All Activity

For 60 years, people have read Warren Buffett’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters to gain insights into his investment philosophies. Every year, thousands convened at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting to gain insights from Buffett and his partner, the late Charlie Munger. Buffett has also done countless interviews over the years. Winnowing all that advice down to four items isn’t an easy task, but this is my attempt. Here’s Buffett on leadership, focus, the best investment you can make, and the true meaning of success. Buffett on leadership What model does Buffett use for managing people? A baseball batboy. As Buffett wrote in his 2002 shareholder letter: My managerial model is Eddie Bennett, who was a batboy. In 1919, at age 19, Eddie began his work with the Chicago White Sox, who that year went to the World Series. The next year, Eddie switched to the Brooklyn Dodgers, and they, too, won their league title. Our hero, however, smelled trouble. Changing boroughs, he joined the Yankees in 1921, and they promptly won their first pennant in history. Now Eddie settled in, shrewdly seeing what was coming. In the next seven years, the Yankees won five American League titles. What does this have to do with management? It’s simple — to be a winner, work with winners. In 1927, for example, Eddie received $700 for the one-eighth World Series share voted him by the legendary Yankee team of Ruth and Gehrig. This sum, which Eddie earned by working only four days (because New York swept the Series) was roughly equal to the full-year pay then earned by batboys. Eddie understood that how he lugged bats was unimportant; what counted instead was hooking up with the cream of those on the playing field. I’ve learned from Eddie. At Berkshire, I regularly hand bats to many of the heaviest hitters in American business. Buffett doesn’t just study companies to spot opportunities. He also works to identify companies with leaders capable of seizing, and then building on, those opportunities. Clearly, he’s a great manager, but more important, he’s a great identifier. Where team effectiveness is concerned, the impact ratio is roughly 90 percent team to 10 percent leader; a great team with a mediocre leader nearly always outperforms a mediocre team with a great leader. Put together a team of awesome salespeople and you can basically leave them alone. Put together a team of awesome engineers and you can basically leave them alone. No matter how transformational, inspirational, or exceptional, even the best leaders can only produce incremental improvements. As Buffett wrote: Berkshire’s operating CEOs are masters of their crafts and run their businesses as if they were their own. My job is to stay out of their way and allocate whatever excess capital their businesses generate. It’s easy work. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend significant time developing the people you currently lead. You definitely should. But you should also spend time identifying people who won’t really need to be led. Add great people to your team, and you’ll be able to spend less time managing that team and even more time identifying great people to add to the team. Which will make it easier to attract great people, since superstars love to work with superstars. Do that, and to paraphrase Buffett, while your work may never be easy, it will definitely be much easier. Buffett on focus Here’s what Buffett thinks about how to best use your time: The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. People are going to want your time. It’s the only thing you can’t buy. I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can’t buy time. Think about it this way. Efficient people are organized and competent. They check things off their to-do list. They complete projects. They get things done. Effective people do all that, but they check the right items off their to-do lists. They complete the right projects. They get the right things done. They do what makes the biggest difference for their business, and for themselves. If you’re struggling to accomplish what you want to achieve, take a step back. Determine what really matters. Determine what really drives results. In most cases, what really drives results is you. So stop thinking your presence is absolutely necessary in every meeting and on every call. That’s especially true if you’re a leader, because when you’re not there, your teams naturally feel a greater sense of freedom, autonomy, and, most important, responsibility. Do what Buffett does: See an open calendar as an opportunity, not a liability. Because a full calendar is a terrible proxy for success. Buffett on the most important investment Buffett doesn’t feel investing in stocks, or even businesses, is the best investment you can make. As Buffett says: Generally speaking, investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Anything that improves your own talents; nobody can tax it or take it away from you. They can run up huge deficits and the dollar can become worth far less. You can have all kinds of things happen. But if you’ve got talent yourself, and you’ve maximized your talent, you’ve got a tremendous asset that can return 10-fold. You may not have the connections. You may not have the talent or skills. You may not have the experience — yet. But what you do have is the time to invest in yourself. To build your connections. To improve your skills. To gain experience. And unlike an investment, skill doesn’t depreciate in value. Nor does inflation lessen its value. More important, skill typically does pay off 10-fold. Simple example. My wife and I own residential real estate properties, and we decided to learn how to install hardwood floors. Not LVT, which we can also do. But lay, sand, and finish real hardwood floors. (And, because we’ve gotten good at it, to use less expensive materials and still make the end result look great.) Sure, it took time to learn. And takes time to do. But over the past couple of years, we’ve saved at least a total of $70,000 across a number of projects. (And we can charge slightly more in rent.) Hardwood floor work is a skill we have, one that we can leverage for the rest of our lives. You might not be into home renovation. But there are things you pay others to do that you could learn to do yourself. If you’re a small-business owner, bookkeeping. Social media marketing. Logistics planning and fulfillment. If you’re a homeowner, basic electrical or plumbing repairs. Most people try to learn to be better financial investors, and that’s great. But make sure you spend some of your time deciding which skills you should invest in. Those are the best investments you can make, because the return is guaranteed. As Buffett says, investing in yourself will produce better long-term results than any other investment you can make, if only because it’s the one investment outcome you can almost totally control. Put in the effort, get a return. What’s not to love about that? Warren Buffett on success As Buffett says he tells college students: When you get to be my age, you will be successful if the people whom you hope to have love you, do love you. Clearly, that’s true where family and friends are concerned; for example, research shows you’ll definitely be more successful if you marry the right person. Substitute “like” for “love,” and it’s also true in business. Skills, education, experience — where success is concerned, all those things and more matter. But one thing matters more. True success — the kind of success that also results in happiness — isn’t possible unless you build great relationships. Granted, you can be self-serving, obnoxious, and insufferable and still get rich. But you’ll be rich and lonely. Plus, it’s a lot easier to be successful if people like you; when your employees, your customers, your partners, and your colleagues not only hope you succeed but, without being asked, actively help you succeed. Those kinds of relationships don’t just make you successful in business. They make you successful in life. And make you a lot happier. —Jeff Haden 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

Bing is testing a new AI-based recommendations section in the Shopping Tab. Bing adds this block to the top of the results, and shows AI-citations at the top right.View the full article

Toxic bosses are not only a “people issue.” They are a balance-sheet issue, a culture issue, and a reputational issue. And if you are a CEO, founder, or a leader trying to build something lasting, you cannot afford to treat them as background noise. Here’s the truth: a single toxic boss can kill psychological safety, drain creativity, spike turnover, and teach your next generation of leaders that fear is an acceptable management tool. I’ve spent 25 years in organizational psychology, watching this pattern repeat across industries, including tech and other high-growth environments. I’ve also conducted interviews and surveys across North America to dig deep into the behaviors and impacts. Toxic bosses harm people’s engagement, productivity, and well-being, and ultimately the organization’s culture through their ongoing destructive behaviors. I refer to them as toxic bosses, not leaders, as a leader brings out the best in their people, while a toxic boss depletes their performance and health. Yet toxic bosses can be tricky to identify as they often present as confident, smart, and polished. This problem is widespread, and leaders underestimate it A 2023 survey reported that 87% of professionals have had at least one toxic boss, and 30% more than one. That isn’t a niche problem, but a workplace epidemic. Another stat should make every executive pause: 57% of employees have left at least one job because of a bad boss, according to DDI’s Frontline Leader Project. People do not quit lightly in this economy, only when the cost of staying becomes too steep. Staggering financial costs The business costs are gradual and easy to excuse away to other reasons. Toxic bosses are masters at passing the blame to anything or anyone but themselves. Turnover driven by bad managers is estimated to be 50–60% of voluntary attrition, equating to $600B–$1T+ annually in North America. Lost productivity from disengagement costs an estimated $450–$550B USD per year. Toxic bosses suffocate innovation If you lead a future-facing company, you likely run on ideas. Toxic bosses kill these through daily fear-inducing behaviors, including micromanagement, manipulation, and gaslighting. Under that pressure, people share less. They do “safe work” instead of bold work. You still get output for a while, but it is brittle. Your top talent does not thrive in survival mode. They exit, disengage, or contort themselves into a smaller version of who they are. Toxic bosses harm health, and that becomes a business cost Through interviewing 40 toxic boss survivors from numerous industries and levels across North America, as well as surveying hundreds more, the health and productivity related costs of toxic bosses are undeniable. One study found workers under toxic bosses faced greater risk of cardiovascular disease. Another study found toxic workplaces increased the risk of depression by 300%. When health declines, your organization pays in absenteeism, presenteeism, disability costs, medical leaves, and churn. You also pay in slower decision-making and weaker collaboration, because exhausted people do not think expansively. “But they get results” is the most expensive sentence in leadership. Or you might even hear: “They’re tough, but they make us better.” Let me translate what that means: “They create fear. Fear produces compliance.” Yet compliance is not commitment and does not create inventive teams. Learn the patterns, then stop promoting them In my new book I Wish I’d Quit Sooner: Practical Strategies for Navigating and Escaping a Toxic Boss, I describe eight common toxic boss personas, including the Self-Serving Egomaniac, Dishonest Manipulator, Great Divider, and Gaslighter. While no boss fits perfectly, these personas give people a language to use. Eradicating toxic bosses Eradicating toxic bosses involves a set of decisions, repeated consistently, even when difficult. My recommendations for executives to prune toxic leadership include: 1) Treat toxic leadership as a core risk. Track it the way you track security incidents and quality defects. Collect specific feedback on each leader and regular pulse checks on your climate and act on the results. 2) Stop rewarding “results at any cost.” Promotion criteria must weigh how leaders achieve outcomes, not just what they achieve. If your top performer leaves a trail of burnout, their “wins” came at costs too great. 3) Make 360 feedback count. If a leader consistently scores as abusive, manipulative, or unsafe, executive coaching alone is not enough. If they are truly a toxic boss, they should not be in a people leadership role. 4) Protect reporting pathways. People do not speak up when retaliation is likely, even if it’s subtle. Provide multiple reporting channels, ensure confidentiality, and communicate actions in aggregate so trust builds over time. 5) Create escape routes inside the company. Internal mobility is a pressure-release valve. If someone is doing strong work under a harmful manager, your system should allow them to move without needing a dramatic, career-risking complaint process. If you are suffering under a toxic boss, there is a way out If you are currently suffering under toxic leadership: this is not your fault, and you are not weak for feeling the impact. I’ve seen the most brilliant professionals and leaders lose their confidence from reporting to a toxic boss, at any level, including executives. In I Wish I’d Quit Sooner, I urge people to start documenting incidents and to build an exit plan, including a “Good Riddance date,” because toxic bosses rarely improve over time. The path out is often stepwise, not cinematic: protect your energy, gather support, get clear on options, and move deliberately. What will your business tolerate? You can build breathtaking technology and still lose the plot if you allow toxic bosses to thrive. Culture is shaped by what you tolerate, especially when the person causing harm brings in great revenue. So here’s my question for you: what would your people create if they weren’t spending countless energy enduring a manager they fear? If you want a deeper, practical roadmap for identifying toxic bosses, protecting yourself, exiting, and recovering, my new book I Wish I’d Quit Sooner: Practical Strategies for Navigating and Escaping a Toxic Boss is designed to help. You can learn more here. View the full article

