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Every technological revolution has its awkward adolescence. We’re living through AI’s right now. Recent research from Stanford and BetterUp has given this moment a name: “workslop.” It’s the flood of hastily AI-generated content that clogs inboxes, clutters presentations, and quietly erodes productivity. The email that reads like it was written by a committee of robots. The strategy document with oddly formal phrasing and zero original insight. The presentation deck that says nothing new. If this sounds familiar, you’re not imagining it. And if you’re a manager watching your team’s output simultaneously increase in volume and decrease in quality, you’re not alone. But here’s what history teaches us: this phase is predictable, necessary, and temporary. The question isn’t whether we’ll move through it. It’s how quickly we can get to the other side. Why Workslop Happens When personal computers arrived in offices, workers treated them as expensive typewriters. When the internet became ubiquitous, we spent years learning that you can walk 10 feet to talk to someone instead of firing off another email. Each time, we mistook the tool for the solution. We’re making the same mistake with AI. Only faster, and at greater scale. The core problem is one of delegation versus collaboration. AI will deliver increased speed and efficiency, but most organizations have accidentally encouraged their people to treat it as something to offload to rather than something to work with. An associate generates a client memo with Claude and sends it along, complete with the telltale “AI can make mistakes, please double-check” footer still attached. A manager asks ChatGPT to write a strategy document and forwards it without adding context, nuance, or judgment. This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a mindset problem that technology has exposed. When content creation becomes effortless, the cognitive work of thinking deeply becomes optional. And when it becomes optional, people can opt out. What researchers are calling “cognitive atrophy” is really just a gradual disconnection from the thinking process itself. We’re delegating not just the execution, but the strategy. AI will get you 70% of the way there, but someone still needs to own that final 30%, and right now it seems some people are checking out before the finish line. The Way Through The good news? Workslop isn’t a crisis. It’s a phase. Organizations that recognize it as such can compress what might take years into months. Start by redefining what you measure. The drive to do more with less can create pressure to crank out more work in the same time, with AI as the productivity multiplier. But leaders need to resist the assumption that one person plus AI should equal twice the output. If you’re still evaluating employees primarily on volume, you’re incentivizing exactly the behavior you don’t want. Prose and code generation are now commoditized. What matters is the quality of thinking that directs these tools. In your performance management processes, assess people on their judgment, their ability to steer AI effectively, and their capacity to iterate toward genuinely excellent outcomes. Draw bright lines. Leaders need to align on the AI vision, the guardrails, and how they’ll hold people accountable. Establish explicit standards for what constitutes acceptable AI-assisted work. Some organizations are implementing simple rules: AI-generated content must be marked during internal review. Client-facing materials must demonstrate clear human value-add. Any work bearing AI watermarks or disclaimers gets automatically returned. These aren’t punitive measures. They’re cultural signals about what professionalism means in an AI-augmented workplace. Without mutual commitment from leaders to embed these standards, the bright lines blur. Embrace experimentation, but guide it. The workslop phase exists because people need room to learn, and that requires a growth mindset, not a fixed one. Risk aversion kills experimentation. Moving through this phase means reframing failure as data, celebrating what you learn from missteps, and managers modeling vulnerability about their own learning curve. Managers can accelerate this shift by tapping into people’s intrinsic motivation for mastery. But experimentation without feedback loops doesnt create change. So have forums where teams share what’s working and what isn’t, and celebrate the wins and the learnings of human-AI collaboration. Learn from unexpected sources. Universities faced the workslop crisis before corporations did. Many have developed sophisticated approaches to maintaining rigor while embracing AI tools. They’ve created assignments that inherently require human judgment, implemented systems that flag low-quality automated work, and redesigned evaluation criteria to emphasize critical thinking over production. These aren’t perfect solutions, but they’re battle-tested ones that can translate to corporate contexts. Resist the delegation instinct. The most important cultural shift is also the simplest: don’t treat AI as your copilot. Treat it like a student, and you’re the teacher. This reframes the entire relationship. You’re not handing off work. You’re responsible for what that student produces, which means staying engaged in the iterative process, using tools to enhance rather than replace human judgment, and taking full ownership of outputs regardless of how they were generated. Organizations that successfully embed this mindset move through the workslop phase measurably faster. The upside? New Stanford research tells us that employees trust AI more when they can see it as a collaborator, not a closed system. An Unexpected Opportunity Here’s what makes this moment genuinely unique: the traditional corporate hierarchy of expertise has temporarily inverted. Right now, a brilliant 22-year-old who knows how to work with AI tools can create more value than their manager who doesn’t. This isn’t a threat to experienced leaders. It’s an opportunity. Junior employees have rare insight into what actually works, and smart managers are creating channels for those employees to lead the way forward. You’re not being replaced. You’re being offered a shortcut to expertise that would otherwise take years to develop. The companies that emerge strongest from the workslop phase won’t be those that restricted AI use or pretended the problems didn’t exist. They’ll be the ones that acknowledged the awkwardness, called it out, learned from it quickly, and built cultures where humans and AI genuinely complement each other. Experience shows us that the most critical cultural factors that will shape the success of AI include the degree of autonomy of teams to shape workflows, the measures and controls put in place, and what gets rewarded and recognized. We’re in the messy middle of the AI adoption curve. Workslop is almost certainly happening in your organization right now.The only question is whether you’re managing the transition or hoping it resolves itself. History suggests which approach works better.
