Fast Company

The road to “work–life balance” is a near-guaranteed path to failure. 

Hear me out.

For years now, we’ve heard endless discussions on how to make work–life balance a reality, and time and time again, we see those concepts challenged, redefined, and downright labeled an impossibility. And then you hear from the occasional person that it’s achievable. But there are so many variables, including home life, earning power, proximity to support and help, and work role and responsibilities that approaching balance in any one way will most certainly not work for everyone. What balance looks like for a 25-year-old, single and childless software engineer who walks to work in San Francisco will be drastically different from the balance of a 38-year-old single parent that has a three-hour commute every day. 

With such a delta between the multiple definitions of work–life balance, is it possible for company leadership to find a way to make it mostly achievable for their entire workforce or will we be forever chasing something unattainable? One thing is for certain: the era of near-total self-sacrifice and “working yourself to death” in order to excel at work is over. Some would argue this is a uniquely American professional trait. So when leading a global team, what has worked for one part of the world most definitely doesn’t work for the rest (leading to resentment). And if we’re being honest, it wasn’t really working for Americans either. People are increasingly recognizing the importance of mental and physical well-being and healthy boundaries in the workplace. And that may have some leadership sweating. 

As a long time C-level executive—and a wife and mom of two kids—I’ve also struggled with the give and take of work and home. To try to find the best possible solution when faced with attending a board meeting and the desire to chaperone my son’s field trip to the state capital. Both are equally important to me and both are pressured by the expectations of those around me. 

Here’s what I’ve realized: There’s no one right answer, but there are plenty of wrong ones. Inflexibility is wrong. Leadership without empathy is wrong. Unrealistic expectations of your team members’ self-sacrifice is wrong. Refusal to acknowledge that people have different needs is wrong. 

But what’s right? How can leadership support employees in healthier ways? How can leadership sort out what people truly value and need, to help bridge the work–life balance gaps that we’ve all come to realize weren’t healthy? How can we address the unspoken expectation of being a workaholic that people feel? I think the answer lies in the need to toss the entire concept of work–life balance in the trash altogether, and instead really think about work–life integration. 

What that can look like for the business, how it can help employees, and how to chart a path towards individual ownership, autonomy, and empowerment where people are generally just happier, less stressed but just as productive, if not more. A balance-based system is extremely fragile. Instead, integrating life and work is possible; weaving the two together according to what works for the individual, trusting the people to design a system that works for both the individual and the team overall, and learning the value of flexibility. 

Here are five tenets of leadership that have worked wonders for me and my teams over the years, ranging from Fortune 50 companies to companies experiencing explosive growth, doubling or tripling in size within a couple of years:

Strong Leadership and Empathetic Leadership Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

Ruling with an iron fist has never worked. It makes for miserable employees and frustrated management. Empathy goes a long way in connecting with your team, understanding them on a more intimate level, and leading in a way that puts people first. 

The Health of Your Team Directly Correlates To The Health of the Business

It’s time leadership rethinks their expectations. The pursuit of being the best isn’t in and of itself bad, but if getting there means putting unrealistic pressure on your teams to perform at whatever cost, it is. All hands meetings at 3a.m. on a Sunday (or any day) or forcing people to work through the night to meet a deadline aren’t hallmarks of passion or dedication. They aren’t badges of honor. They are reflections of flawed leadership. Instead, leaders need to shift their thinking, adjust their expectations when necessary, and lead in a way that makes success achievable without sacrificing the workforce. 

Empowerment Means You Need to Take a Backseat Sometimes

Guidance with clear direction is the best way to empower your team to make their time at work as valuable as possible and allow them the space to take ownership of decisions at work. A level of trust and autonomy will have them satisfied in the work structure that best suits them, all the while allowing the space to recharge when needed. As leaders, we need to focus less on hours worked and more on quality of work and whether objectives have been met. Forcing a nine-to-five workday structure is less about productivity and more about control—something empathetic leaders need to move away from. 

Life Happens

Life is full of curveballs and if the pandemic taught us anything, leaders need to realize that employees are humans first, with different needs, pressures, aspirations, and priorities. And things can change in a heartbeat. Supporting team members through these changes benefits the company overall, but more importantly, it provides a work environment that makes people a priority as human beings, not productivity machines. 

Lead By Example

Most importantly, leaders need to lead by example to create a work environment that has healthy boundaries, space and time to recharge, and open communication when tough topics need to be addressed. Perhaps the easiest way to do that is to take a vacation and truly disconnect and recharge, or be open (and unapologetic) about prioritizing home events as much as work events. Everyone has a life outside of the office, and that should be embraced and celebrated. Leading by example brings teams closer together, and aids collaboration, understanding, and honesty. 

Niki Hall is CMO of Contentsquare, a digital experience analytics company, overseeing its global go-to-market strategy. Its digital experience analytics cloud helps companies understand hidden customer behaviors, and use those insights to drive more successful experiences.

In 2019, my business partner and I attended a “virtual reality meal” at James Beard House. At the time, we wrote it off as a novelty. While these kinds of events offered innovative one-off experiences, it wasn’t yet clear how emerging technologies would add consistent value to the wider arts industry. Mass adaptation felt a long way off.

