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Have you ever admired a leader so dialed into their long-term mission that it seems nothing can shake their focus? Every move appears premeditated, every milestone perfectly timed. Now think about a leader who seems to always be in step with the moment. Their company launches timely features, aligns instantly with market shifts, and always feels fresh. For every leader who succeeds through single-minded focus, there are others whose obstinacy has led them and their organizations to arrive at a destination that is no longer desirable. And while adaptability can be a gift, it also leads many organizations to shift strategies with each change in the winds without ever hitting on a true contribution. This tension between structure and adaptability isnt just theoretical; its a foundational dynamic that has shaped industries for decades. Approaches to enterprise software development provide a useful way to gauge whether youre leaning too far in either direction. Balancing Your Leadership Approaches Early on in the history of the software industry, a waterfall strategy reigned supreme. Road maps guided development, with possible major platform releases happening every one to two years, version releases quarterly, feature sets monthly, and bug fixes weekly. Teams operated with near-military precision towards long-term goals, broken down into shorter term deliverables. But as the pace of change accelerated, that model began to break down. Agile software development emerged, favoring speed, iteration, and real-time user feedback. Short sprints (often 60 to 90 days) determined what was going to be released. Each sprint on a project added features, fixed bugs, and adapted to feedback from the previous release. Unlike with waterfall, employees from across agile teams were empowered to fix things and make many changes without going through their chain of command to get approval. In our coaching work, weve seen that the same push and pull between waterfall and agile playing out in leadership styles and company cultures. Some leaders operate like agile systems: adaptive, fast-moving, iterative, and with a distributed decision structure. They respond quickly to new data and arent afraid to pivot when the market shifts. Others take a waterfall-inspired approach: structured, methodical, deeply focused on long-term outcomes, and more rigidly hierarchical. They chart a course and stick to it, often prioritizing consistency over speed. Neither mindset is wrong, but over-indexing on either one can create serious blind spots. Agile thinkers risk spinning in circles when they follow the tides. Waterfall thinkers risk charging toward goals that become outdated or foundering on unsolvable problems. For executives, the ability to integrate both approaches is no longer optionalits essential. Heres how to strike that balanceand why your teams future may depend on it. 1. Assess your own leadership style In our coaching conversations with leaders, we often start by asking them to reflect on whether they naturally lean toward structure or spontaneity. We can expand on their natural preference by administering a personality profile survey as well. Are they more likely to build a road map and stick to it, or pivot at the first sign of change? Developing this self-awareness isnt about labeling or even changing your styleits about recognizing where you need balance. If you default to agile thinking, ask yourself: Are we making measurable progress? Or changing directions without setting a course? Are we building anything lasting? If you favor waterfall thinking, ask: Is our goal still relevant? What feedback are we ignoring? Which market changes do we need to take into account? During a recent coaching conversation a senior marketing leader at large hospitality company expressed frustrations about her proposed product launch, a new menu item, being challenged by her colleague who runs operations. He thought a different item would be faster, easier, and aligned to what customers recently told him they wanted. Her team had spent the last six months toward brand alignment, market research, product iterations, testing, launch planning, and marketing planning and were now finally ready to do something. Her waterfall approach and his agile approach were in conflict. Both made great points. In the end, they struck a balance between both proposals and management styles. 2. Understand when culture amplifies leadership style As a leader, you have to ask whether your company culture reflects your style or balances it. A culture determines how people behave naturally, on average, even when a leader is not in the room. Do people tend to work in a structured manner, with long-term goals in mind, always talking about progress against objectives? Or, does it feel like people question the current state, proposing new ideas and take initiative without seeking executive approval. Crucially, if the culture leans in a particular direction, how easy and safe is it for people who lean the other way to challenge the others. A lot of can depend on whether the company typically hires and promotes a type that matches the leaders biases or whether it embraces individuals who bring unique perspectives and skills to the workplace. When you build a corporate ethos in your image, you magnify your own tendencies in ways that create a harmonious work environment. People are not likely to argue with your decisions, because they reflect their own opinions as well. Day-to-day, that can be pleasant. In the long-run, though, it creates problems. If the leadership and organization are all Agile, then chaos may manifest. A slow-moving Waterfall culture may stall innovation. Take Boeing as an example; it continued reliance on a hierarchical, Waterfall-style of leadership and development culture has been widely criticized for contributing to recent