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In early 2023, Shopify made a bold and deliberate decision that rippled through its entire organization. Without warning anyone or conducting a phased rollout, they removed over 12,000 recurring meetings from employee calendars. They put a company-wide pause on all Wednesday meetings, and consolidated larger group sessions into a single window each week. From the outside, it looked like a scheduling adjustment. On the inside, it was an intentional reevaluation of how the company valued time, attention, and collaboration. Surprisingly, the decision resulted in very little chaos. Teams adapted and work moved. Space led to clarity surfacing. Shopify reported that the shift freed up more than 322,000 hours annually of time that employees previously spent in motion, but not always in progress. This two-week experiment was an act of leadership that asked, what are we doing simply because we always have? For many, that became a permanent way of working. Many organizations everywhere have practices and processes that persist by default. Meetings, reports, systems, and sign-offs become embedded not because they are essential, but because no one ever questioned them. But over time, demands on our attention continue to multiply. It becomes increasingly difficult to protect our time, and leadership needs to show its strength through discernment. They also need to let go of anything that no longer makes a meaningful contribution. Our bias towards addition Leadership, by its very nature, invites accumulation. Over time, it gathers layers: inherited systems, obligations that no longer serve a purpose. Often, theres the comforting illusion that being across everything means being in control. But this is a fragile place to be. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology explored this human tendency toward addition. When researchers asked participants to improve an object, design, or process, they almost always added something, even when taking something away would have created a better outcome. The study revealed the instinct to equate improvement with increasing something. The act of removing feels risky because it disrupts what we know. Ive watched this play out in countless organizations. Leaders respond to a growing workload by creating new layers of process, new forums for communication, and new metrics for accountability. They do so with the best intentions. However each layer eventually becomes another brick in the wall of complexity. And before you know it, employees are spending more time on the process than their actual work. The weight of more A few years ago, I began using the phrase red brick thinking to describe the moment a leader stops adding and starts questioning. It came from an exercise I often run in workshops using a small, uneven LEGO bridge. When I ask how to level it, most people instinctively reach for another brick. They start to build higher, wider, stronger. It takes only one person to realize that balance comes not from addition, but from removing the small red brick that caused the imbalance in the first place. That simple shift in perception can change the way a leader approaches everything. To lead with subtraction is to lead with discrimination, but in a good way. It means pausing before responding, questioning before committing, and creating space before filling it again. It invites the kind of simplicity and creativity thats difficult to find when your calendar is full and your attention is divided across too many demands. I worked with a senior executive who felt trapped by the very systems she had helped design. Her weeks were consumed by meetings, status reports, and requests for sign-off. When we examined her schedule, it became clear that she was operating inside a structure that no longer reflected her priorities. Together, we began removing the elements that had quietly accumulated: a report that no one read, a meeting that produced little value, and a responsibility that belonged elsewhere. Over time, her energy returned, her thinking sharpened, and her team grew more capable. It wasnt a dramatic shift, but it was decisive, And it all started with the willingness to ask one simple question, Does this still belong? Leading with subtraction Letting go is not about abandoning responsibility or lowering standards. Its a conscious act of leadership that requires courage, restraint, and trust. Doing this requires us to believe that we can create results by doing less. By releasing what no longer serves us, we create the capacity to serve better. In the language of red brick thinking, we build every organization from necessary structure and unnecessary weight. Over time, those red bricks turn from supportive to obstructive and slow everything down. And when leaders choose to remove them, they dont just reclaim efficiency, they reclaim perspective. They begin to see what truly matters, and they allow others to see it, too. When you lead by subtraction, its measured, deliberate, and deeply human. It recognizes that progress isnt always about movement. Sometimes, the most powerful thing a leader can do is stop, notice the weight theyre carrying, and decide that carrying less might just be the wisest way forward.
