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Research shows that an employees perception of what makes an authentic leader is the most significant predictor of job satisfaction and happiness at work. And I experienced this firsthand when my boss said three simple words that changed everything. You see, as a journalist, I was always accustomed to someone checking, editing, and approving every piece before publication. So when I asked my new boss yet another question about a piece of content I was working on, his response shocked me. He turned around and said, I trust you. I was blown away because it was a huge shift. For the first time, Someone is encouraging me to trust my own judgement instead of seeking approval. It was the complete opposite of everything perfectionism had reinforced in me. And while that was a breakthrough moment for me, Id realized just how much perfectionism had shaped me leading up to that moment. Thriving from failure Back in 2011, I was living my dream. I was on stage at the New York Comedy Club, about to deliver my first five-minute stand-up set in America. Id memorized and rehearsed and memorized every word. After I delivered my first joke, my mind went completely blank. Nothing. For 30 excruciating seconds, I stood frozen like a deer in headlights. When I looked down at my palm for my SOS backup notes, all I saw was a giant smudge mark. My nervous, sweaty hands totally smeared the ink. I looked around the room, locked eyes with a friend, and took a desperate breath. Eventually, my jokes came flooding back. But I replayed that freeze for years on loop in my mind. That experience taught me that perfectionism isn’t protection at all. Far from it. It’s actually a trap. We think we’re safe when weve mapped everything out, but it’s actually the opposite. If we forget one tiny point, everything unravels quickly. Research distinguishes between excellence-seeking perfectionism (driven by high standards) and failure-avoiding perfectionism (driven by fear and concerns). So many of us are trapped in the latter, with this fear disconnecting us from our authentic voice. This kind of perfectionism is sneaky because it disguises itself as high standards. And its also very, very convincing. Trying to meet an impossible standard I see this pattern constantly. One leader at a recent presentation skills workshop was convinced she needed to get everything right. But when I asked, According to who? she couldnt answer. We laughed, her shoulders dropped, and she smiled. Her entire presence shifted. Authentic leadership requires presence, vulnerability, honesty, and trust. But its rigidity that causes fear-driven perfectionism. When youre trapped in perfectionism, youre chasing an impossible standard, instead of leading from a true place. And teams can feel that disconnect. After I froze on stage in New York, I made a decision. I would never memorize another performance. Instead, I learned to be present, trust myself, and adapt. And the result was always better performances and much deeper connections because I was finally in the room with my audience instead of being trapped in my head. The antidote to perfectionism isn’t lowering our standards. It’s raising authenticity. Preventing perfectionism from getting in the way Ive learned that below are the key steps to follow if you want to prevent perfectionism from getting in the way of your success: Own your mistakes openly. When you admit your mistakes, you give others permission to stop hiding theirs and start learning from them instead. Share what didnt work. I tell leaders about bombed pitches and lost rooms. Failure can build connections very quickly. Say I dont know. When someone asks you something you haven’t considered or you dont have the answer to, admit it. This creates the space for honest connections. Get comfortable with version #1. My comedy coach Judy Carter said, Get your ideas out there because you can always make them better. At the end of the day, done is way better than perfect. When my boss said those three words to me, he gave me something powerful. And thats permission to trust myself. Sure, perfectionism might make you look good, but authentic leadership is what actually transforms people and is what allows you to build true connections and relationships that will last for years to come.
