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Here is a selection of Posts from March 2026 that you will want to check out: Difficult Conversations Don't Have To Be So Difficult by @davidburkus Why Your Leadership Training isn't Working by @stopyourdrama Marlene Chism Lindy Library: The 0.1% Of Ideas I've Found by @george__mack Excellence Is Not a Performance Target via @AdmiredLeaders Beneath the Surface of Leadership Development by @DanReiland The Quiet Signals Every Great Leader Notices (That Others Miss) by @WScottCochrane Why Being Good, Fast and Cheap Is the Most Radical Thing a Brand Can Do via @MusebyClio by John Stapleton If Your Email Is Too Long, Your Thinking Isn’t Finished by @PhilCooke Before hitting send, ask yourself a simple question: What is the one thing I’m trying to say? Be Better by @James_Albright The world we live in needs it. The people we serve and lead need it. Be better. Monomaniacal by @KevinPaulScott Obsessive focus on a single idea, goal, or pursuit Why AI May Lead to More Work, Not Less by Jacqueline Isaacs via @FaithWorkEcon In many cases, AI tools are actually expanding human work. Are You Empowering or Controlling? by @samchand 2:27 VIDEO AI Makes Designing Faster. But Are We Thinking Less? by @gokhankurt This applies to leadership as well. The Psychology of Prediction by @morganhousel 12 common flaws, errors, and misadventures that occur in people’s heads when predictions are made POV: The creative agency model is dead – that’s why I shut mine down by Madison Utendahl via @itsnicethat When the Crisis Isn’t Your Fault—But It’s Still Your Responsibility by @PhilCooke Why Gifted Leaders Still Fail: Lessons from 25 Years of Ministry with Allen Holmes with @richbirch The Right Plane by @KevinPaulScott The Two Paths Leaders Take After Success: Death and Destruction or Sustainable Success? by @BrianKDodd on Leadership Be the Person that People Want to follow by @James_Albright Visibility Versus Credibility. Two Different Things and Why It Matters. by @PhilCooke Resolve Your Personal Dilemmas with Greater Confidence by Haywood Spangler What Your Conversations Reveal About Your Culture by @stopyourdrama Marlene Chism See more on Twitter. * * * Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas. View the full article

Here’s a familiar scenario: The product development team creates a hot new app. The client is excited to launch it, and the PR team is preparing the campaign for its release. And then this happens: The manager in charge of the project steals the spotlight and takes all the credit for the work. There’s no praise for the team, no celebration of everyone’s success, and no recognition of team members’ contributions. When that happens, it’s quite likely that team morale will take a nosedive. This behavior has frequently appeared in research as a bad-boss trait that leads to employee disengagement and even turnover. In a study I tracked a few years ago, “taking credit for employees’ work” was rated the worst managerial behavior by 63 percent of respondents and something they would consider worth quitting over. It’s worth considering: Can taking credit for employees’ work actually be an effective management tactic for advancement? Or might it hold leaders back and hinder their progress? A study highlighted in Forbes, which looked at 3,800 managers and assessed how effective they were when claiming credit, found that those who took credit for others’ work were seen as quite ineffective (13th percentile). In contrast, leaders who made a genuine effort to give credit to their team members were regarded as some of the most successful (85th percentile). Having trained numerous managers and executives in my leadership course, I see this harmful tendency to dominate the spotlight and claim all the credit as a reflection of individual performance. Managers with this mindset focus on personal recognition, caring primarily about their accomplishments and how they are perceived by superiors. Identify more servant leaders To stop the cycle of bad managers in our midst, we need to identify, develop, and promote more servant leaders—people naturally inclined to give their people credit for their contributions, shine a spotlight on them, and show them appreciation. In fact, Gallup research found that employees who regularly receive credit increase their productivity, achieve higher customer loyalty and satisfaction scores, and are more likely to stay with their organization. Great leaders with loyal followers don’t seek glory or validation; they recognize their own achievements. They highlight others’ successes, and then take a step back to celebrate these accomplishments, fostering greater confidence and trust among their followers. —Marcel Schwantes This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

It has been a bruising 24 hours for investors in memory chip storage companies, including Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), Sandisk Corporation (Nasdaq: SNDK), Western Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: WDC), and Seagate Technology Holdings (Nasdaq: STX). Yesterday, all four leaders in the memory chip space ended the day significantly lower. Here’s what’s happening—and why some are questioning whether the RAM shortage that has driven these companies’ stock prices to new heights will soon come to an end. Memory chip stocks get pummeled—again Just a few weeks ago, the sky seemed to be the limit for memory chip makers. After all, the world is in the middle of a full-blown RAM shortage, which means memory chips are in high demand. This demand has caused the stock prices of four companies—Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate—to surge over the past six months, with performance that has been, simply put, eye-watering. For example, the least best-performing stock of the four companies is Seagate, but even its stock price has risen 53% in the past six months. Micron’s stock price has performed even better, rising 92%. Western Digital is up even more, rising 109% over the past six months. As for Sandisk, its stock performance over the same period has been phenomenal, up more than 410%. And keep in mind that those were the gains even after the memory chip makers’ stock prices began getting pummeled last week. Yesterday, that pummeling continued, with Micron shares dropping nearly 10% during the trading session, while Western Digital lost 8.6%, Sandisk lost 7%, and Seagate dropped 4.6%. With yesterday’s dips, all four major memory chip makers have seen massive stock price declines over the past five days, with Micron down more than 20%, Sandisk down 18.5%, Western Digital down almost 15%, and Seagate down more than 10%. The question is, why? What the AI boom gives, it can take away The AI boom of the past several years has led many of the world’s largest tech giants to spend hundreds of billions building massive data centers to run their AI systems. These data centers require servers that in turn require massive amounts of RAM to run the AI. The staggering RAM requirements for the AI boom have led to a memory chip shortage. And while that is bad for everyday retail customers like you and me, that shortage has been very good for the memory chip makers themselves. Their once-cheaper RAM technology now sells at a premium—and they have no shortage of deep-pocketed enterprise customers snapping up all the RAM they can make. But what the AI boom gives, it can take away. Last week, one of the world’s AI leaders, Google, announced it had developed a new technology called TurboQuant. As Fast Company previously reported, Google says the tech is “a compression algorithm that optimally addresses the challenge of memory overhead in vector quantization.” Without going into too much detail, the tech essentially means that AI giants like Google might soon be able to run compute-intensive AI tasks on computers that require up to six times less RAM than they do now. While this is great news for the AI giants, it’s horrible news for memory chip makers, as demand for their chips could drop by as much as 6x. Why did memory stocks get hit so hard yesterday? Importantly, Google’s TurboQuant news was released last week (RAM makers also took a beating when it was first announced), so why did memory chip stocks fall again yesterday? It’s always impossible to know the exact motivations for any large-scale selloff in the markets, but investors probably spent the weekend digesting the TurboQuant news. And when markets opened on Monday, enough investors thought it might be a good idea to start taking some profits on the four memory chip makers, which have seen such impressive gains in recent months. Such profit-taking can often trigger a snowball effect, resulting in significant falls in a stock in any given trading session. The only other thing likely to have affected memory chip stocks yesterday is the same event that has affected most other stocks over the past month: lingering uncertainty around the war in Iran. The markets have been generally down this month, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that we could be heading for our worst quarter in four years. What investors will be watching for in particular with memory chip stocks is whether the RAM shortage may indeed be coming to an end sooner than most expected. That answer will likely have the greatest influence on memory-chip stocks in the months ahead. View the full article