Bing spotted testing more listings in the sponsored product section at the top of its results. View the full article

Zoho became ubiquitous in 2026. Zoho’s trademark business software also includes management solution ManageEngine, enterprise automation and integration software Qntrl and online course launching software TrainerCentral. Today these brands together serve over 1 million customers and more than 150 million users around the globe. And those customers have plenty to say about the service Zoho provides. “‘Partnership’ is a word that gets frequently used in business,” says David Fauser, VP of Sales, Marketing and Strategy for CIMCO Refrigeration. The company specializes in engineering, manufacturing and construction of sustainable thermal solutions and runs their US operations out of South Carolina. “With Zoho, I can say that they have always genuinely felt like a true partner,” Fauser adds. Zoho does more than just deliver software, he explains. The company acts like a collaborator. Zoho helps Fauser’s team think through challenges, adapt to change and improve operations. “That level of customer focus and long-term perspective is what has made our relationship endure over eight years,” Fauser adds. What Other Customers Say To commemorate its 30th anniversary, Zoho asked customers some forward thinking questions about the year ahead. Where do they see their businesses, business technology in general and AI specifically heading in 2026? And what advice might they offer other entrepreneurs seeking to get their businesses up and running? You may find some answers surprising. What Do You Most Look Forward To? Zoho begins with an ice breaker. And the responses prove telling. What are you looking forward to the most in 2026 when it comes to your business? LaVerne Cox, CEO, Evergreen Investments LaVerne Cox, CEO of Evergreen Investments, gives a fairly straightforward answer. The Duluth, Ga.-based real estate service provider offers a plethora of services for owner occupants and real estate investors. The company provides brokerage services to help clients obtain income producing properties. It also handles investment sales of residential real estate. Finally, it offers property management services to help clients optimize their real estate investment and refinance services when needed. “In 2026, we are rolling out a web and mobile customer application that will connect our customers to our service operations within our Zoho One applications, which we use to manage our brands,” Cox explains. Zoho offers full automation through Zoho Creator and a payment portal through Zoho Payments. These and other services allow you to run much of your business directly through Zoho. “We hope to also roll out a new brand offering in Summer 2026,” Cox adds. Jessica Miller, Director of Compliance and Systems, Island Practice Management How Can Zoho’s Technology Transform Your Business? Many current Zoho clients use a substantial amount of the Zoho platform to run and automate their businesses. Take Island Practice Management, a company supporting mental health and wellness practitioners and based in Port Jefferson Station, NY. The company offers a huge variety of services to full and part-time mental health and wellness businesses. These services include everything from logo development and website creation to appointment and call management. They also include a full array of billing services, office rental and supply services. On the technical side, Island Practice Management uses Zoho tools to provide its growing set of offerings. “We have already seen how impactful the right technology can be,” says Jessica Miller, Director of Compliance and Systems at Island Practice Management. “We use a large portion of the Zoho platform, and the way the tools integrate with one another has made a huge difference for us.” she adds. This year, the company plans to expand its consulting services using AI to help clinicians create documentation faster. They used a Creator app they made and documentation became a breeze. “As someone who has worked as a therapist for most of my adult life, I have always loved the clinical work and honestly disliked the documentation,” Miller explains. “AI has helped reduce that burden so clinicians can spend more time focused on clients while keeping human judgment at the center of care,” she adds. And what about the results? “With that said, the documentation generated by AI isn’t perfect, but it is a great starting point,” Miller says. And Speaking of AI… Zoho also asked clients more broadly how they see AI and other technology evolving to better serve small businesses in 2026. Clients clearly feel the most useful evolutions involve AI in a supportive role in small businesses rather than replacing human creativity and judgment. Surge Web Design based in Boise, Idaho provides its clients with responsive web design, copywriting services for websites and even SEO and logo design. Natalie Hansen, Co-Founder and President, Surge Web Design Natalie Hansen, Co-Founder and President of Surge Web Design, sees AI as becoming more useful and less intimidating. “I hope that small businesses can learn to use AI as a tool, not to replace people, but to help us do our job better and give better service,” Hansen explains. Hansen observes that for a small team or even a solopreneur, AI can help organize data, create task lists, and even brainstorm ideas. This can prove helpful when you lack other team members with whom to collaborate. Other clients suggest AI’s limits will define how it evolves and how small businesses and entrepreneurs use it. LaVerne Cox of Evergreen Investments, for example, believes AI still needs human intervention. “AI automations and agents have proven their inability to work without the necessity of seasoned professionals who can handle more complex protocols and rationalizations,” says Cox. On the other hand, she believes these limitations will lead to AI development that ultimately becomes much more useful to small businesses. “I think this deepening of understanding will allow the tools to engage more remotely without as many human interactions, but I also believe it will never replace the complexities provided by human beings within the strategy or creation process,” Cox explains. Elea Lopez, Project Lead, Parametrics Medical What’s In It For Me? Still other Zoho customers believe the main factor developers need to keep in mind remains whether new tools actually make life easier for customers. Parametrics Medical provides biologic implants, allograft tissue and regenerative medicine for the medical industry and is located in Leander, Texas. The company uses Zoho Analytics dashboards and automation services across departments. Elea Lopez, Project Lead for the company, says she’s impressed with new AI developments but hopes developers stay focused on the right issues. “For an AI company to say they have the most advanced AI is cool, but what does that do for me and my business?” Lopez asks. “Does the most advanced AI make my day-to-day tasks easier or is it just good at making conversation?” she adds. “Does it actually reduce the amount of work I have to carry out or does it add extra work because I have to go back and check what it did, then correct it?” Zoho began introducing AI across much of its business software in 2025. Zoho Analytics and Zoho Creator, the company’s main automation tool, now both include AI features. But Zoho has also always put customers first when developing those tools. “Vendors don’t need our help, businesses do, which is why delivering customer value has, for 30 years, been Zoho Corporation’s North Star,” explains Sridhar Vembu, Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zoho Corporation. “Before any innovation, strategy, or guiding principle becomes a product, pivot, or policy, it must first affirm the question, ‘Will this help businesses?’” Vembu adds. Zoho believes this philosophy more than any other factor has led to the company’s success and continued growth. What Development in Small Business Software Would You Most Like To See? In keeping with the company’s customer centric approach, Zoho also asked small businesses another important question. What evolution would they most want to see in small business software? Miller insists her greatest wish involves small businesses being put first for a change. “I would like to see more software built with small businesses in mind from the start,” Miller explains. “Too often, technology is designed for large organizations that have dedicated teams for IT, operations, and compliance, and small businesses are expected to adapt themselves to systems that were never built for their reality.” She then spells out what such software would look like. “For small businesses, software needs to be intuitive, flexible, and integrated without requiring constant customization or outside support,” Miller says. “The ability to start with something usable out of the box, and then grow into more advanced features over time, makes a huge difference when teams are small and time is limited.” “I’d love to see software become simpler and more intuitive,” Hansen agrees. “Many small business tools promise to save time, but end up creating more complexity with overlapping features,” she adds. “I’d like to see platforms that communicate better with each other, require less setup, and are designed around how small businesses actually operate, not how large corporations do – but still be able to scale with you.” What Worries You The Most About AI and Technology Development In The Future? Zoho also asked customers what they are most cautious about in 2026 when it comes to technology and AI. Not surprisingly, security ranked high up on the list of concerns. “While the promise of making our days more efficient through AI is great in theory, we have to consider what could go wrong,” Lopez says. “What if there is a data leak? What if the data we feed into AI programs is twisted and convoluted? What if it is used against us by an opposing company?” she asks. “When new technology comes around, it is easy to think it will change the way we do everything,” Lopez concludes. “But I think most businesses aren’t looking to change everything, just to make what they have more efficient in key areas without sacrificing security.” Zoho remains committed to security as it has throughout its entire history. Product security, data security and operational security at Zoho are ensured through the company’s globally recognized compliance certifications and its emphasis on privacy. What Advice Could Zoho Customers Offer Solopreneurs and Small Business Owners? Zoho also asked customers for advice they might offer other entrepreneurs seeking to get their businesses up and running in 2026. “My biggest piece of advice is to start, even if you do not have everything figured out,” says Miller. “When we launched Island Practice Management, none of us had formal business training,” she adds. ”We were mental health professionals building on what we had learned running Island Psychiatry, and a lot of our learning happened along the way.” “Curiosity, flexibility, and a willingness to take thoughtful risks mattered far more than having a perfect plan,” Miller says. “Investing in the right software early was also important for us, but just as important was taking the time to really understand it.” “One of the most helpful lessons we learned was that you should not try to fit yourself into a piece of software,” she explains. “You need software that fits your business. Having that mindset has helped us avoid chasing tools that look good on paper but do not support our real workflows.” And Zoho certainly fits the bill in this respect. Quebec-based global security company GardaWorld Security Systems and Technology relies on Zoho’s ability to adapt to a company’s growth while offering maximum flexibility. “As our business has evolved over the past 10 years through further acquisitions, organizational restructures and new operating models, Zoho has continued to scale with us rather than forcing us into rigid frameworks,” says Brandon Lennix, Director of Commercial Operations. Become a Zoho Customer Today As Zoho celebrates 30 years of success and growth and crosses the threshold of 1 million customers worldwide, it also recognizes some of its most recent customer additions. These include Rapid Response Monitoring and Synergy HomeCare in the U.S.; and Mercedes-Benz India, Force Motors, Joyalukkas and Union Bank of India in South Asia. Also included are Flora Food Group, Handl Tyrol and Atout France in Europe; Al-Ahli Saudi FC and Al Qadsiah FC in the Middle East; Grupo Gonher in Latin America; and Creditas and Editora Globo in Brazil. These customers and more come to Zoho because of the way the company’s unique philosophy sets it apart. “Being bootstrapped, private, and built entirely in-house makes Zoho an outlier among competitors,” says Vembu. For more on how Zoho’s solutions can help your small business grow, visit the Zoho website or contact their sales team. This article, "Zoho Users Discuss The Future As Company Reaches 1 Million Customers" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s commitment to putting data centres in space boosts fortunes of smaller playersView the full article