Category:
E-Commerce
When Hurricane Melissa began moving toward Jamaica earlier this week, Amazons chief meteorologist was watching closelynot just for the companys global shipping operations, but also to see how its disaster relief team might need to act. “As soon as the hurricane formed, we had eyes on it,” says Abe Diaz, principal technical product manager for Amazon’s disaster relief team. “We’ve been tracking this for multiple days.” [Photo: Amazon] Inside an Amazon fulfillment center near Atlanta, pallets are stacked with disaster relief supplies, from medical supplies to solar-powered lights. Its one of 15 massive disaster relief hubs that the company has stationed inside warehouses around the world. In the wake of the record-breaking hurricane that hit Jamaica, with flooding and 185-mile-an-hour winds that destroyed homes and infrastructure, the hub was poised to send shipments to partners like the Red Cross. When the team spoke to Fast Company yesterday, they were planning a potential shipment of power supplies on a cargo plane for today. “Damage assessments are still underway at both of the airports and then they’re going to be prioritizing life-saving, rescue and response teams for access first,” says Jeff Schweitzer, who leads Amazon’s global disaster relief operations. If all went as planned, though, the power systems would also be on a flight, ready to support first responders and “provide augmented power in areas that just simply won’t have power for weeks to come,” he says. Other early shipments will likely include tarps and solar lights that can also charge phones. Each delivery will happen only after nonprofits or agencies on the ground assess the situation and order what they need. “As with everything at Amazon, we work backwards from the customer,” Diaz says. [Photo: Amazon] In the warehouse, some pallets are wrapped in color-coded shrink wrap, to help nonprofits easily tell from a distance what’s inside, such as diapers. One pallet is designed to include everything needed for a nonprofit to set up a mobile office. Amazon first began its disaster relief work in 2017, after conversations with organizations about how difficult it is to get the right supplies quickly after disasters. Since then, it has been closely working with organizations to understand what they need and to track data about what’s used in each event so it can better prepare. [Photo: Amazon] The team works to find the most efficient products to donatefor example, water filters instead of bottled water. “It makes no sense for us to send a whole bunch of water bottles and fly them out to Jamaica when high-efficiency water filters can do 100 times the volume with just a pallet of product,” Diaz says. “These are the kind of items that we’re just trying to be really smart on what is needed and what we’re getting there.” [Photo: Amazon] The hubs, which are each located inside existing Amazon fulfillment centers to make use of the company’s existing infrastructure and workers, are each filled with products most likely to be needed locally. A hub near L.A. is stocked with supplies for wildfires, such as masks. The Atlanta hub has kits for cleaning up homes after a floodfrom gloves and shovels to respiratorsthat have been used in previous hurricanes and events like the floods in Central Texas this summer. [Photo: Amazon] Organizations also make their own preparations; the World Food Programme, for example, prepositioned a shipment of food and other suplies to the area before Hurricane Melissa hit. But Amazon can quickly respond as more is needed, with pallets ready to be sent out as soon as a request comes in. It’s one example of corporate philanthropy that makes use of a company’s core competency, rather than simply giving money to causes. (Amazon also uses its delivery infrastructure to help food banks reach more clients at home.) Toyota did something similar when it donated kaizen training to the Food Bank for New York City, helping cut wait times for dinner from an hour and a half to 18 minutes.
