The best laid schemes of mice and men [often go awry], wrote the poet Robert Burns in 1785. In other words, even our most carefully crafted plans rarely unfold as expected. Nearly two and a half centuries later, in the fast-moving age of AI, that insight feels more relevant than ever.
For entrepreneurs, staying competitive means building a business plan that can keep pace with evolving technology. After nearly two decades as CEO of a SaaS company, Ive learned that planning isnt about predicting the future with perfect clarityits about being ready and adaptable. Here are five planning strategies that have helped me make my company more tech-responsive and allowed me to future-proof our growth.
Building flexibility into budgets
If the past few years have taught us anything, its that change is the only constantand that rapid change is more likely than ever, whether in technology, the economy, or global health.
To keep up in a fast-paced and largely unpredictable tech landscape, leaders need to build flexibility into their budgets. At Jotform, that means factoring in a bit of slack for experimentation and unforeseen shifts. We make space for pilot programs, internal beta testing, and regular software updatesnot as an afterthought, but as a core part of our planning process. This approach enables us to pivot as needed and stay open to emerging tools or trends, like AI agents, that could give us an edge.
In a landscape defined by constant evolution, adaptability can become a competitive advantage.
Revisiting the tech stack quarterly
Its essential to regularly revisit your tech stackthe software tools, frameworks, and infrastructure that keep the wheels of your company turning. An interface or database that worked well six months ago may be completely obsolete today. Whats more, Ive found that you can almost always identify ways to make your workplace more efficient.
While many companies revisit their tech stack annually or biannually as a rule of thumb, for businesses operating in environments where technologies are evolving fast, Id recommend a quarterly check-in.
Conduct your review with an automation-first mindset. With the right tools and tech, you can streamline entire processes and eliminate tedious, manual tasks, freeing up employees for work that truly matters. Nowadays, Im investing my time and energy in researching the latest AI agents to integrate into our tech stack. These are autonomous tools that can independently carry out tasks or entire workflows. You give them the goal, and they figure out how to execute it.
Think of it as regularly tuning your engineand you dont want to cruise, you want to race.
Creating a cross-functional tech committee
At our company, cross-functional collaboration is second nature. Since most projects span multiple departments, weve found that bringing together diverse expertise not only builds momentum, but also leads to smarter, faster decision-making. By involving key stakeholders early, we avoid costly delays and hiccups down the road.
Today, most companies need a dedicated tech committeeone that keeps a pulse on emerging technologies, evaluates the companys existing tools, and offers strategic guidance on implementation.
To make the best decisions for the business, this committee should include representatives from across the organization: developers, designers, sales, HR, finance, and beyond. A cross-functional makeup ensures that all perspectives are considered when shaping the companys tech stack.
Investing in digital upskilling
As a growing body of research shows, professionals across the board are anxious about the impact of AI on their job security. A recent survey, for example, found that 74% of IT professionals fear AI will render their skills obsolete. And yet, many companies continue to take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to AI, mistaking a fundamental shift for a fad. But as each day makes more patently clear: AI isnt going anywhere.
To stay competitiveand to ease employee concernscompanies should adopt a top-down strategy for digital upskilling. Fortunately, AI itself can be a powerful solution. AI-powered tools offer scalable, cost-effective training tailored to each employees role, skill level, and goals.
Take those AI agents, for example: They can design personalized learning paths, identify targeted materials, and conduct Socratic-style sessions to deepen understanding. Imagine a social media manager aiming to upskill in AI-generated content. An agent can provide curated lessons, recommend practice exercises, and schedule check-insmaking it easy to integrate learning into the workday without cutting into personal time.
Monitoring adjacent industries
Finally, monitoring industries adjacent to your company is not a planning tipits a strategy for survival nowadays. Consider the cautionary tale of Blockbuster. By ignoring advances in technology and e-commerce, and consumers shift toward convenience, they missed the streaming revolution. They filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Meanwhile, Netflix is crushing it in 2025.
The takeaway? Leaders who track innovation beyond their own industry are quicker to adopt the right solutions for their companies. Identify the right thought leaders, check software review sites like G2, and stay plugged into emerging tech. Your plans still might not unfold as expected, but with the right tools, youll be able to adapt.
