Halloween candy shoppers who bought Reese’s pumpkin-shaped candy said they felt tricked when the picture on the outside packaging didn’t exactly match the treat inside. They were so upset, in fact, that they filed a lawsuit in late 2023 seeking $5 million in damages. Now a judge has dismissed their claims.
At issue is Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, whose wrappers show an image of a pumpkin-shaped candy with a jack-o’-lantern face carved into the chocolate outer layer. In reality, the chocolate inside is faceless.
In a class-action suit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida, plaintiffs claimed Reese’s candy wrappers were deceptive.
According to court documents, plaintiffs thought “the product contained a cute looking carving of a pumpkin’s mouth and eyes as pictured on the product packaging” and said they would not have made the purchase had they known the chocolates would not actually feature those decorative details.
[Images: USDC/Middle District of Florida]
Reese’s maker the Hershey Co. didn’t buy it. The confectioner noted the Halloween-themed packaging also included images of uncarved pumpkin chocolates and a disclaimer reading “decorating suggestion” to indicate the carvings were an idea to try yourself.
The class-action suit claimed the “decorating suggestion” disclaimer was printed in tiny letters on the back and thus inadequate, but a judge didn’t agree and wrote that these consumers ultimately got what they were after: edible candy.
“Plaintiffs paid for a consumable good, and in return, they received a delicious, edible Reese’s product,” Judge Melissa Damian wrote in her order granting a motion to dismiss on September 26. “Plaintiffs have failed to allege facts demonstrating a concrete injury.”
It’s common for packaged foods to include disclaimers like “enlarged to show texture” and “product may not appear exactly as shown” for exactly this reason. No, your Cheerios aren’t actually that big, and no, your Reese’s pumpkin-shaped peanut butter cup doesn’t come pre-carved.
For Hershey, which accounts for some 36% of the U.S. chocolate market, according to PitchBook data, these disclaimers are a way to guard against frivolous lawsuits when the company wants to use something other than ultrarealistic product images on its packaging.
Like a box of cake mix that shows a picture of a finished cake on the outside, the Reese’s wrapper wasn’t showing what the candy looked like upon opening it, but what it could look like after some DIY carving. For those who can’t bear to eat a pumpkin Reeses without a jack-o-lantern grin, the message here is clear: You’re better off with a toothpick and some creativity than a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.
A new business infrastructure is emerging with enormous potential impact but almost no conscious design. In this new world, algorithms negotiate with algorithms, making decisions that shape markets, determine the course of careers, and decide whether companies succeed or fail. Humans, meanwhile, risk being left to watch from the sidelines.
On LinkedIn, posts written by AI models are liked by bots and commented on by AI assistants. In recruiting, candidates use AI to draft résumés while companies use AI to evaluate them. In procurement, some organizations are already using AI to draft requests for proposals, or RFPsdetailed documents that invite vendors to bid on supplying goods or serviceswhile vendors are turning to AI to generate the proposals they have been invited to submit.
The efficiency gains that AI can deliver are very realautomation can save time, cut costs, and improve consistency. But this does not mean we should ignore the dangers that those gains obscure. If we want to avoid slipping into a world in which humans are increasingly irrelevant, we need to be both alert to the risks and intentional about designing processes and tools to mitigate them.
What Changes When Algorithms Interact
In order to navigate this new reality, business leaders must first understand it more precisely. Here there are four important features of our algorithmically abstracted world:
The Audience Changes
New technologies often transform business, but whats happening now is different. The new technology isnt just providing new tools, but a new audience. This isnt an entirely new phenomenon. Humans have been tuning content for algorithms in some areas for years, as in the case of search engine optimization for websites. But not only is the scale now changing, but the algorithmic audience is taking over both sides of the conversation.
When algorithms speak to other algorithms, language changes from a medium for human understanding into code for machine processing. For a job seeker writing an application today, the best path forward is not always to try to tell their professional story in a way that will be compelling to a human audience. Instead, it will often be better for them to encode keywords and phrases to maximize their score in the applicant tracking system (ATS scores). And, ironically, the best tools for creating this kind of optimized application are often algorithmic themselves: generative AI models.
This does not mean that communication has stopped. It has not. Rather, it has changed. In addition to, and sometimes in place of, human meaning, a different kind of meaning is becoming increasingly important, one that is measured in match scores, engagement rates, and ranking positions. Humans are still involved in the loop, but only at certain points, and much of the process goes on without human intervention.
Metrics Are Replacing Reality
In 1975, the British economist Charles Goodhart came up with what is now known as Goodharts Lawthe idea that when a measure becomes the target for action, it ceases to be a good measure. The idea is that once people make decisions with the goal of meeting certain metrics, the underlying behavior that the metric was meant to measure is changed as people shift from focusing on the real, underlying goal to trying to optimize their score.
Briefly put, once we understand there is a system, we always try to game it.
Goodharts Law becomes increasingly relevant as we move toward autonomous algorithmic interactions. For example, ATS systems score candidates based on keyword matches, years of experience, and educational credentials. Candidates respond by using AI tools to optimize for exactly these metrics.
But high scores in the assessment system then lose their intended meaning: Where a high score once meant that a candidate was probably a good fit for the job, now it may just mean that the candidate has access to tools that are good at gaming the scoring system.
Tacit Knowledge Erodes
Teachers and sports coaches have long known that much of the most important learning for their students or athletes happens in the process of doing the work rather than in a flash of insight when an explanation is given.
When managers write performance reviews, they arent just documenting performance; they are also developing their ability to observe, evaluate, and articulate feedback. When teams craft project proposals, in addition to bidding for work, they are clarifying their thinking, discovering gaps in logic, and building shared understanding.