There’s a pigeon pitcher on the dining table. A large burl wood button mounted on the wall as art. A doormat in the shape of an apple. Emma Chamberlain, one of Gen Z’s most influential tastemakers, has designed a 100-piece collection for West Elm that spans furniture, textiles, and decor. It’s full of elegant pieces including a velvet sofa, a round wooden dining table, and cabinets wrapped in cream lacquer. But woven into this lush aesthetic are kitschy little details meant to feel like thrift shop finds. It’s a collaboration that offers a glimpse into what today’s twenty-somethings are looking for as they outfit their first homes. Three years ago, when Chamberlain was 21, she opened her Los Angeles home to Architectural Digest, and West Elm’s team took note. The space had elements of the West Elm aesthetic—nods toward mid-century and Scandinavian style—but the house was also distinct. There were unexpected pieces, like a chandelier made of acrylic chain links, and a groovy 1970s inspired mirror. It was hard to simply categorize whether the look was minimalist or maximalist, futuristic or retro. “My approach to home decorating is inherently eclectic,” Chamberlain tells Fast Company. “Rather than choosing pieces based on what should go together, I choose what feels right to me, mixing styles and eras to create a space that feels unique.” When Day Kornbluth, West Elm’s President, saw the pictures of Chamberlain’s house, she immediately wanted to collaborate with her. She felt that Chamberlain’s aesthetic would appeal to a new generation of consumers who are just beginning to create their homes. But on a personal level, she wanted to get a glimpse into Chamberlain’s personal creative process, to see how she arrives at a look that feels so fresh. “For many tastemakers in our culture, the home is a secret obsession,” Kornbluth. “They have a private, creative process to create their spaces. As a home brand, we have this enormous privilege of getting a glimpse into how our collaborators create.” West Elm reached out, and Chamberlain said yes. This came as as surprise to Kornbluth, since Chamberlain’s life is packed. She first rose to prominence as a YouTube creator in her mid-teens, building a following on the strength of her candid, self-deprecating persona. She has since expanded into fashion—becoming a recurring presence at Paris Fashion Week and a face of Louis Vuitton—and launched Chamberlain Coffee, a thriving business. Home, though, had always been a quieter personal pursuit, but one she has been itching to explore. “It turns out, she had a lot to say about the home,” Kornbluth says. The design process was collaborative to a degree that surprised even the West Elm team. Chamberlain sat on every piece of furniture before signing off on it. She was interested in both the beauty and the functionality of the pieces. “Furniture isn’t only about aesthetics. More than anything, it’s about function,” Chamberlain says. “Everything should serve a purpose. Even the pitcher that looks like a pigeon? You can actually pour things out of it.” Together, West Elm’s design team worked with Chamberlain to create a modular sofa in a ticking-stripe fabric that can expand or contract depending on your square footage. A floor pouf has a hidden side pocket for the remote—a detail that came from Chamberlain’s annoyance at never having a place to store a remote. A telephone bench, nodding to the entryway furniture of another era, serves the same purpose it always did: sit down, take off your shoes, put your key somewhere. The lacquer wrapped 6-drawer dresser has a raised compartment along its back edge to corral skincare and makeup brushes. But sprinkled among these practical pieces are quirky vintage-inspired pieces that bring Chamberlain joy. There’s the pigeon paraphernalia, the button motif that appears in everything from coasters to wall art, and apple-shaped throw pillows and doormats. The aesthetic reads a little like a thrifting, which makes sense for Gen Z, which has grown up on Depop and Salvation Army finds. The tension between the rigorously functional and kitschy is part of the secret to Chamberlain’s distinct look. The collection also charts something larger for West Elm. The brand has spent two decades as a kind of gateway to mid-century modern living—accessible price points, clean lines, the language of Ray and Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen translated for Brooklyn apartments and suburban starter homes. Kornbluth has been thinking about how to evolve that DNA without abandoning it. The Chamberlain collaboration, she says, isn’t a departure so much as an expression of where mid-century has gone for a new generation. “There are things we would never have done if we weren’t doing them with Emma,” she says. “But they feel right for West Elm too.” What makes it feel right is a shared philosophy about what home is for. “Your home should be a place to express yourself and experiment stylistically and creatively,” Kornbluth says. “We don’t want to be a brand that tells you what you shouldn’t do. Our energy is: your home is going to be good if it feels like you.” That philosophy has a particular resonance right now, because it encapsulates how Gen Z thinks about design. Kornbluth says that many on the West Elm team are in their twenties, and Chamberlain’s approach resonated strongly with them. “They’re not interested in having the home or look that is like everyone else,” Kornbluth says. “They’ve grown up with access to so much visual information on the internet. You might worry that they would get lost in all of this, but in fact, they just seem to know themselves better. And as a result, they’re clear and brave in their choices.” Chamberlain puts it more simply. “The most timeless thing you can do is choose pieces that bring you joy,” she says. “Something funny will stand the test of time more than something trendy. You’d be surprised how you can style something kind of ridiculous and make it look intentional. It’s like fashion. You can wear almost anything. If you wear it with confidence, people think it’s cool.” View the full article

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. If you want a glimpse of the future of business, I recommend spending a few hours with Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur, investor, and host of the The Diary of a CEO podcast. I did just that earlier this month, when I interviewed Bartlett alongside PwC partners at a series of Daily Decode sessions the professional services firm hosted at South by Southwest (SXSW). Bartlett’s observations and experiences are worth clocking because he is, in many ways, a leading indicator of where business is going: He is an AI power user and promotes its widespread use at the companies he’s founded. He’s young (33 years old), and he’s influencing a new generation of leaders: The Diary of a CEO was Spotify’s No. 1 business and tech podcast last year. Here are three insights that stood out from my conversations with Bartlett: 1. He’s hiring “agent maxxers.” Bartlett says that as more labor can be handled by AI agents—software that can autonomously perform tasks—he sees work at his companies increasingly shifting to specialists, such as a chief financial officer with irreplaceable domain and company knowledge who can direct an agent to supplement their job. He calls these people “agent maxxers”—those who truly understand the technology. “I’m not [hiring] anyone in between,” he says, noting that he recently spoke with a promising candidate who said she’d not used Claude Code—nor had she built anything with agents. She didn’t get the job. 2. Obvious pain paralysis is the new Innovator’s Dilemma. Bartlett suggests that many companies have “obvious pain paralysis”—a tendency to try to address or lessen the pain in front of them, deferring decisions when the upside is vague and distant. He points to return-to-office policies as an example: Leaders didn’t bring folks back to the office for fear that people would quit and because management couldn’t articulate or quantify the benefits. He says he sees the same thing happening with AI and urges executives to think expansively about the possibilities: “In moments of great transition, you have to take bold, decisive action and make difficult decisions now or [face] more difficult decisions later,” he says. “We’re all in that position, including me.” Bartlett’s assessment feels like a 2026 take on Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma, which chronicled how successful companies failed because they focused on addressing the issues of today while failing to foresee new technologies that would make them obsolete. The lesson of both: disrupt before you get disrupted. 3. He’s creating a culture of “pushing on paper walls.” One way Bartlett makes sure that his companies stay nimble (and perhaps avoid disruption) is to institutionalize challenging the status quo. He calls this “pushing on paper walls” or questioning whether a constraint, or wall, is real or flimsy like paper. If a vendor says a project will take six weeks, Bartlett’s team is encouraged to ask for a tighter turnaround; internal processes are constantly evaluated to see if they can be done quicker or smarter. His companies use their communications channels to celebrate the dismantling of paper walls. “When you open up Slack, and you see the intern or the CFO going, ‘I found a paper wall today,’ [you] can imagine what that breeds in an organization in terms of culture,” he says. From his perch as an entrepreneur, creator, and millennial, Bartlett certainly has the flexibility to experiment and provide a window into the future of business. But his worldview—a landscape that’s AI-centric, fast-moving, and disruptive—isn’t radical. It’s the new normal. How are you preparing for what’s next? How are you future-proofing your company? Do you have a version of “agent maxxers” or “paper walls” that you celebrate? Send your ideas to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’ll publish the best examples in a future newsletter. Read more: secrets of the most successful podcasters TBNP built a media empire by tapping into the ”internet’s dive bar” The making of ”Acquired,” the tech podcast sensation Inside “Call Her Daddy” podcaster Alex Cooper’s next move View the full article

