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Stories about AI-generated fabrications in the professional world have become part of the background hum of life since generative AI hit the mainstream three years ago. Invented quotes, fake figures, and citations that lead to non-existent research have shown up in academic publications, legal briefs, government reports, and media articles. We can often understand these events as technical failures: the AI hallucinated, someone forgot to fact-check, and an embarrassing but honest mistake became a national news story. But in some cases, they represent the tip of a much bigger icebergthe visible portion of a much more insidious phenomenon that predates AI but that will be supercharged by it. Because in some industries, the question of whether a statement is true or false doesnt matter much at allwhat counts is whether it is persuasive. While talking heads have tended to focus on the post-truth moment in politics, consultants and other knowledge producers have been happily treating the truth as a malleable construct for decades. If it is better for the bottom line for the data to point in one direction rather than another, someone out there will happily conduct research that has the sole goal of finding the right answer. Information is commonly packaged in decks and reports with the intention of supporting a client narrative or a firms own goals while inconvenient facts are either minimized or ignored entirely. Generative AI provides an incredibly powerful tool for supporting this kind of misdirection: even if it is not pulling data out of thin air and inventing claims from the ground up, it can provide a dozen ways to hide the truth or to make alternative facts sound convincing. Wherever the appearance of rigor matters more than rigor itself, AI becomes not a liability but a competitive advantage. Not to put too fine a point on it, many knowledge workers spend much of their time producing what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls bullshit. And what is bullshit according to Frankfurt? Its essence, he says, is not that it is false but it is phony. The liar, Frankfurt explains, cares about truth, even if only negatively, since he or she wants to conceal it. The bullshitter, however, does not care at all. They may even tell the truth by accident. What matters to bullshitters isn’t accuracy but effect: how their words work on an audience, what impression they create, what their words allow them to get away with. For many individuals and firms in these industries, words in reports and slide decks are not there to describe reality or to conduct honest argumentation; they are there to do the work of the persuasive bullshitter. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity? ","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Knowledge work is one of the leading providers of what the anthropologist David Graeber famously called bullshit jobsjobs that involve work that even those doing it quietly suspect serves no real purpose. For decades, product vendors, analysts, and consultants have been rewarded for producing material that looks rigorous, authoritative, and data-driventhe thirty-page slide deck, the glossy report, snazzy frameworks, and slick 2x2s. The material did not need to be good. It simply needed to look good. And if that is the goal, if words are meant to perform rather than inform, if the aim is to produce effective bullshit rather than tell the truth, then it makes perfect sense to use AI. AI can produce bullshit better and more quickly and in greater volume than any human being. So, when consultants and analysts turn to generative AI to help them with their reports and presentations, they are obeying the underlying logic and fundamental goals of the system in which they operate. The problem here is not that AI produces bullshitthe problem is that many in this business are willing to say whatever needs to be said to pad the bottom line. Bullshit vs. quality The answer here is neither new policies nor training programs. These things have their places, but at best they address symptoms rather than underlying causes. If we want to address causes rather than apply band-aids, we have to understand what we have lost in the move to bullshit, because then we can begin figuring out how to recover it. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig uses the term quality to name the property that makes a good thing good. This is an intangible characteristic: it cannot be defined, but everyone knows it when they see it. You know quality when you run your hand along a well-made table and feel the seamless join between two pieces of wood; you know quality when you see that every line and curve is just as it should be. There is a quiet rightness to something that has this character, and when you see it, you glimpse what it means for something to be genuinely good. If the institutions that are responsible for creating knowledgenot just consulting firms but universities, corporations, governments, and media platformswere animated by a genuine sense of quality, it would be far harder for bullshit to take root. Institutions teach values through what they reward, and we have spent decades rewarding the production of bullshit. Consultants simply do in excelsis what we have all learned to