For years, Heinz has consistently innovated in the ketchup space. Theres been jalapeo ketchup, chipotle ketchup, mayochup, and even pickle ketchup. Other sauces have gotten similarly modernized, with stunt products like a Taylor Swift-inspired ranch dressing and a hot-pink Barbie barbecue sauce. Notably forgotten amid this flurry of condiment exploration? Mustard.
Now Heinz is rectifying that error, officially announcing the release of the condiment Heinz Mustaaaaaard, the brands first new mustard product in 10 years. The smoky-sweet chipotle honey mustard will debut for a two-week period at Buffalo Wild Wings, followed by a limited-time nationwide release at Target, 7-Eleven, Walmart.com, and Amazon.com.
[Photo: Kraft Heinz]
Heinz Mustaaaaaard was initially teased back in February, when Heinz revealed it would be collaborating on the sauce with record producer DJ Mustard (so named because of his given first name, Dijon). The timing was spot-onMustard had just exploded in the cultural zeitgeist after a callout of his name in Kendrick Lamars song tv off inspired memes and resulted in Mustard joining the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. At the time, Heinz named Mustard as its official chief mustard officer.
But, according to the team at Heinz, this wasnt just a collaboration with Mustards name attached to it: The producer met with Heinzs R&D team in person to select the final flavor, down to the specific proportions of each ingredient chosen.
[Photo: Kraft Heinz]
DJ Mustard mixes a mustard
Most people are probably familiar with Mustard through his music and his recently viral collaboration with Lamar. Fewer are aware of his side hustle as a grill master.
Heinz pitched a potential collaboration with Mustard more than a year before the official partnership announcement in February. During that time the team learned that Mustard already had a love for Heinz, says Peter Hall, president of elevation for Heinz North America. Mustard shared that he had long used Heinz mustard as his go-to staple when grilling, and that he had a particular penchant for sweeter mustards.
In a press release, the artist said Heinz mustard has always been the most important ingredient among his grilling secret weapons, noting, I knew I wanted to make my own sauce one day, something that wouldnt be like anything else out there. Adding mustard gives you that nice browning, bark formation, and grilling, but thats just step one.
[Photo: Kraft Heinz]
The actual creation of Mustards mustard was a four-month-long process, starting with the music producer personally visiting Heinz headquarters in Pittsburgh to help mix up the recipea kind of access that Heinz has never granted to a celebrity collaborator in the past.
Richard Misutka, director of R&D for Kraft Heinz Elevation Brands, worked directly with Mustard during his visit. He says the team prepped around 10 different add-on flavors that might pair well with mustard, including honey, chipotle, jalapeo, bacon, caramelized onion, and even mango. Then, to ensure that they could replicate each potential recipe, all of the various combination components were weighed before they were mixed and tasted by Mustard.
[Photo: Kraft Heinz]
We started with our Heinz yellow mustard, and then we started playing around with some of the flavors, Misutka says. True to Mustards reputation, he liked the honey, so instead of playing around with the yellow mustard, we pivoted to the Heinz honey mustard. At that point, Misutka recalls, Mustard chose to add an extra shot of honey to the standard recipe. Then we looked at some of the other flavors to help accentuate the experience. We pushed him out of his comfort zone a little bit, because we knew he did not like spicy foods. So we’re like, Let’s just try the chipotle here and see what you think. He absolutely loved it.
While bacon and mango were both possible contenders for Mustards top pick, the chipotle combination ultimately won out. I think it has tremendous balance. I mean, you have th sweetness, you have the vinegar tartness, you have the smokiness from the chipotle, as well as the heat, Misutka says. It’s really a great product, and it was a tremendous experience.
Mustard summed up his estimation of the product in his own words: This is the one, the Mustard of all mustards.
Somewhere along the way, you learned how to read a room. How to anticipate what others needed before they said it. How to shape-shift just enough to stay admired, promoted, or simply safe. You became highly competent at adapting your identity, at being what the moment, the meeting, the mission demanded.
And it worked. You delivered. You rose. You built a life of visible success.
But lately, in the quiet spaces between the doing, somethings been stirring. A haunting whisper that asks: If I stop performing . . . who am I?
This is the quiet cost of adaptation: achieving without anchoring, succeeding without a self.
Its more common than we talk about. Especially among high-performing professionals. In fact, more than half of U.S. postgraduate workers say their job is central to their identity. And in environments where productivity and performance are prized above all else, its easy to confuse your role with your worth.
Eventually, the gap between the self weve curated and the self weve buried starts to ache.
However, theres good news. If the way youve adapted has left the core of you behind, you dont have to forfeit the success youve achieved to rediscover yourself. The key is to learn how to modulateadapt to meet the needs of those around you while still caring for yourselfversus modifywhen you alter yourself to engineer outcomes that cost you your identity. Both can deliver near-term success, but modulating is sustainable. Modifying isnt. Thats what Jason learned.
The Story of Jason: A Master of Adaptation
Jason had always been the go-to guy. Smart, strategic, relational, he could manage up, down, and sideways without breaking a sweat. By 42, he was COO of a global tech firm. On paper, everything looked ideal.
But in a coaching conversation with me one morning, he surprised himself with tears. Ive been everything to everyone, he said quietly. And now Im not sure who I am. I know how to play any role. But I dont know whats real anymore.
His voice cracked. I dont think Ive ever actually asked myself what I want.
Jasons story isnt rare. Its the natural result of a system that rewards adaptation over authenticity, and of humans wired to belong at almost any cost.
Why We Lose Our Identities
Several forces drive this invisible drift:
1. Social Conditioning:From a young age, were praised for being compliant, easy, high-achieving. Youre so mature, someone says, because we didnt cry when we needed to. Youre such a leader, someone notes, because we stepped in where others stepped back. We learn early that being attuned to others makes us valuable.
2. A Need for Approval:Psychologically, we are wired to stay close to what feels safe. Children who sense that love is conditional learn to become highly adaptive. Adults carry those patterns forward, often unconsciously. In the workplace, this shows up as people who over-function, over-accommodate, or suppress parts of themselves to stay approved and feel validated.
3. Professional Incentives:Organizations reward whats visible: performance, productivity, polish. Authenticity, vulnerability, or questioning the game? Those are trickier. The SHRM research series found that 44% of U.S. employees feel burned out at work, with 45% feeling emotionally drained and 51% feeling “used up.” Even more disturbing, more than 15% of working-age adults globally experience anxiety or depression, often quietly, behind successful facades.
The trouble isnt that we adapted. Its that we forgot we were doing it.
Four Ways to Return to Yourself
The good news? The self you buried isnt gone. Its just been quiet. Here are four ways to begin the return.