We didn’t know then, of course, that the demand for experiential tech was about to explode as people found themselves locked down at home and desperate to access cultural experiences as distractions, comforts, and life rafts amid the chaotic isolation of 2020.

Emerging tech became a lifeline for the arts, and for people seeking connection and distraction.

But now, as the IRL (in real life) world starts to reopen, albeit haltingly, arts organizations face a choice: Will reopening return them to the old normal’s status quo, or will they commit, for the long term, to use emerging tech and digital experiences as a connecting lifeline to audiences who previously weren’t able to access them?

Window on the world

With the closure of museums, events spaces, and restaurants, the arts industry faced an undeniably steep challenge—the effects of which were felt most keenly by working artists. But amid the wreckage, we also witnessed promising innovations from savvy brands and organizations. Well-designed digital offerings not only kept their content accessible to their core audience but also expanded their reach and impact exponentially.

Virtual experiences became a desperately needed window on the world, and to stave off isolation, everyone—from grandmas to toddlers—had to become technologically literate in a very short amount of time.

So while brick-and-mortar doors stayed shut through lockdown, virtual doors flung wide open: You could visit the Louvre from your living room or attend a performance of Hamilton anywhere in the world. Britain’s National Theatre welcomed audiences around the globe to view its cinematically recorded NT Live archive for free during England’s first lockdown, ultimately leading to the launch of a subscription service that will serve those far-flung viewers for years to come.

Virtual reality and augmented reality finally found the direction they were lacking in those halcyon novelty days: Frieze offered users a chance to hang famous paintings on their wall through an augmented reality app, and Spanish artist Felipe Pantone created an Instagram exhibition using a VR graffiti simulator.

Of course, none of this means that live experiences are dead. Just a couple of weeks ago, I took my kids to an Olaf Breuning show, and their wonder at seeing art up close in situ was completely life-affirming. After two years cooped up at home, it was clearer to me than ever before just how powerful and crucial experiencing the arts in real life can be.

Going forward, it shouldn’t be about pitting digital and in-person experiences against each other. Smart organizations will have a foot in each stream. We’ll forevermore need to think about virtual and in-person experiences as two halves of a whole.

London’s Serpentine Galleries and Washington, D.C.’s AFI Docs Festival have taken this new truth to heart: Both are moving forward into the “new normal” with robust hybrid programming strategies to ensure audiences can connect comfortably with their exhibitions in a variety of ways.

Opening doors

Thinking about virtual and IRL experiences isn’t just a matter of abiding by restrictions and playing to audiences’ new preferences and comfort levels—it’s so much more important than that. It’s about inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility, for consumers as well as for creators.

A thoughtfully designed digital offering can level previously steep playing fields, making a range of experiences available to audiences who previously couldn’t afford or physically attend location-based experiences. The knock-on effect here could potentially open doors too long shut to minority creators.

Arts and culture organizations could learn from the wider creative industries in this regard; as a result of the long-standing accessibility challenges highlighted by COVID-19, design and advertising coalitions have launched programs like .movtogether and the Design Community Hub to address the disparity.

Added value

The bridging of digital and physical experiences may be relatively new to mainstream cultural organizations, but retailers have been greasing the wheels on this transformational approach for years now. Think Ikea’s augmented reality Home app, or HP Reveal’s contribution to bridging the gap between home and school for students. An American Institute of Graphic Arts report on design futures aptly observes that in these cases, digital elements add value to the overall experience, rather than simply funneling audiences to some main live event.

And now we’re seeing this same “add-on” approach emerge from more high-end brands. Celebrated fashion designer Thom Browne launched his 2021 collection in a virtual 3D showroom—and while the experience was developed due to COVID-19 restrictions, it certainly doesn’t feel like a forced substitute. Never before have audiences at a runway show had such in-depth access to the details of Browne’s work. In this iteration, viewers can take their sweet time experiencing each piece in 360-degree, high-definition glory. Browne now intends to include a virtual element in future launches, as a valuable component alongside live showings.

Building a bridge

But well-designed digital experiences don’t necessarily have to be slick and expensive. Yes, emerging VR and AR tech has a new, more urgent lease on life, and luxury brands are leading the way for many exciting and important innovations. But organizations without the budget or resources for flashy experiences needn’t feel like they’re doomed to the “old normal.”

One of the biggest successes in digital experience innovations during COVID-19 was the Frick Collection’s Cocktails With a Curator series. Low-tech videos filmed inside curators’ homes generated millions of views, proving, as The New York Times observed, that “online audiences don’t expect a simulation of a gallery visit on-screen. They want a museum experience native to the web—and that can be a little faster, a little less polished, a little more direct.”

At the end of the day, arts and culture organizations need to keep their focus where it’s always been: human connection. And they need to design their experiences—online or in person—with that humanity at the core.

What we have now is an opportunity to expand the definition of what connection with the arts means and who gets to participate in it. We have a chance to design the future of the industry in a way that makes a notable difference for the mental and emotional health of our global community—a priority that should have taken center stage a long time ago.

Amy Globus is the cofounder and creative director at Team, working with clients like Pfizer, the Bronx Museum, and Red Bull Arts.

