Just in time for the busy holiday travel season, Apple has rolled out a new iOS 26 feature that lets users store their U.S. passport on their iPhone. The digitization of the passport is something tech-savvy travelers have longed for, especially as other once physical-only items that have crowded our pockets, like credit cards, driver’s licenses, and even car keys, have made their way onto the iPhone.
But so far there are limitations to what you can do with your digitized passport, which Apple dubs your Digital ID. Heres what you need to know about uploading your passport to your iPhone and what you canand cantuse it for once its there.
How to add your passport to your iPhone
Adding your U.S. passport to your iPhone is relatively straightforwardprovided your iPhone and your passport meet some requirements.
As far as your iPhone goes, it must be an iPhone 11 or later; it must be running iOS 26.1 or later; and its region must be set to the United States. Youll also need Face ID or Touch ID turned on, as well as Bluetooth. Finally, your Apple Account must have two-factor authentication enabled.
As far as your passport is concerned, it must be a United States passport, and it must not be expired.
If your iPhone and passport meet these requirements, you can add your passport to your iPhone. Heres how:
Open the Wallet app.
Tap the + button.
Tap Drivers License and ID Cards.
Tap Digital ID.
Tap Add to iPhone and Apple Watch or Add to iPhone Only.
Scan the photo page of your U.S. passport when prompted.
Use your iPhone to scan the chip on the inside back cover of your passport when prompted.
Take a live photo of your face when prompted and follow the facial movement instructions that appear on the screen.
Once youve gone through the steps above, Apple will verify the details from your scanned passport and your facial movements, and your iPhone will then send you a notification when your passport information, contained in what Apple calls your Digital ID, is available in the Wallet app.
Verification is usually done within a few minutes.
[Photo: Apple]
What information does your Digital ID hold?
The new Digital ID on your iPhone contains much of the information in your passport. This includes your:
Legal name
Date of birth
Age
Sex
Passport number
Passport issue date
Passport expiration date
If you open the Wallet app, tap your Digital ID, then tap the i button, youll even be able to see your passport photo on the Physical Passport Information screen.
You cant use your digital passport everywhere
The first thing many people are likely to think when they hear they can now add their U.S. passport to their iPhone is, Great! I dont need to carry my physical passport with me anymore.
Unfortunately, this isnt true.
Your passports information, stored in your new Digital ID card in iOS 26s Wallet app, can be used as an identity document to get through some airport checkpointsbut the keyword is some.
Apple says its new Digital ID is currently in beta, and during that beta stage it can be used at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints in more than 250 airports in the U.S. for in-person identity verification during domestic travel.
But while your new Digital ID will get you past TSA security checkpoints at these 250-plus locations, it cannot be used for international travel or at border crossings.
Digital ID gives more people a way to create and present an ID in Apple wallet even if they do not have a REAL ID-compliant drivers license or state ID, Apple says. Digital ID is not a replacement for a physical passport, and cannot be used for international travel and border crossing in lieu of a U.S. passport.
Can I rely on my digitized passport for domestic travel?
Even if youre flying domestically, its still wise to carry alternate acceptable forms of ID that will get you through a TSA checkpoint. This includes your REAL ID-compliant drivers license or your actual physical U.S. passport, which is also REAL ID-compliant.
Apple says you can use your newly digitized passport on your iPhone at TSA checkpoints at more than 250 airports in the U.S.,” but the company was unable to provide me with a list of these airports.
An Apple spokesperson told me that most major U.S. airports, including John F. Kennedy International (JFK) and San Francisco International (SFO), accept Digital ID. However, since the TSA is the authority regarding where Digital ID is accepted, Apple directed me to the government agency for a list of airports that recognize the new ID. (As of this writing, the TSA has not yet responded to my inquiry.)
You can store your U.S. passport on your iPhone. But should you?
One concern individuals may have is whether putting their passport on their iPhone is a wise move from a privacy and security standpoint.
Apple says the Digital ID on your iPhone is encrypted, and since your passports information is locked behind Face ID or Touch ID, even if someone had access to your phone, they couldnt access your passport information.
Those who worry that using a Digital ID will mean theyll need to hand their iPhone over to TSA staff at the airport can rest easy, too. If you want to use your Digital ID at a TSA checkpoint, you wont have to unlock your iPhone or hand the device over to TSA staff.
Instead, youll present your Digital ID much like you do a credit card you use wit Apple Pay: Youll place your phone near a TSA reader, and your iPhone will alert you to the passport information it will share. Further, it will share this information only with your authorization, which you give by double-clicking the iPhones side button and scanning your biometrics using the iPhones Face or Touch ID.
By allowing users to add their passport information to their iPhone, Apple has made the upcoming holiday travel season a little more convenient for many with domestic flights to catch. Too bad that’s likely to be the only convenient thing about U.S. air travel in the weeks ahead.
All last week, OpenAI watchers reported seeing strange things.
References to GPT-5.1 kept showing up in OpenAIs codebase, and a cloaked model codenamed Polaris Alpha and widely believed to have come from OpenAI randomly appeared in OpenRouter, a platform that AI nerds use to test new systems.
Today, we learned what was going on. OpenAI announced the release of its brand new 5.1 model, an updated and revamped version of the GPT-5 model the company debuted in August.