This tacit knowledgethe skills and insights that emerge from doing rather than consuming informationerodes when AI takes over the process.
Purpose Shifts
Our current business functions evolved in a human-driven world. They contain processes designed by humans, for humans, to achieve some human goal. When these processes are outsourced to autonomous algorithmic interactions, often they stop serving the original purpose. In fact, the whole point of doing them can be lost.
Take performance reviews. These originally had the clear goal of assessing employee capabilities to support actions aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the human worker. But if we end up with AI on both sides of the interaction, the whole process becomes performative. For instance, if a knowledge worker uses AI to write his reports, and his managers uses AI to generate the workers performance reviews, the original purpose of the review process is no longer being served.
This doesnt mean that nothing valuable is taking place: an AI assessment of the quality of AI outputs can still tell us something useful. But it does mean that the reason for carrying out the reviews is now a pretenseimproving the effectiveness of the human worker has become irrelevant to the process that is actually being conducted.
Four Strategic Responses
As algorithms increasingly transact with algorithms, business now operates on two levels at once: an algorithmic layer where signals are exchanged between machines, and a human layer where meaning and value are created. Leaders must guide the interaction between these layers so that efficiency gains do not come at the expense of judgment, learning, or purpose. Here are four practical steps:
Protect Human Judgment: Not every decision can or should be automated. Leaders must deliberately ring-fence certain domainsfinal hiring calls, creative development, setting organizational purposeand ensure that human judgment retains the final say in these areas. Generally, where values, creativity, and culture are at stake, a human should be the final decision maker.
Translate Between Worlds: As business anguage splits into two distinct trackssignals for machines and meaning for humansleaders will need translators. These are people and processes that can interpret ATS scores, SEO rankings, or engagement metrics and reconnect them with human insight. A résumé may score well, but does the candidate bring originality? A post may perform, but did it actually persuade? Translation layers stop organizations from mistaking algorithmic proxies for real understanding.
Design for Learning: Some activities are valuable not only for their output but also for the tacit knowledge they generate. Leaders must protect key processes as sites of practice, even if they are slower or less polished. Short-term efficiency gains should never come at the cost of eroding the capabilities on which long-term success depends.
Protect the Purpose: When business activities shift into algorithmic exchanges, its easy for the form to survive while the function disappears. A performance review still gets written, but the developmental conversation never happens. A proposal gets generated, but the shared thinking never occurs. Leaders must continually bring activities back to their underlying purpose and ensure that the process still serves that purpose rather than becoming an empty performance.
Algorithms are now part of the basic fabric of business. Resisting this shift is as pointless as commanding the tide not to come in. But while this change is inevitable, it must still be managed and steered by leaders who are aware of what is at stake. By protecting judgment, translation, learning, and purpose, organizations can ensure that automation delivers efficiency without erasing the human meaning that business depends on.
In part four of How YouTube Ate TV, Fast Companys oral history of YouTube, insiders describe how the companys Partner Program began sharing ad revenue with creators, kicking off the age of the professional YouTuber. As monetization transformed the platform, creators faced the newfangled challenges of managing fame in the viral video age. YouTube, meanwhile, wrestled with hate speech and other unsavory content.
With YouTube increasingly competing with TV in its classic form, it also spent billions to bring one of broadcastings most iconic offeringsthe NFLon board.
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Read more How YouTube Ate TV
Part one: YouTube failed as a dating site. This one change altered its fortunes forever
Part two: Pit bulls, rats, and 2 circling sharks: The inside story of Google buying YouTube
Part three: How YouTube went from money pit to money printer
Ian Hecox, cocreator (with his high school friend Anthony Padilla) of the comedy duo Smosh: We were one of the first 10 channels on YouTube to get monetization [in 2007]. That allowed us to move out of our parents’ houses and into a house where we lived and worked for multiple years.
Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube chief product officer/CTO (20082014): At first you had to know somebody to get into the Partner Program. The choice to open it up in 2009 was big. It was heavily motivated by our interaction with Sal Khan and Khan Academy, and how important it was to support creators like that.Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, the pioneering maker of educational videos: I think I got on YouTube’s radar because of [Mehrotra]. He’s a close friend. He used to say, You know, Sal, I checked your viewership. If you turned your ads on, you could maybe make a living off of this.Mehrotra: Of every dollar that came in [to YouTube], 55 cents went right back out [to creators]. That was a promise we were willing to make. It was a very hard decision at a time when we were losing a lot of money.Justine iJustine Ezarik, YouTuber: The first few years, I wasnt making a lot of money. But then the YouTube Partner Program came along. And then the brand deals started coming.
Zahavah Levine, YouTube general counsel, chief counsel (20062011): Paying this new generation of YouTube creatorswho developed content specifically for YouTubeled to an entirely new ecosystem for unknown performers and filmmakers by giving these artists new ways to promote their work to a global audience and rise to fame.
Meanwhile, YouTubes cultural influence was still surging.
Kevin Allocca, YouTube culture and trends executive (2010present): In 2010, you had Double Rainbow and Auto-Tune the News. Some of the Lonely Island stuff from Saturday Night Live was popping as well. In 2011, you had Rebecca Black and Nyan Cat. It was kind of the peak viral video era.
The parents of unknown 13-year-old singer Rebecca Black paid $4,000 to produce a video of her song Friday. It got about 1,000 views in its first month on YouTubeand then, after going viral, racked up 167 million more in four months.
Rebecca Black, singer: Friday was never intended to be a part of the internet. The idea of it being [seen] by anyone more than my family and the people I was making it with was the furthest thing from my mind.Allocca: The things that were viral at that point were the ones that people were sharing across different social media platforms or that were being embedded across all the big blogs.
