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What do prison and business have in common? At first glance, nothing. One is a place where hope and trust are scarce, and every decision you make is a matter of survival. The other is a world built on innovation and collaboration, full of opportunities. But when you strip them both down to their core, youll find the same thing: leadership. And not the kind of leadership you read about in glossy books. Im talking about real-life, earned leadership. My name is Andre Norman, and I was once sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. That kind of time breaks most men. But I worked day in and day out to earn my freedom and, after 14 years, I reentered the world as a completely different man. While I was behind bars, before I realized my life didnt have to end in prison, I rose through the ranks of the gang system. As a prison boss, I managed gang activities from within the maximum-security walls, one of the toughest environments on the planet. But I soon realized that, even though I had a sense of leadership, I was the King of Nowhere. During two years of solitary confinement, I made a decision that changed everything. I set my sights on Harvard University. It was a big goal for someone in my position, but I knew if I wanted it badly enough, I could make it happen. From that moment, I worked backward, using the same skills that had helped me survive in prison: reading people, networking, communicating. And in 2015, my dream became a reality: I earned a fellowship at Harvard Law School. In prison, leadership wasnt a titleit was survival. You had to know how to read people. If you make the wrong call, it could cost you your life. I didnt have the luxury of guessing. I had to know. Is this person going to kill me today, or are they someone I can work with? Behind bars, you learn quickly that loyalty isnt given, its earned. And trust? Trust is the most valuable currency of all. When I got out and started working with CEOs and leaders, I realized that the business world is not so different from the world I left behindbesides the fact that nobody is coming to the table with a knife. Still, the principles of leadership dont change. In prison, nobody cares about your title. They dont follow you because you say youre in charge. They follow you because youve proven you can lead. Its the same in business. Your people arent going to trust you just because of your org chart. Theyll trust you because youve shown them that youre worth trusting. If Ive learned one thing, its that leadership is universal. Whether youre behind bars or behind a desk, the same rules apply. Here are a few of the rules Ive picked up along the way: Comfort is the enemy of success Comfort is a trap. In prison, getting comfortable meant letting your guard down. And letting your guard down could mean losing everything. The same applies to leadership. When you and your team settle into a rhythm that feels safe, you stop growing. The best leaders embrace discomfort because its a sign of growth and progress. Make better people, not just better businesses Prison taught me that the strength of your crew determines the strength of your leadership. If youre only focused on hitting numbers or meeting deadlines, youre missing the bigger picture. In business, just like in life, better relationships build better outcomes. As a leader, your job isnt just to make sure the work gets done, its to help your team to grow into the best versions of themselves. When you invest in your people, the results take care of themselves. Accountability isnt punishment Holding people accountable doesnt make you the bad guy. Accountability is love. It means you care enough to challenge your team to be better, just like you challenge yourself to be a better leader. In prison, accountability was life or death. In business, its the difference between mediocrity and greatness. When you hold people accountable, youre not punishing themyoure showing them you believe in their potential. Communication is everything In prison, a single misstep in communication could lead to chaos. The same goes for business. Effective communication isnt just about what you say but how you say it. Even more importantly, its about how you listen. Great leaders read between the lines and notice whats been left unsaid. Their goal isnt to be the loudest voice in the room, but to create space for people to speak up. Communication is the glue that holds your team together. Golden handcuffs are still handcuffs Handcuffs trap leaders, too. The question is: Are you in your position because youre passionate about the work, or because of the allure of money, status, and power? Leadership can feel like a cage, even when its lined with perks. If you feel constrained, its time for a change. You can walk away. Or you can simply break free from monotony by seeking out fresh challenges that inspire and stretch you. Leadership isnt a positionits a practice. Its something you work at each and every day. Leadership is earned through action and proven in the moments when you step up, even when its hard. So, you have a choice: to lead with purpose or to go through the motions. The leaders who make the biggest impact are the ones who never stop doing the work. What does your leadership look like?
