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The standing desk is old news. Behold, the standing table. Herman Miller just released a new design that takes the concept of a standing desk to a whole new level. The Spout Sit-to-Stand Table comes in a range of sizes, from 2-by-4 feet to a whopping 4-by-7 feet, supports up to 400 pounds, and can seat a whole team rather than just one worker. Thats because it breaks a key form factor that most other standing desks follow: the number of legs in use. The vast majority of standing desks have only two motorized legs, mostly because theyre easier to stabilize and engineer to move seamlessly. Meanwhile, the Spout table stands on four legs, allowing chairs to be placed comfortably on all sides of the table.[Image: Herman Miller]The biggest challenge in designing a four-leg solution was creating a rigid and stable platform that could seamlessly support large surfaces, a Herman Miller spokesperson shared with Fast Company. The design team and engineers tackled this by developing an elegant 360-degree understructure that not only enhances stability but also scales across multiple sizes, from 2448 deep and 4284 wide.[Photo: Herman Miller]A four-legged standing desk isnt unheard of (in fact, Herman Miller offers a leather-wrapped version), but youd be hard-pressed to find one with 28 square feet of surface space. And, whereas most standing desks on the market tend to live within a minimalist color palette, the Spout can be customized with a wide range of surface materials, edge details, and leg colors, like dusty blue or fire engine red. To keep the tables profile sleek and elegant, its engineers also had to ensure that all of its moving mechanicslike the motors and drive assemblywould be tucked out of view inside the legs themselves.[Photo: Herman Miller]The team devoted countless hours to ensuring that every line and radius aligned perfectly, the spokesperson said. While the table may appear elegantly simple, the precision and complexity behind its design are anything but.Buyers of the Spout table will certainly be paying for this attention to detail. The price of the table varies widely depending on the size you choose and how you personalize it (see a guide here), but the three standard sizes currently available for purchase on the website start in the mid-$2,000s. For a Herman Miller product, this isnt exactly a surprise. Many of the companys office goods have make up their pricey costs not only in their high-quality materials, but also in their status-signaling cachet (see the Eames lounge chairs recent renaissance among tech bros).Personally, Id want my $2,000 desk to come with just a bit more opulence. Still, for any work-from-home tech couples out there or office managers looking to literally level up their space, this might just be the perfect product.
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The Trump administration and Elon Musk have spent the past several weeks upending the federal government. After essentially shutting down most operations of the nations foreign aid efforts through USAID, the next target appears to be NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Musks team has reportedly infiltrated NOAAs offices, and NOAA staff have been told to stop all contact with foreign nationals, which threatens the very nature of the agency’s work; international cooperation is crucial to both weather and fisheries activity because neither the atmosphere or the ocean are limited to U.S. borders. Employees are anticipating drastic staff and budgeting cuts. Project 2025 specifically noted NOAA as a target, as well. The Heritage Foundations 900-page right-wing playbook called the agency one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and recommended it be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated” and instead privatized. It’s not clear what that would look like, though experts have said it isn’t a good ideaand that private weather companies wouldn’t even want that change because they’d have to bear the cost of collecting weather data that’s currently given to them for free. NOAAs services are far-reaching; most prominently, it houses the National Weather Service, which provides forecasts for the country, and the National Hurricane Center, which issues warnings and forecasts for tropical cyclones. It’s also responsible for marine fisheries and even space weather predictionswhich can affect the GPS that all our phones rely on. Even if you dont live in an area at risk of hurricanes or eat seafood from fisheries managed and inspected by the agency, NOAA plays a huge role in your life. Everyone relies on NOAA, whether you realize it or not, says Jeff Watters, vice president of external affairs with the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental advocacy nonprofit. The services that NOAA provides touch basically everyone everyday, in some way or another. Weather forecasts, marine rescues, plastic pollution, and oil spills Because theres no NOAA logo under each local meteorologists forecast or on weather apps, most Americans may not realize that agency is actually providing the data that underpins Accuweather or the Weather Channel or their local news channel’s meteorological reports. But once NOAA’s functions “start to fall apart or degrade, Watters says, we’ll notice them pretty quickly. If our weather forecasting industry were to be entirely privatized, as Project 2025 envisions, it could leave entire areas of the country without proper forecasting and essentially in the dark. What about remote areas in Alaska? Watters asks. Is a [private] company going to invest in multimillion pieces of infrastructure to monitor and understand weather in those locations when theyre serving small-ish numbers of people? Americans needand have come to expectblanket weather forecasting coverage. If you break that system, I almost shudder to think of the ramifications, he says. As another example, the entire tsunami warning system is within NOAA. It’s another function Americans may not notice “until you are facing down a potential tsunami, and don’t have the prediction that a tsunami is going to hit,” Watters says. Multiple scientists reacting to the threats against NOAA have summed up its impact by simply noting that accurate, publicly available weather forecasts save lives. Beyond weather forecasts, NOAA manages the network that responds to stranded marine mammals, like beached whales or dolphins that need rehabilitation. They’re essentially first responders” for sick, injured, or distressed animals from whales and dolphins to seals and sea lions, Watters notes. Its also responsible for the stewardship of nearly everything in the ocean, from managing marine sanctuaries and coral reefs (which are in severe decline) to monitoring marine debris, which includes plastic pollution. Ocean Conservancy does a lot of work on the plastic pollution front, and Watters notes that two recent pieces of legislations to bolster the marine debris programthe Save Our Seas Act and Save Our Seas 2.0were actually signed by Trump during his first term. President Trump should be proud of that part of what NOAA does, he says, and to turn our backs on those important bodies of work would be hugely damaging to the ocean environment. Understanding oil spills also falls under NOAAs purview. Theres a small but mighty team within the agency