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Just know this: There’s going to be a conversation about artificial intelligence at Thanksgiving this year. An AI superfan is going to gush about chatbots and go on, at length, about how “These things just seem to know everything.” The dinner table’s funnyman will play a highly cringe video they made with the technology. Someone else will either be flummoxed or horrified. A proud guest will declare a vow of abstinence—in fact, they’ve never even used ChatGPT, they will reveal. One self-important guest will feel very smart when recounting the time they caught an AI making a mistake, once. They’ll tell everyone about it. These conversations will be bad. There will be camps: the Luddites, the accelerationists, the skeptics, and the 85-year-old ChatGPT power users. There will be the extant Elon evangelists, the people who are very tuned in, and the people who have not been paying attention to any of this. Conversations will touch on both the anticipation and the terror of the tech. The economy. The tech oligarchy. The environment. The bubble. No one will really be talking to each other. Not in any meaningful sense. Have the conversation anyway. Not because you’ll form some sort of consensus, but because these long human conversations—at their best—come with love and also tension. AI provides neither. Of course, the major hurdle to reaching any sort of common understanding is that AI is too ambiguous a term to serve as a stable jumping-off point for a coherent discourse. For some, the term references a capital-intensive recipe of hyperscaled data centers and transformer models. For others, AI means the consumer-facing, knowledge-loaded models like Sonnet 4.5 and Grok 3. For others, there are simply the characters of “Grok” and “ChatGPT” and “Claude.” To many, AI is simply synonymous with the current age, some loose sense that the internet is increasingly automated and agentic. A good number of people simply use AI, increasingly intermingled with social media and the internet, as a shorthand for all technology. All of these definitions are, in their way, completely accurate, and too divergent for having any meaningful discussion about AI. Proceed, still. We do not choose our families—or at least our blood relatives. AI, meanwhile, promises potentially limitless self-selection. Eras past gave us the YouTube rabbit holes and personalized algorithism. Now chatbots promise private universes of confirmation bias, personalization, and sycophancy. Younger generations are growing up with an unprecedented level of intimacy, and confidentiality, with these bots. Worse, people are forming deeply psychological and romantic relationships with AI tools, plopping their deepest selves into a digital abyss—instead of their loved ones or human professionals. This siloing away of our intimacy leaves us with impossibly difficult-to-predict consequences for our social skills and human relationships. For this reason, many people who have eschewed AI are protecting themselves, while the rest of us are still looking to define the relationship we want with the technology. The challenge, of course, is that AI companies already know what kind of relationship they want us to have with these chatbots: an all-encompassing one, an endless saccharine dialogue. We don’t yet know what lifelong microtargeted conversational partners might do to us, but it’s probably not wonderful. This raises the stakes for our human interactions, including imperfect and ever-trying family holidays. AI firms want to woo us with frictionless interfaces for everything. The antidote is sitting across the table from the people we care about, and all the friction they come with, to discuss our interesting times and everything else. View the full article

At the start of the Introduction to Innovation class at Robert C. Hatch High School in rural Uniontown, Alabama, the face of a teacher fills a wall-size screen at the front of the room. Beaming in from far away like a Zoom call, the teacher is part of a new approach to providing specialized education in underserved communities. This is the Connected Rural Classroom. It’s a novel rethink of the typical high school classroom, designed specifically to increase access to niche, high-quality education for students in rural schools with limited resources. A remote teacher on a big screen is just one part of the classroom’s unique elements. Designed to emphasize science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses and increase students’ technological fluency, the classroom is outfitted with a range of built-in cameras, adjustable lighting, flexible seating, and a slate of hardware for tech-centric programming. The classroom is supported by the state of Alabama and was created by Ed Farm, a Birmingham-based nonprofit focused on closing the growing digital skills gap in communities across the Southeast. “Especially in Alabama, there’s just a lack of high-quality STEM teachers and math teachers that those students in rural areas have access to,” says Waymond Jackson, president of Ed Farm. A high-tech classroom In contrast to the typical linoleum-floored room filled with rows of rigid desks, the Connected Rural Classroom looks more like a modern office. There are movable collaboration tables, standing desks, rocking chairs, ottomans, stadium seats along the back wall, and a line of focus booths looking through windows at the trees outside. The large screen sits at the front of the room on a dark wall that encourages better focus, with a small stage-like area at its foot for presentations by in-class instructors and fellow students. Calming colors and sound-absorptive materials tame the sometimes chaotic effects caused by a roomful of teenagers, and linear cues in the ceiling and floor subconsciously direct their attention to the room’s main instruction area. The room’s lighting is optimized for circadian rhythms, mimicking daylight to augment the single wall of windows in the room. There are also four programmed lighting scenes that can be used during different class scenarios, from stage-lit formal presentations to full-light active collaboration to a subtle dim setting for times requiring quiet focus. There are multiple cameras that provide the remote instructor with views of all parts of the room, and embedded technology allows the instructor to beam to a specific screen to interact with small groups, or directly onto a student’s tablet for one-on-one instruction. The classroom was designed by the architecture firm Kurani, which has been designing unconventional and often tech-forward classrooms for more than a decade. Founder Danish Kurani says this is part of making the room work not just for students but also for the teachers who may be sitting behind a computer hundreds or thousands of miles away. “We went to great lengths to essentially try to make it easier for the remote instructor,” he says. “It’s far more difficult when you’re remote, especially when you’re dealing with high school students. Like, how do you have presence in the room? How do you connect with them?” The zoom of classrooms The classroom design was developed with feedback from students and instructors, and in close collaboration with Ed Farm, which launched in February 2020 with funding from a partnership between the Alabama Power Foundation and Apple. The goal is to expand technology education for students and upskill adults in rural areas. Apple CEO Tim Cook, an Alabama native, was in Birmingham for the program’s 2020 launch. “Ed Farm is about clearing a path for anyone—of any age, background, or interest—whether or not they’re destined for a career in technology,” he said at the time. Ed Farm has made physical spaces a cornerstone of its work, and developed the Connected Rural Classroom design as a prototype for improving the places where technology skill can be acquired. “There was this absolute misalignment between today’s workforce, today’s classroom, and tomorrow’s workforce,” CEO Jackson says, noting that working with Kurani, there was always the goal of creating a classroom design that could work across Ed Farm’s primary geography in the Black Belt of Alabama, but also beyond. “This is truly a model that can be scaled state by state,” he says. That hope informed the earliest stages of the design process. Kurani says his team started by researching existing public school classrooms across the country to understand their spatial and architectural conditions. They found that the average classroom is between 700 and 900 square feet, tends to have its door close to a corner, and has a single wall of windows on the opposite side of the room. The design the architects developed is a prototype that matches those average conditions. Kurani sees it as a kit of parts that can be slightly adjusted based on the layout of a room or the location of its door and windows. “When it’s time to deploy it in schools, it’s very easy and we can tell all of them, ‘Yes, we can easily bring this to your school. It will fit,’” Kurani says. Ed Farm plans to scale the Connected Rural Classroom design to other schools, but also to expand its focus on creating similar educational spaces for people of all ages. “One of the things that we were pushed on by Apple as we came up with our solutions, was to think about the problems and the things that we’re doing that are relevant to Alabama as a microcosm of what actually exists across this country,” Jackson explains. “We see community spaces and unused community assets as an opportunity to bring technology and technology infrastructure closer to those folks that we’re seeking to serve.” View the full article

