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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Nearly 20 years ago, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen published The Innovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, his groundbreaking work about why successful companies often lose their way. But CEOs still struggle with one of the books central lessons, which is that companies need to disrupt themselves. Companies certainly know more about disruption than they did in 1995, but I still speak and write to executives who havent firmly grasped the implications of the theory, Christensen told former Harvard Business Review editor and Inc. columnist Karen Dillon in an interview published shortly after his death in 2020. The forces that combine to cause disruption are like gravitythey are constant and are always at work within and around the firm. It takes very skilled and very astute leaders to be navigating disruption on a constant basis. New paths and challenges Indeed, even after leaders make the difficult decision to shed traditional and reliable revenue streams to invest in new products and services, executing such transitions can take years. Such lags can test the patience of investors and other stakeholders, especially when theres no guarantee that the new business model will succeed. Just ask Michael Weening, president and CEO of Calix, Inc., which took 13 years to transform itself from a networking gear maker into a software and managed services company for rural broadband providers. The company was founded in 1999, at a time when startups and enterprises alike were rushing into the lucrative business of making gear to power the internet. (Remember when Cisco Systems was the most valuable company in the world?) But a decade later, enterprises started to change the way they were deploying technology, moving to cloud-based solutions that began to minimize the need for companies to maintain their own computing equipment. Calix leaders saw the change coming and began laying the groundwork for an entirely new approach in 2012one that reimagined the company as a software and cloud company for rural broadband service providers. The company hired Weening from cloud trailblazer Salesforce in 2016 to help with the transition. However, a year later, the companys annual loss had widened to more than $80 million from $27 million on revenue of about $450 million as Calix realigned the business to focus on investments in its software business. The market cap fell to $275 million, about two-thirds of its value at the time of its 2010 initial public offering. Staying the course Weening credits Carl Russo, Calixs founder and chairman, with having the patience to weather losses. He says: The founder was the largest shareholder, who could in essence say to the market, Were making these massive investments because if we dont do this, were going to turn into a low-margin commodity business. In addition to making changes to Calixs core business model and business infrastructure, Weening and his leadership team had to bring in new talent, resulting in restructuring costs for severance and termination benefits. Another big challenge was convincing Calixs clients, the rural broadband operators, to embrace Calixs new offering. Rather than selling them gear for their fiber optic networks, Calix wanted to offer a cloud and software platformwith a host of fully integrated managed services, some of which the broadband companies could then sell to their consumers and business customers. For example, Calix customers can sell residential customers a subscription to Bark, a social media-monitoring service for parents. Theyre great at construction; theyre great at reliability and running a network, but this new world of broadband is around experiences, Weening says. How do you teach them how to be sales and marketing- and experience-orientated? Weening drew on his experiences leading customer success at Salesforce to develop resources and training to help Calix clients take advantage of its products and services. New outcomesa decade later The transformation is starting to pay off. The company in 2023 made Fortunes list of the 100 fastest-growing companies of the year based on growth in revenue, profits, and stock returns. The company reported lower revenue and losses in 2024 but recently reported first-quarter earnings that beat expectations. Calixs market capitalization is about $2.4 billion. Ask Weening what he thinks about disrupting Calix now, having gone through a 13-year transformation: He and the company say transformation is ongoing, and he says he relies on his customers to keep innovation on track. You can never get arrogant, he says. You always have to be listening. We have 10 advisory customer boards. And if youre not arrogant, everyone will tell you where you suck. He also offers a reminder of why so many companies resist tackling the innovators dilemma, even when they understand the risks of inaction. This, he says, is not for the faint of heart. How does your company navigate disruption? Has your company faced the innovators dilemma? How do you, in Christensens words, navigate disruption on a constant basis? Send your stories and anecdotes to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id like to share your examples in a future newsletter. Read more: innovators dilemma Why companies fail to innovate. An excerpt from The Innovators Dilemma Basecamp founder Jason Fried talks to Clayton Christensen How Steve Jobs solved the innovators dilemma