Did greed just save the day? That’s what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed recently. “The reason we have the vaccine success,” he said in a private call to Conservative members of Parliament, “is because of capitalism, because of greed.”

Despite later backpedaling, Johnson’s remark reflects a widely influential but wildly incoherent view of innovation: that greed—the unfettered pursuit of profit above all else—is a necessary driver of technological progress. Call it the need-greed theory.

Among the pandemic’s many lessons, however, is that greed can easily work against the common good. We rightly celebrate the near-miraculous development of effective vaccines, which have been widely deployed in rich nations. But the global picture reveals not even a semblance of justice: As of May, low-income nations received just 0.3 percent of the global vaccine supply. At this rate it would take 57 years for them to achieve full vaccination.

This disparity has been dubbed “vaccine apartheid,” and it’s exacerbated by greed. A year after the launch of the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool—a program aimed at encouraging the collaborative exchange of intellectual property, knowledge, and data—”not a single company has donated its technical knowhow,” wrote politicians from India, Kenya, and Bolivia in a June essay for The Guardian. As of that month, the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative, a vaccine sharing scheme established to provide developing countries equitable access, had delivered only about 90 million out of a promised 2 billion doses. Currently, pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and conservative lawmakers continue to oppose proposals for patent waivers that would allow local drug makers to manufacture the vaccines without legal jeopardy. They claim the waivers would slow down existing production, “foster the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines,” and, as North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr said, “undermine the very innovation we are relying on to bring this pandemic to an end.”

All these views echo the idea that patents and high drug prices are necessary motivators for biomedical innovation. But examine that logic closely, and it quickly begins to fall apart.

A great deal of difficult, innovative work is done in industries and fields that lack patents. Has the lack of patent protections for recipes led to any dearth of innovation in restaurants? An irritating irony here is that economists who espouse the need-greed theory themselves innovate for comparative peanuts. For instance, in 2018, the median compensation for economists was about $104,000. The typical pharmaceutical CEO, meanwhile, earned a whopping $5.7 million in total compensation that year. (The hands-on innovators aren’t the need-greeders here; the median compensation for pharmaceutical employees—including benefits—was about $177,000 in 2018.) Even in Silicon Valley, writes ever-astute technology insider Tim O’Reilly, “the notion that entrepreneurs will stop innovating if they aren’t rewarded with billions is a pernicious fantasy.”

To be sure, it was not greed but rather a vast collaborative effort—funded largely with public dollars—that generated effective coronavirus vaccines. The technology behind mRNA vaccines such as those produced by Pfizer and Moderna took decades of work by University of Pennsylvania scientists you’ve likely never heard of. According to The New York Times, one of those scientists, Katalin Kariko, “never made more than $60,000 a year” while doing her innovative foundational research. The researchers at Oxford University who developed the technology behind AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which was mostly publicly funded, initially set out with the intention of “non-exclusive, royalty-free” licensing for their vaccine. Only after pressure from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did they renege and license the technology solely to AstraZeneca.

It was astonishing, then, when Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s CEO, said that intellectual property, or IP, “is a fundamental part of our industry and if you don’t protect IP, then essentially there is no incentive for anybody to innovate.” The Oxford scientists whose work AstraZeneca licensed literally just innovated without the incentives Soriot claimed are essential. Why do journalists present need-greeder claims, such as Soriot’s, without holding the specific role of profit seeking to account?

It’s no secret that innovators (and people generally) often aren’t necessarily greed-driven. For instance, as Walter Isaacson notes in his book about superstar biochemist Jennifer Doudna’s work on Crispr gene manipulation technology, she was never motivated primarily by money. In fact, he reports that corporate maneuvering over her work made her “physically ill.” Countless cases like hers show that innovations in science and technology typically aren’t the result of genius lightning strikes but rather of field-wide efforts with multiple teams circling the same goal. If anyone withdraws for lack of greed-gratifying incentives, no problem: They’re welcome to write themselves out of history. Others will gladly grasp the glory. And we, the public, lose nothing.

Perhaps Soriot meant, more generally, that reduced revenues would cut AstraZeneca’s overall research and development (R&D) spending. But even that claim is detectably dubious. When drug makers claim that high prices are essential for innovation, they are “flat out lying” financial expert Yves Smith wrote in 2019. Smith cited data published with the Institute for New Economic Thinking showing that, between 2009 and 2018, 18 drug makers listed in the S&P 500 spent 14 percent more on stock buybacks and dividends than they did on R&D. These companies could easily ramp up investments in innovative drugs, the authors wrote, simply by reining in distributions to shareholders. (Don’t forget that share buybacks were effectively classified as illegal market manipulation until the Securities and Exchange Commission, under Reagan, relaxed the rules in 1982.)

Of the money that drug companies do invest in R&D, a significant amount for many goes not toward innovative research but to “finding ways to suppress generic and biosimilar competition while continuing to raise prices,” according to a recent report from the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform. In these cases, executive and investor greed demonstrably impede innovation. A recent Congressional hearing dramatized this issue when Rep. Katie Porter, a California Democrat, grilled the CEO of AbbVie, a biopharmaceutical company which she said spent $2.45 billion on research and development, $4.71 billion a year on marketing and advertising, and $50 billion on shareholder payouts between 2013 and 2018. She characterized the idea that R&D justified astronomical prices as “the Big Pharma fairy tale.”