Though Blacks song hit the Billboard charts, it was widely mocked online, and she was targeted for harassment, including death threats.
Black: The idea of putting yourself out there, for me as a kid, was terrifying. I dont think the internet knew at all what it was turning itself into, what it already was at that point. There was such a Wild West of the dark web and the deep web and strangers on the internet. As a child, theres just no way that you even can truly grasp what that means.
Founded in 2010, VidConan annual conference for creators, executives, and fanshelped make the platforms community tangible.
Tara Walpert Levy, Google ads director (20112021); VP, Americas at YouTube (2021present): We started taking advertisers and agencies to VidCon, where they could see the relationship between the creators and the fans.Jim Louderback, general manager and CEO, VidCon (20172022): All you had to do was stand there and watch a famous creator walk across the Anaheim Convention Center. The teens would scream and yell and run after them. It was Beatlemania for YouTubers.Ezarik: At the first VidCon I brought T-shirts to give away, and I was handing them out in the lobby. You cannot do that now. There are too many peopleit’s a safety hazard. But back then, we were all just hanging out. We didn’t know any better.
How YouTube Shaped CultureI Counted to 100,000!, January 2017Jimmy MrBeast Donaldson shares 40 hours of himself counting, sped up to 23 minutes. His increasingly lavish stunts eventually make him YouTubes most followed creator.
In 2014, Susan Wojcicki (19682024), a key architect of Googles ad business, succeeded Salar Kamangar as YouTubes CEO. She was soon confronted with complaints from marketers whose ads were being shown with videos that included hate speech and other offensive material. Some of them suspended advertising on the platform.
Levy: Peple would send us videos and say, This is a problem.Johanna Voolich, YouTube VP of product management (20152021); chief product officer (2023present): We needed to figure out how to lean into the community guidelines that wed had, how to make them stronger, how to work on our advertiser guidelines, how to work on enforcement.
How YouTube Shaped CultureCobra Kai, May 2018An updating of the 1984 movie The Karate Kid, this series is a hit among the companys big-budget YouTube Originals. After two seasons, it goes to Netflix.
Ultimately, creating YouTube videos is still about connecting with a community and staying human, even if the demand on creators can be incessant and the good stuff can feel like its swimming in a sea of slop.
Rhett McLaughlin, cocreator and cohost of Good Mythical Morning (2012present), whose recent topics have included a review of every flavor of Spam: You sit down and watch some videos that are designed for engagement, and you do that for an hour; you walk away and you feel like your brain has just had all its serotonin drained out of it.
Link Neal, Good Mythical Morning cocreator, cohost: The cornerstone of everything we do is that were inviting viewers into our friendship.
Chris Schonberger, CEO of First We Feast, which produces Hot Ones (2015present) featuring celebrities chatting while eating increasingly spicy wings: [Hot Ones host] Sean [Davis] says that the audience is like a cat that tells you where it wants to be scratched.
Michelle Khare, whose activities on Challenge Accepted (2018present) have ranged from joining the circus to training at the FBI Academy: When we release an episode, we have immediate feedback. Many times we take those learnings and apply them to the next video, rather than having to wait for the next season of the show.
Casey Neistat, filmmaker and YouTuber: You can have a moderately or mildly successful channel on the platform if you approach it with a moderate or mild level of attention. When I found a real inflection point in my YouTube channel by posting every day, I made the decision to go into that as aggressively as possible, to post every day for something like 800 days in a row. The demands on me were tremendous.
Felicia Day, actress, singer, writer, and YouTuber: iJustine [Ezarik] is the survivor. Shes talked a lot lately about how shes pacing herself, not sharing as much, because you cannot sustain it as a human being. If you cant fill your well, because youre always online, youre going to burn out.
Ezarik: Right now Im obsessed with Labubu, so I have a bunch of Labubu content coming out. I like sharing it with my audience, and if theyre not interested, theyll just click away and watch something else. Keeping consistent is key, even if youre not posting every day. Just letting them know that Im still here.
How YouTube Shaped CultureSkibidi Toilet, February 2023Generation Alpha binges on Alexey Gerasimovs animated series about humanheaded toilets. It garners tens of billions of views within months and spawns memes and merch aplenty.
As YouTube grows ever more central to how billions of people entertain and inform themselves, its boundaries have gotten tougher to pin downto the benefit of creators and viewers alike.
Neistat: In the mid-2010s, YouTube was elevating specific creators. And in the decade since then, theyve necessarily taken their foot off the gas of defining what it means to be a creator, because they breached this critical mass where they no longer needed to tell people what the platform was. Everyone had their own understanding. What’s come out of that is really special. It’s expanded the definition of what it means to be a YouTuber.
Day: When I launched my company, Geek & Sundry, on YouTube [in 2012], YouTube was looking to Hollywood to make content. Native creators weren’t as encouraged or valued or seen as important. And now it’s like creators rule. Its a wonderful place to be.
Kevin Perjurer, a YouTube documentarian whose Defunctland channel tells the stories of abandoned theme park attractions: When I started on the platform [in 2017], it was all about regular uploading. You know, You gotta pick your day of the week, and then hit that time with a video of similar runtime and a similar style, and that’s how you grow. That is completely gone in terms of the modern-day YouTube, for better, I think. YouTube is now much more about longer projects that took a dedicated amount of time and effort put into them.
Allocca: There’s not a day goes by that I don’t see something where I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m looking at right now. The ways that people use this technology evolve with the ways that society and human creativity evolve.