British embassy official expelled from Moscow as Putin increases pressure on foreign missionsView the full article

In a 1944 issue of Arts & Architecture magazine, the architect and designer Charles Eames sounded an alarm. “It has been estimated that one million five hundred thousand houses each year for a period of 10 years will be needed to relieve the urgent housing problem of this country,” he wrote. “The enormity of such a need cannot even be partially satisfied by building techniques as we have known and used them in the past. Large scale industry would seem to be the only logical means by which we can achieve an enterprise of such proportion.” Throughout their careers, Charles and Ray Eames explored how industrial production could impact home building, most famously through their own Pacific Palisades residence, also known as Case Study #8. But a fully factory built house was their elusive white whale. Now it’s finally becoming a reality through a collaboration between the Eames Office, a non-profit organization dedicated to stewarding and extending the couple’s work, and Kettal, a Spanish manufacturer of furniture and prefabricated pavilions. At Milan Design Week, the two organizations are debuting The Eames Pavilions, a modular construction system based on the designers’ philosophy of efficient, flexible, and adaptable architecture. A four meter square indoor pavilion, which is roughly 170 square feet, will start at 45,000 Euros (about $52,000) and is expected to go on sale worldwide in late 2026. An outdoor version of the same size starts at 60,000 Euros (about $69,000) with an estimated availability in 2027. Customers can combine modules to create larger pavilions and it’s possible to stack them to two stories, too. For the Milan installation, on view at the Triennale Museum from April 21 to May 10, 2026, Kettal and the Eames Office will show two of the myriad configurations that the system can produce. The first is a double-height iteration, which looks a lot like the Case Study #8. It has a black-painted metal frame, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, zig-zag trusses, chicken wire–reinforced windows, and vivid wall panels in primary colors. (The price tag for this specific build? $145,000 Euros, or about $167,000.) The second is a single module featuring wall panels adorned with geometric shapes the Eameses liked. While not a one-to-one replica of any previous Eames house, the kit of parts represents an amalgamation of the designers’ core ideas around materiality, structure, and proportion and, importantly, channels the captivating spirit of their residential projects. “The Eames house and their other houses, were meant to be the beginning of something that would turn into a system or into a series, but they were experiments,” says Eckart Maise, author of the forthcoming book The Eames Houses and a design consultant who worked closely on the product’s development. “Charles and Ray were very clear in their intent to mass produce.” The housing crisis is even worse now than when Charles wrote his Arts & Architecture article. According to Zillow, the housing deficit has grown to 4.7 million units in 2025. Could an Eames prefab offer a solution? A long road to mass production The Eames Office has been exploring an answer to this question for years. In 2021, the Eames Office attempted to revive a never-built 1951 wood-framed prefab Charles & Ray developed with Kwikset (Kwikset went out of business before construction could begin), but learned that the regional business model of most prefab housing companies limited the scale at which they could work. So instead, they shifted gears and focused on manufacturers with an international reach who could fabricate metal framing, which is more practical than carpentry for mass distribution. This led Maise to Kettal. Thirty percent of the company’s business comes from an indoor-outdoor modular pavilion system, which it has produced for a decade. The company had the infrastructure in place to manufacture, distribute, and install the pavilions worldwide. Fortunately, Antonio Navarro, Kettal’s creative director, was also interested in exploring an Eamesian design. “It’s difficult not to fall in love with the solutions, the atmosphere that they created, the lighting,” Navarro says. “It’s the kind of architecture that we need for the future because it’s ecological, it’s easy to assemble, it’s easy to transport, and it’s easy to manufacture.” Maise and Kettal spent three years researching and developing the Eames Pavilion System. They began by visiting the Case Study #8 and took measurements, color samples, and material studies. Getting the details right, all the way down to window profiles, would be “important to keep the magic” of Charles and Ray’s spaces, Maise says. They also combed the archives for information on the houses the duo designed for Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza (also known as Case Study #9), the actor Billy Wilder (Maise uncovered an unpublished design concept for the house), and Max De Pree, the son of Herman Miller founder D.J. De Pree. Across the houses, Maise noticed how Charles & Ray established modules and extended floorplans based on the dimensions of those modules. “It gave us the security to say it’s an open system and you can build many different things because across those five or six designs, you realize how open they thought in their configurations,” Maise says. Adapting an icon The Kettal-manufactured system, which ships flat, has similar DNA to the Eameses’ architecture but, “it’s really important to understand that the Pavilion is not a facsimile of the Eames House,” Maise says. Still, the options for customization will be recognizable to fans of the couple’s work. For example, buyers can choose a roofline that’s flush with the walls, just like Case Study #8, or a roof with deep eaves for shading, which nods to the overhang at the Wilder house. For the exterior walls, the combinations could include solid walls, glass, and panels reinforced with X-braces, details borrowed from Case Study #8, or a solid panel adorned with two triangles, just like the Entenza house. Interior finishes like wood paneling and draperies also reference the details the Eameses used across their residential projects. Today’s materials and manufacturing process have improved since the Eameses designed their homes. Meanwhile, building codes across the globe have become much more rigorous for energy efficiency, seismic activity, and wind tolerances. Because of this, Kettal is integrating modern materials and products into the pavilions including aluminum windows with performance glass for thermal insulation instead of single-pane glazing, lightweight concrete panels instead of poured-in-place elements, and aluminum alloy framing which has the same resistance as steel. The Eames Office and Kettal see opportunities for the Pavilion System to serve as Accessory Dwelling Units, backyard pavilions, pool houses, or even a single-family home. But first, it needs to test how the pavilion performs outdoors and prove that it meets the most rigorous building codes and technical requirements around the world. Additionally, creating meeting rooms or private offices in open-plan workspaces represents a “huge potential,” Maise says. (Kettal already sells its indoor products to customers like Tesla, Apple, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Salesforce.) “It’s exciting to make the magic of [Charles & Ray’s] architecture available as a product,” says Maise, who previously collaborated with the Eames Office on furniture when he was the chief design officer at Vitra. “When you walk into an interior, you walk in with all your senses. It’s different from an object.” View the full article

A section of The President's executive order on mortgage credit called for eliminating requirements for loan officer registration, a process industry experts say has never been considered a burden. View the full article

A federal appeals court ruled mortgages in REMIC trusts may qualify as ERISA plan assets, reviving fiduciary duty claims against Onity in a case brought by a union pension fund. View the full article

The gas station convenience chain Buc-ee’s is known for selling a slew of logo-ed merch to its devoted brand fans. And increasingly, it’s also known for aggressive trademark enforcement, suing competitors, apparel brands, and small businesses over logos, mascots, and even names it argues are too close to its signature smiling beaver. Most recently, Buc-ee’s, which has locations across the South, has gone after Ohio chain Mickey’s for its mascot logo, a cartoon moose, a move greeted with some skepticism. After all, as one skeptical commentator noted: “A beaver is not a moose.” Fair enough. But as the Texas-based chain grows, such lawsuits—often focused on cartoon animals, circular badge designs, and “-ee’s”-style naming—have become a defining feature of the company’s expansion, and a notable step beyond routine trademark protection against obvious copycats. “I would say this strategy is not typical,” says Darius Gambino, an intellectual property lawyer and partner in Philadelphia-based firm Saul Ewing. “Most times we see brands go after things that are more exact matches for their mark or their logo.” Buc-ee’s has been willing to go after cartoon chickens, ducks, dogs, even an alligator, in an approach that’s “a little bit outside the norm,” he adds. (Saul Ewing has no current or past involvement in litigation with Buc-ee’s.) The Buc-ee’s legal campaign over its intellectual property dates back more than a decade, but has accelerated in recent years as the company, founded in 1982, has grown into a national roadside phenomenon. Early disputes tended to focus on direct competitors—gas stations and convenience stores whose logos or branding, Buc-ee’s argued, too closely resembled its beaver mascot or overall visual identity. The company consistently invoked the “likelihood of confusion” standard in trademark law, which hinges on a seemingly simple question: Might a consumer mistakenly confuse the alleged imitator with the real thing? These claims emphasize similarities in layout, expression, and color schemes rather than exact duplication. By the mid-2020s, Buc-ee’s enforcement broadened both in scope and frequency. The company filed a wave of lawsuits against businesses well outside the traditional gas station space, including apparel brands, independent retailers, and reportedly at least one dog park. In these cases, Buc-ee’s argued that even stylized or humorous takes on a beaver—or other cartoon animals presented in a similar format—could dilute its brand. At the same time, it began targeting not just imagery but naming conventions, challenging businesses whose names echoed its distinctive “-ee’s” construction. As Buc-ee’s has expanded into new regions, this assertiveness has followed. The upshot is a deliberate, sustained strategy: protect a highly recognizable brand identity at all costs, even if critics argue the targets are often small businesses with only tangential similarities. It’s been effective. In most instances, Gambino notes, the litigation has settled with the Buc-ee’s target making branding changes. And in plenty of cases, the infringement was actually hard to dispute. Others seem less clear cut, but may be risky to fight. “If you’re looking at this landscape now and how aggressive Buc-ee’s is being,” Gambino says, a smaller business might err on the side of caution in staying away from potential branding overlaps. To critics, that raises questions about the line between brand protection and brand bullying. The Mickey’s moose dispute is a case in point. The 42-location chain dates back to 1982 and uses a cartoon moose logo, reportedly trademarked in 2020. While it’s looking to the right, like Buc-ee, and the colors are similar, the illustration style is arguably different. And, you know, it’s a moose. “We’ve been challenged by an out-of-state corporation, questioning the very identity and symbols that have been developed by our family since I was that kid on a milk crate years ago,” the CEO of Mickey’s declared in a statement. “We intend to move forward as the Mickey’s you’ve always known … We aren’t going anywhere.” (Buc-ee’s did not respond to an inquiry from Fast Company, but in a statement to Cleveland.com about the Mickey’s suit its general counsel said: “Buc-ee’s will not stand idly by while others infringe upon its intellectual property rights it has worked tirelessly to build and protect.”) Buc-ee’s might be unusual in its willingness to pursue infringement claims beyond the obvious (or even beyond the mascot’s species), but for now that approach’s success speaks for itself, Gambino suggests. “I think that’s a great strategy to keep people away from your brand,” he says. “Having trademarks is like building a fence. The more fences that you have around your brand or around your property, the better off you are.” In fact, he suspects big brands in the restaurant and convenience store spaces, among others, might be keeping an eye on Buc-ee’s and its trademark battles with an eye toward getting a little more aggressive too. That said, Gambino adds, many of the Buc-ee’s trademark squabbles have been mismatches: a big and profitable chain going after smaller players, largely resulting in settlements rather than actual judgments. The wisdom of the strategy could change if an opponent really wants to hash out the parameters of the Buc-ee’s trademarks. “The more you do this,” he says, “the more you might run into somebody who has the means or the will to fight with you about it.” View the full article