1. Notice the Cost of Over-Adaptation
Begin by noticing the signs that somethings off. Do you feel hollow after high-achievement moments? Do you leave meetings unsure what you actually think or want? Do your days feel like performances strung together?
Over-adaptation often comes with subtle burnoutnot of energy, but of identity. The mask has grown heavy, but weve worn it so long, we think its our face.
This is not a failure. Its a signal.
2. Track What Feels True (and What Doesnt)
Reclaiming yourself starts with paying attention to what resonates. What makes you feel more like you? What makes you shrink, go numb, or check out? What conversations, values, or people light something in you?
Keep a simple alignment journal for a week. Jot down moments when you felt most like yourself, and least. Patterns will emerge. Your inner voice is quieter than your to-do list, but its still there. Listening is a practice.
3. Create Spacious Identity, Not Just Roles
Its easy to collapse our identity into our functions. Im a leader. Im a parent. Im a problem-solver. But the self beneath roles is wider than any title.
Ask: Who am I when no one is watching? What values do I hold when theres nothing to gain? What would I say or do if I didnt fear being misunderstood?
In a world where 77% of workers have experienced burnout at their current job, according to research by Deloitte, choosing to explore identity outside of work isnt indulgent, its essential.
Building a spacious identity means allowing yourself to exist even when youre not being productive or impressive. Its messy, but its true.
4. Practice Micro Acts of Integrity
Returning to yourself doesnt require a grand reinvention. Start small.
Speak up in a meeting when its easier to stay silent. Take an afternoon to do something that has no strategic value, only joy. Share honestly with a peer instead of defaulting to polished answers. Integrity isnt perfection. Its congruence. And every time you act in a way that matches your inner truth, you rebuild trust with yourself.
Its Not Too Late to Return
You adapted because you had to. Because it worked. Because it kept you safe or seen or successful. Theres no shame in that.
But there comes a point when continuing the performance costs more than it gives. When the ladder you climbed leads not to joy, but to disorientation. And when the only real move left is inward.
Thats what Jason did. He didnt quit his job or retreat to the woods. He started smaller. He blocked off one hour a week, just for himself, with no agenda. He began journaling what felt true and what didnt. He reached out to an old friend and admitted he wasnt as fine as he seemed. He brought more curiosity into his leadership meetings, even when he didnt have the answers. And slowly, the hollow places began to fill, not with more achievement, but with alignment.
The good news? You dont have to burn i all down. You dont have to quit your job or find yourself on a mountaintop.
You just have to start telling the truth. First to yourself. Then maybe to others.
You can still be excellent. Still contribute, lead, and grow.
But now, from the inside out.
The self you thought you lost is waiting. Not to punish you, but to welcome you back.
AI hallucinations are one of users’ biggest concerns when utilizing large language models (LLMs). And while many might expect front-runners like OpenAI and Anthropic to lead the way in addressing the issue, it’s a travel and expenses platform that may be breaking new ground.
On Wednesday, Navan revealed its new AI platform, Navan Cognition, which goes beyond single-purpose chatbots and basic AI tools to create an AI workforce capable of automating complex tasks.
“We never do cool technology for the sake of it,” says Ilan Twig, Navan’s cofounder and chief technology officer. “We use the best technologies to drive the best user experience.”
On June 20, the company confidentially filed for its initial public offering. Navan was last valued at $9.2 billion in 2022 after raising $304 million in equity and debt financing.
Navans Cognition-powered virtual travel agent, Ava, can book and reschedule flights and hotels, manage upgrades, process expenses, and provide 24/7 support through a conversational chatbot platform. But early in development, the company realized that for AI to be truly reliable, it must work unsupervisedand more importantly, with no critical hallucinations.
“A critical hallucination is when the user somehow, or the bot somehow, gets to the point where something undesirable happens,” Twig says.
A hallucination can impact both the user and the company, particularly in terms of travel, whether by booking a flight that doesnt exist to satisfy a request, or offering a free upgrade the user isnt entitled to.
With this in mind, Navan began using Cognition through Ava in 2023, ultimately finding that instead of using one generalist chatbot, a network of specialized agents working together produced more accurate and reliable results.
“We focused on a real-life problem, and we built the infrastructure to support that real-life problem,” Twig says.
Working as an organization
Inspired by the neural connections of the human brain, Navan Cognition deploys a modular multi-agent framework, with AI specialized in different areas, supervised for accuracy. In a way, Cognition works as a company org chart, breaking down AI into various departments with particular specialties, like booking flights or issuing refunds. Other “departments” serve as compliance for logic, and “managers” answer questions and liaise with others if a question is unknown.
Itamar Kahn, a neuroscience professor and principal investigator at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute says Navan identified the conditions that cause LLM hallucinations and developed solutions to eliminate them.
Kahn, a close friend of Twig, first heard about Cognition in its early stages three years ago, following the framework’s development. He also provided support for Twig’s recent white paper detailing how Navan Cognition works and what problems it aims to solve.
“I have a shared research interest with Ilan: high-order cognition. Essentially, any kind of system, artificial or biological, can react to changing circumstances in its environment, and respond to those efficiently,” Kahn says.
When a user asks Ava a question or assigns a task, Cognition routes it through several specialized agents to determine the best course of action. Meanwhile, a supervising AI agent checks responses for accuracy and credibility, acting as a safeguard.
Twig says he was inspired by the way supervisors in call centers review and learn from agent calls. So I said, okay, I’m going to have a supervisor,” he tells Fast Company. “But instead of waiting for the end of the week and sampling two calls, I will actually do it for every response that the agent wants to send back to the user. It will first go to the supervisor to ensure that it doesnt feel or smell like a hallucination.
Navans departmental-like approach has proven effective, with Ava now handling around 8,000 chats daily, reportedly with zero critical hallucinations. The systems lack of need for human oversight has also helped Navan scale without having to expand its travel support agent workforce.
Why is a travel platform at the forefront of AI innovation?
Innovation requires curiositya trait Twig has carried from childhood into his work at Navan.
At age 15, Twig became obsessed with light, building a virtual harp using mirrors, resistors, and the south-facing window of his childhood home in Israel. “I ended up having eight virtual beams of light connected to the computer. Whenever you disrupted any of the lights, it would generate a note. And it was the Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol . . .”
He has nurtured that same inventive spirit on his engineering team at Navan, encouraging fresh thinking on common problems. “We are curious. We are not afraid of making mistakes,” Twig says.
But it wasnt just out-of-the-box thinking that led to Cognitions development. Being a smaller company without a sole focus on AI forced Navan to innovate differently. “They’re not an AI company that is trying to solve the problem of large language models,” Kahn says. “They wanted to solve this problem for all of these customers. And I think this is why this system is working.”
