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Moving into a new leadership role is a big moment. But in todays rapidly shifting environmentwhere change moves faster than everyou dont have the luxury of slowly assessing your team and making gradual adjustments. The pace of technology and AI, hybrid work, low employee engagement, evolving strategies, and shifting workforce dynamics demand that you assess your team quickly and confidently. Gone are the days of observe and wait. Youre expected to deliver results fast, and your team needs to be plug-and-playand that means quickly understanding who on your team is ready to move with you, who might need support, and where changes might be necessary. Here are five traits or “now must-haves” to look for in your first three months to assess whether your team is equipped to meet the momentand the future. 1. Goal Alignment Are they rowing in the same directionor pulling against the current? Misalignment can be quiet but costly. One tech executive we worked with noticed a team member constantly questioning her strategy in meetings. Eventually, she had a candid conversationand made the call to part ways. The rest of the team felt relieved as the lack of alignment had been slowing everyone down. Ask yourself: Do they support the strategyor challenge it without solutions? Do they identify their mutual dependencies? Are their actions reinforcing the companys direction? As a new leader, the ability to detect early misalignment and address it decisively is critical. If ignored, it can sabotage your goals. 2. Sound Judgment Can they make good decisions with limited information or time pressure? You cant make every decision yourself. Thats why judgment matters. One CEO that Melissa coached asked her sales lead to evaluate a complex strategic shift. His response wasnt just a yes or noit was a thoughtful breakdown of risks, trade-offs, and stakeholder implications. She knew immediately she could trust him with big decisions. Similarly, a leader Frans worked with asked his new team to identify their number-one issue to be solved within their circle of influence. The leader organized a session with a clear goalfor the team to develop two alternative solutions to the issue. The discussion that ensued exposed, very clearly and quickly, who was able to provide a sharp assessment of and solutions to the problem. Ask your team members: Describe a situation where they had to make a decision with incomplete and/or ambiguous information How did they manage the uncertainty? What did they consider most difficultand why? Watch how they weigh risks, not just outcomes In these times of exponential change and uncertainty, leaders must make decisions with limited information and under pressure, making sound judgment crucial. 3. Adaptability How resilient are they in terms of recovering from pivots and stress? Do they adjust fastor resist when things shift? Change isnt the exception anymoreits the norm. Asking about how team members have handled past challenges is telling. One leader Melissa worked with joined a company right after a failed reorganization. During one-on-ones, he asked team members how theyd handled past disruptions. Some responded with solutions; others stayed stuck in old complaints. That distinction helped him begin to identify who could thrive in the new culture. In addition to asking about how team members have navigated past obstacles, observing and assessing how team members navigate real work challenges is also critical. A newly appointed leader that Frans worked with oversaw a five-person leadership team where each leader managed an independent production facility. Due to a ban on a country involved in a war, one facility lost over half of its demand. The teams initial response was to lay off a large portion of the workforce, creating negative sentiment. When the team realized that another facility was severely understaffed due to strong growth, an aging workforce, and high turnover, they decided to transfer staff from the struggling plant to the growing one, with plans to reverse the transfer once the ban was lifted. Observing how team members navigated this scenario gave Franss client invaluable information about their levels of adaptability. In fact, assessing team members by watching them tackle real or simulated challenges is often more reliable than relying on spreadsheets, quotas, or even a predecessors notes, as it reveals their actual behavior and true capabilities in context. Ask yourself: How do they respond to sudden pivots? Do they stay focusedor get flustered? Are they looking for whats nextor longing for what was? Adaptability is a skill that grows through recovery, not resistance. And, in uncertain times, the best strategy is adaptability. 4. Tech Fluency Do they lean into digital toolsor avoid what they dont understand? Being tech-savvy isnt about coding. Its about confidence with data, digital tools, and AI-enabled processes. One of Melissas clients, an operations leader, asked her team, What tools did you use to make this decision? Some had solid answers; others didnt know. That helped her see who needed coachingand who was ready for more responsibility. Watch for: Comfort using key platforms or dashboards Proactive use of AI or automation tools Curiosity about how tech improves outcomes Tech fluency and digital intelligence are no longer nice-to-haves. They are becoming the baseline for modern leadership. 5. Growth Mindset & Risk Tolerance Are they playing to winor playing it safe? One team leader started asking a new weekly question: Whats something you tried that didnt work? And what did you learn from it? It became a signal of who was learningand who was hiding. The people willing to share, reflect, and adjust were the ones he tapped for bigger opportunities. Look for: Openness to feedback and experimentation Energy around learning and developingnot fear of failure Willingness to take smart, calculated risks Leaders must have a growth mindset and actively practice strategies to build a bold, learning-oriented culture in order to get their teams to take more risks. Clarity now beatscleanup later and theres no grace period for leaders anymore. Your first three months set the tone. By assessing these five traits earlyalignment, judgment, adaptability, tech fluency, and growth mindsetyou can lead with clarity, set expectations, and make confident decisions about the team around you. In a world of constant change, speed matters. But the real advantage? Knowing whos ready to change with you. And how well the five essential traits are distributed among your team. And, when all else fails, try Franss go-to question when he was CEO: Would I rehire this individual if building this team from scratch today?
