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Feeling stuck in your career doesnt mean youve hit the end of the road. Instead, it often signals the start of something transformative. In this article, seasoned professionals share real-world strategies for breaking through career plateaus, from embracing discomfort to reconnecting with your purpose. Whether youre navigating uncertainty or craving more impact, these insights offer actionable paths to reignite momentum and unlock new opportunities. Embrace Disruption to Fuel Career Growth I’ve hit a few career plateaus throughout my journey, and each time, I found growth by intentionally being a bit disruptive. Disruptive in the sense that I actively sought out challenges beyond the title I held, the role I was hired for, or the opportunities typically offered, especially as the only woman asking for that kind of consideration. Early on, I moved quickly through the HR function, building expertise across disciplines until I had a firm grasp on the entire function and felt I could lead others. That season of my career was exciting, fulfilling, and fun. I was thriving, but I still wanted more. So, I started asking for stretch assignments, exposure to the board, and cross-functional projects that would expand my perspective beyond HR and into the business as a whole. One of my most pivotal moments came at the C-Suite level. I found myself craving new ways to contribute and grow, so I stepped into an acting COO rolewithout the formal title. That shift opened the door to entirely new kinds of problem-solving, deeper collaboration across departments, and the opportunity to serve the organization in a more holistic, meaningful way. But, eventually I hit my final plateauthe kind that doesn’t get solved with a promotion or new project. That’s when I decided to truly embrace my personal motto: get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and I launched my company. As a solopreneur, my reach is no longer limited. I choose the work I say yes to, the partnerships I nurture, and the impact I want to make. My purpose is ignited, my passion is renewed, and my story is still being written. Becky Kowall, founder, chief HR strategist, 22 North HR Reflect and Align for Strategic Advancement Professionals generally want to work hard, feel valued for what they do, understand how their role connects to the organization they work for, and live a good life. They are so driven to continue to add value to the organizations and teams they work for that they often don’t take the time to reflect on their contributions and connect them to where they want to go and what they want to do, which often leads to a career plateau. They end up on autopilot, going through their days doing the best they can until they realize they’ve plateaued or want something more or different. This awareness is a great opportunity to pause, reflect, and uncover new opportunities for advancement. With clients I work with, we start by identifying what they enjoy, what they want more of, and what they don’t enjoy, or what they want less of. We uncover what success looks like for them, and what they want to feel when they step away from their career at retirement, along with what they’d have regrets about not doing at this intersection. This is an important component, as making change is often scary, and taking steps towards the right thing instead of falling into something that’s going to have them feeling similarly makes a difference. From there, we take stock of their impact, experience, and leadership so they can reflect on what they’ve achieved (and why it matters), track success stories, and speak about their work with clarity, confidence, and alignment. Next, we consider how they can stay visible, valuable, and empowered to ask for something more in their current roles or strategize how to look for it elsewhere through avenues like networking. Without this process, clients are often so disconnected from the incredible impact they’ve had in their careers at this point, from entry level to very senior, that the pause and reflection makes a huge difference and allows one to regroup and determine what advancement looks like for them and how to strategically make it happen. Clients who do this go from being overwhelmed with too many options to finding clarity and confidence about what they really want. This makes the ask for advancement much easier, and they land in roles they feel aligned with and happier about. Shannon Bloom, PCC, leadership & transformation career coach & founder, Radiant Firefly Seek Mentorship to Navigate Career Challenges It is a feeling that can begin to creep up over time, and eventually one may experience career stagnation. To break free of these doldrums within a career, there has to be a strategy created to uncover new opportunities for advancement. One strategy I’ve seen work is to find a more senior colleague who can serve as a mentor and sounding board for career challenges and opportunities. There are typically formal programs within a workplace where employees can obtain mentorship, and if it doesn’t exist, then find an organization outside of work that can provide a mentor. It is important to consider who can best serve as your mentor; some qualities to consider are their current work experience, skills, and companies they have worked for during their career. I have sought out mentorship outside my work environment when I was considering the next steps in my career, and I have also served as a mentor in my work environments. Through one experience, over the course of nine months, I had the opportunity to coach and support the development of a junior professional in a mentoring program where I facilitated 32 one-on-one development sessions. We discussed