U.S. gas prices jumped past an average of $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 on Tuesday as the Iran war pushed fuel prices to soar worldwide. According to motor club AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is now $4.02 — over a dollar more than before the war began. The last time U.S. drivers were collectively paying this much at the pump was nearly four years ago, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The price is a national average, meaning drivers in some states have been paying well over $4 a gallon for a while now. Prices vary from state to state due to factors ranging from nearby supply to differing tax rates. Since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint war against Iran on Feb. 28, the cost of crude oil — the main ingredient in gasoline — has spiked and swung rapidly. That’s because the conflict has caused deep supply chain disruptions and cuts from major oil producers across the Middle East. Motorists around the world are also coping with higher gas prices due to the war. In Paris, for example, gas is at 2.34 euros per liter ($2.68), which is about $10.27 a gallon. Expensive gas could drag on the economy and drive up other prices Higher gas prices are impacting consumers and businesses as many households continue to face wider cost of living strains. And as drivers pay more to cover necessities like gas, many may be forced to cut their budgets in other places. More expensive fuel can also push up other spending, from utility bills to the price of many goods consumers buy each day. Consumer prices and the cost of living already have become flashpoints in this midterm election year, with Democrats especially hammering The President and Republicans as the GOP tries to hold majorities on Capitol Hill. A recent AP-NORC poll found that 45% of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford gas in the next few months, up from 30% shortly after The President won the 2024 presidential election with promises to lower costs. In the immediate future, analysts point to groceries, which have to be restocked frequently and could also see price hikes as businesses’ transportation costs pile up. But hauling other cargo and packages has also been impacted. The United Postal Service, for example, is seeking a temporary 8% added charge on some of its popular products including Priority Mail. U.S. diesel prices — the fuel used for many freight and delivery trucks — is now going for an average of $5.45 a gallon, up from about $3.76 a gallon before the war began, per AAA. If the war drags on, it’s possible that those prices could tick up even higher. Most tanker movement in the key Strait of Hormuz, where roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil typically sails through, remains at a halt. That’s led to cuts from major producers in the region who have no way of getting their crude to market. Meanwhile, Iran, Israel and the U.S. have all struck oil and gas facilities, worsening supply concerns. Reserves open in an effort to cut prices In a search for some relief, the International Energy Agency pledged to release 400 million barrels of oil from emergency stockpiles of member nations. That includes the U.S., despite The President initially downplaying the need for reserve oil. The The President administration has also eased sanctions to free up some oil from Venezuela, and temporarily Russia. The White House also says it’s waiving maritime shipping requirements under a more than century-old law, known as the Jones Act, for 60 days. It’s not yet clear if those efforts will bring relief for consumers. A lot of factors contribute to gas prices. Refineries buy crude oil in advance, meaning some could be work with more expensive oil for a while, and it will take time for any new supply to trickle down to consumers. And while steep crude prices are a leading driver behind today’s surge, U.S. gas prices typically tick up a bit at this time of year. More drivers are hitting the road and trying to fuel up while they can, so there’s higher demand. Warming weather also brings a shift to summer blend fuel, which is more expensive to produce than winter blend. The US is an oil exporter, but it’s still affected by global prices The U.S., which is a net oil exporter, hasn’t seen as stark a shock as other parts of the world that rely more heavily on fuel imports from the Middle East, notably Asia. But that doesn’t mean America is immune to price spikes. Oil is a globally-traded commodity. And most of what the U.S. produces is light, sweet crude — but refineries on the East and West coasts are primarily designed to process heavier, sour product. As a result, the country also needs imports. Escalating geopolitical conflicts have disrupted oil flows and contributed to a surge in gas prices in the past. The U.S. average for regular gasoline climbed to its highest level of more than $5 a gallon in June 2022, nearly four months after the Ukraine war began and world leaders imposed sanctions against Russia, a leading oil producer. Prices at the pump later fell from that record. Before Tuesday, per AAA data, the national average had stayed below the $4 mark since mid-August of 2022. Associated Press journalists Angela Charlton and Bill Barrow contributed to this report. —Wyatte Grantham-Philips Associated Press View the full article

UK Liberal Democrats had called for royal trip to be cancelledView the full article

As marketing leaders, we don’t wake up thinking about algorithms. We wake up thinking about growth. For CMOs, the job has always been the same: drive real business impact, improve ROI, and prove—repeatedly—that marketing is a growth engine, not a cost center. Long before generative AI entered the conversation, marketing leaders were under pressure to connect activity to revenue, align tightly with sales, and make performance visible. The pressure to quantify value didn’t start with AI. It started when the business demanded proof. What has changed is the speed and precision with which we can now deliver that proof. AI ISN’T REINVENTING MARKETING. IT’S REWIRING DISCOVERY. There’s a growing narrative that AI is reinventing marketing from scratch. That’s not quite right. The fundamentals haven’t changed. Customers still want clarity, differentiation still matters, and trust still closes deals. What has changed—dramatically—is how buyers discover information. Artificial intelligence is accelerating marketing’s ability to connect actions to outcomes. Predictive models surface intent earlier. Personalization is finally scalable. Attribution is sharper and more defensible. In many ways, marketing’s contribution to growth has never been more measurable. At the same time, AI is quietly breaking the discovery model most marketing strategies were built on. Search engines, feeds, and clicks are no longer the primary gateways to information. Increasingly, buyers encounter brands through AI systems that summarize, synthesize, and recommend—often without ever sending them to a website. That creates a paradox for CMOs: just as we get better at measuring impact, the signals we’ve historically relied on—traffic, rankings, and engagement—are becoming less reliable indicators of influence. Many marketing tactics that dominated the last decade were designed for a discovery model that rewarded volume: more content, more keywords, more posts, more gates. Large language models don’t work that way. They reward clarity. They don’t favor noise. They surface authority, structure, and context. Content optimized for feeds and rankings often performs poorly in an AI-mediated environment, while rigorously built content performs better than ever. Once you accept that discovery has changed—but accountability has not—the leadership challenge becomes clear: CMOs must decide what no longer deserves attention. A “KEEP. DROP. SCALE.” FRAMEWORK FOR AI-FIRST GROWTH In an AI-first discovery world, the question isn’t “How do we do more?” It’s “What should we stop, what should we protect, and what should we scale—so our efforts compound instead of dilute?” A simple. “Keep. Drop. Scale.” matrix gives us CMOs a practical way to reallocate effort without disrupting momentum while modernizing content for AI-driven visibility and improving ROI and attribution—even as clicks decline. Keep: What signals authority What keeps showing up in AI-driven discovery is content that was built to last. CMOs should keep and protect: Deep expert content grounded in real data, not opinion. Clean structured content using consistent headings and schemas. Content clusters organized around real customer problems, not internal narratives. Structured content retains visibility in AI‑generated results even as traditional click‑through rates decline. AI doesn’t need flash. It needs a signal. Drop: What exists to feed the machine This is the hardest part—and the most freeing. It’s time to reduce or eliminate: Keyword-stuffed content that answers no real question. Social output optimized for cadence rather than insight. Gated assets that summarize information buyers can now get instantly from AI. If content exists primarily to game the system, AI will route around it. In an AI‑first discovery world, volume without substance becomes invisible. Scale: Explainability, provenance, and context This is where the biggest opportunity lies. Prioritize explainers over announcements. Make authorship, sources, and timestamps explicit. Provide context that connects facts to meaning. Create modular content that can be cited, summarized, and reused accurately. AI favors content that is easy to attribute, summarize, and trust. This can be a strategic advantage that improves buyer confidence and accelerates late‑stage conversations. WHY THIS MOMENT MATTERS FOR MARKETING LEADERS AI doesn’t replace marketing fundamentals. It exposes the weak ones. The marketers who win in this transition will not be the ones chasing every new tool or metric. They will be the ones who make deliberate choices about what to stop, preserve, and scale. A “Keep. Drop. Scale.” framework gives leaders: Air cover to say no to legacy work that no longer compounds. A clear narrative for teams navigating constant change. A credible way to report impact as discovery decouples from click.s In an AI‑first world, visibility isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about being understood, trusted, and surfaced when it matters. That’s not the end of marketing. It’s the next chapter. Felicity Carson is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at onsemi View the full article

