What's on Your Mind?

Below, Melissa Bernstein shares five key insights from her new book, The Heart of Entrepreneurship: Crafting Your Authentic Recipe for Success. Bernstein founded a toy company, Melissa & Doug, with her husband, in 1988. In 2021, they launched their second company, Lifelines, a wellness brand offering sensory products to manage stress and enhance well-being. She is the entrepreneur-in-residence for the Inner MBA certification program created by Sounds True, LinkedIn, and Wisdom 2.0. She is also cofounder of Duke University’s Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs program. What’s the big idea? As we age, many of us lose touch with the childlike curiosity and wonder…

When you have work life balance and fulfillment, you’re set up not only for success, but also for happiness. The big questions though, are about how you can find the best approach to work and life based on where you are in your journey, based on what’s unique about you, and based on what you find most important. The work-life mix is critically important. In fact, a survey of 26,000 people in five countries by Randstad found that for 85%, work-life balance was the most important element that people were looking for in both current and future jobs—a critical feature for their satisfaction. Importantly, this is the first time in the survey’s 22-year history that work-lif…

Early in my career, a colleague and I made a shared commitment one summer to eat healthier. Salads. Smoothies. The full routine. Like many well-intentioned plans, our discipline began to fade after a few weeks. Eventually, we introduced what we jokingly called Grease Wednesdays, a weekly cheat day as a reward for all our good behavior. Every Wednesday, one of us would head out to grab fast food, and we’d hide away in a small boardroom to indulge in our shared lack of nutritional discipline. At first, it was just the two of us, chatting with laptops closed and fries on the table. And then coworkers began peeking into whatever boardroom we were in, curious about the…

We’re facing a career confidence crisis. Work is changing fast, yet many employees feel stuck. At LinkedIn, our data shows workforce confidence has dropped to a five-year low, and only 15% of employees say their manager has supported them with career planning in the past six months. Managers can play a big role in righting the ship—helping employees build the new skills they need to stay relevant and develop into future leaders. But this requires a fundamental shift: transforming them from task-overseers to coaches developing talent and sparking the best ideas from their teams. There are some key steps any company can take now to develop a culture of coaching that sta…

Culture does not scale linearly with revenue or headcount —it requires intentionality the faster you grow. When I joined DPR Construction in the early 1990s, we were a small startup with a shared vision. Today, we have over 13,000 employees worldwide. Along the way, we’ve learned that sustaining culture through growth isn’t automatic—it takes clarity, intention, and continual reinforcement. With growth, we faced a familiar challenge many companies do: How could we preserve the cultural core we started with as a smaller company as we grew to an organization of thousands of people spread across the globe? Company culture is often described as intangible; however, li…

What are the qualities of a great team? You’ve probably been taught that team success requires building trust, fostering psychological safety, and cultivating a unified mindset. Seems logical. You might have learned that consensus is important and hierarchies are bad. Okay. You’ve undoubtedly been given that old chestnut, “There’s no I in team.” A classic. Team building 101. It’s conventional wisdom, and yet it completely misses the paradox of teams: While companies often focus on merging everyone into a single homogeneous entity, truly great teams embrace the distinct, diverse roles and talents of their team members. Every high-performing group in an organization wil…

Annoying peers are hard enough to deal with. Things get even more complicated when the annoying person is your boss. As with peers, there are several ways that a boss can be annoying. Unfortunately, you have to tread lightly with many (though not all) bosses. To be clear, the focus here is on annoying bosses, not toxic ones. A boss who is a narcissist, a harasser, or who sows mistrust isn’t just annoying, they’re bad for you and the organization. I’m going discuss four things that may seem petty, but if you start dreading your engagements with your boss (or resenting them for their foibles), it can come back to hurt your working relationship. The cipher Some p…

There are three kinds of annoying colleagues. I have already written about dealing with annoying bosses and colleagues. What happens if the source of your annoyance is one of your direct reports? Once again, dealing with what bothers you depends a lot on what it is causing the problem. Here are four common causes of annoyance. 1. The one who sucks up It is natural for people who are ambitious to want to find ways to get ahead. Obviously, doing great work is important, but a little self-promotion can’t hurt either. After all, if you have lots of direct reports, you may not notice everything that everyone is doing. So, you should expect that the folks who work fo…