As a former OpenAI Beta testerand someone who burns through millions of GPT-5 tokens every monthheres what you need to know about GPT-5.1.
A smarter, friendlier robot
In their release notes for the new model, OpenAI emphasizes that GPT-5.1 is smarter and more conversational than previous versions.
The company says that GPT-5.1 is warmer by default and often surprises people with its playfulness while remaining clear and useful.
While some people like talking with a chatbot as if its their long-time friend, others find that cringey. OpenAI acknowledges this, saying that Preferences on chat style varyfrom person to person and even from conversation to conversation.
For that reason, OpenAI says users can customize the new models tone, choosing between pre-set options like Professional, Candid and Quirky.
Theres also a Nerdy option, which in my testing seems to make the model more pedantic and cause it to overuse terms like level up.
At their core, the new changes feel like a pivot towards the consumer side of OpenAIs customer base.
Enterprise users probably dont want a model that occasionally drops Dungeons and Dragons references. As the uproar over OpenAIs initially voiceless GPT-5 model shows, though, everyday users do.
Even fewer hallucinations
OpenAIs GPT-5 model fell short in many ways, but it was very good at providing accurate, largely hallucination-free responses.
I often use OpenAIs models to perform research. With earlier models like GPT-4o, I found that I had to carefully fact check everything the model produced to ensure it wasnt imagining some new software tool that doesnt actually exist, or lying to me about myriad other small, crucial things.
With GPT-5, I had to do that far less. The model wasnt perfect. But OpenAI had largely solved the problem of wild hallucinations.
According to the companys own data, GPT-5 hallucinates only 26% of the time when solving a complex benchmark problem, versus 75% of the time with older models. In normal usage, that translates to a far lower hallucination rate on simpler, everyday queries that arent designed to trip the model up.
From my early testing, GPT-5.1 seems even less prone to hallucinate. I asked it to make a list of the best restaurants in my hometown, and to include addresses, website links and open hours for each one.
When I asked GPT-4 to complete a similar task years ago, it made up plausible-sounding restaurants that dont exist. GPT-5 does better on such things, but still often misses details, like the fact that one popular restaurant recently moved down the street.
GPT-5.1s list, though, is spot-on. Its choices are solid, theyre all real places, and the hours and locations are correct across all ten selections.
Theres a cost, though. Models that hallucinate less tend to take fewer risks, and can thus seem less creative than unconstrained, hallucination-laden ones.
To that point, the restaurants in GPT-5.1s list arent wrong, but theyre mostly safe choicesthe kinds of places that have been in town forever, and that every local would have visited a million times.
A real human reviewer (or a bolder model) might have highlighted a promising newcomer, just to keep things fresh and interesting. GPT-5.1 stuck with decade-old, proven classics.
OpenAI will likely try to carefully walk the link between accuracy and creativity with GPT-5.1 as the rollout continues. The model clearly gets things right more often, but its not yet clear if that will impact GPT-5.1s ability to come up with things that are truly creative and new.
Better, more creative writing
In a similar vein, when OpenAI released their GPT-5 model, users quickly noticed that it produced boring, lifeless written prose.
At the time, I predicted that OpenAI had essentially given the model an emotional lobotomy, killing its emotional intelligence in order to curb a worrying trend of the model sending users down psychotic spirals.
Turns out, I was right. In a post on X last month, Sam Altman admitted that We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues.
But Altman also said in the post now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.
That process began with the rollout of new, more emotionally intelligent personalities in the existing GPT-5 model. But its continuing and intensifying with GPT-5.1.
Again, the model is already voicer than its predecessor. But as the system card for the new model shows, GPT-5.1s Instant model (the default in the popular free version of the ChatGPT app) is also markedly better at detecting harmful conversations and protecting vulnerable users.
Naughty bits
If youre squeamish about NSFW stuff, maybe cover your ears for this part.
In the same X post, Altman subtly dropped a sentence that sent the Internet into a tizzy: As we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our treat adult users like adults principle, we will allow even more, like erotica fo verified adults.
The idea of Americas leading AI company churning out reams of computer-generated erotica has already sparked feverish commentary from such varied sources as politicians, Christian leaders, tech reporters, and (judging from the number of Upvotes), most of Reddit.
For their part, though, OpenAI seems quite committed to moving ahead with this promise. In a calculus that surely makes sense in the strange techno-Libertarian circles of the AI world, the issue is intimately tied to personal freedom and autonomy.
In a recent article about the future of artificial intelligence, OpenAI again reiterated that We believe that adults should be able to use AI on their own terms, within broad bounds defined by society, placing full access to AI on par with electricity, clean water, or food.
All thats to say that soon, the guardrails around ChatGPTs naughty bits are almost certainly coming off.
That hasnt yet happened at launchthe model still coyly demures when asked about explicit things. But along with GPT-5.1s bolder personalities, its almost certainly on the way.
Deeper thought
In addition to killing GPT-5s emotional intelligence, OpenAI made another misstep when releasing GPT-5.
The company tried to unify all queries within a single model, letting ChatGPT itself choose whether to use a simpler, lower-effort version of GPT-5, or a slower, more thoughtful one.
The idea was nobletheres little reason to use an incredibly powerful, slow, resource-intensive LLM to answer a query like Is tahini still good after 1 month in the fridge (Answer: no)
But in practice, the feature was a failure. ChatGPT was no good at determining how much effort was needed to field a given query, which meant that people asking complex questions were often routed to a cheap, crappy model that gave awful results.