that works on models to predict the movement of oil, so whenever theres a spill, it can explain how it will spread and calculate how much oil might be in the water. If we don’t have that function and a big oil spill happens, we have no way of figuring out how to deal with it, Watters says. NOAA also helps recover funds from those responsible for oil spills; over the last 30 years, that’s totaled more than $10 billion. Without NOAA, there may not be that retribution, which is crucial for restoring coastal communities. NOAA is bipartisanand stopping it doesnt stop climate change Project 2025 takes aim at NOAA for its role in driving what it calls the climate change alarm industry. The Trump administration has been purging mentions of climate change, and any data associated with it, from government websites. But dismantling NOAA doesnt stop the effects of climate change; it would just limit how prepared we are for them. NOAA also, notably, doesnt have a partisan alliance. Its actually historically had bipartisan support. Watters calls it the impartial eyes and ears and what’s going on in our atmosphere and in our ocean. NOAA doesnt relay this data with any political bias or agenda, it does so from a purely scientific view that information and transparency matters. It is up to the administration to decide whether they want to actually do anything about climate or not, he adds. But to cut off our eyes and ears and say we’re going to face the world blindfolded seems like not a very good idea. All of NOAAs powers and responsibilities have been given to it by Congress over decades, and written ito law. Watters didnt share an opinion on Neil Jacobs, Trumps nominee to head NOAA who was cited for misconduct in an incident known as Sharpiegate in 2019. But Watters emphasized the need, in Jacobs confirmation hearing, for senators to ask about the administrations plans for the agency. (Congress also has jurisdiction over NOAA’s activities, so the threats to the agency are another example of how Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is embarking on illegal actions across government departments. DOGE itself isn’t even a federal agency, as the creation of new cabinet-level departments needs approval from Congress.) Congress has given so much direction and responsibility to this agency, and American people depend on it. If someone has plans for this agency and isn’t saying so, shouldn’t we have a conversation about that? he says. It shouldn’t just be up to someone behind the scene deciding that they want to tear an agency apart. The services that NOAA provides are too important for us to not have a national conversation about the future of the agency.
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Appointing a chief of staff is a critical first step for any CEO looking to make impactful leadership decisions. But an executive who merely utilizes their chief of staff as an administrative extra set of hands risks missing out on meaningful transformation opportunities. The critical decision to position a chief of staff as a true executive partner, when executed well, can be a bold investment that impacts a CEOs legacy. Based on my own experience as a chief of staff for a Series A unicorn-to-be and my current work coaching and placing these professionals, Ive seen firsthand that todays chiefs of staff act as leadership amplifiers. They occupy a unique position at the top of the organizational chart, where they can operate across teams without being burdened by the direct management of a department. This freedom allows them to shield their CEOs from distractions and ensure they focus on the work that truly matterstheir unique strengths, vision, and decision-making. An open secret and unfair advantage Understanding and defining the role remains a challenge. As a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz put it, appointing a CEO-whispering talent as one of the firms inaugural chiefs of staff made sense because nobody knew what that meant. I’ve seen this asymmetry of understanding first-hand in hundreds of conversations with executives. For Jamie Hodari, CEO and cofounder of Industrious, a chief of staff is a clear necessity. Who wouldnt want to be in two places at once? The best chief of staff relationship enables exactly that. Sitting alongside his sixth chief of staff since founding his company, Hodari told me, Ive never encountered a hard problem at work where two smart people trying to think through it wasnt preferable to one. But Ive also spoken with CEOs who have been given the misguided view that this position is merely an administrative role with a fancy title. Bridging this executive knowledge gap promises so much upside that McKinsey and BCG have intensified their thought leadership around this role in recent white papers and podcasts. Christie Horvath, CEO of pet healthcare company Wagmo, says that she views her chief of staff as an extension of her own brain. The chief of staff on her team takes on tasks that can be delegated to other departmentstheyre often CEO-led initiatives where the chief of staff must operate as a true strategic partner, not just a project manager. Unleashing emerging leaders Ive seen chief of staffs being tasked with all sorts of significant initiatives by savvy CEOs. These might include projects like: Spearheading the hiring process for other C-Level roles Company-wide Rhythm of Business and Stakeholder Management Plans Standing in and speaking for the CEO in high-stakes meetings . . . all with little to no guidance. Their often-uncommon career trajectoriesspanning disciplines like consulting, law, and product developmentalso equip chiefs of staff to bring fresh, outsider perspectives that might not otherwise appear in executive leadership meetings. And while 75% of chiefs of staff support CEOs, many others work with CFOs, CHROs, or department heads, tailoring their expertise to the leaders scope. Hire for a partner, not a position A trusted right hand can create new value that even the CEO or board of directors might not see. While the position is usually leveled as a middle-management role, the chief of staff is one-of-one in the corporate hierarchy, reporting directly to a boss several levels more senior. These individuals command competitive salaries even in a challenging job market, reflecting the rigors of the position. We see this in the data from our most recent Ask a Chief of Staff compensation reportcompared to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, average chief of staff salaries across industries are approximately 49% higher than the latest median salary figures for general and operations managers. Taking on the $150 billion pet care industry as a leadership duo with her chief of staff, Horvath shared with me that, a huge part of what makes this partnership successful is the “chemistry”how easily my chief of staff can anticipate what I envision. The key is to hire someone who complements your skill set and shores up areas where youre less effective, rather than duplicating your strengths. The most important takeaway for CEOs is that this role is not merely a positionits a partnership. Empowering a chief of staff as a true C-suite partner is a bold future-focused move, requiring the highest degree of self-awareness, trust, and adaptability from a chief executive.
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