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At the Exceptional Women Alliance (EWA), we bring together accomplished women who mentor, support, and challenge one another to grow as leaders, women, and as human beings. Each month we highlight one of these extraordinary voices and the insights that define her approach to leadership and life. This month I spoke with Mindy Mackenzie, former interim CEO of Beautycounter, longtime advisor to portfolio companies at The Carlyle Group, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Courage Solution: The Power of Truth Telling with Your Boss, Peers, and Team. Mindys leadership philosophy challenges the belief that progress requires constant motion. She believes the most important work begins in stillness, in the willingness to pause, listen, and lead from purpose and authenticity rather than pressure. Q: You say sitting still can feel like agony, and you highly recommend it. Why? Mindy Mackenzie: Most of us are addicted to motion. We fill every moment because slowing down forces us to face what is really happening inside. Sitting still, truly being with yourself, can feel unbearable at first. It is uncomfortable, but it is also where truth lives. If you can sit quietly, even for a few minutes, you will start to hear what is real instead of what you are performing. That is the beginning of clarity. Q: Why is this so hard for successful women leaders? Mackenzie: Because we have been conditioned to equate busyness with value. High-performing women often measure their worth by what they accomplish. The problem is that when you stop, you have to confront the question underneath it all: Who am I when I am not producing? I think a key concept is understanding who you are outside of your role. Many leaders do not know that answer, and that lack of separation between identity and achievement is what makes stillness so uncomfortable. Q: How can leaders start practicing stillness in a real way? Mackenzie: You do not need to go to a monastery or sit in 17 yoga retreats. It does not take five hours a day. Sit in your closet for five minutes. Set a timer. Just get in touch with yourself and allow whatever comes up. When I work with executives, I remind them that they are human choosers. Every day you have the choice to lead from pressure or from presence. I ask one question: What do you choose right now? It sounds simple, but it changes everything. Q: You draw a connection between leadership and parenting. How do the two overlap? Mackenzie: Parenting teaches humility, patience, and listening before responding. Those skills are exactly what leadership requires. At home, I often ask my family, on a scale of one to 10, how are you feeling about this? I use the same approach in business. The answers usually surprise me. You think you know where someone stands, but you do not until you ask. That question opens real dialogue. It moves a conversation from assumption to understanding. In leadership, that shift builds trust, and trust is the foundation of every strong culture. Q: How do you define authentic impact? Mackenzie: Real impact comes from genuine care. I even use the word love in business, which makes people squirm, but I genuinely love the people who work for me and they know it. I’ve paid attention to the bosses who have sucked the energy out of the room versus the bosses who have given energy. True, amazing impact that lasts on people’s lives comes from leaders who bring that conscious intention to how they show up. That’s the measure of leadershipthe energy you give, not the energy you take. Q: What do you want leaders to take away from this approach? Mackenzie: Telling yourself the truth about how you really feel is tremendously hard, and it is a radical act of courage. All of these concepts are so easy to say, and they are a lifetime’s work. We need to be reminded because we forget, we get caught up. What can you do? Just try to pause and go, what is happening here? What am I choosing right now? And then not judge it or beat yourself up with self-flagellation. The old way is saying I’m not good enough, I’m bad, I’m wrong. The new way is just acknowledging how you feel and letting it be okay. Larraine Segil is founder, chair, and CEO of The Exceptional Women Alliance.