both challenges and opportunities to address her desire to progress to the next stage of her career. After completing the program, my protégé continued focusing on her strategy to address her career needs, and she went through the process to secure a new role for herself. In my case, I was able to learn from a senior professional and ended the mentorship program with a plan as to how I would seek out new opportunities to advance my career. Another approach to uncover new opportunities and add new skills for advancement is to volunteer. I took this approach, before business school, to gain experiences and transferable skills as a consultant, project manager, and mentor for various pro bono consulting projects. Finally, assess on a periodic basis how you feel about your work environment. Questions to consider are: Are you utilizing your skills to have the impact you desire? Are you doing work in an environment where you can thrive? Are you adequately compensated for the level of work you produce? To avoid reaching a career plateau, conduct an assessment on a periodic basis (e.g., every three or six months) to determine career satisfaction. Conducting these periodic assessments will thwart the possibility of a career plateau because there will be a strategic approach to deflect career stagnation. Andrea Bell, CEO & owner, The Employment Strategist Experiment with AI to Reshape Your Role A few years into running Petners (a nonprofit feeding stray animals in Ukraine), I hit a plateaunot just in growth, but in my own role as a founder and an operator. We were doing the same things week after week: writing posts, sending newsletters, and pitching donors and partners. None of it was broken, but none of it was leading anywhere new either. The shift came from tiny, messy experiments. One of those experiments involved using AI to speed up content creation. That became the spark for building an AI-powered tool that helps nonprofits create donor-centric content. Suddenly, I wasn’t just leading a stuck nonprofitI was launching a tool that could help other nonprofits grow. New conversations started, new doors opened, and I had a new way to grownot just my organization, but my career. I believe that’s the most underrated part of experimentation: it doesn’t just improve what you’re doingit can completely reshape who you are in your work. When you start treating stuck moments like playgrounds for tests, your role evolves with the process. Experimentation today is unusually accessible, too. We don’t need a growth team or user testing labyou can use Lovable and n8n to build something within hours, not months. Maia Iva, cofounder and CEO, Kweet Build Your Personal Brand for New Opportunities I reached my career plateau when I became the head of technology and innovation at Etihad Airways. You might ask, how did I come to that conclusion? The answer is simpleI tried for various positions at the next level, but I kept getting rejections. The math is straightforward. As you climb the ladder, the number of positions gets smaller. The ratio of professionals applying for senior positions compared to the number of available positions is lower. This is frustrating for any professional, and it was the same for me. So how did I address this? There are two ways you can manage this. First, you can sulk about it (which I did for a few weeks), and second, I decided that if I had to stand out, I had to be better than my peers. That’s when I learned about personal branding. I started going through YouTube to understand what others were doing to enhance their personal brand. It was clearI had to show myself as an expert in my field. So I decided to use the most common medium to get my message out there: a website. I created a website under my name, and I started to post articles about my area of expertise. But I wasn’t getting any traffic. I learned that my website needed search engine optimization (SEO). It took me a couple of weeks (and a few weeks of trial and error) before I started getting traffic to my website. With all the new traffic coming to my website and the articles that I carefully wrote, I started to receive queries and questions about my expertise. That opened the floodgates of queries from recruiters and senior executives. New opportunities started to come my way, and my confidence began to grow. I finally zeroed in on the opportunity that I wanted and moved ahead in my career. What I learned from this experience: Rather than sulk about the situation, do something constructive with your time and learn new skills. Learning new skills at an older age can be difficult, but with a progressive mindset, there is nothing you can’t do. Be prepared to jump outside of your comfort zone. You will be surprised where life takes you. These three lessons might be simple, but they take a lot of effort, patience, and dedication. You will achieve success if you have the right mindset. Noel D’Costa, managing partner of enterprise solutions, DXC Technology Tackle Avoided Tasks to Reignite Growth Follow your avoidance. Most times, you hit a plateau after you become too goodthe irony. When I hit my plateau, it was because the system I was working in became too stable. The deploys were smooth, and the team didn’t need hand-holding. Nothing felt new; there was no tension, no stretch. I spent 90% of my time doing things I was great at. It felt more like maintenance instead of growth. I decided to do something I avoided and dreaded: handling customer complaints. It is convenient to let the customer care department handle customer complaints. This was my starting point. I delved into user frustrations from the support logs. I started reading comments, replaying sessions, and sitting in on support calls. Hearing the pain behind the metrics we