This week, Rothy’s launches a new collection unlike anything we’ve seen before from the shoe brand. There are burgundy kitten heels, stacked leopard-print booties, and comfy olive clogsall made from velvet fabric.
At first glance, you’d think the cozy-looking shoes were made of cotton or wool. But in fact, they’re made from the same recycled water bottles that Rothy’s uses for its classic flats.
When the company launched in 2016, it quickly developed a cult following for its simple ballet flats made from a textured knit material. Over the past nine years, Rothys has grown quickly, going beyond flats to create sneakers, loafers, heels, and even handbags that feature its distinct, easily recognizable recycled plastic fabric.
Now the company has a fleet of 26 stores, is profitable, and generated $211 million in revenue last year, a 17% increase from the year before.
[Photo: Rothy’s]
Rothy’s original materialthe textured, woven knitcontinues to be popular. But to keep growing, the company seeks to innovate. Its in-house team of material scientists and product designers have been tasked with developing new fabrics that meet the brands sustainability and durability standards but that look distinct in a wide range of styles.
This new material, which its calling ReVelvet, does just that. “We built our reputation on the original [recycled plastic] material,” says Heather Archibald, Rothy’s chief product officer. “But we don’t want to be limited by it. We want to be able to create any shoe you could possibly imagine.”
[Photo: Rothy’s]
An Iconic Material
In 2012, Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin had the idea to create a sustainable footwear startup that would produce a more feminine shoe than the sneakers that were coming onto the market (think: Veja or Allbirds). They spent four years working with manufacturers to develop a fabric made from recycled plastic bottles. Then they built a factory in China that would knit the shoe uppers at scale using a zero-waste 3D knitting machine.
It turned out that all of this groundwork was well worth the effort. When Rothy’s launched in 2016, its $129 shoes were a hit. Women loved that they were comfortable, eco-friendly, and durable (the shoes are machine washable).
As the shoes became a status symbol that telegraphed the wearers values, the instantly recognizable upper became a key selling point. Rothy’s designers used the recycled material to create everything from sneakers and clogs to heels for women, and driving shoes and loafers for men.
Over the years, Rothy’s has dipped its toes into other materials. Felice Gunawan, Rothy’s lead material developer, says it is possible to create different textures by incorporating other materials into the recycled polyester.
By weaving in hemp and organic cotton, Rothy’s developed a linen-like texture for summer sandals and slides. By weaving in merino wool, it created a warmer texture for clogs and boots. But these were fairly subtle changes. “We wanted to challenge ourselves to create something that looked even more distinct,” Gunawan says.
[Photo: Rothy’s]
A Two-Year Quest
For two years, Gunawan scoured the market for textile manufacturers who were creating interesting sustainable materials. The good news is that there’s an abundance of these companies in operation. “There’s a lot of innovation happening now when it comes to sustainable materials,” Gunawan says. “It’s happening both at small startups and in large companies.”
For Gunawan, it was important to find a material that would meet Rothy’s rigorous standards. It has a lab in its China factory that is devoted to durability testing. And it also needed to work with a company large enough to produce the material at scale. Eventually, Gunawan found the material that would become ReVelvet, and ensured that the fibers would work seamlessly in Rothy’s 3D knitting machines in China.
[Photo: Rothy’s]
Archibald and hr design team then set out to create silhouettes that would work well with the ReVelvet. Since velvet can have a more formal aesthetic, they created a pointed slingback that looks nice with an evening dress, and penny loafers that pair well with office wear. And since velvet can also look cozy and warm, they created a clog style.
As it turned out, the companys timing was perfect: Velvet is having a moment. This fall, you’ll find it in blazers, evening dresses, and even trousers. “It was entirely luck,” Archibald says. “We had no way of knowing these shoes would be so fashionable right now.”
That little bit of luck has emboldened the team to innovate further. Gunawan is constantly keeping an eye out for new eco-friendly materials coming on the market that can be used in shoes. And Archibald is excited to transform these materials into new styles.
“For a while, Rothy’s was associated with a very particular aesthetic,” Archibald says. “But as we’re evolving, we want to be known as a brand that creates sustainable, durable shoes that come in all kinds textures and silhouettes. One day, we could create our own version of a leather shoe or even a satin wedding shoe.”
Feel like youre constantly yelling at your kids to get off their phones? Wondering how to rein in their sky-high screen time? Youre not alone. Parents across the country are grappling with the same challengeincluding best-selling author, viral motivational speaker, and mother of three, Mel Robbins.
Robbins is the author of The Let Them Theory, a mindset shift built on the idea that if you let the people around you do what theyre going to dowithout letting it affect youyoull thrive. Now, shes teamed up with Verizon to share practical, research-backed strategies for navigating the digital world with kids.
Last week in New York City, Robbins spoke as part of Verizons Digital Wellness initiative, which offers workshops and resources to help families navigate the digital world safely. She shared strategies for helping parentsand their childrendevelop a healthy phone-life balance.
Phones are incredible. They are the most incredible tool you can use to connect with people, to learn, to express yourself, Robbins told the crowd of 300. But the real trick is learning how to balance when youre using it mindfully versus when youre mindlessly giving it time and attention.
Here are the tips Robbins shared with the crowd.
It starts with you
Robbins began by urging parents to look in the mirror before pointing fingers. She told them to take stock of how often they use their own phones around family, and why.
You cannot yell at your kids, expecting them to police themselves and have balance, if youre not modeling it, Robbins said.
By adopting healthy screen habits yourself, she explained, you can influence the rest of your household. Her advice: Avoid mindlessly reaching for your phone, and keep it out of reach at home when youre not working.
Be curious, not controlling
Instead of trying to control every minute of kids screen time, Robbins urged parents to get curious about the bigger picturethat is, what phone use actually means to their children.
Her own perspective shifted when she stopped seeing her kids phones as simply technological devices and started seeing them as their friends. She encouraged other parents to do the same.
We look at the phone and see a waste of time, but this is your kid’s friend, Robbins said. Biologically speaking, it is age-appropriate for kids to want to be with their friends.
Let them lead the way
This is where Robbinss viral Let Them” theory comes into play. To better understand why kids spend so much time on their phones, she advises letting them take the lead in an open, healthy conversation about their habits.
For instance, if your child wakes up exhausted after a night of texting, dont immediately confiscate the device. Instead, invite them to share their thoughts on what their phone use means to them. Ask why it feels important to stay online so lateyou might learn that their friends pressure them to keep texting or that they fear how others will react if they go offline.
Youre no longer in a battle about a device or a computer, Robbins said. Youre actually in connection with your kid and talking about the deeper stuff.
Implement these 2 habits to practice every day
Robbins urged parents to start with two simple, healthy habits for both themselves and their kids.
First: no phones in bed. She cited research showing that 1 in 4 preteens sleep with their phone, a habit that often leads to less rest. If your child sleeps upstairs, she suggested, have them leave their phone downstairs to charge overnight.