The number of people who have come to me whispering, “I want to be seen as a thought leader.” And yet when I say, “Amazing, let’s put you on camera,” I’m suddenly met with . . . crickets. I get it. Putting yourself out there can feel awkward. Exposed. Vulnerable. That’s how I feel about dancing in public. It’s my own personal nightmare. At Zumba, I’m hiding behind the water cooler. At my wedding, my husband had to mouth the 1-2-3-4 count so I wouldn’t lose the beat. And recently at a music festival, the band leader pointed at me to come dance on stage. I prayed he was pointing to the person behind me. Nope. As I sheepishly walked up the stairs to the stage, I realized something important: no one cares that much. No one thinks I’m auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance. They’re not judging me—I was overthinking. So I danced. Honestly, probably not that well. However, once I stopped overthinking, I actually had fun. That’s the truth about visibility: Once you stop overthinking, you can start owning your voice. The Real Fear Behind Thought Leadership When I spoke at this year’s Fast Company Innovation Festival on this topic, I started with a few simple questions: Who wants to be more visible? Who wants to be seen as a thought leader? Who wants speaking invitations, press, clients, opportunities? Almost every hand went up. Then I asked, “Who posted a video of themselves in the past month?” Not even a third of the room. We say we want to be seen, but we hide. We tell ourselves we’re too busy, that social media is superficial, or that we’re “not good on camera.” I’ve trained thousands of people to be on camera—from my years as a national TV producer to now a public speaking and video coach—and everyone can learn the skills of being confident on camera. So what holds people back? Fear. Fear of looking silly, fear of seeming salesy, fear that someone from high school will see our video and mock us. But here’s the reality: Hiding from the camera is hiding from opportunity. If you’re not showing up, people who should be discovering you—clients, collaborators, journalists, recruiters, conference organizers—simply won’t find you. Visibility isn’t vanity. It’s credibility. From ‘Accomplished but Anonymous’ to Seen and Successful After nearly 20 years producing and directing at Netflix, People, and launching Us Weekly’s first-ever digital video unit, I left TV to help professionals grow through video and podcasts. But I had a problem: My own social media was a hodgepodge of work moments and my young children climbing on top of me. I was what I now call “accomplished but anonymous.” I had expertise and credibility—but only to my circle of media executives and TV producers. I needed visibility outside my circle if I wanted clients to seek me out. So I started posting to social media, showing up on camera and speaking at seminars. It was awkward at first (not as awkward as dancing on stage!) but I got better each week. Over time, I had new clients, invitations to be a guest on podcasts, and corporate training opportunities. The success has metastasized since then. This year I gave two TEDx talks, I’m a national keynote speaker, and have a thriving business coaching professionals to be seen as experts through video and podcasts. None of that would have happened if I continued to be concerned about “being cringey.” And that’s why I created my SEEN Framework, to help professionals show up authentically without feeling fake or cringey. The SEEN Framework Here’s a breakdown of what SEEN stands for. S = Self-Awareness I grimace when people say “I know I should be on camera, but I’m not good at it” as if they’ve failed in life. You’re an expert in your industry, not a full-time TV host. I have a degree in communication, so don’t feel you “should” know this. And just because you own a phone does not mean you automatically know how to create content. (If owning a microscope made me a scientist, I would have saved a lot of money on tutors.) Being self-aware means recognizing what you haven’t learned yet. Be kinder to yourself. Being confident on camera is a skill, not a personality trait. E = Expertise In my very first job in TV news, I decided who got on-air as an expert. If I picked someone who wasn’t actually an expert? I could get fired. (And I really needed that job.) To be viewed as an expert, establish both your credibility and your point of view. Ask yourself: What do I believe about my industry that isn’t being said enough? What are people constantly misunderstanding about my work? What problems am I obsessed with solving? These insights become your content pillars, your speaking topics—even the early chapters of your book. One of my leadership coach clients recently told me, “My book is basically already written thanks to our messaging work.” That’s the magic of defining what you stand for: It clarifies everything. Forget about building your “personal brand”—share your professional perspective. E = Exposure When I asked the crowd at the Fast Company Innovation Festival what word “influencer” brings to mind they said: “shallow,” and “freeloader.” Tough crowd. But when I asked a friend what she thought the word meant, she said: “An influencer is a thought leader in their industry.” Forget about semantics. And don’t shy away from messaging people you don’t know well—some of my most meaningful business relationships, like partnerships, collaborations, and clients have started online! N = Next Level When I began in TV over 20 years ago, to be visible you needed to be selected by an editor or a TV producer. Instead of feeling that social media is a burden, see it as an opportunity. Stop waiting for gatekeepers—bosses, publishers, networks—to choose you. Create your own opportunities. Start a video series. Host a webinar. Pitch yourself to a podcast. Launch the newsletter you’ve been thinking about since 2017. One of my clients—a health care consultant—followed this exact path: We created a video series and podcast, and she doubled down on posting to social media. Within months she had three new clients (including her dream client) and within a year she was invited to moderate conferences nationwide. When you stop waiting for permission and start creating, doors swing open. The Mindset Shift: Stop Hiding, Start Shining Thought leadership doesn’t start with followers, it starts with ownership. Own your ideas, your voice, and your visibility. Create your own stage. When you stop hiding, you start shining. Thought leadership isn’t about being loud or cringey. It’s about sharing your point of view, and having the value you bring be seen and recognized. So stop overthinking and start owning your voice. People want to hear it. View the full article

Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee made public more than 20,000 pages of documents from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. The documents were released as thousands of individual text files, images, and scanned PDFs, a monumental trove most wouldn’t have the time or patience to sift through. But what if you could navigate the source documents as easily as you do your inbox? That was the thinking behind Jmail, a Gmail-style interface for accessible browsing of Epstein’s released emails launched Friday by Kino CEO Luke Igel and software engineer Riley Walz. Walz, a serial website builder previously dubbed San Francisco’s “Tech Jester,” is also one of the masterminds behind the Panama Playlists, which earlier this year exposed the Spotify listening habits of some famous people, as well as a tool to track San Francisco’s parking cops (the project lasted just four hours). In an X post announcing the Epstein project, Walz confirmed the pair used Google’s Gemini AI to do optical character recognition on the individual emails, making them more readable and searchable than the source documents. The site also includes verification links to government originals. “You are logged in as Jeffrey Epstein, jeevacation@gmail.com,” the Jmail website reads. “These are real emails released by Congress.” Just like a real inbox, the messages are sorted from most recent, dating up to the eve before Epstein’s arrest in 2019. There’s also a working search feature (search “The President,” and you’ll get 1,000 results). In the sidebar, you can sort by Inbox, Starred, and Sent. Copying Gmail’s ability to star important messages—except this time crowdsourced by the internet—the most-starred email, with 228 stars, is correspondence with Epstein’s brother, Mark L. Epstein. It contains the now infamous line: “Ask him if Putin has the photos of The President blowing Bubba?” The lower sidebar section is sorted into Labels, which, in Gmail, separates emails by category. In Jmail, it is a list of people who regularly corresponded with Epstein, including journalist Michael Wolff, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Donald The President’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, to name a few. The House Oversight Committee released the original emails on November 12. Since that release, the president has signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the attorney general to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” within 30 days. View the full article

When it’s parked in your garage, the Polestar 3 can now help you save on your electric bill. The automaker is the latest to roll out bidirectional charging for its electric vehicles, making it possible to charge the SUV’s battery when power is cheap and then use the vehicle to power your house when prices go up. The company partnered with Dcbel, a startup that makes technology that manages the flow of energy between the car and home. “Most of our cars sit in driveways more than 80% of the time,” says Dcbel CEO Marc-André Forget. “Now, for the first time, if we think about it, cars start to be useful even when parked. This is transformational. It’s the second-largest investment for most family after the market of the home, and those assets are underused.” When you plug the car into Dcbel’s home energy station, called the Ara, artificial intelligence kicks in and analyzes energy prices, forecasts how much energy you’ll need over the next few days and how much you need for driving, and, if you have solar panels, it also predicts how much solar power you’ll be generating. The device uses that data to decide, “Should I charge the car right now?” Forget says. “Should I supercharge the car? Should I wait and charge later? Should I use the energy from the car to power the house, to basically avoid buying energy from the grid at a very high price?” When your house needs power, the equipment converts DC power from your car into AC for the wiring in your home. (The tech can also double as an inverter for solar panels, though if you already have a solar inverter, it likely doesn’t have the right software to work with an EV.) Any EV could become bidirectional, but automakers need to develop software to make it work. Polestar spent 18 months working with Dcbel to design a seamless user experience. Users can track the system through an app, though it handles everything automatically. If the power goes out in the middle of the night, the car will wake up and start charging your house. If the grid is down over a long period, the car’s battery can charge an average house for 2.5 days, or as long as 10 days if you start rationing power. The home energy system is pricey, starting at $5,000 for a base model. But in California, Dcbel won a grant that will provide customers with generous rebates: up to $8,100 for a full-featured version of the tech, up to $2,000 for installation, up to $200 for interconnecting to the grid, $1,000 to enroll in a dynamic rate utility program, and up to $2,500 toward a bidirectional EV like the Polestar 3. The rebates are first-come, first-serve, and decline over time. But for the first customers, the charging equipment could be nearly free. “We chose to focus on California primarily because of the state incentives that are available,” says Peter Wexler, head of product for Polestar in North America. “They made a natural introductory plan for us.” Customers in other states can buy Dcbel’s charging system, but would have to front the full cost. For utilities, this type of system can help stabilize the grid. Power demand surges at certain times—when everyone gets home from work in the evening, or when everyone turns on their AC during a heat wave. If enough EV owners use their batteries to power their house when demand is highest, it can make it possible for utilities to avoid turning to more polluting sources like gas power plants. California also has some vehicle-to-grid (V2G) pilots that allow EV owners to sell power back to the grid at peak hours and make money, but that isn’t yet widely available since the public utility commission still needs to finalize interconnection and compensation rules. Dcbel’s equipment will enable V2G charging as soon as utilities permit it. Dcbel has developed and shared a new software standard for bidirectional charging that it hopes automakers will universally adopt; it’s currently working with eight automakers to add other cars to its system. Forget contends that more cars with this capability will likely roll out soon, noting, “I think we’re going to see lots of news about current cars becoming bidirectional over the next couple of months.” View the full article

Africa’s official maps are stuck in the past, often either outdated, incomplete—or both. But governments don’t have the budgets to fix them, making it difficult to complete projects as complex as deciding where to put new solar plants to as simple as delivering a package. Now a new plan is underway to map the entire continent using satellite data and AI. “Maybe 90% of African countries don’t have access to an accurate current base map for their country,” says Sohail Elabd, global director of emerging markets at Esri, the mapping company behind the Map Africa Initiative. At a United Nations event last year, Elabd met the heads of national mapping departments from around 30 African countries. Nearly all said they didn’t have accurate base maps—the foundational maps that are critical for everything from urban planning to disaster response. “Everyone was complaining that they’re struggling,” he says. “They had no funding.” On the plane ride home, he started thinking about what satellite data could make possible. Traditionally, mapping a country required flying specialized planes with sensors and cameras over the land for a month or more, along with extensive data collection on the ground. “Usually it’s a very costly process and time consuming,” says Elabd. Now AI can analyze satellite data and create detailed maps at a fraction of the cost. The new project will train AI to recognize features across different terrains, from roads in the desert to homes in the rainforest. Then it will produce base maps that include physical features of the landscape, buildings and roads, and geographic boundaries. The project will also map additional layers, from agricultural fields to urban infrastructure and vegetation. It’s possible to map not only where farms or trees are located but also to analyze the type of crop and the species of each individual tree. While satellite data and AI are already used in mapping, the continent-wide scale of the project is unprecedented. The maps can help governments update land registries and plan everything from where to best deploy wind and solar farms to port infrastructure improvements. They can help make navigation systems more accurate. And in parts of Africa where standard addresses don’t exist—making it hard to make deliveries or deploy emergency services—the new maps can give governments the details they need to create address systems. The project will launch early next year, with Space42, a UAE-based space tech company, providing satellite data, and Microsoft supplying cloud infrastructure and the AI framework. Each African country must submit an official request to participate. After the AI is trained, updating the maps will become significantly cheaper, and each country will receive a data management system for annual or biannual updates. The same approach can help other areas that have gaps in map data, including South America and parts of Asia. Elabd notes, “The platform we are building for Africa is designed to be reusable and cost-effective for other regions, and it can produce base maps anywhere in the world.” View the full article