Category:
E-Commerce
As a kid of the 1970s, I was fascinated by a short-lived art movement known as photorealism. The painters who practiced it created works that werent merely realistic. They were borderline indistinguishable from photographsan extraordinary feat to pull off with oil on canvas. If the genre hadnt involved so much painstaking effort, it might have gained more momentum. Thanks to generative AI tools such as DALL-E and Midjourney, which can turn a written prompt into a photo-like image in seconds, we now live in an era of point-and-click photorealism. The results often dont amount to anything more than internet chum. I certainly didnt consider any of it to be artuntil last week, when I read about a Costa Rican artist named Matias Sauter Morera. He made the news by selling an image hed created using AI to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where it will be included in an upcoming exhibit called Queer Lens: A History of Photography. In an interview with Artnets Adam Schrader, Sauter Moreraan accomplished photographerdiscussed this image and others hed made using AI, all inspired by the secret lives of 1970s Costa Rican cowboys. I encourage you to check out the Artnet storys pictures and explanation of why Sauter Morera chose to synthesize them rather than take them with a camera. He didnt just type prompts into DALL-E and then claim the results as his own creation. Instead, he says, his process involves multiple AI models, Photoshop, and months of labor; though he emphasizes that the results are not photos, they clearly benefit from his photographers eye. What Sauter Morera is doing has real emotional punch to it: It has more in common with the photorealism of the 70s than with the spammy, soulless AI slop of 2025. But I do admit to being taken aback by the way Artnet and other media outlets that reported on his Getty sale bandied about the term AI photograph. Im not even sure how I feel about the august museum including one of his computer-generated pictures in a photography exhibit. After all, the fact that an image looks an awful lot like a photograph does not make it one. Photos start out as light captured via a photosensitive surfacetoday, usually an electronic sensor, and a strip of film before that. They record a moment in time that actually occurred. Sauter Moreras AI images do not; thats their entire point. (He says he opted for AI in part to add a speculative element, as well as avoid invading anyones privacy.) Now, the line between photography and reality as we might envision it has always been blurry. For one thing, even unedited photos have the power to mislead as well as inform. The act of pointing a lens at something is as much about what doesnt get into the frame as what does; youre never seeing the whole story, and maybe not even a good-faith subset of it. More than a century and a half ago, famed photographer Mathew Brady shot a photo of then-presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, had an assistant retouch it to be more flattering, then took a picture of that picturebasically that eras equivalent of applying a beauty filter. Today, Google and Apple both tout smartphone AI that lets you quickly and easily erase people and objects from photos. That might be pretty innocuous if youre excising random photobombers from a snapshot of your family at the beach, but its still a decisive move away from photography being documentary evidence of anything. I believe its worth preserving the distinction between a photoeven its been through the AI wringerand something that closely resembles one. Im not just worried about the prospect of people being deceived by simulated photos produced by AI: That computer-generated horse is already out of the hyperrealistic barn. Itll only run more rampant as algorithms eradicate the remaining telltale signs of an images synthetic origins. (Incidentally, did you know that AI still cant figure out how to show left-handed people writing?) What has me particularly jittery is the prospect of peoplemany of whom are perfectly content luxuriating within bubbles of misinformationnot caring whether an image depicts something that actually happened. Conflating photo-like images with photos can only encourage such a scenario. Even now, this isnt a theoretical problem. Facebook is awash in bargain-basement AI imagery that doesnt seem to be fooling members so much as providing the same dopamine hit as a real photo. And last year, during Hurricane Helene, an AI-generated image of a sobbing child and adorable puppy being rescued via boat went viral on Twitter. The picture tugged at heartstrings, but was also weaponized in attacks on the Biden administrations response to the disaster. After its authenticity was questioned, one member of the Republican National Committee continued to call it a photo and said she didnt care about its backstory. She might not, but we should. Technologies and standards for authenticating the provenance of digital imagery are vital, but they presume a desire to separate the real from the fake. As that distinction gets tougher to make through mere eyeballing, well need to work harer to maintain it. Reserving the term photograph for images shot with a camera is not a bad first step. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if youre reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Wednesday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. Im also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. More top tech stories from Fast Company This vibrating app makes you feel better just by putting your iPhone on your heartA new app uses haptic feedback motors to stimulate your vagus nerve and calm you down. Read More Federal workers fired by Elon Musks DOGE are sharing their anxieties on RedditGovernment employees are taking to the online forum to share layoff horror stories and discuss their next steps. Read More What is Y Combinator now? Critics say the famed accelerator is having an identity crisisAs Y Combinator expands and evolves, investors and founders question whether its golden reputation still holds. Read More Apple finally lets you merge 2 Apple IDskinda. Heres howAnyone with more than one Apple ID knows how frustrating things can get. Now you can do something about it. 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Category:
E-Commerce
Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Companys work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: What should I do if I feel like my company is failing? A: This is a bleak question, and unfortunately not uncommon right now. Ill address it from two different angles: 1.) If you feel the failure of the company is unfixable or that you arent in a position to help; and 2.) If you have hope that you might be able to turn things around. When the failure of your company is certain (or unfixable) First, here are some of the signs that things are going south. One of two can just mean the company is going through a rough patch, but if these start adding up, its harderbut not unheard offor a company to recover. The company you work for has been losing significant amounts of money for more than a year The company has had a significant round of layoffs, or more than one round of layoffs in the past year. Or employees are being offered early retirement or buyouts The company has a hiring or raise freeze Several star employees leave Consultants are brought in to revamp things The vision and strategy of the company changes or seems uncertain Upper management suddenly starts conducting a lot more closed-door meetings There is a significant drop in customers or clients Projects are cancelled with no explanation Thats a simplified and not comprehensive list, but if you are asking this question, youve probably noticed a few of those signs along with the general things are not great vibes. And regardless of if or how soon your company might close, go bankrupt, be sold, etc., it can feel pretty demoralizing to work for a company thats not doing well. You likely have a feeling like nothing you do will matter and you certainly arent motivated to do your best work.In this case the ending is the same: You will have to find a new job. How you arrive there is your only choice. You can look for your next role, resign (yes, you should still give two weeks notice), and leave before the ship sinks. Your other choice is to wait it out. The reason to do that is to collect any possible severanceespecially if youve been with the company for a long time. When theres hope that you can turn things around Now that weve gotten the worst case scenario out of the way, lets end on a slightly more hopeful note. If you feel like things are bad but can still be turned around, your ability to effect change depends a little bit on your role. The general spirit is the same, however. You can either: Return to what worked before: Use your institutional knowledge and lean on your strengths. Try something totally new: Throw out the notion of what worked before and get creative with fresh ideas. Yes, those are completely opposite tactics. But both can be helpful depending on the issues facing your company. Heres how to decide what to try: When to lean on what worked before: Sometimes businesses go astray because they venture too far from their core mission or what made them successful in the first place. If you’re in a leadership position and there have been a lot of changes over recent years or a move away for what worked in the past, its a good time to realign your team’s goals with those core principles and eliminate the obstacles that get in the way. That can even mean things like how you work. If your team was happier and more productive working remotely and output and morale has dropped since a company wide RTO policy, make the change back. Admitting you were wrong is uncomfortable. But its also the sign of the type of emotionally intelligent leader who people want to work for. If you arent in leadership, but see that new policy is hurting the company, you can still suggest changes. Just make sure you are armed with data. Show, for example, that your customer or sales numbers were higher before the company cut back on contracting with certain suppliers or that the candidate pool has shrunk since the company ended its DEI initiatives. When to try something totally new: Companies often fail because times change and they dont. If your company is stuck in a this is how its always been done mindset, it might be time to try something new. This is a huge mindset shift and individual employees cant overhaul for the whole company. But that doesnt mean you cant get a little experimental. If there are too many layers of bureaucracy in the way of making change, it might mean trying something a little unofficially. While the notion of asking forgiveness instead of permission is certainly riskier, if your company isnt doing well anyways you have less to lose. This could mean things like collaborating across departments or changing a workflow or reevaluating departmental budgets.Feeling like you are on a sinking ship is a tough spot to be in at work, but it can also give you the freedom to step outside of your comfort zone.Need some more advice on navigating a tough business climate? Here you go: This is how to be an empathic leader during stressful times How to motivate employees in difficult times, according to a psychologist 4 ways to keep your teams happy and productive in tough times
