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When companies undergo a major change, such as a CEO transition, reorganization, merger, or acquisition, most leaders default to one well-worn instinct: control the message. Lock down talking points. Tighten the language. Make it polished and official. In working with executive teams across industries, from tech to retail, weve seen time and again that simply trying to control the message isnt enough. In fact, it often has the opposite effect, creating more confusion and mistrust than clarity. Because in every high-stakes moment, your audienceemployees, customers, investorsis asking the same unspoken question: Whats in it for me? And if youre not answering it, someone else will. Why WIIFM isnt a selfish question For years, the phrase Whats in it for me? (or WIIFM) has gotten a bad rap. Leaders dismiss it as self-centered or marketing fluff. Not a serious strategy. But the opposite is true: WIIFM is one of the most powerful lenses available to a leader navigating complex change. Its not about pandering. Its about making strategy personal and anticipating needs. When people understand how a change will impact them, theyre far more likely to align with it, advocate for it, and stick around to help execute it. WIIFM isnt about promising perks or pay raises. Its about translating organizational ambition into something timely and tangible for the people you need on board. Weve seen this across the board: in mergers and acquisitions where alignment felt impossible, in CEO transitions where trust was on the line, and in executive team restructurings where internal politics threatened progress. Leaders who start with WIIFM consistently build momentum, while those who skip it often lose the narrative . . . and the talent. What happens when leaders skip the WIIFM moment Not long ago, we worked with a company making an acquisition. The executive team was excited about the deal and confident about the shared mission, but in those critical first weeks after the announcement, they froze. Without all the answers in place, they waited to finalize every detail before they communicated anything to the acquired organization. During that time, the acquired organization was left to speculate. Rumors flew. Teams filled in the blanks. Fear took over. By the time the executive team had the certainty the acquired company was looking for and formal messaging landed, it was too late. Some talent had moved on, and for the rest, they were left with months of unwinding the rumors and working from a deficit to rebuild trust. We see this pattern again and again: silence creates space for confusion. In the absence of clarity, people default to self-protection and assume the worst. The longer the silence lingers, the further they go down the rabbit hole. But when leaders show up early, even if all the answers arent yet clear, and acknowledge the WIIFM questions head-on, they build trust. As one client told us, When you show your face, you get the benefit of the doubt. By anticipating their needs, you can limit their anxieties and show that you considered how they may be impacted. How to answer Whats in it for me? (without saying those exact words) Lets be clear: this isnt about scripting new taglines. Its about pausing to ask a better question before you write the message. Before announcing any change, take five minutes to ask: What might my audience be worried about right now? What might they hope this change will solve for them? What could this feel like from their seat? As one senior leader we worked with put it: People don’t expect their leaders to have all the answersthey expect presence. Leaders must be transparent, empathetic, and engaged in navigating change alongside their teams.” One message, many audiences: How to stay consistent One of the biggest hesitations we hear from executives is: How do I tailor the message without creating inconsistencies? The answer is to identify a core message and then deliver it in audience-relevant language. Your strategy may not change, but the way you communicate it will. For example, your core message might be: Were evolving our structure to accelerate innovation. For employees, that might sound like: Were investing in clearer roles and fewer bottlenecks so teams can move faster and focus more on the work that matters. For customers: This means quicker product releases, better service, and less lag time. For investors: We expect this change to improve speed-to-market and reduce operating inefficiencies. Each message serves the same strategy. But each audience hears what matters most to them. Four prompts to make it personal Weve developed four simple prompts that help leaders shift their communication from top-down announcements to audience-centered leadership: What are they worried about losing?Security? Status? Control? Address it head-on. What might they gain?New opportunities, visibility, development, autonomyspell it out. But dont make any promises. What does this mean for them in the next 30, 60, 90 days?Use time as a grounding tool and a project management asset. This may present an opportunity to reengage with the audience after each benchmark. What will we be transparent about even if we dont have all the answers yet?Uncertainty is okay. Silence is not. These prompts do more than clarify the messaging. They help you show up as a leader who gets it and who doesnt just recite vision statements but connects them to the lived realities. Leading in the uncertainty gap As leaders, we often feel the pressure to have everything figured out before we speak up. But that instinct is counterproductive. Waiting for perfect information, especially in M&A scenarios, means youve already lost the room. As ProjectNext senior advisor Connie Rawson often reminds our clients, Even saying, We dont have all the answers yet, but heres what you can expect in the next 30 days, creates more stability than radio silence. Because the real risk isnt in saying the wrong thing, its in saying nothing at all. In an era where trust is harder to earn and easier to lose, hierarchical authority doesnt command unbridled loyalty the way it used to. People want clarity, connection, and honesty. They deserve it. The good news? WIIFM isnt just a tool for crisis moments. Its a muscle you can build into your everyday leadership. When you consistently make strategy personal across teams, stakeholders, and situations, you dont just manage chage. You lead through it.