present proved how much my work shaped people’s experience. It pulled me into product decisions, pricing, and messaging and gave me the umph I needed. When you feel stuck, follow your avoidance. Try out something you aren’t good at. Find a space where you don’t feel smart. That way, you learn and grow. Jay Speakman, chief technical officer, CustomWritings Address Skill Gaps to Unlock Progression Addressing a skills or knowledge gap can be an effective way of uncovering new opportunities for advancement. It is beneficial to have a niche and extensive expertise in a particular domain. However, the needs of the organization you work for or the industry you belong to might change over time. Acquiring new skills might become pivotal for success, and a lack of these skills might actually hinder your career progression. Once you find yourself in a career plateau, ask yourself these questions: Who among your peers is experiencing the kind of career progression that would make you happy? What skills do they have that have enabled that progression? What skills are the most valued in your domain/industry at this point in time? Once you have identified the gaps, formulate a plan to gain these new skills. Identify courses you can take or networks you can leverage to get your foothold in the new, unfamiliar territory. I personally used this method when I hit the five-year mark in my career as a software engineer. Even though I had experienced early success, I was still worried about reaching stagnation. I realized that I needed to be more product/domain/business-minded instead of just focusing on my tech skills. I pursued an MBAwhich opened up a whole host of opportunities for me. Anuj Mulik, software engineer, Featured Reconnect with Your ‘Why’ for Renewed Momentum In my experience, when I hit a career plateau, I realized that I was often obsessing ove the “what”what was next, what my next title would be, what my landing place in the company would be. Instead, what I needed to ground myself in was clarity around the “why” I do the work I do in the first place. This reframe allowed me to reflect on moments in my career where I felt most energized and in alignmentthere are clear patterns and themes in these moments. In this reflection, it became clear to me that I am driven by evolving cultures into those where more people feel seen, where equity is baked into systems, and where leadership reflects lived valuesnot just business outcomes. I was able to use this clarity to evaluate opportunities differently, advocate for purpose-aligned projects (even within my current role), and move toward designing roles that didn’t previously exist. By re-grounding my next move in my why, I was able to make intentional, values-aligned choices that reignited my momentum. Nani Vishwanath, consultant & facilitator, The Courage Collective Leverage Assessments to Identify Career Paths When facing a career plateau, I took a Birkman assessment and found it very valuable. This assessment has high internal validity, meaning that at different points in your life, there’s a high likelihood that you’ll get the same results. This is important as it is a tool that you can refer back to later on in your professional journey. It looks both at the types of careers that will work for you and at the characteristics of different job environments that will help you excel. As part of the process, you work with a coach to analyze the results and to use them to help with essential tasks like updating your résumé and LinkedIn profile to highlight core findings from the assessment that would make you attractive as a candidate. I was able to use this assessment to improve how I spoke about myself as a team member and what I can contribute to a team. I was able to quickly move to a role that allowed me to grow, build skills, and set me up for what came next. Marianna Sachse, founder & CEO, Jackalo Pursue Education to Expand Career Horizons One of the tried-and-true methods for uncovering new opportunities in your career is to consider going back to school in some capacity. It doesn’t always have to be full-time, but going back to school allows you to expand your knowledge, make yourself even more marketable, and, in some programs, you’ll get certain industry certifications that are becoming more essential in a crowded sea of professionals. Not to mention, going back to school while in your career affords you a new networking pool to draw from, helping you make new connections that can help you in your career in ways you can’t yet begin to predict. Joe Klenk, director of marketing, Pennsylvania Institute of Technology Communicate Career Goals for Internal Moves I learned a strategy from a colleague who used it to successfully change his career. I approached my manager at the time and shared my goals and the type of work I wanted to do. A couple of months later, he informed me about an opening in another department. I already knew the other manager, so I moved internally to that department without any internal job ever being posted. That’s how I pivoted from working in the TV studio to working on entertainment marketing campaigns. It’s really important to be proactive in your career and tell people what you want. This strategy works because it helps change other people’s perspective of you beyond your current role. Melissa Chiou, senior marketer/ media & entertainment advisor, MelissaChiou.com
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E-Commerce
