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Have you ever admired a leader so dialed into their long-term mission that it seems nothing can shake their focus? Every move appears premeditated, every milestone perfectly timed. Now think about a leader who seems to always be in step with the moment. Their company launches timely features, aligns instantly with market shifts, and always feels fresh. For every leader who succeeds through single-minded focus, there are others whose obstinacy has led them and their organizations to arrive at a destination that is no longer desirable. And while adaptability can be a gift, it also leads many organizations to shift strategies with each change in the winds without ever hitting on a true contribution. This tension between structure and adaptability isnt just theoretical; its a foundational dynamic that has shaped industries for decades. Approaches to enterprise software development provide a useful way to gauge whether youre leaning too far in either direction. Balancing Your Leadership Approaches Early on in the history of the software industry, a waterfall strategy reigned supreme. Road maps guided development, with possible major platform releases happening every one to two years, version releases quarterly, feature sets monthly, and bug fixes weekly. Teams operated with near-military precision towards long-term goals, broken down into shorter term deliverables. But as the pace of change accelerated, that model began to break down. Agile software development emerged, favoring speed, iteration, and real-time user feedback. Short sprints (often 60 to 90 days) determined what was going to be released. Each sprint on a project added features, fixed bugs, and adapted to feedback from the previous release. Unlike with waterfall, employees from across agile teams were empowered to fix things and make many changes without going through their chain of command to get approval. In our coaching work, weve seen that the same push and pull between waterfall and agile playing out in leadership styles and company cultures. Some leaders operate like agile systems: adaptive, fast-moving, iterative, and with a distributed decision structure. They respond quickly to new data and arent afraid to pivot when the market shifts. Others take a waterfall-inspired approach: structured, methodical, deeply focused on long-term outcomes, and more rigidly hierarchical. They chart a course and stick to it, often prioritizing consistency over speed. Neither mindset is wrong, but over-indexing on either one can create serious blind spots. Agile thinkers risk spinning in circles when they follow the tides. Waterfall thinkers risk charging toward goals that become outdated or foundering on unsolvable problems. For executives, the ability to integrate both approaches is no longer optionalits essential. Heres how to strike that balanceand why your teams future may depend on it. 1. Assess your own leadership style In our coaching conversations with leaders, we often start by asking them to reflect on whether they naturally lean toward structure or spontaneity. We can expand on their natural preference by administering a personality profile survey as well. Are they more likely to build a road map and stick to it, or pivot at the first sign of change? Developing this self-awareness isnt about labeling or even changing your styleits about recognizing where you need balance. If you default to agile thinking, ask yourself: Are we making measurable progress? Or changing directions without setting a course? Are we building anything lasting? If you favor waterfall thinking, ask: Is our goal still relevant? What feedback are we ignoring? Which market changes do we need to take into account? During a recent coaching conversation a senior marketing leader at large hospitality company expressed frustrations about her proposed product launch, a new menu item, being challenged by her colleague who runs operations. He thought a different item would be faster, easier, and aligned to what customers recently told him they wanted. Her team had spent the last six months toward brand alignment, market research, product iterations, testing, launch planning, and marketing planning and were now finally ready to do something. Her waterfall approach and his agile approach were in conflict. Both made great points. In the end, they struck a balance between both proposals and management styles. 2. Understand when culture amplifies leadership style As a leader, you have to ask whether your company culture reflects your style or balances it. A culture determines how people behave naturally, on average, even when a leader is not in the room. Do people tend to work in a structured manner, with long-term goals in mind, always talking about progress against objectives? Or, does it feel like people question the current state, proposing new ideas and take initiative without seeking executive approval. Crucially, if the culture leans in a particular direction, how easy and safe is it for people who lean the other way to challenge the others. A lot of can depend on whether the company typically hires and promotes a type that matches the leaders biases or whether it embraces individuals who bring unique perspectives and skills to the workplace. When you build a corporate ethos in your image, you magnify your own tendencies in ways that create a harmonious work environment. People are not likely to argue with your decisions, because they reflect their own opinions as well. Day-to-day, that can be pleasant. In the long-run, though, it creates problems. If the leadership and organization are all Agile, then chaos may manifest. A slow-moving Waterfall culture may stall innovation. Take Boeing as an example; it continued reliance on a hierarchical, Waterfall-style of leadership and development culture has been widely criticized for contributing to recent