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What if, instead of working toward an exit strategy, we built companies for longevity? Thats the question at the heart of employee ownership. Its not just a perk to lure talent. Its a fundamentally different way of building a business, and one that might just be the key to long-term resilience. Ive spent nearly my entire career inside a 100% employee-owned architecture, engineering, planning, and interiors design firm. Today as CEO, I lead its 1,800 employee-owners. Ive seen firsthand how this model changes everything, from how team members treat clients to how the organization is able to weather change. But this isn’t a story about just one company. It’s about a mindset shift that could help more companies build lasting value instead of just quick wins. RETHINK OWNERSHIP: BEYOND THE CAP TABLE When most people think of ownership, they picture equity grants or stock options. But real employee ownership is more than a line item. Its a structure that changes incentives, yes, but also culture, leadership, and accountability. Being 100% employee-owned has shaped how we make decisions, collaborate, and deliver work. When you know your colleagues have skin in the game, you trust them differently. You lead differently. You take responsibility in a way that doesnt hinge on hierarchyit stems from care rooted in real ownership. And when your clients know theyre dealing with employee-owners, not just employees, that builds trust in return. Clients can feel the difference. Its not always easy to define, but its palpablein the commitment, the deep sense of shared responsibility, the pride people take in the outcome. WHY IT’S SUSTAINABLEAND SCALABLE One of the most compelling reasons to explore employee ownership is its long-term viability. When a company is built around shared responsibility instead of individual power, it becomes more resilient to leadership changes. I once spoke to a CEO who said he wasnt sure his company would survive without him and his fellow majority owners. I cant imagine building something without knowing that it would endure for future generations. The companys legacy shouldnt rest on any single person. Our founding partners built the company on the idea that if you invest in the company, the company should invest in you. That spirit helped guide our transition to full employee ownership decades ago. Shared ownership encourages leaders to think beyond the present moment. In my experience, it also invites more people into that conversation. When ownership is broad-based, strategic planning becomes a collective effort, not just a top-down mandate. Teams are more likely to align on long-term goals, and more willing to adapt when circumstances change, because theyve helped shape the direction. Ownership changes the timeline youre working on. You stop optimizing for the quarter and start asking bigger questions: What will serve our team, our clients, and our communities for the next 5, 10, 15, or even 50 years? INNOVATION THROUGH INCLUSION One possibly unexpected benefit of employee ownership is what it unlocks creatively. When people feel a genuine sense of agency, they collaborate differently. Our firm uses a matrix leadership model that gives different types of experts the chance to lead depending on the problem at hand. That level of collaboration always brings its own challenges, but more importantly, it creates room for new ideas and cross-disciplinary solutions to emerge. Ownership doesnt just empower decision making; it encourages experimentation. We support things like personal development grants that allow employee-owners to pursue research projects outside their day-to-day work. One grant led to a neuroinclusive design exhibit featured at a major international architectural showcase. These kinds of initiatives dont just enrich culturethey advance innovation. WHAT LEADERS SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES Employee ownership isnt right for every company. But its a model worth serious consideration, especially for leaders thinking about employee engagement, long-term value creation, or succession. If you’re a founder or executive, ask yourself: What will happen to your company when you step away? Will the culture, vision, and value you’ve built live on? Or does everything rest on the shoulders of a few people at the top? Ownership changes that equation. It puts real sustainability at the core of how a business operates. Ive seen what happens when people arent just asked to think like owners, but actually are owners. It creates a different kind of business: one thats more resilient and more invested in the long term. In a world full of companies built for the exit, we need more that are built to last. Steven McKay is the chief executive officer of DLR Group.