Your kids might hate you, she said. Its okay. Let them. Within two weeks, she added, they may still be grouchy, but at least theyll be much better rested.
Second: no phones at the dinner table. And that doesnt just mean not looking at your devices. Robbins recommends keeping phones completely away during family meals in order to avoid distraction and temptation. You can become a family that has a meal together, and when you sit down, you can say: I am with you, she said.
She stressed that its fine to play the bad guy. Kids often want someone to blame when friends ask why theyre not online, and they may even feel relieved when a parent takes that blame.
Create a rocking family group chat
A healthy phone-life balance means more than putting the device down. Robbins also encourages using it to have fun with your family.
Many families already have a group chat for logistics, she noted. But she urged parents to become the captain of fun in those chatssending memes, GIFs, and funny stickers to their kids. Dont expect constant replies, she said, but know theyll appreciate and eventually engage with this lighter form of connection.
One of the greatest things about the phone is that its an incredible way to stay connected to people, Robbins said. There will be times where the most important thing is the thing right there on that screen. But there are a lot of times where the most important thing is the person sitting right there in front of you.”
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
Since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, some overheated parts of the countryparticularly in the West, Southwest, and Southeasthave experienced home-price declines from their peak (see this map).
While many of these markets have seen only modest drops, a few metro areas, such as Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin have undergone what Id consider material home-price corrections, falling 18.6% and 23.0% respectively from their peaks.
These regional home-price declines raise the question: How many mortgage borrowers are actually underwatermeaning their house is worth less than their outstanding mortgage balanceright now?
To find out, ResiClub reached out to ICE Mortgage Technologyformerly known as Black Knight, before it was acquired by Intercontinental Exchange for $11.8 billion in 2023.
1.0% > The share of outstanding homeowner mortgages with negative equity (i.e., underwater) at the end of April 2025, according to data from ICE Mortgage Technology provided to ResiClub this week.*
23.0% > The share of outstanding homeowner mortgages with negative equity (i.e., underwater) at the end of September 2009, according CoreLogic/FirstAmerica.
Why, on a nationally aggregated basis, are there still not many homeowners underwater, despite home-price declines in some markets?
Nationally aggregate home prices are still pretty close to all-time highs. While many pockets of the West, Southwest, and Southeast have seen home prices decline at least some from the peak, nationally aggregated single-family prices are still pretty close to all-time highs.
Amortization of ultralow mortgage rates. Many homeowners locked in ultralow mortgage rates during the Pandemic Housing Boom. With fixed rates around 2% to 3%, those monthly payments included a larger proportion of principal repayment from the start. That means borrowers have been paying down their balances more aggressively than they would under higher-rate loans. As of Q4 2024, 54% of outstanding mortgage holders have rates below 4.0%, which has helped some borrowers build equity faster and give them a greater buffer.
Few buyers actually purchased at the peak in correction markets. Even in boom-to-correction markets like Cape Coral, Florida, or Austin, only a small share of homeowners bought at the absolute top of the market in spring 2022. Most current homeowners in those areas either bought before or after the peak. This limited exposure at the peak helps explain why negative equity, so far, hasnt been a big problem, even in some of the hardest-hit metros.
While only 1.0% of outstanding U.S. homeowner mortgages have negative equity, there are few pockets where its getting closer to 5.0%or has even slightly crossed it.
Among the 100 major metro areas for which ICE Mortgage Technology provided data to ResiClub, these 15 metros have the highest share of homeowner mortgages currently underwater:
Cape Coral, Florida > 7.8%
Lakeland, Florida > 4.4%
San Antonio > 4.3%
Austin > 4.2%
North Port, Florida > 3.8%
Jacksonville, Florida > 2.9%
Baton Rouge, Louisiana > 2.8%
Palm Bay, Florida > 2.7%
New Orleans > 2.7%
Deltona, Florida > 2.6%
Tampa, Florida > 2.5%
Colorado Springs, Colorado > 2.3%
Little Rock, Arkansas > 2.2%
Dallas > 1.7%
Oklahoma City > 1.6%
Even in markets like Cape Coral (7.8%) and Austin (4.2%) that have higher shares of outstanding homeowner mortgages that are currently underwater, thats still far off from the levels seen at the height of the Great Financial Crisis-era bust. For comparison, back in September 2009, a staggering 68% of mortgage borrowers in Nevada, 48% in Arizona, and 45% in Florida were underwater.
So far, in the down markets it’s really just the 2022, 2023, and 2024 vintages being impacted. Even in Austina metro where home prices have fallen 23% from their May 2022 peakonly 1.5% of 2021 borrowers are underwater.
Big picture: If home prices in parts of the Southwest, Southeast, and West continue to experience mild home-price pullbacks, the share of recent borrowers who are underwater in those markets will rise beyond the levels weve outlined here. However, barring a major downward shift, it still wouldnt come close to the depths of negative equity seen in 2009 or 2010 anytime soon.
Sam was barely a month into his CIO role when he saw the writing on the wall. The companys much-touted AI transformation was already unraveling.
AI had been declared the centerpiece of the companys enterprise strategy months earlier and placed under the chief innovation officers remit. But after his predecessor left, ownership splintered. Sales launched their own pilots. Marketing spun up a tiger team. The CTO declared AI strategy now belonged to his team.
By the time Sam arrived, priorities overlapped, resources were being drained by pet projects, and internal turf wars threatened the companys ability to competenot just externally, but against itself.
Sams experience isnt unique. Were living through a new era of hyper-competitionwhere the gap between AI and digital leaders, and those struggling to keep up, is widening fast. McKinsey reports the performance divide has surged over 60%, with AI leaders delivering two to six times more shareholder value than laggards.
To compete, organizations must transformnot just technologically, but operationally. That means aligning hundreds or even thousands of people across business, tech, and operations to move in sync. But too often, transformation efforts break down from within, leaving teams on the ground with whiplash.
Weve seen it firsthand. Kathryn, as an executive coach and keynote speaker, and Jenny, as an executive adviser and learning & development expert, bring frontline insights from coaching senior leaders and building systems that scale. The five strategies that follow are designed to help leaders align on what matters mostso the organization moves together, stays focused, and competes at the pace of change.
1. Reset the Executive Team Around a Shared Mission
As a new CIO, Sam didnt yet have the authority to realign the enterprise, but he had something just as powerful: insight. In his first 90 days, he listened. He tracked how AI efforts had fractured across functions and documented where resources were duplicative or misaligned. When the CEO asked him to share his observations with the executive committee, Sam presented a simple, yet revealing map of overlapping initiatives.
Crucially, he didnt catch his peers off-guard. He previewed his findings with each executive beforehand, inviting input and building trust. That transparency prompted the CEO to bring in outside support.
Together, we helped the executive team articulate a shared purpose: what only they, as the senior leadership team, could uniquely deliver for the company. They identified five enterprise-wide priorities, each with a clearly defined owner, desired outcome, and expected impact on employees, customers, and performance.