Even if greed makes sense for some for-profit ventures, it would be unwise for us to rely only on for-profit enterprise to harness innovation for social goals. There are many things that we must do whether they are profitable or not, and the horrific fiasco over vaccine patents has shown us that biotech executives and other members of the “thinkerati” are not above putting profits ahead of saving lives. As White House adviser Anthony Fauci noted to The Hill earlier this year, America has a “moral obligation” to “make sure that the rest of the world does not suffer and die” from something that we can help to prevent. Our government is failing in its duty to act in the public interest if it allows “your money or your life” to pass as an acceptable business model.

As an open letter signed by more than a hundred intellectual property scholars recently stated, IP rights (which includes patents) “are not, and have never been, absolute rights and are granted and recognized under the condition that they serve the public interest.” The scholars noted precedents like last year’s use of the Defense Production Act to increase production of medical supplies, and the U.S.’s commandeering of penicillin production during World War II. If COVID-19 vaccine makers refuse to make life-saving technology publicly available, governments should enact mandatory licensing or similar measures.

There are also compelling reasons to develop a standing, publicly operated rapid-response vaccine manufacturing capability. Pfizer’s CFO suggested that prices on vaccines will go up once we are out of the “pandemic-pricing environment,” noting that the company can charge nearly nine times more than they have been (“$150, $175 per dose,” the CFO said, versus the $19.50 Pfizer is charging the U.S. in one supply deal). Even if those who haven’t received a single dose of the vaccine never do, that could mean roughly a $30 billion bonanza from U.S. booster shots alone. Patient advocates estimate that it would cost just $4 billion for the U.S. to set up a public-private operation capable of manufacturing enough mRNA vaccines to immunize the whole planet, with each shot costing $2. This would be a great way for America to show global leadership, and would surely be way cheaper, both individually and collectively, than being annually “Pfizered.” Plus, the usefulness of such a facility would long outlast the current pandemic, with climate change making zoonotic spillover events more likely (not to mention the risks of weaponized viruses). COVID-19 was our “starter pandemic,” as Ed Yong usefully dubbed it.

If greed-driven companies fail to exercise their powers responsibly, they should face competition from the public sector. President Biden let the cat out of the bag when he said that “capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.” While many people applauded his sentiment, stop and think about the implication: The president was, in essence, saying that we expect corporations to exploit us if given half a chance.

We pay a huge price in blood and treasure when we give the need-greeders free rein to lie to and exploit the public with impunity. We must be clear-eyed about exactly when greed can help our collective interests and when it hinders them. During a crisis as dire as a global pandemic, greed won’t save us.

Jag Bhalla is a writer and entrepreneur.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Food and grocery delivery services boomed during the pandemic as our purchase habits and expectations changed. And now 7-Eleven is getting in on the home delivery trend by launching a pilot program in select states that will see beer, wine, and even Slurpees delivered to your door within 30 to 60 minutes.

The company has announced a collaboration with Minibar Delivery, an independent marketplace for alcohol delivery, that will see select stores in Florida, Texas, and Virginia offer beer and wine delivery direct to customers’ homes. In addition to alcoholic beverages, the new pilot program will also allow 7-Eleven customers to order snack hits such as Slurpees, Big Bite Hot Dogs, chips, and pizza.

7-Eleven says 600 stores will take part in its alcohol delivery pilot. That includes stores in Orlando, Tampa, Fort Myers, and Miami in Florida; San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth in Texas, and Virginia Beach, Richmond, Norfolk, and Alexandria in Virginia, with additional markets to come later this year. Alcoholic deliveries will, of course, be limited to those 21 years old and above.

If you live in one of the markets the pilot program is rolling out in, you can order from your local 7-Eleven via the Minibar Delivery’s app (iOS/Android) or on the web at www.minibardelivery.com. And if it’s your first order from 7-Eleven, you can get $7.11 off your first purchase by using the promo code 7ELEVEN when you checkout.

This fall was supposed to be spectacular. After a year and a half of dealing with the trauma, anxiety, and exhaustion of the pandemic, the vaccines arrived, and it seemed like normalcy was around the corner. I was planning to throw house parties and enormous dinner gatherings to catch up with friends, and host Halloween and Thanksgiving shindigs. But the highly transmissible delta variant changed all of that.

With COVID-19 cases surging around the country, many of us are headed back indoors with our pod-mates. It’s a depressing thought. But to make it (slightly) more bearable, why not invest in a few things to liven up your home? We’ve selected some of our favorite design-forward home goods to inspire you as you spruce up your living space for the months to come.

A Splash of Color for Your Walls

MoMA Design Store, $325

Ronan Bouroullec is a celebrated furniture designer who is also known for beautiful abstract paintings. This one, featured in MoMA’s collection, is bound to put a smile on your face with its burst of colors. MoMA Design Store sells a print on embossed paper, which mimics the artist’s technique of using felt-tip pens on glossy paper. You won’t have to go through the trouble of framing it, because it comes in a wax oak molding and Plexiglass.