After failing to stop multiple offshore wind projects from moving forward on the East Coast, the The President administration is trying a new tactic: paying companies not to build wind farms. Last week, the government announced that it would pay TotalEnergies approximately $1 billion to give up on building two planned offshore wind farms in the U.S. and to invest in oil, gas, and LNG production instead. But experts say that the federal government can’t legally spend taxpayer money this way. And Total was already planning to build new fossil fuel projects before striking the deal. In the past, when energy companies decided to give up offshore leases, they ate the loss. Other companies, for example, have given up offshore oil and gas leases in Alaska. “They may or may not have spent a lot of money on the lease, but they routinely will expire, and the companies are not going to ask for reimbursement because they’re not going to get it,” says David Hayes, a law professor at Stanford who worked on climate policy in the Biden administration. “That money has gone into the U.S. Treasury. The Interior Department can’t simply on its own say to the U.S. Treasury, ‘Please give that money back because the company decided it doesn’t want to proceed with the lease.’” The French company TotalEnergies bought two leases for planned wind farms in 2022: one off the coast of North Carolina, for more than $133 million, and one off the coast of New York for $795 million. Then The President took office, and started to attack wind farms. The president has a longstanding grudge against offshore wind; his allies in the fossil fuel industry also don’t want competition from large wind projects. Last year, the The President administration ordered five large offshore wind projects that were already under construction to stop work. The administration cited unspecified national security concerns, though all of the projects had already been thoroughly vetted by the military. The energy companies sued and each won in court. The government didn’t appeal the verdicts, in a sign that it knew it wouldn’t win. (Separately, the government is also now using military reviews to delay more routine approvals for wind farms on land.) Earlier this month, one of the offshore projects, Vineyard Wind, finished construction. Revolution Wind, another project, started delivering power. Last week, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind also started delivering power to the grid. When that project is fully complete, it will power around 660,000 homes; Dominion, the utility building it, says that it will save customers $3 billion on fuel costs over its first decade. Those companies lost millions because of the delays and had to battle to keep going. In TotalEnergies’ case, instead of struggling to begin new projects in the face of a hostile administration, the company decided to pull out. The CEO has said that he approached the administration to make the new deal. (Neither TotalEnergies nor the Department of the Interior responded to Fast Company‘s requests for comment.) But experts say the deal, as described, isn’t legally viable. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management “does not have the authority to give a so-called refund if an entity that is holding a lease wants to relinquish the lease,” says Elizabeth Klein, who led the agency under Biden and is now director of domestic policy programs at Penn Washington. BOM also doesn’t have the funds. Klein says that its annual budget is only around $200 million. “BOM is not sitting on a billion dollars,” she says. The administration may reportedly use the Judgment Fund to pay—but that fund is supposed to be used for settlements when the government has been sued and is likely to lose in court. In this case, Total never tried to start building the wind farms, the government never tried to stop it, and Total never sued. “The government hasn’t taken any action to cancel those leases,” says Klein. “There is no litigation. “In my view, it’s as if the government is saying, you know, we were about to break the law, and instead of breaking the law, we’re going to pay you the money out.” In a press release about the deal, the Department of the Interior cited the Rio Grande LNG plant that Total plans to expand in Texas as part of the new fossil fuel work that the federal government will reimburse “dollar for dollar.” But Total had already committed to that work. Even if it were legal to use, the money isn’t incentivizing anything new. Congress could object to the misuse of taxpayer money. “These are U.S. funds that are being inappropriately applied, without Congressional approval, for liability that does not exist,” says Hayes. The states that were supposed to get the power, New York and North Carolina, could also potentially sue, since residents there will lose out on clean power that could have helped lower energy bills. View the full article