The 2023 Whole Cluster Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley Vineyards has notes of candied cherries, cinnamon, and sweet tobacco. But its defining feature may be its container: a glass bottle designed specifically for reuse. Made by 3-year-old Oregon startup Revinothe first company to launch a reusable glass wine bottle in the U.S.the Pinot Noirs green Burgundy-style bottle is sturdy enough that it can be used, sanitized, and refilled up to 50 times. Willamette Valley Vineyards, which operates 13 vineyards across Oregon, began selling 1,452 cases (or 17,424 bottles) of its 2023 Whole Cluster Pinot Noir in Revinos containers last year. The winery plans to put another 1,452 casesof its 2024 Whole Cluster Pinotin Revino bottles again this year. Seven of its nine tasting rooms now double as collection points for Revino bottles. We will take any Revino bottle back, says Jim Bernau, Willamette Valley Vineyards founder and CEO. That means customers can drop off bottles from Willamettes vintages as well as any other more than 70 Oregon wineries that Revino works with, including Bethel Heights, Cameron, Et Fille, and Remy Wines. More than 40 of these wineries already have wine in Revinos signature bottles. (The remaining wineries are still aging their wine and will bottle in Revino containers in the coming years.) When it comes to beverages, glass is often thought of as the “greenest” packaging type. Not only is it infinitely recyclable, but unlike bauxite (used for tin cans), it doesn’t require cutting down large swaths of rainforest to mine it. But as a circular material, glass is only as good as the recycling efforts that surround it. And in the U.S., those are few and far between. Adam Rack, Callie Edwards, and Keenan O’Hern [Photo: Molly Bailey/Revino] Revino founders, Keenan OHern and Adam Rack were critics of single-use packaging when they met in early 2022 through an MBA student who was doing a project on refillable beer bottles. On trips to the Netherlands, OHern, whose mom is Dutch, had observed residents habitually returning their beer bottles to shops. Its just a way of life over there, he says. You return a beer bottle, bring it back to the shop, and they wash it and reuse it, he says. Rack, who worked at Portlands Coopers Hall winery for nearly a decade, was an early adopter of refillable beer bottles, which Coopers Hall began using in 2018. (Racks email signature is a quote from Dr. Seusss The Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.) Together, they saw an opportunity to create an ecosystem for reusable wine bottles, starting in their home state of Oregon. Revino, which launched in 2023, makes money selling extra-durable U.S.-made bottles to wineries. Retrieving and washing the bottles is included in the cost of the bottleseven if that means Revino drivers have to drive 258 miles to Quady North in Southern Oregons Applegate Valley. The company offers wineries a 10 cent credit on future glass purchases for each bottle returned, and an additional discount to wineries that collect and neatly stack them in a pallet. Customers, meanwhile, can return Revino bottles from one winery to bottles at any return site (not just Willamette Valley Vineyards). In Portland, that includes Vino wine shop, Statera Cellars, Johns Marketplace, and others. Revino is on track to sell nearly half a million bottles this year, and aims to make $35,000 in monthly recurring revenue by early 2026. In addition to Oregon wineries, Revino has onboarded a handful in Napa (Frogs Leap, Silver Oak) and Washington state, as OHern and Rack work to expand their model to other parts of the country. Thus far, Revino has secured more than $440,000 from investors, including a prize from the Strategic Economic Development Corporations Pitch Willamette. [Photo: Revino] CRACKING THE GLASS RECYCLING PROBLEM Only 31.3% of glass is recycled in the U.S. according to the EPA. Many states don’t have curbside pick up of glass; and only 10 states have bottle bills, which require beverage makers or distributors to add a deposit on all glass bottles that consumers can recoup if they return the containers. States like Oregon and Maine that have bottle bills have fairly high recycling rates. But elsewhere in the country, many people just resort to throwing glass in the trash. Though its highly recyclable, glass is an energy-intensive material. To recycle it, glass cullet (crushed glass thats ready to be remelted), limestone, sand, and soda ash are heated to between 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, a process that can emit toxic air contaminants when pollution controls arent properly installed. Glass is also heavy, which means its both expensive and carbon-intensive to transport. A 2014 study commissioned by the Wine Institute in California found that the making and transporting of glass bottles account for 29% of wines carbon footprint. Revino aims to solve these issues by making it easy for winemakers to reuse bottles. Before launching, OHern and Rack held meetings with dozens of Oregon winemakers to collaboratively design the companys first reusable wine bottlethe green Burgundy one. Made by glass manufacturer O-I Glass in its Kalam, Washington, and Tracy, California plants, the bottles are produced with 50% to 70% recycled material. Even though Revinos bottles are durable enough to withstand roughly 50 washings, they weigh just 495 grams, which is less than some winerys regular bottles. Winemakers concerned about their carbon footprint appreciate this since the lighter the bottle, the less fuel is used to transport bottles to club members on the East Coast. Revinos first Flint bottleclear glass, for rosé, pinot gris, and other whiteswill be produced by the end of this year, and ready for purchase by January 1. Because the new bottles are all made in the U.S., there wont be any price fluctuations due to Trumps tariffs. OHern and Rack are closing on a wash facility in the Portland metro area and have purchased a high-end German Seitz bottle washer. Until that facility comes online, wineries