Make Your Own Artwork

Areaware, $17

If the Bouroullec painting got your creative juices flowing, maybe it’s time to make some abstract art of your own. These Doodle Crayons were developed by artist and designer Nikolas Bentel, who loves helping people reimagine everyday objects. The shape of the crayons spur you to use them in different ways—by pulling them along their sides or pushing them around flat. Then proudly display your scribbles and doodles on your fridge or walls.

A Rug With Many Lives

Revival Rugs, $839

If you’re looking for a touch of warmth in your home, consider updating your rugs. Rather than buying a brand-new, factory-made one,  you could get a vintage rug that has had many lives. Revival Rugs curates vintage rugs from around the world then cleans and refurbishes them. This particular one-of-a-kind rug was made in Malatya, Turkey, and it features geometric patterns that are unique to that region. The company allows you to search for a rug by size and color, so you can find one that is perfectly suited to your space.

Turn Your Bathroom Into a Museum

Design Milk Store, $62

We start and end our days in the bathroom. Shouldn’t it be a gorgeous spot in the house? Design Milk has a range of bathroom products, from shower curtains to bath rugs, that feature modern art. I’m particularly taken by this one, called the Mendocino Moon Jelly rug, because it is inspired by the quiet town in California known for its beautiful mountain views. It’s designed in the Turkish kilim style and is made from quick-drying cotton.

Take In The Light

Goodee, $265

As the days get darker, you’ll want to brighten up your home. This meditative lamp, called the Reflection Oblo Table Lamp, was designed by David Weeks, an industrial designer from New York, and features a mouth-blown bulb and a base made of semi-translucent, hand-thrown porcelain that has a reflective glaze for enhancing the bulb’s light.

A Throw Blanket To Regale The Eyes

MoMA Design Store, $200

If you’re in the market for a throw blanket as the cooler months arrive, you might consider this lively, colorful one by the Japanese designer Osamu Mita. It’s inspired by Japanese vending machines that dispense capsules full of surprise toys. There are 15 patterns on display, each inside a circle meant to represent a toy capsule. Mita’s art has been featured in MoMA’s collection and these particular designs were part of a 1998 exhibit, Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles.

Give Your Pandemic Puppy A Designer Bed

Minna, $225

You got a furry friend to help you get through the pandemic. As the two of you spend more time indoors, why not create a designer sanctuary for the little guy with this beautiful pet bed? The Penny Dog Bed is made by pedal loom weavers in San Antonio Palopó, Guatamala, and features striped fabric in a range of colors that will spruce up a room. If you don’t have a pet but you love the product, buy it anyway: It doubles as a floor pillow.

Splurge On Your Cozy Corner

Blu Dot, $1,299

If you’re going to spend a lot of time reading a book in a cozy corner of your home, you could do worse than this beautifully crafted full-grain leather chair that will last a lifetime. The Heyday Lounge Chair, designed by Blu Dot, is meant to make you feel like you’re suspended in mid-air. Bonus: The chair ships fully assembled.

A Broom You Can Believe In

Sunhouse Craft, $35

You might think there’s nothing duller than a broom. But that’s because you haven’t explored the universe of artisanal brooms. These Rainbow Brooms are by designer Cynthia Main, who wanted to create home goods inspired by traditional Appalachian crafts. Each broom is sustainably made in Berea, Kentucky, and the brooms are hand woven from locally sourced wood. They’ll bring a smile to your face as you’re going about your chores and sweeping your home.

If you want to try some, cultured meat still isn’t easy to find: So far, only one form of cultured chicken has regulatory approval, and only in Singapore. But more is coming, and your pets won’t have to wait long either. Soon there will be cultured meat for pet food, which could help cut the 64 million tons of carbon pollution that comes from producing meat for dog and cat food.

The biotech startup Because, Animals is the first to focus on pet food, and hopes to launch its first products—including a “mouse cookie” snack for cats—by 2022. “The ultimate goal of most cultured meat companies is to create a product that will allow animals to be taken out of the food supply chain,” Shannon Falconer, CEO and cofounder of Because, Animals, said in an email. “And, given that humans are the largest consumers of traditional meat, it makes sense to focus on humans when making a cultured meat product. However, something that most people are unaware of is that, in addition to humans, there is another hugely significant population driving the animal agriculture industry forward: our pets.”

More than a quarter of the environmental impact of animal agriculture, by one estimate, comes from feeding pets meat. Pet food often uses rendered meat, the grisly ingredients that people don’t want (like viscera, heads, bones, and blood) or meat that can’t legally be sold because the livestock was diseased or dying. The volume of this rendered meat is so large that if farmers couldn’t sell it, they couldn’t afford to dispose of it as biohazardous waste; Falconer argues that pet food helps prop up the entire industry.

While some companies make plant-based pet food, dogs and cats are arguably healthier when they eat meat, particularly cats, which need certain proteins that can only be found in meat. When the startup started product development for its first cat food, it decided to begin not with beef or chicken but mouse. “Cats evolved as predatory animals, with their food sources being mice, rats, rabbits, lizards, and insects,” says Falconer. “Although chicken, beef, and fish are the main sources of meat in pet foods, studies have shown that these proteins are also among the leading food allergens in cats and dogs.” The only reason that these meats are used in pet food, she says, is because they’re already being produced for humans.