AI search engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity are changing how consumers discover and purchase products online. If your product pages aren’t optimized for these AI assistants, you could be missing out on a growing source of traffic and revenue. The challenge? AI assistants don’t evaluate product pages in the same way traditional search engines do. They need to fully understand your products so they can confidently recommend them to different users with different needs. To help you assess how well your product pages are optimized for AI search, here’s a simple scorecard covering the six most important factors. 1. Product specifications Does the product page clearly display the product’s attributes and specifications? AI assistants need clearly stated specifications to better understand your products and match them to customer needs. If a shopper asks an AI assistant for “an airline-friendly crate for a 115-pound dog,” the AI must be able to see the maximum weight limit of a product before it will recommend it. Without clear specifications, some products won’t get recommended, even if they’re actually a perfect match. Amazon does this really well, and it’s likely one of the many keys to their strong performance in AI search. Just look at all the helpful specifications they clearly lay out on their product pages. Action item: Go through your product pages and make certain all applicable specifications are clearly displayed. Don’t bury them in the main product description or other marketing copy. Clearly lay them out in a structured table or bulleted list. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with 2. Unique selling points Are the product’s unique benefits clearly described? AI needs to understand both what makes your product stand out and why your products should be recommended over the competition. If a product page reads like every other industry website, AI assistants have no compelling reason to recommend the listed products. Think about it from the AI’s perspective: If a user asks “what’s the best L-shaped sofa,” the AI will look for products with clear differentiators (hidden storage, machine-washable, modular parts, durability, etc.). The characteristics that make your product stand out should be explicitly stated on the page. Here’s a great example from Home Reserve. Their product pages have a section called “Key Features” that lists the unique selling points that separate them from the competition. Action item: Make sure your product pages clearly state what makes them better and why it matters to the customer. Keep your key features specific. Generic selling points like “high-quality craftsmanship” or “premium materials” are too vague and don’t give AI assistants enough information to establish a clear differentiation. Dig deeper: How AI-driven shopping discovery changes product page optimization 3. Use cases and target audience Are the product’s intended use cases and audience clear? AI assistants don’t match products to keywords — they match products to people and their unique needs. When a user asks ChatGPT, “what’s the best desk for a small apartment,” the AI looks for products intended for compact spaces, small rooms, or apartment living. If a product page only describes the desk’s dimensions without connecting them to a particular use case, AI assistants may not recommend the product when users ask about those scenarios. Any given product could have a multitude of use cases and audiences. A standing desk could be ideal for remote workers, people with back pain, gamers, or small business owners outfitting a home office. If a product page only speaks to one of these audiences, it might not get recommended to the others in AI search. Action item: For each product, include the top three to five specific use cases or audience segments on the page. Go beyond demographics and think about situations, pain points, and goals. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 4. FAQ section Does the product page include an FAQ section answering common questions about the product? AI assistants always try to connect products with the right buyer. When a user asks a question like, “what’s the best waterproof sealant for a flat roof,” the AI looks for information on product pages demonstrating they’re a good fit for the particular use case. This is what makes FAQ content so valuable. A well-structured FAQ section can give AI assistants additional confidence that the product is a good fit for the user and worthy of a mention. The more specific and detailed your FAQ answers are, the more prompts your product can match within AI search. For example, Liquid Rubber sells mulch glue and waterproof sealants. They do a great job of providing a clear list of frequently asked questions on their product pages. This type of FAQ content can help their products get recommended more often when users ask ChatGPT specific questions: What’s the best VOC mulch glue? Can I get mulch glue that will last up to 12 months? Is there a mulch glue that delivers within one week? Action item: Review your customer support inquiries, product reviews, competitor pages, and relevant Reddit threads to identify the most common customer questions. Then add these questions directly to your product pages with clear and concise answers. Dig deeper: AI citations favor listicles, articles, product pages: Study 5. Product reviews Does the product page display customer ratings and review counts? AI assistants will recommend highly rated products with strong reputations. A product with 500+ reviews and a 4.8-star rating is a much safer recommendation than a product with zero reviews or a low rating. Just ask ChatGPT for product recommendations, and you’ll see the product ratings front and center. Take, for example, the prompt, “What’s the best medium roast caramel flavored coffee?” It’s clear that ChatGPT relies heavily on product reviews and only recommends products with a high rating. When you click on any of these products, you’ll see that product ratings and the number of reviews are clearly displayed on the product page. Note: Your product’s rating in ChatGPT may differ from what’s on your product page. This is because ChatGPT calculates an aggregate rating across multiple merchants (e.g., Walmart, Target, etc.), rather than only pulling from your product page. But having a strong rating isn’t enough — you need a lot of reviews as well. I recently reviewed 1,000 ecommerce-focused prompts and found that the median number of reviews was 156. So, if you want to increase your chances of getting recommended by ChatGPT (and other AI assistants), aim for at least 150+ product reviews. Action item: Make sure your product pages clearly display customer ratings, review counts, and (ideally) some actual reviews. Third-party review platforms like Yotpo, Judge.me, and Shopper Approved can solicit product reviews from customers for you. Dig deeper: How to make ecommerce product pages work in an AI-first world 6. Product structured data Does the product page include structured data for price, availability, reviews, and other key attributes? It’s easier for AI search engines to understand information presented in a clear structure (e.g., tables, lists). But there’s nothing more structured than the JSON format for structured data (also known as schema markup). There’s a common claim in AI SEO that structured data is some kind of magic bullet for AI visibility. The reality is more nuanced. Structured data experiment An interesting experiment conducted by SEO consultant Dan Taylor tested the impact of structured data on AI search. He included a physical address for a made-up company in the JSON-LD structured data, but didn’t include it anywhere in the page content itself. Then, when he asked ChatGPT for the address, it still pulled it from the structured data. This experiment shows that AI assistants are indeed crawling structured data. But they’re not necessarily parsing it the same way a traditional search engine would. Instead, they’re simply treating it as another source of text on the page. If the content in your schema is relevant to a user’s prompt, AI assistants will pick it up. But it doesn’t matter whether the schema is valid or completely made up. Where structured data helps most So, if AI assistants treat structured data like any other text, is it still worth adding it to your product pages? The short answer is “yes.” Presenting important product information clearly and well formatted can always help AI assistants understand your product pages. But the real advantage is in the product cards found within the AI responses. Google is using its Knowledge Graph data in their AI systems, and this type of structured data, or schema markup, can feed into it. There are also reports of ChatGPT using Google Shopping data for its product recommendations. So, the main advantage of structured data is how it plays into Google’s Knowledge Graph of products, which can directly impact product recommendations across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, and even ChatGPT. With the rise of agentic commerce, product data will only become more important as AI agents rely on it to compare, evaluate, and even purchase products on behalf of users. See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with Putting the scorecard to work Here’s a quick overview you can use to audit your product pages: Once you’ve scored your highest-priority pages, any gaps become the priority on your AI product optimization roadmap. Tackle the “No” items first, since those represent the biggest missed opportunities, then work on upgrading the “Partial” scores. This type of product optimization is still a blind spot for many ecommerce brands, which means every factor you improve is a chance to get recommended where they don’t. The sooner you close these gaps, the harder it becomes for competitors to catch up. View the full article

Google's John Mueller explained, one again, why it takes weeks to roll out a core update. It is often because there are different components to core updates through the rollout stages, and each needs to be pushed individually. View the full article

Cost of oil likely to keep climbing until Strait of Hormuz reopens to shipping View the full article

Microsoft is at it again with its sponsored labels tests. This time, Microsoft is testing almost transparent sponsored labels within the Bing search results. The labels are super grayed out and super hard to see.View the full article

Last week, OpenAI announced a new feature for ChatGPT named location sharing. This allows you to share your precise location with ChatGPT, so ChatGPT can give you more localized and near me results.View the full article

Unless the war ends quickly, a rise in Eurozone interest rates looks inevitableView the full article

As his poll numbers tank, the president’s trade and immigration agendas are encountering judicial resistance tooView the full article

Google Ads is rolling out asset group theming for Performance Max campaigns. This lets you copy an asset group and apply this theme to your text and images using Google AI.View the full article

Google is sending out emails with updates on how Google Business Profiles may verify your business details. Google said it may "reach out using automated messages via call, text, or WhatsApp to the verified phone number on your Business Profile."View the full article

Gift from hedge fund boss will fund new school of governmentView the full article

Delay in release of WordPress 7.0 stems from concerns over the real-time collaboration feature. The focus is on targeting "extreme stability." The post WordPress Delays Release Of Version 7.0 To Focus On Stability appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

The companies anticipate they will submit a joint stipulation of dismissal with prejudice within 45 days, according to a document filed Friday. View the full article

Cesar Chavez Day is getting a new name. Following a New York Times investigation detailing the late civil rights leader’s alleged abuse against women and girls, California has decided to rename Cesar Chavez Day, traditionally celebrated on March 31, Farmworkers Day. Now the new name is gaining traction elsewhere. In 2000, California was the first state to commemorate Cesar Chavez Day as a paid holiday, which honored the legacy of Chavez, who fought for the rights of farmworkers. Since then, a day of commemoration for Chavez was established in other places, and in 2014, then-President Barack Obama proclaimed Chavez’s birthday, March 31, as Cesar Chavez Day federally. Chavez founded the union United Farm Workers (UFW) with labor leader Dolores Huerta in 1962, which led nationwide boycotts and pushed for pay raises for workers. Huerta was among the women in the New York Times report who accused Chavez of abuse, stating that Chavez raped and impregnated her twice. Following the story in The Times, California lawmakers responded swiftly by renaming March 31 with a focus on farmworkers to commemorate the movement over a single person. Other states and cities are following suit. Minnesota decided to rename the holiday Farmworkers Day. In Los Angeles, the day will be known as Farm Workers Day, styled with a space between farm and workers. To acknowledge the women and the alleged abuse they endured from Chavez, Tempe, Arizona, temporarily renamed the day Women Farmworkers’ Day and will decide on a permanent name at a later date. Elected officials in San Luis, Arizona, where Chavez died in 1993, had a proposal to rename the day Día de los Campesinos, Spanish for “Farmworkers Day,” but not enough council members were present to vote on it when they met, so it will remain Cesar Chavez day for now. It will likely be the last holiday under Chavez’s name, according to the mayor. Meanwhile, El Mirage, Arizona, renamed the day El Mirage Day of Service. The speed to rename everything named after Chavez is a sign that people listen to and believe women, says Dartmouth professor Matthew Garcia, who authored a 2014 book on the UFW under Chavez, and it’s spurred by outrage over sexual abuse against girls detailed in government files about Jeffrey Epstein. “I think it’s all very appropriate,” he tells Fast Company. “What you replace these monuments and street names and building names with is another question.” While the timeline to rename Cesar Chavez Day this year was set by the calendar, organizers, historians, and public officials looking to commemorate farmworkers and their labor movement by a different name down the line have another year to consider what to call it. Garcia says he’s fine with the name Farmworkers Day in California, but he believes that specific communities should have the patience to consider other local leaders in the farmworkers movement to commemorate. “It could be a very democratic process,” he says. “One of the things the farmworkers movement was known for was engaging with people in the community.” View the full article

Founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple officially incorporated on April 1, 1976. The company helped usher in the era of personal computing, pairing meticulous design with tight hardware–software integration and a simple promise: “It just works.” Its history has been anything but linear. There were early breakthroughs, a near-collapse in the 1990s, and a dramatic revival after Jobs returned, followed by a run of mass-market hits beginning with the iPod and accelerating with the iPhone. All told, Apple has over five decades launched category-defining products, shelved its share of misfires, and pushed some genuinely odd ideas. These are the clearest examples of each. Apple’s best iPod Mini: While the original iPod transformed music consumption and kicked off Apple’s ascent as a consumer tech brand, 2004’s iPod Mini introduced the click wheel that we all now associate with Apple’s portable music player. It was the ultimate expression of what the iPod could be, and its lower price helped put Apple hardware into more people’s pockets. The App Store: The iPhone gets most of the credit for the smartphone revolution, but the App Store is what really brought it to life. Being able to download apps for free or cheap transformed the iPhone from a neat gadget into a real computing platform, and it foreshadowed Apple’s pivot from a hardware company to services business. iPad 2: If Apple’s goal with the iPad was to provide a minimal sheet of glass that turns into anything—an e-book reader, a video player, a gaming machine—the second-gen iPad was the first product to nail it. The dramatically thinner design helped it become Apple’s most-used tablet, even for years after the arrival of newer models. Tom Morris 2010 MacBook Air: Steve Jobs pulling the original MacBook Air from an envelope is an all-time great product reveal, but the 2010 revisions are what brought the concept to the masses. With a much lower starting price of $999 for the 11-inch model (versus $1,799 for the original 13-incher) and speedy solid state storage as a standard feature, it established the Air as Apple’s mainstream laptop for years to come. M1 chip: Announced in 2020, the M1 was Apple’s first Mac chip designed in-house. Built on a 5-nanometer process with 16 billion transistors, it powered the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. The result was a noticeable jump in speed and efficiency, with machines that ran faster, cooler, and longer on a single charge. iMessage: Apple’s real innovation with iMessage was to automatically supersede standard text messaging between iPhone users. With no effort, the limitations of regular texting—tiny images, barely-watchable videos, group chat size limits—went away, and Android users were sadly singled out, giving Apple a built-in marketing advantage that persists today. Apple II: As Apple’s first pre-assembled computer, and its first with color graphics, the Apple II help kickstart personal computing at home. Perhaps as importantly, it launched Apple’s longstanding foothold in education, and seeded countless childhood memories of playing Oregon Trail on school computers. AirPods Pro: The first-generation AirPods were one-size-fits-all, which worked for some people but not others. The 2019 AirPods Pro changed that. They were Apple’s first earbuds to create a proper seal in the ear canal, using silicone tips in multiple sizes. That alone improved passive noise isolation, and the active noise cancellation was solid too. A Transparency mode let in outside sound when you needed it. Elvin Rapheal MagSafe for iPhone: Apple’s magnetic connector might not have seemed like a big deal when it arrived with the iPhone 12 in 2020, but it quickly kickstarted a vast ecosystem of interesting accessories, from snap-on power banks and wallets to car dashboard mounts and docking stations. Five years later, most Android phones still haven’t caught up. GarageBand: Apple’s free music-making software is remarkable for how easily it accommodates a wide range of skills. A child can spend hours fiddling with GarageBand’s ready-made beats and loops, yet it’s surprisingly robust and extensible for multi-track recording with real instruments. iPhone 4: Released in 2010, the iPhone 4 added a front-facing camera, enabling FaceTime video calls. It also introduced the Retina display and a redesigned stainless steel body, making it the thinnest smartphone at the time. App Tracking Transparency: With App Tracking Transparency in 2021, Apple drew a clear line on user privacy, requiring apps to explicitly ask permission before tracking activity across other apps and websites. The change came at a steep cost to the mobile ad industry, costing companies like Meta tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. iTunes Plus: Apple achieved a real breakthrough when it started selling DRM-free music in 2007, allowing users to play their songs on any device using any software they wanted. Within two years, DRM had disappeared from the entire iTunes catalog, and users could liberate their existing copy-protected tracks for 30 cents apiece. It was a rare taste of actual digital content ownership that has sadly disappeared in the streaming age. Time Machine: Even in the age of cloud storage, owning a physical backup of your data is still pretty important, and Time Machine continues to make it easy for Mac owners. Just plug in a hard drive and click a few buttons, and you’ll have a full copy of your computer for when things go wrong. Why doesn’t Windows have this? AirPlay: The great thing about AirPlay is how it bypasses all the vagaries of Bluetooth when you just want to play music on some speakers. Being able to route any audio app to one or more AirPlay speakers—even across multiple rooms—is sneakily one of the best parts of the Apple ecosystem. Hide My Email: Apple’s arguably doing more than any other major tech company to keep email addresses private. Anyone who uses the “Sign in with Apple” button in an app or web site can sign in with a randomized email address that forwards to their real address, keeping the latter hidden, and iCloud+ subscribers can also generate more masked email addresses on-demand. It’s an easy way to keep an important piece of personal information away from marketers and control who’s allowed to email you. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The biggest selling point for Apple’s 2009 Mac software update was that it had “zero new features,” as former software engineering head Bertrand Serlet announced at the time. This wasn’t entirely true, and its implied elimination of bugs was a bit overblown, but Apple’s commitment to slowing down and making under-the-hood improvements was a breakthrough in its own way. It’s why Mac enthusiasts keep pining for a modern Snow Leopard equivalent after years of MacOS feature bloat. Shortcuts for iOS: Apple gave a real gift to power users by letting them set up complex automations and routines on their iPhones. No single software feature has done more to advance what’s possible with iOS, even if most users never touch it. HyperCard: Released in 1987, HyperCard let users build interactive stacks of linked text, images, and sound using a simple scripting language. It was an early form of hypermedia, predating the web and influencing technologies like HTTP and JavaScript. Live Photos: Apple’s idea to capture not just the exact moment of a photo, but a second or two of video around it, has made revisiting old memories more engaging and allowed iPhone users to get better stills than what they actually took. It’s no surprise the feature was quickly copied by practically every Android phone. Apple Pay: In 2014, Apple Pay used the iPhone 6’s Touch ID to enable contactless payments in stores and apps. More than a million credit cards were registered in the first three days, making it the largest mobile payment system in the U.S. at the time. The feature expanded to the Apple Watch the following year, letting users pay with a tap of the wrist. Apple’s Worst iTunes for Windows: If you ever want to witness some pure expressions of primal technology rage, try searching the web for something like “itunes windows bad.” You will find countless forum threads and blog posts bemoaning the sluggish, unreliable, crash-prone mess that Apple clearly never cared all that much about. Sadly, the response to the Apple Music app that succeeded it hasn’t been much better. Motorola ROKR E1: Sure, it wasn’t an Apple product, but the first attempt to integrate iTunes with a mobile device (two years before the iPhone) still ended up being a dud, with a measly 100-song limit and slow file transfers. Even Steve Jobs seemed unenthused while announcing it. Apple Maps: Apple set out to replace Google Maps on the iPhone with its own mapping app. Led by Scott Forstall, the company launched Apple Maps with iOS 6 in 2012. But users quickly ran into inaccurate directions, missing landmarks, and bizarre visual glitches. Tim Cook issued a public apology, and Forstall was reportedly pushed out after refusing to sign the apology letter. First-generation Siri remote: Apple’s attempt to bring touchpad-like controls to the Apple TV streaming box was a great way to frustrate anyone who happened to be visiting. While swiping with your thumb was helpful for gliding through lengthy menus, fine-grained controls became needlessly difficult. The current remote retains the swipe support but grounds them in a normal-looking directional pad. Siri: Speaking of Siri, Apple acquired the fledgling personal assistant in 2010 and launched it on the iPhone 4 a year later, giving the company an early lead in voice assistants. But the product never evolved fast enough. It remained limited and inflexible, eventually falling behind competitors from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Butterfly Keyboard: Introduced in 2015, the butterfly keyboard used a low-travel mechanism to make MacBooks thinner. It also made them fragile. Dust and debris frequently caused stuck keys, repeated characters, and full keyboard failures. Macintosh TV: In 1993, Apple tried to combine a computer with a cable TV. The catch: it couldn’t do both at once. The product lasted just four months. Apple III: Apple’s first attempt to build a business computer in 1980 was a disaster from the start, with notoriously loose component connections and a motherboard prone to overheating due to Steve Jobs’ demands for a fanless design. Apple had to replace thousands of faulty machines across two product revisions, and gave up on the entire product line in 1984 after selling only 65,000 units. Songs of Innocence: As a gift to all 500 million of its iTunes users, Apple dropped a copy of U2’s latest album into all of their music libraries without permission. The stunt went over so poorly that it prompted an apology from U2 frontman Bono, while Apple had to release an additional software program to extricate the album from users’ collections. Liquid Glass: Apple’s iOS 26 redesign leaned heavily on translucent layers and fluid animations. Many users found the interface harder to read and slower on older devices. Third-Generation iPod Shuffle: In 2009, Apple removed all onboard controls from the iPod Shuffle, moving them to the headphone cable. The change made the device harder to use and incompatible with third-party headphones. Macintosh Portable: While Apple billed its first battery-powered Mac as a “no-compromise machine” in 1989 it was quite clearly compromised by its 16-pound weight, $7,499 price tag, and weaker processor than the non-portable SE/30. Apple discontinued it in 1991 to make way for the far superior PowerBook 100. Apple’s Weirdest Apple Vision Pro: It’s not like Apple these days to release experimental products for bleeding-edge early adopters, which is why the Vision Pro is so puzzling. While the mixed reality technology is impressive, the bulky design and $3,500 price tag makes Vision Pro feel more like a developer kit than a fully fleshed-out product. Mac Pro Wheels Kit: For creative professionals who desired the most powerful Mac possible, the $6,999 Mac Pro made some sense. But $700 for a set of wheels that don’t even lock in place—or $400, for those willing to forgo the Mac Pro’s standard feet—seems like a bit much. Apple just discontinued the Mac Pro last week, taking the wheels down with them. Apple Watch Edition (1st generation): Yes Jony, we get it, the Apple Watch is a luxury timepiece, as indicated by the option to spend $10,000 (or more) on an 18-karat gold version. But we also knew that, unlike a real luxury watch, this product would soon become obsolete. Apple dispensed with the gold from the Series 1 onward. iPod Socks: A set of colorful knit sleeves released in 2004 to protect iPods. Functional, but undeniably odd. View the full article