Along with enabling YouTubers to explore new frontiers, YouTube has become essential to some of the worlds most well-established content providers as they seek mass audiences in changing times. One long-in-the-making landmark moment came in 2022, when it acquired rights to the National Football Leagues Sunday Ticket package, formerly a DirecTV staple.
Hans Schroeder, executive VP and COO, NFL Media: I go back to somewhere in 2005, even before Google bought YouTube. A couple of us took a day trip out to Google and met with Jennifer Feikin, who was running Google Video at the time. Our excitement only grew once they acquired YouTube, and you saw the growth of that platform.
Mehrotra: In 2012, we tried to buy the rights to Sunday Ticket from the NFL. We were ready to pay $2 billion for it and ended up not being able to make the offer. We couldn’t get Larry [Page] to approve it. And YouTube ended up with the exact same deal for the same price 10 years later.
Christian Oestlien, YouTube VP of product management (2015present): As with all deals, it came together quickly. I was down in Australia at the time, so it was a lot of 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. type meetings.
Schroeder: There was always excitement that we could do something together. They launched the YouTube TV platform and distributed NFL Network and RedZone on that. And that led to Sunday Ticket.
Oestlien: One thing that’s really nice about NFL Sunday Ticket was it built on top of the several years of experience we had on YouTube TV of delivering sports as low-latency, high-quality broadcast-level experiences. We built a really big fan base on YouTube across sports with our clips and highlights business and our partnerships with the NFL and others.
Levy: The NFL is doing incredibly creative stuff on YouTube, above and beyond distributing their content. Their strategy was very specific: They wanted to partner with us on younger and more female viewers. And so they did a whole series of partnerships with our creators where they let them backstage at exclusive events.
Schroeder: As you think about the creator content that they have and how that gets wrapped around an NFL game, were just at the tip of the iceberg now.
Oestlien: We’re 10 years into many of us working on our partnership with the NFL. It’s a really nice milestone to showcase how far the company has come and how invested we are in making sure that these great sporting moments can be a big part of the YouTube culture.
Additional reporting by María José Gutiérrez Chávez, Yasmin Gagne, David Salazar, and Steven Melendez.
If you’re in charge of an editorial team, you’re used to objections from the rank and file about using AI. “It gets things wrong.” “I don’t know what it’s doing with my data.” “Chatbots only say what you want to hear.”
Those are all valid concerns, and I bring them up often in my introduction to AI classes. Each one opens a discussion about what you can do about them, and it turns out to be quite a bit. AI hallucinations require careful thought about where to apply fact-checking and “human in the loop.” Enterprise tools, APIs, and privacy settings can go a long way to protecting your data. And you can prompt the default sycophancy out of AI by telling it to give you critical feedback.
There’s another objection to AI that’s been growing, however, and you can’t just prompt your way out of this one. There’s a growing reluctance among some knowledge workers to use AI because of how much energy it consumes and the consequential environmental impact.
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It’s no secret that, as the number of people using AI grows, the colossal energy footprint of the AI industry increases. It’s true that chips powering AI continually become more efficient, but tools like deep research, thinking models, and agents ensure the demand for energy rises, too. It didn’t help that Sam Altman once said that saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT was needlessly burning millions of extra dollars. Data center construction alone has soared by 40% year over year, raising concerns about not just energy needs but also water consumption.
When guilt over AI use turns into pushback
In the eyes of those concerned about the environment, these stories and statistics can weigh on a person. Using ChatGPT starts to feel like a betrayal, with every query producing both intelligence and a commensurate amount of guilt. If they feel their employer is pushing them to use these tools anyway, that guilt can bubble up into anger, and even resistance.
We’re already starting to see serious objections. Civil servants in the U.K. voiced reluctance to use AI tools because of net zero emissions concerns, The Telegraph reported. Various officials charged with implementing AI-driven initiatives balked, fearing that doing so would conflict with Britains climate commitments. A similar dynamic is playing out at the municipal level in the U.S. Some city IT staff and policymakers in places like California have begun scrutinizing AI projects through a sustainability lens.
Many media professionals are concerned too. A couple of weeks ago, I saw at least three journalists bring up the concernat separate eventswhile I was attending the Online News Association conference in New Orleans. And in a recent training I did with a large corporate comms team, I polled the audience: What is your chief concern about using AI, giving them five choices: hallucinations, bias, sycophancy, privacy, or energy use? A full 37% picked energy use.
All the evidence points to AI’s energy use developing into a massive PR problemnot just for the industry, but for any business. It’s hard to be “AI forward” if your workers think using it is a huge step backward for climate change.
To be clear, this isn’t to say the environmental concerns aren’t validit’s just that they’re simply not my area of expertise. But AI and managing teams are, and it’s clear this issue will be a growing challenge for AI leaders across industries, but especially media, since journalists are on the front lines of reporting AI’s environmental impact.
Dos and donts for managing employee concerns
So what can company leaders do to address this problem before it gets out of control? That will depend on a number of things: your AI policy, the tools you’re using, and the demographics of your workers. But here is some guidance, divided between dos and don’ts:
Do listen carefully to their concerns. Are they objecting because of broad climate implications, or are their concerns more specific? Does it have to do with a specific tool? A local impact? The more detail you have on the issue, the more you will know what you can do about it.
Don’t dismiss their concerns, or try to deflect them by pointing to other industries. Yes, cars spew carbon, and there are microplastics in the ocean. But there are also diesel engines and recycling programs. It’s fair to ask what the equivalent is for AI.
Do research the problem. In August this year, Google became the first major lab to produce a detailed technical report on the energy, carbon, and water footprint of its AI services, which was an opportunity for the company to brag about its progress, reducing the energy consumed per prompt by 33 times from May 2024 to May 2025. This could be useful information for your team.