Category:
E-Commerce
As demand for EVs declines, electric automaker Rivian is taking this time to adapt its business and expand its brand. Rivians founder and CEO RJ Scaringe joins Rapid Response to explore the companys recent $5.8 billion partnership with Volkswagen, the ongoing risk assessment for self-driving features, and how Rivian’s AI-enabled ‘technological plumbing’ can accelerate the brand beyond incumbent manufacturers. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I want to ask about AI because everyone’s focused on how it will impact car experiences. What are you doing at Rivian, and how far are we from a driverless world? Should we have one? I think it’s incredibly important. It arguably becomes the most important part of the businessthe vehicle’s ability to drive itself. Consumers start getting their time back. Even if you enjoy driving, the ability to leave and have the car take you is a nice feature. This is a big focus for us. When we launched our first products, we had a limited highway assist feature that allowed hands-on wheel and eyes on the road, but the vehicle drives itself. On our Gen 2 vehicle, we started working on designing an entire camera set, with 55 megapixels, more than any other vehicle sold in the U.S. We have five radars, including a front imaging radar. We control that entire stack and use emerging technologies to train the platform. Self-driving developed before 2021 was heavily rules-based. But now, we can use end-to-end training, using modern techniques akin to what’s used in large language models and transformers. It’s completely changing self-driving development and speeding it up. We announced a hands-free feature, where the vehicle will drive itself on highways with hands off the wheel, coming very soon. After that, we’ll expand it to other roads, then to hands-free, eyes-off. There are exciting features coming. I want to make sure I really understand this. So the car can essentially be driven without you doing anything, but it’s not safe enough to turn it entirely over to the car in all situations. But as it improves, you’ll update the software to allow that safely, without changing the vehicle. When we release or enable our self-driving features, we start in domains with extremely high confidence. It’s a bit of the Wild West because there’s no legal body arbitrating the level at which to expose these features. It’s your judgment about what you feel confident in and the risk you’re willing to take? Every brand makes this decision differently. We’ve really erred on hyper-focus on safety, making sure that before we expand the operating windows to, let’s say, neighborhood roads or school zones, we want to really be robust in the solution. We’re talking about autonomy, which is one slice of AI in the vehicle. We’ll see other AI elements emerge. Think of something as simple as navigating. Imagine if you don’t know where you want to go. You get in the car, and say, “I’m hungry.” And the car says, “Well, what do you feel like?” And you say, “I don’t know.” And it says, “Well, yesterday you had Italian. What do you feel about burritos today?” And, you know, so just the ability to be conversational and contextual. It’ll be one of those kinds of changes, I think, where it’ll happen, we won’t even fully realize it’s happening. And then we’ll look back and be like, how did we used to live? When you think about AI applications beyond self-driving, how important is it for Rivian to be at the forefront versus following along? Early on, we realized software was going to be important. At Rivian, we’re controlling the whole software stack, not using suppliers for all these computers. We’re making our own, with all our own computers. It requires fundamental shifts, not relying on third-party suppliers for software or computers. This architecture I’ve described underpins what we’ve achieved. We did a $5.8 billion joint venture and licensing deal with Volkswagen Group, the second-largest car company in the world. We’re providing software and electronics to enable what I just described, allowing them to step massively forward in network architecture and software topology. And, that’s of course what we architected. If you don’t have that, it’s hard to imagine integrating AI properly. Step one is getting the plumbing right. You’ve got to get the network architecture right. You’ve got to get the topology of computers right. You’ve got to get the right levels of compute. I mean, down into the basics of like, what level of memory do you have? What’s your graphics capabilities? And these are things that are going to be really hard without making a big break from the traditional model for existing manufacturers. So I say all this because I think we’re at this inflection point where the cars of the historical past in terms of architecture and the cars of the future in terms of architectureI put ourselves, I put Tesla in that category. And the features are sort of similar, like they’re mostly the same. And it’s easy to confuse features for capability, but the platforms are totally different. And so the growth potential of those two platforms in terms of adopting future technology is wildly different. So where they end up in, let’s say five to 10 years, is in very, very different places. And so I think we’re gonna see a lot of existing incumbent manufacturers work very hard either through partnerships like what was done with us, or through other means to move to these newer technology platforms. China has become a leading EV producer. I’m curious about the implications for the car