The first snack, called Cultured Mouse Cookies for Cats, has been tested by cats and is ready for production, though the company is still working on how to fully scale up its process. Like cultured meat under development for humans, the process starts by harvesting cells from an animal—in this case, a mouse (the mouse isn’t harmed)—and then feeding those cells nutrients inside a bioreactor, where they grow and turn into real meat that is animal-free. Cultured rabbit for dogs will come next.

The final challenge, as with cultured meat for humans, is regulatory approval. “Regulatory approval will look different depending on the country,” Falconer says. “But the fundamental question that any and every regulatory authority will ask is: How do we know it’s safe? There isn’t a single experiment that Because, Animals conducts that doesn’t place the health and safety of our cultured meat as our highest priority. We’re incredibly thorough, so we don’t expect to have any hiccups around regulatory approval aside from the inherently lengthy review process.”

Software applications—apps—drive everything about how we function in the world. But can apps function as medicine? Can they treat our health problems, or better yet, prevent them?

An organization founded in 2017 called the Digital Therapeutics Alliance believes that software can prevent, treat, and manage a range of health issues. And now its members, armed with stacks of peer reviewed papers, are trying to get the government to write legislation that creates a pathway for their success.

“Think of us as a digital drug,” says Big Health founder Peter Hames. The company has two mobile apps, Daylight, which treats anxiety, and Sleepio, which treats insomnia. The apps deliver cognitive behavioral therapy, a skills based therapy that, through a virtual professor, teaches you techniques for falling asleep and mitigating anxiety. It also asks users to log progress through a sleep diary. This level of data collection allows Big Health to document whether or not its app is working.

Together, the two apps have been the subject of 56 peer-reviewed clinical papers, of which 13 included randomized controlled trials, involving 13,000 participants.  There is fairly thorough data supporting their usefulness, because the effects of apps—just like drugs—can be measured and validated. “More participants have taken part in controlled studies of Sleepio, our insomnia therapeutic, than have ever taken part in studies of Ambien,” says Hames.

In general, digital therapeutics tend to take a lifestyle approach to illness, teaching patients how to manage health problems ranging from chronic pain and diabetes to anxiety. The Digital Therapeutics Alliance has 59 member companies, including pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim. In the last few years, it’s seen growing investment from venture capital. In 2015, the category attracted $134.3 million in venture funding, but by 2019, digital therapeutics had cleared $1.2 billion worth of deals, according to Pitchbook data. Pitchbook’s analysts estimate that digital therapeutics will be worth $6.9 billion by 2025.

“Through data we’re tying to make sure users are more engaged, retained, and eventually help them improve clinical outcomes,” says Erez Raphael, CEO of DarioHealth. “Further, we have the data to prove the clinical outcomes.” Part of why these interventions are successful is because they make keeping up with healthcare regimens much easier. The apps not only allow members to track their own progress, but often feature other accountability measures, like check-ins with a coach—all of which can be done from home.

Ostensibly, any kind of treatment proven to treat sleeplessness or reduce anxiety should be prescribable and covered by health insurance. Some major insurers do cover Sleepio (the company also has a deal with CVS/Caremark and the National Health Service in the U.K). However, other digital therapeutics companies are still struggling to be accepted for insurance reimbursement. Many digital therapeutics provide treatment for on-going conditions, which are not always easily reimbursable under fee-for-service insurance models.

For instance, DarioHealth uses a digital platform combined with coaches and sometimes medical devices to treat diabetes, hypertension, weight loss, and musculoskeletal issues. Part of the issue the company encounters with insurers is that there aren’t corresponding insurance billing codes for the kinds of services its digital therapeutics provide. Instead, it has also worked out deals wherein its 185,000 users can be reimbursed for Dario’s medical devices, like it’s glucometer. It primarily sells its program to patients directly and employers as an employee health benefit.

“The biggest hurdle that we have right now is that [Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services] has yet to define a benefit category for software as a medical device,” says Therapeutic Alliance CEO Andy Molnar. While CMS does not dictate what insurers will and will not reimburse for, it sets the standard because it is the largest payer in the country. Typically, insurers cover drugs and healthcare services provided by doctors. Digital therapeutics don’t fall into either of those categories.

There are signs that CMS may be embracing digital therapeutics soon. In January, CMS finalized a rule called the Medicare Coverage of Innovative Technology, which would make technologies with a breakthrough status from the Food and Drug Administration eligible for reimbursement under Medicare for four years.  However, implementation of that rule has been delayed until at least December 15, to give the Biden administration an opportunity to review and amend it. MCIT currently doesn’t address digital therapeutics directly, but it does reimburse for medical equipment, often a component of digital therapeutics.

In addition to MCIT, a bill introduced last year may create a stronger pathway to reimbursement for digital therapeutics. The Prescription Digital Therapeutics to Support Recovery Act would ensure Medicare and Medicaid cover prescription digital therapeutics that render behavioral health services, including programs that address mental health disorders and substance abuse. If it is eventually passed, this bill would create a benefit category for digital therapeutics, as Molnar described.