do to some degree: produce something that looks good without caring whether it really is good. First you wear the mask, they say, and then the mask wears you. Initially, perhaps, we can produce bullshit while at least retaining our capacity to see it as bullshit. But over time, the longer we operate in the bullshit-industrial complex, the more bullshit we produce, the more we tend to lose even that capacity. We drink the Kool Aid and start thinking that bullshit is quality. AI does not cause that blindness. It simply reveals it. What leaders can do Make life hard. Bullshit flourishes because it is easy. If we want to produce quality work, we need to take the harder road. AI isnt going away, and nor should we wish it away. It is an incredible tool for enhancing productivity and allowing us to do more with our time. But it often does so by encouraging us to produce bullshit, because that is the quickest and easiest path in a world that has given up on quality. The challenge is to harness AI without allowing ourselves to be beguiled into shortcuts that ultimately pull us down into the mire. To avoid that trap, leaders must take deliberate steps at both the individual and organizationl levels. At the individual level. Never accept anything that AI outputs without making it your own first. For every sentence, every fact, every claim, every reference, ask yourself: Do I stand by that? If you dont know, you need to check the claims and think through the arguments until they truly become your own. Often, this will mean rewriting, revising, reassessing, and even flat out rejecting. And this is hard when there is an easier path available. But the fact that it is hard is what makes it necessary. At the organizational level: Yes, we must trust our people to use AI responsibly. Butif we choose not to keep company with the bullshitters of the worldwe must also commit and recommit our organizations to producing work of real quality. That means instituting real, rigorous quality checks. Leaders need to stand behind everything their team produces. They need to take responsibility and affirm that they are allowing it to pass out of the door not because it sounds good but because it really is good. Again, this is hard. It takes time and effort. It means not accepting a throwaway glance across the text but settling down to read and understand in detail. It means being prepared to challenge ourselves and to challenge our teams, not just periodically, but every day. The path forward is not to resist AI or to romanticize slowness and inefficiency. It is to be ruthlessly honest about what we are producing and why. Every time we are tempted to let AI-generated material slide because it looks good enough, we should ask: Are we creating something of quality, or are we just adding to the pile of bullshit? That questionand our willingness to answer it honestlywill determine whether AI becomes a tool for excellence or just another engine that trades insight for appearance. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity? ","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
If you work in an office, your next coworker might not be human at all. Workers are already well-acquainted with artificial intelligence in the office, using AI tools to take notes, automate tasks, and assist with workflow. Now, Microsoft is working on a new kind of AI agent that doesnt just assist, but acts as an employee. These Agentic Users will soon have their own email, Teams account, and company ID, just like a regular coworker. Each embodied agent has its own identity, dedicated access to organizational systems and applications, and the ability to collaborate with humans and other agents, states a Microsoft product roadmap document. These agents can attend meetings, edit documents, communicate via email and chat, and perform tasks autonomously. The rise of AI has already spelled death for middle management, and is having a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the American labor market, according to economists at Stanfords Digital Economy Lab. Gartner projects that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI, and at least 15% of daily business decisions will be made autonomously by AI agents. If AI employees can soon take over the grunt work no one wants to do, like scheduling and reporting, leaving people to handle the big picture tasks, thats a win, right? Yet it also raises questions like: whose job is it to supervise AI employees? How much can AI really be entrusted with? And what happens if, or when, something goes wrong? Last year Deloitte surveyed organizations on the cutting edge of AI, and found just 23% of these organizations reported feeling highly prepared to manage AI-related risks. According to one study, 40% of agentic AI projects could be canceled by the end of 2027 due to inadequate risk controls, unclear business value and escalating costs. As AI rapidly establishes itself as a workplace norm, 2025 will be remembered as the moment when companies pushed past simply experimenting with AI and started building around it, Microsoft said in a blog post accompanying its annual Work Trend Index report. The rollout of Agentic users could start later this November, according to internal documents first reported by The Register. With Microsoft Ignite this week, stay tuned.