Category:
E-Commerce
Headlines alternate between massive AI investments and reports of failed deployments. The pattern is consistent across industries: seemingly promising AI projects that work well in testing environments struggle or fail when deployed in real-world conditions. It’s not insufficient computing power, inadequate talent, or immature algorithms. Ive worked with over 250 enterprises deploying visual AIfrom Fortune 10 manufacturers to emerging unicornsand the pattern is unmistakable: the companies that succeed train their models on what actually breaks them, while the ones that fail optimize for what works in controlled environments. The Hidden Economics of AI Failure When Amazon quietly rolled back its “Just Walk Out” technology from most U.S. grocery stores in 2024, the media focused on the obvious: customers were confused, technology wasn’t ready, labor costs weren’t eliminated as promised. But the real lesson was subtler and more valuable. Amazon’s visual AI could accurately identify a shopper picking up a Coke in ideal conditionswell-lit aisles, single shoppers, products in their designated spots. The system failed on the edge cases that define real-world retail: crowded aisles, group shopping, items returned to wrong shelves, inventory that constantly shifts. The core issue wasn’t technological sophisticationit was data strategy. Amazon had trained their models on millions of hours of video, but the wrong millions of hours. They optimized for the common scenarios while underweighting the chaos that drives real-world retail. Amazon continues to refine the technologya strategy that highlights the core challenge with visual AI deployment. The issue wasn’t insufficient computing power or algorithmic sophistication. The models needed more comprehensive training data that captured the full spectrum of customer behaviors, not just the most common scenarios. This is the billion dollar blind spot: Most enterprises are solving the wrong data problem. Focusing on the right data, not just more data Enterprises often assume that simply scaling datacollecting millions more images or video hourswill close the performance gap. But visual AI doesnt fail because of too little data; it fails because of the wrong data. The companies that consistently succeed have learned to curate their datasets with the same rigor they apply to their models. They deliberately seek out and label the hard cases: the scratches that barely register on a part, the rare disease presentation in a medical image, the one-in-a-thousand lighting condition on a production line, or the pedestrian darting out from between parked cars at dusk. These are the cases that break models in deploymentand the cases that separate an adequate system from a production-ready one. This is why data quality is quickly becoming the real competitive advantage in visual AI. Smart companies arent chasing sheer volume; theyre investing in tools to measure, curate, and continuously improve their datasets. First-hand experience As the CEO of a visual AI startupVoxel51these challenges are something Ive lived first-hand. My co-founder and I started the company after seeing how bad data derails AI projects. In 2017, while working with the city of Baltimore to deploy vision systems on its CitiWatch camera network to aid first responders, we experienced the pain of creating datasets, training models, and diagnosing failures without the right tools. That work inspired us to build our own platform, which became FiftyOnenow the most widely adopted open source toolkit for visual AI with more than three million installs. Today, more than 250 enterprises, including Berkshire Grey, Google, Bosch, and Porsche, use it to put data quality at the center of their AI strategy. Here are just a few outcomes: Allstate improved data quality in vehicle damage inspection by automating the pipelinesegmenting parts, detecting damages, and matching repair costsreducing hours of manual effort while ensuring consistent results. Raytheon Technologies Research Center organized and filtered large research datasets to surface meaningful patterns in complex image attributes, turning noisy data into usable insights. A Fortune 500 agriculture tech company curated training data from harvesters to improve grain segmentation, capturing edge cases like unhusked and sprouting kernels for more robust models. A Fortune 500 company curated visual data to detect defective screens before shipment, preventing costly recalls and customer returns. SafelyYou shows the impact of this approach. The companys system helps care delivery in senior care facilities with models that help reduce fall-related ER visits by 80%. The key wasnt just massive scale60 million minutes of videobut the ability to curate variations in how seniors actually fall: different lighting, speeds, body types, and obstacles. By automating checks for annotation mistakes and model blind spots, they cut manual review by 77%, boosted precision scores by 10%, and saved up to 80 developer hours each month. The Path Forward For executives evaluating visual AI investments, the lesson is clear: success is driven not by bigger models or more compute, but by treating data as the foundation. Organizations that prioritize data quality consistently outperform those that focus primarily on technology infrastructure or talent acquisition. Investments in data collection, curation, and management systems are the levers that truly move the needle. By embedding scenario analysis into data strategymodeling how different data quality, diversity, or labeling scenarios impact performancecompanies can anticipate risks, optimize resource allocation, and make more informed AI investments. Ultimately, the most successful visual AI initiatives are those that integrate rigorous data practices with forward-looking scenario planning, ensuring that models deliver reliable performance across a range of real-world conditions.