like Willamette Valley are storing the empty bottles, which will eventually be cleaned by Revino, and then sold back to wineries at a discounted price. Willamette Valley pays $12 a case of 12 bottles for its Revino bottles, which is more than the $9.20 that Bernau says he pays for a case of bottles from Saxco bottles, made in Kalama, Washington. That said, with the 10 cent discount that partner wineries receive on future glass purchases for each bottle returned, Bernau will get a discount of $1.20 per case on his next purchase of bottles. An additional two-cent credit per bottle is added if the winery is willing to collect and neatly stack a full pallet of returned bottles for Revino to pick up. This brings the cost per case to $10.56still $1.36 more than the Saxco case. Bernau isnt concerned about the price difference because he knows hes doing the right thing by keeping glass out of landfills. In the end, if Revino can stick with this, there will be cost equivalency, he says. With glass bottle prices continuing to rise, Revino may pencil out sooner rather than later. If you think about it, the glass wine bottle has value already, Rack says. Pint glasses at a restaurant or wine glasses are used hundreds of times. These bottles dont break when you throw them in the trash because theyre so heavy and thickbut [people still] throw them away. And theyre gone. Theres value there! [Photo: Jeff Johnson/Bethel Heights Vineyard] MORE WINE VARIETALS, MORE BOTTLE STYLES There have been previous attempts to create a rewash system in the Willamette Valley, but the scale has always been too small and the task of collecting bottles too daunting. Also, some winemakers have been reluctant to part with their various bottle styles, according to Pat Dudley, a founder of Bethel Heights winery. But Dudley says winemakers attitudes are starting to shift as they see their customers demanding more sustainable forms of packaging. I think there has been enough push in that direction that winemakers are starting to feel obliged to give up that silliness about the bottle weight and the bottle shape, she says. Let your label be your brand! Revinos clear Burgundy-shaped bottle for rosé is on track to debut later this year and the company has plans for other styles in the future. Rack and OHern are active members of the PR3 alliance, which is developing the only global standard for reuse. Members include environmental nonprofits like the Clean Water Fund and Surfrider as well as government entities like Seattle Public Utilities and the San Francisco Environment Department. (Companies like Clorox and Target are also members.) Rack is part of the washing standards work group. Revino also has ambitious expansion plans, but Rack says they want to develop their infrastructure on the West Coast before expanding further east. Some of the wineries in Napa have been looking at reuse for almost a decade, wanting to figure it out but they didnt know how to do it on their own, Rack says. Revino is also launching some pilots with a few Napa wineries to back-wash their existing bottle line, which will both create another income stream for the company and allow the wineries to see how high their return rates are. This will also help us present ourselves to policy experts down there and investors, OHern says. Eventually theyd love to open a California wash facility to cater to that market. Thats the whole goal, he says. We dont want to have this hub and spoke facility. We want these to be localized to the regions that were collecting and washing in. [Photo: Molly Bailey/Revino] MARKETING THE REUSABLE BOTTLE Willamette Valleys Bernau says the decision to work with Revino was a no-brainer. From the beginning, weve been focused on environmental stewardship, he says. Founded in 1983, Willamette Valley Vineyards is certified through the Low Input Viticulture and Enology (LIVE) program and its Bernau Estate Vineyard is certified biodynamic. In 1990, Bernau became the first Oregon winemaker to add a 10-cent bottle credit to all his labels. The winerys estate tasting room in the Salem Hills has been a collection point for wine bottle returns ever since. Since the 1989 vintage, our first vintage, weve been teaching our customers to bring the bottles back, Bernau says. Revino uses design to help this effort. The first iteration of its bottles had the word Refillable embossed along the heel and an embossed impression of the state of Oregon on the punt (the dimple at the bottom of a bottle). The second version says Reusable. And because Revino is already expanding into neighboring states, the Oregon shape will be replaced with a tracing circle, a symbol for reuse. Revino is also getting participating wineries to change their labels to inlude language that says Reusable Bottle with a QR code that leads consumers to Revinos returns page. Bernau says that customers have been enthusiastic about the winerys refillable bottles. The Revino marketing materials, which are on all Willamette Valleys tasting room bars, have become a talking point and even sway some customers to order the Whole Cluster Pinot Noir, according to the winerys estate general manager Spence Fogarty. They feel theyre a conscious consumer, he says. And then they are shown the bottlewhich has a unique shape and the [imprint of the] state of Oregon on the bottom. They feel that theyre doing their part. The tasting rooms offer another incentive: If you bring six empty Revino bottles in, you get a free flight. Bernau says since the whole cluster was released in August, hes already received 12% of the bottles back. Thats nearly double what OHern and Rack had forecasted for the first year. Looking at those early indicators, its really quite exciting seeing the amount of participation, Rack says.