Heres how Sam approached his first 90 days combining insight, relationship-building, and clear communication to set the foundation for enterprise alignment.
Days 1-30Days 31-60Days 61-90Key ObjectivesListen and Map LandscapeSocialize and InfluenceAlign and Set the FoundationActivities Conduct 1:1s with all executive peers and direct reports to understand priorities and concerns Review previous AI initiatives to understand points of duplication or tension Use a stakeholder mapping framework to identify key influencers and relationship gaps Document where AI workstreams and ownership had fragmented Create a high-level map of overlapping initiatives Preview findings 1:1 with each peer to build trust and reduce surprises Tailor insights to reflect what matters to each stakeholder (e.g., link to their KPIs) Begin to draft what a unified path forward could look like Present synthesized observations to the CEO and executive team Recommend a reset: frame what the executive team can uniquely deliver Help the executive team align on 35 shared priorities and clarify cross-functional ownership Propose monthly progress reviews to protect alignment after the meeting ends
This first act wasnt about fixing everything. It was about creating enough clarity to stop the internal land grab, and lay the groundwork for collective leadership.
2. Make the Workand the RulesVisible
The next step: operationalize the strategy. The team mapped each enterprise priority, identified the key workstreams underneath, and assigned shared ownership. For each priority, they named what would need to changestructures, resources, meeting rhythmsto deliver on the commitment. Boundaries were clarified. Duplication was reduced. Expectations were reset.
Just as important, they agreed on how decisions would be made going forward. New governance forums were established to drive consistency across business, technology, and operations. Shared metrics were also introduced to track progress and flag misalignment early. Sam helped reframe AI, not as a stand-alone initiative, but as the enabler of every enterprise goal.
When your executive team agrees on what matters most, the next challenge is making it operational. These six questions can help you turn strategy into execution:
Ownership: Who owns each workstream, and where is accountability shared?
Decision rights: Who decides, who advises, and when?
Governance: What forums and cadences keep teams aligned?
Resourcing: Are people, budgets, and tools sufficient?
Metrics: Are KPIs aligned and visible across teams?
AI enablement: How will AI enhance, not hinder, core priorities?
A strategy that isnt operationalized is just a slide deck. Turn priorities into ownership, decisions, and habits.
3. Sequence the Work So Teams Dont Collide
Even the best strategy sessions wont fix a broken operating model. The real test of alignment is what happens after the meeting ends.
This team didnt leave follow-through to chance. They created a monthly executive rhythmnot just for updates, but to review priorities, flag bottlenecks, and refine how they worked together. The meeting became a forcing mechanism to stay focused and accountable.
But alignment isnt just about sticking to the planits also about pacing. With every departmnt eager to lead, the team had to get intentional about sequencing. Instead of launching everything at once, they assigned each enterprise priority to a lead function and a specific quarter. Each team had clarity on when to step upand just as importantly, when to support others.
For Sam, this meant aligning with his peers on milestones, outcomes, and KPIs upfront. Rather than letting Sales, Marketing, and the CTOs team charge ahead in parallel, the CIO worked with the CEO and fellow executives to establish a clear sequence:
Q1: The CTOs team built the core AI infrastructure and governance standards.
Q2: Sales piloted AI-driven prospecting tools based on that foundation.
Q3: Marketing launched AI-powered customer insights and personalization campaigns.
This staggered approach gave each function space to lead, and ensured that each phase built upon the last. Teams had space to lead, room to learn, and clarity on when to pivot. Thats what sequencing unlocks.
4. Cascade Relentlesslyand Build a Feedback Loop
Even the strongest executive alignment fails if it stops at the top. Sams team knew that priorities dont become real until theyre understoodand acted onat every level.
To make it stick, they rolled out a deliberate cascade plan. Enterprise priorities were translated into department-specific objectives, with clear owners and timelines. Managers were equipped with simple, consistent talking points. Leaders reinforced the why, not just the what, connecting daily work to the bigger picture.
Just as important, they established a real-time feedback loop. One early win came from a frontline support team using an AI-enabled tool to streamline customer inquiries. The impact was quickly elevated and scaled across other units.
If your priorities havent reached the teams doing the work, you dont have alignmentyou have a memo.
5. Build the Skills Your Transformation Demands
Sustained transformation doesnt just require execution: it demands growth. Even senior leaders need support as they shift roles, evolve mindsets, and lead through uncertainty. Thats especially true with AI, where capabilities change faster than most organizations can hire or retain.
Thats why Sams company paired their reset with skill-building. With the CEOs backing, they invested in leadership development, executive coaching, and experiential learning focused on cross-functional collaboration, strategic influence, and change management.
Sam also upskilled his own team. Once a centralized AI strategy group, they became enablershelping business units adopt AI tools effectively. That required new set skills: AI literacy, and consultative problem-solving.
Lead the Way, Then Lead Together
Transformation isnt a one-off project. Its an ongoing investment in how people think, work, and lead. In high-stakes environments, even the strongest strategies can fracture without focus, discipline, and shared purpose at the top.
Sams story is a reminder: success doesnt start with a new initiative. It begins with how senior leaders show upso that transformation becomes more than a mandate.
You dont have to do everything at once. Just make sure the most important work gets donetogether.
Bernadette Berger is the director of innovation at Alaska Airlines, where she leads transformative initiatives that reimagine the travel experience for guests and employees. With a background in industrial design and a career path that spans dance instruction, stage performance, UX, and more than a decade spent designing aircraft interiors at Teague, Berger brings a unique blend of creativity, human-centered thinking, and technical insight to the aviation industry.
Berger is on a mission to humanize travel. In my conversation with her, we discuss how design can foster dignity and independence in travel, and she shares how her team is using emerging technologieslike AI and automationto solve aviations hardest problems, not just for today but for years ahead.
Have you always been a creative person?
Yes! This is actually my fourth careerIve had a jungle gym of a career instead of a ladder. My first career was as a dance teacher. I taught kids and adults how to dance, choreographed recitals, and did competitions. I learned a lot about teaching creative skills and mastery to people of all ages.
Then I thought, maybe Id be a performer. So I was an actress for many yearsmusicals, eight shows a week, the whole thing. I learned to sing, act, and develop a very specific creative skill. But I remember one lighting tech rehearsalI was standing there, waiting, and thought: Im spending all this time fulfilling someone elses creative vision. I think I could do this better. I want to be the one coming up with the creative ideas.
So I went back to school and fell into industrial design and spent many years designing airplanes. Now, working at an airline, Im in a different rolebut Ive carried all those lessons with me.
[Photo: courtesy Alaska Airlines]
How did you find your way into the airline industry?
I studied industrial design at the University of Washington. At the time, industrial design was just starting to sneak into digital interfaces. It was the early days of what later became the entire UX design practice. I found myself leaning toward projects that had both physical and digital componentsor some sort of spatial element with a digital layer.