OpenAI fixed the issue in ChatGPT with a user interface kludge. But with GPT-5.1, OpenAI is once again bifurcating their model into an Instant and Thinking version.
The former responds to simple queries far faster than GPT-5, while the latter takes longer, chews through more tokens, and yields better results on complex tasks.
OpenAI says that theres more fine grained nuance within GPT-5.1s Thinking model, too. Unlike with GPT-5, the new model can dial up and down its level of thought to accurately answer tough questions without taking forever to return a responsea common gripe with the previous version.
OpenAI has also hinted that its future models will be capable of making very small discoveries in fields like science and medicine next year, with systems that can make more significant discoveries coming as soon as 2028.
GPT-5.1s increased smarts and dialed-up thinking ability are a first step down that path.
An attempt to course correct
Overall, GPT-5.1 seems like an attempt to correct many of the glaring problems with GPT-5, while also doubling down on OpenAIs more freedom-oriented, accuracy-focused, voicy approach to conversational AI.
The new model can think, write, and communicate better than its predecessorsand will soon likely be able to (ahem) flirt better too.
Whether it will do those things better than a growing stable of competing models from Google, Anthropic, and myriad Chinese AI labs, though, is anyones guess.
This story has been updated.
If you’re in the business of publishing content on the internet, it’s been difficult to know how to deal with AI. Obviously, you can’t ignore it; large language models (LLMs) and AI search engines are here, and they ingest your content and summarize it for their users, killing valuable traffic to your site. Plenty of data supports this.
Creating a content strategy that accounts for this changing reality is complex to begin with. You need to decide what content to expose to AI systems, what to block from them, and how both of those activities can serve your business.
That would be hard even if there were clear rules that everyone’s operating under. But that is far from a given in the AI world. A topic I’ve revisited more than once is how tech and media view some aspects of the ecosystem differently (most notably, user agents), leading to new industry alliances, myriad lawsuits, and several angry blog posts. But even accounting for that, a pair of recent reports suggest the two sides are even further apart than you might think.
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Common Crawl and the copyright clash
Common Crawl is a vast trove of internet data that many AI systems use for training. It was a fundamental part of GPT-3.5, the model that powered ChatGPT when it was released to the world back in 2022, and many other LLMs are also based on it. Over the past three years, however, the issue of copyright and training data has become a major source of controversy, and several publishers have requested that Common Crawl delete their content from its archive to prevent AI models from training on it.
A report from The Atlantic suggests that Common Crawl hasn’t complied, keeping the content in the archive while making it invisible to its online search toolmeaning any spot checks would come up empty. Common Crawl’s executive director, Rich Skrenta, told the publication that it complies with removal requests, but he also clearly supports the point of view that anything online should be fair game for training LLMs, saying, “You shouldnt have put your content on the internet if you didnt want it to be on the internet.”
Separately, Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) looked at how the new AI-powered browsers, Perplexity Comet and ChatGPT Atlas, handle requests to access paywalled content. The report notes that, when asked to retrieve a subscriber-only article from MIT Technology Review, both browsers complied even though the web-based chatbots from those companies would refuse to get the article on account of it being paywalled.
The details of both cases are important, but both underscore just how far apart the perspectives of the media and the tech industry are. The tech side will always tilt toward more accessif information is digital and findable on the internet, AI systems will always default to obtaining it by any means necessary. And publishers assert that their content still belongs to them regardless of where and how it’s published, and they should retain control of who can access it and what they can do with it.
The mental divide between AI and media
There’s more happening here than just two debaters arguing past each other, though. The case of Common Crawl exposes a contradiction in a key talking point on the tech side of thingsthat any particular piece of content or source in an LLM’s training data isn’t that relevant, and they could easily do without it. But it’s hard to reconcile that with Common Crawl’s apparent actions, risking costly lawsuits by not deleting data from publications who request them to, which includes The New York Times, Reuters, and The Washington Post. When it comes to training data, some sources are clearly more valuable than others.
The browsers that circumvent paywalls reveal another incorrect assumption from the AI side: that because certain behaviors are allowed on an individual basis, they should be allowed at scale. The most common argument that relies on this logic is when people say that when AI “learns” from all the information it ingests, it’s just doing what humans do.
But a change in scale can also create a category shift. Think about how paywalls typically work: Many are deliberately porous, allowing a limited number of free articles per day, week, or month. Once those are exhausted, there’s the old trick of the incognito window. Also, some paywalls, as noted in the CJR article, work by loading all the text on the page, then pulling down a curtain so the reader can’t see it. Sometimes, if you click the “Stop loading” button fast enough, you can expose the text before that curtain comes down. One level up from there is to use your browser’s simple developer tools to disable and delete the paywall elements on an article page.
Savvy internet users have known about all of these for years, but it’s a small percentage of all usersI’d wager less than 5%. But guess who knows about all these tricks, and probably many more on top of them? AI. Browser agents like those in Comet and Atlas are effectively the most savvy internet users possible, and they grant these powers to anyone simply requesting information. Now, what was once a niche activity is applied at scale, and paywalls become invisible to anyone using an AI browser. One defense here might be server-side paywalls, which grant access to the text only after the reader logs in.