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E-Commerce
Amazon’s Fire TV lineup has gone from a perfectly simple concepta stick that streams videoto a corporate naming convention nightmare. Theres the HD, the 4K Select, the 4K Plus, the 4K Max, and the Cube. Clear as mud. Lets try to make sense of this lineup, shall we? The Budget Basement: Fire TV Stick HD The Fire TV Stick HD is your entry point. It handles 1080p, and that’s pretty much the whole story. It works fine for an older TVthe kind you put in the guest room or the garage. At $25, its cheap, it’s simple, and it’s a little slow, both performance-wise and thanks to its aging Wi-Fi 5 chipset. If you have a 4K television, walk past this one and don’t look back. If you insist on buying it, wait for a sale. They happen often. The New Low-End: Fire TV Stick 4K Select Ah, the “Select.” This is Amazon’s latest attempt to offer a budget 4K option. Yes, it does 4K, and yes, at $40, its reasonably cheap. But you need to know what youre losing. For starters, it skimps on internal memory (1GB of RAM), meaning itll feel a bit sluggish. Like the HD, its hamstrung with Wi-Fi 5. And perhaps more importantly, it skips Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Those two formats are crucial for getting the best picture and sound out of a modern 4K TV and sound system. The lag you’ll feel is a constant reminder that you saved a few bucks. If the price doesnt drop ludicrously low, proceed with caution. Middle Road Mastery: Fire TV Stick 4K Plus The Fire TV Stick 4K Plus is the renamed and now slightly easier-to-understand mid-tier offering (it was the Fire TV Stick 4K). For most people, this is the smart, safe purchase. For just $10 more than the Select, it brings back the crucial features the Select is missing: a full 2GB of RAM for snappy performance, full support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and Wi-Fi 6 for more stable streaming. Ironically, at the time of this writing, its actually on sale for $10 less than the Select, making it a total no-brainer. Its the baseline where your 4K TV finally gets to stretch its legs and deliver the visual punch it was designed for. When in doubt, start here. Performance King: Fire TV Stick 4K Max The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is the stick for the enthusiast, the gamer, and the person who simply hates waiting for stuff to load. The $60 4K Max takes the “Plus” model and stuffs it with extra muscle: a faster processor, 16GB of storage (double the others for more apps), and, most critically, Wi-Fi 6E. If you have a compatible router, Wi-Fi 6E gives you a dedicated, fast lane for streaming, virtually eliminating buffering and lag, especially when the rest of the house is clogging the network. If you plan on doing any cloud gaming, or just want the smoothest, most responsive experience without buying a whole cube, the 4K Max is the clear winner. The All-Powerful Hub: Fire TV Cube While the Fire TV Cube is not stick-shaped, its the big dog here, a streaming box that makes even the 4K Max look like childs play. Its processor is the fastest of the bunch and includes an integrated Ethernet port for a rock-solid wired connection. Its main party trick is hands-free Alexa control. You can tell your TV to switch inputs, turn on the lights, and launch a show without ever touching the remote. This is a powerful, top-tier device built for the smart home fanatic, with a $140 price tag. If your entertainment center is your smart home control panel, and money is less of an object, the Cube is your choice. For everyone else, its probably overkill. The bottom line Skip the HD unless you have an HD-only TV Be wary of the 4K Select; it strips out too many key premium features to justify the small savings The 4K Plus is a solid, well-rounded performer If you want the best performance for your dollarthe perfect balance of speed, features, and future-proofingit’s the Fire TV Stick 4K Max If you want it all and then some, the Cube is for you
Category:
E-Commerce
