What's on Your Mind?

Who shaped your career? Think about the people who guided, challenged, and helped you grow into the professional you are today. Do you think that artificial intelligence could have replaced their support? AI is revolutionizing mentorship by offering tailored learning, progress tracking, and administrative support. But AI has its limitations. AI cannot replace human intuition, empathy, and the ability to challenge mentees in a nuanced way. In today’s workplace, mentorship has never been more critical and complex. A new generation of employees is looking for new ways to learn and develop, and mentoring is at the top of their list. And they are not afraid to turn to …

Shares in Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) are up a modest amount after the company announced yesterday that it has agreed to be purchased by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. As of the time of this writing, WBA shares are up under 7% to $11.33. Here’s what you need to know about the buyout and share movement. Walgreens is going private After years of financial struggles, publicly traded Walgreens announced yesterday that it has accepted a deal from private equity firm Sycamore Partners to be bought and taken private. Rumors of the deal were first reported earlier this week. Under the agreement, Sycamore will take the pharmacy chain privat…

Across both white-collar and blue-collar settings, productivity depends on how well information is organized and communicated. DataSnipper uses AI to help auditors quickly surface relevant details in lengthy legal documents, while Sharebite streamlines employee meal programs for the hybrid workplace. Tines has developed a unified AI platform to manage a wide range of workplace software, and Weavix has reimagined the shop-floor radio for modern communication needs. DataSnipper For helping rapidly sift through lengthy financial documents Auditors often need to extract dates and financial details from dense documents such as leases, loan agreements, and meeting minutes—ta…

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. We need to change the conversation about how we diagnose autism—and what we believe causes it. Lately, there’s been growing attention on environmental toxins and singular external triggers as explanations for autism. But the reality is far more nuanced. As a clinical geneticist and PhD genomic scientist with over a decade of experience working in medical affairs and clinical genomics, I’ve …

Most companies operate like one-sided cubes—what the world sees is curated and polished, but the rest remains hidden, even to the people inside. Strategy becomes surface-level. Teams chase goals without grounding. Leaders lead without alignment. In a world growing more complex and emotionally disoriented, that’s not just unsustainable—it’s dangerous. It’s time for a Strategy Renaissance. We need to move beyond sterile planning cycles and rediscover the human heart of strategy. In this new era of work, meaning isn’t a bonus feature—it’s your sharpest edge. The Great Divide Between Strategy and Meaning We have long treated strategy as the realm of numbers a…

In Abbey Road’s Studio One, even a lick of paint could ruin everything. Famous for hosting Adele, Harry Styles, and U2, it’s where the scores of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Wicked were recorded, as well as the soundtracks of blockbuster games like Call of Duty, Halo, and Final Fantasy. It’s also where Ryan Gosling delivered his memorable “I’m Just Ken” for Barbie. Nearly a century after its opening, Studio One underwent a six-month, multimillion-pound refurbishment, with the main priority being the preservation of one very important thing: the sound. “What we don’t want to do is change the acoustics, so every minute detail in the room has been conserved and p…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Speaking to investors last week, Lennar co-CEO Jon Jaffe said that the spring 2025 selling season for America’s second-largest homebuilder is off to a slower-than-normal start. “We do not see the seasonal pickup typically associated with the beginning of the spring selling season,” Jaffe said. “So we continue to lean into our machine focusing on converting leads and appointments and adjusting incentives as needed to maintain sales pace. These adjustments came in the form of mortgage rate buydowns, price reductions, and closing cost assistance. La…

Right now, America is facing a traffic safety crisis unlike anything we’ve seen in decades. And it’s only accelerating: 2023 was the deadliest year for pedestrians and cyclists in 45 years. Crashes are rising in nearly every state. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration just warned that traffic deaths are staying at “persistently high levels,” despite fewer people commuting post-pandemic. Meanwhile, distracted driving deaths jumped nearly 12% last year alone, according to the latest federal data. Everywhere you look, it’s getting more dangerous to move through your own neighborhood, whether you’re walking your dog, riding your bike, or just driving home fr…

When the electric car startup Rivian was set to release its first vehicle in late 2021, the company made the unconventional choice. Instead of a more conventional neutral tone, it manufactured a significant amount of its initial production run in a custom color the company called Launch Green. It was a decision that ran counter to almost every color trend and automotive industry sales report, and one that’s come to shape the way the company builds out one of the most unique color palettes in the car business. “Everybody buys black, white, or gray. Pretty much every single brand, they’re going to have that. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the U.S., you’re in China, …

Only one in four U.S. employees strongly agree that their organization cares about their overall well-being, with stark implications. Gallup reports that high employee well-being leads to improved performance, fewer sick days, and lower rates of burnout and turnover. “When your employees’ well-being suffers, so does your organization’s bottom line,” the group noted. At one time we may have thought that workplace well-being was separate from personal well-being. But now with digital overload, remote work, and a blurring of lines between work and home, it is a critical area for addressing how we feel about life in general. So how can organizations make mental healt…

Robert Bordone is a negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution expert who founded Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program as well as the Cambridge Negotiation Institute. He was a professor at Harvard for many years and is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Law School. Dr. Joel Salinas is a behavioral neurologist and scientist. He was formerly a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a clinical associate professor of neurology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He was the founded and was chief medical officer at Isaac Health. What’s the big idea? Instead of seeing conflict as a battle to win or a mess to avoid, disagreem…

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…

Do you know where your drinking water comes from? In South Florida, drinking water comes from the Everglades, a vast landscape of wetlands that has long filtered the water relied on by millions of people. But as the Everglades has shrunk over the past century, the region’s water supply and water quality have become increasingly threatened, including by harmful algal blooms fueled by agriculture runoff. Now, the water supply faces another rising challenge: saltwater intrusion. FlickrCC BY-ND 2.0 Protecting South Florida’s water hinges on restoring the Everglades. That’s why, 25 years ago, the federal government and universities launched the world’s largest e…

Lately, the conversation about office policy has been dominated by reports of return-to-office mandates, with many employers aiming to get all of their workers back in person by the end of the year. But a new study shows that, despite the best efforts of many RTO proponents, hybrid schedules represent a lasting shift in the way we work—and employees like it that way. The study is the ninth annual “State of Hybrid Work” report from Owl Labs, a company that offers remote work tech like videoconferencing. It found that, across industries, hybrid work isn’t just “a trend.” Rather, it’s now become a priority that workers are “often willing to trade compensation or quietly …

When a friend and I began investing in thoroughbreds in 2018, it wasn’t fantasies of running in the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness Stakes that excited us most. It was naming the racehorses. We’d seen California Chrome and American Pharoah etch their names in the sports lexicon. And while producing a horse of that caliber was a longshot, just the prospect of the announcer yelling, “Here comes [name we chose] down the stretch!” was unexpectedly thrilling. This weekend’s Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown, features some elite thoroughbreds, and even some better names. Journalism, the favorite, has arguably the best name in the field. American Promise h…