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E-Commerce
If youve ever experienced incommensurate rage from slow or oblivious walkers, this TikTok series is for you. Matt Bass has always been a walker, often logging 10 miles per day on weekends. Recently, hes taken to the streets of New York City, phone in hand, documenting what he calls bad walkers. I decided to start a TikTok to capture some of the moments you have to see to believe, Bass tells Fast Company over email. @mvttbvss Who else gasped or had a visceral reaction when this one started? I consider this horror genre of walking because its that scary. Really forcing the rest of society to bend to your whim when you have a formation this wide. 0/10 score #nyc #newyork #newyorkcity #fyp #nyclife original sound – Matt Bass Armed with just an iPhone and a pair of Apple wired earbuds as a makeshift mic, he films incognito behind sunglasses, rating aloud the walking etiquette of those who cross his path. Bass briefly experimented with Ray-Ban Meta glasses for hands-free, clandestine filming, but he found the audio quality lacking and returned to his tried-and-true setup. So, what actually constitutes a bad walker in Basss book? Typically, a formation that is 4 wide, all side by side, will be deemed bad walking etiquette, he says. I think anyone swinging umbrellas or shopping bags is also an example of a bad walker. He adds: The worst walkers are typically taking up the full width of the sidewalk, buried in their phones, not paying attention. Other documented offenses include what he terms drifterspedestrians who unconsciously veer across the path, blocking the entire width. Then theres the chain link fence violationpeople who link arms or hold hands three or more across, obstructing both incoming and outgoing foot traffic. @mvttbvss This one felt nostalgic, like the first episode I ever did. Too slow, too wide, swinging & drifting – checks a lot of boxes. Hope you enjoyed, and I said excuse me for the people that always ask me to #fyp #fyp #foryoupage #foryourpage #nyc #newyorkcity #nyclife #soho #targetaudience original sound – Matt Bass Hes also identified seasonal offenders, like shadow clingersthose who cling to the shade of a building, ignoring standard sidewalk etiquette of staying on the right side in favor of avoiding the sun. Theres even an edition devoted to umbrella etiquette. @mvttbvss Tag a shadow clinger in the comments. I think this is the epitome of inconsiderate walking. Dont force someone else to walk on the wrong side of the path in the heat , you are the obstruction , like a car driving on the wrong side of the road – unjustifiable behavior #fyp #fyp #foryoupage #foryourpage #foryou #newyorkcity #nyc #newyork #nyclife #targetaudience original sound – Matt Bass Its a grievance many can relate to. I’ve found my people. I hate hate hate bad walkers, one commenter posted. Another wrote: The amount of unholy rage that I feel being stuck behind people with no self-awareness is unhealthy! (Bass responded to that latter commenter: Dont worry. Were solving this global crisis, one video at a time.) While Bass takes care not to expose identities or engage confrontatioally, some viewers have criticized his approach. They can go at their own pace. They arent on your time. Go around, one commenter argued. To which Bass replied: People who say ‘just go around’ definitely haven’t walked the streets of New York themselves. Easier said than done in most cases. Bass is clear that good walking etiquette isnt about speed. Not everyone has to be fast, he says. But everyone should be aware of their surroundings and considerate of others. Hes also spotlighted examples of stellar walkers, just so people know what to strive for.
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E-Commerce
Recently, Delta Air Lines announced it would expand its use of artificial intelligence to provide individualized prices to customers. This move sparked concern among flyers and politicians. But Delta isnt the only business interested in using AI this way. Personalized pricing has already spread across a range of industries, from finance to online gaming. Customized pricingwhere each customer receives a different price for the same productis a holy grail for businesses because it boosts profits. With customized pricing, free-spending people pay more while the price-sensitive pay less. Just as clothes can be tailored to each person, custom pricing fits each persons ability and desire to pay. I am a professor who teaches business school students how to set prices. My latest book, The Power of Cash: Why Using Paper Money is Good for You and Society, highlights problems with custom pricing. Specifically, Im worried that AI pricing models lack transparency and could unfairly take advantage of financially unsophisticated people. The history of custom pricing For much of history, customized pricing was the normal way things happened. In the past, business owners sized up each customer and then bargained face-to-face. The price paid depended on the buyers and sellers bargaining skillsand desperation. An old joke illustrates this process. Once, a very rich man was riding in his carriage at breakfast time. Hungry, he told his driver to stop at the next restaurant. He went inside, ordered some eggs, and asked for the bill. When the owner handed him the check, the rich man was shocked at the price. Are eggs rare in this neighborhood? he asked. No, the owner said. Eggs are plentiful, but very rich men are quite rare. Custom pricing through bargaining still exists in some industries. For example, car dealerships often negotiate a different price for each vehicle they sell. Economists refer to this as first-degree or perfect price discrimination, which is perfect from the sellers perspective because it allows them to charge each customer the maximum amount theyre willing to pay. Currently, most American shoppers dont bargain but instead see set prices. Many scholars trace the rise of set prices to John Wanamakers Philadelphia department store, which opened in 1876. In his store, each item had a nonnegotiable price tag. These set prices made it simpler for customers to shop and became very popular. Why uniform pricing caught on Set prices have several advantages for businesses. For one thing, they allow stores to hire low-paid retail workers instead of