Colleagues are a critical part of what makes your work experience enjoyable and meaningful. You interact with your colleagues and (in the best of cases) create a neighborhood of peers that you can rely on both to push the work forward and to share the joys and tribulations of the workday. That’s why annoying colleagues can be a particular thorn. When you have a peer at work that you don’t want to deal with, it disrupts the flow of your day and diminishes your intrinsic enjoyment of work. So, what can you do to deal with annoying coworkers? A lot of that depends on what is making them annoying. Here are a few possibilities. Missing social norms One thing th…

In September, my mom died after a short battle with colon cancer. She was 83 and lived a full life in which she had a fulfilling career in education, traveled the world visiting 100-plus countries, and was married to my father for more than 60 years. It’s hard to lose a parent, and my workplace (like many) allowed me time off to be with family for the days before and after the funeral. But no matter how generous the policy at your workplace is, you’re going to have to come back to work before you’re done grieving. Grief happens following any significant event that creates a tear in the fabric of your life story. The death of a loved one is an obvious source of grief, …

It’s popular right now to talk about meritocracy and how we want the most talented people to be able to rise to the top. Yet that’s not the reality for many. Lots of people experience a workplace reality where they see a few charmed people become the darlings of leadership. These darlings get recognized for their contributions and fast-tracked for honor, opportunity, and promotions. Sometimes, that’s for good reason. If you’re feeling jealous of the office favorite, it’s worth trying to be objective. Perhaps you wanted the recognition and reward and didn’t get it, and so you’re projecting your frustration on someone who really deserves the recognition. But, there …

Frustration is a common emotion. It’s a close cousin to anger, because both deal with your reaction to an obstacle that is preventing you from achieving your goals. Where they differ is that anger is (usually) directed outward at an external obstacle. The energy and rage that anger generates may be useful for trying to influence that external obstacle physically. Frustration is often directed at an internal or systemic obstacle that you can’t do much about. You may be frustrated because you don’t have the capability or time to do something, or may feel like some aspect of your company (or society) prevents you from accomplishing a goal. But frustration is often u…

The workplace presents a distinctive set of disclosure dilemmas, beginning with the strange fan dance of interviewing. We are trying to put our best foot forward; to convince our potential employer we’re a perfect fit and consummate professional, yet we’re asked, “What are your weaknesses?” and “What are the biggest mistakes you’ve made?” Even the seemingly laidback “So, tell me about yourself” can feel like a trap. Where should we start? There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about the benefits of “bringing your whole self” to work. There’s some evidence for those benefits. Letting others see more of you than you might ordinarily show them forges bonds, includ…

For years, Google made it incredibly easy to look up someone’s address, phone number, age, and other personal info. All you had to do was type in a person’s name and where they live, and you’d get all kinds of details from sites like Whitepages and Spokeo, which pull together that info from public and private sources. Creepy as this is, doing anything about it has always been a slog, and most people never bothered. While some companies charge hundreds of dollars per year to remove this data on your behalf, that’s not really necessary. If you have an hour or so to spare, you can hide your personal information from casual snoopers on Google, and even on the people s…

Gabriela Flax spent the first part of her career working in tech as a product manager. And while every day was different and varied, there were aspects of it that were causing her burnout. “I’ve always really enjoyed the product marketing aspect of my work,” she says. “I really like talking to end-users about ‘Hey, this is how this thing helps you’ and how to articulate that.” However, she wasn’t able to work on it as much as she would have liked. At the same time, Flax was in her 20s, living in London, and had stopped drinking alcohol. She began posting her journey in social media, talking about bars and places that were non-alcohol related. Flax recalls, …