Regardless, what the browser does with the data after the AI ingests it is yet another access question. OpenAI says it won#8217;t train on any pages that Atlas’s agent may access, and indeed this is how user agents are supposed to work, though the company does say it will retain the pages for the individual user’s memory. That sounds benign enough, but considering how Common Crawl has behaved, should we be taking any AI company at their word?
Turning conflict into strategy
So what’s the takeaway for the mediabesides investing in server-side paywalls? The good news is your content is more valuable than you’ve been told. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be so much effort to find it, ingest it, and claim it to be “free.” But the bad news is that maintaining control over that content is going to be much harder than you probably thought. Understanding and managing how AI uses your content for training, summaries, or agents is a complicated business, requiring more than just techniques and code. You need to take into account the mindset of those on the other side.
Turning all this into real strategy means deciding when to fight access, when to allow it, and when to demand compensation. Considering what a moving target AI is, that will never be easy, but if the AI companies’ aggressive, constant, and comprehensive push for more access has shown anything, it’s that they deeply value the media industry’s content. It’s nice to be needed, but success will depend on turning that need into leverage.
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As I write this my 6-and-a-half-month-old daughter is sitting on my lap in my home office, where she spends an hour or two each day. Despite all the toys Ive laid out for her, the thing she typically reaches for is my keyboard, occasionally leading to the odd typo.
Ive been a freelance journalist for about 12 years, but never has this work-from-home, choose-your-own schedule arrangement been so valuable.
Last year I was able to be with my wife at almost every doctors appointment, ultrasound, and blood test before we became parents in April. Since our daughter was born, I have enjoyed the flexibility not only to make it to every pediatrician appointment and give my wife a helping hand during the day but also to be a part of important milestone moments.
I couldnt imagine having to walk out the front door each morning, only to return a couple of hours before bedtime in the evening, but of course that is the reality for most working parents.
That is perhaps why solopreneurship is so popular among those with kids, especially women, and particularly those stepping away from extremely demanding careers to start or grow their families.
Studies in Australia and Canada have found that many workers make the transition into parenthood and self-employment at the same time, and research even suggests that self-employed mothers outperform those without children.
Being more present at home and work
When her first child was born, Fernanda Chouza went in the opposite direction, taking on a more challenging role at a fast-growing AI startup in San Francisco.
Over time Chouza says she earned the respect and leeway to take time off to care for her kids, but then she got laid off in 2022, when her kids were 2 and 4 years old.
As I looked at hyper-growth companies, I realized I would need to put in, like, two years of elbow grease to get to the point where I can take a week off for my kids, she says. The idea of starting from scratch was too hard.
Instead, Chouza started a one-women marketing agency called the Launch Shop, offering fractional product marketing expertise to software companies launching new products.
Previously, Chouza says she spent many hours at work feeling guilty for not being home with her kids, and many hours at home worrying about whether she was dropping the ball at work.
Now I have full flexibility. I don’t have to be constantly apologizing for stuff, and I only show up when I’m at the top of my game, she says. When I’m off, I’m fully off; I don’t have anxiety on the weekends, I don’t have anxiety at night, and I can be a lot more mentally present with my kids.
Though she doesnt enjoy the same kind of equity-payout potential, Chouza says her salary is about 50% higher than her previous earnings, while providing significantly more time off.
Previously, she said she could take two or three weeks off a year but was expected to be responsive on email and Slack during that time.
Thus far this year, Chouza has taken a week or more off from work on eight separate occasions for reasons ranging from her kids eye infection to a two-week trip to visit their grandparents abroad.
In corporate, I would have had to grovel and apologize for any time off, she says. It felt like I was being penalized for being a mom and they think of me as a liability, like Were always making so many accommodations for Fern.
A side door to new career opportunities
Perhaps one of the most unexpected benefits are the kinds of clients Chouza has worked with as a solopreneur. She says most companies are hesitant to hire executives in the current market but still need short-term support, making a contractor with corporate experience a viable option.
By being fractional Im actually punching so far above my weight, she says. I would have never had this exposure if I was just trying to go through the front door, but Im coming in through this side door and getting these amazing logos on my résumé and this amazing experience.
That is perhaps one of the most surprising benefits for those who step away from the workforce to start an independent venture while raising a family. Though many choose solopreneurship for the flexibility, they often discover that it can also offer a bridgeor even a ladderback into the traditional workforce.
You can think of it as not necessarily I’m going to build a startup that’s going to pay me a lot of money, but Im going to write a story for myself that professionally fills those years, explains Kyle Jensen, the director of entrepreneurship programs, and associate dean and professor in the practice of entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Management.
I created something new, I operated it, I ran it, and through all of this I developed all sorts of executive acumen and business sense, and maybe some software skills.
Professional benefits aside, Jensen also says part of what makes solopreneurship so appealing to parents is the ability to trade some of the financial rewards for time.
With this manner of entrepreneurship, you can treat your human capital as a luxury good, and you can choose different distributions of time that allows you to enjoy things that are important but not necessarily prioritized in our societylike parenting, he says, adding, The only person who’s going to remember that you worked extra hours are your children.
Its a random Tuesday in October, and your kids are home again. A national holiday? Nope. A snow day. Not even a speck of frost on the ground. Its Professional Development Day or Parent-Teacher Conference Half Day or one of the 15 other noninstructional days that appear in the school calendar like little landmines for anyone with a full-time job.