Working for myself was the goal. I did it. I made it. I work for myself. But it hasn’t fixed my life. I’m free to pursue anything I want. But achieving goals doesn’t and won’t make me complete. There’s a term for it: the arrival fallacy. It’s the reason we sometimes still feel “empty” even when we achieve what we want. Achieving a goal rarely feels like arrival. Because it’s not the end we imagined. You do everything you can to climb the ladder. But you get up there and then nothing. Or even worse, a disappointment. That happens because the end we expect doesn’t necessarily solve our problems. Goals are meant to guide us. They can show you how much you’ve grown. How far you’ve come. And what you are capable of achieving. But they are not an end in themselves. Happiness is a by-product of getting things done. Philosophers and psychologists have been saying it for years. But we forget because we want instant gratification. You want to experience what it feels like when you finally tell yourself you made it. “The brain is in pursuit of happiness, and because the brain is much more concerned about the future than the present, it conceives happiness as the guarantee of an indefinitely long future of pleasures,” wrote philosopher Alan Watts. The hedonic treadmill Goals are never done. You are never done. The human mind is wired to adapt. You achieve one thing today, tomorrow you will find something else to focus on. It’s called the hedonic treadmill. You think more money, a bigger house, a promotion, or a new project will make you happy. You get it. It feels good for a while, then your brain moves the target. You feel that weird emptiness again. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It’s just biology. Even the most successful people you know suffer from the arrival trap. We are wired for pursuit, not possession. The “feel good” emotion is in the chase, not the results. The thrill is in the doing, the process, the almost-there. The minute you get what you want, the brain jumps ships. The fallacy becomes a trap because we assume a number, a title, or a single experience would fix our wiring. It won’t. Accept it, and you stop beating yourself up. You will never be satisfied. But there’s a way around the arrival trap. The solution Focus on finding meaning and joy in what you do daily. “It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top,” says writer and philosopher Robert M. Pirsig. The point of life was never to tie our happiness to goals. Or “arrive” to feel joy. You are already on the mountain. You might as well find and enjoy what makes you come alive. Build meaning into your experiences, not the onetime milestone. Enjoy today’s wins no matter how small. Notice your progress. Find joy in the act of doing, not in checking boxes. By all means do what you must. Set the goal. Focus on the process of getting things done. But stop expecting life-changing happiness when you arrive. Completion is not necessarily fulfilment. Learn to enjoy the climb. That way, even failure feels like progress. Because it is. You’ve learned what doesn’t work. You’ve become wiser. I start projects that bring out the best in me. That means I refuse to get attached to the outcome. I get my thrill from the process. I’m only entitled to my actions, never to its fruits. Whatever I achieve is a bonus. Mahatma Gandhi said “The path is the goal.” Shift your focus to finding meaning in the doing, not the having. Completed a small task of the project. Good. Celebrate the weird small stuff. Helped someone at work without waiting for praise? Great. These micro-wins can do wonders for our happiness. The “arrival” feeling you expect isn’t the end. It’s just one of many experiences to come. You may feel empty again. And that’s okay. That’s normal. Accept it, and suddenly you stop fearing the emptiness. You stop blaming yourself. Find joy in the climb Goals will give you direction. But it’s the process that truly transforms you. Reaching a goal won’t fill the existential emptiness. Start finding joy in the climb. That’s where you actually feel alive. Happiness isn’t a place you arrive at. It’s the quality of your attention along the way. It’s the focus you bring to your work, the connection with your team. And the small improvements you notice along the way. By all means set your goals. Pursue them. But remember, the finish line is just one of many in your lifetime. Pursue goals for growth. That’s where you actually feel alive. The real work is reaching the peak; it’s learning to enjoy the climb. The prize was never the point. The person you became while earning it was. Next time you achieve something and feel that strange emptiness. It’s not a sign you are ungrateful. It’s a sign you’re human. View the full article

Below, coauthors Melissa Valentine and Michael Bernstein share five key insights from their new book, Flash Teams: Leading the Future of AI-Enhanced, On-Demand Work. Melissa is an associate professor of management science at Stanford University, where she codirects the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. Michael is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford, where he is a Bass University Fellow. Both have had their work featured in major publications, including The New York Times and Wired. What’s the big idea? Have you ever wished that you could assemble your version of the Avengers at work? That’s basically what it means to build a Flash Team. Bringing together the right set of experts at exactly the right time to tackle a tough, important job has become a realistic, repeatable goal for leaders today—unlocked by powerful new technological tools that enhance organizational strategy. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Melissa and Michael—below, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. There are experts everywhere, all the time One of the biggest mindset shifts of flash teams is recognizing that expertise is abundant. Managers have been trained to think that hiring an expert takes weeks of job postings, interviews, and approvals. But whatever expertise you need, you can probably access it in minutes, not months. A founder of a $35 million start-up told us that he had a client who needed to reimagine how to sell a beloved toy truck after their retail stores shut down. Using the flash teams approach, he quickly found a former McKinsey partner in retail, someone from Toys R Us corporate development, and a supply-side expert from Amazon. They had never met before, but they delivered so well that the client rehired them to manage execution. We’ve demonstrated that same speed in our classrooms. I’ve asked students to hire a professional designer from Upwork and get a finished team logo in under 80 minutes. Every time, they’ve done it. “Technology lowers the transaction cost of finding, vetting, and convening experts.” Leaders can stop assuming that talent is a bottleneck. Once you recognize expert abundance, you can start designing projects differently: taking on bolder challenges, experimenting faster, and pulling in expertise at the moment it’s needed. This shifts managers from fearing scarce or hard-to-find talent to orchestrating abundant talent. This is possible because modern online labor markets and digital platforms are the infrastructure. They provide access to millions of professionals worldwide, reputation systems that help you assess quality, and fast contracting and payment systems that remove friction. Technology lowers the transaction cost of finding, vetting, and convening experts, so leaders can act on the abundance that’s already available. We live in an economy of expert abundance. With the right mindset and tools, you can assemble the right people at exactly the right time. 2. AI can help you design teams and organizations The amazing thing about having flash teams is that, because they are created using computing, you suddenly have the ability for AI to help design your organization: how to staff, how to work together, and when to adapt. As a result, we can solve lots of problems that are organizational and managerial blind spots. We’re not talking about theory here, but about practical dials that managers usually leave on the table. AI can influence how our teams and organizations are structured and function: How should this team be collaborating? Should we have horizontal leadership or enforce a steep hierarchy? Who should even be on this team, or are right for this project? Many of the decisions needed to build an effective team can be supported by AI insights. As people, we tend to under-explore. We don’t try enough options. We try a couple different things, see what seems to work, and then we say, “Yeah, seems good.” But this is how we fall into a rut. With AI plus flash teams, you instrument the basics and give the system permission to propose small experiments, such as: Try a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for decisions this week. Rotate one member for fresh eyes. Shorten stand-ups and add a mid-week asynchronous check. If it produces improvements, the AI learns to keep it; if it doesn’t help, the AI might toss it. As people join or roll off, the recommendations adapt. These kinds of things give us managerial superpowers. AI-enhanced flash teams can make this possible. 