Don’t encourage mitigating individual use. This might be controversial, but the worst thing an AI-forward worker can do is neglect to use AI to help solve a problem that it can really help with. And that goes for thinking, deep research, and GPT-5 Pro, too. Rather than mitigating individual use of tools, instead . . .
Do transition workflows into dedicated tools. If a particular tool or workflow proves useful enough, you should develop it such that it uses the most efficient model possible, which will save on compute costs and the environment. Paying for your own compute is the ultimate incentivizer to throttling unnecessary use.
Finally, don’t stop talking about the problem. When you give updates to your team, talk about what you’re doing, as an organization, to address the issue. Ambitious companies might even create an internally visible energy countersomething that would measure not just how much energy you’re using, but also how much compute you’re getting from it, showing how you’re improving efficiency over time.
The risk when workers lose faith
As AI advances, governed by mammoth trillion-dollar companies and world governments, it’s understandable that individuals may feel they have no agency in how it impacts society, and that includes the planet. It’s important for leaders to recognize that feeling of impotence and flip it into a quest for efficiency and open communication. Organizations that don’t might find that the workers using AI in unauthorized ways aren’t nearly as bad as the ones who refuse to use it at all.
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Below, coauthors Ulrik Juul Christensen and Tony Wagner share five key insights from their new book, Mastery: Why Deeper Learning Is Essential in an Age of Distraction.
Ulrik is founder and CEO of Area9 Lyceum. Formerly a member of the McGraw Hill executive board, he is a frequent keynote speaker and regular contributor to Forbes. He also serves on several boards including the Technical University of Denmark.
Tony is senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and former codirector of Harvard Graduate School of Educations Change Leadership Group. He is the bestselling author of Creative Innovators and The Global Achievement Gap.
Whats the big idea?
In a world where AI can deliver information faster and more accurately than any human, what matters most are the uniquely human skills of critical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration, and character. This is why we need to replace our outdated, time-based education model with a mastery-based approach. The future of learning depends on a ground-up redesign of our standards, metrics, and methods in the classroom.
1. The core purpose of education should be to develop the skills of mind and heart necessary for productive work, active citizenship, and personal health and well-being
Our current education system is far too focused on information retention and recallthings that AI can do far better than any human beingand failing to develop our uniquely human skills. The world simply no longer cares how much students know. What matters far more is what they can do with what they know.
A woman named Monique Little did everything society told her to do to succeed. She worked hard in high school, earned a bachelors degree from a good college, and yet, she was stuck in a series of dead-end, low-wage jobs because she lacked marketable skills. In fact, 45% of recent college graduates are underemployed, working in jobs that dont even require a bachelors degree. Monique told us that she had come to see her degrees as no more than certificates of attendance. She told us that she learned far more technical and people skills in 10 weeks at a nonprofit training program called Per Scholas than in all her years of schooling, which is what enabled her to land a great new job as an internet threat analyst for a startup.
2. We must abandon the traditional, time-based model of learning
Progress should be based on clear evidence of mastery, not on arbitrary measures, like Carnegie units. The Carnegie unit, which defines a course as 120 hours of seat time, was established more than a century ago. This system, along with its reliance on multiple-choice tests, is fundamentally flawed. It leaves many students behind who simply need more time to master a subject.
This system, along with its reliance on multiple-choice tests, is fundamentally flawed.
We offer an inspiring alternative: performance assessments. Schools in Allen County, Kentucky, are holding defenses of learning where middle schoolers publicly present and defend their work to community members. This shifts the focus from passive memorization to active demonstration of skill and understanding. This kind of authentic, public assessment not only motivates students but also gives the community a clear, face-to-face sense of what their students can truly do.
3. Tapping into students intrinsic interests and passions motivates them
Rote learning and external rewards and punishments (like grades) are not enough and lead to increasing levels of student disengagement and anxiety in schools.
We provide a fantastic example from a program called the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, or CAPS. A student named Antonio Linhart entered the program interested in game design. CAPS didnt force him down a predefined path; instead, it helped him apply his passion to real-world projects, including a client project, a community outreach project, and a personal passion project. This process of connecting his interests to meaningful, hands-on work sparked his curiosity and led him to discover new career paths in computer science that he didnt know existed.
We also saw this idea in practice at Red Bridge School, where a group of young girls interested in fashion created clothing designs based on their curiosity about roly-poly bugs. This kind of learning is foundational to creativity and mastery of skills.
4. A personalized approach is essential in mastery-based learning
Nearly everyone can achieve high levels of mastery, but not everyone learns at the same pace. We bring this idea to life with a powerful story from the world of adult learning, specifically from the Danish road-safety certification organization, VEJ-EU. This program trains a diverse group of workers, from civil engineers with advanced degrees to laborers who didnt finish high school, all of whom must pass the same proficiency-based certification exam.
True education is not a race.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all class, they developed a personalized, computer-based learning system that allows individuals to progress at their own speed. The program proved that all learners could achieve the required mastery, even though the slowest learners might need 10 times longer than the fastest ones. True education is not a race. Its about providing the time and support necessary for every individual to reach a defined standard of competence.
5. This new model of learning requires educators to be sources of inspiration
Teachers must become performance coaches, guides, and mentors who know and support their students. In Finland, a country whose education system is often praised globally, aspiring teachers enter a masters degree program where they spend a full year with a master teacher and a team of peers. They regularly observe each others classes, debrief on their practice, and collaboratively refine their lesson plans.
This model, rooted in collaboration and continuous feedback, transforms teaching from an isolated profession into a community of practice dedicated to improvement. This systemic, mastery-based approach to teacher training is what has enabled Finland to consistently achieve excellent and equitable education outcomes. Its a stark contrast to the conventional conference, observe, conference model that is still common in many teacher preparation programs today.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with ermission.