At this point, Ive stopped trying to keep track. Every month seems to come with a surprise, theyre home moment. And as a working parent, there are few phrases that strike fear into my heart quite like: No School Today!
I love my kids, but that doesnt mean I can drop everything every time the school district decides teachers need a day to recalibrate. I want their educators to have the time they need, I truly do. Its a job I dont have the patience or superpowers to handle. But the system is still built around a 1950s fantasy where one parent is home and is available for midday pick-ups, early dismissals, and weeklong winter breaks. Most families dont live that reality anymore.
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The hidden toll of random days off
This juggling act is brutal. Every day off becomes an exercise in logistics, guilt, and creative problem-solving. Whos taking off work this time? Can I trade shifts? Do we have any vacation days left? Should I call in sickAGAIN?
For parents who cant afford nannies or backup care, there arent many options. A babysitter can cost more than what a parent makes in a day. Drop-off programs seem to fill up within minutes and you have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting off the waitlist. And working remote with kids running around, making noise, and needing food hardly makes for a productive day.
Of course, the burden doesnt hit parents equally in cisgender households. Research shows that working mothers are far more likely to take time off or rearrange their schedules to cover the gaps in childcare. A 2023 study found that unexpected school closures forced mothers to cut six hours per week on average. Over a three-month period, that adds up to 72 hours. So, its not just inconvenient, it can have economic consequences. Most families cannot afford to bring home less money, and for single parents, this could cause a crisis.
Surviving this requires even more emotional labor: coordinating carpools, texting neighbors to ask a favor, setting up playdates with a child that has a SAHM. This is about childcare and the mental strain of dealing with an unpredictable and unsupportive system.
There has to be a better way
So, whats the solution? Its not as simple as hiring more babysitters. We need modern policies that reflect how families live and work today.
Here are a few ideas worth exploring:
Community care partnerships. Check out your local YMCAs, libraries, and afterschool programs. Some receive state or district funding to offer affordable coverage on non-school days. Some cities, like Seattle, already do this.
Rethink remote flexibility. If companies can pivot to global time zones and hybrid schedules, they can also accommodate parents during the school-year craziness. Family Flex Days could allow workers to shift hours without penalty.
Policy shifts. Paid family leave cant just be about new babies. It should also recognize the everyday realities of caregiving. That includes the random Tuesday your second graders school closes at noon.
Until the workplace and the school system sync up, parents will keep paying the price in time, money, and peace of mind. The bottom line is, we dont need parents to be more flexible. We need the system to be.
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Seeing peers lose their jobs has a way of making people weird. Its not much different from grief. When someone loses a loved one, you can almost feel the tension: people fumbling for the right words, hoping not to say something insensitive, then saying something insensitive anyway. Everything happens for a reason. Theyre in a better place. That is, assuming any condolences are shared at all.
Many of us have been there. You dont want to overstep. Dont want to make the person feel worse. I get it: Showing sympathy can feel like a minefield. The same thing happens when companies downsize their staff, only the loss isnt life. Its employment.
When someone gets laid off, its a kind of corporate death. One day, youre working alongside someone, swapping memes on Slack, surviving the same back-to-back meetings. The next day, their desk is vacant, their Slack photo appears black and white, and their email account forwards incoming messages to whoever has inherited their responsibilities.
Ive been on both sides of this situation, a casualty and a survivor. Ive seen folks who are lucky enough to evade the chopping block minimize, deflect, or disappear. Its not that people are cruel. Theyre uncomfortable. Layoffs remind us how little control we have over our own jobs. And in that discomfort, we forget the person in front of us is going through some real s**t.
I remember working at a startup in a contractor role that was cut abruptly after nearly a year. One acquaintance, a guy named Tyler, stopped by my desk to check in before my last day. He somehow made my departure about him: Were already such a small team, I dont know how they expect us to get all of this work done. I rolled my eyes.
Another well-meaning coworker at least showed concern. But after offering some empty platitudes (When one door closes, another opens), she asked an unanswerable question: What are you gonna do? I wanted to say, I dont know, Janice, probably stress-eat a pack of Oreos, go on a weekend bender, and then obsessively scroll LinkedIn for my next job, but I just kept it to the first four words.
What stung the most was the colleagues who suddenly acted like I was contagious. Youd think I was on Power the way these people suddenly went ghost. You can feel that void, that interrupted rhythm of virtual or real-life interaction. I assume they probably dont know what to say, so they say nothing. Its still wack.
Heres the thing: Its not all that difficult to show up for someone who is suddenly out of work. You dont have to fix their situation; you just have to let them know you see them. Ask how theyre doing. Validate their feelings. Tell them something youll miss about them.
You dont need a motivational speech. A simple, Thats awful, Im really sorry youre dealing with that, can mean a lot. Instead of clichés like, Youve got this! offer your presence. If you want to talk, Im here works just fine.
Get specific about how youd like to be supportive. Let me know if you need anything rarely goes beyond lip service. Instead, offer to share job postings you come across or connect your newly unemployed colleague with contacts at companies that may be hiring. If appropriate, you can even offer to serve as a reference.