industry. How do you view China’s developments and their impact on your business? Well, the world is electrifying. The U.S. market is slower than Europe or China. But probably the singular issue that I’d say there’s very clear alignment between both the Democratic side of the United States and the Republican side of the United States is that the United States needs to continue to lead in technology and to continue to really serve as an economic superpower. And in order for that to be true, we also need to continue to be great at the world’s future technologies. China benefited from government support for EVs. If America wants to stay at the forefront in this technological development, how important is government support? China has many electric car companies, a lot narrowly differentiated. Their regions provided much financing, leading to intense price competition to capture a growing market. However, there’s uncertainty about whether these products can be sold in the U.S. and the tariffs involved. Probably, in the short term, there’s going to continue to be not a lot of trade from the U. S. shipping products to Chinaand vice versa China shipping products and vehicles to the United States. But I think in the long term everyone should be thinking about this, to say, let’s imagine a world where we can all compete freely, meaning we’re competing head to head. And so we spend every day thinking about How do we make our products better? How do we look at what others are doing and embrace the competition and see it as an opportunity for us to run faster? That’s the mindset we built into the business. This interview is part of a Rapid Response partnership with Stripe.
Category:
E-Commerce
During Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Democratic Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota asked him about his stance on people who take antidepressants. “I know people, including members of my family, who’ve had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off of heroin,” Kennedy responded. While many of Kennedys beliefs are questionable, hes voicing a common misconception around SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Approximately 13% of Americans take SSRIs, which are a type of antidepressant that work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain. To begin with, Dr. Sarah Hartz, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, points out that there is a difference between being addicted to a substance and taking a medication for a chronic condition. With the latter, your symptoms may come back if you stop taking medicationwhich can be the case for people who have severe anxiety or depression, or high blood pressure. In addition, several medications require patients taper off of them slowly, or theyll experience unpleasant side effects. These include blood-pressure and heart medications, and, yes, in some cases SSRIs. A 2024 analysis of 79 studies encompassing 21,000 patients found that approximately one in 30 patients have severe symptoms when they stop using antidepressants. With SSRIs, people have different tolerances for how quickly they can get off of them. Some people have to taper, some dont, Hartz says. Furthermore, addiction itself is a tricky term to unpack. In the most general sense, addiction means a person cant quit a substance even if they want to. Technically, sugar and caffeine are addictive. So is alcohol. Yet, using them regularly is widely accepted. Likely, when Kennedy compared heroin to SSRIs, he was referring to severe addiction, or what psychiatrists call substance use disorder. Substance use disorder has 11 different criteria, which can be grouped into four categories: Physical dependence: Developing a tolerance for increased amounts of the substance and experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you stop. Risky use: For example, using the substance while driving or continuing to use it despite experiencing mental or physical problems. Social problems: For example, neglecting responsibilities or continuing to use the substance despite it causing problems in relationships. Impaired control: Taking the substance longer than your meant to, having cravings, experiencing an inability to stop, or spending significant amounts of time obtaining, using, or recovering from the substance. Hartz points out that SSRIs dont cause these four categories of problems. While, some people do experience withdrawal symptoms and others need to increase their dose, usually taking SSRIs improves someones ability to functional socially. Furthermore, it takes a few weeks for SSRIs to kick in, so they are less likely to be abused or cause impaired control. You cant get high from SSRIs, says Hartz. You can take five times the recommended dose and you wont get high. Theres no instantaneous mood change so people are less likely to misuse them, unlike opioids or stimulants for ADHD. SSRIs are also accompanied by side effects such as decreased libido, inability to climax, headaches, and nausea. I dont see people taking them when they dont need them, Hartz says. Most people dont want to take a pill they arent getting a benefit from. Hartz notes that Kennedys statements echo existing stigmas around mental health. Psychiatric medications are singled out in a way they shouldnt be, Hartz says. People think mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression arent medical problems. They think its about self-control and behavior so they feel guilty about seeking help. But depression and anxiety can be debilitating and we have treatments for them.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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