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Authenticity is a critical leadership trait. Research shows that it facilitates more trusting relationships and a more positive working environment. Often, though, in my executive coaching practice, I hear senior leaders use ‘authenticity’ as a covert excuse to resist development. When clients say, “That doesn’t feel authentic,” it’s often a signal they’re avoiding growth. They’re fearfully or righteously attached to a static version of their leadership. This is a major liability. As leaders elevate in seniority, they must adapt their approach. They need to experiment with different ways of thinking, communicating, and engaging to navigate increased scope and complexi…

The conference room door opened, and the team filed back to their desks. Sam had missed the meeting. A client call had run long; it happens. He leaned over the cubicle wall as Elaine sat down. “What did I miss?” he asked. She paused. “Nothing big. Just the usual.” That answer should concern every leader. Because something did happen in that room. Slides were shown. Words were spoken. Time was invested. But nothing stuck. No idea traveled, and no action accelerated. A meeting happened, but communication did not. George Bernard Shaw once wrote that the biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. Leaders fall into that illusion more …

Below, co-authors Dave Evans and Bill Burnett share five key insights from their new book, How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day. Dave and Bill are co-founders of the Stanford Life Design Lab and co-authors of the New York Times bestseller, Designing Your Life. What’s the big idea? A meaningful life isn’t something you discover once or achieve at the top of a hierarchy. It’s something you design through daily practices, mindsets, and experiences. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Dave and Bill—below, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. What’s better than fulfillment? Learning to b…

Economist Larry Summers will resign from his tenured job as a professor at Harvard University, the school announced on Feb. 25, 2026, following heightened scrutiny of his ties with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers will leave at the end of the 2025-26 academic year, with a new title: president emeritus. It’s a soft landing for his fall from grace. In November 2025, Harvard launched an investigation of Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary who previously served as Harvard’s president. The probe looked into whether Summers and other members of Harvard’s faculty and administration had interactions with Epstein that violated its guidelin…

Globally, the majority of people say they’re extroverted, and if you’re an introvert, you may feel out of touch, out of sync, or disconnected. You may also struggle to find friends, make friends, or sustain friendships. But it’s possible to feel not only connected and fulfilled, but also comfortable with yourself as an introvert. It’s a critical issue today. We’ve all become more isolated, with increasing numbers of people who say they’re lonely or they don’t have enough friends. Relationships are critical to physical, cognitive, and emotional well-being. But it’s possible to create great friendships at work and in life, even if you’re an introvert. THE IMPOR…

In the late 1920’s, Einstein and Bohr were engaged in a series of famous debates about the future of physics, in which Einstein insisted that “God does not play dice with the universe.” “Einstein, stop telling God what to do,” Bohr retorted. Einstein lost the argument and his career as a productive scientist was largely finished after that. Ostensibly, the debate was about quantum mechanics and whether what we can know about subatomic particles is absolute or merely a function of probability. But at a deeper level it challenged a basic philosophical principle that had been around since before Plato or Aristotle: that essence precedes existence. If essence precede…

A journalist is assigned a profile of a prominent politician on a tight turnaround. With the interview just hours away, she asks ChatGPT to generate a list of questions. Satisfied with the 30 questions churned out in under a minute, she shares them with her editor to make sure no stone is unturned. The editor nearly rewrites the list entirely. It’s missing questions about pivotal early-life experiences, why the senator dropped out of college, parting ways with her first campaign manager, and more. All of these missing questions stem from understanding the larger context and years of honing editorial judgment—the kinds of things AI can’t replace. Just as generative…

Anthropic is making hay while the sun shines. The AI company’s high-stakes dispute with the Pentagon—in which it refused to allow its product to be used for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance—generated intense mainstream media coverage and a wave of public support, including from many within the artificial intelligence community. Claude rose to No. 1 in the Apple App Store’s free app rankings on Sunday, February 28, and on Tuesday, March 3, it hit No. 1 in a similar ranking for the Google Play store. The government is effectively banning the use of Anthropic models and tools within government agencies and their suppliers, and has labeled Anthropic…