The New York City subway is not a glamorous scene to behold. Between the grime, the crime, and the occasional scurrying rat, it is best experienced in small doses and only when the need arises. Unless, that is, you’re traveling through Grand Army Plaza.
As of May this year, anyone passing through the Brooklyn transit hub will be stopped in their tracks by a 7-foot tall, papier-mâché T-Rex looming over what may well be New York City’s most outlandish bodega. Titled Rex’s Dino Store, the bodega is located inside one of the city’s defunct newsstand kiosks. It features newspapers with titles like The Maul Street Journal, Jurassic Park Slope, and various pun-laden products like a Steg-Yun poster and Snarlboro cigarettes, all purchasable with a Master-claw card.
[Photo: Megan Armas]
Alas, none of the items on display at the bodega are actually for sale, since it is an art installation more akin to a diorama. “We are also glad to bring some whimsy to MTA riders commute,” says artist Sarah Cassidy, who created the project with artist Akiva Leffert. “Even if youre having a bad day, its difficult to resist a good dinosaur pun.”
[Photo: Megan Armas]
Rex’s Dino Store is the culmination of the MTA’s so-called Vacant Unit Activation Program, which aims to breathe new life into the subway system’s long-empty retail spaces by offering them, rent-free, to artists. Since launching in spring 2024, the program has helped convert 12 previously vacant units across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronxwith half a dozen other locations set to open this summer.
But according to Mira Atherton, a senior manager in the MTAs real estate department and the curator of the initiative, Rexs Dino Store marks a turning point for the initiative, which has primarily grown through word-of-mouth. Its in a very visible part of the station, and it’s such a fun and creative and loud activation,” she says. In the past month, Ive gotten so many inquiries from artists.
[Photo: Megan Armas]
The vacancy struggle
The MTA has long struggled to fill its retail spaces. Of the roughly 195 retail units scattered throughout the subway system, only 52 are open for business, reflecting a staggering 75% vacancy rate that has worsened since the pandemic stalled foot traffic.
[Photo: Megan Armas]
Previous attempts to reinvigorate them have included leasing to coffee kiosks, and ATMs. Some have floated more radical ideas. Assembly member and NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has proposed transforming these unused spaces into crisis and drop-in centers to assist unhoused New Yorkers. His $10 million initiative would fund outreach workers stationed inside empty units, offering immediate care and connecting individuals to longer-term services.
Meanwhile, the goal of the Vacant Unit Activation Program is to enchant the transit experience by bringing moments of unexpected delight into the city’s drab underground corridors. Might these art installations eventually attract paying tenants? Atherton says that hasnt happened yetbut its not off the table. And if a commercial partner does express interest in a location, the art installations dont necessarily have to go the way of the T-Rex. “The hope is it will inspire retailersbut that could work for an entire corridor rather than a single unit,” she says, noting that some subway stations have more than one vacant unit.
[Photo: Megan Armas]
A problem with a solution
Atherto was entrusted with the project in January 2023. At the time, she says, the vacancies were “a problem with no solution.” First, she considered launching a design challenge for architecture and design students, or bringing on a master tenant to program the spaces, but ultimately, she landed on an open call for artists and cultural organizations. It launched in November 2023 with a purposefully non-prescriptive brief. “We don’t want to say ‘this is what you should do,'” says Atherton. “The point is that the MTA doesn’t know. I would have never thought of putting a dinosaur in a bodega.” (The program is entirely separate from the better-known MTA Arts & Design initiative, which has its own budget and commissions permanent mosaics, murals, and digital works across various subway stations.)
[Photo: Megan Armas]
The first installation opened in May 2024 and was created by artist Natalie Collette Wood, in partnership with the nonprofit ChaShaMa. Titled Urban Oasis: Nature in Transit, it was located at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, where Collette Wood transformed an empty store into a lush, plant-filled terrarium, granting New Yorkers an unexpected pocket of calm in Midtown Manhattan.