Those suggestions are baseline, but my former boss at the aforementioned job did something small that went a long way. In my final leadership meeting, she carved out time so other managers could express kind words and farewells. One by one, they spoke about my poise under pressure, my witty emails, that one project that I managed to perfection. I felt appreciated. It reminded me of the impact I made over a short period of time. It reminded me that I would be an asset in my next gig.
When Ive seen layoffs up close, Ive noticed something: The people who show up make all the difference. Its not about having the perfect words. Its about presence. Jobs come and go. Titles change. But the way we treat each other when things fall apart? Thats what people remember the most.
The Only Black Guy in the Office is copublished with Levelman.com.
One X user named Julia recently shared screenshots of an email exchange with her boyfriend in which she was, in her own words, “colleague-zoned.”
In the now-viral post, which has over 15.4 million views at the time of writing, Julia penned in the caption: “Sent a document to my boyfriend’s work email so he could print it for me and got colleague-zoned.”
Julia had emailed her boyfriend a document to print, ending her note with, “I love you! Please print this for me! Thanks,” and a red heart emoji. To which he formally responded: “Julia, thanks for reaching out. I have received your document and printed it on 8″ x 11″ paper. Will deliver to you later this evening to be signed. Thank you.”
Of course, Julia responded as any girlfriend would. “Are you breaking up with me?” she emailed back. To which he wrote: “Keeping things professional. Just wanted to confirm that I have followed up on your request. Best regards.”
Some speculated that his emails are likely monitored, hence the professionalism. That is a man who is locked tf in at work, one wrote. Others recognized the screenshots for what they are: a funny bit. And it turns out, many people apparently do this.
My favorite time of year is when I email our HOA bill to my husband and he does this, one wrote. Its like professional flirting. Another added: Something about office speak with loved ones is so funny.
Julia is not the only one who has found herself colleague-zoned. Another TikTok creator recently shared a screenshot of her text exchanges with her finance bro husband.
Just got 2026 HC enrollment presentation. Lets get lunch/coffee again this weekend and discuss next year, he texted. Just sent to our Gmails so you can review ahead of time.
As professional boundaries blur and work continues to bleed into our personal lives, it can be easy to accidentally slip into office speak when replying to a personal email or syncing calendars with your partner. You might circle back to Thanksgiving plans or touch base on what day the trash needs taking out.
Some take things a step further and purposefully conduct monthly performance reviews of their romantic relationships, or discuss KPIs and OKRs with their significant others to align on future goals. It works for some. For others, perhaps its a sackable offense.
As for Julia, to assuage concerns over her relationship, she later shared screenshots of a follow-up text exchange.
Im crying. I just looked at my phone for the first time in like two hours. lmao. Are your emails actually monitored?? Or were you just being silly? she asked.
Her boyfriend admitted, No, theyre not monitored at all. I was just being funny.
Now entering: the colleague zone.
If talent is the oxygen of a company, succession planning is the life-support system. Yet too many organizations treat it like an org chart exercise, waiting until someone resigns or retires before scrambling to find a replacement.
When a leader walks out, the ripple effects are immediate: strategy stalls, teams lose momentum, and culture wobbles overnight.
The bigger problem? Most companies arent ready when it happens.
According to DDIs 2025 HR Insights Report, only 20% of CHROs say they have leaders prepared to step into critical roles, and just 49% of those roles could be filled internally today. That means most organizations are closer to a leadership crisis than they realize. This isnt just an HR issue; its a business continuity risk.
The Spreadsheet Trap
Too often, succession planning lives in a spreadsheet. Once a year, leaders review ready now candidates, check the box, and move on. But when someone exits suddenly, those names on paper dont always translate into reality.
Ive seen it firsthand. At one company where I worked, the president resigned unexpectedly. On paper, there were successors. In practice, none were ready. The company scrambled to find an external hire, losing momentum and market confidence.
Contrast that with PMI Worldwide (the owner of the Stanley brand), where culture and succession planning went hand in hand. The CEO and leadership team lived the values, held open forums, and celebrated wins. They didnt just plan for future leaders; they developed them into leaders. When growth accelerated, the bench was ready.
One company had a spreadsheet. The other had a system. The difference was everything.
The Succession Reality
Turnover remains high. The Work Institute projects that 3540 million employees will voluntarily quit in 2025, even as overall quit rates soften. That includes top performers you cant afford to lose.
Employee tenure is shrinking, too. For those under 35, the median is just 2.7 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Replacing leaders can cost up to 200% of their annual salary, per Gallup and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and it takes more than a year for new hires to become fully productive. To make matters worse, 38% of new hires leave within their first year, often before being considered for promotions.
Meanwhile, DDI reports only 20% of HR leaders believe their workforce is future-ready. Without a deliberate pipeline, companies expose themselves to leadership gaps, stalled strategies, and avoidable financial hits.
From Planning to Culture
Succession planning isnt a list of names; its a culture of growth. That means development is ongoing, not episodic. Leaders are accountable for building their bench. Talent sharing crosses functions and geographies. Data guides investment in development.
A proactive succession process signals to employees that advancement is real, not theoretical. It drives engagement, strengthens retention, and ensures seamless transitions when leadership inevitably changes. Most importantly, it tells your people: your future has a place here.
Treat Succession Like a KPI
The companies that succeed dont treat succession as a side project. They operationalize it. That means:
Measuring it like a KPI. Leadership bench strength should be reviewed with the same rigor as financial results. At Amazon, where I led succession processes, leadership readiness was tracked as closely as customer metrics through indicators like internal promotion velocity, bench strength ratios, time-to-fill critical roles, and successor readiness scores. These metrics werent HR dashboardsthey were business metrics.
