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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Disruption has become our new workplace reality. For managers, navigating change is an everyday responsibility, not an occasional responsibility. Gallup reports that 72% of employees recently experienced workplace disruptions, and nearly a third of leaders experienced extensive disruptions. Today, no disruption is as prevalent as the rise of artificial intelligence. Yes, as sophisticated as AI might become, the key to successfully leading your team through change does not lie in smarter tech, but rather in fostering the fundamental human skills that AI will never be capable of delivering. The human role Quiet the noise around AI and you will find the simple truth that the most crucial workplace capabilities remain deeply human. According to World Economic Forums Future of Jobs Report 2025, essential skills like resilience, agility, creativity, empathy, active listening, and curiosity are far more valuable than technical skills. Those skills listed may be commonly referred to as soft, but in the age of AI, they are not just feel-good assets reserved for your personality hires. The future of work hinges on how well your teams adapt, connect, and perform together as humans. Of course, none of this should be surprising. Good leaders understand the importance of human-centered skills. Yet, there remains a significant gap between what we value and what we actively build in our people. Deloittes 2025 Human Capital Trends Report says that 71% of managers and 76% of HR executives believe prioritizing human capabilities like emotional intelligence, resilience, and curiosity, is very or critically important. This human skills gap is even more urgent when Gen Z is factored in. They entered the workforce aligned with a shift to remote and hybrid environments, resulting in fewer opportunities to hone interpersonal skills through real-life interactions. This is not a critique of an entire generation, but rather an acknowledgment of a broad workplace challenge. And Gen Z is not alone in needing to strengthen communication across generational divides, but that is a topic for another day. Adding fuel to the fire are increased workloads, job insecurity, and economic stresses. When we combine these pressures with underdeveloped human skills, we see the predictable outcomes: disengagement, confusion, and last years buzzword, quiet quitting. If leaders are not proactively developing their teams human capabilities, they leave them unprepared to navigate exactly the changes they are expected to embrace. Find comfort in discomfort So what should leaders do? The answer is simple, but the practice is challenging. Leaders must embrace their inner improviser. Yes, improvisation, like what you have watched on Whose Line Is It Anyway? Or the awkward performance your college roommate invited you to in that obscure college lounge. The skills of an improviser are a proven method for striving amidst uncertainty. Decades of experience at Second City Works and studies published by The Behavioral Scientist confirm the principles of improv equip us to handle change with agility, empathy, and resilience. A study involving 55 improv classes, including several facilitated by The Second City, revealed a powerful truth. Participants who intentionally sought out discomfort developed sharper focus, took bolder creative risks, and reported greater confidence and improved communication skills. The lesson? Discomfort is not the problem. It is the pathway forward. Leaders must model this openly. Normalize statements like, This feels awkward, but well navigate it together. When your team sees discomfort as an opportunity to learn rather than a flaw to fear, they will follow your example. Encourage authentic curiosity Amid constant change, we crave clear answers. But sometimes rushing toward the first right answer closes the door to innovation and possibility. Instead, leaders should practice authentic curiosity. Ask your team, What else could be true? Welcome I dont know moments. Create psychological safety so new ideas can surface without judgment. Curiosity keeps your teams adaptable. And according to the World Economic Forum, it remains one of the most valuable capabilities leaders can nurture. Make listening the cultural norm We talk a lot about the importance of listening, but few teams actually practice it consistently. Make listening intentional and visible. Respond with the phrase, So what Im hearing is, followed by paraphrasing what you heard. Pose thoughtful questions that indicate your priority is understanding, not just replying. Consciously build pauses into conversations, especially during tense or critical discussions. When team members feel heard, they are more willing to collaborate, innovate, and commit to their teams. Listening is not simply polite. It is strategic and transformative. Disruptions will not slow down. Innovative technologies will continue to emerge. New directives will always appear. Priorities will shift rapidly. But leaders who want to guide teams who thrive, not just survive, must invest in their people first. An improvisors skills are worth cultivating. Because, the future of work does not need smarter tools, but it will demand more empowered, resilient humans, and the improvisational leader who inspired them. Tyler Dean Kempf is creative director of Second City Works.