At the time of writing, a total of eight stations feature active art installations, each with their own focus and flair. At 50th Street, in Manhattan, an installation titled Safe Space by artist Traci Johnson imagines a pink, plush interior designed to provide the comfort of a mothers womb. At 81st Street, near the Museum of Natural History, an interactive piece called SoundBooth invites passersby to plug in their instruments for a spontaneous busking session. And at Jackson HeightsRoosevelt Avenue, the Queens-based nonprofit Los Herederos has turned a former retail unit into a vibrant, community-inspired space that doubles as a home base for their web radio station, LH Radio.
[Photo: Megan Armas]
A play on the subway?
This summer, new installations are coming to Jay StreetMetroTech and Sterling Street stations, both in Brooklyn. A new project will also replace Urban Oasis at 53rd Street, offering a fresh perspective on the same stretch of corridor. And later this year, if all goes to plan, Atherton hopes to unveil her most ambitious idea inside a long-abandoned unit at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The idea? An as-of-yet-undefined collaboration with a theater group called Jewel Box, which already hosts plays in a speakeasy-style room. “There’s a ton of vacant space that’s difficult to program because the electrical systems are outdated and the power supply is very limited,” she says, but she’s determined to get creative.
At Grand Army Plaza, the MTA had to undertake some construction to make the kiosk usable. Cassidy and Leffert faced several challenges and bureaucratic hurdles, from securing artist insurance to fireproofing the materialsincluding Rex himselfbut they say the delays only gave them more time to sculpt a better dinosaur. (The entire installation cost about $5,000 out of pocket.)
Initially, the pair had proposed an immersive sound installation, but the MTA rejected the idea on safety grounds. Sound equipment, for example, would require live supervision, and there was no budget for that. So, they went back to the drawing board. The kiosk already had a newsstand with a countertop and shelving in place, so the cogs started turning. “A bodega on the moon? A bodega for cats? It was an old bodega. So how old was it? A bodega for dinosaurs?”
From there, Cassidy says, “the puns started to write themselves.”
Generative AIand the velocity of its evolutionis forcing every breed of designer to contemplate a future without them. Will Midjourney and DALL-E eliminate the need for graphic designers? Will Claude and Gemini obviate the UX lead? What happens to motion artists in a world where Sora supposedly becomes the newest auteur?
We’re no sages. And were certainly not clairvoyant. But we can comfortably say that, even if an AI-driven design industry apocalypse is coming, it hasn’t arrived yet.
Our second annual report on the state of the design industry draws from a dataset of 176,000 job listings weve gathered on Google Jobs (which consolidates listings from across the internet, including Indeed, LinkedIn, and regional job boards) from October 2023 to February 2025. They span several design disciplines: graphic, interior, game, urban, UX, product, and architectural.
The clearest and perhaps most reassuring takeaway this year? Designers are still needed. Graphic and UX design job postings are flat from last year, game design postings are up, and urban design postings are way up. Only architects and product designers saw a dip, with postings for the latter down 24% from last year. So its not time yet to abandon that art or architecture degree in order to become a prompt engineer.
Still, several things have definitely changed since our last report. Austin has become less of a magnet for architects and urban designers. Canva, software that had initially been met with skepticism among professionals in the industry even just a few years ago, is becoming a mainstay in the graphic designer’s arsenal. And UX designers arehallelujahgaining a bit more job security. Heres what Fast Company found.
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MethodologyWe extracted jobs from the Google Jobs search module monthly from October 2023 to February 2025, resulting in 26,624 jobs when duplicates were removed. We used a combination of Gemini and manual tech token search to extract information on salary, company type, and software tool usage. The categorization of jobs as full-time or contract/internship and their geographic locations were contained as separate structured fields in Google’s data. Monthly and hourly salaries were standardized to yearly rates by multiplying the rate by 12 for monthly salaries, and by 2,080 for hourly salaries.This article is part of Fast Company‘s continuing coverage of where the design jobs are.
Believe it or not, first impressions are biological. When meeting someone for the first time, well before your résumé or title is considered, your brain and body are sending and receiving subtle signals that influence trust. In todays workplaces, where hybrid teams and digital interactions dominate, those signals matter more than ever.