Category:
E-Commerce
In business, theres one skill no leader would dare neglect: the financials. Financial literacy, like understanding a balance sheet, cash flow, or P&L, is one of the foundations for decision making. As climate change rewrites supply chains, consumer demand, and regulation, another fluency is becoming just as essential. Climate literacy will protect business growth and resilience, while leaders who ignore it are being left behind. But mastering it means more than knowing that emissions are a problem. Its about being able to read, question, and apply environmental data the way a CFO interprets financials. Leaders must be able to ask, and know the answer to, questions like: Where are our biggest emissions risks? Which investments deliver real impact reductions versus a marketing spin alone? How do we balance short-term targets with long-term resilience? Are we measuring the ROI of ongoing sustainability initiatives? OUT OF THE SILO AND INTO THE BOARDROOM Sustainability data is not just for sustainability teams. Instead of climate data living in a silo, it must become embedded in decision making across the business, reflecting how financial data is key to core business decisions and has many applications beyond the finance team. Were already seeing the shift in action. Retail teams are not only generating science-based impact data with Vaayu, but actively using it across functions. Their product design teams are testing and adjusting materials, logistics teams are optimizing deliveries, and marketing teams are building carbon data into how they communicate. One example is the intimate apparel brand Triumph, which carried out nearly 1,500 product-level analyses. The footprints revealed clear hotspots across categories, from suncare (which averaged just 2.18 kg COe per item), to make-up, where end-of-life impacts were highest. They pointed to the urgent need for stronger circular solutions and better disposal practices. Taking a different approach to applying impact data, Vestiaire Collective assessed its avoided emissions through its resale platform, enabling them to show customers that second-hand luxury can actually outperform fast fashion on cost. The unique cost-per-wear metric found that buying pre-loved luxury items was around one-third more affordable over time than purchasing new fast fashion, challenging the assumption that luxury must always come at a higher price. Far from being only about sustainability, these insights ultimately help leaders drive decisions that lead to reduced costs and risks while also enhancing brand credibility, trust, and even ROI among key audiences. Companies that fail to act arent just missing an opportunity; they are falling behind competitors who are already speaking the language of sustainability and turning climate action into business advantage. CROSS-INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS The cross-industry lesson is simple. Every sector, from finance to healthcare, will need to treat carbon literacy like financial literacy. Just as leaders once learned to parse revenue streams and liabilities, they must now understand emission scopes, avoided versus created impact, and the trade-offs between compliance and innovation. The companies that invest early in building this fluency will be the ones prepared for investor scrutiny, regulatory shifts, and, perhaps most importantly, customer trust. TURN COMPLIANCE RISKS INTO REWARDS Implications extend into mandates, too. Regulatory momentum remains. Even with delays, climate disclosure frameworks like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive are still on the horizon. Leaders need to act now to build internal processes and data systems ahead of when rules kick in, making carbon illiteracy a genuine liability in addition to being a blind spot. And regardless of policy shifts, market expectations persist. Investors, customers, and talent continue to demand a credible climate response. The workforce itself is becoming a change driver. Younger generations increasingly choose employers that align with their values, and companies that fail to embed carbon literacy risk losing talent to more forward-looking competitors. In this sense, climate fluency is growing into a defining marker of resilience, credibility, and long-term growth. Carbon literacy is fast becoming a source of risk mitigation and competitive edge. Companies that understand their products true impact can redesign them with lower footprints, communicate that data with transparency, and stand apart in crowded markets. This not only appeals to climate-conscious customers but also builds loyalty and trust at a time when greenwashing is under greater scrutiny. Now, climate data is not a specialists job but a leadership skill. No CEO would admit to not understanding a balance sheet, but soon, no leader will get away with not understanding their companys climate impact, either. Namrata Sandhu is founder and CEO of Vaayu.