Category:
E-Commerce
In what is somehow a real-life event and not an overwrought metaphor for the state of American democracy, earlier this week, work crews began tearing down the East Wing of the White House in order to make room for President Donald Trumps planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition. Previously, Trump had said that the project would not interfere with the existing building, which now appears to be accurate only in the sense that by sometime this weekend, the East Wing will no longer exist. The ballroom, which has an estimated cost of $250 million and a conspicuously uncertain completion date, will allow a president who feels most comfortable holding court at his chintzy Florida social club to enjoy a reasonable facsimile in D.C., complete with gold and crystal chandeliers, a gold-accented ceiling, and gold floor lamps. For months, Trump has boasted that he wouldnt pay for the ballrooms construction using public resources, which is perhaps the plans only saving grace. But as the government shutdown enters its fourth week and millions of federal workers continue to go unpaid, the president has opted for a financing model that is grotesque and insulting in a different way: passing the tab along to a menagerie of wealthy opportunists eager to curry favor with a president who values personal fealty above all else. Trump has fantasized for years, even before he entered politics, about being the man who expanded the White House, and reportedly reached out to the Obama administration in 2010 to offer to build a ballroom himself. He also claims to have approached the Biden White House with the same offer, which, given their history, is a conversation I assume would not include much by way of small talk. Now that Trump is president for a second time, hes been champing at the bit to follow through. Shortly after taking office, he mused about building his beautiful, beautiful ballroom, and in August, he told reporters who spotted him walking on the White House roof that he was looking for more ways to spend my money for the country. Trump has also said that managing the business of real estate is relaxing for him, an interesting insight into his priorities that is, in my view, bad news for anyone who hopes hes working diligently to reopen the government he runs. Last Wednesday, Trump hosted a dinner at the White House to court deep-pocketed prospective donors to underwrite the ballroom project, which he variously described to them as phenomenal and totally appropriate. The guest list, according to The New York Times, included representatives from many of the Big Tech brands that distanced themselves from Trump during his first White House tenure, and are now doing their best to make him forget about it: among others, Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, Meta, and Microsoft. Also well-represented at dinner was the crypto industry, whose luminaries are by now used to opening their checkbooks whenever Trump asks. Representatives from Coinbase, Ripple, Tether were in attendance; so were the Winklevoss twins, who now run the crypto exchange Gemini, and Charles and Marissa Cascarilla, whose company, Paxos, is the blockchain partner for PayPal. Also listening to Trumps pitch were a handful of big-name companies with lucrative government contracts, whose executives even more of an incentive to contribute to the presidents latest vanity project. Lockheed Martin, for example, holds multiyear defense contracts worth billions of dollars; the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton does business almost exclusively with the federal government; Peter Thiels Palantir, which has been an integral part of the U.S. defense and intelligence infrastructure for years, recently inked a $10 billion contract to provide software support services to the Army for the next decade. Under this administration, it appears that an implicit condition of continuing to do business with the government is doing little favors for Trump upon request. Even bit players in the MAGA universe who have good reason to believe they are already in Trumps inner circle still felt compelled to show up: Kelly Loeffler, the former Georgia senator whom Trump appointed to lead the Small Business Administration; Benjamin Leon, Jr., whom Trump has nominated to serve as ambassador to Spain, and the Lutnick family, whose patriarch, Howard, is currently the Secretary of Commerce. On the one hand, it feels remarkable to me that a sitting Cabinet member would perceive no optics problems with allowing his boss to solicit his family for cash on an ongoing basis. On the other hand, given this presidents history of firing Cabinet members who do not conduct themselves at all times as vassals privileged to be in his presence, obediently attending is probably the prudent choice. A final list of donors has yet to be released, but Trump says the project is fully funded. Per CBS News, Google, Booz Allen, and Palantir (among others) have all agreed to donate, as has Lockheed Martin, which has given somewhere north of $10 million. And in his remarks at the dinner last week, which was advertised on gold-lettered invitations exhorting recipients to help establish the magnificent White House Ballroom, Trump praised unnamed attendees for being really, really generous, and insinuated that some in the audience had given as much as $25 million. A pledge form obtained by CBS News allows donors to The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House to pay in a lump sum or on a three-part installment plan, and teases that they willbe eligible for some sort of recognition, which could entail etched signage on the ballrooms exterior. There is probably no better illustration of the Trump administrations approach to governance than gut-renovating the Peoples House by adding a co-branded, corporate-sponsored wing to it. One of the larger confirmed donations so far reveals just how high the stakes can be for those whom Trump asks to give. About $22 millionroughly 10% of the total price tagcomes from the money YouTube agreed to pay Trump last month to settle a lawsuit he brought over the companys decision to suspend his account in the aftermath of January 6. If you are keeping track at home, this means that a Silicon Valley giant that was kicking him off its platform four years ago is now waving the white flag in the form of an eight-figure check. At the dinner, Trump could not resist obliquely celebrating his reversal of fortune one last time: Its amazing the way a victory can change the minds of some people, he said, according to The New York Times. Officially, YouTube wrote its check to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit involved in funding the ballrooms construction. But the takeaway from this episode is pretty clear: The people and companies Trump solicits can either surrender what amounts to a rounding error on their balance sheets, thus earning Trumps praise and enjoying a significant tax write-off. Or they can pass, and run the risk that Trump turns around and uses the legal system to shake them down for even more. Wealthy people buying access to power is not new; for that matter, neither is wealthy people spending their money on decor that was already garish four decades ago. But the presidents preoccupation with rebuilding the White House in his imageand his supporters willingness to chip inlays bare the extent to which decisions in this administration are getting made by people who have no idea what life is like in this country for those who are not billionaires. Trumps government might not be open, but it is as for sale as it ever was, for anyone who can afford to pay the price.