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E-Commerce
Getting a sense of the scale of social media platforms can be tricky. While tech companies often share self-serving metricslike monthly active users or how likely users are to buy products after engaging with brandsthey rarely offer a true sense of their platforms’ enormity. But a new study published in Cornell Universitys preprint server arXiv aims to change that by quantifying TikToks scale over a single dayclaiming to be among the first to grasp the platforms full scope. It also offers insight into what people are watching, how much content is being uploaded, and who is posting it. The motivation is using this social media data to better understand society, says Jürgen Pfeffer, one of the studys coauthors and chair of computational science at the Technical University of Munich. The researchers reverse-engineered how TikTok assigns video IDs to gather their data, eventually capturing what they believe to be at least 99% of all posts from a single hour on April 10, 2024around five million videos. They also sampled one minute from every hour across a 24-hour span between April 9 and 10. The entire process took five months. Among the teams findings was the sheer scale of TikTok activity. They estimated 117 million videos were uploaded on that single day. Roughly one in five featured children, based on estimates from an age classification engine the team trained. Videos posted precisely at the 0th second of each minute significantly outperformed otherssuggesting timing tricks might influence the algorithm. However, Pfeffer notes this could be due to professional creators scheduling their posts, who are also more likely to achieve success. About a fifth of the videos were deleted within seven months, hinting at large-scale moderation or user regret. The average video was approximately 20.5 seconds long and was viewed between 2,250 and 2,500 timesdepending on whether the data came from the hour-long slice or the one-minute-per-hour sample. Pfeffer was also surprised to find that TikTok engagement peaked twice daily. Around 4 a.m. UTC (11 p.m. EST), uploads surged to nearly six million videos per hour, reaching a similar peak again around 1 p.m. UTC (8 a.m. EST). The researchers attributed these spikes to global usage cycles, as morning users in Asia overlapped with late-night uploaders in the U.S., and vice versa later in the day. The team also grouped popular videos into thematic clusters. Among the most common were images with colorful backgrounds and graphics and selfies with fashionable outfits and watermarks. Less frequent themes included political commentary on police operations in Pakistan (0.025% of all videos) and camouflaged military soldier images, which accounted for 0.06% of the content.
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E-Commerce
Were facing a career confidence crisis. Work is changing fast, yet many employees feel stuck. At LinkedIn, our data shows workforce confidence has dropped to a five-year low, and only 15% of employees say their manager has supported them with career planning in the past six months. Managers can play a big role in righting the shiphelping employees build the new skills they need to stay relevant and develop into future leaders. But this requires a fundamental shift: transforming them from task-overseers to coaches developing talent and sparking the best ideas from their teams. There are some key steps any company can take now to develop a culture of coaching that starts with your managersbut extends well beyond them. Start to develop your managers as coaches If you want your managers to become coaches, that starts by coaching your coaches. Just like elite athletes rely on coaches to reach peak performance, managers also need coaching to unlock their full potential. Coaching is a skill that needs to be intentionally developed. Executives are starting to grasp this opportunity. Nearly 80% of global CHROs agree their managers in the future will spend less time managing tasks and more time coaching teams. Leading companies are doubling down on this already. For instance, IBM supports first and secondline managers to grow through targeted programs, assessments, and skill-aligned badges. Manager Impact, for example, is an interactive learning experience that coaches new managers on how to lead with confidence, create meaningful employee experiences, and navigate real-world leadership challenges. Managers who