What's on Your Mind?

“Sean,” the CEO of a health technology startup, invited Garry to join what he called a strategy offsite. By mid-morning, it had become something else. Six people, a whiteboard, a Series A closing in ninety days. The question on the table: where do we invest next? More engineers? A bigger sales team? Another content hire? Garry set down his coffee and asked a different question. “What if we stopped asking what we can afford to build, and started asking what we can now imagine building—that we genuinely couldn’t have a year ago?” The room shifted. So did the conversation. And that reframe—from resource allocation to possibility expansion—is the strategic inflection …

Often when we talk about work-life balance, we focus on ways that work impinges on personal life. Are you taking the time to take care of your physical and mental health? Are you nurturing your personal relationships? Are you giving yourself a chance to engage in hobbies and activities that add meaning to your days? But, sometimes your personal life takes over everything. A family member’s illness or the death of a loved one can throw a wrench into the workings of your life. The dissolution of a marriage can shatter your world. A calamity like a fire can disrupt every aspect of your daily existence. When that happens, work may suddenly take a backseat as you address t…

Tomorrow is the quarterly staff meeting, and project director Ann knows she needs to be ready. The agenda is familiar. At 3 p.m. she opens PowerPoint, pulls up the last deck, swaps in tomorrow’s date, and starts updating the numbers. By 5:30 pm, the slides are done. But is she ready? She has a deck, not a message. She has data, not direction. Communicating like a leader isn’t about updating presentations—it’s about shaping moments. And those moments are won or lost long before you step to the front of the room. Here are seven ways managers can ensure they’re making the most of their moment. 1. Know your plan Ann’s preparation went sideways the moment she o…

AI promises massive productivity gains—that is if employees are willing to use it and can figure out how to integrate it into their workflows. In the rush to reap the benefits of AI, KPMG one of the “big four” accounting firms, headquartered in London, just launched a new incentive program for its US advisory division. Per a new Business Insider report, the program, called “AI Spark Innovation”, is offering cash prizes for consultants who excel in AI innovation. The payouts will be hefty. US Vice Chair Rob Fisher told BI that the “outsize” cash awards will be “materially larger than an end-of-year compensation award.” Fisher continued, “It’s really intended to b…

Medical equipment maker Stryker was allegedly hit with an Iran-linked cyber attack on Wednesday right after midnight ET, causing a global outage across its system, with staff and contractors saying a logo of an Iran-linked group appeared on the login page, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. Shares of the Michigan-based global medical technology company (SYK) were down nearly 4% in early afternoon trading on Wednesday at the time of this writing. What happened? According to the report, staff said cellphones, laptops, and other devices that run on Microsoft’s Windows operating system to connect ​to Stryker’s ​technology ⁠systems …

Few media brands scream “straight” quite like Playboy. Since the 1950s, the men’s lifestyle magazine has been best known for its photos of nude and scantily clad women (aka Playmates)—and, of course, for its iconic bunny mascot. But those who’ve been paying attention, Playboy has quietly undergone an editorial transformation. Since November, the magazine has relaunched its print edition (previously halted in 2020), started a Substack newsletter blending archival material with original writing, and introduced new Playmates to the world. It’s all been under the advice of Phillip Picardi, who was announced on March 11 as Playboy’s new chief brand officer and editor-in-ch…

Retail has always evolved around a central promise. First it was price and scale. Then convenience and speed. More recently, brand and experience took the lead. Now another shift is underway, one that many companies still treat as secondary. The next competitive advantage in retail is designing for real life. That means designing for the full range of human ability, attention, mobility, and circumstance. Not as a compliance exercise. Not as a niche offering. But as a smarter, more complete version of customer experience. Accessibility is often misunderstood as a feature aimed at a small group of people. In reality, it is a systems-level discipline. It asks a simpl…