Category:
E-Commerce
Twenty-five years ago, Google unveiled Adwords, which pledged to enable advertisers to quickly design a flexible program that best fits [their] online marketing goals and budget, Google cofounder Larry Page said at the time. The principle was simple. AdWords allowed advertisers to purchase individualized, affordable keyword-based advertising that appears alongside search results used by hundreds of millions of people every day. That decision was a game changer for Google. Advertising now accounts for around three in every four dollars of revenue the company has made so far this year, growing 10% in the last year alone. The product, since renamed Google Ads, has powered the company to prosperity, cementing its position at the top of the search space. But a quarter of a century on, artificial intelligence could force an overhaul of Google Ads. The shift from traditional search to AI answer engines represents the greatest challenge to Google’s $200 billion monetization engine we’ve ever seen, says Aengus Boyle, vice president of media at VaynerMedia, a strategy and creative agency set up by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. Thats not because competitors are siphoning away users from Google: The companys global daily active users are up 13% year on year, with nearly 2 billion people logging on to Google services every day, according to Bank of America estimates. But because Google is starting to layer in AI-tailored answers into the front page of its search resultsoften above the advertisements and blue links to sources that helped make its name over the last 25 yearsits ability to bring in ad revenue could take a serious hit. If AI answers start replacing traditional Google searches, thats a real threat to the whole cash engine, says Fergal O’Connor, CEO of Buymedia, an ad platform company. Google makes most of its money from ads tied to clicks. The more queries, the more ad space, the more revenue. The problem is that AI summaries of search results make it less necessary to click through to websites. So far, thats been to the consternation of website owners, who rely on visits to their websites in order to sustain their business models. In time, it could harm Google itself. If people stop clicking through to sites because they get what they need from an AI summary, that entire model takes a hit, OConnor says. Of course, Google will obviously try to wedge ads into the AI answers, notes OConnorand indeed, the company is already doing sobut he says its not a like-for-like comparison. One generative answer replaces a full results page of ad inventory, so its fewer impressions, fewer clicks, and less data flowing through the system, he explains. However, if anyone is best placed to capitalize on those changes, its Google, Boyle predicts. Their clearest advantage lies within Google Adswhich has allowed them to integrate ads into new AI discovery surfaces, like AI Overviews and AI Mode, faster than any of their competitors in the space, he says. OConnor believes that Google will adapt to the new norm, with AI being alteringbut not terminalto the future of advertising. If people genuinely stop Googling and start asking, the whole search economy has to reinvent itself, OConnor says. But if you’ve been around the digital ad space for a few decades, you’ll know that we’ve survived a few events that were billed as being apocalyptic to the industry. Google has had 25 years to understand how best to target and present ads to its users and to squeeze out everything it can from the ad industry. Its best placed to secure another 25 years of dominance, even if it requires some changes.