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E-Commerce
Americans know AI runs on electricity and theyre starting to realize theyre the ones paying for it. A recent nationwide survey of more than 1,400 U.S. households found that two-thirds of Americans believe AI is already driving up their power bills, and most said they cant afford more than a $20 monthly increase. Theyre right to be worried. As tech companies pour hundreds of billions into new data centers, the surge in electricity demand is rewriting the economics of the grid and households are footing the bill for an AI power tax they never voted for. The frustrating truth is that this isnt about running out of power. As prices keep rising and politicians promise to build our way out of this crisis, we already have more than enough electricity. A broken system Whats broken is the system around us. As Chris Wright, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, recently said, “we don’t need more electrons We only need more electrons a few hours a year at peak demand. We have slack capacity 98% of the time.” Outdated pricing rules hide the real cost of peak demand, shift the burden onto ordinary people, and drive bills higher even when supply is abundant. And as AIs appetite for energy grows, that broken system is turning into a massive, invisible subsidy one that lands squarely on consumers. In 2025, U.S. tech companies will spend $300400 billion on AI infrastructure.Thats over 2% of GDP, a greater share than telecoms at the height of the Internet boom. Growing demand This industrialization of intelligence has sparked the steepest electricity demand growth since World War II. Five-year load forecasts jumped from 23 GW in 2022 to 128 GW in 2025, with data center usage projected to rise from 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 to 12% by 2030. And since January 2021, residential electric prices have climbed nearly 40%. In PJM, which covers 13 states and D.C., the cost of ensuring reliabilityknown as capacity priceshas spiked 11x in just two years, with analysts attributing two-thirds of the increase to data centers. Thats $9.3 billion in extra utility bills this year alone, or an AI power tax of $10$21 per month per household. If similar trends spread nationwide, Americans could face $1530 billion annually in AI subsidies by 2027. Unlocking capacity But the problem isnt AI, or solar panels that fail to deliver power at midnight when demand is lowestits figuring out how to unlock the slack capacity of our existing grid where and when we need it. Imagine if airlines couldnt charge more for Thanksgiving flights, so they had to buy enough planes for everyone to fly that one day. The rest of the year, those planes sit idle, but ticket prices stay high year-round to cover that wasted capacity. Thats exactly how our electric grid works today. Households and small businesses pay flat retail rates that dont reflect real-time scarcity or costwhether power is dirt-cheap at 3 a.m. or sky-high during a heatwave, you pay the same. This one price fits all approach hides the true cost of peak demand. The bill for serving those peaks doesnt vanish, its just socialized across everyones rates, driving costs up for all. Large industrial users dont face this problem. They buy electricity directly in wholesale markets, where prices fluctuate by the minute, and can shape their demand to avoid paying for expensive peaks. This flexibility allows them to reduce costs dramatically. Meanwhile, households and small businesses cant. The result is a regressive system where those least able to change their behavior are stuck paying the most. We have the technology The good news is that we already have the technology to fix this.