A new short film premiered at SXSW over the weekend, written and directed by Jeff Nichols (Mud, The Bikeriders) starring Oscar nominee Michael Shannon, Oscar-winning singer/songwriter Ryan Bingham, Hassie Harrison, and narrated by Oscar winner Sissy Spacek. Love Letter to Texas is a 12-minute story of personal reinvention, and a beautiful visual tribute to some of the Lone Star state’s most photogenic and iconic backdrops in film history. It’s also Tecovas ad, bankrolled and produced by the Western apparel and cowboy boot brand. Founded in 2015, Tecovas is a new brand in a category steeped in heritage. It began as the “Warby Parker of Boots” but has since opened…

Project management software giant Asana is rolling out what it calls “AI teammates”—bots that can participate in handling and discussing work via Asana’s platform in similar ways to actual humans. Unlike some AI assistant and copilot products that take direction only from one human user, Asana’s AI teammates are designed to work with multiple humans, similar to how an actual new hire might receive assignments, feedback, and comments from a range of coworkers. The aim is to offer a set of AI tools that integrate not only with software companies already use, but with the Asana-based workflows they rely on to divvy up and discuss work. So while the bots won’t nece…

Elon Musk and Tesla want to call their autonomous robotaxi service Cybercabs, a name that would seem to fit snugly with the company’s line of “Cyber” products. But an obscure French beverage wholesaler, run by someone who appears to be a devoted Musk fan, could ruin those plans. UniBev, based in Ajaccio, France, beat Tesla to filing for the trademark for Cybercab. Last week, Musk’s company struck back, filing a 167-page complaint with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that called UniBev “a bad faith trademark squatter, who started as a Tesla fan.” UniBev has until April 19 to respond to the complaint. Should the issue go to trial, a decision could be delayed un…

Enterprise AI spending hit $37 billion in 2025—a 200% jump from the year before. The message from the C-suite couldn’t be clearer: AI is no longer a competitive advantage. It’s table stakes. So why are three-quarters of enterprises still stuck in pilot mode? Budgets have been approved, platforms deployed, and centers of excellence stood up. Yet few AI initiatives meet expectations for revenue impact. The technology isn’t the problem. The problem is that no one actually taught your people how to use it. The knowledge gap is enormous Enterprises are running an average of 200 AI tools. However, only 28% of employees know how to use their company’s applications…

Over the past year, tech companies invested hundreds of billions in the new data centers needed to power rapidly increasing demand for the technology. The investment is motivated in part by confidence that major AI labs such as those at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google will continue to wring more intelligence out of their models. Indeed, fears have receded that the AI labs’ go-to strategy of supersizing models, training data, and computing power was no longer yielding large leaps in intelligence. Instead, the cadence of bigger and better models has accelerated, in part because AI coding tools are playing an increasing role in building new models. That’s certainly true a…

Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian, the founders of Proximity Media, share their top leadership tips for creatives. View the full article

Sundar Pichai is guiding Google through the AI revolution with a leadership style that balances bold innovation with thoughtful responsibility. View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the Pandemic Housing Boom, rapid home price appreciation supercharged fix-and-flip activity. The 2022 mortgage rate shock ended that run and caused the biggest pullback in home flipping activity since 2007. Profit margins compressed, days on market increased, and many newer investors exited the space. However, over the past couple of years, home flipping activity has stabilized around 2019 levels. The first LendingOne–ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey in Q1 2025 showed a market recalibrating to that new reality. The latest results tell a simi…

When a fake wedding announcement featuring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson popped up in a late-year print issue The Boston Globe, it looked like a star-studded romcom was underway. But “The Drama,” indie studio A24’s latest film, has stirred controversy, and most audiences don’t know what its about. The film’s trailers, the first of which was dropped just a day after the wedding announcement, revealed a somewhat vague plot line—Zendaya and Pattinson play Emma and Charlie, a couple grappling with the aftermaths of a confession as they ready for their wedding. Speculation on the film’s big twist ignited a flurry of conspiracies and theories online, ranging from mere c…