Category:
E-Commerce
Our culture equates busyness with importance, overcommitment with achievement, and exhaustion with value. For high-achieving professionals, this belief system isnt just inconvenient, its quietly eroding energy, focus, and fulfillment. Meetings pile up, emails never end, and the pressure to do it all becomes a measure of worth. And yet, this version of productivity is deeply misleading. The truth is, sustainable success doesnt come from cramming more into your day. It comes from aligning what you do with who you are, and giving yourself permission to prioritize energy, clarity, and presence over perpetual motion. Because motion for the sake of it is meaningless. The Cost of Outdated Beliefs Most of our thoughts are inherited patterns: echoes of beliefs we absorbed without realizing or having context. Many high achievers carry invisible scripts around their worth and value that may seem insignificant, yet arent harmless. They quietly shape decisions, drain energy, and fuel cycles of overcommitment. Left unchallenged, they keep us trapped in performance over presence, forcing a choice between professional success and personal fulfillment that shouldnt exist. The data confirms the danger: Nearly 60% of professionals report negative stress impacts, including irritability, fatigue, and decreased motivation. Chronic stress is linked to over 120,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone. Leaders who push past their limits not only compromise their own well-being, but they also set a tone for teams that normalizes depletion. Rewriting Your Inner Story The first step to changing the way you work and live is identifying the beliefs running the show. Ask yourself: Which internal narratives drive my decisions? Which of them are inherited, unexamined, or outdated? Do they still serve me, or do they keep me misaligned? Once these scripts are visible, you can begin to rewrite them. Old belief: I must prove my worth by doing more. New truth: My worth is inherent; I do not need to earn it through busyness. Old belief: Busyness is a sign of importance. New truth: Stillness is a strategy, not a liability. Reflection and focus expand my impact. Old belief: I can (and should) do it all. New truth: Freedom comes from focus, not volume. Saying no is wisdom, not weakness. Even small shifts in thinking create space for bigger changes in behavior, energy, and presence. Story in Action Consider Laura, a senior leader at a fast-growing tech firm. On paper, she was thrivingleading teams, closing deals, and responding to emails at all hours. Yet she felt perpetually drained, anxious, and disconnected from both her work and her personal life. Every day felt like a treadmill she couldnt step off. When she began questioning her internal narratives, she realized her default belief: If Im not constantly available, Im failing. With that recognition, she experimented with small rituals to reclaim her energy. She started each morning with a 10-to-20-minute walk, phone-free, allowing her to plan her day with clarity. Before meetings, she paused to breathe and set her intention. And in the evenings, she created simple rituals that increased her presence: journaling one win for the day as she stepped away from her laptop, a gratitude circle at dinner with family, and reading for pleasure. These small, deliberate actions transformed her experience of her own life. Laura wasnt doing less; she was choosing differently. Her focus sharpened, her decisions felt clearer, and she felt more present in conversations with her team and family. By embedding rituals instead of relying on autopilot routines to just get through the day, she reclaimed control over her energy, rewrote the story she was living by, and discovered that sustainable success comes from alignment, not overextension. Rituals, Not Routines: A Practical Tool Changing beliefs is only the beginning. Without intentional action, old habits quietly reassert themselves. This is where ritualsintentional and meaningful rhythms unique to youbecome transformative. Unlike routines, which can be automatic and draining over time, rituals are infused with purpose. They create moments of renewal, grounding, and clarity. For example: Starting your day with a five-minute reflection instead of jumping straight into email. Brewing coffee or tea while you set an intention for the day or the next meeting. Closing the workday with a transition ritual, signaling the shift from professional to personal time. Winding down with reading, candlelight, journaling, or a hot shower. These intentional pauses are strategic, not indulgent. They preserve energy, enhance focus, and allow you to operate from alignment rather than autopilot. Presence as a Leadership Advantage The most effective professionals arent necessarily those who work the longest hoursthats the old way of working. Theyre those who show up whole because theyre in alignment with who they are, inside and out. Presence is a competitive advantage. It fosters better decision-making, inspires teams, and creates ripple effects that extend far beyond individual performance. Leaders who model energy stewardship and intentionality shift culture without a single memo. By choosing rituals that anchor them in alignment, they normalize boundaries, reflection, and focused contribution. And in doing so, they give others permission to do the same. Practical Steps to Begin Identify your top stress-beliefs. Notice moments you feel compelled to say yes or overcommit. Ask what underlying belief is driving the behavior. Reframe them. Convert old stories of proving and performing into new narratives of presence, permission, and focus. Anchor with rituals. Introduce small, meaningful practices that support the beliefs you want to live by. Examples include morning reflection, mid-day resets, or transition rituals between work and personal life. Observe the ripple. Notice how these changes affect your energy, decision-making, relationships, and the culture around you. Even small, consistent choices shift patterns over time. They turn pressure into presence, busyness into clarity, and stress into sustainable energy. Redefining Work-Life Success Utimately, high performance doesnt require sacrifice, but it does require alignment. When you stop measuring worth by how much you do and start measuring it by how intentionally and fully you show up, everything changes. You dont have to do it all. You have to do what matters, and do it in a way that preserves your energy, your joy, and your ability to be fully present. The rest will follow. The future of work starts now, and success is being redefined: Lead not from exhaustion, but from alignment. Lead not to impress, but to empower. Your rituals are the blueprint, not only for your own performance but for the culture you create.