Ten years ago, I published ​Deep Work​. It was my second mainstream hardcover idea book. The previous title, ​So Good They Can’t Ignore You​, hadn’t sold as well as we hoped, so the expectations were lower for this follow-up. This turned out to be freeing, as it allowed me to write Deep Work largely for myself – exploring the conceptual edges of the issues surrounding distraction that interested me most. I was fascinated, for example, by the economic reality that so many knowledge work organizations systematically undervalued focus, and was convinced that this provided a massive opportunity for those willing to correct for this mistake. In this way, I saw myself as articulating something like Moneyball for the cubicle class. I also firmly believed that the act of thinking was at the core of the post-Paleolithic human experience; the source of our greatest ideas, satisfactions, and even moments of transcendence. This mixture of the economic and philosophical was different from the typical book in this genre at the time. Readers probably expected that I would open on a breathless tale of an overworked executive, then regurgitate some stats about interruptions, before proceeding with long lists of tips calibrated to be practical, but also not too challenging, presented in a conversational tone and accompanied by clearly manipulated case studies. But Deep Work was much weirder and more intense than that. Re-reading it recently, I was struck by how many of my stories had nothing to do with the knowledge sector at all. I quoted philosophers of religion and a blacksmith who forged swords with ancient techniques. I profiled a memory champion and discussed chavruta, the Jewish practice of studying Talmud or Torah in pairs. Rather than opening the book on a frustrated executive, I focused on Carl Jung’s efforts to break free from Sigmund Freud’s capriciousness. It was a direct look at the sources and ideas that most resonated with me. This idiosyncratic approach seemed to reveal something fundamentally true about the problematic state of work at that time, as the book soon found an audience, going on to sell more than two million copies in over forty-five languages. (In its wake, So Good They Can’t Ignore You finally found its groove as well, quietly selling more than half a million copies, providing me with a dash of retrospective vindication.) All of this led me recently to ask a natural follow-up question: How have things changed since that book first came out in 2016? I tackled this query in ​a long-form essay​ I published in the New York Times over the weekend. My answer wasn’t optimistic: “The problems I focused on in Deep Work, and in my writing since, have been getting steadily worse. In 2016 my main concern was helping people find enough free time for deep work. Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all, regardless of how much space we can find in our schedules for these efforts.” Distractions in the workplace intensified over the past decade with the addition of instant messaging tools like Slack and low-friction digital meeting programs like Zoom. Outside of work, social media, which was generally still admired when Deep Work came out, has morphed into an addictive TikTok-ified slurry of optimized brain rot. Meanwhile, new AI tools offer quick-fix short-cuts to whatever intellectually engaging work activities remain. None of this is great news. So, what should we do? The obvious short answer is to read ​Deep Work.​ (Or, if you already have, buy some copies for people you know who need to hear its message!) But that’s only a small step toward our larger goal of a world in which we once again respect the act of cognition. In my Times piece, I suggest a louder response: we launch a revolution in defense of thinking. I go on to suggest multiple concrete actions that such a revolution can include, such as: Stop consuming social media (which is, if we are being honest, digital junk food and something adults largely need to eliminate from a healthy content diet). Keep your phone plugged in and charging when at home instead of on your person. Push Congress to follow Australia’s lead and ban social media for kids. Build work cultures in which phones and laptops stay out of meetings, and find collaboration strategies that don’t require constant messaging. Stop vague demands to “use AI” and instead carefully integrate these tools where they actually make us smarter, not just busier. But more important than any specific suggestion is the larger spirit of revolution. “I’m done ceding my brain — the core of all that makes me who I am — to the financial interests of a small number of technology billionaires or the shortsighted conveniences of hyperactive communication styles,” I write in the conclusion of my Times op-ed. “It’s time to move past fretting about our slide into the cognitive shallows and decide to actually do something about it.” The post In Defense of Thinking appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Ten years ago, I published ​Deep Work​. It was my second mainstream hardcover idea book. The previous title, ​So Good They Can’t Ignore You​, hadn’t sold as well as we hoped, so the expectations were lower for this follow-up. This turned out to be freeing, as it allowed me to write Deep Work largely for myself – exploring the conceptual edges of the issues surrounding distraction that interested me most. I was fascinated, for example, by the economic reality that so many knowledge work organizations systematically undervalued focus, and was convinced that this provided a massive opportunity for those willing to correct for this mistake. In this way, I saw myself as articulating something like Moneyball for the cubicle class. I also firmly believed that the act of thinking was at the core of the post-Paleolithic human experience; the source of our greatest ideas, satisfactions, and even moments of transcendence. This mixture of the economic and philosophical was different from the typical book in this genre at the time. Readers probably expected that I would open on a breathless tale of an overworked executive, then regurgitate some stats about interruptions, before proceeding with long lists of tips calibrated to be practical, but also not too challenging, presented in a conversational tone and accompanied by clearly manipulated case studies. But Deep Work was much weirder and more intense than that. Re-reading it recently, I was struck by how many of my stories had nothing to do with the knowledge sector at all. I quoted philosophers of religion and a blacksmith who forged swords with ancient techniques. I profiled a memory champion and discussed chavruta, the Jewish practice of studying Talmud or Torah in pairs. Rather than opening the book on a frustrated executive, I focused on Carl Jung’s efforts to break free from Sigmund Freud’s capriciousness. It was a direct look at the sources and ideas that most resonated with me. This idiosyncratic approach seemed to reveal something fundamentally true about the problematic state of work at that time, as the book soon found an audience, going on to sell more than two million copies in over forty-five languages. (In its wake, So Good They Can’t Ignore You finally found its groove as well, quietly selling more than half a million copies, providing me with a dash of retrospective vindication.) All of this led me recently to ask a natural follow-up question: How have things changed since that book first came out in 2016? I tackled this query in ​a long-form essay​ I published in the New York Times over the weekend. My answer wasn’t optimistic: “The problems I focused on in Deep Work, and in my writing since, have been getting steadily worse. In 2016 my main concern was helping people find enough free time for deep work. Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all, regardless of how much space we can find in our schedules for these efforts.” Distractions in the workplace intensified over the past decade with the addition of instant messaging tools like Slack and low-friction digital meeting programs like Zoom. Outside of work, social media, which was generally still admired when Deep Work came out, has morphed into an addictive TikTok-ified slurry of optimized brain rot. Meanwhile, new AI tools offer quick-fix short-cuts to whatever intellectually engaging work activities remain. None of this is great news. So, what should we do? The obvious short answer is to read ​Deep Work.​ (Or, if you already have, buy some copies for people you know who need to hear its message!) But that’s only a small step toward our larger goal of a world in which we once again respect the act of cognition. In my Times piece, I suggest a louder response: we launch a revolution in defense of thinking. I go on to suggest multiple concrete actions that such a revolution can include, such as: Stop consuming social media (which is, if we are being honest, digital junk food and something adults largely need to eliminate from a healthy content diet). Keep your phone plugged in and charging when at home instead of on your person. Push Congress to follow Australia’s lead and ban social media for kids. Build work cultures in which phones and laptops stay out of meetings, and find collaboration strategies that don’t require constant messaging. Stop vague demands to “use AI” and instead carefully integrate these tools where they actually make us smarter, not just busier. But more important than any specific suggestion is the larger spirit of revolution. “I’m done ceding my brain — the core of all that makes me who I am — to the financial interests of a small number of technology billionaires or the shortsighted conveniences of hyperactive communication styles,” I write in the conclusion of my Times op-ed. “It’s time to move past fretting about our slide into the cognitive shallows and decide to actually do something about it.” The post In Defense of Thinking appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

UK imposes £390,000 penalty on European operation for payments to video streaming service OkkoView the full article