The modern kitchen has become a canvas for self-expression, a place where consumers obsess over aesthetics and materials with an intensity usually reserved for fashion. They carefully consider the color of their Dutch oven, the kind of wood in their cutting board, and where to display their glass canisters. And yet, tucked into the corner of that same beautiful kitchen, is almost certainly an unattractive trash can that looks like it was designed in 2000 and never revisited. The home goods market is massive and growing. It was valued at $960 billion in 2024 and projected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2030. But aside from premium brand SimpleHuman, which paved the way for well-designed trash and recycling systems, the category has largely been the overlooked stepchild of the kitchen. They tend to come in boring colors, are frequently loud, and often don’t properly hide the trash bag. Caraway wants to bring new life into the category. Next week, it launches a new trash and recycling system that reimagines both the functionality and the aesthetics of a kitchen trash can. (That is, if you can swing the $445 price tag for the set.) “We designed them to feel like furniture,” says Jordan Nathan, Caraway’s founder and CEO. “We want a product that you could feel really proud to display.” The New Caraway Trash System Caraway began developing the trash system in 2020 or 2021, and began by surveying customers to see what they would improve in a trash system. It turned out that most of them had multiple recycling bins in their home because they needed to separate paper from plastic. (“Typically those cheap blue plastic bins,” Nathan says.) Since they didn’t have enough space to lay these bins out next to one another, they often kept trash and recycling in different spots, requiring a trek across the kitchen. The design team took all of this information and began to reimagine what trash and recycling could be. They sketched out a system with a small footprint, with bins designed to sit side by side, and a recycling solution with sorting capability. The result is trash bins that come in two configurations, with a wide or narrow opening, to fit seamlessly into your kitchen’s design. The recycling bin is a particular design feat: a stacked two-compartment unit with pull-out drawers, each fitted with a discreet brushed metal handle, that allows you to sort glass and metal from cardboard and paper. The trash and recycling cans are meant to nest coherently, side by side. But even though they look effortless, a lot of work has gone into their functionality. “The internal mechanics based on the shape are different per product,” Nathan says. The step mechanism on the narrow bin operates differently from the one on the wide bin. The recycling unit required solving for a unique structural challenge: making sure a heavy bin full of wine bottles wouldn’t tip over, and that the pull-out drawers wouldn’t come flying open. “It was three separate R&D projects that also had to work together,” Nathan notes, “which was quite a big challenge.” On the aesthetic side, the system comes in brand’s signature muted, earthy palette—cream, forest green, terracotta, navy, and sage—all powder-coated in the same smooth, seamless finish that has become the brand’s visual calling card. Nathan says they deliberately excluded stainless steel and black, the color of most trash cans on the market today. “We really wanted to bring a Caraway look and feel to this,” Nathan says. A Natural Extension Caraway launched in 2019 with a non-toxic cookware set, then expanded into bakeware, food storage, and utensils, with each product thoughtfully designed to work with the others. The company has accumulated over 2.5 million customers and is now sold at Target, Crate & Barrel, Walmart, and Costco, in addition to its own direct-to-consumer channel. The company has raised $70.3 million over multiple rounds, including a $35 million Series A led by McCarthy Capital in 2022. Nathan attributes the brand’s success to its rigorous design process, which is painstaking and unusually slow. The company has a design team of three in-house designers, five product developers, and four employees overseas who manage factory relationships. And that small team is always operating five years out. “We’re actually working right now on our 2030 pipeline,” Nathan says. Getting there requires finding manufacturing partners willing to upend their processes—and most aren’t. Caraway’s products often require factories to change their production lines, since they use new novel materials. The company rarely uses plastic, and its signature ceramic coatings on pots and pans require dedicated production lines free from Teflon contamination. Finding partners takes one to two years alone. “I’d say nine out of ten factories reject our projects because they’re really difficult,” Nathan explains. The new trash system marks a significant inflection point for Caraway: It is the first product the brand has made that isn’t explicitly tied to cooking. “When we launched the brand, we called it Caraway Home very purposefully,” says Jordan Nathan, founder and CEO. “We have a big mission and the goal is to really build a hundred-year business.” The longer-term vision is sweeping: Nathan describes a future Caraway store where designers help customers outfit their entire living space with the brand’s products from floor to ceiling. By expanding into the rest of the home, Nathan says Caraway has broadened its R&D pipeline, although he doesn’t share what other rooms beyond the kitchen the brand will step into first. For now, Caraway has done something deceptively simple: made a trash can you might actually be happy to own. In a category that has coasted on indifference for decades, that’s not nothing. View the full article