Category:
E-Commerce
Do you know that the longer a decision-maker views your résumé, the more likely it is that youll get an interview? Recent research combined eye-tracking and machine learning to understand résumé decisions better. The most actionable conclusion was that Experience section dwell time predicts interview invitations. Thats next-level information. Weve had eye-tracking studies for years. They tell us what readers look at, but give no additional meaning. Now, by applying AI, we know which sections of the résumé matter the most for getting interviews. I was a retained search consultant for 25-plus years. For the last 10 years, Ive been writing executive and board résumés. When I did search, the first question I asked candidates after interviews was, How long were you there? That was the best way for me to know how well the interview went. Thus, it makes sense that résumé dwell time also predicts success. So, lets talk about how to make your résumés Experience section sticky to readers via design and content choices. Eliminate Walls of Text People dont read word by word. They scan, looking for information relevant to their needs. Large blocks of text lose readers because theyre hard to scan. In How People Read Online: The Eyetracking Evidence Report, The Nielsen Norman Group, a user experience firm, described a wall of text as a major repellent that instantly makes users think twice about engaging. To avoid that, limit résumé text blocks to three lines, four if you must. Nothing else about your résumé matters if people wont read it. Focus on Experience Help readers navigate your résumé by providing clear section labels (Professional Experience, Education, Skills, Community Service, etc.). Nielsen Norman also shared that many readers assess whether a page is worth any time in less than a second. They appraise before they even start the infamous six-second scan. Because the Experience section drives interviews, place it below the summary at the top of your résumé. You have to show your relevance immediately to earn deeper reader attention. Use a Consistent Structure Present your recent experience in a consistent structure. I include: Company names Company descriptions The locations where my clients worked for companies Job titles Employment dates Job scope descriptions Impact statements. I always place company names and job titles on left margins to help readers who are scanning. They want that information. Give it to them effortlessly. Also, lighten readers cognitive loads by separating job scope information and impact bullets. Describe scope in a narrative paragraph. Follow that with impact bullets. Dont force your readers to do the scope and impact sort. They want you to tell them what your role was and how you performed in it. Make it easy for them if you want to keep their attention. Rank Order Your Impact Stories Based on Your Readers Needs Identify a jobs deliverables. To do this, use job postings, talk with insiders, and ask AI platforms questions. Then, write your impact bullets to convince readers you can succeed in their roles. Let go of what you think is important about you; youll have time for that later. To grab and keep your readers attention, align your bullets’ content and order with their most critical needs. Provide White Space White space makes résumés easier to read and understand. That ease increases dwell time because it makes readers more willing to engage. Use these minimum parameters: Three-quarter-inch top and bottom margins One-inch side margins Half-point spaces between bulleted impact statements If you need more room, edit your content; dont fudge the white spaceyoull lose readers. When I see a crowded résumé, I think the person hasnt learned whats important to their audience. Because of that, theyre sharing everything they guess might be relevant. That erodes the likelihood readers will find what they need and, in turn, dwell time. Readers Evaluate Résumés and Make Decisions Ive talked a lot about readers here, but the reality is that the people who view your résumé are evaluators. They look at your presentation. Then they decide whether you appear to meet enough of their needs to merit more of their time. Make it easy for them to understand your relevance, and they will slow down to focus on you.