complete these programs achieve significantly higher employee engagement scores, says IBM. Coca-Cola is taking similar steps to grow managers into coaches by implementing rigorous leadership assessments to select the right people for leadership roles, and then providing cohort-base development to set those people managers up for success as coaches. Theyve seen notable upticks in how employees are rating their managers, as well as a boost in overall employee satisfaction. Taking the time to develop your managers into coaches is key to helping employees get unstuck and supercharging growth across the business. Plus, providing managers with the tools and support they need to excel in their roles improves their own retention and engagement, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits the entire organization. Consider making professional 1:1 coaching an employee benefit Its important to recognize your teams are operating through a moment of historic work change. By 2030, we expect 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change, with AI emerging as a catalyst. To keep pace, your people need more support. Training managers to coach is essential, but they cant do it alone. Thats why more companies are bringing in independent career coaches who offer specialized guidance on complex workplace challenges, like navigating difficult workplace relationships, managing career transitions, or developing crucial interpersonal skills that AI cant replicate. Kearney, a business consulting firm and LinkedIn Top Company for 2025, has taken this approach by offering a six-month individualized coaching program and practice rotations designed to accelerate consultant growth. And at LinkedIn, we recently made the decision to offer every single employee, regardless of their job function or seniority level, an opportunity to work directly with an independent career coach. This investment in personalized development is already showing promising results, with 97% of our employee participants saying they feel more confident in their ability to navigate their careers after coaching. Scale personalized coaching in new ways with the help of AI There is no replacement for one-on-one coaching from a trusted adviser, but that person cant be there for you 24/7, which is where AI tools can round out your strategy. While many leaders are focused on AIs impact on productivity, AI for coaching is emerging as the next frontier, with more companies experimenting and seeing early gains. Were seeing firsthand how more organizations are tapping into our AI-powered coaching features in LinkedIn Learning, with companies like Gates Foundation and Thomson Reuters actively using our new coaching tool to help their managers practice new skills. Companies are already saying this is helping their employees better prepare for that difficult conversation or high stakes presentation. Building a strong culture of coaching will always be rooted in human expertise, but it can be complemented and scaled to new heights with the help of technology. The most valuable skill we can cultivate today isn’t technicalit’s teaching our people how to learn continuously in a rapidly changing world, building resilience that no economic shift or technological disruption can shake. By investing in coaching, you’re not just developing skillsyou’re unleashing the uniquely human potential that will define success in the AI era and beyond.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the lower Manhattan neighborhood of NoHo, the crowded area around Lafayette Street was once called Gasoline Alley because of the many auto shops and gas stations housed there. While New York is still crowded with cars, gas stations in Manhattan are now more rare (there are none today in Gasoline Alley, only one left in all of lower Manhattan.) But off of Lafayette, theres a new kind of space-inspired gas station that reveals the future of fuela future in which we power vehicles across land, air, and sea with CO2 instead of fossil fuels. The Fuel Store is an immersive concept store by AirCo, a Brooklyn-based startup that turns captured CO2 and hydrogen into synthetic fuels. Most people dont think about their fuel all that much, or dont know that there are options other than fossil-fuel derived gas. The Fuel Store is meant to introduce people to AirCos technology, and paint a possible future where CO2 powers everything from motocross bikes to jets to spaceships. [Photo: AirCo] Previously called Air Company, AirCo has turned captured CO2 into all sorts of consumer products, including vodka, hand sanitizer, and perfume, since it was founded in 2017. In 2024, AirCo raised $69 million in a Series B round, and the company also has a $65 million contract with the Department of Defense; its raised over $100 million in total, according to Pitchbook. With just under 120 employees, it’s lab and R&D operations are located in Brooklyn. Recently its been focusing on fuel, because thats an industry where it can have substantial