3. Management classics are still classic—just reimagined. In some ways, flash teams sound like something brand new—on-demand experts, AI tools, dynamic org charts—but the management classics are still classics. They just look a little different in this new world. Take project management. In our research, we studied hundreds of flash teams. The best teams didn’t succeed just because they had the right experts. They succeeded because a team manager made sure the pieces came together: synchronizing handoffs, keeping information transparent, and making sure the client’s vision stayed connected to the team’s daily work. One engineer told us bluntly, “The PM (project manager) makes or breaks the team.” Or leadership. In one of our experiments, when a client suddenly changed requirements mid-project, the teams that thrived weren’t those with the flashiest experts. They were the ones where a leader stepped in to integrate different perspectives, rebalance priorities, and help the group adapt quickly. Leadership—the ability to inspire, coordinate, and adapt—still matters, maybe more than ever. “Flash teams give new life to timeless management skills.” And integration. Even with great role clarity, unexpected complexity shows up every day. Someone doesn’t deliver, or two roles conflict, or the work comes in messy. That’s the residual complexity that only managers can resolve. In one case, a team writing poems for a card game had beautiful but mismatched outputs. They quickly elevated one person into the role of Chief Poetry Officer for a day—just long enough to integrate the parts into a coherent whole. That’s hierarchy reimagined: temporary, lightweight, but crucial. With flash teams, digital tools support classic management functions. Platforms like Slack or project dashboards give managers real-time visibility across the whole team. AI-enabled systems can help leaders spot when handoffs are slipping, recommend workflow adjustments, or even simulate different team configurations before you commit. The human arts of leadership, integration, and project management get amplified. Flash teams give new life to timeless management skills. The tools may be modern, but the fundamentals—clear leadership, good coordination, thoughtful integration—are still what make or break a team. 4. AI org simulations and organizational what-ifs. Flash teams open this incredible opportunity to have a “what-if machine”: What if we organized the team this way? Would the team work better or worse? What if we brought this person onto the team—would it help? What if we split up into two smaller units? Would we move faster and make better decisions? Imagine being a manager and getting a fast, concrete preview of what might happen: what could go wrong, what’s likely to improve, and what might get worse. This is possible through the clever application of large language models, such as ChatGPT. We can use this new generation of AIs to create lightweight simulations of your organization. Imagine digital twins: little digital copies of everyone on your team that act and behave roughly the same way that they do. With those simulations, you could put the digital twin of your team or org into different configurations—reconfigure the team, change collaboration rules, and more—and see if they coordinate more smoothly. This is possible through generative agents. These are AI agents that simulate people based on a bit of knowledge about them. Maybe you run a little interview with everyone in the team and use that to create a digital twin of them, or maybe everyone agrees to use a slice of your historical Slack or email to create digital twins of your team. Once you have that, your team can become this dynamic, queryable object: you ask a question, run a quick scenario, and watch how it plays out. It’s a rapid, plausible rehearsal—a “what if.” “This is possible through the clever application of large language models, such as ChatGPT.” In this way, we can also catch early warning signs for a team. It allows leaders to flag whether a team is likely to fracture—to stop wanting to work together—by using about 60 to 90 seconds of their chat. A tiny glimpse into how people communicate and coordinate can reveal surprisingly strong signals. Suddenly, we can predict whether this team will work as great long-term partners, or if we should reconsider them. It’s almost like organizational speed dating. Imagine having the superpower to create organizational “what ifs.” It gives you this amazing managerial sandbox. Flash teams turn your org into a safe, queryable “what-if” machine, so you can prototype structure before you commit to it. 5. You already have a flash teams toolbox You don’t need to have a PhD in artificial intelligence to do these things. You can do it today, without any custom software. All you need is the idea and access to a modern large language model like ChatGPT. It turns out that everything we had to spend months coding manually can be generated on the fly by an LLM if you can just be specific about what you need. AI can help you design or refine your team. One option is to get an advanced degree in computer science and learn about networks of multi-armed bandits, then build it internally. But the other option is to just keep a spreadsheet where you’ve been keeping track of how things are going, and the management decisions you’ve been making so far. Input that into GPT-5, ask it to implement this approach, and it will do all the math for you. Enjoy our full library of Book Bites—read by the authors!—in the Next Big Idea app. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

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Meta allegedly stopped internal research on social media’s impact on people after finding negative results, a court filing released Friday claims. The filing took place in a Northern California District Court, as a group of U.S. state attorneys general, school districts, and parents launched a suit against Meta, Google-owned YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. The court documents allege that Meta misled the public on the mental health risks to children and young adults who excessively use Facebook and Instagram, even though its research showed that the social media apps had demonstrated harm. “The company never publicly disclosed the results of its deactivation study,” the lawsuit says. “Instead, Meta lied to Congress about what it knew.” The research, code-named “Project Mercury,” took place in 2020. Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to see what impact deactivating Facebook had on people. According to internal documents, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.” According to the filings, instead of pursuing more research, Meta dropped the project, claiming that participants’ feedback was biased by “the result of the existing media narrative around the company.” Politico reported that in a sealed deposition earlier this year, Meta’s employees expressed concern about the research’s findings. “Oh my gosh, y’all. IG is a drug,” Shayli Jimenez, a Meta senior researcher, is quoted as saying in internal documents. In response, another employee allegedly said, “We’re basically pushers.” The Politico story reported that Jimenez said in her deposition that the comments were made “sarcastically.” In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said: “We strongly disagree” with the allegations, “which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture.” Stone continued: “The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens—like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens’ experiences.” And in a series of posts on BlueSky, Stone also pushed back against the idea that Meta was trying to bury the results of the terminated study with Nielsen, noting that the study found that people who believed using Facebook was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it. “It makes intuitive sense, but it doesn’t show anything about the actual effect of using the platform,” Stone wrote. However, the latest uproar over Meta’s research is hardly the first time the company’s impact on children’s mental health has been questioned—even by its own employees. In 2021, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal company documents to the government, which referenced risks to children. Haugen said the company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but refuses to “because they have put their astronomical profits before people.” A growing body of evidence, outside of the company’s own research, has long pointed to the harm that social media may have on children’s mental health. A 2019 study found that teens who spent more than three hours a day on social media “may be at heightened risk for mental health problems, particularly internalizing problems.” Likewise, research shows that mental health disorders among today’s youth are at an all-time high and growing. In response to growing concern around children’s mental health, in a 2023 report, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on social media companies and policymakers to act, rather than to place the entire burden of limiting kids’ time on social media on parents. View the full article