With fewer resources than giants like OpenAI, Navan had to take a creative approach. “It’s a choice of architecture,” Kahn says. Rather than building another LLM to replace one with errors, Navan changed the inputs and outputs that inhibited the hallucinations.
With promising results, Navan is now preparing to scale its platform, making the Cognition framework available to other developers and companies to sign up for later this year.
“It is an amazing opportunity, because LLMs are new thing,” Twig says. “It opens the door to pretty much follow your imagination. And if you are persistent and curious, there is an opportunity to do something that no one else on the planet did.”
At colleges and universities across the country, older adults are roaming the quads. These are not emeritus professors or late-blooming freshmen, though. They’re residents, living in an increasingly common type of senior housing. A growing number of colleges and universities have started augmenting their campusesand boosting their revenuesby building senior living facilities right alongside lecture halls and student dorms.
Dozens of projects are either built or planned in and around campuses all over the U.S., from Stanford to Notre Dame to the University of Florida, providing a much-needed source of housing built specifically for the needs of older adults while creating new sources of revenue for colleges that are seeing their student enrollment numbers fall and their futures in doubt. They’re also creating a surprising social synergy between two demographic groups that don’t often mix: college kids and senior citizens.
That unconventional pairing is becoming a draw for older adults, and making more universities think seriously about converting parts of their campuses from educational spaces to retirement communities.
“In the past, maybe people would move to Florida and retire from society. But now people want to stay engaged and involved,” says Cynthia Shonaiya, a partner at the architecture firm Hord Coplan Macht (HCM), which has designed several senior housing projects on university campuses, sometimes known as university-based retirement communities. “Lifelong learning is something that is important to seniors nowadays.”
Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography]
One of the firm’s newest senior living projects is Broadview, located right across the quad from the administration buildings on the campus of the State University of New York’s Purchase College. The project includes 174 independent living apartments, 46 villas, 36 assisted-living residences, and 32 memory care suites. It’s anchored by a 10,000-square-foot building called the Learning Commons that features lecture halls, a performance space, arts studios, and a maker space that are all accessible to both residents and students. Each serves as a conventional gathering area for retired residents, but they’ve also become impromptu learning and teaching spaces, with projects led by both residents and students. “It’s symbiotic,” says Shonaiya. “You have to have a space where people come together that is intentional.”
Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography]
It’s also an attractive concept, particularly to people with a connection to the college. “As soon as we went to market, we saw so many ex-teachers and current teachers automatically sign up for units in the building,” says Chad Bederka, a principal at HCM. “Within the first 15 minutes, the largest units were gone.”
Broadview is a $398 million development, arranged through a ground lease from the college to a third-party developer. As state-owned land, the deal was shaped by state legislation, which requires 75% of the proceeds to provide scholarships and 25% to support new faculty. The college receives $2 million in rent payments annually.
The financial viability of such projects has caught the attention of university administrators across the country. Alejandro Giraldo, senior living practice leader at the architecture firm Perkins Eastman, says this project type has grown in popularity since emerging about 20 years ago, offering an unconventional source of revenue for higher education institutions.
Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography]
“In many cases, there’s not an option to sell the land because of endowments or because it’s a public school,” he says. “They’re asking what is the product that is going to help us fulfill our educational mission, maintain it, but also expand it and bring some revenue to the school.”
Perkins Eastman is a firm that has specialized in senior living since its founding in 1981. In recent years, it has been hired to design more senior livin projects on or adjacent to universities and colleges, including Vincentian Schenley Gardens, an assisted living facility next to Carlow University and the University of Pittsburgh. It’s a privately developed project that’s using its proximity to universities as a selling point.
Other projects of this type are developed directly by universities and link senior residents to continuing education opportunities. Sometimes projects are led by third-party developers who emphasize the link to the universities’ programming and student population. “Every school has different approaches and strategies. That’s what is interesting about this. There’s no two that are the same,” Giraldo says. “Unless you have a very close partnership between the operator and the university, that is a recipe for disaster.”
Vincentian Schenley Gardens [Image: courtesy Perkins Eastman]
Drew Roskos is an associate principal in Perkins Eastman’s senior living studio, and in addition to being an architect, he has a master’s degree in gerontology. He says senior housing at universities works best when projects create an active connection between the residents and the university. That can take the form of an assisted living facility that partners with a university’s nursing program, or an active adult community that has programming tied directly to classes or curricula. Being on a campus helps make those connections even stronger. “The closer the proximity, the more rich and more meaningful the relationship can be,” Roskos says.
Vincentian Schenley Gardens [Image: courtesy Perkins Eastman]
Building connections between residents and students is also a goal, and one that’s of increasing concern. In 2023, the Surgeon General put out a major report highlighting the negative health and social consequences of isolation and loneliness. Older adults are particularly vulnerable, according to the report, but so are young people. “The idea of having seniors moving to a community that’s on a college campus, with young adults who can mentor them, and they can learn from each other, I think it has significant social benefits,” says Shonaiya.
When designing these projects, Shonaiya says architects and senior housing providers must consider what types of amenities they need to include to forge better connections between residents and a university’s students and programs. Some things are already built into a typical college campus, like dining halls, performance venues, and craft-centric spaces like woodshops, and senior housing projects can piggyback off their close proximity. But some facilities built for 20-year-old college students won’t meet the physical needs of older adults, so amenities like a swimming pool or a nearby restaurant are often added. “It’s a balance of what can be shared, what is accessible, and what needs to be duplicated so that it remains convenient for the seniors,” Shonaiya says.
NewBridge on the Charles [Photo: courtesy Perkins Eastman]
Other design considerations include general accessibility requirements like short walking paths between residences and university amenities, wide hallways, brighter lighting, and interior color schemes that don’t create jarring contrasts. Shonaiya says the Learning Commons at Broadview required special attention to acoustics in order to ensure older users are able to hear and participate in lectures and classes held in the space. “All of those aspects are baked into the design, but in such a way that the students don’t feel like they’re coming into a nursing home,” she says.
Broadview at SUNY [Photo: Brian Lauer, Jeffrey Totaro Photography]
The projects also need to fit into the surrounding campus, which can sometimes be difficult. Bederka says the Broadview project at Purchase College was added to a campus made largely of concrete brutalist buildings designed in the 1950s and 60s. “Trying to integrate a senior living community into a brutalist design was very challenging,” he says. Instead of mimicking the campus aesthetic, the designers looked to the surrounding community and designed the project to reflect the Georgian-style buildings in the area and the campus’s roots as former farmland.
These projects work best whenthey embody the unique character of the university they’re associated with, says Roskos, noting, “You need to find the story that’s behind the relationship. It’s really a reflection of what the university campus feels like. It’s got to operate as a business, but it should be cohesive with its environment.”