Youre in a meeting when your boss suggests changing a number to make the quarterly report look stronger. Heads nod. The slides move on. You feel a knot in your stomach: Do you speak up and risk being branded difficult, or stay silent and become complicit?
Most people picture defiance as dramatic outbursts. In reality, its often these small, tense moments where conscience collides with compliance.
I first saw the power of defiance not in the workplace, but closer to home. My mother was the ultimate people-pleaser: timid, polite, eager to accommodate. Barely 4 feet, 10 inches tall, she put everyone elses needs above her own. But one day, when I was 7, I saw a different side to her.
We were walking home from the grocery store in West Yorkshire, England, when a group of teenage boys blocked our path in a narrow alleyway. They hurled racist insults and told us to go back home.
My reaction was instantaneous: Stay quiet, avoid conflict, and get past them as quickly as possible. I grabbed my mothers arm, urging her to move with me. But she didnt. My quiet, deferential, never-confrontational mother did something completely different. She stopped, turned, and looked the boys directly in the eyes. Then she asked, calmly but firmly, What do you mean?
She wasnt loud or aggressive. And in that moment, she showed me that defiance doesnt always roar, and it can come from the people you least expect.
Ive carried these lessons into my work as a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. For decades, Ive studied why people comply, staying silent when they dont want to, and how they can resist wisely. In my book Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes, I offer a framework based on behavioral science research that can help you defy in ways that are intentional, effective, and true to your values.
What defiance really is
When people think of defiance, they often picture teenagers slamming doors, protesters shouting in the streets, or rebels breaking rules just for the thrill of it. But thats not the kind of defiance I study or the kind that shapes our lives most often.
Defiance is not about being oppositional for its own sake. Its about choosing to act in line with your values when there is pressure to do otherwise.
That pressure can come from anywhere: a boss urging you to fudge the numbers, a friend nudging you toward something you dont believe in, a culture telling you to stay in your place. Defiance in those moments might be as small as saying no, asking for clarification, or simply pausing instead of rushing along with the group. Other times, it means speaking up, challenging authority, or maybe walking away.
Seen this way, defiance isnt a fixed trait that some people are born with and others lack. Its a practice: a skill you can strengthen over time. Some days you might comply, other days you might resist. What matters is that you have the awareness and the tools to make the choice consciously, rather than letting fear or habit decide for you.
Why people comply
If defiance is so important, why do people so often stay silent?
One reason is a psychological process Ive uncovered in my research: insinuation anxiety. It arises when people worry that not complying with another persons wishes may be interpreted as a signal of distrust. Turning down a bosss request to adjust the numbers might feel like youre implying theyre dishonest. To avoid that discomfort, you go along, even when it violates your values.
Behavioral science has long documented this pull toward compliance. In the 1960s, for example, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that ordinary people would administer what they believed were dangerous electric shocks to strangers simply because an authority figure told them to.
My own research has shown surprisingly high levels of compliance with obviously bad advice, even when given by a stranger with no consequences for disagreeing. People feel immense social pressure to go along with what others suggest. Thats because if youve never been trained in how to say no, it feels uncomfortable and awkward.
A framework for action
If compliance is the human default, how can you build the muscle of defiance? In my research, Ive developed a simple actionable guide that I call the Defiance Compass. Like a navigation aid, it orients you in difficult situations by asking three questions:
Who am I? What are the core values that matter most to me?
What type of situation is this? Is it safe to resist? Will it have a positive impact?
What does a person like me do in a situation like this? How can I take responsibility and act in a way thats consistent with my identity and values?
Asking these questions shifts defiance from a gut reaction to a conscious practice. And heres whats important: That third question (What does a person like me do?) circles back to the first (Who am I?), because how you act again and again becomes who you are.
Defiance doesnt always mean open confrontation. Sometimes it means asking a clarifying question, buying time, or quietly refusing. It can mean speaking up or walking away. The key is to start small, practice regularly, and anchor your choices in your values. Like any skill, the more you practice, the more natural it becomes.
Why defiance matters now
Defiance may be risky, but its never been more relevant. At work, employees are pressured to meet targets at any cost. In politics, citizens face waves of misinformation and polarization. In everyday life, people struggle to set healthy boundaries. Across all these contexts, the temptation to comply for the sake of comfort is strong.
Thats why learning to defy strategically matters. It protects personal integrity, strengthens institutions, and helps sustain democracy. And it doesnt require being loud or confrontational.
Of course, not every act of defiance is safe or guaranteed to make a difference. Sometimes it comes at real personal cost and some people still choose to act even when the impact isnt certain: Think of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat, or Colin Kaepernick taking a kee. In those moments, the act itself becomes the message. Both of those individuals were deeply connected to their values and the assessment is personal: What feels worth the risk to one person might not to another.
Defiance does require practice: noticing when values are at stake, pausing before you nod along, and choosing actions that align with who you want to be. Each act of consent, compliance, or defiance shapes not just your story but the stories of our societies.
If you practice defiance, and teach it and model it, you can imagine a different type of society. You can start to envision a world where, in that same alleyway from my childhood, one of the boys will step forward and tell his friends, Thats not okay. Let them pass.
Sunita Sah is a professor of management and organizations at Cornell University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women in Doha, Qatar, is the first mosque built for women. Architect Liz Diller designed the 50,000-square-foot complex to combine modern elements with traditional features. In addition to a prayer space, it also houses a library, classrooms, an event space, and café. The project is a winner of Fast Companys 2025 Innovation by Design Awards.