Category:
E-Commerce
Over the next 20 years, an estimated $84 trillion will change hands in the U.S.; some call this the Great Wealth Transfer, others the Silver Tsunami. This wealth is held in cash and assets, but also in the estimated 2.9 million private U.S. businesses that are owned by those over 55. Many retiring business owners will look to sell their company to private equity or larger conglomerates, while others will pass their businesses on to their heirs. A few are considering something more radical: giving their company away to good causes, like Paul Newman who gave his eponymous food company to Newmans Own Foundation when he passed away in 2008. This idea remains radical enough that when 83-year-old Yvon Chouinard and his family announced that all of Patagonias future profits would go to fight climate change in September 2022, the New York Times devoted a full-page spread to the move. Now, theres even a book dedicated to Patagonia and its transition. 100% for Purpose companies like Newmans Own and Patagonia are still the exception, but there are more of us than you think: ticketing platform Humanitix, search engine Ecosia, browser Mozilla, consumer brands like The Good Store and Thankyou, and more. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg also announced plans to donate a controlling stake of his company to a trust that will continue to fund Bloomberg Philanthropies after his death. As President and CEO of a 100% for Purpose organization, Ive begun to hear more and more from businesses that are looking to follow in our footsteps. Why this move? You may ask: Why would philanthropically minded business owners and founders give their company away versus just selling the business later on, and creating a foundation with the proceeds? The short answer: Its a great way to cement your legacy, preserve the company, and maximize giving. Lets imagine your business makes $10M in profits and you sell it for $50Mcongrats! You can then choose to manage a foundation endowment and give away $2.5M a year (5% as per the minimum distribution rule). Or you spend it down, giving away $10M a year for five years. Compare these options to giving your company away to a foundation (like Newmans Own Foundation) or a trust (like Patagonia). The company and its employees stay in place, and continue to generate $10M annual profits, which can then be given away to good causes year after year. You have created a philanthropic annuity. But more than that, you have given your business, employees, and customers a gift as well. Every product they make, sell, or buy is now a product whose profits go to support good causes. And for those starting new business, it may not be a fair comparison today, but Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner put in $40,000 of their own funds to get Newmans Own started back in 1982. That could have been a one-time gift but instead, Paul and Newmans Own have since given away over $600 milliona 15,000x philanthropic return! A range of models How do you get started on the 100% for Purpose journey? Here are a few models to consider, from simple to more advanced: Give Your Profits Away Today: You can do so with an existing corporate structure. Paul Newman did this at first with Newmans Own as the Foundation was established years later. Thats also how Cummings Properties and The Good Store got started. Depending on your jurisdiction, there are more or less tax-friendly ways to go about this, and if you dont already have an existing foundation, you might find a Donor-Advised Fund an easy way to get started. Donate your Business to an Existing Foundation or Non-Profit: Why re-create the wheel when there are already close to two million 5013(c) organizations in the U.S.? Id venture to say theres at least one among these that aligns to your value and your giving priorities, and that they would welcome a profit-fueled philanthropic annuity. Establish your own Foundation and Donate your Business to it: You want to be more hands on? Establish your own foundation. When Paul Newman died in 2008, he gifted the food company to Newmans Own Foundation, but that was actually not legal at the time. The IRS granted us an exception to be able to continue operating until the Philanthropic Enterprise Act was passed in 2018. This new law allows foundations to own profitable companies outright, versus in the past, being limited to no more than 20% equity stakes. Split Voting Rights and Economic / Profit Rights via a Perpetual Purpose Trust: Perpetual Purpose Trusts are also relatively new in the U.S.: the first on record dates back to just 2018, but their European equivalent, steward foundations, including Novo Nordisk, Ikea, and Rolex, have been around for decades. Purpose Trusts offer flexibility, for example allowing you to keep some or all voting rights of the company while giving away the economic rights to your foundation, a non-profit, your employees, or a mix of all these. This is what Patagonia chose to do, with a HBR case study on the details for the legal aficionados among you. Giving Tuesday is almost upon us, and while I dont expect people to make such a decision in one day, I want to invite current business owners and future founders to think about joining the 100% Purpose movement. Giving a business away is still considered a radical move, but it offers business owners, their employees, and their customers something a traditional sale never can: legacy.
Category:
E-Commerce
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