We have reached the moment white collar workers have feared for months. Has AI finally come for my job? Companies like Salesforce claim they need fewer human employees to do the work AI can tackle, after laying off thousands. Klarna claims the company was able to shrink its headcount by about 40%, in part because of AI. Duolingo said last spring it will stop using contractors for work that AI can handle. Overall, companies have announced a staggering 700,000 job cuts in the first five months of 2025, an 80% jump from the previous year. The irony is almost poetic. For years, the tech industry assumed robots would come for factory workers first. Amazon’s leaked documents once suggested the company could replace half a million warehouse jobs with automation. Instead, just weeks ago, Amazon laid off 14,000 middle managers while planning to hire 250,000 seasonal warehouse workers for the holidays. The AI revolution, it turns out, is hollowing out the corporate ladder before it touches the warehouse floor. The narrative around artificial intelligence and the job market is challenging for white-collar workers right now. Yet while Silicon Valley sends warnings over which desk jobs AI will consume next, we’re missing an equally important question about the future of AI: What about everyone else? The AI application bubble nobody’s talking about We are currently in an AI application bubble. The last few years of AI innovation have focused almost entirely on white-collar productivity: workplace efficiency tools, revenue-optimization platforms, and communication automation. Many of the major AI innovations from the past two years have been designed for someone working a 9-5 desk job from a laptop. Meanwhile, the people who make up 60% of the American workforce are stuck completing manual onboarding processes, sorting through countless texts to find the right shift, calling in when they need a shift swapped, clocking in on physical time clocks, logging in to web-only portals, and waiting for biweekly paychecks. We’re talking about warehouse crews, janitors, delivery drivers, nurses, and game day parking attendants. These are the people who have been largely forgotten when it comes to how AI can transform their day-to-day jobs without risk of eliminating their roles. Every day, millions of shift-based workers keeping hospitals running, concerts staffed, and factories moving are dealing with broken, archaic systems. They’re waiting for shift confirmations, digging through emails for schedules, and calling managers just to ask, “When am I working next?” By focusing almost all of AI’s potential on the white-collar economy, we’ve left out the workers who are irreplaceable. Building accessible, intuitive tools for non-tech-savvy users has the potential to narrow the global inequality gap while creating a more resilient foundation for technological progress and a more resilient economy. Only 40% of American workers say they have a “quality job” While office jobs dwindle, demand for human workers continues to grow. Restaurants need servers. Construction sites need carpenters. Hospitals need nurses. And in turn, the people doing these jobs need shift accessibility, work-life flexibility, and the ability to get paid quickly after shifts so they can continue to participate in the shift work economy and keep the world moving. The human cost of not having a better way to work is striking. A recent Gallup and Jobs for the Future study found that just 40% of U.S. workers have what they define as a “quality job.” The rest face unstable schedules, limited growth opportunities, and financial insecurity. Not because they lack motivation or work ethic, but because the systems that support frontline work haven’t kept pace with the demands of modern life. When workers play significant roles, have preschedules, and receive fair pay, they’re more engaged, more productive, and lead higher quality work lives. What we learned building technology for Uber drivers We know what’s possible when technology is actually designed for frontline workers, because we’ve lived it. While leading product development for the Uber for Drivers app, the two of us spent years focused on the driver experience. Drivers had to navigate complex processes: onboarding, completing background checks and vehicle inspections, selecting preferences, and receiving payments. Uber’s success was powered by a phenomenal self-service app that gave drivers the agency, control, and flexibility they needed in their lives. That experience taught us that technology has the potential to dramatically improve frontline work, and the emergence of AI gives us an opportunity to do that once again. Tools like smarter scheduling systems that account for worker preferences and availability, AI-powered training programs that adapt to individual learning styles, communication platforms that actually work for teams that don’t sit in front of computers all day, and predictive systems that can optimize logistics and reduce physical strain. The technology exists. The investment, however, is still lacking. Irreplaceable The “Essential Economy” that we are talking about includes sectors like construction, manufacturing, transportation, etc., and represents $7.5 trillion in output per year, which is 27% of America’s GDP, equating to 52 million jobs and two million businesses. If you were to add healthcare, retail, and all public services—considered by many to be critical, hourly work sectors of the economy—the size jumps to $12 trillion of GDP, 95 million jobs, and three million businesses. Without people to fill these roles, not only are essential services not being provided, but the US economy also suffers greatly. With each technical revolution, we’ve always seen that collaboration with the technology yields better results than we can without it, or it can without us. Instead, what if AI innovators asked, “How can we use AI to make these jobs better, safer, and more productive while also making workers’ lives easier?” Consider a warehouse worker trying to swap shifts to attend a child’s school event. In most facilities today, this involves a series of text messages, phone calls, and manual approvals—a process that might take days and often fails. AI could handle this in seconds, reaching out to available workers who have relevant experience and required certifications, sharing shift details, and filling the shift. The worker doesn’t lose their job; they gain flexibility and dignity. Consider a nurse who needs more hours as bills are adding up. He signs up with a new staffing agency so he can pick up extra shifts here and there. Today, onboarding entails manual back-and-forth with the agency and waiting days for assignments. AI can dramatically speed up his time to first shift, verifying his license instantly after he uploads it, offering digital onboarding tailored to the units where he’ll be picking up shifts, and matching him with shifts that work for his busy schedule. Instead of frustration and delays, the nurse begins with confidence and is able to start earning and covering his bills faster. Applying AI to the roles that need it today As the tech industry grapples with shifts toward white-collar jobs and AI’s role, we have an opportunity. The same sophisticated AI systems that can automate corporate reporting can be adapted to optimize shift schedules. The same machine learning that powers chatbots can improve safety protocols. The same natural language processing that summarizes emails can help workers with limited English proficiency better understand their rights and benefits. The current moment of disruption in white-collar work is painful for millions of people, and that pain deserves recognition and resolution. At the same time, it also creates an opening to ask bigger questions about where AI should be applied and who it could serve. The AI revolution isn’t going away anytime soon. This is our opportunity to choose how we use it, and who benefits. View the full article