I’ll never forget the morning I froze in front of a client. I was a Vice President at Kearney, the global management consulting firm, presenting our proposal to a three-person client subcommittee. Mid-sentence, my mind went completely blank. Not the normal “lost my train of thought” blank. The kind of blank that leaves a scary emptiness where confidence used to live. I’d been putting on a mask each day. I’d tried to be positive and stay on top of everything. But that morning, I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt anxious and exhausted at the same time. My mind was racing, and my body was depleted. The mask had finally cracked in the worst possible place. What I didn’t know then was how common my experience has become. Recent Wiley research reveals that 47% of managers describe their work stress as severe, compared to 37% of employees. The people responsible for preventing team burnout are burning out faster than the teams they’re protecting. This isn’t just a personal crisis—it’s an organizational one. Gallup research shows managers contribute to 70% of team engagement and well-being. When we crash, we don’t fall alone. But here’s what I learned after rebuilding my career and interviewing hundreds of leaders. Burnout isn’t inevitable. The managers who stay resilient practice five specific daily habits. 1. They practice self-care and talk about it When managers visibly practice self-care, team performance improves. American Psychological Association research shows a direct correlation. But it’s not just about doing self-care privately—it’s also about modeling it openly. Ellen Derrick, Partner at Deloitte Asia-Pacific, told me that she “grew up an athlete” and exercise remains critical to how she works through stress. What transformed her team wasn’t just that she exercised—it was that she stopped hiding it. When she started naming practices out loud—blocking her calendar for a run, protecting family time—her team followed. 2. They listen with empathy rather than just offering solutions Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, discovered you don’t show you care by talking or doing things. You show you care by listening with empathy. He created a listening course for all 12,000 employees. The core skill he taught was to listen to understand, rather than to fix. Workplace relationships improved, and managers reported their home lives transformed. Most people don’t come to you because they need you to solve their problem. They come because they need to feel less alone carrying it. To implement this habit, try listening to your first conversations for 90 seconds without offering advice. 3. They play to their strengths I saw the power of strengths firsthand with my son Adam. When he was about to graduate from high school, Adam was interested in advertising. After work experience revealed it wasn’t what he thought, I encouraged him to take Gallup’s CliftonStrengths assessment. He discovered his top strengths were restorative (problem-solving), futuristic (vision), and learner (acquiring knowledge). These insights helped him choose neuroscience, which aligned much more organically with his natural abilities. Later, when friends encouraged him to explore medicine, he recognized that it would use those same strengths daily. Today, he’s halfway through anesthetics training and finds great purpose in calm problem-solving, forward thinking, and continuous learning. Gallup research shows individuals who use their top five strengths each day are six times more likely to be engaged at work. As a manager, consider whose strengths a specific task is suited for before you delegate it. 4. They recognize progress and not just outcomes Teresa Amabile’s research on The Progress Principle reveals that nothing motivates knowledge workers more than progress on meaningful work—not recognition, not pay, not perks. However, most managers only recognize the finish line. The managers who build momentum recognize the micro-progress: “The way you reframed that problem in this morning’s meeting unlocked something for the whole team.” 5. They ask, “Are you OK?” when something doesn’t seem right As Founding Board Director of R U OK?, I’ve learned that 95% of people in my leadership seminars know someone close to them—at work or home—struggling with anxiety, depression, or addiction. Everyone is touched by this. Yet most of us stay silent. I’ve seen this question work in boardrooms, on construction sites, in mining operations—industries where vulnerability feels impossible. It works because the person feels understood. The critical part: ask in private. The stigma around mental health remains real. You don’t need to be a counselor. You just need to notice when something’s off and care enough to ask. If you notice that a team member seems a little off, create a private moment and ask: “Are you OK?” These habits won’t eliminate workplace stress. But they’ll help prevent the crisis I experienced—and the one destroying 47% of managers right now. Start with one habit tomorrow. Your team is watching. View the full article

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” – President John Fitzgerald Kennedy Most leaders will tell you they play the long game, and it is one of those things that sounds right and costs nothing to say. What is harder, rarer, and worth talking about is what underpins their conviction. Artemis II is a 50-year case study in exactly that. On April 1, four astronauts will board the Orion spacecraft and fly around the Moon in the first crewed lunar mission since 1972. The mission did not survive nine administrations on belief alone. It survived because enough people, across enough leadership transitions, kept building the structural conditions for it to continue even when the spotlight dimmed. Belief was necessary, but it was not sufficient. Tenacity kept it going. I have been thinking about that distinction a lot lately, because the bets leaders are being asked to carry right now are genuinely long and genuinely uncertain. The timelines are not quarterly, the outcomes are not guaranteed, and the pressure to show results, or pivot, or at least announce something, is relentless. The question I wanted to ask today’s leaders was not whether they have conviction, but what conviction looks like in practice when it is expensive and the outcome is uncertain and the easier path is right there in front of you. So I interviewed eight of them.* Here’s what they said: Noel Wallace, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Colgate-Palmolive “For over two centuries, we have been dedicated to oral care, and I’m incredibly proud that our Bright Smiles, Bright Futures program, which we launched in 1991, has now reached over 2 billion children and their families globally. By pairing our world-class science with this heartfelt mission, we are truly fulfilling our purpose to reimagine a healthier future for every family we touch, and that is a bet that has only gotten more meaningful with time.” Ron Lockton, Chairman & CEO of Lockton “Sixty years ago we made the long bet to remain an independent, privately held company. That decision grounded our competitive advantage in disciplined, long-term thinking and gives us the freedom to deliberately operate at lower margins, reinvesting the difference into our people, culture, specialized insurance solutions, and data-driven digital capabilities to deliver greater client value. This focus on client satisfaction over short-term profit rewards our Associates and fuels sustained, organic growth that continues to outperform our peers.” Rob Barrow, CEO of Definium Therapeutics “The U.S. is facing a profound and worsening mental health crisis, with current treatment options failing millions of people. Our big bet: to usher in a new era of psychiatry with the potential of lysergide tartrate, or LSD, which had its start in systematic research in the 1940s. Through the lens of modern science, our rigorous clinical trials are designed to explore and generate regulatory-grade evidence, and we believe we’re approaching a meaningful shift in what mental health treatment could look like. This will require deep education and collaboration across many stakeholders to create lasting change, but we’re excited and emboldened by the opportunity.” Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit “We made a long bet that communities, groups of people, would matter more than hashtags, which are just groups of things. People don’t just want to consume, they want to belong somewhere. It took some time, but that bet is aging pretty well.” Hayden Brown, President & CEO of Upwork “In 2023 we made a bet that went against the prevailing narrative: AI wouldn’t hollow out the market for human talent, it would supercharge demand for the best people. We rebuilt Upwork on that thesis. Today the fastest-growing segment on our platform is professionals who combine AI fluency with deeply human skills, like creativity, judgment and taste. The market is repricing this combination fast. We saw it coming. I didn’t expect it to move this quickly.” Bill McDermott, Chairman & CEO of ServiceNow “Empathy is the most durable competitive advantage there is, in any era, at any scale. My long bets have always been about people because early on I learned they are the soul of every great business. From owning my own deli as a teenage entrepreneur, to leading the fastest growing enterprise software company in the world, that truth is more important than ever in this AI revolution. There is no artificial intelligence without human intelligence. Empathy and the trust it builds in people will always be the ultimate human currency.” Mike Keech, CEO of Liquid I.V. “My biggest long bet was choosing to build Liquid I.V. Hydration Multiplier Sugar-free for real longevity rather than a quick win, which meant committing early to our core pillars of science, impact, and culture. We invested in new ingredients and our infrastructure that would take years to fully show their full value, but we believed the long game was worth it. And like anything built to last, the payoff comes when you look back and realize the foundation you laid is even stronger than it felt in the moment you were building it.” Jack Khattar, President & CEO of Supernus Pharmaceuticals “Two decades ago, we chose to invest in ourselves. We had to dream big and take big risks to get big results, transforming from a small, independent team into the full-fledged pharmaceutical company we are today. Throughout it all, we believed in our people and their ability to make it happen. Seeing our diverse portfolio deliver real-world results in Psychiatry and Parkinson’s is a powerful vindication of that journey, and I couldn’t be prouder to lead the team that made it all happen.” My take My big bet was that owned media would become central to the media mix of corporate storytelling. Back in 2009 at Starbucks, as confidence in media began to decline while interest in the people behind our business rose, we changed the structure of our newsroom and hired journalists, including a former broadcast anchor to lead, to do the internal reportage on the cultural fabric of the company to use as external stories. I carried that infrastructure through to Salesforce, then Google and to our own client counsel at Burson, as the rise of social and influencer relevance is the natural progression of this idea. The real bet was on humanizing our original content. *Colgate-Palmolive, Lockton, Definium Therapeutics, Reddit, and Supernus Pharmaceuticals are clients of my company, Burson. View the full article