That interest led to me connecting with the design consultancy Teague. For over a decade at Teague, I got to design aircraft interior architecture, which involves anything you touch, see, or interact with inside the airplane. I also got a chance to learn many other design skills: lighting design, audio design, haptics, materialityall the ways Id classify as experience design.
Thats what got me into travel. But the thing thats kept me in travel is this: I think travel can be the best tool for fighting hate. It can be amazing for fighting discrimination, racism, xenophobia. Its really hard to hate another group of people when youve experienced their culturewhat they eat, how they move through their city, their town, their villagehow they relate to one another. I love working in the travel space because its about connecting people.Does that perspective influence your design?
100%. One of the jobs of a designer is to make sure you’re not designing for yourselfthat you’re really walking a mile in the shoes of the end users you’re designing for. There’s no better way to learn how to design a travel experience for someone who doesn’t speak English than to go to a country where you don’t speak the primary language.
There’s no better way to learn how to design a better way to move bags around an airport than to go load bags for a full shift in the rain. You learn really fast when you experience those challenges yourself versus hearing about it secondhand or observing someone doing it. It changes the conversations you have, the ideas you think of, and the way you launch solutions.
[Photo: courtesy Alaska Airlines]
How has the airline industry adapted to experiential design and service design?
The ones that are adopting a user-centric approach wholeheartedly are the ones that are winning. It’s easy to see when decisions are made purely on what’s best for business without considering what’s best for humans. At Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines, care and customer care are central tenets of our business. Great customer care comes from our frontline employees.
If we’re not creating great tools and experiences for our flight attendants, pilots, and customer service agents, they won’t be able to be their best for our guests. There’s as much focus on creating a well-designed employee experience as there is on the guest experience because they’re so related to each other.
[Photo: courtesy Alaska Airlines]
What about designing for better interactions between airline staff and airport staff?
Absolutely. Guests are constantly handed off from airline staff to TSA and back. If youre on an international flight, you may show your passport three times. We’re working closely with TSA to allow identity verification using your face or phone. Imagine not needing to dig out your wallet at bag drop, TSA, or the gate. This year, there will be 13 moments in the travel journey where you can use your face or phone instead.
Wht role does your team play in shaping travel experiences at Alaska Airlines?
As an airline, we look at how people are boarding in Asia, how guests take short flights in Europe, or how travel is booked in South America. We often examine our own industry, but as the innovation group, we also get to look outside of aviation. We’re trying to make the flight booking path as easy as buying something on Amazon. We want the day-of-travel experience to be as seamless and interactive as planning your day at Legoland or Disneyland. We study personalization from places like Sephoratheir app, stores, and online experience.
We look both inside and outside our industry because the same traveler buying sunscreen on Amazon is coming to our airport with high expectations for personalization, seamlessness, real-time information, and self-service. Even though other companies dont have the same constraints we do in flying people across the world, our bar still has to be just as high.
It sounds like senior executives are really invested in this. Did you have a lot of work to do to prove that this innovation group works?
Yes. Working on moonshot ideas is not for the faint of heart. Its for people who get excited about what might be, and who arent held back by fear of what might go wrong.
Our job is to prioritize the really gnarly challenges that we face as an airline and then ask over and over: What would need to be true for this challenge to go away? What tasks can we do that are fast and inexpensive so we can learn more, whether it’s that a technology isnt ready yet or that a process could be automated, or that we should communicate differently with guests?
We constantly ask ourselves: Are there different ways to tackle this problem? What are the hard-and-fast rules, and where can we think differently to get different results?
[Photo: courtesy Alaska Airlines]
What are some of the challenges that design has helped the airline industry overcome?
Design has helped more people travel. Historically, aviation was expensive and not accessible to everyone. But design has changed that. Now, more people can travel safely, independently, and with dignity.
Think about booking a tripan airline, a hotel, a car, fun activities. Design helps deliver not just information, but the right, relevant information for each person. It helps guests who are blind, deaf, traveling with a service animalit helps them enjoy travel with the same independence and dignity as anyone else. Theres still more work to do, but one of the major successes of design in this industry is making travel more accessible to more people.
How are you using AI in your work? Do you think AI can improve designs contribution to the travel industry?
AI is a big part of our innovation strategy and really, almost every departments strategy. Its well integrated across the airline to elevate how we work. Right now, were using AI where it excels: looking at lots of data sources and synthesizing them for humans. AI is great at pattern recognition, prediction, detecting things, and using rules to make quick decisions.
We use AI for complex scheduling, improving safety, rerouting aircraft around storms, and in computer vision. Its already being applied in machine learning and automation. But the next level Im excited about is AI as your best team member where it helps humans make nuanced decisions, use intuition, and observe when automated processes are going wrong. Thats where well start to see jobs improve in quality.
Were currently using automation on the ramp to help move bags from plane to plane more effectivelyespecially with tight connections. AI can track bags, planes, and people, and find the best routes for bag transfers. That frees up human ramp agents to focus on the complex problem-solving theyre experts in.
You work with both creative and noncreative people. How do you motivate themespecially people who dont consider themselves creative?
I have a spicy take. I believe, deep in my soul, we are all creative. Creativity is a form of problem-solvinga trial-and-error process. My heart breaks when people say, Im not creative. I want to say, Who told you that? Because almost everyone I work with is a great problem solver. They may use analytical tools, but theyre still making creative choices.
How do I motivate people? A lot of it is looking at problems from a different perspective. Asking, What if? What would need to be true for this to work? When you invite people into that way of thinking, they can contribute using their own methodssketches, words, process flows, or whatever it may be.
The killer of creativity is fearfear of embarrassment, fear of failure. Most of what we try doesnt work out, but we learn so much from the process. Thats the point. To me, thats creativity.
What advice do you have for aspiring designersespecially students?
I used to teach at the University of Washington, my alma mater. I loved seeing lightbulbs go off when students finally got something. Id assign them to go somewhere and experience a challenge firsthand. Want to design for a user group? Be that user for a day. Dont just observe them.
If youre ambitious and want to be a senior designer or creative director, spend time around those people. Watch how they carry themselves. Learn from their presence. One of my mentors walked into a room with confidenceheels clicking, bag down, commanding attention. You cant learn that on Teams.
So my advice is to get in front of people in real life. Experience what they experience. Sit with coworkers. Build bonds. Learn from mentorshow to be and how not to be. That all requires showing up in person. Working from home is efficientand I love the flexibility with my kids. But creative teams need bonds. You need trust to have honest conversations about work without it feeling personal. You have to apologize when you mess upbe transparent. When I show vulnerability, my team can too. Vulnerability is a requirement for trust.
The first space race was about flags and footprints. Now, decades later, landing on the moon is old news. The new race is to build there, and doing so hinges on power.
In April 2025, China reportedly unveiled plans to build a nuclear power plant on the moon by 2035. This plant would support its planned international lunar research station. The United States countered in August, when acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy reportedly suggested a U.S. reactor would be operational on the moon by 2030.