Stress-testing before a crisis. Ask: If this leader left tomorrow, whats our real plan? If the answer is silence, youre not ready.
Embedding it into daily development. Succession isnt built once a year in a talent review. Its built through mentoring, stretch projects, and intentional growth opportunities.
What Great Succession Planning Looks Like
Succession planning isnt about whos next in line. Its about creating a continuous flow of leaders when the business needs it most. Done right, it:
Identifies high-potential employees early, using performance + potential, not tenure.
Differentiates between ready now and ready in 12 years and develops both.
Prepares for both planned exits (retirements) and unplanned ones (attrition, poaching).
Aligns talent strategy directly to growth priorities.
Assesses the impact of loss. If a leader leaves, what projects stall? What revenue streams are at risk?
Balances internal with selective external hires.
Leaders should review succession with the same urgency they give to financials. Ask yourself:
Do our successors have the skills to succeed today?
Are leadership capabilities aligned with future growth?
Where are we most vulnerable to leadership gaps?
Are we over-reliant on external hires at the expense of internal talent?
If the answers are unclear, the plan isnt strong enough.
The ROI of Getting It Right
Effective succession planning delivers measurable returns. It helps retain top performers, enables smoother transitions, and strengthens culture. When employees see investment in their development, theyre more likely to stay and more likely to be ready. The numbers back it up. DDIs research shows companies with strong leadership pipelines are 2.4 times more likely to financially outperform their peers. Succession isnt a cost center; its a competitive advantage.
Were in an age where AI-fueled rapid prototyping and sleek direct-to-consumer startups seem to capture all the attention. But some of the most profound design disruptions didnt start in a founders garage or in the algorithms of artificial intelligence; they were born in the aisles of mainstream consumer stores like Target. In the late 1990s, my company, Michael Graves Design changed the conversation around design with a teakettle that was joyful, affordable, and elegant. It didnt just sit on a stove, it stood for a new idea: Good design was not a luxury, but a right. Targets Design for All programs went on to define America’s expectation that great design should be available to everyone. Design evolved from a styling afterthought into a corporate strategy, and the democratization of design was born.
Today, democratic design ethos feels more urgent than ever. As consumers increasingly expect thoughtfulness, beauty, and accessibility from the products they buy, heritage brands have a chance to reclaim center stage. To do that, they need to go beyond nostalgia, and beyond quips like design thinking. They need to lean into design as disruption, using proven frameworks like participatory design, value-sensitive development, and service ecosystems to create meaningful, mass-market innovation.
Lets break that down.
THE NEW COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: LET THE CONSUMER LEAD
The notion of democratic product design is simple: Give consumers a genuine voice in the design process. Many brands have shown that when you allow customers to vote on product features, brands send the powerful signal, were building this with you, which can shift loyalty to your brand and deter competitors from catching up. But the magic only works when the vote is real, shaping what comes next.
For legacy brands, this is a powerful opportunity. You dont need to reinvent yourself to resonate; you need to open the design conversation. To us, this means engaging our community to test prototypes to evaluate proposed functional enhancements, to choose colors and finishes, and to ask customers for product categories to explore.
DESIGN WITH, NOT FOR: COCREATION AS BRAND STRATEGY
The next layer is cocreation, a participatory design methodology drawing from users lived experiences to inform what gets designed and manufactured. Consumers are hyper-attuned to authenticity. Cocreation does more than generate goodwill. It transfers creative ownership, builds emotional stakes, and cultivates a tribe, not just a customer base.
Recently, our community helped choose between different finish options for a new teakettle design. Their choice, brushed brass, wasnt what we expected. That insight is shaping our launch and will deepen customer buy-in.
When evaluating your own product development process, think of it in four pillars:
Dialogue: Do we invite open, two-way feedback?
Access: Are we sharing tools and context with users?
Transparency: Do users know how their input affects outcomes?
Shared risk/reward: Are they more than just participants?
By deploying this framework, our community shares product ideas and their own life hacks for existing items, and this helps shape mass produced designs.
THE CASE FOR VALUE-SENSITIVE DESIGN
Design isnt neutral. It carries implicit signals about who its for, what it enables, and what it assumes. Thats where value sensitive design (VSD) comes in: an ethical design approach adapted from technology design, embedding values like accessibility at every phase of development.
VSD begins with a set of human values. From there, you iterate:
Conceptual investigation: What values are at play?
Empirical research: What do users want or need?
Technical exploration: How can we embed these values in the final design?
We used VSD to create a line of bathroom safety products for Pottery Barn. These product types, including grab bars, are often stigmatized and overlooked. No one necessarily wants a grab bar. VSD helped us turn these functional aids into affirming, well-crafted objects with functional enhancements, like combining them with a toilet paper or towel holder. The designs reflect other consumer fixtures, with materials, proportions, and lines reflecting style, cache, and aspiration. Customers shared that these aids dont scream medical. They look like they belong in a thoughtfully designed home, not a hospital. People can finally choose to equally value safety and style. Thats VSD in actiondesigning dignity into daily life.