Other countries have already taken steps to make sure that patients have easy access to digital therapeutics and telemedicine. In 2019, Germany passed The Act to Improve Healthcare Provision Through Digitalization and Innovation, so that healthcare apps could be covered by insurance. That same year, the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published guidance for digital therapies on how to gain acceptance by the NHS.

Raphael is encouraged by the progress. “It’s a much more modern way for people to manage their health.”

“No one in his or her right mind would argue that quantity guarantees quality,” bestselling novelist Stephen King wrote, “but to suggest that quantity never produces quality strikes me as snobbish, inane, and demonstrably untrue.”

Many of the people we think of as the most creative in history had staggeringly prolific levels of output in their careers. Charles Darwin published around 120 scholarly papers, Albert Einstein published around 250 papers, and Sigmund Freud published 330 papers. Thomas Edison held nearly 2,000 patents on his inventions. Johann Sebastian Bach composed more than 1,000 musical pieces, and Pablo Picasso is credited with more than 20,000 paintings, sculptures, and drawings.

In the journal writing challenge set by my own seventh-grade teacher, my classmates all commented that it helped them become less self- conscious. Furthermore, even those who had previously hated writing started to enjoy it. For me, it acted like a creativity release valve. Perpetually dogged by perfectionism, I found that the new stakes finally loosened me up.

Without the fear of judgment, I spontaneously produced poems, songs, and short stories. Boosting the quantity of your output could help you become more creative, as we discussed above. A positive, elevated, and open mood also seems to disinhibit and allow for more ideas to come. In this state, you are unhindered by internal criticism.

Lest you think that creativity is all about being in a good mood and just waiting for magic, it’s clear that the emotional recipe for creativity is, well, not fully clear. Emotional intensity and even ambivalence seem to play a role in creativity, too. Researchers used to believe that positive moods led to creativity, but recent research has revealed a messier truth. High-intensity feelings, even if they are negative, can lead to completing a set goal, whereas low-intensity feelings, again, even if they are negative, enable us to think more broadly, more diffusely—the kind of thinking necessary to shift perspective and “see the big picture.”

Expertise matters, too. Two of the criteria for creativity are novelty and usefulness. If you know nothing about a field, you might get lucky and produce a few creative ideas (especially if you are expert in another area and are transferring your skills from there), but how can you know what is useful or novel in this new area without expertise? Being at the right challenge for your skill level is key.

In short, the idea is practicing a lot, being in the right mood—and more the magnitude than whether you’re happy or sad—and don’t forget you need to have a level of expertise in that area, of course. All of these will affect your creativity.

Where creativity lives in the brain

Ever heard that the right brain is creative and the left brain is logical? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but recent brain imaging data has debunked that idea. The old idea seems to have come from language centers being in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities being in the right, but recent findings show a far more complex and interesting picture.

Recent studies of people lying in brain scanners and performing tasks requiring creativity or creative thinking showed that they tended to engage not just one part (say, the right or left hemisphere of the brain) but multiple large-scale brain networks that run through the frontal area, the temporal lobes, and the limbic system. This could be seen not just in randomly selected people, but also in people who are indisputably creative, such as freestyle rappers and jazz improvisers.

Why increase your creativity?

There are many reasons why interventions designed to boost your creativity might be worth pursuing. First of all, creativity brings a special kind of focused joy: flow. Flow, also known as being “in the zone” or being immersed, fully absorbed in a feeling of energized focus, is an inherently pleasurable experience. It’s common when in the throes of creativity. Many artists, scientists, and performers report that they lose track of time and lose any sense of themselves when they are immersed in their craft.

Second, creativity may lead to interesting careers. In the 21st century, we are going to need a lot of innovative solutions for everything from climate change to how we should try to coexist with AI. Not to mention how to bridge the widening gap between rich and poor, how to make our food sup- ply chains more sustainable, or how to travel to other planets. If you want to be part of solving these problems—some of which may involve lucrative career paths—you may want to boost your creativity.

Creativity also offers the possibility of personal glory and immortality. If you want fame or fortune now, doing the same things as everyone else but faster and more reliably could be your ticket. If you want to be remembered forever, however, creativity is the path to get there. Maybe when you unlock more of your creativity you will become the next Coco Chanel, Edison, Marie Curie, Ludwig van Beethoven, or Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Your art could be in museums, your music could be played on everyone’s devices, your company could be publicly traded, your cure for a disease could save millions, and your inventions could be sold in stores everywhere.

Elizabeth R. Ricker is the author of Smarter Tomorrow: How 15 Minutes of Neurohacking a Day Can Help You Work Better, Think Faster, and Get More Done. She received her undergraduate degree from MIT and holds a master’s from Harvard University studying the mind, brain, and education.

Excerpted from Smarter Tomorrow. Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth R. Ricker. Used with permission of Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Corporate sustainability pledges, from net zero to carbon negative to nature positive, are now a fixture of daily life. And I’m worried.

Having worked in sustainability for the past decade, I’ve had a front-row seat on the way these commitments often play out. And without deep business transformation, they won’t. I’m hearing a lot of noise around where businesses are planning to land, but not so much on what it will take to get there.

