What's on Your Mind?

Whenever there’s economic uncertainty, it’s easy to worry that your position is at risk. But what if the worst has happened: Your company has done a big layoff—and you and your team weren’t on the list? Of course, you and your direct reports may both fear that more cuts are on the horizon. And yet, there’s work to be done. How do you support your team, keep them productive and also find the opportunities in the middle of such a big disruption, especially when you may face the need to ‘do more with less’? We work with executive clients—Alisa Cohn as an executive coach and Dorie Clark as a keynote speaker and consultant—and have seen this increasingly as layoffs st…

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 …

There has been lots of chatter in the past few years about the benefits of a shorter workweek, as some companies have tested out four-day work schedules and other variations on the traditional workweek. Back in 2021, on the heels of the pandemic, California Congressman Mark Takano even introduced a bill to enshrine a 32-hour workweek—though it never garnered enough bipartisan support to progress further. In surveys, a majority of workers have expressed interest in a four-day or 32-hour workweek (with no reduction in pay, of course). Even as some leaders increasingly see the evolution of the workweek as an inevitability, we’re still a long way from ushering in swee…

In 2021, I quit a 15-year career as a tech executive in the finance industry and pursued content marketing and journalism. When I tell this story, I’m often met with, “You did what?” People can’t wrap their heads around such an unexpected career shift. While I quit my tech job, it wasn’t an overnight decision. In fact, it was something I’d been considering for a long time. A career pivot is much different than simply finding a new job in the same industry. If you’ve contemplated the same, you’ve probably asked yourself, “Can I do this? Will it be worth the change? What if it doesn’t work out?” As someone who’s pivoted not once, but twice, in the past …

Between the rise of quiet quitting, the evolution of hybrid work, and concerns about artificial intelligence, we live in tumultuous times. In order to retain talent, it’s important for leaders to adapt to the changing needs of their employee population. This is a particularly large challenge at the moment since it requires understanding and supporting very different groups. There are currently five different generations from all walks of life in the workplace. They have a wide range of preferences when it comes to money management, lifestyle, and retirement goals. Finding ways to better understand and engage with the needs of unique employee segments can enhance …

Paired with high-deductible healthcare plans, health savings accounts help ease healthcare costs. HSAs are a triple tax-advantaged vehicle in the tax code, allowing for pretax contributions, tax-free compounding, and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses. However, few owners fund their HSAs to the maximum, and even fewer invest their HSA dollars outside a savings account. Most consumers likely don’t fill their HSAs because they lack the financial means; critics note that the HDHP/HSA combination can be less beneficial for lower-income workers. But even wealthy consumers may decline to fully fund their HSAs. Many HSAs charge account-maintenance fees and e…

A strong résumé can make all the difference. It demonstrates to hiring managers that you’re the best person for the job by summarizing your career highlights and accomplishments. We know it’s important to customize your résumé for each job you apply to, and to ensure that you’re including quantitative accomplishments whenever possible, to show the impact you’ve had. But despite the amount of time we all spend writing and refining our résumés when job searching, there’s still a fair amount of debate about the ideal format. One common question is whether or not to include an objective statement at the top of your résumé in order to provide a snapshot of the type of…

In 2011, Patagonia faced the same pressure every retailer faces on Black Friday: maximize sales on the year’s biggest shopping day. Instead, they ran a full-page ad in the New York Times with a stark message: “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” The ad detailed the environmental cost of making their bestselling R2 fleece, such as 135 liters of water in the manufacturing process and 20 pounds of carbon dioxide for transporting it to the company’s warehouse. This wasn’t a clever marketing ploy. The ad directly urged customers to think twice before purchasing, to fix existing gear before replacing it, and to buy and sell second-hand. This was a real commitment to the values that had…