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I feel it—the strain, the fractured attention. The constant tug to check, scroll, click. Everything we want is a tap away. Yet when we chase it all, something essential slips through our fingers. I see it clearly in my own world of conferences and events. These are spaces meant for connection, yet people often leave feeling overwhelmed and oddly under-connected. The truth is that genuine engagement is rare. According to Gallup, only 21% of employees are fully engaged. Most are simply going through the motions. It’s a similar story at large-scale events and webinars, where participation beyond passive listening has long been the exception, not the norm. That’s exactly why we need to get smarter about how we bring people in. The paradox of our time is this: We can be anywhere, tuned into everything, and still not truly show up. For business leaders, that’s a high-stakes dilemma. In a landscape full of options, you’re not just competing with the next brand, you’re competing for the attention of someone juggling hundreds of emails, dodging spam, and scrolling past a world in crisis. THE CHALLENGE TO SHOW UP None of this is breaking news. The battle for attention is well-documented. But what’s less discussed, and just as urgent, is that not all engagement is equal. True participation is more than clicking, liking, or even showing up. It means contributing, influencing, shaping. And it can be the difference between relevance and irrelevance for a brand. Over the years, I’ve sat through countless keynotes and meetings where success was measured in metrics that looked good on paper but meant little to those in the room. Still, many businesses chase the easy numbers: impressions, clicks, headcount. These are visible, measurable, and falsely reassuring. But they often track activity without meaning. And mistaking visibility for vitality is a dangerous error. The deeper challenge, and opportunity, is to create environments—digital or physical—where participation asks people to show up fully, as themselves. To risk being seen. To give shape to the thoughts and questions they’ve been carrying but haven’t had the space to voice. The problem is that much of what we call participation today is extractive. It looks active on the surface. People give their time, energy, and attention, but get little in return. Extractive participation puts people to work: in classrooms, meetings, projects, or jobs, but it leaves them drained. It’s not always intentional. Often, it stems from a legacy mindset, treating participation as a metric, not a meaningful exchange. Most places aren’t designed to make people feel seen, challenged, or changed. Participation is treated as performance. It’s become about optics, a signal of engagement, not the real thing. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY I’ve seen this in my own field. Many well-produced industry events make this mistake at scale. They spend millions to bring people together, flying them across countries or continents, yet fail to foster real participation. Attendees sit through polished keynotes and panels without speaking to the person beside them, someone who might be wrestling with the very same challenges they have. They leave with pages of notes, but no real connections nor any transformation. The best questions in the room go unasked or unanswered. The most valuable ideas stay buried, not for lack of brilliance, but because no one created the space for them to emerge. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The rooms we gather in—physical or virtual—can do more than host content. They can become engines of energy, curiosity, and exchange. In my own work, I’ve seen what’s possible when spaces are designed to welcome vulnerability and invite true dialogue. The energy shifts. The space transforms the people in it. That’s when participation changes, from extractive to generative. People begin asking better questions. They challenge each other more openly. And they stay engaged. GENERATIVE PARTICIPATION Generative participation creates mutual growth and it happens when three things are present: Reciprocity: People are not only consuming, they are also giving and receiving in equal measure. Amplification: Contributions build on one another, creating outcomes no single person could reach alone. Transformation: Participants leave different than they arrived, more connected, more capable, more inspired. In the right space, a single question can shift a strategy. A personal story can upend assumptions. A simple idea can spark a new product, a partnership, a path forward. People don’t leave drained but energized. They leave with notes scribbled in the margins, names to follow up with, and ideas they can’t wait to bring to life. The difference is simple, but it changes everything. Extractive spaces take more than they give. Generative spaces turn contribution into creation and connection, both with others and with oneself. That’s the difference between engagement that feels like a performance and connection that feels like a life force. The ability to contribute meaningfully isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic asset. The challenge is, it’s hard to measure. You can’t showcase it on a slide like attendance numbers or social impressions. But when it’s missing, you feel it: classrooms where students check out, communities that can’t mobilize, businesses full of talk but starved for clarity. And when it’s there, you feel that too: Teams move with purpose, networks grow stronger, and ideas don’t just echo, they spark action. GIVE UP SOME CONTROL True contribution thrives in environments that signal safety, openness, and curiosity. But creating that kind of space goes beyond making people feel comfortable. It means loosening your grip, letting go of control so others can step in, speak up, and shape what happens next. Because here’s another truth: Real participation involves giving up some control. We spend plenty of time and energy trying to “generate engagement,” a phrase that sounds like progress but often sidesteps the harder work of inviting real contribution. True participation is rarely tidy. Creating space for it means welcoming the unexpected. Because the unplanned and the unpolished often create the conditions for something more powerful to emerge. That’s where shared meaning, surprising insight, and the breakthroughs our organizations and our world need most begin to take shape. Christine Renaud is CEO of Braindate. View the full article

As a physician at Duke, I often saw how women, especially those juggling chronic illness, caregiving, and limited healthcare access, faced delays in getting the right care. What stood out wasn’t just the complexity of their conditions, but how predictable the barriers were. Women face unique challenges in getting timely access to the care they need. Many care options are simply inconvenient and often do not meet patients where they are. For example, forcing a busy working mom to take the day off work, driving 30 minutes for a routine screening can be a challenge if having to juggle a 9-5 and childcare too. Many women are caregivers for aging parents or children, compounding the challenge of taking care of oneself. To make health more equitable, women require convenient options to engage in their health and readily participate in research. Recently, a landmark 40-year study of beta-blockers, one of the most common medications prescribed, demonstrated that adverse effects on women, when taken after specific types of heart attacks. This flew in the face of what I was taught in medical school, though at that time there weren’t enough studies with women participants and the information just wasn’t available. For years, women have been prescribed these medications, based on study designs that didn’t adequately represent them. It’s not just that women are underdiagnosed or left out of research; it’s that we’remissing a massive opportunity to advance health by elevating options for women. Women are the most frequent healthcare decision makers, but also the longest consumers of healthcare (i.e. women live longer than men!) in the economy. While women account for 80% of healthcare decisions, they also make up 65% of the healthcare workforce. They experience more chronic disease, and spend more out-of-pocket, not including maternity costs. They use more prescriptions, attend more appointments, and shape family health behavior. If you’re building a product, launching a trial, or setting a research agenda, the reality is simple: You’re already in the business of women’shealth, whether you know it or not. WOMEN’S HEALTH IS MORE THAN BIKINI MEDICINE For too long, “women’s health” has been conventionally categorized by the body parts covered by a bikini—reproductive care, breast cancer