If you live in one of the 10 U.S. states with a bottle deposit program, youre probably familiar with the idea of feeding your empty plastic bottles or aluminum cans into a machine and getting a few cents back for your effort. But what if instead of earning a nickel or a dime, you could be entered in a lottery for a chance to win a bigger prize with each bottle you return?
That option actually motivates people to recycle more bottles, researchers discovered when they tested it out on a small scale. Not only did people recycle more often, but they actually felt a little happier after doing so (compared with when getting a regular 10-cent return). And, it turns out, Norway already offers this incentive and also has one of the highest rates of recycling for plastic bottles in the world, at about 97%.
This idea that people prefer a small chance at a bigger prize to a small reward is a common one in behavioral economics, says Jiaying Zhao, a professor of psychology and sustainability at the University of British Columbia and one of the authors of this study, which was recently published in the journal Waste Management. She wanted to see if the same principal could help spur sustainable behavior changes.
Bottle deposits already help increase recycling rates. In the U.S., beverage containers (including plastic and glass bottles and aluminum cans) that are eligible for a bottle deposit have an average recycling rate of 64%, but beverage containers that arent eligible for a refund have a recycling rate of just 24%. That latter figure includes all the bottles in states without deposit laws, and containers that are exempt from deposit lawslike in Massachusetts, for example, where regular plastic water bottles arent eligible for a deposit.
Offering a chance at a bigger prize could increase recycling rates even more. The researchers set up bottle return locations in British Columbia and Alberta in Canada, offering people the option of a 10-cent return or a 0.01% chance at a $1,000 prize. With that lottery option on the table, people brought 47% more bottles to recycle. The researchers also surveyed people on their happiness levels after returning the bottles, and they found that the people who chose the lottery option were slightly happier, even when they didnt win.
The same people even came back multiple times to return bottles, says Jade Radke, a PhD student at UBC and the study’s coauthor. In Alberta, the researchers set up their bottle return at a rib festival, and people were even walking around to collect cans on the tables and try again, she says. (The bottle return in British Columbia through this study was located at a food court and set up for two months.)
The potential impact of increasing recycling rates this way is huge. Creating new bottles comes with a lot of carbon emissions, and not recycling bottles also comes with a lot of pollution, so it can be a meaningful way to decrease all of those things, Radke says.
If we could scale the results from the study to the entire U.S., that would mean an additional 2.1 million tons of containers recycled here. That would also save carbon emissionmore than 4 million tons, or about the same as taking 1 million cars off the road per year. And for any legislators that may be concerned a lottery system would cost more money to run, the researchers say it ends up being the same average payout as per-bottle deposit systems.
When the researchers set out to test this incentive, they didnt know it was already available in Norway. Now they see it as further proof of a recycling solution. Norway began offering a bottle recycling lottery in 2009 (a bottle lottery has also been available in Finland since 2011), and now, 97% of all plastic beverage bottles there are returned.
In Norway, people can use a reverse vending machine to either choose between the guaranteed refund, or the chance to win 5, 10, 100, or 100,000 euros. The system also doesnt encourage gambling, its creators say, because theres no way to enter with cash and there are no near misses, like with other kinds of gambling.
The Norway bottle lottery has another twist: Some of the lotterys proceeds go to the Norwegian Red Cross. This chance to donate to a charity through bottle returns could be another motivator. Instead of 10 cents back to you, what if the proceeds go to a food bank or charity? Zhao says. Her team actually tested the effectiveness of this option as well, with results soon to be published. The researchers also plan to test how the lottery incentive impacts people who bring giant bags of bottles to big bottle depots, in order to see if the incentive increases their recycling rates as well.
It’s important that municipalities that may want to offer a bottle lottery still give people the option of the regular 5- or 10-cent return, Zhao says. In cities across the U.S. and Canada, people known as canners or binners actually rely on bottle returns for part of their income to get by. We don’t want to take the short gain option away, she says. Instead, we want to give people the option to choose.
When I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, summer was all about quasi-anarchic, unsupervised free-range child roaming. It was decidedly not about homework, so you may not recall those reading lists teachers used to assign us all that fondly. But I do! (I even once assigned myself a book report for the fun of itdont ask.)
As a book hound who grew up to be a journalist who covers books and authors, I get pitched a lot of them, and more often than not theres a precarious tower of tomes on my desk. So as summer kicks off, its time to once again get lost in a reading list. Whether youre beach bound or holed up at home, these eight books offer myriad lenses through which to view the past, present, and future of design and the artsno book report required.
[Cover Image: Phaidon]
Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US compiled by Andrew Satake Blauvelt (out July 3)
Cranbrook alum Charles Eames once said, Eventually everything connects: people, ideas, objects. This book explores those intersections at the school that was essentially ground zero for the mid-century modern movement. Curated by Andrew Blauvelt (director of the Cranbrook Art Museum, which is hosting an exhibition of the same title through September 21), this 464-page tome explores work by the likes of Eero Saarinen and Florence Knoll, as well as women and designers of color who are often overlooked in the history books. Like Dominic Bradburys Mid-Century Modern Designers, Blauvelts examination offers a spotlight and reappraisal of these unsung heroes alongside the usual names, and it does so with a great editorial design system notable for its use of color, which extends to the cover, spine, and even those painted edges.
[Cover Image: Penguin Random House]
Exhibitionist: 1 Journal, 1 Depression, 100 Paintings by Peter Mendelsund
Peter Mendelsund is the definition of a polymath: classical pianist turned book cover design extraordinaire, turned author, turned Atlantic creative director . . .
But the one thing he never did was paintuntil he experienced a severe depression that nearly claimed his life. Exhibitionist is a memoir that might not be the lightest summer read, but it is a testament to the sheer restorative nature of art, and the work that just might have saved one of the best working artists today.
[Cover Image: Princeton Architectural Press]
100 Logos: A to Z by Louise Fili (out August 26)
This tiny treat features lettering icon Louise Fili’s favorite marks from throughout her career, from Ecco Press and Tiffany & Co. to more obscure regional clientswhere the work truly surprises and delights, perhaps the result of being untethered from boardrooms and committees. You could flip through the book in about 5 or 10 minutesbut you could also look at this collection of ornate logos for hours, given the artistry and attention to scrupulous detail that went into each one.
[Cover Image: Yale University Press]
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective edited by Janet Bishop and Cara Manes
If youre only familiar with Ruth Asawas iconic wire sculptures, youre in for a treatbecause for a half-century-plus, the trailblazer was busy making paintings, casts, prints, and more, and it can all be found in this book. In 2020, Cronicle published the insightful biography Everything She Touched, and this volume is a robust, essential companion that goes further down the rabbit hole of Asawas brilliance. (Moreover, between the recently published Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury and the forthcoming Ruth Asawa: The Tamarind Prints, its a big year for fresh insights into the modernist whose work we might have thought we knew well.)