While it might feel like a sudden sprint, this isnt exactly breaking news. NASA and the Department of Energy have spent years quietly developing small nuclear power systems to power lunar bases, mining operations, and long-term habitats.
As a space lawyer focused on long-term human advancement into space, I see this not as an arms race but as a strategic infrastructure race. And in this case, infrastructure is influence.
A lunar nuclear reactor may sound dramatic, but it’s neither illegal nor unprecedented. If deployed responsibly, it could allow countries to peacefully explore the moon, fuel their economic growth, and test out technologies for deeper space missions. But building a reactor also raises critical questions about access and power.
The legal framework already exists
Nuclear power in space isnt a new idea. Since the 1960s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union have relied on radioisotope generators that use small amounts of radioactive elementsa type of nuclear fuelto power satellites, Mars rovers, and the Voyager probes.
Nuclear energy in space isnt newsome spacecraft are nuclear-powered. This photo shows the nuclear heat source for the Mars Curiosity rover encased in a graphite shell. The fuel glows red-hot because of the radioactive decay of plutonium-238. [Photo: Idaho National Laboratory, CC BY]
The United Nations 1992 Principles Relevant to the Use of Nuclear Power Sources in Outer Space, a nonbinding resolution, recognizes that nuclear energy may be essential for missions where solar power is insufficient. This resolution sets guidelines for safety, transparency, and international consultation.
Nothing in international law prohibits the peaceful use of nuclear power on the moon. But what matters is how countries deploy it. And the first country to succeed could shape the norms for expectations, behaviors, and legal interpretations related to lunar presence and influence.
Why being first matters
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, ratified by all major spacefaring nations including the U.S., China, and Russia, governs space activity. Its Article IX requires that states act with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties.
That statement means if one country places a nuclear reactor on the moon, others must navigate around it, legally and physically. In effect, it draws a line on the lunar map. If the reactor anchors a larger, long-term facility, it could quietly shape what countries do and how their moves are interpreted legally, on the moon and beyond.
Other articles in the Outer Space Treaty set similar boundaries on behavior, even as they encourage cooperation. They affirm that all countries have the right to freely explore and access the moon and other celestial bodies, but they explicitly prohibit territorial claims or assertions of sovereignty.
At the same time, the treaty acknowledges that countries may establish installations such as basesand with that, gain the power to limit access. While visits by other countries are encouraged as a transparency measure, they must be preceded by prior consultations. Effectively, this grants operators a degree of control over who can enter and when.
Building infrastructure is not staking a territorial claim. No one can own the moon, but one country setting up a reactor could shape where and how others operatefunctionally, if not legally.
Infrastructure is influence
Building a nuclear reactor establishes a countrys presence in a given area. This idea is especially important for resource-rich areas such as the lunar south pole, where ice found in perpetually shadowed craters could fuel rockets and sustain lunar bases.
These sought-after regions are scientifically vital and geopolitically sensitive, as multiple countries want to build bases or conduct research there. Building infrastructure in these areas would cement a countrys ability o access the resources there and potentially exclude others from doing the same.
Dark craters on the moon, parts of which are indicated here in blue, never get sunlight. Scientists think some of these permanently shadowed regions could contain water ice. [Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center]
Critics may worry about radiation risks. Even if designed for peaceful use and contained properly, reactors introduce new environmental and operational hazards, particularly in a dangerous setting such as space. But the U.N. guidelines do outline rigorous safety protocols, and following them could potentially mitigate these concerns.
Why nuclear? Because solar has limits
The moon has little atmosphere and experiences 14-day stretches of darkness. In some shadowed craters, where ice is likely to be found, sunlight never reaches the surface at all. These issues make solar energy unreliable, if not impossible, in some of the most critical regions.
A small lunar reactor could operate continuously for a decade or more, powering habitats, rovers, 3D printers, and life-support systems. Nuclear power could be the linchpin for long-term human activity. And its not just about the Moondeveloping this capability is essential for missions to Mars, where solar power is even more constrained.
The U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space sets guidelines to govern how countries act in outer space. [Photo: United States Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, CC BY-NC-ND]
A call for governance, not alarm
The United States has an opportunity to lead not just in technology but in governance. If it commits to sharing its plans publicly, following Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty and reaffirming a commitment to peaceful use and international participation, it will encourage other countries to do the same.
The future of the moon wont be determined by who plants the most flags. It will be determined by who builds what, and how. Nuclear power may be essential for that future. Building transparently and in line with international guidelines would allow countries to more safely realize that future.
A reactor on the moon isnt a territorial claim or a declaration of war. But it is infrastructure. And infrastructure will be how countries display powerof all kindsin the next era of space exploration.
Michelle L.D. Hanlon is a professor of air and space law at the University of Mississippi.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In the new edition of my book, The Simulation Hypothesis, released in July, Ive updated my estimate of how likely we are to be in a simulation to approximately 70%, thanks to recent AI developments. This means we are almost certainly inside a virtual reality world like that depicted in The Matrix, the most talked about film of the last year of the twentieth century.
Even young people who werent born in 1999 tend to know the basic plot of this blockbuster: Neo (Keanu Reeves) thinks hes living in the real world, working in a cubicle in a mega software corporation, only to discover, with the help of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), that hes living inside a computer-generated world.
The AI Factor
What makes me so sure that we are living in a simulation? There are multiple reasons explored in the book, including a new way to explain quantum weirdness, the strange nature of time and space, information theory & digital physics, spiritual/religious arguments, and even an information-based way to explain glitches in the matrix.
However, even while discounting these other possible reasons we may in a simulation, the main reason for my new estimate was because of the rapid advance of AI and virtual reality technology, combined with a statistical argument put forth by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. In the past few years, the rise of generative AI like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Xs Grok has proceeded rapidly. We now have not just AI which has passed the Turing Test, but we already have rudimentary AI characters living in the virtual world with whom we can interact.
One recent example includes prompt-generated video from Google Veo. Recently, Google has introduced the ability to create realistic-looking videos on demand, complete with virtual actors and landscapes that are completely AI generated, and speak real lines of dialogue, all based on prompts. This has led to prompt theory, a viral phenomenon of AI-generated video of realistic characters exhorting that they were definitely not generated by AI prompts.
Another recent example is the release of AI companions from Grok, which combine LLMs with a virtual avatar, leading to a new level of adoption of the rising wave of AI characters that are already serving as virtual friends, therapists, teachers, and even virtual lovers. The sexy anime girl in particular has led to thousands of memes of obsession with virtual characters. The graphics fidelity and responsiveness of these characters will improveimagine the fidelity of the Google Veo videos combined with a virtual friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/assistant, who can pass what I call, the Metaverse or Virtual Turing Test (described in the new book in detail).
The Simulation Point
All of this means we are getting closer than ever to the simulation point, a term I coined a few years ago as a kind of technological singularity. I define this as a theoretical point at which we can create virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from physical reality, and with AI beings that are indistinguishable from biological beings. In short, when we reach the simulation point, we would be capable of building something like the Matrix ourselves, complete with realistic landscapes, avatars and AI characters.