Category:
E-Commerce
Ford Motor said on Monday it will take a $19.5 billion writedown and is killing several electric-vehicle models, in the most dramatic example yet of the auto industry’s retreat from battery-powered models in response to the Trump administration’s policies and weakening EV demand. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company said it will stop making the F-150 Lightning in its electric vehicle form, but will pivot to producing an extended-range electric model, a version of a hybrid vehicle called an EREV, which uses a gas-powered generator to recharge the battery. The company is also scrapping a next-generation electric truck, codenamed the T3, as well as planned electric commercial vans. Instead, Ford said it will pivot hard into gas and hybrid models, and eventually hire thousands of workers, even though there will be some layoffs at a jointly owned Kentucky battery plant in the near term. The company expects its global mix of hybrids, extended-range EVs and pure EVs to reach 50% by 2030, from 17% today. Ford will spread out the writedown, taken primarily in the fourth quarter and continuing through next year and into 2027, the company said. About $8.5 billion is related to cancelling planned EV models. Around $6 billion is tied to the dissolution of a battery joint venture with South Koreas SK On, and $5 billion on what Ford called program-related expenses. The automaker also raised its 2025 guidance for adjusted earnings before taxes and interest, to about $7 billion, up from a previous range of $6 billion to $6.5 billion. Fords shift reflects the auto industrys response to waning demand for battery-powered models, after car companies plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into EV investments early this decade. The outlook for electrics dimmed significantly this year as U.S. President Donald Trumps policies yanked federal support for EVs and eased tailpipe-emissions rules, which could encourage carmakers to sell more gas-powered cars. U.S. sales of electric vehicles fell about 40% in November, following the September 30 expiration of a $7,500 consumer tax credit, which had been in place for more than 15 years to stoke demand. The Trump administration also included in the massive tax and spending bill that passed in July a freeze on fines that automakers pay for violating fuel-economy regulations. Rather than spending billions more on large EVs that now have no path to profitability, we are allocating that money into higher-returning areas, said Andrew Frick, head of Fords gas and electric-vehicle operations. The F-150 Lightning rolled off assembly lines starting in 2022 with much fanfare comedian Jimmy Fallon wrote a song about the truck. Ford increased production of the model to meet an influx of 200,000 orders, but sales havent kept pace. The company sold 25,583 Lightnings through November of this year, a 10% decrease from the prior-year period. The successor to the F-150 Lightning, the T3 truck, was supposed to be built ground-up for production at a new complex in Tennessee, and be a core part of Fords second-generation EV lineup. Ford is now replacing production of the EV pickup with new gas-powered trucks starting in 2029 at the Tennessee factory. Ford effectively killed the entirety of its announced second-generation of EV models with Mondays announcement. For its future EV lineup, the company is shifting focus to more affordable EV models, conceived by a so-called skunkworks team in California. The first model from that team is slated to be priced at about $30,000 and go on sale in 2027. This midsize EV truck is being built at Fords Louisville plant. (Corrects the location of the battery plant to Kentucky, not Tennessee, in paragraph 3) Nora Eckert
Category:
E-Commerce
AI is quickly moving beyond rote tasks and into the realm of bigger-picture decisions that once relied only on human judgment. As companies treat AI as a thinking partner, the technology also introduces new risks. But the efficiency gains are hard to ignore, and companies are going head first into adoption. Its very much like a chief of staff or a senior adviser, says Stacy Spikes, CEO of cinema subscription service MoviePass. To Spikes, AI platforms are a second or third set of eyes, helping him approach vendors or handle tricky people-to-people situations. He says he treats AI as a sounding board, not a decider. Im not letting it make the decision for me, or letting it predetermine what I’m going to go in and do, but I’m having it give me a better understanding, he says. Spikess experience shows the tension companies face as they roll out early use cases. AI can help employees act quickly and with greater precision, but organizations are still weighing what works and what doesnt, where the guardrails should be, and how to prevent judgment from slipping into autopilot. Across industries, leaders are now testing the interplay between AI and human judgmentand developing the processes that let the two work together. AI as a strategic partner Spikes embeds AI into his executive workflow. He likens it to how large firms use management consultants to map scenarios and risks, as well as act as a sounding board. He uses AI to help with complex decisions across people dynamics, situational gray areas, and selecting external partners or service teams: It could, for example, offer advice on handling disagreements between colleagues or partners, or offer alternate perspectives that challenge someones initial point of view. I’m constantly having conversations with different AI tools, says Spikes. Ill give them information and have