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A typical three-bedroom house in Austin, Texas, can sometimes rack up monthly utility bills of $200 or $300 in the summer. But in new homes under construction in a nearby suburb, residents will owe little beyond the basic utility connection fee. The homes, built by Habitat for Humanity, tap into a shared geothermal system in a fully geothermal neighborhood. Heat pumps in each house connect to pipes that loop hundreds of feet underground, making use of the earths steady temperature for heating and cooling. The houses are also built to use as little energy as possible, with features like deep eaves that shade the interior and reduce the need for air-conditioning. Solar shingles on the roofs produce enough power to match each homes expected electricity use. Our goal is to make sure that they have a very, very low energy bill at the end of the day, says Billy Whipple, chief impact officer at Habitat for Humanity’s Austin office. The nonprofit, known for working with volunteers to help lower the cost of construction, sees affordable housing holistically. Its not enough just to have a low monthly mortgage payment; homes also need to be designed to have low maintenance and utility costs, especially as energy bills keep rising. [Rendering: courtesy Austin Habitat for Humanity] A 100% geothermal neighborhood The houses are part of Whisper Valley, a larger development that was designed to rely on geothermal energy. This type of geothermal technology, also known as a ground-source heat pump, isn’t new. Habitat for Humanity has used the tech itself in other developments. But it’s still fairly uncommon because of the cost. Depending on the house, some systems can cost as much as $45,000. Building a connected network for the neighborhood, rather than adding the technology home by home, helps make it more affordable. EcoSmart Solution, a company that builds geothermal infrastructure, drills boreholes on each lot that connect to a larger energy system. “It allows us to implement the geothermal heating and cooling system at a fraction of the cost of doing it on a home-by-home basis,” says Chris Gray, EcoSmart’s CEO. “We bring it as a service. We do all of the drilling, all of the piping, all of the network connecting to each lot before the builders ever take over the lot.” Taurus Investment Holdings, the original developer behind the property, had a vision of making sustainability mainstream. “They were looking at what we can do to really create sustainability, but in an accessible, affordable way that can be approachable for the mass market,” Gray says. [Photo: EcoSmart Solution] The first homes began construction in 2017, and hundreds are now in place. Ultimately, the neighborhood is projected to have around 7,500 homes built by a variety of developers, along with businesses and around 700 acres of green space. Houses currently listed for sale range up to $465,000. Habitat for Humanity’s three-bedroom and four-bedroom homes, available for families earning 60% to 80% of the area median income, are much more affordable, at $230,000 to $245,000. (That’s also well below the average cost within the city of Austin, where the median sales price was around $575,000 last month.) The nonprofit budgeted around $33,000 per house to add the solar and geothermal systems, according to Whipple. Ultra-efficient homes To minimize energy use, Habitat’s homes are well-insulated with an extra-tight building envelope. “When [homeowners] heat and cool, they won’t have to do it as frequently,” Whipple says. The houses also use passive design techniques, like deep overhangs on the windows that provide shade on sweltering Texas days. Inside, the appliances are Energy Star certified. The homes also use LED lighting, smart thermostats, and heat pump water heaters. While it’s impossible to predict how much energy a particular family might useif they like to crank up the AC especially high, for examplethe size of the solar system installed on the roof was calculated to cover all typical usage. That obviously makes a difference for residents on tight budgets. Skyler Korgel, one future resident who will be a first-time homeowner, says that she currently pays between $35 and $70 a month on energy bills in her apartment. “Having that jump to $200 to $300 per month, or unpredictably more during the summers, in a traditional home would be financially unsustainable for me,” Korgel says. “Between the geothermal heating system, rooftop solar panels, smart energy management systems, high-efficiency appliances, and a tight building envelope, I am hopeful that I can reach energy usage of effectively zero, eliminate my energy bill for some months, and even be able to provide power when the electric grid is strained,” she says. A model for future development Habitat for Humanity is building 48 homes in the neighborhood, including 25 that will be constructed in October by volunteers in a five-day sprint. (Skilled construction workers are handling more complex tasks like connecting heat pumps to the geothermal system.) But it’s also considering using the solar-and-networked geothermal approach for future homes. That may include more houses at Whisper Valley. EcoSmart is working with other developers to plan new projects across the country, from single-famiy homes to multifamily buildings. Others are also turning to geothermal. In Brooklyn, for example, a 463-unit apartment building that recently opened uses hundreds of geothermal wells for heating and cooling. An even larger all-geothermal apartment complex is opening in another part of Brooklyn. In some cases, existing neighborhoods are also moving to geothermal. Near Boston, one neighborhood has been testing a shift from gas heat to geothermal heating and cooling over the last two years. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the city is building a geothermal district system in a neighborhood where 75% of residents are low-incomeboth as part of the city’s work to reach climate goals and to help residents significantly cut energy bills.