To understand why our progress in reaching this point might increase the likelihood that we are already in a simulation, we can build on the simulation argument that Bostroms proposed in his 2003 paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Bostrom surmised that for a technological civilization like ours, there were only three possibilities when it came to building highly realistic simulations of their past (which he called ancestor simulations). Each of these simulations would have realistic simulated minds, holding all of the information and computing power a biological brain might hold. We can think of having the capability of building these simulations as approximately similar to my definition of the simulation point.
The first two possibilities, which can be combined for practical purposes, were that no civilization ever reaches the simulation point (i.e. by destroying themselves or because it isnt possible to create simulations), or that all such civilizations who reached this point decided not to build such sophisticated simulations.
The term simulation hypothesis was originally meant by Bostrom to refer to the third possibility, which was that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. The logic underlying this third scenario was that any such advanced civilization would be able to create entirely new simulated worlds with the click of a button, each of which could have billions (or trillions) of simulated beings indistinguishable from biological beings. Thus, the number of simulated beings would vastly outnumber the tally of biological beings. Statistically, then, if you couldnt tell the difference, then you were (much) more likely to be a simulated being than a real, biological one.
Bostrom himself initially declined to put a percentage on this third option compared to the other two, saying only that it was as one of three possibilities, implying a likelihood of 33.33 % (and later changed his odds for the third possibility to be around 20%). Elon Musk used a variation of Bostroms logic in 2016, when he said the chances of us being in base reality (i.e. not in a simulation) were one in billions. He was implying that there might be billions of simulated worlds, but only one physical world. Thus statistically, we are by far highly likely (99.99%+) in a simulated world.
Others have weighed in on the issue, using variations of the argument, including Neil deGrasse Tyson, who put the percentage likelihood at 50%. Columbia scientist David Kipping, in a paper using Bayesian logic and Bostroms argument, came up with a similar figure, of slightly less than 50-50.
Musk was relying on the improvement in video game technology and projecting it forward. This is what I do in detail in my book where I lay out the 10 stages of getting to the simulation point, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), BCIs (Brain Computer Interfaces), AI, and more. It was the progress in these areas over the past few years that gives me the conviction that we are getting closer to the simulation point than ever before.
The Equation
In my new book, I argue that the percentage likelihood we are in a simulation is based almost entirely on whether we can reach the simulation point. If we can never reach this point, then the chances are basically zero that we are in a sim that was already developed by anyone else. If we can reach this point, then the chances of being in a simulation simply boil down to how far from this theoretically point we are, minus some uncertainty factor.
If we have already reached that point, then we can be 99% confident about being in a simulation. Even if we havent reached the simulation point (we havent, at least not yet), then the likelihood of the simlation hypothesis, Psim , basically simplifies down to Psimpoint, the confidence level we have that we can reach this point, minus some small extra uncertainty factor (pu).
Psim Psimpoint pu
If we are 100% confident we can reach the simulation point, and the small factor pu is 1, then the likelihood of being in a simulation jumps up to 99%. Why? Per the earlier argument, if we can reach this point, then it is very likely that another civilization has already reached this point, and that we are inside one of their (many) simulations. pu is likely to be small because we have already built uncertainty into our Psimpoint for any value less than 100%.
So, in the end, it doesnt matter when we reach this point, its a matter of capabilities. And the more we develop our AI, video game, and virtual reality technology, the more likely it is that at some point soon, we will be able to reach the simulation point.
Are we there yet?
So how close are we? In the new book, I go through each of the 10 stages and estimate that we are more than two-thirds of the way there, and I am fairly certain that we will be able to get there eventually. This means that todays AI developments have convinced me we are at least 67% likely to be able to reach the simulation point and possibly more than 70%.
If I add in factors from digital and quantum physics detailed in the book, and if we take the trip reports of mystics of old and todays near-death experiencers and psychonauts (who expand their awareness using DMT, for example) at face value, we can be even more confident that our physical reality is not the ultimate reality. Those who report such trips are like Platos philosopher who not only broke his chains, but also left Platos allegorical cave. If you read Platos full allegory, it ends with the philosopher returning to the cave to describe what he had seen in the world outside to the other residents, who didnt believe him and were content to continue watching shadows on the wall. Because most scientists are loath to accept these reports and are likely to dismiss this evidence, I wont include them in my own percentage estimation, though as I explain in the book, this brings my confidence level that we are in a virtual, rather than a physical reality even higher.
Which brings us back to the inescapable realization that if we will eventually be able to create something like the Matrix, someone has likely already done it. While we can debate what is outside our cave, its our own rapid progress with AI that makes it more likely than ever that we are already inside something virtual like the Matrix.
Lush forests and crisp mountain air have drawn people to New Yorks Adirondack Mountains for centuries. In the late 1800s, these forests were a haven for tuberculosis patients seeking the cool, fresh air. Today, the region is still a sanctuary where families vacation and hikers roam pristine trails.
However, hidden health dangers have been accumulating in these mountains since industrialization began.
Tiny metal particulates released into the air from factories, power plants and vehicles across the Midwest and Canada can travel thousands of miles on the wind and fall with rain. Among them are microscopic pollutants such as lead and cadmium, known for their toxic effects on human health and wildlife.
For decades, factories released this pollution without controls. By the 1960s and 1970s, their pollution was causing acid rain that killed trees in forests across the eastern U.S., while airborne metals were accumulating in even the most remote lakes in the Adirondacks.
In the early 1900s, sanatoriums such as the New York State Hospital at Ray Brook, near Saranac Lake, were built to house tuberculosis patients. The crisp mountain air was believed to help their recovery. [Photo: Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection/Library of Congress]
As paleolimnologists, we study the history of the environment using sediment cores from lake bottoms, where layers of mud, leaves, and pollen pile up over time, documenting environmental and chemical changes.
In a recent study, we looked at two big questions: Have lakes in the Northeast U.S. recovered from the era of industrial metal pollution, and did the Clean Air Act, written to help stop the pollution, work?
Digging up time capsules
On multiple summer trips between 2021 and 2024, we hiked into the Adirondacks backcountry with 60-pound inflatable boats, a GPS and piles of long, heavy metal tubes in tow.
We focused on four pondsRat, Challis, Black and Little Hope. In each, we dropped cylindrical tubes that plunge into the darkness of the lake bottom. The tubes suction up the mud in a way that preserves the accumulated layers like a history book.
Back in the lab, we sliced these cores millimeter by millimeter, extracting metals such as lead, zinc and arsenic to analyze the concentrations over time.
An illustration of the authors shows how lake sediment cores capture the history of the region going back thousands of years. [Image: Sky Hooler]
The changes in the levels of metals we found in different layers of the cores paint a dramatic picture of the pristine nature of these lakes before European settlers arrived in the area, and what happened as factories began going up across the country.
