What's on Your Mind?

Organizations talk about wanting innovation, but most aren’t willing to create the right conditions for it. We celebrate disruptors, bold thinkers, and game-changing ideas—but the way most organizations actually run makes creativity nearly impossible. Leaders ask, “How do we encourage creativity?” But the real question is: “How do we keep it alive in a world that values efficiency over exploration?” Efficiency kills creativity, but not how you think Most discussions around creativity killers focus on rigid hierarchies, tight deadlines, and risk-averse cultures. While these are barriers, the deeper, more insidious problem is the cult of efficiency. Organizatio…

Headlines alternate between massive AI investments and reports of failed deployments. The pattern is consistent across industries: seemingly promising AI projects that work well in testing environments struggle or fail when deployed in real-world conditions. It’s not insufficient computing power, inadequate talent, or immature algorithms. I’ve worked with over 250 enterprises deploying visual AI—from Fortune 10 manufacturers to emerging unicorns—and the pattern is unmistakable: the companies that succeed train their models on what actually breaks them, while the ones that fail optimize for what works in controlled environments. The Hidden Economics of AI Failure …

Before air-conditioning existed, staying cool during the summer months in the southern United States was a foreign skill for early European colonists. But enslaved Africans, hailing from similar warm climates, had developed, over centuries, architectural strategies for combating sweltering summer conditions. It was from these early enslaved builders that the most quintessential architectural feature of homes in the United States emerged: the porch. Porches, verandas, porticoes, and other types of outdoor coverings connected to a building have existed in various forms across the globe for centuries. However, what we think of as an American style of porch, first associa…

The days are getting longer, sunnier, and warmer in the western hemisphere. Those bright summer days have a bigger impact on the workforce and the physical office than you may think. The obvious ones are longer lunches and fewer people in the office due to vacations. Yet when everybody is in the office, there is one common human habit happening during the summer that is often overlooked. One that undermines employee productivity and increases a building’s carbon emissions. The productivity killer? Sunshine. Not that anybody is against it, but when the sun is at its highest and hottest, sun glare and heat penetrating the glass panes in office buildings prompts employe…

Why do CEOs of big AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic often publicly acknowledge that AI is likely to result in significant job loss? Most AI company CEOs now concede that widespread job loss from AI is coming, while differing somewhat on the timeline. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has long acknowledged that AI will displace workers. “The real impact of AI doing jobs in the next few years will begin to be palpable,” he said recently. But he often adds that AI will also create new jobs, such as for humans who manage teams of AI agents. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been the most frank and pessimistic when it comes to AI-driven job loss: “I would not be surprised if somewhe…

“Overworked and underpaid” has become the modern workplace anthem. The internet is full of advice on how to negotiate harder, “quiet quit,” or jump ship. It’s an easy narrative to embrace: If you feel undervalued, the system must have failed you. That story is comforting. It’s also costly. While genuine exploitation exists, most people stop short of asking the harder, and far more lucrative question: What is my contribution actually worth in the market? Effort Is Not Currency We have a tendency to measure our value by our level of exhaustion. We tally up the stress, the late nights, and the emotional labor. But markets do not pay for perspiration. They pay …

Underperformance usually shows up in the guise of missed deadlines, low-quality work, or a bad attitude. This gets spotted sometimes, but not always, by a leader who then has to make a choice: when and how to tackle the underperformance. However, the problem can be exacerbated by acting too quickly: there is often a fierce desire within leaders to jump to action. They want to stop the badness, stop the ripples, and solve the situation as quickly as possible. But often, this means that they make assumptions about what is causing the underperformance and how to solve it without taking a little time to explore the real reasons behind the poor performance. The problem…

Do you know that the longer a decision-maker views your résumé, the more likely it is that you’ll get an interview? Recent research combined eye-tracking and machine learning to understand résumé decisions better. The most actionable conclusion was that Experience section dwell time predicts interview invitations. That’s next-level information. We’ve had eye-tracking studies for years. They tell us what readers look at, but give no additional meaning. Now, by applying AI, we know which sections of the résumé matter the most for getting interviews. I was a retained search consultant for 25-plus years. For the last 10 years, I’ve been writing executive and board ré…

You’ve worked together before. You trust each other. You know how the other person thinks under pressure. On paper, it’s the safest move. In many ways, it is. Shared history creates speed—faster decisions, candid conversations, less time decoding intent. When CEOs bring former colleagues into senior roles, baseline trust feels like rocket fuel. But familiarity also introduces a hidden risk that undermines executive teams far more often than leaders anticipate. What I see repeatedly in executive teams built on shared history is the quiet formation of inner circles. Leaders who “go way back” share shorthand, context, and trust earned elsewhere. Others, often equ…

You’ve likely heard of vibe coding and very well may have conducted an experiment or two yourself, enlisting Claude or some other AI tool to create a simple website or an interactive game. OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy coined the phrase with a tweet in February 2025. In its simplest terms, vibe coding involves telling an AI program what you want to accomplish and having the AI create the code. It uses natural language provided by the user to generate the software. Vibe coding is a truly revolutionary democratizer of software development. It allows anyone with a computer and a little imagination to come up with software that appears, at least on the surface, to …

