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I used to think I was a great salesperson because I had all the right answers. I knew my product inside and out. I could explain every feature, every benefit, every reason someone should say yes. And I did what most people do—I led with that. Confident. Certain. Ready to convince. And I lost deals I should have won. I remember one pitch early in my career like it happened yesterday. I walked into the room fully prepared. My slides circled the room like a victory lap. I spoke for ten minutes straight, laying out exactly why my offer was the perfect solution. When I finished, the client looked at me and said, “That’s nice… but that’s not what I’m looking for.” It was a …

In a recent survey of senior leaders at large U.S. and U.K. professional services firms, 61% said they had abandoned at least one AI project in the past year because their people lacked the skills to deliver it. Deloitte’s “2026 State of AI in the Enterprise” report, based on a survey of more than 3,200 business and IT leaders across 24 countries, found that insufficient worker skills are now the single “biggest barrier to integrating AI into the business.” There is no quick or easy solution to this problem. While it is possible to bring in new hires or contractors with the short-term capabilities you need, this approach is not sustainable in the long term as it is bo…

One of the best days of Gabriella’s career was also one of her hardest days as a parent. Gabriella, who asked for a pseudonym to protect her children’s privacy, had just filmed the launch video for her new company. On the train ride back home, she got a call from her daughter’s school. The new nanny she’d hired, who had been thoroughly vetted, had left her two-year-old son locked in the car in the school’s parking lot and disappeared for half an hour before teachers heard the crying and rushed to help. “I remember feeling so guilty and crushed, thinking, ‘Oh my God, I don’t feel like I can leave my children because I don’t know how to find childcare that I can trust,’…

To make room for more housing without losing green space, planners in a new Toronto neighborhood flipped the usual approach: Instead of carving out room for parks and plazas, they made the streets do that work instead. “The street is almost like a public courtyard,” says Rasmus Astrup, design principal and senior partner at SLA, the Denmark-based firm that was part of the design team for the new neighborhood, called Ookwemin Minising. The main street will be car-free, “like a linear park,” he says, and filled with 400 trees. Other streets will allow cars, but prioritize large swaths of green space. The design gives residents public space, and doubles as climate i…

One cold Friday night a few years ago, I collapsed to the ground in the arrivals hall of a small French airport. I started sobbing and couldn’t stop. It took physical collapse for me to acknowledge that I was burned out and that my work life was unsustainable. In the time since my own burnout, the term has become ubiquitous. And given the abundance of research on the topic, I’m not going to deny its dangers. Burnout is real, serious, and measurable. However, I don’t believe that we’re living in a burnout epidemic. What we are living through is an epidemic of the use of the term burnout. And that overuse is blunting the urgency of a massive global issue. What burno…

There’s a saying I’ve found myself sharing in coaching conversations with senior leaders lately. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It’s my response to a significant pattern playing out right now across every sector I work in, and that’s constant busyness masquerading as leadership. We know from the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025 that 80% of employees and leaders lack sufficient time or energy to do their work. Meetings are ad hoc and continue after hours. Some 52% of leaders say their work feels chaotic and fragmented. These leaders are facing the biggest shifts or inflection points their businesses have possibly ever experienced. For many, this is da…

I work in front of a screen. And I’ve been thinking about how AI will change my work. What does it even mean for my future? It’s completely normal to wonder about this. Most people are convinced artificial intelligence is a threat to their careers. But what they are forgetting is the human value they bring to their work. Aaron Levie, CEO of the enterprise cloud company Box, recently pointed out that when people watch AI at work, they are most likely seeing it take over the first 80% of a task—the heavy lifting of repetitive processing. The last 20% is where you come in. Your domain expertise, judgment, and relationships. That is what makes you irreplaceable. AI can fi…

The release of Google’s latest AI models this week at Google I/O was yet another example of the direction of travel for the generative AI revolution. Facing a user base that is increasingly burning more tokens under basic subscriptions or API access, AI companies are starting to hike prices and throttle usage. In response to those cost pressures, consumers are beginning to cut their cloth accordingly. And while frontier AI providers are releasing ever more powerful models into the world, smaller companies are advancing, too. Often based in China, these are frequently accused of copying the innovations of U.S. models through techniques like distillation, or reverse eng…

Jeff Bezos is betting that the future of fashion won’t be made from cotton or polyester but, instead, from lab-grown fibers. Through the Bezos Earth Fund, Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos have committed $34 million to researchers developing next-generation textiles, including biodegradable fibers and plastic-free synthetic silk. Their aim is to replace some of the most resource-intensive materials in the global clothing industry with alternatives that could dramatically reduce the industry’s environmental footprint. The investment marks a notable shift for the fund, which has largely focused on conservation since Bezos pledged $10 billion to climate initiatives in 2…