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E-Commerce
In the defining years of American business, founding CEOs were virtually synonymous with the companies they led. Walt Disney was Disney incarnate; Dale Carnegie came to represent the steel industry itself. These figures were not just company leaders; they were the gravitational center around which entire industries revolved. Those days are gone. Though we still have echoes in modern chief executives like Tim Cook or Richard Branson, these figureheads, too, are becoming rarer. In fact, the average CEO tenure is the lowest in recent history. Over the past three years, CEO turnover has reached record highs, with 58 leadership changes in the S&P 500 alone. This pattern has prompted the C-suite to focus on a new leadership strategy: employing interim CEOs. Eighteen percent of all new CEOs are interim appointments compared to 7% just a year ago. For most, theyre still seen as a lame duck or hired gun, sent to take care of the companys rudimentary duties; at best, a suboptimal stand-in for a proper leader. The savviest companies, however, are no longer relegating interim CEOs to a holdover role. Theyre instead empowering them to be dynamic doers, essential to transforming organizations and breaking stale patterns and enacting rapid, bold changes. Interim CEOs Have Unique Opportunities To Enact Change Interims occupy a liminal space in the risk-averse, C-suite business world. Their temporary position frees them from the common pitfalls others so frequently get stuck in: politicking, backslapping, and monitoring rather than doing. With the right instincts and a good plan, however, the best interim CEOs can assess internal dynamics, align fellow leaders, and make key decisions while laying the groundwork for their successor or becoming permanent installations themselves. When James M. Cornelius was appointed Interim CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2006, he spearheaded expansive strategic partnerships and top-down initiatives to reduce costs and risk. His eight-month interim period was marked with such focus and urgency that it earned him full-time tenure, where he remained for years. Besides just righting the ship, he made decisions quicker than a permanent CEO ever could have. Whereas the previous three years saw negative YoY growth, Cornelius got BMS back on track with a near-double-digit YoY revenue increase. With the confidence of their fellow executives and shareholders, interim CEOs have the opportunity to move forward with the expectation of growth and new horizons, free from traditional time-pressures and deadlines. They can manage change in the C-suite, making tough-but-necessary decisions without bias. When Chipotles wunderkind CEO Brian Niccol departed for Starbucks, many wondered who could possibly follow his historic tenure. Rather than a superstar CEO from another organization, Chipotle brought on Scott Boatwright, an interim CEO from their own rank-and-file. Leaning on his prior COO experience, Boatwright erased bottlenecks and streamline decision-making from the top down, using his unique skill set to maintain prior momentum for a rock-solid year-end. These successful initiatives landed him a solidified seat atop the fast casual empire, where he still remains. In both of these cases, a new permanent executive may have felt pressured to keep the ship on autopilot rather than turn the wheel. With interim CEOs, these companies gave their leaders the freedom to make substantive change, resulting in both a healthy balance sheet and a naturally proven successorthe two foremost goals of any leadership transition. Interim Tenure, Genuine Risk Make no mistake, theres a myriad of reasons companies choose to play it safe by limiting the purview of interim CEOs. Leadership missteps dont just jeopardize the new leader but can also create long-term impacts way beyond their tenure. Take Reddits interim CEO Ellen Pao, who took the helm in 2014 when the company was on a steady path to an IPO. Pao implemented massive, top-down changes to the sites rules and guidelines that went against Reddits founding ethos, causing upheaval among hundreds of thousands of users. She fired popular long-time employees, losing internal trust and community support alike. While Pao may have started the trouble, it didnt end with her. As is often the case, a period of poor management led to cultural decay that lingered for years. Reddits cofounder had to come in and right the company’s ship over the ensuing half decade. Temporary Leaders Need Long-Term Vision As CEO tenure continues to shorten and transitions become a fact of life, interim leadership appointments will become the ultimate inflection point for an organizations future. Not every interim CEO appointment is doomed to failfar from itbut Reddits woes show why executive buy-in and clear company goals are essential. Theres a term in executive circles for this: leadership alignment. Successful companies let the interim CEO take charge but also have everyone else in the C-suite define their boundaries and establishes immutable values by which they must still abide. Top organizations will even allow stakeholders and employees to weigh in on those values to inspire increased confidence in the new head honcho. Some of the biggest companies have proven leadership alignment works. When Target was flailing in 2014, longtime executive John Mulligan stepped in to lead them into the future. As he said himself, the strong support and clear guidance from other executives was precisely what he needed. Interim no longer has to mean ineffective. During a period of leadership transition, the ship still has to go somewhere. So, the companies that give even their temporary leaders the mandate to navigate uncharted waters will sail ahead, faring far better than those who force them to drift with the tide.
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E-Commerce
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