crises. The rigid, top-down approach delayed necessary changes in engineering and quality control, despite repeated warnings from employees and whistleblowers. The 2024 mid-air panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX reignited scrutiny, and internal documents revealed slow, structured processes that resisted fast adaptation or real-time feedback. The Waterfall mindsetprioritizing schedules, approvals, and internal reporting linesled to safety risks, brand damage, and regulatory backlash. In contrast, consider Netflix. In the late 1990s, they recognized an inefficiency in the movie rental business. Leaders in this space had significant overhead costs from the physical stores from which people rented and returned movies. By allowing customers to select movies online and have then delivered, they created an economy of scale. Building this business required attention to detail and customer service. Yet, the company remained sensitive to technology trends. They realized that they were essentially sending computer files through a low-bandwidth connection (the U.S. Mail) and disrupted their own business model by pivoting to streaming. Further realizing that many companies could develop streaming models, they pivoted again to content creation. Becoming a content creator requires a lot of expertise, and so they had to implement this model using a more traditional Waterfall approach. This balance between Agile and Waterfall approaches has enabled Netflix to remain a significant force in the market. The takeaway? While a particular cultural and leadership disposition around Waterfall or Agile may b the natural to the organization and may have served it well for many years, great leaders are aware of those tendencies, and build a culture that can challenge the status quote and balance, when needed, Agile and Waterfall approaches to yield healthy (if sometimes uncomfortable) debate. 3. Combine long-term vision with real-time feedback A 2024 meta-analysis in the Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation found that agile leadership has a significant impact on organizational outcomes, team effectiveness, collaboration, and innovation. But the key isnt to replace long-term thinking entirelyits to layer agility on top of it. Thats why the most successful leaders use both mindsets. They know when to zoom outbuilding toward five-year goalsand when to zoom in, listening to customer feedback or shifting based on real-time performance indicators. New Balance has done this exceptionally well, maintaining its long-term manufacturing commitments in the U.S. while evolving its brand to meet changing consumer tastesa move that helped drive a record $6.5 billion in sales in 2023. A CMO we coached recently calls her approach glocal marketingthe balance between local and global marketing, which includes honoring the long term brand promise (Waterfall) while still connecting, through customization, at the local level to what is relevant and popular at that moment in a particular area (Agile). At the team level, this looks like maintaining a steady mission while adapting tactics. At the leadership level, it means pairing clarity of purpose with the humility to course correct. 4. Build balanced teams that challenge your defaults Theres a method in psychology to measure individual tendencies known as need for cognitive closure, and it provides a useful way to think about your own leadership approach. People high in need for closure prefer action to thinking, so they tend to react to situations and engage with available information, which is characteristic of an agile approach. People low in need for closure prefer thinking to action and typically mull over information, which often leads to the focus on long-term goals characteristic of a waterfall style. Understanding your own tendencies as a leader as well as those of your trusted associates is valuable, because it gives you the opportunity to balance your team to include those with a range of levels of need for closure to ensure your team isnt heavily biased toward either the agile or waterfall style. You can measure these tendencies with the Need for Closure scale. It will help you to see whether the people you work with tend toward High (i.e., Agile) or Low (i.e., Waterfall) Need for Closure. If you find that your team tends to be biased more toward reaction or more toward deep thought, you can use timelines to help overcome those tendencies. For example, if your team tends to react quickly, set a deadline for finalizing a decision thats far enough out to allow your team the time and space to slow down and proceed carefully and thoughtfully. In contrast, if your team often deliberates too long and gets stuck in long-term patterns, an earlier deadline can push them to make decisions more quickly. Dont surround yourself with people who think exactly like you. Instead, build teams that stretch your instincts, pressure-test your assumptions, and help you operate at both 30,000 feet and ground level. Often, peoples preferences reflect hidden assumptions that they themselves may not be aware of. Being forced to justify your strategic decisions explicitly in conversations brings those assumptions to the forefront. In addition, these strategic choices may sometimes reflect reasoning gaps that these conversations will also bring to light. Navigate with intention The best leaders dont choose between agile and waterfallthey learn to navigate the tension and switch gears with intention. Agility without direction leads to burnout. Direction without agility leads to obsolescence. So, ask yourself: Are you leaning too far in one direction? What conversations, feedback loops, or partners could help you rebalance? Because real leadership isnt about having a single styleits about learning when to move fast, when to slow down, and how to bring your team with you, every step of the way.