Why Google's new AI user agent may be tied to shift of resources from Project Mariner To Gemini Agent The post Why New Google-Agent May Be A Pivot Related To OpenClaw Trend appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Your tools can make or break productivity (especially when you’re on a fully remote team!). At Buffer, we're fully distributed across multiple time zones, so our collaboration tools are ✨ essential ✨ for staying on track. Put simply, a social media collaboration tool is software that lets everyone on your team plan, create, review, approve, and publish posts together — all in one shared workspace. Our suite of tools is extensive, especially on the Marketing team, and our curated selection helps us fill our queues, manage social channels, create graphics, and generally stay organized. In this article, I’ve listed some of the tools we use that make collaboration on social media and content creation a breeze. Key takeawaysUse one hub for social scheduling and approvals. We use Buffer to coordinate post approvals and keep our content calendar in one place across 11+ social channels.Remote communication needs both sync and async. Slack handles the quick, day-to-day stuff; Zoom is for when we need face time. Neither replaces the other.A solid project management tool is non-negotiable. Notion is where we track everything from blog calendars to big-picture projects — it's the closest thing we have to a shared brain.Design tools should match your team's skill range. Canva works for those of us who aren't designers (hi, that's me). Figma steps in when we need something more polished.Cloud storage keeps everyone on the same page. Google Workspace and Dropbox mean no one's ever hunting through email threads for the latest version of a file. Jump to a section: At a glance: 8 essential social media collaboration tools for social media teams 1. Buffer 2. Slack 3. Google Workspace 4. Dropbox 5. Notion 6. Canva 7. Figma 8. Zoom Quick collaboration tips on sharing to social media as a team What are your favorite collaboration tools? FAQ about social media collaboration tools More social media marketing resources At a glance: 8 essential social media collaboration tools for social media teamsBuffer — Best for all-in-one social media managementSlack — Best for quick, asynchronous team chatsGoogle Workspace — Best for real-time document collaborationDropbox — Best for sharing large multimedia filesNotion — Best for project and knowledge managementCanva — Best for fast, template-based graphicsFigma — Best for advanced design collaborationZoom — Best for live video meetings and screen shares1. BufferBest overall social media management tool Of course, I have to mention Buffer as a top social media collaboration tool. Buffer actually does more than just social media management. We've built collaboration into Buffer from the ground up, from adding content ideas into the Create space, where anyone with access to a Team account can pop in to view and comment, to the Publishing area, where social posts can go through as many levels of approval as you need. Buffer’s social media collaboration features include, but are not limited to: Add unlimited users on the Teams plan: Each user has their own login and permission levels (more on this below), making it easier to keep track of who is working where. Set permission levels for different users: Choose exactly who can post on each of your social media channels. Set up an approval system: With these different permissions, certain users will require or can ask for approvals on their posts before they’re published, so you can always ensure quality and consistency. Collaborate on ideas: Work together on social media content in Create, a dedicated space for all your ideas. Leave notes for team members: Make comments or suggestions for other users on your plan.Pricing: Free plan available for up to three channels. Teams plan starts at $10/month per channel (with all premium features and unlimited users). 2. SlackBest for asynchronous communication on social media ideas Slack is basically a chat room that helps teams communicate. And thousands of teams use it in all kinds of ways. We use Slack in multiple ways as a remote team: We gather material for employee advocacy, coordinating simply over Slack or in combination with another toolTeammates can drop fun and interesting links into one of the channels for others to check out. We use it to brainstorm ideas and strategies in public and private channels.One of my favorite things? When our team spots opportunities for posts in our Slack conversations, they'll drop them straight into our content calendar. There have been a few brilliant social media posts borne out of our Slack chats. Pricing: Free plan available with limited message history. Pro plan starts at $8.75/month per user. 3. Google WorkspaceBest collaboration tool for end-to-end teamwork SourceAnother favorite of social media teams is Google Workspace, especially Google Drive. I highlight Drive specifically because it holds everything from our spreadsheets to presentations to forms. In Google’s vast suite of products, you can collaborate together, live, on the same work with your internal and external team. Some popular docs you might choose to share: Spreadsheet of your social media metricsSocial media strategySocial media auditDocument with your brand’s voice and tonePricing: Business Starter plan starts at $7/month per user. Free personal Google accounts work for smaller teams, though you'll miss out on shared drives and admin controls. 4. DropboxBest collaboration tool for file sharing of all kinds SourceDropbox is a great tool for us at Buffer, as we can use it to share everything from images to templates to documentation. For example, we used Dropbox to store the videos recorded by different teammates for our new employee onboarding video project. Since everyone was able to easily access the Dropbox folder to upload their videos, the project went ahead without a hitch. Pricing: Free plan with 2 GB of storage. Plus plan starts at $11.99/month with 2 TB of storage. 5. NotionBest collaboration tool for overall project management Notion is one of our superpowers as a Marketing team and a top recommendation for successful social media collaboration. Its robust set of features helps us achieve many goals from our different locations across the world, including but not limited to: Hosting and managing our blog, newsletter, and social media content calendarsHolding our big-picture project database across different teamsClarifying task management and distribution across team membersPricing: Free plan available for individuals. Team plan starts at $10/month per user. 6. CanvaBest collaboration tool for simple graphic design Need some advice from your team on social posts you’re creating? With Canva, you can share your in-progress content with anyone on your team, and others can combine forces with you to design the same graphic together. We work with Canva extensively on the Marketing team and use it to power through design needs so that even the most artistically challenged of us (that’s me, hello) can throw together decent-looking images like the one at the top of this list. Pricing: Free plan available with access to thousands of templates. Pro plan starts at $15/month per user (or $10/month if billed annually). 7. FigmaBest collaboration tool for complex graphic design projects On the other end of the design spectrum is a tool more geared toward professionals. In Figma, you can create mockups of social media images along with other design-related tasks. Whenever we have a project that requires a design that we just can’t achieve in Canva, our graphic designer graciously shares mockups and visual content for us on the Marketing team to review, approve, and share. Even with a tiny learning curve, I find Figma an intuitive tool for collaboration that allows the entire team to contribute to the design process, regardless of their skill level. We also use Figma for brainstorming on the Marketing team, using it to visualize our thoughts and contributions during team meetings. Pricing: Free plan available for up to three Figma and three FigJam files. Professional plan starts at $15/month per editor (or $12/month billed annually). 8. ZoomBest for video calls and chats As a remote team, synchronous Zoom calls make up a major part of social media collaboration for us. Here's something we do a lot: We take screenshots, clips, and chats from our Zoom calls and turn them into social media content. There have been a few gems brought out of these, shared across our social media. Our culture of transparency helps here — we share both the wins and the struggles. Pricing: Free plan available for meetings up to 40 minutes. Pro plan starts at $13.33/month per user. Quick collaboration tips on sharing to social media as a teamThere’s a lot to consider when sharing together as a social media team – whether that be a team of two, 10, or more. Here are some tips to help you when collaborating as a social media team: Determine your social media strategy and structureEstablish a consistent voice and toneKnow how, where, and what you’ll postIf relevant, let your audience know who is postingDelegate by shifts or networksUse tools to make collaboration easierGive everyone the right access (contributors vs. managers)What are your favorite collaboration tools?What tools do you use to work together on social media marketing? We'd love to hear what's working for you and your team. We’re always keen to try out new tools and workflows here at Buffer. We'd really appreciate any advice you have for us. FAQ about social media collaboration toolsWhat is a social media collaboration tool?A social media collaboration tool is software that lets several people plan, create, review, and publish posts in one shared workspace. Everyone sees the same drafts, feedback, and schedules, so work moves faster, and nothing gets lost in email threads. What are the four main types of collaboration tools?Most teams use a mix of tools to stay organized and work smoothly together. Project management tools help you assign tasks and track progress. Cloud storage tools give everyone access to shared files. Document collaboration tools let you write and edit together in real time. And chat and video tools keep communication quick and easy, whether you’re meeting live or sharing updates async. How can I pick the right social media collaboration tool for my team?Start with ease of use — if it’s not simple, your team won’t use it. Look for clear permissions and approvals so you can manage who drafts, reviews, and publishes content. Make sure it integrates with your existing tools, fits your budget as you grow, and offers reliable support when you need help. Can I collaborate with teammates for free in Buffer?Yes, you can. Buffer offers a free plan that includes basic collaboration features, which is a great starting point for individuals and small teams. If you need more advanced options, like additional permissions or approval workflows, you can try Buffer Teams with a 14-day free trial. You can cancel anytime, so it’s easy to explore what works best for your team without any pressure. More social media marketing resourcesBest Content Format on Social Platforms: 45M+ Posts Analyzed20+ Top Social Media Sites and Platforms to Grow Your BrandThe 11 Best Social Media Analytics Tools for Creators and MarketersThe 11 Best Social Media Management Tools — Tried + TestedBeyond Publishing: How to Make the Most of All Buffer’s FeaturesView the full article