The good news is that you can learn to send them more intentionally. In my work developing Leadership Biodynamics, a biology of behavior approach to executive presence, I help leaders become more aware of how trust and connection are built at the behavioral level. The signals that trigger trust are not abstract: theyre cues the human brain is wired to read quickly and deeply, because in evolutionary terms, deciding whether someone was safe to approach was once a matter of survival.
Thats still true in the modern workplace. Whether youre onboarding to a new team, pitching an idea to executives, or building rapport with clients, the signals you send, especially those of warmth, create the foundation for influence.
Here are five warmth signals, rooted in behavioral science, that can make you instantly more trustworthy at work.
1. Listen With Full Attention
In any conversation, your body gives away whether you are truly listening. Direct eye contact, open posture, leaning slightly forward, and subtle nods all signal active attention. These cues calm the other persons limbic system, reducing social threat and increasing openness.
Research on neuroception, the brains unconscious scanning for cues of safety, shows that listening behaviors have an outsized impact on trust. When someone perceives you as fully present, they are more likely to see you as trustworthy.
2. Acknowledge and Validate Others
Warmth is not just about being friendly. Its about making others feel seen and valued. Small behaviors, such as verbally acknowledging good work, validating concerns, or thanking colleagues meaningfully, send powerful signals.
In Leadership Biodynamics, I teach that validation is a key biological mechanism of social bonding. When you acknowledge anothers contribution, you activate neural circuits linked to oxytocin release. This reinforces affiliation and trust.
3. Focus On Others In Conversation
Its easy to let a conversation drift back to your own experiences or ideas. However, warmth signals are amplified when you keep the focus on the other person. Ask questions. Draw them out. Let them shine.
Behavioral science research supports this. Studies show that people rate conversations more positively when the other person shows genuine interest and curiosity about them. This behavior is linked to increased perceptions of trustworthiness and likability.
4. Be Approachable and Easy To Relate To
Approachability is a behavioral signal with deep biological roots. From a neuroscience perspective, a smiling face, relaxed tone of voice, and nonthreatening posture lower others cortisol responses and increase approach behaviors.
Even small shifts in physical demeanor can change how others regulate their own behavior in response to you. Warmth cues such as smiling when greeting colleagues or using humor appropriately make you easier to approach. As a result, you are more trusted.
5. Show Thoughtfulness In Small Actions
Trust is cumulative. Seemingly minor actions, like following up after a conversation, remembering a colleagues birthday, or offering help without being asked, signal consistency and care over time.
Behavioral scientists have shown that such acts trigger reciprocal altruism mechanisms in the brain. This strengthens relational bonds. In leadership terms, they contribute to what I call a positive relational “microclimate,” a state in which trust, loyalty, and collaboration flourish.
Why These Signals Matter Now
In hybrid workplaces, where informal trust-building moments are fewer, warmth signals become even more important. They help compensate for the missing relational glue that office proximity once provided.
The latest research on team trust and psychological safety confirms this. Teams that build trust quickly perform better, especially under uncertainty. Warmth signals are often the fastest path to that trust. It is not status or credentials, but behavioral cues that others can feel in the moment.
Trust is not built by charisma. It is built by signals your biology already knows how to send. The opportunity is to send them more intentionally.
The bottom line is this: if you want to become more trustworthy at work, start small. Tune your warmth signals. Listen fully, validate openly, focus on others, be approachable, and act thoughtfully. In the biology of behavior, these are the cues that connect. And connection is what drives trust and influence.
Across the globe, we are witnessing a historic surge in defense spending. In the United States, the 2025 defense budget climbed to over $895 billionone of the largest increases in peacetime history. Europe is following suit. NATO countries, long reluctant to meet their 2% GDP defense target, are not only catching upsome are even surpassing it.
Chinas defense budget, too, has grown steadily, now exceeding $240 billion. The logic is simple but sobering: the world feels less secure, and the response has been to armfaster and broader than at any time since the Cold War.
Some of this acceleration is driven by real and growing threatsRussias aggression, instability in the Middle East, and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific. But much of it reflects a self-reinforcing spiral: nations are investing in weapons because others are. In this climate of fear, alliances are being redefined. The transatlantic relationship, once centered on cooperative security, is now being recalibrated around hard power and deterrence.