[Cover Image: Tune and Fairweather]
Process by Matthew Seiji Burns, featuring design by Mark Wynne
The plot of this novel is straightforward enough (and likely uncomfortably familiar to many who work in Silicon Valley): Lucas Adderson is a young man driven by an almost animalistic need to find outsized success creating the next unicorn tech juggernaut. His days are riddled with surreal meetings and strange characters, anxiety, and self-torture. Finally, after years of trying, his goal is within his grasp, but its consummation occurs at a great cost to his humanity, and perhaps everyone elses too.
What is wholly unfamiliar is the design by Wynne and publisher Tune & Fairweather, best known for its gorgeous books exploring the worlds of FromSoftware video games like Elden Ring and Bloodborne. Among Wynnes inspirations were visually interwoven reads like House of Leaves and The Medium is the Massage, and here he immerses readers in the story through experimental typography. The type shape-shifts; it expands and contracts; it fragments; as the main characters mental state breaks down, it does, too. It can be demanding at timesbut with that challenge comes immersion, and a curious new reading experience.
[Cover Image: Assouline]
Self-Portraits: From 1800 to the Present curated by Philippe Ségalot and Morgane Guillet
Were accustomed to seeing self-portraits as curious one-off moments in an artists show or museumbut to see a collection of some 60 in one place is as obvious as it is remarkable. From Pablo Picasso to Paul Gauguin and Cindy Sherman, this intimate journey across art history ultimately fascinates in not just seeing how an artist distills themselves through their own filter, but in questioning and probing what self-portraiture means at large. While I wouldnt shove this book into a beach bagit is, after all, a luxe Assouline volumeit very much invites a place for pondering on your coffee table.
[Cover Image: Skyhorse]
The Education of a Design Writer by Steven Heller and Molly Heintz (out June 24)
Im not recommending this book because I have an essay inside itIm doing so because of all the other people who do, too: Ken Carbone, Chappell Ellison, Jarrett Fuller, Rick Griffith, Karrie Jacobs, Mark Kingsley, Warren Lehrer, Ellen Lupton, Silas Munro, Virginia Postrel, Anne Quito, Angela Riechers, Adrian Shaughnessy, Veronique Vienne, Rob Walker . . . and the list goes on.
With 200-plus books under his belt, Steven Heller (who Ive edited for a number of years) is perhaps the best-known design writer outside of Philip B. Meggs. So when he pulls together a book on the craft, as he did here with Molly Heintz, the rest of us are wise to listen (or, you know, readand then write).
[Cover Image: Fuel Design]
Ukrainian Modernism by Dmytro Soloviov
Full disclosure: I know very little about Ukrainian modernist architecture. But Im apparently not alone Per Fuel Publishing, these ingenious buildings have not gotten their due for a variety of factorsincluding the stigma of belonging to the Soviet era, corruption, neglect, as well as the ongoing threat of destruction from both unscrupulous developers and war. So, Soloviov sought to give them their due, with their resilience perhaps a mirror to Ukraines people at large.
Another full disclosure: I have not yet gotten my hands on a copy of this bookbut I cant wait to rectify my knowledge when I do. Homework: assigned.
Extra Credit!
The Invention of Design by Maggie Gram
Draw by Kenya Hara
Jason Polan: The Post Office edited by Jason Fulford (out September 23)
Extraordinary Pools by Naina Gupta
Good Movies as Old Books by Matt Stevens
The War of Art: A History of Artists Protest in America by Lauren ONeill-Butler (out June 17)
Gardens for Modern Houses by Beth Dunlop
Whether we like it or not, we live in a world that is ruthlessly optimized to reward results. Nonetheless, failure is a part of everyones lifeand an essential part of achievement in fields ranging from sports to science.
In fact, high achievers are those who fail more oftennot lessthan the average person. They take more risks, go outside their comfort zone, set more challenging goals, and engage more frequently and vigorously in improving their performanceand this is how they succeed. You cant lose if you never playyou also cant win.
Runner-up
But what about coming in second? Is there value to the near missto being so close to a win, but falling short?
In education, being salutatorian is impressive. But it still means you miss out on the valedictory speech and its attendant scholarship. A high spot on the university waitig list rarely becomes an enrollment offer. In careers, the runner-up performer might earn a congratulatory email but not the promotion or hefty salary increase; the second-best job interview candidate gets little consolation from knowing they almost received a job offer but are still unemployed.
Salespeople who hit 99% of their quota still forfeit the Hawaiian-vacation incentive and bonus. In research, the lab that publishes second loses the patent, the grant, and the headlines. And if you are the runner-up in a presidential election, theres at best a slim chance you can run again in the future, and your popularity may actually decrease after losing (in politics, this loser effect leads to a dip in confidence from voters, and theres often no time for a second chance).
Near misses as opportunity
And yet, near misses are not as disastrous as the above thought experiments suggest.
Indeed, finishing a hairs breadth behind the winner still means youve outperformed almost everyone elsebe they hundreds of classmates, thousands of job applicants, or an entire electorate. Moreover, the person who edges you out isnt necessarily better on merit alonefactors like political currents, privilege, or just plain luck can tip the scales.
Perhaps most importantly, coming up just short can serve as a springboard for growth, offering the chance to learn, adapt, and come back strongerprovided you choose to seize it. Heres why:
Lessons learned
First, while everyone prefers success to failure, it is often easier to learn from failure than from success. Success tells you that you are great; it is the socially accepted way to provide you with positive feedback on your talents, reinforcing your self-belief, and inflating your ego. While this sounds greatand without much in the way of downsidesuccess is also likely to generate complacency, overconfidence, and arrogance (its much easier to stay humble in defeat). Conversely, failures are opportunities to learn, especially when you see them as learning experiments that provide you with critical feedback on your skills, choices, and behaviors. As Niels Bohr wisely noted, An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
In short, a near miss can act as an inherently, if brutally honest audit of your assumptions and strategiesuncovering blind spots that success tends to conceal. By forcing youor at least inviting youto diagnose exactly why you fell short, a near miss suggests you refine your mental models; rethink and tweak your tactics; and build new, better tested, decision-making muscles.