The promise of AI was always that it would handle certain kinds of work so we could focus on others. It was going to free our time, reduce friction, and let us concentrate on what requires human judgment and creativity. That promise assumed we would divide the labor wisely. That we would hand off the operational drag—the scheduling, formatting, and summarizing that eats the day before we’ve had a chance to think. We would keep the cognitive friction—the hard work of wrestling with ambiguity, forming a point of view, and figuring out the right approach. The work where your value is actually made. Instead we handed over the thinking first. Because cognitive friction is the effort you most want relief from, and AI makes it so easy to skip. ChatGPT became the fastest-adopted platform in history, appealing directly to our instinct for instant gratification. We did not divide the labor. We outsourced it. The cost is becoming clear. When we outsource the cognitive struggle, we erode our capacity to think. At work, it shows up as “workslop”: polished output with no real thinking behind it. More than 40% of workers have already encountered it. At the individual level, the pattern is even more troubling. A recent study of 1.5 million AI conversations mapped what this looks like in practice. First, users ask: “What should I do?” Then they accept the answer with minimal pushback. Then they come back and do it again. And then, often too late, comes the regret: “I should have listened to my intuition.” This is not a single moment of poor judgment. It is a pattern that compounds. Each cycle makes the next one more likely, and over time, it does not just reduce the quality of output. It atrophies the judgment that made the person valuable in the first place. This is a division-of-labor problem. And it is one that economics has been grappling with since Adam Smith broached the topic in his revolutionary 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations. He showed that 10 workers in a pin factory, each handling one step, could produce around 48,000 pins a day, while one worker doing every step might not finish a single pin. But Karl Marx observed something that Smith’s efficiency model did not account for: When you divide labor, workers can lose connection to what they produce. They make parts of things and never see the whole. As he wrote in his seminal 1867 work, Das Kapital, they become “appendages of the machine.” Smith showed what division of labor produces. Marx showed what it can cost. What makes this 21st-century moment different is that for the first time, the labor being divided is not physical. It is cognitive. In an industrial economy, alienation was a real cost. Workers lost connection to what they made, to the meaning and wholeness of their work. But they still had labor to sell. Their hands, their skill, and their physical effort were still needed. In a knowledge economy, the thinking is the labor. Lose connection to it, and you do not just feel alienated from the product—you lose the capacity to produce it at all. There is a comfort in letting the machine handle the thinking, while you still feel like you are working, or at least going through the motions. But cognitive friction is where the substance behind the motions is actually made. Skip it, and the output carries none of you. None of your judgment, your instinct, the context that only you can bring. That is the work that is uniquely ours, and it is not work we should be relieved of. The alternative path, where artificial intelligence does give us agency, is within reach. But it takes intention and discipline. The temptation is always to let these eloquent thinking machines go further, to let them think through the implications before you have had a chance to form your own view. Giving in to it threatens to distance you further from your own thoughts—your most valuable asset. If the division is working, you should notice something changing in your day. Not more output, but faster clarity. More time spent on the thinking that actually matters. The industrial age measured productivity in units per hour. In the knowledge economy, the measure that matters is the time to insight (TTI): how quickly you arrive at the understanding that moves things forward. If you feel, instead, like an appendage to the machine—disconnected from what you produce—the division is working against you. Division of labor creates efficiency. It does not have to produce alienation from your own thinking. Done right, it creates the space for human ingenuity. The machine handles the operational drag. And I get to sit here, wrestling with what this all means and what we should do about it. View the full article

French company’s debut debt financing follows rising demand for alternatives to US groups View the full article

Most Western executives think their exposure to China begins and ends with the question of whether they buy from or sell to Chinese companies. They are wrong. China’s capacity for innovation, its manufacturing dominance, and its geopolitical influence are changing the competitive landscape that all businesses operate in. Even when Chinese companies aren’t swimming in your part of the ocean, the country’s policies and priorities have a direct impact on the water. The facts are undeniable. The research institute Rand Corp. estimates that Chinese AI models now operate at one-sixth to one-fourth the cost of comparable American systems, and a U.S. advisory commission warned this week that Chinese AI now dominates global open-source usage rankings. But artificial intelligence is only one expression of a broader shift. The same country that is closing the AI gap also manufactures over 80% of the world’s batteries, builds more commercial ship tonnage in a single year than America has since World War II, and is rapidly becoming the partner of choice for countries looking for an alternative to an increasingly unpredictable United States. These forces—innovation, industrial capacity, geopolitical realignment—are reshaping the operating environment for every company, including those that don’t trade with China at all. Business leaders who want to prepare their organizations for this changed world need to start by understanding these three fundamental forces and their effects. The innovation myth is dead For decades, the comfortable Western narrative held that China could manufacture but couldn’t innovate—that it could copy but never create. That narrative is false, and has been for a while. In AI, Chinese models have moved from trailing U.S. frontier systems by double digits on standard benchmarks to near-parity, and they deliver these results at a fraction of the cost. Lee Kai-fu, founder of the Beijing startup 01.AI, told Reuters the gap had narrowed to three months in some core technologies, and that China was now ahead in certain areas. Nature describes the Kimi K2 model by Moonshot AI as “another DeepSeek moment,” matching or surpassing some Western rivals on specific tasks. When it comes to electric vehicles, the transformation is even more vivid. BYD’s Yangwang U8 is an SUV that literally floats and can park sideways like a crab. The company’s Denza Z9GT model charges from 10% to 70% in five minutes and has a range of 800 kilometers. BYD sold over 417,000 vehicles overseas in 2024, aimed for 800,000 in 2025, and ended up selling more than a million. These aren’t cheap knockoffs. They are better products at lower prices. None of this means the old problems have disappeared. A report by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirms that effective remedies for trade-secret theft remain difficult in China. Academic misconduct is real enough that Beijing itself is now moving to punish universities that fail to sanction research fraud. But here’s the point most Western leaders miss: China is so vast that it doesn’t need the whole system to be world-class. If even 20% of its innovation economy is operating at the frontier, that’s a force larger than most countries’ entire output. And the trajectory is moving in one direction. The supply chain you don’t see Even executives who don’t buy from or sell to China are exposed to its industrial dominance in ways they may not understand. The United States produced around 10 ocean-going commercial vessels in 2024. China produced more than 1,000 and now controls the world’s largest merchant marine fleet. That is quite a gap, and it reflects something qualitative—control over the physical plumbing of global trade. And shipbuilding is just one example of a pattern playing out across critical infrastructure—from ports to cranes to telecommunications equipment. The dependency runs deeper than physical infrastructure. For 19 out of 20 important strategic minerals, China is the leading refiner, with an average market share of 70%. More than 90% of battery-storage applications rely on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that are almost exclusively supplied from China. Nearly all batteries used for power grids depend on China for at least one step in the supply chain. Even firms that think they are not exposed to China often discover that the vulnerability sits a tier or two upstream. This supply chain exposure is growing, thanks to a predictable, repeating pattern. Beijing identifies strategically important sectors and directs massive investments into these areas. Chinese manufacturers rush to compete, leading to overproduction. Global prices collapse, non-Chinese competitors can’t survive at those margins, and within a few years, China is the dominant—or only—supplier left. That is how solar went from a competitive global market to one in which China controls over 80% of every major manufacturing stage. Indeed, so extensive was Chinese investment that in August 2025, the Chinese government encouraged firms to reduce production and eliminate overcapacity, because China was on track to produce roughly twice the solar cells the world was forecast to buy in 2025. Geopolitical shifts The third force might be the hardest for many Western business leaders to absorb: the geopolitical center of gravity is moving. The current U.S. administration has directed withdrawal from 66 international organizations, following earlier exits from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement on climate change. In the resulting vacuum, countries are turning to China. Canada agreed to slash EV tariffs from 100% to 6.1%, with Prime Minister Mark Carney calling ties with China “more predictable.” When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Beijing in January, Reuters described a broader “pivot to China” that was gathering pace, with investors saying Beijing could offer “predictability and certainty” when the U.S. feels more uncertain. Meanwhile, China and Iran have built a yuan-denominated trading system that sidesteps the dollar entirely—one small piece of a de-dollarization trend with implications far beyond the oil market. Let’s be clear: This is a reluctant embrace, not an enthusiastic one. The Human Rights Watch organization documents China’s systematic denial of freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Another watchdog group, Freedom House, rates China 9 out of 100 for political rights and civil liberties, giving it a categorical “Not Free” status. Countries are being pushed into China’s arms, not jumping willingly. But perception shapes markets as much as principle does, and right now, China looks stable, predictable, and oriented toward long-term outcomes at a moment when America looks like none of these things. What a CEO Needs to Do None of these forces are within a CEO’s control. But what business leaders can do is develop strategies for navigating a world that these forces shape. Here are five things to do now. 1. Map your actual exposure. Most companies have no visibility beyond their tier-one suppliers. That means they literally cannot see where their China dependence lies. McKinsey & Co.’s supply chain risk survey found that 82% of companies were affected by the new U.S. tariffs in 2025—and many didn’t see it coming. Before you can make any strategic decision about China, you need to know where China already sits inside your business. If you can’t map it, that is the first problem to solve. 2. Use China’s own plans as forward intelligence. China’s policy announcements are the most underused source of competitive intelligence available to Western business leaders. The 2026–2030 five-year plan is not a vague aspiration document—it is a procurement directive that triggers mandatory coordination across every central ministry, provincial government, and state financial institution. 3. Diversify at the structural level. Build a portfolio of suppliers, not a dependency on one or two; build a portfolio of markets instead of betting on one geographical region. The point is not to eliminate exposure to China, but to be intentional about spreading the risk. The companies that have thrived globally—such as Apple, Nvidia, and the NBA—haven’t decoupled from China. They have diversified around it while remaining deeply engaged. 4. Protect what is yours, but don’t close the door. If you create intellectual property of any kind, the U.S. Trade Representative’s findings make clear that protection in China remains difficult. Treat IP security as a core operational discipline, not a legal afterthought. China is also tightening its own trade-secret regulations—which creates both additional protections and obligations. But protection isn’t a strategy if it becomes a reason to ignore innovation happening elsewhere. The companies that reflexively reject Chinese technology because it’s Chinese will find themselves paying more for less while competitors adopt what works regardless of origin. 5. Reject the binary. The world that is forming is not one of cleanly delineated blocs. It is a world of partial bifurcation, selective interdependence, shifting regulation, and overlapping spheres of interest. Your strategy needs to operate across that reality, not pretend that it will resolve itself into something simpler. The bottom line China is not an easy partner, a trustworthy actor on intellectual property, or a country whose values most Western business leaders share. But it is the largest manufacturing economy on earth, it’s innovating at speed, and it’s filling the space that America is vacating. You do not have to like it, but you do have to plan for it. View the full article