What is peacetech?
This shift has also reshaped the technology landscape. Private and public investment is pouring into so-called “dual-use technologies“AI, data infrastructure, robotics, cyber tools, space assetsthat can serve both civilian and military purposes. Palantir, Anduril, Helsing, and others are becoming the darlings of venture capital and defense procurement alike. And yet, amidst this frenzy, a crucial question is being left unasked: Can technology also be used not just to win wars, but to prevent them and save peoples lives?
There is an emerging field that dares to pose this questionPeaceTech. It is the use of technology to save human lives, prevent conflict, de-escalate violence, rebuild fractured communities, and secure fragile peace in post-conflict environments.
From early warning systems that predict outbreaks of violence, to platforms ensuring aid transparency, to mobile tools connecting refugees to services: PeaceTech is real, it worksand it is radically underfunded.
Unlike the vast sums pouring into defense startups, peace building efforts, including PeaceTech organizations and ventures, struggle for scraps. The United Nations Secretary General released in 2020 its ambitious goal to fundraise $1.5 billion in peacebuilding support over a total of seven years. In contrast, private investment in defense tech crossed $34 billion in 2023 alone.
Why is PeaceTech so neglected?
One reason is cultural: in the tech world, peace can seem abstract or idealisticsoft power in a world of hard tech. In reality, peace is not soft; it is among the hardest, most complex challenges of our time. Peace requires systemic thinking, early intervention, global coordination, and a massive infrastructure of care, trust, and monitoring. Maintaining peace in a hyper-polarized, technologically complex world is a feat of engineering, diplomacy, and foresight.
And its a business opportunity. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, violence costs the global economy over $17 trillion per yearabout 13% of global GDP. Even modest improvements in peace would unlock billions in economic value.
Consider the peace dividend from predictive analytics that can help governments or international organizations intervene or mediate before conflict breaks out, or AI-powered verification tools to enforce ceasefires and disinformation controls. PeaceTech, if scaled, could become a multi-billion dollar marketand a critical piece of the security architecture of the future.
From dual-use to triple-use
So whats the path forward?
We need to expand the current dual-use framing of technologycivilian and militaryto a triple-use paradigm that includes peace as a third pillar. This would mean structuring investments in a way that not only supports battlefield advantage and economic competitiveness, but also actively contributes to conflict prevention, mediation and resolution.
Venture capital firms, for instance, could allocate 510% of their dual-use investment portfolios to PeaceTech driven ventures. Governments, too, could dedicate slices of their expanded defense budgets to peace building innovation funds. Security alliances like NATO could adopt PeaceTech as part of their doctrinedeveloping and deploying technologies that de-escalate tensions supported by real solutions rather than just deter or defeat enemies.
This is not nave idealism. It is a pragmatic innovation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw how governments and technologists could come together to build contact tracing apps, accelerate vaccine development, and respond to a global crisis in real time. Why should we not mobilize with the same urgency and ambition to respond to the epidemic of conflict and instability?
What is innovation for?
Technology is not truly neutralit is a tool and reflects the priorities of those who fund and deploy it. Right now, our investments signal a belief that conflict is inevitable and peace is accidental. We can and must reverse that logic.
In the age of AI and digital dominance, Pax Technica is emergingnot as utopia, but as a strategy: peace through technological strength. PeaceTech and defense must work hand in hand to develop the most effective technologiesnot just to prevent conflict, but to build stability and save lives. Without speed, seamless integration, and real-time adaptability, even the most advanced PeaceTech and defense systems will fail in critical missions.
The future depends on the rapid mobilization of technological innovationto respond to threats, protect civilians, and secure peace before violence erupts.
We are already building the tools that will shape the future of security. The question is whether well use them only to wage waror also to build peace and save millions peoples lives.
Getting away from work to go on a vacation? Great! Returning to work after said vacation? Not so great. Few people enjoy being welcomed by a maxed-out inbox and a list of decisions they missed.
Work is very noisy right now, and it moves real fast, says Smita Hashim, chief product officer for Zoom. There are so many messages flying around and constant meetings. Its easy to understand the fear of coming back.