A century plagued by contamination
Starting in the early 1900s, coal burning in power plants and factories, smelting and the growing use of leaded gasoline began releasing pollutants that blew into the region. We found that manganese, arsenic, iron, zinc, lead, cadmium, nickel, chromium, copper, and cobalt began to appear in greater concentrations in the lakes and rose rapidly.
At the same time, acid rain, formed from sulfur and nitrogen oxides from coal and gasoline, acted like chemical shovels, freeing more metals naturally held in the bedrock and forest soils.
Acid rain damaged trees in several states over the decades, leaving ghostly patches in forests. [Photo: Will & Deni McIntyre/Getty Images]
The result was a cascade of metal pollution that washed down the slopes with the rain, winding through creeks and seeping into lakes.
All of this is captured in the lake sediment cores.
As extensive logging and massive fires stripped away vegetation and topsoil, the exposed landscapes created express lanes for metals to wash downhill. When acidification met these disturbed lands, the result was extraordinary: Metal levels didnt just increase, they skyrocketed. In some cases, we found that lead levels in the sediment reached 328 parts per million, 109 times higher than natural preindustrial levels. That lead would have first been in the air, where people were exposed, and then in the wildlife and fish that people consume.
These particles are so small that they can enter a persons lungs and bloodstream, infiltrate food webs, and accumulate in ecosystems.
A wind map shows how pollution moves from the Midwest, reaching the Adirondacks. The colors show the average wind speed, in meters per second, and arrows show the wind direction about 3,000 meters above ground from 1948 to 2023. Average calculated using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. [Image: Sky Hooler]
Then, suddenly, the increase stopped.
A public outcry over acid rain, which was stripping needles from trees and poisoning fish, led to major environmental legislation, including the initiation of the Clean Air Act in 1963. The law and subsequent amendments in the following decades began reducing sulfur dioxide emissions and other toxic pollutants. To comply, industries installed scrubbers to remove pollutants at the smokestack rather than releasing them into the air. Catalytic converters reduced vehicle exhaust, and lead was removed from gasoline.
The air grew cleaner, the rain became less acidic, and our sediment cores show that the lakes began to heal through natural biogeochemical processes, although slowly.
By 1996, atmospheric lead levels measured at Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks had declined by 90%. National levels were down 94%. But in the lakes, lead had decreased only by about half.
Only in the past five years, since about 2020, have we seen metal concentrations within the lakes fall to less than 10% of their levels at the height of pollution in the region.
Our study is the first documented case of a full recovery in Northeast U.S. lakes that reflects the recovery seen in the atmosphere.
Its a powerful success story and proof that environmental policy works.
Looking forward
But the Adirondacks arent entirely in the clear. Legacy pollution lingers in the soils, ready to be remobilized by future disturbances from land development or logging. And there are new concerns. We are now tracking the rise of microplastics and the growing pressures of climate change on lake ecosystems.
Recovery is not a finish line; its an ongoing process. The Clean Air Act and water monitoring are still important for keeping the regions air and water clean.
Though our findings come from just a few lakes, the implications extend across the entire Northeast U.S. Many studies from past decades documented declining metal deposition in lakes, and research has confirmed continued reductions in metal pollutants in both soils and rivers.
In the layers of lake mud, we see not only a record of damage but also a testament to natures resilience, a reminder that with good legislation and timely intervention, recovery is possible.
Sky Hooler is a PhD student in environmental science at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Aubrey Hillman is an associate professor of environmental sciences at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Generative AI platforms have sent shock waves through the K-12 education sector since the public release of ChatGPT nearly three years ago.
The technology is taking hold under the belief that students and teachers need to be proficient in these powerful tools, even though many concerns remain around equity, privacy, bias, and degradation of critical thinking among students.
As a professor who teaches future educators and is part of an AI-focused working group, I have observed the potential for artificial intelligence to transform teaching and learning practices in K-12 schools. The trends I am seeingand that I encourageare for K-12 educators to use AI to shift from memorization and rote learning to instead emphasize critical thinking and creativity.
Jumping in the deep end
After the public release of ChatGPT in late 2022, some large school districts initially banned the use of AI due to concerns about cheating. Surveys also reflected worries about chatbots fabricating information, such as references for school papers, in addition to concerns about misinformation and biases existing in AI responses to prompts.
Students, on the other hand, tended to jump into the deep end of the AI pool. Common Sense Media, which offers recommendations on childrens media consumption, published a report in 2024 showing that students were using AI-supported search and chatbots for homework and to stave off boredom as well as other personal reasons, including creating content as a joke, planning activities, and seeking health advice. Most of the teachers and parents of the students in the study were unaware that students were using the technology.
In my work at Drexel University teaching graduate students who are aspiring school principals or superintendents, I found that in 2023, K-12 students were afraid of using AI due to the policies implemented in their districts banning it. However, it quickly became apparent that students were able to mask their use of AI by instructing AI to insert some mistakes into their assignments.
Meanwhile, despite teachers initial concerns about AI, approximately 60% of K-12 teachers now admit to using AI to plan lessons, communicate with parents, and assist with grading. Concerns over students cheating still exist, but time-strapped teachers are finding that using AI can save them time while improving their teaching.
A recent Walton Foundation and Gallup study revealed that teachers who used AI tools weekly saved an average of 5.9 hours per week, which they reallocated to providing students more nuanced feedback, creating individualized lessons, writing emails, and getting home to their families in a more reasonable time.
Opening up new ways of teaching
I recommend that my graduate students use AI because I think ignoring emerging trends in education is not wise. I believe the benefits outweigh the negatives if students are taught ethical use of the technology and guardrails are put in place, such as requiring that AI be cited as a source if students use it in coursework.
Advocates say AI is changing teaching for the better, since it forces teachers to identify additional ways for students to demonstrate their understanding of content. Some strategies for students who rely too heavily on AI include oral presentations, project-based learning, and building portfolios of a students best work.
One practice could involve students showing evidence of something they created, implemented, or developed to address a challenge. Evidence could include constructing a small bridge to demonstrate how forces act on structures, pictures, or a video of students using a water sampling device to check for pollution, or students designing and planting a community garden. AI might produce the steps needed to construct the project, but students would actually have to do the work.
Teachers can also use AI to create lessons tailored to students interests, quickly translate text to multiple languages, and recognize speech for students with hearing difficulties. AI can be used as a tutor to individualize instruction, provide immediate feedback and identify gaps in students learning.
When I was a school superintendent, I always asked applicants for teaching positions how they connected their classroom lessons to the real world. Most of them struggled to come up with concrete examples. On the other hand, I have found AI is helpful in this regard, providing answers to students perennial question of why they need to learn what is being taught.
Thought partner
Teachers in K-12 schools are using AI to help students develop their empathetic skills. One example is prompting an AI to redesign the first-day experience for a relocated student entering a new middle school. AI created the action steps and the essential questions necessary for refining students initial solutions.