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E-Commerce
The most common email messages I receive these days are obviously AI-generated pitches for guests to appear on my podcast. They all begin the same way, with a praising reference to one of my recent episodesusually the second-to-last posted show. Your recent interview with so-and-so was penetrating, and got to the heart of the problem of x or y. Then comes the crucial pivot: John Doughs work takes that problem even further . . . And then the pitch for John Dough to be on the podcast. The problem is not just that the publicist used AI to shotgun the known universe of podcasters with pitches artificially customized to their shows. Its that the comparisons and connections are really bad. Your guest spoke so passionately about being a death doula, I think you would be so interested in an artist who makes Halloween napkins festooned with skeletons, which are usually of dead people. So what do I do? I blacklist the sender. The human publicist ends up losing credibility because the one thing I might trust her to doto accurately assess the appropriateness of my show for her guesthad been surrendered to a machine whose job was to make that connection by any means necessary. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/adus-labs-16x9-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/anduslabs.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Douglas Rushkoff and Andus Labs.","dek":"Keep up to date on the latest trends on how AI is reshaping culture and business, through the critical lens of human agency.","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.anduslabs.com\/perspectives","theme":{"bg":"#1a064b","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420531,"imageMobileId":91420530}} She was using AI in the fashion of an Industrial Age factory owner to increase her productivity, but simultaneously ignoring the human process that defines her expertise. I see the same thing happen with AI-generated reports and presentations. Someone gets some speculative idea and then asks Chat to justify it with a few case studies. On the surface, the case studies may sound like theyre supporting the premisebut if you look any deeper, they dont really relate at all. Theyre analogous, but not truly relevant. Worse yet, theyre sitting in what looks like a fully realized Powerpoint presentation. Concepts that could have been interpreted as half-baked, speculative, or open to discussion now appear finalized. They seem inappropriately unrealized for how elaborately they have been rendered, and make the presenter seem foolish. (That is, if the recipient is even reading the work rather than having their AI summarize it.) Deskilling ourselves By using the AI to do the big stuffby outsourcing our primary competencies to the machines instead of giving them the boring busyworkwe deskill ourselves and deprive everyone of the opportunity for AI-enhanced outputs. Too many of us are using AI as the primary architect for a project, rather than the general contractor who supports the architects human vision. (And even many of the general contractors functions are attributable to the human relationships they have developed over the years.) People are treating their chats as if they were fully realized (but as yet nonexistent) AGIs, and letting them do big stuff rather than treating them like tools that can do lots of little stuff. When facing a new seemingly gargantuan project, they turn to the AI first rather than digging in and doing some researchperhaps even using the AI as a research tool instead of relegating the whole project to it all at once. The output looks good to the user, less because it is good than because the Chat has been programmed to make the user feel good about their query. Thats an insightful project idea, Douglas! Ive managed to flesh out an entire proposal at three different price points. The positive feedback loop reinforces the user behavior, until the threshold for asking the Chat to do the project is lower and lower. In the name of getting more product out there, the user loses touch with their own processtheir core competency. No shortcuts The only ones who win in such a scenario are the AI companies, who effectively commoditize the users and their companies. Without any core competencies, the only competitive advantage a user has left is the robustness of their service contract with the AI company. The fast, slapdash results are not worth the cost in human expertise. As the researcher behind MITs study This is Your Brain on ChatGPT explained at a recent ANDUS event, when people turn to an AI for a solution before working on a problem themselves, the number of connections formed in their brains decreases. But when they turn to the AI after working on the problem for a while, they end up with more neural connections than if they worked entirely alone. Thats because the value of the AI is not its ability to create product for us, but to engage with us in our process. Working and iterating with an AIdoing what we could call generative thinkingis actually a break from Industrial Age thinking. We focus less on outputs than on cycles. Less on the volume of short-term results (assembly line), and more on the quality and complexity of thought and innovation. AIs dont have to replace our competencies or even our employees. Thats less an opportunity for success and scale than it is a recipe for deskilling, commodification, and eventual disappearance. Adopting AI as a partner in process and enhancer of competencies requires developing a new kind of culture around technology and innovationone that centers the human ingenuity at the core of a company, and supports the ways that new, intelligent technologies can foster that living resource. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/adus-labs-16x9-1.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/anduslabs.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Douglas Rushkoff and Andus Labs.","dek":"Keep up to date on the latest trends on how AI is reshaping culture and business, through the critical lens of human agency.","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.anduslabs.com\/perspectives","theme":{"bg":"#1a064b","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420531,"imageMobileId":91420530}}
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