According to a survey by MyBioSource, 80% of participants experience post-PTO burnout, and 42% dread going back to work after taking time off. It can almost leave you questioning whether that trip to the beach was worth it. Fortunately, AI can help ease your reentry by streamlining the catchup process.
Before You Go
Preparing to leave often means handing off projects to coworkers who may not be familiar with the details. Andrew Reece, chief AI scientist at the coaching platform BetterUp, recommends leveraging AI to get others up to speed on your projects.
Set up an AI-generated PTO handover, he says. Auto-summarize project status and key contacts for team members that will cover you while youre gone. The more prepared they are, the less youll worry while away.
Before you leave, Raju Dandigam, engineering manager at the travel management platform Navan, also recommends setting up messaging filters like Superhuman and Gmail Smart Labels and Outlook’s AI categorization system. Enable email tagging based on criteria such as project or priority level.
When I return to work, I encounter five to six relevant summary groups instead of facing a 1,200-email unmanageable wall, he says. Some platforms use AI to create brief summaries which appear at the beginning of messages thus saving users from lengthy scrolling and message interpretation.
If you or your workplace hasnt done so already, Mo Nasir, co-founder and CEO of General Aency AI at Tessa AI, recommends setting up and running a notetaker for video calls like fireflies.ai. Transcripts can be fed into ChatGPT in order to summarize the latest developments since your departure, he says.
Or check if your video conferencing tool has a built-in AI companion. For example, Zoom has an AI Companion, a generative AI assistant.
While Youre Gone
Help AI do its job by truly leaving work behind. That means disconnecting fully and not checking any messages while on vacation. While it sounds counterintuitive, it reduces stress upon returning because all your messages will be tagged as unread, says Nasir.
[Anything you open] clears the unread badge, and it’s easy to forget to turn it back on, he explains. The unread message queue is rather convenient for keeping track of any unprocessed messages or emails.
Once Youre Back
In areas with a lot of volume, such as team chat platforms or meeting transcripts, an AI assistant can summarize what happened when you were gone. After returning from PTO, Hashim will review her calendar for the important meetings she missed. She enters prompts, such as What are the top points that were discussed in this meeting? or Was my name mentioned? or Were there any action items for me?
It gets the stress out of the important meetings right away, she says. I can see if I missed anything critical.
Same goes for messaging. In team chat messages, Hashim will ask the AI assistant to Catch me up on what happened in the last seven days. What are the most recent messages in [a specific thread?] or Were there any action items for me? You can also quickly search for messages from important people, such as your boss or the company CEO.
Then, I scan through, she says. If I see something interesting, I will dig in further. If it’s not interesting, I know I can move on because I have a very broad preview.
Dandigam says the Slack AI Assistant monitors essential channels and prepares a daily summary report in a private log. After my absence I receive a concise summary of decisions and blockers and changes that occurred during my time off through Slack, he says. My anxiety decreases through this method which enables me to start meetings with self-assurance.
Nasir recommends catching up on email by using AI-powered email management, such as Superhuman, Fyxer.ai, or simply using Gemini via Google’s recently released version.
I personally sort my inbound email into three categories: notification, response required, and action required, he says. Response required is when an email is asking me for information that is readily available, and action required is when the email is telling me to do something. Finally, spam or people trying to sell me things are generally ignored.
An AI assistant like Beesly.ai can do the same with your voicemails, providing summaries of the messages, which are quicker and easier to review than taking time to listen to the individual recordings.
And when it comes to project documents, Dandigam uses tools like Notion AI or Google Workspace AI integration to receive a brief summary. What changed? What was decided? and Whats still pending? are my go-to questions, he says.
Hashim says AIs capabilities dont need to be only leveraged after time off. Catch me up can happen if you step out to take your kid to a doctor’s appointment, or if you are 10 minutes late to a meeting, she says. It helps people feel so much better, rather than having to interrupt and ask. Its foundational to how people manage their stress and how they actually show up.