Failing enthusiastically
Second, failure increases the gap between your aspirational self (who you want to be) and your actual self (who you are, at least from a reputational standpoint). This uncomfortable psychological gap is only reduced through hard work, grit, and persistence, which together strengthen your chances of succeeding in the future. At the very least, they help you become a better version of yourself, even if you dont succeed in achieving a sought-after prize or goal. As Winston Churchill famously noted, Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Importantly, near misses can be a powerful form of failure precisely because they hurt the most. Being so close to a success can reaffirm your determination and reignite your ambition. Every extraordinary achiever (across fields) differs from others in one important way: they are less likely to be satisfied with their achievements. Indeed, the most common reason people fail to learn from failure is that they are too wounded or hurt by their lack of success, to the point that it extinguishes their drive. In contrast, extraordinary achievers will not give up or let goeven when their failures are hard to digest. This ambitious mindset helps them seek to understand the factors leading to their near misses without getting deflated or depressed by them. Instead, it makes them even hungrier for victory, resilient, and focused on bouncing back stronger.
Emotionally resilient
Third, the way you respond to any form of defeat or failure, and especially the painful near misses, sends a powerful signal to everyone around youinvestors, bosses, or teammatesthat youre emotionally mature, resilient, and coachable. Humans have a general tendency to attribute their successes to their own talents and merit, while blaming others, or situations, for their failures and misses. Avoiding this tendency makes you an exception to the norm. This will be noticed and will impress others. While resilience is largely a function of your personality (the more emotionally stable, extroverted, curious, agreeable, and especially conscientious you are, the more resilience you will show), we can all work to increase our resilience if we truly care about achieving our end goal, by becoming grittier and harnessing whatever mental toughness we have.
When you dissect a near miss with curiosity and humility, you demonstrate a growth mindset that invites collaboration and sparks confidence in your potential. Visible resilience often earns more credibility (and resources) than a flawless run, because it shows youre willing to learn in public. Over time, people who witness your thoughtful rebound become your strongest advocates, eager to back the next iteration of your vision. Life, despte how it feels in disappointing moments, is not a final exam but a continuous assessment; what matters most is not brilliant one-off successes but reliable, steady, determined excellence. As Aristotle pointed out, We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Greater legacies
To be sure, theres no shortage of prominent historical figures who confirm how near misses and other kinds of failures in their early career stages were poor indicators of their actual talent and potential but instead unfortunate or unlucky episodes, uncharacteristic of their brilliance. Consider Roger Federer: after six runner-up finishes on tour, he finally lifted Wimbledons trophy in 2003 and would go on to amass 20 Grand Slam titles. The Netherlands of 1974, whose Total Football lost the final, rewrote soccers playbook. J.K. Rowling, turned down by 12 publishers, went on to sell over 600 million Harry Potter copies. Barbara McClintock, whose jumping genes work was ignored for decades, earned a 1983 Nobel Prize for the discovery. Meryl Streep, whose first Oscar nod in 1979 went unrewarded, has since racked up 21 nominations and 3 wins. The Beatles were rejected by Decca as yesterdays sound before selling some 1.6 billion records. And Alibaba, once dwarfed by eBay in China, now serves over a billion annual active consumers. Each of these (and many other) examples provide evidence that near misses can herald even greater legacies.
Ultimately, the sting of almost is less a verdict on your potential than an invitation to hone it. Near misses arent life sentencestheyre signposts pointing to gaps in your strategy, fuel for your ambition, and a live demonstration of your character to the world. While it is tempting to ruminate about what could have or should have happened, the truth is we never know. We all indulge in counterfactual fantasiesthose what if spirals where we picture an alternate universe in which we married someone else, took the other job, or moved to that city. Psychologists call them sliding doors moments: innocuous-seeming forks in the road that, in hindsight, feel like cosmic turning points. But while its human to ruminate, its wiser to remember that were not omniscient authors of our own lives. The illusion of total control is just thatan illusion.
More often than not, the best way to recover from regret or disappointment is not by obsessing over the road not taken, but by taking a different road. Que será, será. Life is less about scripting your destiny than adapting to its plot twists. In other words, how you react to failure matters, but failure is too brutal and negative a word for simply not getting what you think you preferred or wanted, especially when it may not even be what you actually needed or ought to have preferred. When we embrace each narrow defeat as data, not destiny, we are able to build the very habits and resilience that turn almost into subsequent undeniable success. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted. We add that experience can be more valuable than the objective success of getting what you wanted. In fact, enjoyment of objectives successes including of awards and victories, tends to be more short-lived than we expect.
We need not define ourselves by our past and present achievements. Who we are also comprises our future self, including our possible selvesthe parts of our character and identity that are actually the only ones we can influence.
A few weeks ago, I finally paid for ChatGPT Plus.
It started with a simple goal: I wanted to create a personal archive of my published articles, but wasnt sure how to begin. That led to a long back-and-forth with ChatGPT, where we built a Python script to scrape my author pages, download the content, and format everything cleanly. By the time I hit the free usage limit, I was too invested to pause or switch to another chatbot. So I upgraded.
In hindsight, the money ($20 per month) was well spent. For one, it worked: I now have a folder on my computer containing more than a decades worth of articles.
More importantly, this was the moment that AI tools clicked for me. I’ve had little success using them to write, and often recoil at the images they churn out. When I ask ChatGPT and Google Gemini for factual information, they’re liable to get the details wrong on all but the most widely understood topics.
But in this case, ChatGPT saved me days of tedious workand opened my eyes to what else might now be possible. (The idea of creating code without knowing how to code has even been coined vibecoding by Andrej Karpathy.) If I could use AI to build personal Python scripts, what other plugins or extensions could I try next?
Web extensions, plug-ins, and more
Unlike my colleague Harry McCracken, I’m not using AI to dream up entirely new apps. I already have too many apps from actual professionals on my phone and computer, and I don’t trust AI (or myself) enough to compete with them.
What I’ve really gotten into, though, is using AI to extend and improve the software I use already.
For instance, I take notes and draft stories in Obsidian, an app that’s endlessly extensible via user-created plug-ins. I’ve always dreamed of a quick note plug-in for Obsidian that matches the simplicity of Google Keep, but have yet to find anything that works.
After a few hours of vibecoding, I finally built the plug-in myself. Now, through Obsidians right sidebar, I can view all the notes from any folder in a card-based layout and edit them directly from the sidebar. The plug-in also lets me pin notes to the top, create new notes with a single click, send notes to an archive folder, and search with real-time results. It even works in Obsidians mobile app, with the quick-notes view just a swipe away.
I’ve also been tweaking some existing plug-ins for Flow Launcher, a free Windows app for executing quick actions from a command bar. I took a plug-in for window management and added some new sizing options, and I modified a browser history search plug-in to make it work with my current browser (Floorp).