screenings, and obstetrics related topics. This is instead of what it truly involves: the whole body. Several studies show women are consistently and disproportionately affected by stroke, cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive disorders such as dementia, and more. Women are the cornerstone of the entire healthcare market,whichcan boost the global economy $1 trillion annually by 2040. Bikini medicine has left care gaps in everything from heart disease to chronic pain. On the biopharma side, just 4% of R&D spending targets medical research specific to women. And yet in 2024, female-focused startups received only 8.5% of digital health funding, down from nearly 15% in 2020. This isn’t about a lack of innovation. It’s about a lack of prioritization. WHEN WOMEN ARE LEFT OUT, EVERYONE PAYS There are real costs when women are left out of the data: Clinical risk: Women are twice as likely to experience side effects and we aren’t sure why. Potentially, it’s because trials skew male. Economic drag: Women spend 25% more of their lives in poor health compared to men. That results in billions in lost productivity and missed potential. Reputational fallout: In a consumer-driven world, building products that don’t work well for half the population is a fast way to lose trust—and market share. Getting women into research is not a nice-to-have. It’s critical for safety, quality, and return on investment, and to develop therapies that work well for over half of the people they are prescribed to. CLOSING THE GAP COULD UNLOCK $1 TRILLION A YEAR McKinsey estimates that improving outcomes for women could add $1 trillion to the global economy annually, by 2040. That’s not wishful thinking. It’s rooted in simple interventions—better diagnosis, smarter data, faster access to care. Consider this: Half of all women in the U.S. Half of all women in the U.S. each year skip or delay care, often due to costs, scheduling issues, or a lack of trust in the system. Couple this with clinical research historically, and there is less substantial women’s data available to train AI models powering the future of care, even though women take more medications and manage more chronic conditions. This is where the opportunity lies. Build for the real world, and you build a better business. DESIGNING FOR WOMEN DOESN’T MEAN EXCLUDING OTHERS There’s a common fear that focusing on women somehow limits your market. But the opposite is true. Solutions that meet women’s needs—like care navigation, chronic disease support, and flexible benefits—solve for a broader population, too. What makes women’s health complex is also what makes it valuable. If your product or trial can work for women across life stages, it can be used to inspire solutions for anyone. WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT If we want to change the trajectory of women’s health, we need to: Make convenient options for women to improve access to resources and research participation. Fund more companies prioritizing women in their design and leadership. Follow the January 2025 FDA guidance for trials and datasets to reflect real-world populations, like menopausal status and menstrual cycles. Expand benefits that meet women’s needs beyond reproductive care. Build tools that understand female physiology and behavioral patterns. This isn’t just a moral imperative. It’s a competitive one. LET’S SHIFT THE CONVERSATION Equity in healthcare is an imperative focus of health innovation and personal to many of us, but there’s a business case that’s been hiding in plain sight. Women are the health economy’s chief consumers, workers, and unpaid labor force. Failing to invest in women is failing to invest in the market. Joy Bhosai, MD MPH is founder and CEO of Pluto Health. Jessica Federer, MPH is the managing director of the Women’s Health Fund, and an investor in Pluto Health View the full article

Leading the Exceptional Women Alliance gives me a front-row seat to how accomplished women lift each other through mentorship and growth. Joanna Dodd Massey is a corporate board director and Fortune 500 executive with expertise in risk, governance, and crisis leadership. She has a PhD in psychology and advises boards and executives navigating high-stakes challenges and organizational change. Q: Why do family conversations turn so tense during the holidays? Massey: Alcohol and forced family fun play a role, but underneath it all is our biology. Human beings are one of those species that can’t survive alone—we’re hardwired for connection because our survival depends on belonging to a tribe. When someone attacks our beliefs, the automatic part of our brain reacts as if we’re in danger. It doesn’t know the difference between a tiger in the wild and a relative on a rant. That reaction—what we call the “fight, flight, or freeze” response—shuts down the rational part of the brain that handles logic and self-control. It’s why calm people suddenly get intensely defensive—or disappear into the kitchen. Q: The minute someone mentions politics at dinner, most of us reach for the wine or change the subject. Is there a better way? Massey: Yes—I teach an easy three-step process: (1) honor yourself, (2) honor your neighbor, (3) share your story. Our country was founded on the idea that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, including freedom of thought and expression. When you stand in that liberty, you don’t need others to agree with you. If someone mocks or shames you, that’s just their opinion. These three steps are an easy way to remember that disagreement doesn’t exile you from humanity. In fact, having disagreements amicably shows that Americans can respect differences and still break bread together—just like we did at the first Thanksgiving. Q: Tell us about those three steps. How do they work? Massey: Step 1: Honor yourself is about keeping yourself grounded and your rational brain in the driver’s seat. First, notice what’s happening in your body before you open your mouth. If your heart rate spikes, your jaw tightens, or your shoulders creep toward your ears, that’s your survival system signaling that it’s about to take control—and once it does, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. When you notice those signs, take some deep breaths or use a breathing technique, like 4-square breathing. It distracts your mind and floods your cells with oxygen. With your rational brain still online, remind yourself there’s nothing to win—you aren’t changing them, just like they aren’t changing you. Step 2: Honor your neighbor is about helping the other person stay in their right mind. When we feel attacked, defenses go up. The moment you shift the conversation from condemning to curiosity, everything changes. We all have a story that has shaped us, so say to the other person: “That’s an interesting point that I hadn’t thought of. Can you tell me more about how you came to that understanding?” When people feel heard, their survival system doesn’t worry about being kicked out of the tribe. Step 3: Share your story is exactly what it says—you’re sharing your story, not your opinion. The automatic brain doesn’t care about facts, data, or statistics, so using them won’t change anyone’s mind. What can people here? Vulnerability. When you talk about your own experience, an argument turns into connection. Simply put, the answer to our differences is to humanize them, not politicize them. Q: So, we should just nod and agree with everyone? Massey: Not at all. These steps aren’t about agreeing—the goal is to have a conversation, not a confrontation. Think of it as dinner-table diplomacy. Q: That sounds nice in theory, but does it really work in practice? Massey: Yes—and there’s a great example from the pandemic. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a respected conservative, joined a podcast where infectious disease experts debated anti-vaxxers, but no one was convinced. Then Christie told a personal story. He said he got vaccinated because his aunt and uncle died of COVID, and he’d had a severe case himself. He said he got the vaccine because he didn’t want to die—but also told them they didn’t have to, because this is America and that’s their right. What happened? He was calm and confident in his position (Step 1). He listened and respected their opinion (Step 2). He didn’t try to convince them; he shared a very personal story (Step 3). Q: What’s the biggest takeaway for people heading into holiday dinners this year? Massey: Remember that everyone at the table has an internal “Book of Life According to Me”—a lifetime of experiences that shaped their beliefs. You don’t have to agree, but you can honor the humanity behind those differences. Larraine Segil is founder, chair and CEO of The Exceptional Women Alliance. View the full article