AI is no longer a fringe technology sitting on the sidelines of innovation. Its already influencing who gets hired, how diagnoses are made, what products we prioritize, and even which creative ideas rise to the top. But the most urgent leadership question isnt how fast we adopt AI. Its how deeply we integrate our humanity alongside it.
As a leadership adviser, I have worked with executives navigating complex, high-stakes transformations. The leaders who thrive in this new landscape arent the ones chasing every shiny new tool, nor are they the ones retreating into nostalgic resistance. They are the ones who have learned to bring more of themselves into the room: their discernment, their emotional intelligence, and their narrative insight.
Because when machines get smarter, humans must become better stewards of meaning.
Beyond the Binary: A New Leadership Mandate
We live in a world addicted to binaries: human or machine, analog or digital, automate or resist. The future wont be built in absolutes, according to a joint study by MIT Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group. Some 85% of companies who have implemented AI tools in their work report that it has brought them tangible business value. Yet fewer than 20% have redefined the roles and capabilities of their workforce alongside those tools.
Technology is accelerating rapidly, while human systems are lagging behind. To close that gap, we need a new leadership lensone that doesnt just examine what AI can do but also asks what kind of world were creating with it.
Introducing the HIT Framework for Human-Integrated Thinking
AI doesnt need to replace human thinking; it should expand it. We dont need to out-compute machines, but we do need to out-human them.
That starts with cultivating the very traits that make us irreplaceable: the ability to imagine, empathize, and make meaning. The HIT Framework, or Human-Integrated Thinking, is a call to action for modern leaders. It has three core capacities:
1. Humility. In the age of algorithms, humility becomes a superpower. It allows leaders to admit what they dont know, to question machine decisions, and to build cultures where challenging the output is not just allowed but expected.
In my work with a multinational services firm, we introduced an AI Oversight Council composed of technical experts, ethicists, and frontline employees. Emotional intelligence was just as important as engineering know-how. The result? More inclusive innovation and stronger decision-making accountability.
2. Imagination. AI can extrapolate based on whats already known. But only humans can envision what has never existed.
At Pixar, creators use AI tools to iterate on lighting and character rendering, but the heart of storytelling remains deeply human. In leadership development retreats I facilitate, we use metaphor, visual facilitation, and speculative prompts to prototype not just strategies, but alternative futures. Imagination isn’t soft; its structural.
3. Trust-building. AI might simulate empathy, but it cant build trust. That requires presence, consistency, and compassion. When AI is used in areas like hiring, product design, or healthcare, the human layer must ask: Whats the emotional impact of this decision?
In one life sciences organization I supported, a new AI initiative stalled until leaders reframed the rollout as a human experience, not a technical one. We designed storytelling rituals that allowed employees to share how the changes affected their work and their personal identity. It wasnt about winning hearts and minds. It was about honoring them.
The Cost of Ignoring the Human Factor
Unchecked, AI systems will reinforce bias, scale inequity, and prioritize efficiency over dignity. A report from the World Economic Forum cites curiosity, emotional intelligence, and interdisciplinary collaboration as among the most critical competencies for the future of work. But how many org charts actually reward those traits? To lead in this era, executives must be able to toggle between data and emotion, logic and empathy, code and context. We need leaders who can read a spreadsheet and a room with equal fluency.
The turning point in that same life sciences company didnt come from better code. It came when the executive team made a human shift. They stopped talking about AI in abstract terms and began reflecting on how it would change their relationships with employees, with patients, and with themselves. They invited facilitators, designers, and frontline voices into the quarterly business review. They stopped asking, How do we implement this? and started asking, Who do we want to become through this? That single question reoriented the conversation from compliance to transformation.
The story of AI isnt finished, and its not being written by code alone. Its being coauthored by the choices we make every day: how we show up, what we measure, who we include, and what kind of intelligence we prioritize.
AI will continue to evolve, but the leaders who rise with it wont just automate workflows; they will humanize systems, cultivate wisdom, and bring courage, imagination, and care to a world that desperately needs it. Because the real competitive edge isnt in how fast you adapt to technologyits in how fully you choose to remain human.
If you’re a designer looking for work, where should you live? That depends entirely on the kind of designer you are. Fast Company crunched the data to show you where the opportunities really are.