stand-up conversations with themalmost like a full research team, the way you would use McKinsey or PwC consultants. He says hell come to a fork in the road of decisions and uses AI to decide this pathway or that pathway. Hell run scenarios related to ambiguous judgment calls through multiple models to compare perspectives, before stepping in himself. He says no sensitive data is shared with LLMs; when hes working with his team or vendors, he often asks for ideas on handling challenging milestone situations, including when the company has set goals or KPIs and misses them. The AI doesnt replace his decision-making; rather, it simply gives him more insight with which to make a decision. He points to a recent case with a contractor he let go. The work ended in the first week of the month, but the contractor insisted on being paid for the full month. Spikes ran the scenario through two different AI models. One gave a firm, black-and-white answerprorate the work and move on. Another tool framed the issue more gently, emphasizing the persons past contributions. While Spikes ultimately held to his earlier decisionprorating the paymenthe says the AI conversations influenced the tone, leading him to approach the discussion with more empathy. He thanked the vendor for their earlier work but explained that prorating was necessary to maintain fairness across the team, especially since people talk, he pointed out. But had he not consulted AI, he may not have been nudged toward that balance. Asked whether AI changed the underlying decision, Spikes says no, but it influenced his tone. It made me a little bit kinder than I would have been. Supporting day-to-day decisions Elsewhere, companies are weaving AI into operational decisions to give employees clearer visibility and speed up decision making. Dave Glick, Walmarts senior vice president of enterprise business services, says corporate teams use an internal AI tool called the associate super agent. It works like a single front door: employees ask a question, and the system quietly hands it off to small, task-specific tools in the background. One use case is when employees want to understand what went wrong with a shipment or delivery. A shipment might arrive without a corresponding purchase order or end up at the wrong building; the AI system gathers data from multiple sources to piece together what likely happened. Many of these tasks are sort of detective work, Glick says. This purchase order showed up at the wrong building, or this shipment showed up and we dont have a purchase order for it. So, the AI pulls everything together and shows them what likely happened. Glick emphasized that the human remains in control and can override any conclusion the AI suggests. What used to require digging through multiple databases is now compressed into a much faster preliminary review, with the AI assembling the data before the employee makes the call. Ultimately, the value of AI comes down to its ability to find and assemble the right data; if the data isnt clean, AI cant meaningfully support a decision. Marne Martin, CEO of expense-management software firm Emburse, noted that AI works best when the decision is repeatable and the data feeding it is clean. If you have more than 3.5% of inaccurate or highly biased data in your model, you will not get to the accuracy that you can just trust AI, she says. Similarly, Infosys CTO Rafee Tarafdar says the IT services firm ties AI reliance to risk: the higher the stakes and the shakier their confidence in the model for a given use case, the more a human needs to step in. Is it risky to over-rely on AI? The efficiency gains from using AI are early wins, but researchers caution that exposure to AI can change how people act, prompting them to defer to either AIs judgment too much or default to more control-oriented responses. In an interview, University of Massachusetts Lowell associate professor of management José-Mauricio Galli Geleilate says his research shows that consulting AI turns your framing of the problem and how you see the problem, nudging leaders more towards control, like punitive or surveillance-oriented solutions. His co-author Beth Humberd, also an associate professor of management at UMass Lowell, describes the effect as a kind of psychological distancing: when managers turn to a machine instead of a colleague, you dont have the human cues that you would have in asking another person for their thoughts, she says, which make you pause and consider the person on the other side. Léonard Boussioux, an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Washingtons Foster School of Business, says his research shows people can quickly fall in line with AI because the models are really good at crafting sound arguments, and humans tend to trust anything that feels logical and well-articulated. To curb these effects, researchers say organizations need to build in frictionby forcing people to slow down, questioning the output, and bringing in human context that AI cant capture. Companies say theyre using I to augment but not replace human judgment. And as adoption grows, many are still figuring out where the handoff will be. For many, the hurdle may be more cultural than technical: forcing employees to question AIs output, while getting comfortable with its integration into daily workflows. AI is a level up from where we normally are, says Spikes. A CEO now has another counselor that is limitless in its ability to pull in data and information. it’s informing me, and it’s giving me a wider point of view.
Category:
E-Commerce
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