without offering any details, or posting a black square paired with a pointed platitude.
The first meme of the year was one example of vagueposting in action. It started with a TikTok posted in December about rebranding for 2026. In the comments, others shared their own strategies and self-improvement tips for the upcoming year. A user named Tamara shared her own method involving 365 buttons.
@poptrish #tamara #365buttons #2026 #rebrand long live tamara and i wonder what they buttons are for ?? I was very intruiged before i even realized that was the whole comment section Sybau – KCK Mixes
When pressed to explain what the 365 buttons were for, she simply responded: Hey, so it actually only has to make sense to me for me to do it and I dont feel like explaining it to anyone else.
Vagueposting has also resurfaced on platforms like X in December and early January. On X, one user noted, Why has this entire site turned to fucking vagueposting in the past month, like every viral tweet means nothing anymore because there’s no context.
Why has this entire site turned to fucking vagueposting in the past month, like every viral tweet means nothing anymore because there's no context— FPSthetics (@FPSthetics) December 15, 2025
Another added: Many dreadful things are happening online, but I’m really impressed by how utterly maddening the vagueposting for likes trend is.
Many dreadful things are happening online, but I'm really impressed by how utterly maddening the "vagueposting for likes" trend is— Clarissa Aykroyd (@stoneandthestar) January 26, 2026
The fact that vagueposting is proliferating on X right now is not a coincidence. Elon Musks new monetization policies have warped the platform. Those who remain are in a race to the bottom, competing against AI slop in pursuit of clicks and engagement.
Vagueposting is a trend because the algorithm senses that you are clicking on those tweets (engagement) to see the replies for context, one X user explained. So it promotes vague tweets over ones that explain enough that you can read and scroll past them.
vagueposting is a trend because the algorithm senses that you are clicking on those tweets (engagement) to see the replies for context so it promotes vague tweets over ones that explain enough that you can read and scroll past them.— demi adejuyigbe (@electrolemon) January 11, 2026
As the internet continues to eat itself, what remains across beleaguered social media platforms are half-formed thoughts, clips stripped of necessary context, and engagement baits designed to hook our shrinking attention spans and further trigger our dysregulated nervous systems.
youre probably not gonna like the answer.