In my own classroom, Ive used AI to boost my graduate students critical thinking skills. I had my students imagine that they were college presidents facing the loss of essential federal funding unless they implemented policies limiting public criticism of federal agencies on campus. This proposed restriction, framed as a requirement to maintain institutional neutrality, requires students to develop a plan of action based on their knowledge of systems and design thinking. After each team developed their solution, I used AI to create questions and counterpoints to their proposed solution. In this way, AI becomes a critical thought partner to probe intended and unintended outcomes, gaps in students thinking, and potential solutions that might have been overlooked.
AI researcher Ethan Mollick encourages educators to use AI as a springboard, similar to jazz msicians improvising, as a way to unleash new possibilities. Mollick advises people to partner with AI as co-intelligence, be the human in the loop, treat AI as a coworker, albeit one that needs to be prodded for evidence, and to learn to use it well. I concur.
Changing perspectives on AI
Some early studies on the effects of using AI in education have raised concerns that the convenience of generative AI will degrade students learning and erode their critical thinking skills.
I think that further studies are needed, but I have found in my own work and in the work of my graduate students that AI can enhance human-produced work. For example, AI-powered teaching assistants, like Khanmigo or Beghetto Bots, use AI to help students solve problems and come up with innovative solutions without giving away the answers.
My experiences with other educators on the front lines show me that they are beginning to change their perspectives toward students using AI, particularly as teachers realize the benefit of AI in their own work. For example, one of my graduate students said his district is employing a committee of educators, students and outside experts to explore how AI can be used ethically and in a way that wont erode students critical thinking skills.
Educators are starting to realize that AI isnt going away anytime soonand that its better to teach their students how to use it, rather than leave them to their own devices.
Michael G. Kozak is an associate clinical professor of educational administration and leadership at Drexel University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
People become leaders by first becoming effective managers. They create cohesion and consensus among their team. They maintain an atmosphere of predictability so everybody knows what to expect and focus on executing a plan with excellence. Thats how you consistently deliver value to customers, partners, and other stakeholders.
Yet when you are pursuing change, none of those things will help you. When something is new, untried, and untested, you cant expect an immediate consensus to form around it. You cant expect predictability either, but need to embrace uncertainty. Instead of focusing on execution, you need to explore and find new answers through some trial and error.
Thats one of the things that makes transformation so hard for so many leaders. You need to mode shift away from whats made you successful up to this point and do things differently. That requires you not only to change actions, but to adopt new mindsetsfrom persuasion to empowerment, differentiating values to shared values, and from a heros journey to strategic conflict.
1. From persuasion to empowerment
Tony Soprano, the ruthless mafia boss from the iconic TV show, was a master of coercion. Yet sensing that he could benefit by exploring alternative strategies, he often sought the advice of Dr. Jennifer Melfi, who encouraged him to take a more collaborative approach. Tony thought about it for a minute and asked, Then how do I get people to do what I want?
As much as we might not like to admit it, every manager faces some version of this dilemma. We want to motivate employees, to inspire them to actualize their potential and achieve great things. But at the end of the day, we have goals we need to reach, plans to get there, and we really just want the people who work for us to do what we ask them to.
Yet in a transformational initiative, you need to operate in an atmosphere of uncertainty and, almost by definition, you dont really know what the final solution will look like. You have to experiment, try things out, see what works, what doesnt, and iterate your way to designing a new model. There are no hard and fast rules.
So instead of trying to get people to do what you want, identify people who want what you want and empower them to succeed. Work with them to design an initial Keystone Change and, when you find one that works, arm them with resources they can co-opt so that they can empower others, who can bring in others still.
2. From differentiating values to shared values
Everybody is taught in Marketing 101 that the first rule of selling is to differentiate your product with a unique value proposition to cut through the noise. After all, if you are no different than the competition, why would customers choose you? An undifferentiated product is, by definition, a commodity and commodities dont command high margins.
So it makes sense that managers preparing to launch a change initiative want to focus on what differentiates the idea, because thats what makes them passionate about it. They often use adjectives like disruptive, innovative, and revolutionary to create excitement. Yet what might seem exciting to some, might feel threatening to others.
The problem is that large-scale transformation in an organization usually involves collective action, which makes getting traction very different than marketing a product like, say, a car or a bag of chips. Consumers can choose among competing products, but organizational change requires collective buy-inand resistance is inevitable. Differentiating values invite backlash.
Thats why you want to create a sense of safety around the change by focusing on shared values. For example, when people come back to the office after Agile training, they often tout the Agile Manifesto and are surprised to find that they dont get much traction. A much better strategy would be to focus on things everybody already believes in, such as better products, done faster and cheaper.
Focusing on shared values doesnt mean watering down your visionit means framing it in a way that resonates with what people already care about. You have to meet people where they are, not try to force your passions on them.
3. From a heros journey to a strategic conflict
Leaders often see change as if it were a heros journey in which there is some alternative future state. They believe that if they are good enough, do all the right things, and if their cause is righteous, they will eventually get to that place. Much like Luke Skywalker, who had to face himself before he could face Darth Vader, their struggle is largely internal.
Yet just like Star Wars, thats mostly a fantasy. The true story of change is that of strategic conflict between a future vision and the status quo. There are sources of power keeping the status quo in place, and those sources of power have an institutional basis. If you are ever going to bring about genuine transformation, thats what you need to influence.
Once you understand this story, you can begin to build an effective strategy. Power is embedded in institutions, and real change requires mapping out which ones reinforce the status quo, which align with your vision, and which could go either way. Those institutional targets will determine how you develop tactics.
One of the most powerful moments in our Transformation and Change Workshops is when we identify these sources of power and map them on a power matrix. Thats when the leaders we work with can begin to see a path forward and shift from seeing change as an abstract goal to a concrete, strategic processone where power dynamics can be mapped and influenced.
Adopting a changemaker mindset
Leaders are trained to operate with a manager mindset because consensus and predictability are essential to execute complex operations. Everyone needs to know their role to carry out their responsibilities and be able to trust that everyone else will do the same. Thats how you deliver for customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders.
When you need to change course, however, you need to discard the manager mindset and embrace a changemaker mindset, and that means that the usual best practices wont work. Change isnt predictable, but uncertain. You cant expect a consensus, so you need to identify a coalition thats willing to believe in the change vision and explore possibilities.
What makes that so difficult is that adopting a changemaker mindset requires leaders to abandon what made them successful in the first place. Persuading people that you have the right vision is unlikely to succeed, so you need to identify people who are already enthusiastic about it. Instead of emphasizing how the change is different, you need to focus on values that are already widely shared.
Whats perhaps most challengingand humbling for leaders to understand is that transformation is not a journey in which they get to play the hero, but a strategic conflict with the status quo in their own organization, which is supported by sources of power that have had yearsand sometimes decadesto take hold.
Effective leaders need to master both the manager mindset and the changemaker mindset and learn to effectively switch off between the two. Just because you need to pursue change doesnt mean you can just ignore everyday operations. On the other hand, if you try to pursue change with a manager mindset, you are almost guaranteed to fail.