impact. It’s one of the hardest industries traditionally to decarbonize, says cofounder and CEO Gregory Constantine. Transportation is the largest contributor to the U.S.s greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 28% of all direct emissions. Globally, aviation alone counts for 2% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions. [Photo: AirCo] AirCo instead uses CO2a greenhouse gasas a feedstock. It combines that CO2 with hydrogen to create fuels through a process that runs on renewable energy. Though AirCo declined to share how much CO2-derived fuel it currently produces, it does have partnerships with multiple companies for the use of its sustainable aviation fuel, called Airmade. In 2022, JetBlue signed an intent to purchase 25 million gallons of Airmade over five years, and Virgin Atlantic signed an intent to purchase up to 100 million gallons over 10 years. The company has also has partnerships with Boom Supersonic, and the U.S. Department of Defense. For the government, AirCo has worked on projects for land, air, and sea transportation. [Photo: AirCo] The Fuel Store showcases these different developments. When you first walk in, you see a shiny chrome gas station in the center of the rooman AirCo branded awning over sleek, futuristic pumps. A motocross bike is attached to one pump, meant to represent the freedom to roam, just like how AirCos fuels can be made either in remote locations or in cities. Along the walls are a series of products designed to tell different aspects of AirCos story, and the future of fuel the company envisions. [Photo: AirCo] On one shelf are hard-shell suitcases decorated with modern travel stickers, one of which reads, “My plane is on an air-based diet.” The climate impact of transportation has led to some travel shaming, Constantine says, but he adds that travel is a part of life. Through its work making sustainable aviation, AirCo is making travel less objectionable, he says. [Photo: AirCo] Next to the suitcases are vintage Air Force bomber jackets, adorned with new AirCo patches. In April, AirCo fuel partnered with the Air Force for the first-ever unmanned flight powered by CO2-derived jet fuel. AirCos synthetic fuels are 100% compatible with current aircrafts, unlike hydrogen, which requires new engine designs. [Photo: AirCo] On the other side of the store are life vests made of recycled signal flags, a nod to the companys successful tests with the Navy to use Airmade for marine vessels. (These tests powered boats while also emitting less visible smoke in the exhaust.) The signal flags themselves mean urgent and full speed, echoing the companys perspective on its mission to decarbonize fuel. Above the life vests are dry bags made from upcycled sails, an ode to how sailboats, powered by air, were once the dominant form of sea traveland how air, through AirCos CO2 fuel, could power future marine vessels. Objects like the motocross bike, a mini toy AirCo fuel truck, and vintage Army T-shirts screen-printed with an image of a Polaris MRZR tactical vehiclewhich AirCo successfully powered with its CO2-derived fuel through tests at West Pointshowcase AirCos fuel use on land. [Photo: AirCo] And finally, the Fuel Store also hints at AirCo going into space. One wall features a conceptual Mars helmet and workwear suit. These imagine a future where the red planets atmospherewhich is 95% CO2could be harvested to power spacecrafts, rovers, and habitats. AirCo also has a long-running partnership with NASA. A lot of the work that we do with groups like NASA is to try to prove out that we can produce a fuel not only here on Earth made from CO2 but potentially, in the long-term future, up on Mars, so that we can bring astronauts back, Constantine says. AirCo also created bacon, egg, and cheese space food, a nod to the classic New York City sandwich and the companys home base. [Photo: AirCo] Each of these products has tags that explain their connection to AirCos larger story. Though these items wont be for sale at the Fuel Store, they will be available via auction online after the concept stores run is over. That auction will help fund AirCos research and development. Visitors will be able to purchase AirCo merch like T-shirts, socks, and some of the stickers that appear on the luggage (including ones that read honk if you love unlimited feedstocks and Make love, not CO2). [Photo: AirCo] The Fuel Store will be open to the public from April 30th to May 3rd at 55 Great Jones Street, New York. Constantine hopes the concept store is ableto shed light on AirCos technology, and the hopeful future it envisions. Educating people about the future is a tricky challenge, but it can be an inspirational one, he says. The origins of fuel, and these new technologies like fuel made of CO2, can be foreign to people, but the store puts them in an immersive world full of that technologys use cases. What we’ve tried to do here, Constantine adds, is to show what the future can look like in a way that others haven’t been able to do.