Category:
E-Commerce
Early in my (Chantals) career, my manager, Scott, shared something in my annual review that Ill never forget. My sarcastic sense of humor made some people uncomfortable. He recommended that I “tone it down a bit.” I felt embarrassed and defensive. Since I was young, Id always leveraged humor to connect and signal mental acuity. The feedback made me question what I thought I knew. Was my presumed superpower actually a liability? The conversation rattled me, and I didnt know what to do with the feedback. So often, early-career professionals enter the workforce and receive technical feedback from managers: fix code this way, prepare for a check-in using this template, sequence slides like this for a presentation. This type of feedback is helpful. Too often though, managers are nervous to share behavioral feedback (like what Scott gave to me). They worry that itll come across as too subjective and therefore not valid or offensive to the receiver. These are reasonable concerns, but unfortunately, perception can impact how your career progresses. It might be jarring (and unfair) to receive this kind of feedback, but you can actually use it to your advantage. If youre lucky enough to have a manager who gives behavioral feedback, heres how to move from unproductively rattled to productively responsive. This way, you can leverage the feedback to grow professionally. Be open (not defensive) As humans, we are wired to self-protect ourselves from danger. Research shows that feedback activates the brains threat response. As a result, it can be difficult to accept feedback. To resist a fight, flee or freeze reaction, start by giving yourself grace. As humans, we all have blind spots. That doesnt mean were not good enough the way we are. Then remind yourself that every piece of feedback is one persons perspective, not a fact. Were allowed to hold it at arms length, examine it, and decide if accepting it would support our professional development. When we are “at choice,” we can treat feedback with curiosity, which encourages growth. Practice gratitude Saying thank you releases dopamine and contributes to overall well-being. This is a great antidote to the “fear of not being good enough,” which we often experience when confronted with difficult feedback. Take a moment to appreciate the thoughtfulness of the person who is trying to help you develop and explicitly thank them. This might sound like, I imagine sharing that feedback was difficult, and Im really grateful you did. Its important I understand how Im experienced by others. Thank you. Ask open-ended questions Resist asking the feedback deliverer for numerous examples to back their point. Remember, its not a litigation. This approach will ensure that you dont receive useful feedback from them in the future. Instead, get curious about their experience of you with follow-up questions like, How did that affect you? What else feels important for me to know? What advice, if any, do you have for me? Resist doing the opposite When we receive difficult feedback, it can be tempting to respond by doing the opposite of what weve been doing. But, critical behavioral feedback we receive is often an overdone strength, not a behavior to abandon entirely. For example, one client, Izzy, exuded optimism. She always saw the best in colleagues or opportunities and could frequently be heard saying, Dont worry, itll all work out! and Sure, its possible, no problem. Unfortunately, over time, her relentless positivity started eroding her reputation. Some people perceived her to be naive and thought that she lacked critical thinking skills. Upon hearing this feedback, Izzy felt self-conscious and began to shift her behavior in a dramatic way. She wanted to prove that she could operate with a skeptical eye, It sounds like I should always be the devils advocate in the room, she said. But this reaction would have created a host of other issues. Other colleagues suddenly saw her as overly negative or even inauthentic. Instead, to support Izzys growth, we worked together to invite a little more critical judgment into her leadership to complement her gift of seeing whats possible. When you get tough feedback, instead of over-dialing, figure out specific behaviors that you might be exaggerating. And then, rather than trying to adjust the dial by 180 degrees, try to change it by just 20 degrees. Make small adjustments How do you adjust just 20 degrees? Experiment with new behaviors. Make the experiments small, easy, and playful so they feel appealing versus daunting. For example, my client, Drew, received feedback that he “talked too much and came off as a know-it-all in meetings.” So he decided to conduct an experiment. For a week, he committed to practicing affirming someone elses idea and asking a curious question when someone contributed in meetings before saying what he thought. This sounded like, “Lisa, I see how that could help progress things. Who else do you think we could involve to make it happen?“ At the end of the week, he reflected on how it went, what he learned, and what he wanted to do more or less of the next week. This type of experimentation enabled incremental growth that led to meaningful shifts in how others saw him. The importance of feedback All of us need to receive feedback to hone and continue to grow our skills. For me (Chantal), I started paying closer attention to the way my humor landed with colleagues. I started noticing when my sarcasm enhanced connection and the times when too much levity diminished psychological safety or signaled less professional behavior. Scotts feedback equipped me to use my superpower more skillfully and navigate the nuanced professional realmwith greater effectiveness. Ultimately, we must all know if our humor isnt landing, our communication is too blunt, or our empathy is overbearing. When we have the courage to hear about how others see us at work and are willing to adjust our behavior, were able to have a bigger impact in our careers and in life.
Category:
E-Commerce
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