Category:
E-Commerce
As OpenAI rolls out its new social media app Sorawhich allows users to prompt the companys Sora 2 model to produce fantastical videos of almost anythingthere are obvious concerns that the platform could be used to generate deepfakes and otherwise misleading content. To combat this problem, the company says it adjusted its systems to prevent users from manipulating images of other people, including political leaders like Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, or Emmanuel Macron. If you try to generate an image of a public figure, the Sora appwhich is still invitation-onlywill generally tell you your prompt violates the platforms guidelines. But OpenAI is also using a more analog method of preventing celebrity impersonation: blocking users from even signing up for the platform with certain usernames. The company appears to have blocked users from signing up with usernames that reference major political figures and other celebrities, including Trump, Katy Perry, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Kim Jong Un. While some account names are flagged as already taken, these usernames trigger a specific notice: This username is not allowed. The company did not directly answer Fast Companys questions about how it determines which public figure usernames should be blocked. OpenAI is already selling its ChatGPT technology to U.S. federal agencies, but the company wouldnt say much about whether it might eventually welcome government officials, or the government more broadly, to the Sora app. We don’t have anything else to share right now on future plans, an OpenAI spokesperson told Fast Company. Public figures cant be generated in Sora unless theyve uploaded a cameo themselves and given consent for it to be used. Whether youre a public figure or not, Cameo puts you in control of your likeness, with options to decide who can use it and how. (Cameo is the Sora feature that allows you to upload recordings of yourself to the app and create a highly realistic avatar, and then use that likeness in a variety of AI-generated scenarios.) OpenAI is relatively new to the social media business, but the battle over username ownership is nothing new. Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter have long dealt with the challenge of social media users claiming to be celebrities online, as well as the question of how to grant coveted handles. Control over accounts that appear to belong to government officials is particularly sensitive, and social media companies often tout steps they take to prevent their platforms from misuse during campaign season. But the challenge becomes far more complicated with generative artificial intelligence and generated AI videos, which are premised on inviting people to create doctored content. While President Trump doesnt seem to have an active Sora account right now, he is a devoted social media poster with a growing penchant for AI-generated video memes that mock his political opponents. Soras technology has also gotten significantly better, which means its far more likely that people might get dupedand that they might need to rely on a username to verify the source of a particular piece of generated content. The levels of realism and the number of visible artifacts have both been improved over the previous version and other state-of-the-art video generation apps, Siwei Lyu, a computer science professor at the University of Buffalo, whose team studied the latest Sora model, told Fast Company. Despite visible watermarks on generated videos and other invisible watermarks deployed by the company, to ordinary viewers the generated videos are very challenging to tell apart from real ones, Lyu said. Its still possible for people to circumvent or manipulate the technology, he warned, noting that he wasnt sure how OpenAI developed the list of people whose likenesses cant be generated on the app. OpenAI has released general usage policies on what people arent allowed to do with its models. That includes depicting real people without their consent and producing content thats designed to mislead others. But while the username not allowed message seems to imply that OpenAI wants to specifically limit the ability of people to represent themselves as public figures, its not clear how exhaustive that policy actually is or who its designed to cover. For instance, the username JD Vance is already deployed. And theres a barely followed account that represents itself as Education Secretary Linda McMahon, with her face as the profile picture, as well as one for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also with a profile picture. Neither has verified check marks, which some influencers on the app now display. Its theoretically possible these accounts actually belong to those individuals, but unlikely. Right now, the Sora app is only available to users in North America, but the names of some public figures outside the U.S. and Canada seem to have been proactively protected by the company. The name Sara Duterte, the name of the Philippines current vice president, produces a not allowed notice, as does Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Palestinian politician Mahmoud Abbas, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Netanyahu. The names Maha Vajiralongkorn, the king of Thailand, and Anutin Charnvirakul, the countrys prime minister, were both blocked. William Ruto, the name of the president of Kenya, is also blocked. But not every head of state is automatically protected from any common user using their name. Fast Company was able to successfully edit a Sora account username to the names of leaders of Guyana, Niger, and Angola: Irfaan Ali, Abdourahamane Tchiani, and Joo Lourenço, respectively. An account has already taken the name Ibrahim Traoré, the interim president of Burkina Faso. The username for Prabowo Subianto, the name of the president of Indonesia, has also been nabbed. The name of Peter Pellegrinithe leader of Slovakia, a nation that saw a deepfake video of a candidate spur confusion during an election just last yearis now being used, too. A former State Department official told Fast Company that, on its own, blocking certain usernames is not even a barely acceptable minimum. For now, the username function doesn’t seem to recognize at least some Cyrillic characters, but its possible that someone could try to take advantage of those to make it appear like they already have blocked usernames, the person added. As for leaders in some non-Western countries not having their names reserved, the person said: These companies never care about the Global South until someone gets hurt.
Category:
E-Commerce
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