Letting go of a struggling employee or deciding to coach them is one of the toughest calls a leader has to make. It’s rarely a black-and-white decision, and the stakes are high—not just for the individual but for the whole team and company. Every leader faces this dilemma multiple times in their career, and making a fair, timely decision isn’t always easy. That’s why I created the CORVETT framework—a simple, structured set of questions designed to cut through the noise and help leaders make these tough calls with clarity and intention. Instead of reacting emotionally or making hasty decisions, this approach ensures consistency and fairness. I also teach this frame…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Disruption has become our new workplace reality. For managers, navigating change is an everyday responsibility, not an occasional responsibility. Gallup reports that 72% of employees recently experienced workplace disruptions, and nearly a third of leaders experienced extensive disruptions. Today, no disruption is as prevalent as the rise of artificial intelligence. Yes, as sophisticated a…

Leaders are praised for “seeing around corners” and told to “skate to where the puck is going.” But what if you can’t even see your own feet, let alone a puck or a distant corner? Today’s volatility and uncertainty obscure any clear path to the future, and the forecast isn’t improving any time soon. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, 52% of experts expect an unsettled two-year horizon, 31% anticipate turbulence, and 5% foresee storms. Even if the weather were clear, setting a direction of travel is increasingly difficult as leaders face more complex problems with no obvious or easy solution. Close to 60% of business executives admit that they are missing opp…

Below, Jane Marie Chen shares five key insights from her new book, Like a Wave We Break: A Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself. Jane is a leadership coach, public speaker, and cofounder of Embrace Global, a social enterprise that developed a low-cost infant incubator. She has been a TED Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow, and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Her many honors include being recognized as a Forbes Impact 30 and receiving The Economist’s Innovation Award. What’s the big idea? Like a Wave We Break is a story of self-discovery. When achievements define us or serve as an escape from hidden scars of trauma, we do ourselves and othe…

AI will undoubtedly become a bigger presence in your working life over the next few years. In fact, it likely already is, even without you knowing it. According to a recent study by Gallup, nearly all Americans (99%, in fact) use products that involve artificial intelligence features, but (64%) don’t even realize it. Our current level of AI use may seem subtle and harmless—think virtual assistants, navigation apps, or weather-forecasting websites. But the speed of new technology is fast and the promises it holds for transforming our work are too tempting for many companies to pass up. Like it or not, no matter your industry, AI is likely going to be your new coworker. S…

Longevity with freelancing is entirely possible if you’re intentional, adaptable, and development-oriented. Freelancers should think of themselves as a business of one as opposed to an outsourced employee for other companies. And it’s import to always be improving that business. As E-Myth Revisited author Michael Gerber once wrote, “Most entrepreneurs fail because they are working in their business rather than on their business.” There’s always going to be more competition, new technology, shifting market conditions, and stuff happening in your life that will impact your career as a freelancer. After nearly 12 years of freelancing, here are my recommendations on how t…

We’ve all heard the saying, “When you change the incentives, you change the behavior,” and most of us even believed it at some point. But with experience, you find that human behavior doesn’t fit into such neat little boxes. People act the way they do for all kinds of reasons, some of them rational, some of them not. The truth is that incentives often backfire because of something called Goodhart’s law. Once we target something to incentivize, it ceases to be a good target. A classic example occurred when the British offered bounties for dead cobras in India. Instead of hunting cobras, people started breeding them which, needless to say, didn’t solve the problem. …

While having lunch with a few fellow business owners recently, our conversation turned to the topic on every entrepreneur’s mind—artificial intelligence. It turns out that AI tools have quietly woven themselves into our daily routines, whether we’re brainstorming, researching, or synthesizing data, were also using it in slightly different ways. Tools like ChatGPT are like Swiss Army Knives for productivity and creativity. It’s no surprise that in the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65% of organizations reported regularly using AI—the technology is here to stay. That said, leaning too heavily on AI can go awry. If you delegate content creation to ChatGPT, for …

Below, co-authors Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei share five key insights from their new book, Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making. Barry spent 45 years teaching psychology at Swarthmore College. Now he holds a visiting position at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Richard held a similarly long tenure at Swarthmore College, 42 years, as a philosophy professor. What’s the big idea? There is no such thing as a calculator for life’s decisions. Try as we might to quantify, count, and calculate in search of the “right” choice, that is simply not how wise decision-making happens. Qualitative judgme…