crises. The rigid, top-down approach delayed necessary changes in engineering and quality control, despite repeated warnings from employees and whistleblowers. The 2024 mid-air panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX reignited scrutiny, and internal documents revealed slow, structured processes that resisted fast adaptation or real-time feedback. The Waterfall mindsetprioritizing schedules, approvals, and internal reporting linesled to safety risks, brand damage, and regulatory backlash. In contrast, consider Netflix. In the late 1990s, they recognized an inefficiency in the movie rental business. Leaders in this space had significant overhead costs from the physical stores from which people rented and returned movies. By allowing customers to select movies online and have then delivered, they created an economy of scale. Building this business required attention to detail and customer service. Yet, the company remained sensitive to technology trends. They realized that they were essentially sending computer files through a low-bandwidth connection (the U.S. Mail) and disrupted their own business model by pivoting to streaming. Further realizing that many companies could develop streaming models, they pivoted again to content creation. Becoming a content creator requires a lot of expertise, and so they had to implement this model using a more traditional Waterfall approach. This balance between Agile and Waterfall approaches has enabled Netflix to remain a significant force in the market. The takeaway? While a particular cultural and leadership disposition around Waterfall or Agile may b the natural to the organization and may have served it well for many years, great leaders are aware of those tendencies, and build a culture that can challenge the status quote and balance, when needed, Agile and Waterfall approaches to yield healthy (if sometimes uncomfortable) debate. 3. Combine long-term vision with real-time feedback A 2024 meta-analysis in the Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation found that agile leadership has a significant impact on organizational outcomes, team effectiveness, collaboration, and innovation. But the key isnt to replace long-term thinking entirelyits to layer agility on top of it. Thats why the most successful leaders use both mindsets. They know when to zoom outbuilding toward five-year goalsand when to zoom in, listening to customer feedback or shifting based on real-time performance indicators. New Balance has done this exceptionally well, maintaining its long-term manufacturing commitments in the U.S. while evolving its brand to meet changing consumer tastesa move that helped drive a record $6.5 billion in sales in 2023. A CMO we coached recently calls her approach glocal marketingthe balance between local and global marketing, which includes honoring the long term brand promise (Waterfall) while still connecting, through customization, at the local level to what is relevant and popular at that moment in a particular area (Agile). At the team level, this looks like maintaining a steady mission while adapting tactics. At the leadership level, it means pairing clarity of purpose with the humility to course correct. 4. Build balanced teams that challenge your defaults Theres a method in psychology to measure individual tendencies known as need for cognitive closure, and it provides a useful way to think about your own leadership approach. People high in need for closure prefer action to thinking, so they tend to react to situations and engage with available information, which is characteristic of an agile approach. People low in need for closure prefer thinking to action and typically mull over information, which often leads to the focus on long-term goals characteristic of a waterfall style. Understanding your own tendencies as a leader as well as those of your trusted associates is valuable, because it gives you the opportunity to balance your team to include those with a range of levels of need for closure to ensure your team isnt heavily biased toward either the agile or waterfall style. You can measure these tendencies with the Need for Closure scale. It will help you to see whether the people you work with tend toward High (i.e., Agile) or Low (i.e., Waterfall) Need for Closure. If you find that your team tends to be biased more toward reaction or more toward deep thought, you can use timelines to help overcome those tendencies. For example, if your team tends to react quickly, set a deadline for finalizing a decision thats far enough out to allow your team the time and space to slow down and proceed carefully and thoughtfully. In contrast, if your team often deliberates too long and gets stuck in long-term patterns, an earlier deadline can push them to make decisions more quickly. Dont surround yourself with people who think exactly like you. Instead, build teams that stretch your instincts, pressure-test your assumptions, and help you operate at both 30,000 feet and ground level. Often, peoples preferences reflect hidden assumptions that they themselves may not be aware of. Being forced to justify your strategic decisions explicitly in conversations brings those assumptions to the forefront. In addition, these strategic choices may sometimes reflect reasoning gaps that these conversations will also bring to light. Navigate with intention The best leaders dont choose between agile and waterfallthey learn to navigate the tension and switch gears with intention. Agility without direction leads to burnout. Direction without agility leads to obsolescence. So, ask yourself: Are you leaning too far in one direction? What conversations, feedback loops, or partners could help you rebalance? Because real leadership isnt about having a single styleits about learning when to move fast, when to slow down, and how to bring your team with you, every step of the way.