AI tools are also useful for creating browser bookmarklets, which are special kinds of bookmarks for doing things like decluttering web pages and speeding up videos. I already wrote an entire article about that, but now I’ve created an additional bookmarklet for downloading YouTube videos. This works by connecting to a local Python server that silently processes video links and sends them to my Downloads folder.
In all cases, the process was the same: I would tell ChatGPT exactly what I was trying to make, and asked for clear, step-by-step instructions on how to make it. I’d follow the instructions, compile the code, and go back to ChatGPT for fixes or refinements.
Some assembly required
I dont want to oversell vibecoding as an effortless activity. Each of the above projects took hours to build, as I inevitably fall down a rabbit hole of tweaking, clarifying, and troubleshooting.
Thats partly because AI can be as unreliable in coding as it is in other endeavors. ChatGPT has a habit of confidently declaring that its produced working code, only for errors to appear when compiling or running it. Ive spent hours feeding it error messages, trying to get it to recognize basic syntax issues or missing functions. On several occasions, Ive had to abandon a chat entirely and start a new one after the code modifications veered too far off track.
Even when everything is working properly, its easy to fall prey to scope creep. You might think its simple to add a new feature or tweak the design, but those changes can easily turn into additional hours of refining and fixing. (In fairness, this happens in actual software development, too.)
And while you can accomplish a lot without formal programming knowledge, youll still need a solid grasp of how file systems work and some basic sense of what code should look like. ChatGPT might ask you to replace one snippet with another, or mistakenly claim its providing full code when large portions are missing. Being able to spot when AI is about to screw up can go a long way.
Take some control back
One last disclaimer: I’m not nearly confident enough in what I’ve created to share it with the world, as I’m sure other folks would run into bugs or ask for features that I’m thoroughly unqualified to address. I also wouldn’t suggest vibecoding anything that handles sensitive data or important personal information.
But for the things vibecoding is good atsmall, personal utilities that no one else would want to makeit’s immensely satisfying and even empowering. As Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick recently pointed out, lowering the barriers to software development is a great way to push back against enshittification by major tech companies, whose products inevitably get weighed down by the need to scale and extract more money from captive users.
To that point, you don’t even need AI anymore once the vibe coding is done. Having built what I need for the foreseeable future, I cancelled my ChatGPT Plus subscription after a single month’s payment.
When we hired a Gen Z marketer, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We expected fresh perspectives and a new approach to marketing, but as an older millennial, I didnt expect just how foreign her methods would feel. Our company is an AI-powered platform that helps small and medium-size businesses find top part-time professionals through network-based recruiting. As we grew, we realized we needed someone who truly understood how younger audiences communicate and consume contentnot just to market the product, but to shape how we tell our story in a changing world of work.
For decades, marketing has been about connecting emotionally with audiences. “Hit the pain points,” they say. But now? Were living in a completely different world where short and authentic is king and Gen Z speaks an entirely different language. Try making sense of phrases like:
Touch grass? I AM the lawn.
Delulu is the solulu.
Slayed so hard I need a rest day.
I need a dictionary to decode this. Worse, I cant even evaluate the creatives our marketer brings to the tablethey’re so removed from my understanding of what works. It’s a puzzle. But what is also true is that we needed someone who gets it. In the same way that you need the right tech stack to build a successful product, you need the right people to resonate with your Gen Z audience. Heres what I learned about how marketing has changed from our Gen Z marketer.
A Gen Z style ad for Intech.
The rule of TikTok
Theres a general rule when it comes to social media platforms teenagers dont want to hang out where their parents areor geriatric millennials.
Instagram was built to solve a specific problem: sharing lifes moments in a simple, visually appealing format. It worked because millennials wanted to embellish their life. But that’s a negative vibe for Gen Zs only authentic content ethos.
TikTok is different. It doesnt solve a problem, it is more of a content playground where attention grabbing creative content rules. TikTok is not about functionality but about the thrill of discovery. The same goes for YouTube Shorts.
Micro-trends dominate
One of Gen Z’s most defining traits is how quickly they move through trends. On Instagram, an ad can last for weeks before losing steam, but on TikTok, youll be lucky if a trend lasts a couple of days. Gen Z’s world is about micro-trends, and staying on top of these can feel like a full-time job.
Remember that trends are not created by companies they are created by young people themselves. Advertising itself has become decentralized, and it cant look like advertising at all.
A millennial style ad for Intech.
Thats so me
If you try to replicate Gen Zs style or worse, imitate them as a millennial or older marketer it comes across as inauthentic, and that’s a surefire way to alienate them. Gen Z has a radar for fake, and they’ll call you out for it.
The content that grabs their attention is fast, compressed, and utterly focused on authenticity. Whether its meme-based or pure user-generated content , if its relatable, theyll engage.
Furthermore, Gen Z is rejecting traditional advertising which paints a picture of a happier, more beautiful, successful life. For them, its about identity. If your content doesnt make Gen Z say ‘Thats so me,’ then its not worth their time. This could be a video of someone fake-smiling through a Zoom meeting while their laptop teeters on a stack of laundry, a meme about overthinking a simple text message for 15 minutes, or a skit that dramatizes the emotional rollercoaster of getting ghosted after a job interview. The goal isnt polished perfection – its emotional accuracy, humor, and the unfiltered truth of everyday moments.
Let Gen Zers lead the way
As a founder with over a decade of marketing experience, I’ve come to accept that I cant speak to younger audiences the way fellow Gen Zers can.
Before, our marketing used to follow a classic structure: brand-building business-to-business positioning: thought leadership, long-form content, product launches, and sales enablementall based on the pain solution offer formula. It was clear, structured communication that worked well for a more traditional audience.
After a Gen Z marketer joined the team, everything shifted: we stopped explaining the product and moved away from polished, heavily branded materials. Instead we prioritized native, meme-driven, user-generated, and highly contextual content. The goal wasnt to convince anymore, but to resonate instantly to make the audience say: Thats so me. Our marketer launched TikTok-style videos that used humor to show what it feels like to be stuck hiring from outdated platforms. She created Instagram Reels featuring mock text threads between overwhelmed founders and the dream hire who finally gets it. She even turned real user feedback into memes that felt like inside jokes for our audience. In the new approach, pain points are barely mentioned at allits all about cultural relevance and emotional recognition. At the same time, our return on ad spend jumped from around 30% to 120%.
If your product targets Gen Z, or if you want to stay relevant in a future where Gen Z will be the dominant workforce and consumer group, you need to let them take the reins. Their instincts for trends and authentic content are unmatched. They understand the pulse of whats current and know what will resonate with their peers. If you want your marketing to succeed, you need to follow their lead.
A CEO I recently worked with had become obsessed with speed and staying ahead of disruption. He launched an internal rapid response tiger teama small group of leaders and managers from a cross-section of departmentsto accelerate innovation. Within a quarter, they launched pilots, restructured teams, and redesigned workflows with promising early results.