The battle of the burgers is on. But at the center, there’s no actual fast food. Instead, it features viral moments of the companies’ leaders. In case you missed it: Last weekend, an Instagram video of McDonald’s CEO and chairman Chris Kempczinski—looking rather uncomfortable as he sampled his own company’s newly launched Big Arch burger—was widely circulated and mocked across the internet. He took only one small bite and repeatedly called the food a “product.” “I love this product,” Kempczinski said. “It is so good.” The comments were ruthless. “From this video, it seems likely the CEO of McDonald’s has never eaten McDonald’s before,” one user wrote. “What a…

When Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant first joined the company as chief brand officer back in 2021, he saw a unique opportunity in the brand’s cultural potential. “Sports, entertainment, music, food…it was like the Beautiful Mind meme with the equations spinning,” he told me in 2024. “They just needed someone to put it on the wall.” None of his moves since embody this idea more than Live Mas LIVE, Taco Bell’s live stage show in the spirit of Apple’s WWDC. The show began in 2024, when Taco Bell fanatics (myself included) traveled to Las Vegas to watch company execs unveil the brand’s new and limited edition menu items for the year. It was an absurdly perfect premise (a…

Working in tech, I learned that technology alone doesn’t spark transformation. The people do. And people approach new technologies in wildly different ways. To be successful, companies need to adapt to that line of thinking, just like companies expect their teammates to adapt to transformative technologies, like AI. 3 TYPES OF AI ADOPTERS When we rolled out a custom-built company GPT to our 14,000 teammates several years ago, we saw three clear groups emerge. First, there was the “jump-in-with-both-feet” crowd. These are the early adopters who treat anything new like a shiny toy. Next were the skeptics who wondered how much of an impact AI would have on their d…

With GLP-1 use on the rise in the U.S., one grocery store chain made a starter kit for first-time customers that could help capture a higher percentage of their food budget at a time when it’s becoming increasingly important. ShopRite’s “Wellness Your Way” branded kits are free for customers filling their first GLP-1 prescription at the East Coast grocer’s in-store pharmacies. They’re one part informational, another part promotional, and they’re designed to look like they’re from a direct-to-consumer subscription healthcare brand, taking advantage of ShopRite’s specific store model. The blue mailer box, which is available while supplies last, opens from a front fl…

We live in a time when our expectations for ethical business practices are no longer predictable. Global regulation, along with ideas around standards like ESG, are in flux—and building debate around what the standards should be for leaders and managers. “Some governments are tightening oversight, while others are relaxing enforcement,” write ethics leaders at the World Economic Forum. Companies may focus on strictly following the law, thinking that it doesn’t make sense to go beyond regulatory expectations. But being compliant doesn’t mean you’re being ethical. There are three common signals that your company is headed towards a flawed business practice—decision…

Roger Bennett is the witty and charismatic co-host of the popular “Men in Blazers” soccer media network. Born in Liverpool, England, he moved to the United States and has since helped popularize the sport in this country through podcasts, television shows, and books, including his best-selling memoir Reborn in the USA. His new book, WE ARE THE WORLD (CUP), is a personal history of what he calls “the world’s greatest sporting event.” In the following excerpt, he chronicles his experience of the 1994 World Cup, the last event held in the U.S prior to this summer’s tournament. 1994 was also the year Bennett moved to the U.S. The 1994 World Cup brought football to the Un…

Zig-zagging around the glass-and-steel perimeter of the UC Berkeley Grimes Engineering Center, 36 thin metal rods could be what it takes to prevent the building’s total destruction. The rods are the central element of a novel seismic-responsive structural system that is designed to help the building snap back to its original shape in the event of a major earthquake. Their trick is an embedded cluster of taut cables made from a highly flexible compound called a shape-memory alloy that’s capable of bending under tension—like the lateral shaking in a California earthquake—and then straightening out. Developed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill …

In 2023, as Texas lawmakers debated Senate Bill 13—a controversial bill aimed at restricting certain books in public school libraries and expanding parental oversight—Steve Wandler was among the dozen-plus parents, educators, and advocates who testified before the legislature. Wandler wasn’t just another concerned citizen. He was a Canadian entrepreneur who had relocated to Texas the year before to found Bookmarked, a fledgling startup that promises to help school districts manage their library collections and give parents greater visibility into what their children are reading. The legislation addressed the very issue Wandler believed his company could help solve. Th…

Inside a new HP laptop, the copper in its heat sink comes straight from old HP devices—making the company the first to reuse its own recycled metal in a closed loop. In partnership with HP, the Australia-based startup Mint Innovation took in circuit boards from thousands of old HP computers and servers, and then recycled them to supply pure refined copper back to the company. The process is designed to be more sustainable than traditional smelting. Instead of melting down metals in a furnace—an energy-intensive, polluting process—the startup uses a mix of chemicals and biology to recover valuable materials. “What HP is effectively doing is mining e-waste of their …

Gold-medal moments for American athletes abounded at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Among a slew of highlights, Alysa Liu brought the U.S. Olympic gold in singles figure skating for the first time since 2002, Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin topped the podium in Alpine skiing. The Paralympics, which start March 6, will likely see more medals for women athletes, and many of them will be celebrating in Las Vegas this summer. But data from ticket exchange and resale site StubHub shows that the U.S. women’s hockey team’s triumph over Canada for gold in Milan will have a lasting effect on attendance at Professional Women’s Hockey League games. The company’s internal dat…

Early this year, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood awards season kicked off with the Critics Choice Awards, and soon everything will culminate with the Academy Awards on March 15. With the Oscars just two weeks away—and the rest of awards season nearly behind us—it’s the perfect time to overanalyze what movie will emerge victorious on the big night. All this overthinking could even help you win your office competition (or make some money on Polymarket or Kalshi). Here’s everything you need to know to make an informed Oscar prediction ballot: How Oscar nominations are chosen The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Osca…

When I hosted a client dinner honoring my good friends Jules Kroll and his extraordinary wife Lynn, I did not expect to get one of the best bits of life advice I’d ever heard. Jules and Lynn met in college about 65 years ago and raised four wonderful children together. Toward the end of dinner someone asked, “How do you raise good kids?” Lynn, an amazing force of nature, answered swiftly: “You need to raise the children you have—not the ones you would have liked to have.” I was stunned by the clarity and simplicity of what she said and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. LEARN THE HARD WAY AS A PARENT My father died when I was five. My family situ…

A note to corporations everywhere: Asking politely for the internet to stop making fun of you often has the opposite effect. Microsoft may have just learned that lesson the hard way, after it accidentally helped a not-so-nice nickname go viral. As Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot is integrated into features across the company’s products—from its controversial Recall feature, to a dedicated AI button on Windows keyboards—it’s catching more and more flak, including a new term coined just to clown on Copilot: “Microslop,” a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and “AI slop.” The word was flying freely on Microsoft’s official Copilot Discord server, until users noticed a new fi…

Two months ago, a state administrative judge in California determined that Tesla broke the law by misleading consumers. The argument: Tesla led them to believe that its cars had real self-driving capabilities, calling them “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” (commonly known as FSD). The issue is that Teslas can’t really drive by themselves; they still require drivers to remain constantly vigilant to prevent catastrophe. The verdict prompted the California Department of Motor Vehicles to threaten a temporary suspension of Tesla’s manufacturing and sales licenses. Two months after the ruling, on February 13, Tesla’s attorneys filed a complaint alleging the state “wrongf…

America’s three major stock markets, the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P, are all down sharply in morning trading as of this writing. The wave of red across investors’ monitors is primarily due to one major factor: uncertainty around how far the Iran conflict will travel and how long it will last. Here’s what you need to know about how markets are reacting. What happened? Over the weekend, President Donald The President ordered strikes on Iran, during which the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed. The death of Iran’s leader and the ongoing conflict in Iran will have significant consequences for the region as a whole for years to come. Yet wha…