Category:
E-Commerce
Not all emojis are created equal. The sparkle emoji or red heart emoji are staples of text conversations and social media captions. But how often are you using the baggage claim icon or the non-potable water symbol? Recently, a new trend has emerged: mainstream emojis are being passed over in favor of more creative alternatives. The broken heart emoji? Tired. Predictable. The wilted rose emoji? Aesthetic. Unexpected. The trend began earlier this year when a video from one TikTok user went viral. The caption read: lowkey starting to become too mainstream / i might just start using . Others quickly joined in. How it feels using in the era, one TikTok user posted, cutting to a photo of someones grandpa. @savo.rl #luracks#fyp#foryou not myself – luracks As David Doochin explained for Emojipedia: One of the most typical memes gaining traction among the TikTok contingent is the X has gone mainstream / we now use Y format that declares a given meme, emoji, or cultural symbol as out of date or past its prime and offers a replacement, usually a derivative of the original symbol in some way but sometimes totally arbitrary. The most commonly used emojis include faces, hearts, and hand gesturesones that slip seamlessly into texts to convey emotion. “Loudly Crying Face” was the most-used emoji of 2024, followed by “Face with Tears of Joy” and the “Fire” emoji. Now, among younger generations and the chronically online, certain emojis have taken on entirely new meaningswith lesser-used icons pulled from obscurity. YouTuber John Casterline posted a video last month encouraging people to adopt the aerial tramway emojionce the least-used emoji in the worldas a replacement for the common “Crying Laughing Face.” I came up with a plan where we can make this emoji one of the most used emojis, at least on YouTube, he explained. Instead of using laughing emojis from now on, replace it with this. And if someone doesnt know why youre doing it, dont tell them. This isnt the first time the aerial tramway has been thrust into the spotlight. Back in 2018, the now-defunct X account @leastUsedEmoji reported that the aerial tramway held the title of least-used emoji for 11 weeks straight. Responding to the call, public transportation advocates rallied around the underappreciated emoji, spamming Twitter/X with strings of the aerial tramway. The plan worked. After 77 days, the tram climbed the ranks and was replaced in last place by input symbol for latin capital letters. As of the accounts last post on August 3, 2020, input symbol for symbols had been the least-used emoji for 264 days. Perhaps its time it gets the same treatment.
Category:
E-Commerce
Brands that arent using artificial intelligence will soon be left behindbut its not too late to start, argues a new book, AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business or Brand. The same way that business leaders once explored what it means to be digital first or mobile first or video first, digital strategists and authors Adam Brotman and Andy Sack pose the question: What does it mean to be AI first? Brotman and Sack, cofounders of the digital consultancy Forum3, interviewed some of the most influential leaders in technology for their book, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman, best known for cofounding LinkedIn. The book shares their insights as well as a playbook for businesses on how to integrate AI. Brotman, the former chief digital officer for Starbucks who shaped the brands highly successful mobile app and loyalty program, spoke to Fast Company about what he hopes readers will gain from their new book. Fast Company: Why did you and Sack want to write this particular book, and why now? We had actually been asked by Harvard Business Review Press to write a book on digital loyalty, which is my background and our specialty. But we had just had a holy s— moment, like a lot of other people, when we saw ChatGPT. We didn’t understand what was really behind these generative AI systems and where the various frontier labs and systems were going with it. We thought, we better learn this. We asked Harvard if we could go on this journey and share it with our readers, and they said yes. Why does AI feel different to you than other technological advances? There are two ways. One is that we’re talking about intelligence as a service, and that just felt like something that was always reserved for either science fiction or human beings. It wasn’t just software that you programmed, that either worked or didn’t work. The fact that it could think and reasonat least seemingly sofelt very human and unlike anything that we had seen. The second thing was how fast it was moving. You brought up the holy-s— moment. Ive heard that you and Sack at one point wanted that to be the title of the book. Why? We talked to Sam Altman as our first interview for the book. He said that the mission of OpenAI was to achieve artificial general intelligence. And by definition, thats when the AI can effectively do what any human can do, if not better, pretty much instantly and for free. We were like, Oh my God, youre focused on that. When do you think thats going to happen? And he said, I cant predict it, but probably in around five years. That was a holy-s— moment for us. We were sort of stunned. When you try this technology, I think everybody has their own aha moment, if you will. How do I take advantage of this? What is this going to mean for jobs? What is this going to mean for society? Theres