Your performance at work today has a lot to do with how you spent your time after work yesterday. It’s not just about putting down the devices at a decent hour and having a consistent bedtime routine. New research suggests we can take steps to optimize tomorrow’s performance as soon as work ends today. According to the study, mentally detaching from work earlier in the day—and not thinking about it for the rest of the evening—leads to more energy, less fatigue, and higher work-goal accomplishment the following day. “It’s critical that you start your recovery as soon as you can,” says lead author Ryan Grant, an assistant professor of psychological science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Grant and his co-researchers asked more than 300 participants to log their activity every hour for five hours each evening, as well as record how they felt and what they accomplished the next day. They also identified factors that made it harder to leave work behind—which pushed the start of that mental recovery later into the evening and ultimately left workers feeling more depleted the next day. “On days when workload is higher, people are about 79% more likely to delay their recovery later into the evening,” he says. “On days when people felt more accomplished at work, they were about 56% more likely to recover earlier in the evening.” How to detach quickly, even when working remotely The findings suggest that in-office workers may enjoy a slight performance advantage, as mentally detaching from work is a lot easier with physical distance. That is why Grant says remote workers need to put a little more effort into creating space between their workspace and their living space, even if it’s more mental than physical. “Our brains and our bodies can’t differentiate whether we’re at home or at work. As long as you’re thinking about work, it turns on these stress systems that, if left on too long, will lead to physical and mental health issues,” he says. “Especially for remote workers, it’s critical to have an end-of-day ritual that signals that the workday is done and it’s time to mentally detach.” Grant recommends shutting down the laptop or monitor, going for a walk, even changing into more casual attire to signal that it’s time to stop thinking about work. The study also found that those who leave work with a sense of accomplishment tend to recover faster and, ultimately, show up to work more energized the following day. “One thing you could do at the end of the day is just write down a few small wins, or things you made progress on,” Grant advises. “The next thing I would recommend is writing down what are called ‘implementation intentions’—or what tasks you’re going to work on the next day, when you’re going to work on them, and how—which stops you from thinking about it until the next day.” Using Your Evenings to Gain an Edge The performance boost experienced by those who detach from work earlier is what Grant would describe as “statistically significant,” but it may not feel that way immediately. “These small differences add up,” he says. “Your performance is going to be a lot more sustainable.” Workers may also want to put extra effort into detaching even earlier the night before a big meeting, presentation, or high-pressure situation, says John Trougakos, a University of Toronto professor of organizational behavior and HR management. “A lot of people will instead work hard and cram for the test, so to speak, but they’re doing themselves a disservice as far as their well-being, energy, and focus for the next day goes,” he says. Tempting as it may be to go over your notes and prepare late into the evening, the research suggests you’re likely to perform better by stepping away and letting yourself recover. That is unless it’s the night before and you’re “totally unprepared,” Trougakos adds. The Case for Leaving Staff Alone After Hours The data also brings up a compelling argument for employers looking to maximize employee productivity: They’ll be more successful with a more hands-off approach. Some managers and leaders see no harm in messaging staff after hours, but Trougakos warns those who feel like they’re on-call at night will perform worse in the long run. “The biggest thing is getting over the short-term mentality of, ‘I need this now,’ and having a more holistic, big-picture perspective,” he says. Trougakos explains that, thanks to remote work tools, many feel “tethered to work.” He adds that “organizations and leaders can reduce the probability of that tether becoming an anchor on their recovery, which translates into an anchor on their productivity the next day.” For example, rather than sending a message after hours—even one that includes a disclaimer that an immediate response isn’t necessary—Trougakos recommends scheduling it to go out the next morning. Otherwise, “it completely detracts from their recovery, which will then set them up for less productivity and effectiveness the next day,” he says. Trougakos adds that after-hours requests can also be indicative of a demanding work culture, which research suggests produces worse outcomes for businesses in the long run. “It’s that mindset of ‘longer hours translates to more productivity’ that’s part of the problem, and why many managers and leaders will disregard this advice,” he says. “It’s not just best practices from an employee well-being perspective; it is also critical for the organization, because it means less sick leave, less absenteeism, less turnover, and ultimately better performance.” Is Government Intervention Necessary? Despite the growing body of research to suggest that enforcing simple work-life boundaries offers benefits to both individuals and their organizations, many employers continue to encroach on staff’s personal time. In response, 25 countries have adopted laws that make it illegal for employers to communicate with staff after hours. According to a recent study, organizations in places that introduce these “right to disconnect” laws see increases in employee satisfaction, productivity, and profitability. “We looked at publicly traded firms, who report their financial performance every year, and found that firms in countries that adopted the law experience significant increases in performance,” says Mark Ma, one of the study’s co-authors and an associate professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh. The researchers found that businesses see a 5.7% average increase in return on assets (ROA) and a 6.1% average increase in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) after their jurisdiction enforces a right-to-disconnect law. The researchers also found that overall employee satisfaction scores on employer review site Glassdoor “significantly improved” among Ontario-based employers after the Canadian province’s right-to-disconnect law went into effect in 2021. There are similar state-level proposals in California, New Jersey, and New York, but Ma says those efforts have stalled in the face of layoffs and rising unemployment. “There are some big companies that are adopting their own policies, but not many, because not all managers’ decisions are based on scientific research and evidence,” he says. “There’s no doubt that if you’re better rested, you can work better the next day.” View the full article