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E-Commerce
Not all emojis are created equal. The sparkle emoji or red heart emoji are staples of text conversations and social media captions. But how often are you using the baggage claim icon or the non-potable water symbol? Recently, a new trend has emerged: mainstream emojis are being passed over in favor of more creative alternatives. The broken heart emoji? Tired. Predictable. The wilted rose emoji? Aesthetic. Unexpected. The trend began earlier this year when a video from one TikTok user went viral. The caption read: lowkey starting to become too mainstream / i might just start using . Others quickly joined in. How it feels using in the era, one TikTok user posted, cutting to a photo of someones grandpa. @savo.rl #luracks#fyp#foryou not myself – luracks As David Doochin explained for Emojipedia: One of the most typical memes gaining traction among the TikTok contingent is the X has gone mainstream / we now use Y format that declares a given meme, emoji, or cultural symbol as out of date or past its prime and offers a replacement, usually a derivative of the original symbol in some way but sometimes totally arbitrary. The most commonly used emojis include faces, hearts, and hand gesturesones that slip seamlessly into texts to convey emotion. “Loudly Crying Face” was the most-used emoji of 2024, followed by “Face with Tears of Joy” and the “Fire” emoji. Now, among younger generations and the chronically online, certain emojis have taken on entirely new meaningswith lesser-used icons pulled from obscurity. YouTuber John Casterline posted a video last month encouraging people to adopt the aerial tramway emojionce the least-used emoji in the worldas a replacement for the common “Crying Laughing Face.” I came up with a plan where we can make this emoji one of the most used emojis, at least on YouTube, he explained. Instead of using laughing emojis from now on, replace it with this. And if someone doesnt know why youre doing it, dont tell them. This isnt the first time the aerial tramway has been thrust into the spotlight. Back in 2018, the now-defunct X account @leastUsedEmoji reported that the aerial tramway held the title of least-used emoji for 11 weeks straight. Responding to the call, public transportation advocates rallied around the underappreciated emoji, spamming Twitter/X with strings of the aerial tramway. The plan worked. After 77 days, the tram climbed the ranks and was replaced in last place by input symbol for latin capital letters. As of the accounts last post on August 3, 2020, input symbol for symbols had been the least-used emoji for 264 days. Perhaps its time it gets the same treatment.