Category:
E-Commerce
A first-of-its-kind refinery has been in the works for a decade and half. Set to be completed this year, the facility is design to produce climate-friendly jet fuel, a material in increasing demand in response to climate commitments and regulations around the world. The refinerycalled the Freedom Pines Fuelswas designed to showcase new methods of producing the fuel, and was receiving government support to help clean up air travel. Now, a year behind schedule due to a hurricane and equipment glitches, the project hit another roadblock this summer, when a major shift in U.S. energy policy under the new administration threw a wrench into the business model. It’s now a story of a company quickly adapting under pressure, and an illustration of the challengesand continued opportunityof clean energy in a more hostile political environment. The goal of the company behind the project, Illinois-based LanzaJet, is to produce a close facsimile of the kerosene-based fuel that powers jets and many helicopters and propeller planes todaywithout using petroleum. Instead, the Freedom Pines Fuels plant in the forest hamlet of Soperton, Georgia, will use ethanol to make whats known as sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF. LanzaJet was ready to start with ethanol made from Brazilian sugarcane, until a new U.S. law forced a quick shift to midwestern corn. The fuels that make modern travel possiblekerosene, gasoline, and dieselare typically refined from crude oil, rich in hydrocarbon molecules that release copious energy when burned. But burning them also inundates the atmosphere with heat-trapping carbon dioxide. [Photo: Couresy of LanzaJet] SAF is essentially lab-grown jet fuel, made from carbon already in the environment, rather than pumped up from oil wells. It’s a tweaked formulationfor instance, with less sulfurdesigned to burn cleaner. Sugarcane and corn are two of many possible carbon sources, along with cornstalks, twigs, vegetable oil, factory exhaust, and even garbage. The CO2 released by making and burning SAF should, in theory, be offset by the carbon captured to make more SAF, forming a closed loop. The Freedom Pines Fuels plant is a mini version of a typical refinery, slated to produce nine million gallons of SAF and a million of green diesel fuel in its first year. (A standard crude-oil refinery could churn a billion or more gallons of fuels.) But the Georgia plant is meant to be big enough to show the technology can work at scale. “Most process technology companies . . . almost never build plants of this magnitude,” says Jimmy Samartzis, a climate-focused airline industry veteran who became CEO when LanzaJet was founded in 2020. “It’s expensive, it’s big. But we thought and feltaccurately, looking back on it todayit was the right move to make.” Before the 2024 election, the federal government was also promising generous financial support for Freedom Pines. A Potential Market Boom LanzaJet is backed by companies that are counting on, or stand to benefit from, the shift to carbon-neutral jet fuel, including All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Southwest Airlines, and plane maker Airbus. The UNs International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has committed the industry to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In addition, laws and regulations, such as in Singapore, the U.K., and the European Union, have started requiring airlines or suppliers to blend SAF into the jet fuel supply, beginning at around 12%, then ramping up in later years. More such requirements are in the works in India, Indonesia, and Japan. The European Union is by far the most ambitious. From a mere 2% SAF blend required today, quotas rise steeply about every five years, hitting 70% in 2050. Theres further demand from companies, such as LanzaJet backer Microsoft, striving to meet aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals. In addition to reducing its own footprint, Microsoft has announced plans to buy SAF Certificates,” which subsidize the cost of the fuel to boost its usage. SAF has a long way to go in making a dent. It will account for just 0.7% of all jet fuel in 2025, according to the International Air Transport Association. [Photo: Couresy of LanzaJet] Obviously, if you look at the size of the overall aviation fuel space, in theory the [SAF] market is potentially huge for those that can offer a product at a competitive price, says John MacDonagh, senior research analyst at capital markets research firm PitchBook. LanzaJet has raised “approximately” $400 million, according to Samartzis, from these companies and other backers, including energy producers Shell and Suncor, the U.S. Department of Energy, airport operator Groupe ADP, and Bill Gatess Breakthrough Energy fund. Another backer is LanzaTech. Founded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2005, it relocated its headquarters to Skokie, Illinois, in 2014. The company has engineered microbes to convert waste such as carbon monoxide and dioxide from factories into ethanol, as another route to carbon-neutral fuel and other chemicals. In 2010, LanzaTech and the U.S. Department of Energy started collaborating on technology to transform ethanol into jet fuel. In 2020, LanzaTech spun out LanzaJet as a new company to continue the work. LanzaJet is dipping a toe into the SAF market with Freedom Pines, with plans to build more plants, such as a collaboration with British Airways to open a facility in the U.K. by 2028. LanzaJet has also announced partnerships in India, Japan, and Kazakhstan to build additional facilities. But as it continues to announce expansion overseas, things have gotten messy back at home. SAF Meets MAGA
Category:
E-Commerce
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