For many people, the word sabbatical conjures a very specific image: a long break from work, perhaps time spent on a beautiful beach, maybe a few weeks of rest before returning “recharged.” It’s often perceived as indulgent, impractical, or reserved for academics and executives with generous benefits. That image misses the point. A sabbatical isn’t a more extended vacation. It isn’t an escape from responsibility. And paradoxically, it isn’t even primarily about rest. When well executed, a sabbatical is a deliberate interruption that creates the conditions for identity discovery, integration, and renewal. When done poorly, it can leave people just as disoriented as whe…

I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone say, “This meeting could’ve been an email.” You can probably imagine exactly the voice they said it in (and what their face looked like). You’re probably heard it many times yourself. The meeting in question was a project check-in with multiple departments, where we’d spent an hour listening to one person giving an update that could have been written in a few bullet points. The rest of us just sat there, nodding along, waiting for it to end. No one really needed to speak, no one gave feedback, and no one asked any questions. As we all shuffled out, someone muttered, “Well, that was a waste of time,” and I couldn’t help…

AI slop seems to be everywhere. Low-quality digital content made with artificial intelligence has flooded our feeds, screens and speakers. Is there anything we can do about it? If you want fewer cartoonish videos of dead celebrities, creepy or absurd images or fake bands playing synthetic tunes, a few platforms have rolled out settings and features to help minimize AI-generated content. Here is a guide on how to use them. But first, a caveat from Henry Ajder, who advises businesses and governments on AI and has been studying deepfakes since 2018. He warned that it’s “incredibly difficult” to entirely remove AI slop content entirely from all your feeds. He comp…

If you’d like to do a thorough review of your portfolio and plan, here are the key steps to take. I recommend doing them over a series of sessions, not all at once. Step 1: Gather your documentation This could be your current investment statements, plus Social Security and pension. Pro tip: Set up a My Social Security account to get an overview of your benefits and earnings history. Step 2: Ask and answer: How am I doing? To find out if you’re on track to reach your financial goals, review your current portfolio balance, combined with your savings rate. Tally your contributions across all accounts. A decent baseline savings rate is 15%, but higher-income fol…

In today’s turbulent economic climate, there’s an intense pressure to perform. Organizations are exploring new business models and ways of working to accelerate growth and stay competitive. Boards and shareholders demand results, which pushes leadership teams to dial up their expectations. The term “accountability” has become a buzzword in discussions, but far too many misunderstand and misapply it. When leaders talk about creating a culture of accountability, they often rely on “shame and blame” tactics. This approach might seem effective in the short term, but it ultimately undermines the culture leaders seek to build. Instead of motivating individuals to do more, i…

Two powerful forces are dramatically reshaping the current world of work—artificial intelligence and an aging workforce. While we can see that the way we work is changing, we need to move quickly to effectively cope with both. Currently, AI, machine learning, digitization, automation, and other technology shifts are continuing to drive big changes in how we work and evolving the skills we need. In fact, new Workday research into the AI skills revolution shows that 81% of workers globally recognize that AI is changing the skills needed for their jobs. At the same time, throughout most countries, midcareer and older workers (people aged 45-64) make up a growing po…

In large organizations, HR usually has a process for documenting concerns about employees’ effectiveness that can be used either to help fix those problems—or to provide a basis for later termination. One of the central records used for this purpose is the dreaded performance improvement plan, or PIP. If you get called in to see your supervisor and get hit with a PIP, you’re likely to experience a range of emotions. Understanding your emotional reaction and how to cope with it is an important part of moving forward successfully. Let’s consider a range of emotions you might be experiencing and what you should do: Feeling Grief One possibility is that the PIP com…

AI fluency is quickly becoming the new leadership divide: Some executives are already embedding it into strategy, while others are still asking what it means. The gap is widening—and it’s shaping who gets hired to lead. That’s why AI fluency is becoming a top priority in leadership searches. Not deep technical mastery, but a practical understanding of how these tools work and where they apply. Companies want leaders who aren’t just talking about transformation but are actively engaged in it. People who’ve run pilots, evaluated risks, collaborated with product and tech, or led adoption efforts in their function. They don’t need to be engineers. But they do need to …