a lot of exciting things but theres also a lot of scary unknowns. We thought that was an appropriate name, but of course thats not the best name for a book published by an established publisher. So we compromised and called the introduction chapter The Holy-S— Moment and the book is called AI First. You also interviewed Bill Gates. Can you tell me what your biggest learning or takeaway was from your conversation with him? Yeah, two things: One was that he likened the first time he saw ChatGPT4 to the first time he saw graphical user interface, before Microsoft came up and led the PC revolution with Windows. So he validated and confirmed the significance of this technology. The other thing Bill Gates said to us that was a key takeaway was about the contours of the concept of productivity. Most of us think of productivity as just quantitative, meaning output. He reminded us that productivity has a qualitative edge and dimension to it, and that if you have access to a tool like generative AI and you know how to harness it, you’re going to not just up your productivity, but the quality of your work. I thought that was really interesting. How should business leaders today be leveraging AI? Most organizations want to skip to the AI innovation. They want to skip to the application, like the chatbot or the robot. What theyre skipping over is the powerful effects of everybody using AI many times a day, every day, to enhance their decision-making and analysis and insightsfrankly, to do their job better and faster. Thats not as sexy as some advanced voice-mode, drive-thru technology you deploy across all your QSR [quick-service restaurant] locations. Its not as sexy as completely innovating your creative output through text-to-image, text-to-video capabilities. Those are really important AI use cases, but theyre not the everyday, always-on superpower of letting every individual get that benefit of co-intelligence to make decisions faster. One of the key nuggets from the book is that AI-first organizations start with AI-first people. Is that what you mean when you say that business owners should be thinking of AI as a colleague? Yes. Its collaborating, soundboarding with the AI, inviting AI to the table, as [AI expert and Wharton] professor Ethan Mollick likes to say. Its thinking of it as a member of your team, a colleague. Is there anything else you want readers to know about your book or AI in general? I think a lot of people are intimidated or afraid of either not being able to keep up with the advancements in AI or of the implications of AI, given how fast-moving and powerful it is. What I would say is: Its absolutely not too late. There are so many business leaders in the same spot as you. This is the perfect time to develop a game plan to figure out how to make your organization keep up with whats going on. But dont waitget started.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the fictional town Levi’s and Nike created to promote their latest collaboration of denim outerwear and Air Max 95s, the paperboy still delivers the morning newspaper by bike (with an arm like a cannon, by the way), and the neighbor out walking her dog just so happens to be the WNBA’s Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers. Welcome to Blue Arc County. [Photo: Levi’s] For their latest joint collection, out in July, the brands are releasing a special edition of the Nike Air Max 95 made from Levi’s denim in a neutral matte white; black; indigo denim; and full-on Canadian tuxedo made from the Levi’s x Nike Trucker Jacket and matching Baggy Jean. Like its jeans, Levi’s sneakers with Nike feature a single Levi’s Red Tab under the Nike Swoosh on the right shoe only. The jacket sports a big Nike wordmark and Swoosh logo lockup in white on the back, plus co-branded brown leather patches. [Photo: Levi’s] The world Levi’s and Nike created for the collection is charming but hard to place. In promotional photos and social media shots featuring Bueckers, hip-hop artist Larry June, NFL player Keon Coleman, and designer Daniel Buezo, it’s a mix of rural country, Midwest suburb, and deep South. The local barbecue joint is staged like the sort of roadside, hole-in-the-wall treasure that draws in diners far and wide, and the Blue Arc County logo shows an evergreen tree line that evokes Nike’s Oregon roots. It’s Anywhere, U.S.A., built for promoting two iconic American brands at a time when heartland aesthetic is ascendent. [Photo: Levi’s] This isn’t Nike’s first foray into “jeakers” with Levi’s. They teamed up for apparel like a Nike SB x Levi’s 511 Skateboarding Collection in 2012 and Nike Air Force 1s by Levi’s in 2019. But their 2025 collab uses lighter-wash denim for the jacket and jeans and a lower-profile shoe that feels less like a novelty than some past attempts. It’s a simple capsule, but they got the details right. [Photo: Levi’s] The announcement was timed just before Nike reported its quarterly earnings June 26. The company said earlier this year it expects a sales decline, and its planned NikeSkims launch has been postponed, but a highly anticipated collab with the denim brand is good news. Levi’s parent company, Levi Strauss, beat expectations earlier this year, and CEO Michelle Gass said on the company’s April earnings call that new products were “resonating and driving market share gains. She also referenced a “robust product pipeline that she said will fuel growth in the companys denim and nondenim business well into 2026.