Google Gemini more than doubled its referral traffic to websites in two months while ChatGPT declined from its peak, SE Ranking data shows. The post Google Gemini Sends More Traffic To Sites Than Perplexity: Report appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

When a global financial services firm sought Sam’s guidance, the problem seemed familiar. The firm had deployed AI tools across its business. Adoption was uneven, and the gap between teams was growing. In some corners of the organization, people were already using AI to draft client materials, summarize research, and speed up analysis. In others, they avoided it entirely: unsure what was permitted, worried about quality, or skeptical that leadership really meant it. Managers were fielding questions they weren’t equipped to answer. If my team uses AI, what changes in our standards? What happens to accountability? The leadership team quickly realized the problem wasn’t the technology. It was the people around it. The evidence is clear. BCG’s 2024 research finds top AI-performing companies invest 70% of their transformation resources in people and processes, not technology. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 finds that employee concern about AI-driven job loss has surged from 28% to 40% in two years—anxiety that impedes value creation unless leaders address it directly. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects 39% of core workforce skills will change by 2030. AI has not made human development less important. It has made it the primary lever for competitive advantage. Based on our work with senior executives—Jenny as an executive coach and leadership development expert, Sam as a global transformation leader who helps organizations redesign how they develop and deploy talent—we have identified four strategies for building the learning culture that makes AI investments work. 1. Make It Safe to Try The first capability is cultural, not technical. Mercer’s research finds that for innovation to succeed, employees must feel safe to experiment, ideate, and face potential failure. McKinsey’s research on psychological safety finds that a positive team climate is the single most critical driver of willingness to experiment. Yet McKinsey’s research found fewer than half of employees report one. That gap is where most AI adoption efforts quietly die. “Michael,” a senior marketing and sales leader Jenny worked with at a global consumer packaged goods company, worked with his team to define what good experimentation looked like, named the behaviors that signaled progress, and made clear that early mistakes were expected, not penalized. Within six months, voluntary AI tool usage across his team had increased by more than 40 percent, and managers who had previously avoided AI began openly sharing what they were testing in team meetings—modeling the curiosity the culture needed. “We can buy the best AI on the market,” he told Jenny. “But if our managers don’t know how to lead differently, the tools are just expensive noise.” Provide access to tools, focused training, and human–AI coaching at every level Model the right behaviors from the top: leaders who use AI openly and share what didn’t work give others permission to do the same Make AI fluency visible in promotion and talent decisions Treat adoption as a change management effort, not an IT rollout Pro tip: Run a “psychological safety audit” before your AI rollout. Ask managers: Do your team members feel safe admitting they don’t know how to use a new tool? If the honest answer is no, address the culture first. No training or tooling will overcome a team that’s afraid to try. 2. Build Capability That Matches the Work Once people are willing to try, the second barrier appears: they don’t know how to use AI well for their specific work. Generic training rarely closes this gap. The organizations making real progress have moved from one-size-fits-all workshops to role-based enablement: practical tools, prompt playbooks, communities of practice, and coaching anchored in the work they actually do. This was the friction Michael’s team encountered. Employees weren’t resistant—they were underprepared. They hadn’t been shown what “good” looked like for their role: how to draft a compliant client summary with AI, how to validate AI-generated segmentation analysis, or how to build a prompt that produced usable output. Without that guidance, the tool felt risky, not helpful. The 70-20-10 learning model holds that 70% of adult learning comes from on-the-job experience, 20% from coaching and social interaction, and only 10% from formal training. Yet most AI training programs default to exactly the kind of formal instruction—mandatory modules, certification courses—that the model says accounts for only 10% of how people actually learn. The most effective programs embed AI into real workflows first, then surround that experience with coaching and peer learning—using formal training as a foundation, not the primary event. Michael assigned “AI Coach” responsibilities across key projects and launched “AI Office Hours” so employees could experiment and learn together in real workflows rather than in isolation. AI Coaches became peer resources, not gatekeepers—colleagues who could demonstrate what a strong prompt looked like for a client brief or walk someone through validating AI-generated analysis before it went external. Within three months, the sessions had become standing fixtures, with attendance doubling as word spread that the learning was practical and immediately applicable. Employees who had been hesitant began bringing their own use cases, and the team’s output quality on AI-assisted work measurably improved. Pro tip: Start with the tasks your team already does repeatedly. Identify two or three high-frequency, low-risk workflows and build role-specific AI guidance around those. Competence built in context spreads faster than training delivered in a classroom. 3. Govern for Speed, Not Just Safety As AI usage expands, a governance gap opens. Managers start asking questions no one has answered: What data can we use? Who reviews AI-generated client materials? What happens if the output is wrong? Without clear answers, even willing employees hesitate. Effective leaders treat governance as the condition that makes adoption sustainable, not a constraint on it. McKinsey finds that companies investing in trust-enabling activities—codified ethics policies, clear data governance, consistent follow-through—are nearly twice as likely to see revenue growth exceeding 10%. Short policy documents outperform long compliance frameworks that no one reads. Michael built this in parallel with capability development. His team created a one-page “AI use framework” defining three zones: tasks where AI could be used independently, tasks requiring human review—aka human in the loop—before going external, and tasks that remained human-only. That clarity didn’t slow adoption. It accelerated it. Before the framework existed, managers were making individual judgment calls about what was safe to use—and defaulting to caution. Once the three zones were defined and shared, the cognitive load of every AI decision dropped significantly. Employees stopped asking for permission on routine tasks and started spending that energy on learning how to do them well. Adoption in the “use independently” zone nearly doubled in the quarter after the framework launched, and the volume of questions escalating to legal and compliance dropped by more than half. Pro tip: Build a one-page AI use framework before you launch any tools. Define three zones—use independently, use with review, human-only—specific enough for a manager to apply in a team meeting. Clarity about what’s allowed is the fastest way to remove the hesitation that stalls adoption. 4. Redesign the Division of Labor The fourth capability is the most consequential: defining clearly where AI creates value, what work belongs to humans, and how those boundaries translate into redesigned workflows and decision rights. Eighteen months into his initiative, Michael’s team had mapped the workflows where AI could draft, organize, and synthesize, and deliberately protected work that required human judgment: reading a retailer relationship, coaching a team through a difficult quarter, making a positioning call competitors couldn’t reverse-engineer. The division wasn’t about what AI could technically do. It was about what the business needed humans to own. The business case is clear. Over three years, BCG found AI leaders achieved 1.5x higher revenue growth and 1.6x greater shareholder returns. The differentiating factor wasn’t model sophistication—it was the deliberateness of work redesign. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 finds that 63% of C-suite leaders say redesigning work for AI will deliver the highest people-related ROI. Yet only one-third feel their workforce is ready to make it work. Pro tip: Map your team’s highest-frequency workflows before deciding where AI fits. For each, ask: Is this where speed and consistency are the primary value? Or where judgment and accountability matter most? Build the division of labor from that answer and revisit it every six months. AI Becomes Normal—and That Is the Point Eighteen months after Michael launched his people development initiative—in parallel with the technology deployment, not after it—his business unit was outperforming peers across every AI-linked productivity metric. Not because it had better software. Because it had better-prepared leaders. The leaders who drove that shift weren’t the ones who knew the most about AI. They were the ones who redesigned work, built trust, and helped people adapt. AI stopped being a special initiative and became part of the professional toolkit. Enabling a workforce to benefit from AI is not a software rollout. It is a leadership shift. The best leaders in the AI era are not waiting for the technology to prove itself. They are investing in the people who will make it matter. Continuous development is not a benefit you offer your people. It is the strategy. View the full article

Some of us old-timers fondly remember the satisfying clickity-clack of a physical smartphone keyboard. Back when email was king and multi-paragraph arguments on social networks were few and far between. Well, if you’re someone who longs for the days of firing off missives at breakneck speed, I’ve got good news: The physical keyboard is experiencing a renaissance, and it’s looking like it’s not just a nostalgic gimmick. Yes, hardware keyboards are officially making a comeback, and there are a few devices leading the charge that you’ll definitely want to keep an eye on. Unihertz Titan 2 Elite Now, Unihertz is no stranger to this market. The company already makes Android-based keyboard phones, such as the Titan 2. However, if you’re in the market for a new device, it’s best to hold your horses for the upcoming Titan 2 Elite. The company is promising an upgraded experience with a smooth-scrolling AMOLED screen and five years of guaranteed OS updates. Unihertz is currently running a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the Titan 2 Elite. Backers who pledge a little under $400 can get the phone as a reward. The company says it will ship in June. Clicks Communicator You might recognize the name: Clicks makes a reasonably popular keyboard case for Android phones and iPhones. But the Clicks Communicator will be the company’s first shot at making a complete phone of its own. Designed as a maybe-primary, maybe-companion, definitely-sleek device focused on messaging and productivity, it runs Android 16 and features a 4-inch AMOLED display perched above a classic QWERTY layout. The Clicks Communicator is available for reservation now and is scheduled to ship later this year. You can lock it in for an early-bird price of $399, after which it will jump to its standard $499 retail price. Minimal Phone Finally, for those who truly want to disconnect from the endless scroll, there’s the Minimal Phone. It pairs a full physical keyboard with a high-contrast e-ink display, the same kind of screen you’d find on an e-reader. This phone obviously isn’t built for watching videos, but it’s designed specifically to keep your focus intact while providing the essential tools you need. To wit, it runs Android under the hood and sports access to the Google Play store. It’s available right now, starting around $399 for the base model. View the full article

Lower-cost scheme could be delivered through councils under one option being considered View the full article