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E-Commerce
Over the last two months, a first-of-a-kind project has taken shape at an industrial site in Nevada: the worlds largest microgrid built with used EV batteries, designed to power an adjacent data center.Its the first of a series of microgrids planned by Redwood Materials, the battery recycling company now valued at more than $5 billion. The company is taking in a quickly-growing volume of used EV batteriestens of thousands over the last year, and perhaps hundreds of thousands over the next 12 months. Most of those batteries still have enough capacity to have a second life before the materials are recycled. And they could help deal with a major energy challenge: how new data centers can come online quickly and cheaply without straining the grid and significantly adding to climate emissions.The amount of batteries coming back that have usable life and that are relatively more cost-efficient to deploy has ramped up dramatically in just the last year or two, says JB Straubel, CEO of Redwood Materials. The company announced its new energy business arm at an event on June 26.[Photo: Redwood Energy]Straubel, one of Teslas cofounders, left the automaker in 2019 to help build a new U.S. supply chain of critical battery materials using the growing pile of battery waste. Last year, the company started commercial production of cathode active material, one key component in batteries, from recycled materials. Its recycling business is already profitable; it generated $200 million in revenue last year. But it also recognized the huge opportunity to put some batteries to work again. [Image: Redwood Materials]How EV batteries can find a second lifeWhen a battery is in a car or a truck, its a pretty demanding application, Straubel says. You need a lot of power capability. You really want to charge quickly, usually, so you can go to fast charge stations. And you also need a pretty high percent of your overall initial range that you purchased in the car. But even when a battery has lost so much capacity that it no longer makes sense for driving, it can still be used to store energy. In that application, charging and discharging can happen slowly. A battery might only have half of its original capacity, but can still reliably support the grid or a microgrid. In some cases, it could be used for years before its eventually recycled.In the new microgrid, on Redwoods campus near Reno, more than 800 used EV batteries are connected to 20 acres of solar panels. It has enough power to run a new AI data center on the site, built by Crusoe, a company that designs and deploys low-carbon compute infrastructure.The data center operates fully off the grid, without an external backup. We still expect [the microgrid] to be very, very reliable, Straubel says. In some cases, it might be more reliable, because we have less failure points. To make it possible to avoid the grid completely, the team built a relatively large amount of solar power and large battery capacity. In other cases, the company will build microgrids that do have a grid connection, but allow data centers to run on their own renewable energy most of the time. Some projects could also be built with backup from gas generators. But there are advantages to off-grid renewable projects.[Photo: Redwood Energy]Why companies want to go off the gridOff-grid projects are faster than other alternatives. Right now, the wait time for a new gas turbine can be as long as seven years. Connecting large new renewable energy projects to the grid also takes years because of long delays in the permitting process. A self-contained microgrid can avoid waiting in the interconnection queue. And if its fully renewable, like the project from Redwood and Crusoe, it can also avoid the long process to get air quality permits. All that a project needs is simple construction permits. The process to build can also happen quickly. (Crusoes own data center infrastructure, which uses modular, self-contained small units, is also fast to deploy. The new data center is already running in test mode and will be available for Crusoes cloud customers to use in the coming weeks.)Because renewable energy is cheap, and Redwoods battery system is also affordable, the microgrids can compete head to head with fossil fuels. Were seeing prices now that I think are below what you can do with the gas microgrid, says Straubel. All of this means that even if a tech company doesnt have sustainability as its first priority when it builds a new data center, the microgrid can still be a compelling choice. It seems that in this moment, speed and power availability is the number-one topic, Straubel says. Maybe number two would be overall economics. Number three is sustainability. Not to say that people dont care about thatI feel that most of our customers care quite deeply about it. But theres a lot of pressure for everyone to grow fast and balance all these other constraints while doing it.[Photo: Redwood Energy]The potential for scaleData center providers that want to use solar power need to find land in the right location. But one recent analysis found that there was more than enough available land in the U.S. to support the massive energy demand from new data centersfar more than even high-end projections that say that we may need a staggering 300 gigawatts of new energy by 2030 to cover growth. That analysis looked at the feasibility of microgrids that were 90% renewable and 10% gas-powered. But it mapped out potential sites in detail, and points to areas that could also potentially be used for 100% renewable projects.Redwood is already working on other microgrids for other data centers. And over time, as more used EV batteries become available, they can play a greater role for the grid overall. The volumes in the automotive and transportation sector are so much higher than in the grid sector, Straubel says. Over the long term, I believe that EV batteriestrucks, cars, robotaxis, all of itwill have an extremely significant role to play in really all bulk energy storage.It can help the cost of energy storage come down, which is key to helping renewables fully scale up. Renewables are our cheapest source of generation today, he says. And I think thats only going to expand. But theyre intermittent. We have to find a cost-efficient way to deliver firm, reliable, renewable energy if we have a hope of scaling it. And to me, that is really the long-term main application.
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E-Commerce
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