THINK ECOSYSTEM, NOT ENDCAP
Brands must recognize that products are no longer isolated SKUs, theyre part of a broader service ecosystem. A teakettle isnt just a tool. It starts your morning ritual, fills your kitchen with sound and steam, and maybe even appears in your next Instagram story. Understanding that web, and intentionally designing within it, multiplies product resonance. A product lives in routines, rituals, and spaces. When we honor that, we make more than goods. We make meaning.
Legacy brands can lead hereby connecting thee dots into a more cohesive user experience.
THE PLAYBOOK: FROM LEGACY TO LOYALTY
Democratizing design isnt a campaign, its a commitment. Heres how legacy brands can turn that into a strategy:
Step 1: Run consumer-driven design sprints, votes, submissions, and A/B tests early in the product development cycle.
Step 2: Activate cocreation programs with transparency and shared creative ownership.
Step 3: Integrate values mapping and empathy interviews into the design brief generation stage.
Step 4: Position each product within a lifestyle ecosystem: rituals, routines, and cultural meaning.
Step 5: Measure not just sales, but sentiment, engagement, loyalty, and brand pride.
HERITAGE ISNT A HURDLE, ITS A LAUNCHPAD
The best design doesnt demand attention, it earns it over time through usefulness, delight, and emotional clarity. Legacy brands are uniquely poised to champion that mission by doubling down on the radical idea that good design belongs to everyone.
Design isnt the garnish, its the strategy. And legacy brands that democratize that strategy by inviting their customers in wont just stay relevant, theyll take advantage of their inherent scale to lead again.
Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
Culture does not scale linearly with revenue or headcount it requires intentionality the faster you grow. When I joined DPR Construction in the early 1990s, we were a small startup with a shared vision. Today, we have over 13,000 employees worldwide. Along the way, weve learned that sustaining culture through growth isnt automaticit takes clarity, intention, and continual reinforcement.
With growth, we faced a familiar challenge many companies do: How could we preserve the cultural core we started with as a smaller company as we grew to an organization of thousands of people spread across the globe?
Company culture is often described as intangible; however, like it or not, the actions we take every day, how we collaborate, and show up to work shape our culture. Heres what weve learned.
START WITH STRATEGY
When you start with a common, agreed-upon purpose and strategies, and work toward an aligned vision, culture can thrive as the company scales. We saw this as we moved through the 2000s, implementing strategies to drive focus and create more predictability rather than simply growing for growths sake.
We sought alignment on clients in specific core markets to strengthen resiliency amid market flux. We found that concentrating on our markets allowed us to stay true to our culture by working with clients who value what we bring. We also continued to build a deeper understanding of our customers business and highly technical projects. This focus on customer relationships, markets, and complex projects, not growth is what continues to fuel us.
It’s important to lean into your strengths and protect the spirit of innovation that shaped you from the start.
LISTEN WHILE YOU LEAD
To scale culture is to remember that it isnt a top-down directive. It takes real dialogue because culture is embedded in the conversations employees have and how those conversations inform decisions.
In 2022, after years of strategic focus, we realized there was a deep need to reconnect our culture with how we led. It was a year of change: a collective moment of reckoning. Our leadership team planned something simple, but transformative. We packed our bags, rolled up our sleeves, and took a road trip for what we call Culture Connot to deliver a message, but to listen and receive feedback.
Senior leaders met face-to-face with all teams across all offices, including the craft workforce in the field. We didn’t come with all the answers. We came with open ears.
What unfolded was a uniquely human journey. We met with thousands of employees. We laughed, cried, and got asked hard questions, but most of all we listened. Culture Con gave us a clear lens into what our employees needed and what our company stands for. We hired simultaneous translators so employees could participate in real time. We created open, unscripted events for employees to converse directly with us, and with each other.
REINFORCE THROUGH ACTION
As companies scale, culture risks becoming only words on a wall. Growth adds complexity, and with it, the distance between leadership and teams closer to the work expands. To maintain culture, leaders must show it through actions, not just words. This means leading and reacting in ways people can see and feel.
Through Culture Con conversations, five distinct themes emerged:
A need for a deeper understanding of our vision, purpose, and values.
Clearer paths for career growth.
Stronger strategic alignment for all roles.
The importance of leading compensation and benefits.
A call to prioritize a culture of building teams by fostering more inclusive and integrated environments.
We got to work and now have in place a new benefits package for our skilled craftspeople, tailored to meet their needs. We also introduced internal development programs to support career growth and help individuals see a long-term future with the company. To strengthen strategic alignment, we rolled out new communication tools that link everyday work to company-wide objectives. And to deepen the connection to our values, we expanded efforts to share stories and celebrate work that reflects our purpose in action.
Each of these steps helps keep culture focused and makes it real for people across every role and region. We lead by example and reinforce our culture with the changes we make and the actions we take. Its not about having all the answers right away; its about listening and bringing employees along on the journey.
WHY COMPANY CULTURE MATTERS MORE THAN EVER
Culture requires active commitment every day. It is not staticto stay relevant it must evolve and grow through listening, responding, and building anew without losing what grounds you. Culture demands more of us as leaders: more empathy, agility, and aligned action.
The commitment is worth it: Companies grounded in strong cultures and values attract top talent and fuel resilience in the face of change and adversity. When your culture becomes your competitive edge, you build a company that can thrive through anything.
George Pfeffer is the CEO of DPR Construction.