The dashboard lit up green. But beneath the surface, things were cracking. Departments were misaligned. Innovative pilots clashed with long-term strategic goals. Employees were burning out. Customers noticed.
Were doing everything right, he said. Why isnt it working?
It reminded me of something systems thinker Donella Meadows once wrote: Its almost certainly an example of cranking the system in the wrong direction. In this case, the issue wasnt strategy, talent, or commitment. It was the frame of thinking itself.
Many organizations rely on forecasting as their primary tool for future thinking. Forecasts extend whats already knowntrends, data, and market behavior. Thats useful for near-term planning. But when youre trying to get ahead of disruption or be transformative, its not enough.
Leading with foresight
The path to the future isnt a straight line.
Thats where strategic foresight comes in. Foresight isnt prediction. Its a discipline for understanding complexity, scanning for emerging change, exploring multiple possible futures, and using those insights to make better decisions today. It helps organizations shift from fragile to adaptable, from reactive to resilientand from watching the future unfold to actively shaping it.
Foresight isnt theoryits practice. Heres how to put it to work.
1. Shift from linear forecasts to alternative futures
Traditional planning assumes the future will look like todayjust more intense. More powerful technologies. More complex regulations. More global complexity. More demanding customers.
Strategic foresight challenges the assumption of sameness. Rather than relying on a single, extrapolated future, foresight helps leaders explore a range of plausible alternativesincluding disruptive or counterintuitive ones.
By doing so, organizations can stress test strategies, build adaptive capacity, and prepare for a broader set of outcomes. The futures that matter most arent necessarily the most likelytheyre the ones your organization is least prepared for.
That requires taking off your organizational blinders. Historical data, internal benchmarks, and even industry norms can constrain your view. Leaders need to look outward across adjacent sectors, cultural shifts, and global forces that will shape tomorrows operating environment.
Is the world you live in today what you expected ten years ago? Likely not. The straight-line future is the least likely one. Without broadening your perspective, you risk designing strategies for a world that no longer exists.
Try this: Pick a strategic question. For example: What will it mean to lead in an AI-shaped economy? Then, build distinct scenarios that reflect recurring patterns of how the future unfolds:
Collapse (no rules): a future shaped by systems failure or falter due to disruption
Realignment (shifting rules): a future shaped by changing values, limits, or intentional constraints
Transformation (new rules): a future shaped by fundamental emerging change driven via tech, culture, or new models
Ground each scenario in early signals of social, technological, economic, environmental, and political change. Then ask: What would it take to succeed in each? What can you start doing now?
In practice: A regional bank used this approach to explore the future of trust in financial services. By examining how decentralization, AI governance, and generational values might evolve in different directions, they identified core investmentslike transparency and human-centered designthat would position them well across multiple alternative futures.
2. Look for signals on the margins
Most leaders wait for trends to become visible and validated before they act. But by the time something shows up in your dashboards, it’s already well underwayand likely already influencing the competition.
Strategic foresight trains leaders to seek out weak signals: early signs of change that emerge at the fringes of industries, cultures, and geographies. These signals tend to look small, strange, or unrelateduntil they dont.
When the same unexpected idea starts appearing in unrelated places, or niche behaviors spread across sectors, youre no longer looking at noise. Youre seeing early indicators of what could scale. Weak signals are the raw material for scenario development, and let you act before others do.
Try this: Set aside 30 minutes a week to explore beyond your core market. Scan youth culture, subreddits, startup ecosystems, art, policy, or new language emerging online. Ask your team: Whats something strange, sticky, or unexpected youve noticed? Track them. Patterns will emerge, and youll spot change earlier.
Common pitfall: Dont confuse noise with significance. Virality isnt viability. Look for persistence and spread across time and context. If an idea keeps resurfacingespecially in unexpected placesit may be a sign of deeper change.
3. Understand the systemnot just the symptom
One of the foundational mindsets in foresight is learning to think in systems. Most leaders are taught to break problems down: analyze parts, isolate variables, and find the root cause. That works well in science and engineering. But in businessand in lifeit can be limiting.
To lead effectively in complexity, we need to think holistically. Its not linear cause and effectits loops, interdependencies, and emergence.
Without this lens, leaders risk solving the wrong problem, or worse, reinforcing the dynamics that created it. Systems thinking reveals the deeper structures shaping outcomesand where leverage really lies.
Try this: Take a persistent challengesay, employee burnoutand map it. Place the issue at the center. Ask: What contributes to this? and What does this affect? Draw lines and arrows to show how elements interact. Look for loops and unintended effects. Better yet, build the map with colleagues from across the organization. Youll surface blind spots you didnt know you had.
Counterintuitive insight: Effective solutions often feel unnatural. The best move might be to slow growth, loosen control, or redefine success. If your instinct is to push harder, try asking: What if the opposite is true?
In practice: A global nonprofit used this mapping technique to explore volunteer attrition. Instead of ramping up recruitment, they found that increasing flexibility and reducing performance tracking led to better retention.
4. Plan from the future, not just for it
Foresight isnt just about imagining what might happenits about deciding what should happen and aligning your strategy to make it real.
Once youve explored possible futures, choose one youd be proud to help build. Thats your preferred future: not a prediction, but a direction. Then work backward to identify what must be true for that future to unfold.
Backcasting reverses typical planning. Instead of projecting from today, it asks: If thats where were going, what decisions should we make now?
Try this: Choose a future you want to help createsay, a climate-positive supply chain or radically inclusive service model. Ask: What needs to be true in five years? Three? One? Then identify the actions you can take today to start closing the gap.
In practice: A health insurer used this method to envision a future where care is personalized, proactive, and home-based. By backcasting, they identified shifts in reimbursement, caregiver training, and diagnostics. Within months, they were piloting a solution tied to that long-term visionturning foresight into strategy and actively leading the way for an entire industry.
From Forecasting to Foresight
The most common reaction I hear from executive teams when I introduce foresight is, We already do that. What they usually mean is forecasting. And thats exactly the problem.
Forecasting extends the present. Its helpful for budgeting and risk management, but not for transformation. It cant reimagine your business model, challenge outdated assumptions, or surface the early signals of change.
Foresight can. More importantly, it gives leaders agencynot just to adapt, but to shape what comes next.
This shift isnt just methodological. Its a mindset: one that calls for curiosity, humility, and the courage to act before the future is fully knowable.
The future wont follow your roadmap, but that doesnt mean were powerless. Strategic foresight gives leaders the tools to act with purpose, even in uncertainty. Its not just about anticipating change. Its about becoming the kind of organization that helps shape it.