Sinking morale. Low productivity. Lots of gossip. Quiet quitting. Sloppy work. Cynicism. Talent leaving.
These are all examples of culture rot: the slow, subtle unraveling of what made a good company good. You can feel it before you can name it, Tara Kermiet, a corporate burnout strategist, explained in a recent TikTok post. Its less about one big event, and more about the daily drift that no one claims responsibility for.
Instead of some big scandal or massive profit loss, culture rot is the gradual, subtle decay of a teams culture. Its fueled by bad, unaccountable leaders, and is characterized as a slow straying from original core company values. Your core mission may become unclear, communication breaks down, deadlines get missed. People get disengaged, processes fail and then suddenly, everyones in self-protection mode, Kermiet says.
The term culture rot has recently been trending in other areas, such as branding, design, and creativity. Now, the term has started popping up in ways that it relates to the workplace, being discussed in places like HR publications and lifestyle publications. Alongside other issues like burnout, quiet cracking, and toxic workplaces, culture rot could well be just a handful of the factors driving all sorts of negative consequences in the workplace. According to the latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace report, the global number of engaged employees was just 21% in 2024; Gallup also estimates that low employee engagement cost the world economy $438 billion last year.
In the case of culture rot, one of the main causes is a slow abandonment of the companys stated values. Its all well and good establishing your companys values early on, but without regularly revisiting and reinforcing them, it becomes mere grandstanding. (Sadly, one could argue that, these days, culture rot is inevitable; research shows that only 26% of U.S. employees strongly agree their company always delivers on its promises.)
Having a thriving company culture, and thus avoiding team-wrecking rot, is crucial for retention. After all, those who feel strongly connected to their workplaces culture are 47% percent less likely to be on the lookout for other opportunities. Theyre also more than five times as likely to recommend their company to others as a great place to work. Plus, company culture is closely tied to team productivity, with one Oxford University study finding that workers are 13% more productive when happy.
There are ways to prevent culture rot. In her TikTok, Kermiet says leaders should be sharing what healthy behavior looks like, and what wont fly, and that leaders look at their own habits: Are you following through when you say you will? She also recommends being visible and asking folks questions on a regular basisculture rot happens slowly and daily, so carefully tending to your teams culture bit by bit each day nips the rot in the bud.
Culture takes cues from the leaders, Kermiet says in her post. Every action you take either reinforces trust or erodes it.
If your churn rate is unusually high, and productivity levels low, your company culture has likely been rotting for some time. Its time to cut away the infected areas and reestablish values, beliefs and behaviors from the inside out, before it’s too late. Its worth it. After all, workers who feel strongly connected to their companys culture are more than four times more likely to be engaged at work, according to Gallup.
A decade ago, I spearheaded my organizations strategic expansion into a new Eurasian market. Almost immediately, it became evident that our conventional playbook was inadequate. Success in this complex landscape required not just an understanding of business metrics, but a profound appreciation for cultural nuances and regional dynamics.
We made a pivotal decision: We set aside our polished PowerPoint presentations and embraced a more human-centric approach. Instead of relying on formalities, we engaged in candid, face-to-face negotiationsoften over a steaming cup of tea. This deliberate shift in strategy was about building genuine relationships, and it worked.
By prioritizing trust and open dialogue, we laid the groundwork for a partnership that has not only endured, but flourished.
In my own career, shaped through roles at worldadmired organizations like American Express and Amazon, Ive come to rely on five core leadership traits that have consistently driven results, built strong cultures and turned ambiguity into opportunity. And as a leadership advisor at one of the worlds preeminent executive leadership advisory firms, Egon Zehnder, Ive seen those same five core qualities distinguish transformational leaders across industries.
No one embodies these five traits perfectly every day. But the most effective leaders Ive worked withand aspired to be likeare the ones who commit to practicing and developing these traits over time.
1. Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
Great leaders dont just manage work: They read the room. Emotional intelligence (EQ) enables leaders to pick up on unspoken cues, navigate tense conversations, and build authentic relationships grounded in trust.
Why it matters
People dont perform at their best when they feel overlooked or undervalued. EQ creates psychological safety, which is the foundation of innovation, collaboration and accountability. Leaders who lead with empathy foster a culture of trust, empowering their teams to innovate and thrive in an increasingly complex world.
How to build it
Ask deeper questions. Go beyond How are you? to Whats been challenging for you this week?
Practice active listening. Resist the urge to fix. Instead, reflect back what youre hearing.
Build self-awareness. After difficult conversations, debrief with yourself or a mentor: What triggered you? How did you respond?
2. Visionary strategic thinking
Leadership is about more than keeping the lights on. Its about illuminating the path ahead. That means developing a compelling vision of the future.
Why it matters
In uncertain times, people crave clarity. Vision helps clarify priorities, aligns distributed teams, and keeps momentum focused on long-term impact, even when the short term gets messy.
How to build it
Clarify your why. Whats the deeper purpose behind your work? Write it down and revisit it often.
Connect the dots. Help your team see how their work ladders up to something bigger.
Invite co-creation. Encourage your team to challenge, refine, and evolve the vision with you.
3. Integrity and decisive accountability
Integrity isnt just a personal virtueits a leadership imperative. Do what you say, say what you mean, and own what happens after.
Why it matters
When your words and actions align, people trust you. When you take responsibility, even when its uncomfortable, it encourages others to do the same. That creates an environment where issues surface early, feedback flows freely, and people feel safe taking thoughtful risks.
How to build it
Be transparent. Explain the rationale behind decisions, especially when theyre difficult.
Own mistakes publicly. When things go sideways, share what you learned and what youll do differently.
Set the tone. Recognize and reward integrity in others, even when it comes at a short-term cost.