It’s alive. The Terrarium Phone Case by U.K.-based designer Daniel Idle is a clear iPhone 16 Pro Max case with a vertical terrarium designed to show off small plants growing inside. “The idea came from noticing how personal phone cases have become,” Idle tells Fast Company. “People use them to carry objects, express themselves, and customize something they interact with all the time. That got me thinking about how much time we spend on our phones and how disconnected they make us feel from nature.” To bring nature to this most unexpected of places, Idle wanted to see if a phone case could include living elements by building an ecosystem directly into it. …

Google is quietly rolling out a redesign of the logos for its Workspace apps, including Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Drive. They now look like they’ve been run through a watercolor filter. Each new logo in the suite—which began showing up on May 18 on the web, Android, and iOS—is softer and rounder than its predecessor. What really stands out, though: Every single icon has been given some sort of color gradient. Gmail now smoothly transitions through Google’s brand palette of primary colors and green; Google Meet and Google Chat have lost the full palette in favor of yellow and green aura schemes, respectively; and Google Docs has gone from a flat blue to a…

When’s the last time you thought about pepper? Designers working in the consumer packaged goods category have reimagined many a pantry staple over the past several years, including olive oil, tinned fish, and even chili crisp, but pepper has remained as forgotten as it is ubiquitous. A playfully chunky new brand is giving the category design intentionality, functionality, and visual appeal—and could point to where food brand design is headed. Michael Laniak Michael Laniak, a former line cook, launched Milly on May 12 as a result of his failed attempt to source pepper in the same way he could olive oil or sea salt. Milly sells only whole peppercorns—black, white…

Building versus buying capabilities in-house or deciding whether to outsource them is a strategic decision. And it’s not a decision all executives think about the same way. So much depends on your company’s goals and strengths. It’s important to have a structured way to think about this decision, though, so when you need to incorporate a capability, you know how to make the decision. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members how they decide when to build capabilities in-house versus outsourcing or partnering. It was a popular question, and we had to limit the responses—to just 27! There is wisdom in these words that you can apply to your situations. 1. PARTNER …

Teaching undergraduates gives you a different perspective on things. For many, they see their life already laid out: An analyst position at a prestigious bank or consulting firm after graduation, then graduate school and a string of impressive jobs at important institutions. Then family, travel, and maybe a board seat or two. We all know that life is messier than that, but that’s the type of thing you really have to learn for yourself. The management professor Henry Mintzberg once observed that we expect management to be like a conductor with an orchestra, with the leader on a pedestal directing each movement with expert precision. “But,” he argues, “management i…

Robotaxis are multiplying across American cities. But are consumers actually ready to trust them? Zoox CEO Aicha Evans discusses the company’s strategy as an Amazon subsidiary, its intensifying rivalry with Waymo, and why a new partnership with Uber could be the key to getting autonomous rides from novelty to scale. Evans also reveals why she recruits what she calls an “invisible army of rebels” inside Zoox. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company, Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders …

Most teams have a decision-making problem that no one can quite put their finger on. Meetings multiply. Decisions get relitigated endlessly. The choices that eventually emerge are often so cautious they accomplish almost nothing. The problem isn’t personal. Teams full of talented people routinely get stuck because they were never given a shared language for making choices under uncertainty. When conditions get murky, that gap becomes expensive. High-performing teams, by contrast, build their decision-making toolkit deliberately. They move from endless discussion to concrete proposals. They know the difference between a real objection and ordinary discomfort wi…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on the research and product approach behind Google’s array of new AI products and features, announced this week. I also look at a major recruiting coup at Anthropic, and at some new numbers about small business’s adoption of artificial intelligence. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follo…

More than 30 states across the country have had at least one case of someone sick with Salmonella so far in 2026. Many of those cases are believed to be caused by contact with outdoor poultry, like ducks and chickens. But separately, there’s also been a wave of food recalls for Salmonella contamination, tied to milk powder used in snack seasoning. Salmonella isn’t an uncommon bacteria; each year, the U.S. sees some 1.35 million Salmonella infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most of those stem from food. If it seems like Salmonella is becoming more common, though, there are a few reasons why—related to how we detect…

American cities are choking on traffic. From Los Angeles to Chicago, Atlanta to Boston, gridlock is miserable for everyone. New York City’s Congestion Relief Zone offers a data-rich blueprint for cities willing to treat transportation as a system, rather than focusing on one form of travel at a time. Launched in January 2025, the program charges most drivers entering Manhattan’s core business district during peak hours. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) first comprehensive evaluation report, released in January 2026, shows clear success across mobility, environment, revenue, and equity metrics. The haters are flummoxed. More movement Deconges…