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E-Commerce
In 2017, Ubers executive team reached a critical turning point. The world saw headlines about leadership changes, valuation drops, and cultural upheavals. Beneath the noise, however, lay a deeper issue. It wasnt rogue culture or aggressive expansion. It was misalignment at the very top. An all-too-familiar scenario had taken root: Executives were operating in silos. They werent facing challenges to key decisions, and they overlooked red flags. The result? A $20 billion valuation adjustment and a leadership overhaul that forced Uber to rethink how alignment works at the highest levels. And thats where the real story begins. Instead of crumbling, Uber recalibrated. The company realigned its leadership, rebuilt trust, and restructured cultural processes. The company turned misalignment into an opportunity for transformation. Today, it stands as a case study in how great organizations use misalignment as a catalyst for growth. These challenges arent unique to Uber. Misalignment is present in companies of all stages and sizes. Unfortunately, many teams dont realize it until its too late. What leads to misalignment Most executive teams think theyre aligned. But the data says otherwise. Only 18% strongly agree their teams consistently demonstrate the behaviors that define true alignmentlike communication, integrity, accountability, and follow-through. This gap between perception and reality is where organizations lose their edge. You cant build alignment out of assumptions or beliefs. It requires discipline. If leaders arent actively testing for alignment, they simply hope it exists. Misalignment doesnt happen loudly. It doesnt announce itself from the center stage. Instead, it creeps in during everyday interactions. A CFO notices a financial red flag but assumes someone else will address it. A CMO defends their budget so fiercely it hinders collaboration. Or a CEO shares a vision for the future, unaware their team is nodding in agreement while quietly disengaging. These moments dont feel like failures. But thats what makes them dangerous. The cost of misalignment Misalignment is more than an internal struggle, its an existential threat. In our work with executives across industries like healthcare, technology, government, and finance, the following patterns typically lead to misalignment: Conflict avoidance: Leaders sidestep difficult conversations, allowing minor issues to grow into major problems. Transactional meetings: Discussions lack depth and critical debate, reducing meetings to routine updates instead of platforms for innovation. Superficial trust: Leaders hesitate to ask for help, fearing it signals weakness, while their teams avoid raising strategic concerns out of distrust or fear. Team disengagement: When trust diminishes, team members stop challenging one another and wait for top-down directives, turning from proactive problem-solvers into task-oriented executors. These issues are not failures of leadership competency. They are symptoms of false alignment, which is the consequence of overlooking the need for deliberate cohesion. Signs your executive team is out of sync Think your team is aligned? Consider the following questions: Does alignment depend entirely on your CEO? If your team waits for top-down answers, it isnt aligned. Are your meetings mostly informational updates? If real collaboration happens only in smaller groups, trust is lacking. Are silos the norm? If asking for help feels risky, your leaders are functioning as individuals, not as a team. Is constructive conflict avoided or punished? If problem-solving debates feel unsafe, innovation is stalling. If any of these scenarios resonate, your team isnt just underperformingits likely holding itself back, forfeiting innovation and strategic agility. What great executive teams do differently You cant build alignment in the boardrooms. Its built-in momentsthe way leaders interact, debate, and trust each other. Aligned teams outperform their peers, not because alignment is easy but because it is deliberate. In our experience, companies need to take a two-step approach to fix misalignment: Step 1: Work on internal issues Elevate trust. Companies need to treat trust as a mission-critical value. Facilitate open discussions where executives can address challenges without fear of retaliation. Establish feedback loops and accountability. Integrate structured feedback mechanisms to foster a culture of continuous improvement. Embed professional development. Prioritize coaching and mentorship to make learning and growth central to your teams strategy. Path 2: Bring in outside experts Executive coaches act as mirrors, revealing blind spots, building trust, and uniting teams before fractures lead to failure. They provide the safe space needed for honest discussions and alignment. A CEOs Final Test: Are You Aligned? Finally, great leaders dont assume alignment, they test it. If you want to know whether your team is truly aligned, ask your executivesprivately and anonymouslyto rate your teams trust, collaboration, engagement, and alignment on a scale from 1 to 10. Compare the results. If the scores vary wildly or skew low, your team isnt aligned, its merely coexisting. Start to think about how you can fix it. Remember, misalignment isnt just an operational challenge, its a threat to your organizations survival.
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E-Commerce