employees who are experts in negotiation. Historically, they also made it easier for stores to decide how much to charge. Before the advent of AI pricing, many companies determined prices using a cost-plus rule. Cost-plus means a business adds a fixed percentage or markup to an items cost. The markup is the percentage added to a products cost that covers a companys profits and overhead. The big-box retailer Costco still uses this rule. It determines prices by adding a roughly 15% maximum markup to each item on the warehouse floor. If something costs Costco $100, they sell it for about $115. The problem with cost-plus is that it treats all items the same. For example, Costco sells wine in many stores. People buying expensive Champagne typically are willing to pay a much higher markup than customers purchasing inexpensive boxed wine. Using AI gets around this problem by letting a computer determine the optimal markup item by item. What personalized pricing means for shoppers AI needs a lot of data to operate effectively. The shift from cash to electronic payments has enabled businesses to collect whats been called a gold mine of information. For example, Mastercard says its data lets companies determine optimal pricing strategies. So much information is collected when you pay electronically that in 2024 the Federal Trade Commission issued civil subpoenas to Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, and other financial companies demanding to know how artificial intelligence and other technological tools may allow companies to vary prices using data they collect about individual consumers finances and shopping habits. Experiments at the FTC show that AI programs can even collude among themselves to raise prices without human intervention. To prevent customized pricing, some states have laws requiring retailers to display a single price for each product for sale. Even with these laws, its simple to do custom pricing by using targeted digital coupons, which vary each shoppers discount. How you can outsmart AI pricing There are ways to get around customized pricing All depend on denying AI programs data on past purchases and knowledge of who you are. First, when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, use paper money. Yes, good old-fashioned cash is private and leaves no data trail that follows you online. Second, once online, clear your cache. Your search history and cookies provide algorithms with extensive amounts of information. Many articles say the protective power of clearing your cache is an urban myth. However, this information was based on how airlines used to price tickets. Recent analysis by the FTC shows the newest AI algorithms are changing prices based on this cached information. Third, many computer pricing algorithms look at your location, since location is a good proxy for income. I was once in Botswana and needed to buy a plane ticket. The price on my computer was about $200. Unfortunately, before booking I was called away to dinner. After dinner my computer showed the cost was $1,000five times higher. It turned out after dinner I used my universitys VPN, which told the airline I was located in a rich American neighborhood. Before dinner I was located in a poor African town. Shutting off the VPN reduced the price. Last, often to get a better price in face-to-face negotiations, you need to walk away. To do this online, put something in your basket and then wait before hitting purchase. I recently bought eyeglasses online. As a cash payer, I didnt have my credit card handy. It took five minutes to find it, and the delay caused the site to offer a large discount to complete the purchase. The computer revolution has created the ability to create custom products cheaply. The cashless society combined with AI is setting us up for customized prices. In a custom-pricing situation, seeing a high price doesnt mean something is higher quality. Instead, a high price simply means a business views the customer as willing to part with more money. Using cash more often can help defeat custom pricing. In my view, however, rapid advances in AI mean we need to start talking now about how prices are determined, before customized pricing takes over completely. Jay L. Zagorsky is an associate professor at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Vanessa Urch Druskat is an associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of New Hampshire. She is a social and organizational psychologist, an award-winning scholar, and a pioneer of the concept of team emotional intelligence. Vanessa also serves on the executive board of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Whats the big idea? There is abundant evidence that teams are far better than individuals at making difficult decisions and solving complex problems. In fact, high-performing teamwork has driven every major innovation in human history. But how do you build an excellent team? Thats the challenge. It turns out that its not that difficult once you know the basic guidelines, but it does involve persistent intent and team involvement. Below, Vanessa shares five key insights from her new book, The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Building Collaborative Groups that Outperform the Rest. Listen to the audio versionread by Vanessa herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Building great teams is not about hiring stars. Many leaders believe that building a high-performing team requires hiring star employees. However, intelligence, abilities, and personalities are poor predictors of how people behave in teams and what they can contribute to a teams success. This evidence has existed for decades, but most people have been indoctrinated into focusing on individual performance. By far, the best predictor of motivation and behavior in teams is the specific norms that a team adopts to define how members will interact and work together. Norms are the patterns of behavior, routines, habits, and rituals that define a teams culture, making each team unique. Norms vary greatly among teams conducting the same tasks. They also affect the extent to which team members intrinsic needs are addressed, which in turn arouses the emotions that influence their motivation and trust in teamwork and collaboration. For example, neuroscientists find that evolution has shaped us to be