Category:
E-Commerce
I run two companies, lead a team of over 20 people, mentor women entrepreneurs, and juggle multiple side projects. As a result, my calendar is filled with calls, meetings, decisions, deadlines, and the constant ping of notifications. For years, I convinced myself that unpluggingeven for a daywould be reckless. What if something urgent came up? What if everything collapsed? Eventually, though, I did it. I turned off my phone for seven full days. No email, no WhatsApp, no Slack, no Instagram. Just silenceand, of course, a notebook. This digital detox had a deeper purpose than a conventional holiday. In todays world, being on vacation can mean keeping in touch, even if lightly: answering emails, reading news, scrolling through social media, and so on. We stay in the information bubble, which makes it difficult to tune out the noise. I didnt plan to turn this into a case study. I simply needed a break. What I didnt expect was how deeply restorative and surprisingly productive it would be. My fear was that it would slow me down, but instead, it recalibrated me. And if youre someone who thinks they cant afford to disconnect, thats exactly why you should. Heres a way to start. What the detox looked like Because it was the weekend, I didnt need to make a big announcement. Just four peoplemy mother, sister, business partner, and assistantknew how to reach me in case of an emergency. Everyone else was left in the quiet. It was all designed consciously. Part of the detox fell on the weekend, when I did not expect any urgent messages from clients or partners. Also, there were some public holidays, so in the end I only missed one day of work. At the same time, I put my full trust in my team. Our managers are the first point of contact for clients, while my business partner is the go-to touchpoint for employees. Everyone also has my assistants contact details, so if something truly pressing had come up, they would have easily found out why I wasnt responding. So, late on a Friday night, I shut my phone down, and didnt turn it back on until one hour before my next workday. This buffer gave me space to ease in without anxiety. In case youre wondering, there were no exceptions. The phone wasnt silenced or stashed in a drawer I could access when I needed comfort. It stayed off, completely out of reach. Heres a snapshot of how a day looked like during this period: Mornings started with movementpilates or a long runfollowed by a mindful, unhurried breakfast. Then: hours of reading real books. No articles, no headlines. I took two naps a day for the first 48 hours. It was as if my nervous system had been waiting for permission to rest. By day three, something shifted. I began writing. Not for deadlines, just to think. I filled pages and pagesincluding my goals for the year, updates to my life balance wheel, forgotten ideas, coaching reflections, and personal values I hadnt revisited in months. Creative clarity came fast, and because I opened the space for it, it stayed. Three lessons I took with me I walked away from my phoneless time with dozens of insights. Of those, three stayed with me, and theyve reshaped both how I work and how I lead. #1: Clients are mirrors Every client relationship reflects something back at you. When youre truly present, you start to notice what those reflections are teaching youwhere your boundaries are too loose, where your expertise can deepen, what energizes you, and what drains you. We also learn to listen more attentively. As a seasoned PR pro, I know what I need to do to achieve the best possible resultsthe biggest coverage, the boldest narrative, the most polished story. But over time, Ive realized that what I consider the best isnt always what the client actually needs. This shift in perspective changed the way I work, and helped me build deeper relationships with my clients. I can honestly tell Ive learned more about myself from client work than from many books or programs. Not because they teach me something directly, but because they hold up a mirror. When were receptive to it, that relationship becomes a shared process of growth. #2: Choose your energy before the day begins Before I made this shift, my mornings belonged to everyone else. Id wake up and immediately jump into the noiseemails, deadlines, and messages. I was reacting to the worlds demands before Id even taken a breath. But now, I begin each day with a decision: Who do I want to be today? I started setting a tone for the day, not with tasks, but with intention. Calm. Generous. Creative. Focused. That one quiet choice each morning changed how I navigated everything else. I wasnt reacting, I was leading from the inside out. And when you do that, the world starts meeting you differently. Now, the day feels like minenot something Im surviving, but something Im actively shaping. #3: Dont make decisions just to relieve pressure Many of us, especially high performers, can easily confuse urgency with clarity. We say yes, push forward, launch, commit. Not necessarily because were grounded, but because were tense. Stepping away helped me name that pattern. During this time, I realized how often I made choices to soothe discomfort rather than move from vision. Now, before anything, I pause and ask myselfIs this decision coming from a place of power, or from a place of pressure? Why more people should try a phone detox Your brain needs rest. Not scrolling, not content-switching. Real, deep rest. We dont hesitate to give our muscles recovery days after a grueling exercise session. Why cant we do the same with our minds? When we stop consuming content, our brain starts producing it. Ideas resurface. Our vision returns. We reconnect to the version of ourselves that doesnt need noise to feel alive. Silence, as I learned, did not slow me down. It reintroduced me to what matters the most. We frequently imagine disconnection as a luxury. Its not. From this new vantage point, I can say it is a leadership practice. It is how we step back into our lives with discernment, energy, and purpose. Nothing burned down while I was gone. The world kept spinning. And I came back steadier, sharper, and more attuned to those things I hold dearly. If youre still thinking along the lines of, I could never take a week off, thats exactly your sign. There is clarity waiting for you, patiently, on the other side of silence.
Category:
E-Commerce
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