For decades now, tech companies have been promising us a future straight out of Star Trek. Instead of being confined to phones and computers, our digital lives would extend to a network of screens all around us, from connected TVs and smart fridges to kitchen countertop displays and car dashboards. The tech companies called this “ambient computing” or “ubiquitous computing” and extolled how it would get technology out of the way so we could focus on the real world. Here’s what we’ve got instead: Samsung’s smart refrigerators, which range from $1,899 to $3,499, have started showing advertisements on their screens. Amazon’s Echo Show smart displays now have ads that you can’t turn off, even if you’re paying $20 per month for the upgraded Alexa+ assistant. Amazon also shows “Sponsored Screensavers” on its Fire TV devices if you leave them alone for a few minutes. Tesla recently pushed a promotion for Disney’s Tron: Ares to its car dashboards. They got the ambient part right, in that we’ve now surrounded ourselves with screens we don’t control. But instead of blending into the background, the screens are now doing the opposite, distracting us with ads in hopes of padding their makers’ bottom lines. Promises made Ambient computing got its start in a more idealistic setting, in the late 1980s at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Mark Weiser, then the head of PARC’s computer science lab (and later its chief technology officer) used the term “ubiquitous computing” to describe how an array of screens in various sizes”tabs, pads and boards“would all work in tandem to help people accomplish everyday tasks. “Machines that fit the human environment, instead of forcing humans to enter theirs, will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods,” he wrote. Tech companies started dusting off the idea a couple decades later, as lightweight processors, low-cost displays, and widespread internet connectivity made ambient computing more feasible. In 2013, for instance, Microsoft opened an “Envisioning Center” to test its ambient computing ideas, including head-to-toe touchscreens for kitchens and common areas. Cisco demoed a “Second Screen 2.0” concept, with screens that could blend into the surrounding walls and provide personalized information as needed. Samsung had an even bolder vision, releasing a “Display Centric World” concept video full of rollable, foldable, and transparent displays. “Technology begins with a love for you,” the video declared, before showing how Samsung’s screens would someday wrap around coffee cups, unfurl from night stands, light up inside car windows, and cover classroom walls. The term “ambient computing” took hold a few years later. In 2017, the tech columnist Walt Mossberg used the term to describe technology that got out of your way, and pretty soon both Google and Amazon were running with it. The technology just fades into the background when you dont need it,” Rick Osterloh, Google’s SVP of devices and services, declared during a 2019 keynote. He continued to describe Google’s constellation of connected phones, watches, speakers, and smart displays as “ambient computing” in the years that followed, and in 2022 called it the company’s “north star.” Dave Limp, Amazon’s former senior vice president of devices and services favored the similar term “ambient intelligence,” describing how cloud computing would power a network of smart gadgets from Echo speakers to Fire TV streaming players. An Amazon Developer blog post from 2021 declared that “ambient is the future,” and would “make life easier and better without getting in your way.” Once the stuff of imagination, ambient computing had arrived in earnest, but there was a problem: The utopian ideal was at odds with how these companies make money. Cheap screens you can’t control It’s not enough to merely sell the device, be it a smart speaker, connected TV, or fridge with a built-in screen. Instead, tech companies expect these devices to generate revenue over time through ads or subscriptions. In some cases they sell these products at aggressively low prices in hopes of recouping the investment later. Meanwhile, the software that runs on these inexpensive screens provide far less control than a computer or even a phone. These are increasingly dumb terminals with software controlled through the cloud, which means you have little recourse when that software turns against you. While you can swap out the search engine on your computer with one that doesn’t fill the screen with ads, no such alternative exists when your smart display starts cycling through banner ads or using voice responses to upsell shopping items. The hardware isn’t exactly simple to replace, either. You might be comfortable tossing out a single smart display or speaker, but what if you’ve filled your home with them and built an entire smart home system around them? And what happens when your TVs, fridges, and car dashboards become digital billboards well? With all this in mind, those flashy Samsung and Microsoft concept videos from the early 2010s take on a different flavor. These companies sold us on a digital utopia powered by pervasive screens and connected software without ever explaining how they’d pay for it. Now that we’re surrounded ourselves with the technology to make it possible, the bill is finally coming due.
Category:
E-Commerce
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