highly sensitive to signals of disrespect and social rejection. These emotions foster distrust in teamwork and motivate self-protection and conformity driven by egoistic concerns. Teamwork thrives when norms foster and maintain a sense of belonging within a community. On the other hand, neuroscience reveals that our brain craves a sense of genuine acceptance and mutual support within groups. Teamwork thrives when norms foster and maintain a sense of belonging within a community. We found such norms in the highest-performing teams we studied across industries. The reliability of these norms engendered trust, psychological safety, and a shared sense of ownership over team outcomes. Members felt more in control of their own fateand the teams. Formal and informal team leaders establish the norms that govern behavior within teams. Many leaders unknowingly propagate norms that dont support belongingness and trust. Instead, in the name of efficiency, they establish norms that prioritize the direct exchange of information and resources without requiring empathy or mutual support. On the surface, this can seem perfectly satisfactory to leaders. Our research identifies such norms in average-performing teams across industries. The lack of community reduces engagement and collaboration, which are essential to innovation and high-performing teamwork. The disappointment this creates can lead to disengagement and, in some cases, even destructive behavior. 2. Your team needs emotionally intelligent norms. My colleagues and I found that the best teams adopt emotionally intelligent norms. These norms address the innate needs of all team members, thereby creating a productive social and emotional environment that supports active participation, effort, and critical, sometimes heated, debates that lead to successful team decisions and outcomes. The leaders of the highest-performing teams dont just hope that team members generosity and social skills will emerge to support effective collaboration. They intentionally create these norms and routines. 3. Team members need to understand each other better. My colleagues and I worked with a global leadership team that wasnt reaching its full potential because members were working in silos rather than focusing on the teams shared goals. They were competing with one another, rather than collaborating. The leaders of the highest-performing teams dont just hope that team members generosity and social skills will emerge to support effective collaboration. With our help, they decided to adopt norms and routines that enabled them to learn more about each others roles and responsibilities. They even visited one anothers office locations. It boosted their sense of belonging and mutual support, which enabled the sharing of feedback and ideas that benefited the success of each person. Much of this feedback helped increase the emotional intelligence of individual team members, which in turn improved their relationships outside of the team. Think of it this way: No sports team or musical group would assume they could play well together unless they knew something about their teammates unique backgrounds and talents, as well as what that person needed from others to play at their best. 4. You need routine assessments of the teams strengths and opportunities. We worked with a team whose new leader was overly controlling and projected his fear of making mistakes onto his teammates. Team performance declined, prompting the leader to replace two team members. As a result, team members felt undervalued and fearful, which increased competition within the team and hindered collaboration. With the leaders support, they developed a proactive action plan to adopt team norms, which included monthly structured meetings. During these meetings, team members first discussed what was and wasnt working well in the team and brainstormed changes they would incorporate to ensure their teams goal achievement. Their new norms increased their focus on helping and learning from one another. By collaborating to address the teams and members challenges, the team leaders confidence in the team increased, and the team outpaced its competitors within the year. You need to develop norms that engage your team in both optimistic and pessimistic discussions. The team needs to both anticipate problems and create a vivid, hopeful, and motivating view of their ability to achieve shared success. 5. Engaging with stakeholders fosters innovative thinking within teams. One team we worked with adopted a norm of ensuring stakeholder communication and involvement. They developed a stakeholder map that listed their stakeholders and then assigned one team mmber to serve as an ambassador to each. The information they obtained helped them think more strategically about their priorities and ask for resources that would support their performance (for example, support for changes that the team sought). In one manufacturing organization, good relationships with stakeholders enabled a team to receive new and improved equipment. In a pharma team, good relationships allowed the team to receive quicker decisions from senior management. You need to develop norms that engage your team in both optimistic and pessimistic discussions. The highest-performing teams we studied recognized that they did not have all the information and resources they needed to succeed within their teams. I like to say that a team doesnt need to reinvent the wheel if they talk to someone outside of their team to learn that the wheel exists. Building high-performing teams is not rocket science, but it does require leaders to recognize that team building is not about fixing people or hiring for the perfect set of skills. The leader of one of the highest-performing teams we studied in a Fortune 100 company said it best when she told me: No one on my team has A+ skills, but we collaborate in ways that produce A+ work. If there is a secret to building great teams, its the need to develop interaction norms and routines that bring out the best in team members and utilize team members talents. Emotionally intelligent norms arouse intrinsic motivation and build continuous assessment, learning, and adaptation into a teams everyday culture. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Category:
E-Commerce
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