This past June, Meta set off a bomb in the marketing world when it announced that it would fully automate the advertising on its platforms by 2026. People in advertising wondered: Is this the end of ad agencies as we know it? Has the AI “slopification” of social media finally been fully realized? The hyperbolic reaction is understandable—maybe even justified. With 3.43 billion unique active users across its platforms around the world, and an advertising machine that brought in $47.5 billion in Q2 sales alone (up 22% over last year), Meta is an accurate bellwether for where the ad business is heading. Meta has been working for years to build a machine that is al…

Your company rolls out an AI agent to assign tasks, draft updates, and nudge overdue approvals. But within days, it’s flagging completed work, tagging the wrong people, and creating confusion instead of clarity. It’s a familiar outcome for companies that adopt agentic AI without the workflows, data, or systems to support it. New research from Wrike reinforces that disconnect: 74% of employees say their company treats data like gold, yet most don’t manage it well enough for AI to use it effectively. Even the smartest, most context-aware tools stall without strong foundations. And automation doesn’t fix broken operations—it magnifies them. To get agentic AI ri…

Any office party can be challenging, but holiday office parties are particularly stressful. After all, the season brings a set of demands—including the need to be “merry and bright” when you may not feel that way. To survive this end-of-year event (and to use it to advance your career), here are three strategies that will work wonders. 1. Use Holiday Parties as a Chance to Get to Know New People There are good reasons to circulate broadly at your next holiday party and not to hang out with people you already know. Clustering with friends can lead to excessive drinking, and with that comes danger to your health and safety. Staying with your pals or people you wo…

Siri Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Iris Bohnet is a professor of business and government at Harvard Kennedy School and co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program. What’s the big idea? Fairness is not merely a choice; it is a way of moving through the world. For life and work to exhibit more fairness, people need to embed fair behavior into everyday choices, routines, and systems. Everyone can show up in ways that allow for a diversity of people to be seen, heard, and valued at the table. Below, co-authors Siri and Iris share five key insights from their new book, Make Work Fair: Data-Dri…

Over the past few years, business leaders have lived through a masterclass in volatility. A global pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, surging cyberattacks, economic whiplash, and now the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence have reshaped markets in unpredictable ways. For many executives, resilience once meant little more than business continuity planning: extra servers, backup systems, and insurance policies. But the world we lead in today demands more. Resilience is no longer just about defense—it’s about growth. The organizations that thrive amid disruption are not those with the strongest walls, but those with the most flexible foundations. They are a…

Life with a fluctuating income is a lot like being left-handed: The world isn’t designed to meet your needs, so you need to adjust accordingly. Those who make the leap into solopreneurship are often struck by all the little things they took for granted as salaried employees. Things like having health benefits, taxes and retirement savings deducted from their earnings, knowing exactly when the next injection of cash is coming, or what they’ll make next month. Even monthly billing cycles for things like rent, student loans, and car payments are based on the assumption of predictable monthly earnings. Most don’t ditch the corporate life because they’re really good a…

There are many reasons why someone may have a second job or some kind of side gig when they’re working for you. They may have financial needs that are greater than what you can pay. They may have expertise that enables them to consult or engage with other businesses. They may have a passion project or startup that they’re nurturing while they work for you. Whatever it is that is driving your employees, their other line of work can affect their performance for you. It is valuable to understand what your team members are doing and the impact it is having on their responsibilities for you. Some workplaces (like mine) require explicit declarations of conflicts of inte…

A lot goes through our heads during company restructurings: Will I get laid off? Will my coworkers lose their jobs? What will happen to my workload if my team is affected? But in the wake of such events, if we don’t get laid off, we often ignore or dismiss the emotions that linger because we don’t feel we deserve to experience them. After all, we kept our jobs, we’re the lucky ones. Why should we complain or feel upset? However experts say that not addressing this so-called survivor’s guilt can negatively impact your confidence and productivity moving forward. “Those employees who remain, they feel either undeserving of being able to stay, or they feel respons…