If you wake up before sunrise ready to start the day, you’re not alone—and in many ways, the modern world is designed for you. Schools start early. Meetings begin at 8 a.m. And showing up first is still seen as a sign of dedication. Research from the University of Washington confirms this “early riser bias”: employees who start early are rated as more conscientious and receive higher performance evaluations, even when they work the same hours as colleagues who start later. It sounds like an advantage—and it is. But for many early chronotypes, that same structure becomes a trap. Because the day is already tilted in your favor, it’s easy to slide into overwork and under…

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 f…

When Jon LaMantia, a Long Island-based business reporter, was in journalism school, his professor drilled one rule into his students: you get two exclamation points a year and no more. “So if you use them in January,” LaMantia recalls being told, “you better hope there’s nothing to exclaim for the rest of the year.” The rule stuck. LaMantia still thinks about that rigid quota today. “I use exclamation points all the time in texts and emails. If you don’t, the message sounds more stern,” he says. “But I can’t remember the last time I used one in a business article.” Strong feelings about the exclamation point aren’t uncommon. People tend to either love it or l…

A few weeks ago, I led a leadership workshop for a group of executive women leaders in Birmingham, Alabama. Before I begin leadership workshops, I ask the participants what they want out of our time together. This year, one answer has emerged consistently on top: connection. This isn’t surprising. As executives rise to higher levels of leadership, they often report increased feelings of loneliness. One Harvard Business Review survey found that 55% of CEOs acknowledge experiencing moderate but significant bouts of loneliness, while 25% report frequent feelings of loneliness. As your expertise becomes more specialized, it can be harder to find other leaders who understand …

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Carter G. Woodson is the reason we celebrate Black history this month, and every February. Not many people know him, but he was a scholar, a journalist, and an activist who decided in the early 1900s to document how formerly enslaved Africans and the broader African diaspora contributed to the prosperity and growth of this country and beyond. At the time, our nation’s na…

To survive in today’s market, enterprises must deliver experiences that feel instant and intelligent. Customers expect brands to anticipate their needs and guide them through interactions that are seamless and personal. It’s the promise of having the right conversation at exactly the right moment. But here’s the reality check: While “real time” dominates boardroom conversations, most data ecosystems are anything but. MOVING BEYOND “NEXT BEST ACTION” For years, the “next best action” model has been the playbook for customer engagement. It takes available data, analyzes it, and delivers a single, data-driven response, like recommending a product or sending an off…

Across the city of Chengdu, China, the quiet but remarkable buildings of Liu Jiakun has slowly pierced through the dominant stereotype of bombastic Chinese architecture. Liu, who has just been named the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, has spent the past three decades carefully injecting pieces of socially conscious and transformative architecture into his hometown. Liu’s work includes subtle museums, historically informed preservation projects, and progressive urban projects that blur the edges of private space and public good. “In a world that tends to create endless dull peripheries, he has found a way to build places that are a building, infrastructure, …

Few people would rally behind a campaign described as “we should control what other people can or can’t build,” or “let’s block certain people from living near us.” But that’s exactly what comes from typical zoning, permitting, and development rules. These local policies continue to get support from residents because the narratives are framed as “defending neighborhood character” or “protecting community identity.” Same policy, but without all the troublesome truth. Reframing a narrative from oppression to protection doesn’t change the facts, it changes how people feel about them. Successful NIMBY activists are excellent marketers, whether they realize it or not. They…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. John Rogers, the chief data and analytics officer of Cotality (formerly known as CoreLogic), returned to ResiDay this year to give a two-part presentation: first, how risk—insurance, climate, construction cost—is reshaping the housing market, and second, how AI is about to turn property professionals into “superheroes.” In 2011, the firm was predominantly a U.S. mortgage-data company. Today, Cotality is a multicountry, multi-industry analytics platform that supports more than 1 million real estate agents, touches more than 8 out of every 10 U.S. mort…

The housing market is about to step out of its prolonged slump. And, according to a new report from Realtor.com, selling conditions are about to become favorable. According to the real estate destination’s 2026 Best TIme to Sell report released today, the market is set for a major spring turn around. That’s because, in addition to warmer spring weather, mortgage rates have also been on the downslide, dropping to their lowest rate in at least three and a half years. That, coupled with the typical springtime surge, is likely to inspire more home shoppers to begin their spring time search. The best week for listing, the report says, will be the week of April 12 throu…

Finding an affordable place to live right now is a challenge—but it’s one that different groups of Americans are grappling with in a variety of ways. A new report from Realtor.com explores the distinct barriers to affordable housing that renters face in an economy that has many budgets stretched thin. In the analysis, which draws on 2024 surveys of the country’s 100 biggest metro areas, Realtor.com found three distinct groups emerge in the U.S. rental market data: young renters, family renters, and long-term renters. The one thing those groups share in common? Making decisions about where to live is an exercise in financial survival these days—not a lifestyle choice. …

Kristin Cabot, the HR exec at the center of last year’s Coldplay kiss cam scandal, is headlining a crisis communications conference happening later this year. Cabot will be seated on the panel “Taking back the narrative” at the PRWeek Crisis Comms Conference in Washington, D.C., on April 16, where individual tickets start at $875 per person. “While attending a Coldplay concert in July and unwittingly appearing on the kiss-cam for a few seconds, Kristin Cabot’s life blew up in an instant,” the description of the keynote presentation reads. “From the outside, it was an amusing, if unflattering meme; but for her, everything changed that day. It continues: “Cabo…