4. Curiosity and adaptability
Curious leaders dont cling to old playbooks. They ask better questions, uncover hidden risks, and spot emerging opportunities.
Why it matters
Markets evolve. Technologies shift. Cultures vary. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Curious leaders adapt faster because theyre more committed to learning than they are to being right.
How to build it
Ask What else could be true? when faced with a challenge.
Experiment regularly. Try a new approach in a small, low-stakes area and reflect on the results.
Cross-pollinate. Read outside your industry. Seek out conversations with people who think differently than you.
Lead with questions. In meetings, replace Whats the answer? with What havent we considered yet?
Why it stands out
Curiosity unlocks everything else on this list. It deepens empathy. It expands strategic thinking. It keeps your integrity rooted in humility. And it allows you to empower others by showing that leadership isnt about having all the answers, its about never stopping the search.
5. Empowerment through inspiration and autonomy
The best leaders multiply their impact by empowering others. They inspire and trust their teams to take ownership, delegate with intention, and develop people through stretch opportunities and support.
Why it matters
Micromanagement stifles growth. Empowerment boosts morale and creates space for innovation. It also signals that you believe in your teams potential, not just their current performance.
How to build it
Map out strengths. Understand what your team members are uniquely good at and where they want to grow.
Delegate for development. Give stretch tasks that challenge and support long-term growth.
Coach, dont rescue. When someones stuck, guide with questions, not quick fixes.
Create feedback loops. Make check-ins about learning and support, not just status updates.
Dont wait to start becoming the leader you want to be
If youre reading this, heres my call to action for you: Start today. Pick one quality, commit to one behavior, and test its impact. Reflect, adjust, and let momentum build.
Todays volatile business world needs leaders who can navigate uncertainty with a clear sense of direction and grounded values. As a leader, you have the power to elevate not just your career, but your people. Thats what distinguishes those who lead with impact from those who merely manage.
AI isnt a cost-cutting tool. Its a revenue multiplier. Yet too many companies are stuck asking how AI can help them run leaner with fewer people, faster processes, lower costs. That question wont unlock exponential growth. The better one is: How can AI help us grow faster, sell more, and drive new revenue streams?
Yes, cost savings will deliver marginal gains. But accelerated and/or new revenue unlocks step-change impact. If your AI doesnt show up in your P&L as higher conversion, more long-term value, and stronger monetization, then its not a strategy. Its just automation.
THE REVENUE UNLOCK IS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
AIs real power lies in how it transforms commercial outcomes. The highest-leverage applications arent about doing the same thing with fewer people. Theyre about doing new things better, faster, and more intelligently.
Here are three high-impact areas where AI is already delivering commercial lift:
Real-time relevance
This application is where AI shines brightest, not just in showing the right product, but in reshaping the entire customer journey to determine what matters most to each individual consumer. By analyzing live signals around intent, recency, device, geography, and behavioral patterns, AI models can decide which action, message, or product is most relevant at any given moment. Instead of relying on static customer profiles, AI is powering dynamic prioritization based on signal density, predicted value, and likelihood to act.
Checkout monetization
Checkout has always been a critical moment of truth and AI turns it into a revenue engine. Instead of offering a static buy now, AI can dynamically surface relevant add-ons, bundles, warranties, or services tailored to that exact customer in that exact moment. Because this happens when intent is already high, even small improvements yield disproportionate gains. For many businesses, checkout is the single best opportunity to transform a transaction into a marketplace.
Dynamic decisioning
Unlike one-off campaigns or basic customer journeys, AI-driven decisioning runs continuously in the background, recalibrating in real time. It can adjust promotions, product recommendations, and retention strategies in response to evolving signals: a shift in behavior, market trends, or even an external event. Done right, dynamic decisioning maximizes lifetime value by ensuring that every customer interaction nudges someone toward deeper engagement and higher spend not once, but over time.
Saks Global, Abound, and HelloFresh are just a few companies utilizing these applications in the real world with compelling results:
Luxury retailer Saks Globals AI-curated homepages maximizes personalization to deliver a 7% lift in revenue per visitor and a nearly 10% boost in conversions.
Abound, one of Londons fastest growing fintechs, sets itself apart from competitors by using AI-driven dynamic decisioning. It harnesses open banking insights instead of outdated credit scores and statistical averages. They have lent about $1 billion in the five years since it was founded in 2020. AI insights allow Abound to understand each borrowers unique financial profile with real-time financial data. This use of AI minimizes the companys default rates while allowing it to offer lower borrowing rates to consumers.
Meal kit delivery company HelloFresh has been using AI and machine learning extensively across its business. One way its been driving revenue in the U.S. is with machine learning-powered personalization preferences, optimizing meal selection in real time based on behavior. In August 2025, the company announced a $70 million investment, partly to supercharge AI-driven personalized meal planning across its expanded menu to help customers navigate choices more intuitively.
AI is so much more than an add-on or standalone feature. It should be thought of as a commercial operating system that is baked into every enterprises go-to-market strategy. However, to fully maximize a revenue-focused AI strategy, brands must undertake continuous testing, feedback loops, and optimization of customer touchpoints.
The C-suite has a responsibility to reframe the way we think about AI. Boosting productivity is important, but AI strategies shouldnt just be about doing things cheaper. It should also be used to turbocharge growth and sell in entirely new ways. Using futuristic technology to do the same old same old, like reducing headcount to boost profits, is just a road to stagnation.
Efficiency is expected. Its relevance that drives revenue. Saving money isnt a strategy. Creating value is. The companies that define the next decade wont be the leanest. Theyll be the most revenue-intelligent.
Elizabeth Buchanan is chief commercial officer of Rokt.