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E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. More people will require surgery this year than ever before. And next year, that number will rise again. By 2030, more than 313 million surgical procedures will done annually. This is a demand the current healthcare system cant keep up with. The result will be longer wait times, more complications, and a system stretched far beyond its limits. For decades, surgical innovation has been defined by better tools, stronger materials, and finer instruments, including hardware designed to improve human hands. But true transformation doesnt come from refining scalpels and sutures; it comes from giving surgeons the right information at the right time, through the worlds most intelligent dataset. This is where AI is rewriting the playbook. Not by replacing human expertise, but by amplifying it and by turning intuition into insight, experience into data, and uncertainty into precision. The rise of intelligent surgery Even the most skilled surgeon is limited by human perception. AI is placing intelligence at the center of the operating room, creating a data-driven surgical environment that continuously adapts and enhances precision in real time. Technologies like light field imaging and advanced sensor suites are eliminating blind spots by creating real-time 3D reconstructions of the surgical field with unprecedented depth and clarity. AI guidance continuously adapts during a procedure, giving the surgeon a live surgical roadmap that helps them optimize their every move. AI isnt just showing better images. Its learning. It’s refining implant placement with sub-millimeter precision and continuously optimizing surgical workflows. The result? Reduced operating times, fewer complications, and a consistency level in patient outcomes once thought impossible. AI as the ultimate surgical partner Surgical expertise has always been a mix of experience, intuition, and technique, but even the most skilled hands rely on intraoperative estimations. AI can reduce that guesswork by integrating computational modeling of anatomical structures, shrinking uncertainty to improve surgical precision. AI is improving surgical decision making by giving surgeons clearer insights before and during procedures. It can help plan the best approach, decrease guesswork in the operating room, and lead to more consistent, predictable patient results. In one recent study (RF145), an AI tool was able to measure spinal alignment during surgery more accurately than surgeons. It provided real-time feedback before and after a correction, helping the surgical team see exactly how much alignment had changed and whether additional adjustments were needed. This kind of support can lead to safer surgeries and better patient outcomes. Improve patient safety and outcomes For patients, the success of AI isnt just in better, more informed surgeriesits also in better, more informed recoveries. Predictive analytics flag potential complications before they become problems, enabling proactive interventions and improved care. The numbers tell the story: A deep learning model predicted post-operative complications with 70% accuracy, surpassing traditional clinical risk models and enabling earlier interventions to improve patient safety. Similarly, predictive models have successfully forecasted 30-day hospital readmissions, strongly indicating whether a patient is likely to be readmitted or not. The techmed shift For decades, medtech has been defined by hardware: selling instruments, implants, and surgical devices as products. While these tools have advanced, the underlying approach has been transactional, focused on selling physical components rather than evolving surgical intelligence. Techmed is changing this paradigm. Instead of treating surgery as a series of isolated procedures, AI-driven platforms are creating data rivers, or continuous streams of surgical data that refine precision, optimize workflows, and improve decision making over time. Each procedure informs the next, driving exponential improvements in efficiency, safety, and patient outcomes. This mirrors the evolution of modern technology companies. Rather than one-time sales of surgical tools, techmed is building intelligent, learning-based systems that deliver ongoing value, just as cloud computing and AI-driven platforms have transformed other industries. By integrating data intelligence into surgery, techmed is creating a new foundation for precision, adaptability, and continuous improvement. AIs role in the future of surgery We are at an inflection point. AI is the catalyst reshaping whats possible in surgical care. It is ensuring that every patient, everywhere, benefits from the collective intelligence of thousands of surgeries before them. AI isnt replacing surgeons. Its making them unstoppable. The question isnt whether AI will transform surgery. It already has. The real challenge is whether we will fully harness its potential to ensure precision, efficiency, and better outcomes for all. The revolution isnt coming. Its already here. Gabriel Jones is cofounder and CEO of Proprio.
Category:
E-Commerce
A year ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) put a limit on how much credit card companies could charge consumers for late payments. On Tuesday, the Trump administration quashed that limit, opening the door for financial institutions to once again gouge late-paying customers. The Biden-era rule capped late fees at $8, substantially less than what many credit card companies used to charge. But in a federal court filing in Texas, Trump’s CFPB asked a judge to terminate the rule, saying it had changed its mind and now agreed with banking groups that the rule was illegal. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman (a Trump appointee during his first term) agreed to the request Tuesday afternoon. Pittman had previously blocked the rule from being implemented, saying it violated the 2009 Credit Card Accountability and Disclosure Act, which regulated excessive fees, but allowed card companies to impose “penalty” fees for late payments. The decision to do away with the late-payment fee cap is a further dismantling of Biden’s initiatives. Trump has been vocal about wanting to disband the CFPB altogether, but judges have so far blocked him from doing so, saying he could lay off workers but not eliminate the agency. Initial opposition to the rule came from a coalition of six business and banking groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Bankers Association. Opponents of the rule celebrated the judge’s ruling. We welcome todays court decision vacating the CFPBs credit card late-fee rule,” the groups said in a joint statement. “This is a win for consumers and common sense.” Under the CARD Act, credit card companies are allowed to charge a maximum fee of $41 for a missed payment, even if the cardholder is only late by a few hours. The Biden-era CFPB had argued there was no evidence that those fees deterred future late payments. Worse, it said, the fees were often accompanied by other penalties, such as loss of grace periods, interest due, and drops in credit scores. Consumer Reports, at the time the cap was enacted, estimated late fees cost Americans more than $14 billion per year. A 2022 report from the CFPB found that 18 of the largest 20 credit card companies were charging the maximum $41 fee, while smaller banks and credit unions were more likely to charge $25 or less. Under Biden, the CFPB estimated the cap could save Americans $9 billion per year. More fees are returning The court ruling comes as another “junk fee” consumer protection seems likely to fall. The House and Senate have both previously voted to repeal the CFPB’s limits on excessive bank-overdraft fees as well. Consumer Reports estimates consumers will lose $5 billion in annual savings with that cap gone. Repealing the CFPBs limits on overdraft fees gives big banks the green light to rip off their customers with excessive charges that far exceed the cost of covering the transaction, said Chuck Bell, advocacy program director at Consumer Reports, last week when the House voted to repeal the limit. “Banks will be able to continue penalizing customers with steep fees even though most overdrafts are for small amounts that are repaid within a few days.” Overdraft fees fall most heavily on consumers with low- and moderate-income levels as well as have an outsize impact on people of color, according to Consumer Reports. Black consumers are 69% more likely than white consumers to live in a household that is charged at least one overdraft or insufficient-funds fee per year. Hispanics are 60% more likely to face the fees.
Category:
E-Commerce
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