Could it be that business leaders don’t actually know what it will take to deliver on big commitments? Or are they struggling to tackle the obstacles to change? I’m observing a bit of both.

Regardless of the sticking point, leaders need to be honest with shareholders, internal teams, and consumers about the contradictions between current business models and sustainable production and consumption. Only then can leaders get real about what it will take to deliver on promises and start rolling up their sleeves to make it happen. Here’s what leading true transformation looks like.

Lead, uncomfortably

Most business leaders I know understand that they can’t reach their sustainability goals on a business-as-usual path. They’re well aware that the systems in place favor short-term gains over long-term value and resilience.

This uncomfortable reality may make playing the “not my problem” card seem tempting. That’s precisely where the problem lies. Now is not the time to shrug at things that seem outside of our control. Instead, leaders must dig deeper and challenge their long-held beliefs about doing business.

It’s time to start questioning the rules of business and getting answers: Will our current business model get us to the goals we’re promising to achieve? Which of our products or activities are at odds with our sustainability goals? Leaders need to normalize posing these existential questions at shareholder meetings, to board members, and among industry peers. This requires being honest and up-front about inconsistencies and how to address them.

And these conversations shouldn’t happen in a generational silo. In the classic clash of youth versus business leaders, it’s easy to use dismissal to mask discomfort. But what if leaders started leaning into the energy of the younger generations to find new solutions and common ground?

Practice—and advocate—what you preach

I see two sides of the corporate sustainability spectrum today. On one end are companies that have acknowledged reality: It’s impossible to engineer a road to sustainability without transforming the way we do business. On the other are those who give lip service to the sustainability movement while actively undermining progress within and outside of their company.

Presenting as a politically neutral business is a thing of the past. Consumers are demanding more than words; and they’re watching for inconsistencies. Leaders must tear down silos between sustainability departments and corporate influence teams, ensuring that those lobbying on behalf of the company are walking the talk, too. Companies that are truly committed to fulfilling their promises know that they must advocate for public policies that create the conditions necessary for change.

To fully embody their commitments and values, businesses should become sustainability activists and throw their weight behind causes they claim to care about—not as a performance or just when it’s convenient. Focusing on fixing the issues their operations impact directly is key. The companies that actively work to rewrite the rules of the game for the better are the ones that will maintain their license to operate and be the example for their peers. A true leader focuses not just on cleaning up their own yard but the entire neighborhood.

Get authentic inside and outside the company

Sometimes a “fake it ’til you make it” attitude can help you persevere through a challenge. This is not one of those times. By acknowledging the roadblocks faced and errors made, leaders can contribute to a culture of authenticity and build the trust to lead transformation.

It’s time to challenge traditional boundaries with competitors, too. It’s cliché but it’s true: We’re stronger when we work together. From the Science Based Targets initiative to the brand new Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions, I’ve seen initiatives like these skyrocket over the past decade. This trend is only going to accelerate, so companies that aren’t part of a pre-competitive collaboration should be asking themselves why that is. When an entire industry bands together, the remaining stragglers become increasingly hard to ignore, and excuses for going it alone increasingly slim.

When I look at the state of sustainability today—on the cusp of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26)—I’m concerned. But I’m also optimistic, and I hope that business leaders are, too. The worst thing to do would be to pretend true sustainability is possible while secretly believing the challenges are insurmountable—because they aren’t.

The opportunities of shifting business to operate within the limits of our planet far outweigh any short-term costs or temporary feelings of discomfort. Those who recognize that big challenges call for more than big words—but big action and follow-through—are the ones who will make it to the other side.

Dimitri Caudrelier is the CEO of Quantis.

For over two decades, journalist Karen Given was the producer of a popular nationally syndicated sports radio show, Only a Game. Given identified so closely with this role that when she introduced herself, she would say: “Hi, I’m Karen, the executive producer of Only a Game.”

But when the show and her job came to an abrupt end in September 2020, Given found it hard to maintain a clear sense of identity. “With the loss of my job, I struggled to figure out who I was professionally,” said Given.  

Given’s feelings around job loss are not unique. Work provides many of us with much more than a paycheck. A job can offer recognition and status, instill a feeling of belonging, and reinforce self-worth, which together create a tangible professional and personal identity that can be hard to let go of when the position ends.  

Research shows that having a concrete “work identity”—which can be defined as how important your job is and who you believe yourself to be professionally—can be closely tied to your well-being. In a Gallup poll, unemployed Americans were more than twice as likely as those with full-time jobs to say they had been treated or were being treated for depression, and this situation has become endemic during the coronavirus pandemic as millions of Americans have experienced unemployment.

Regardless of the reason why you lost your job, here are some steps you can take to regain your sense of self:

Grieve the loss of your work identity

As a coach who works with people in job or career transition, I’m acutely aware of the intense feelings of anger, sadness, and abandonment that generally accompany a layoff. After having a go-to response to the icebreaker question, “what do you do for a living?” it’s hard to be forced by circumstances to let go of the pithy answer that helps us position ourselves in other people’s worlds, as well as our own.

When a job that you once identified with becomes a thing of the past, it’s essential to acknowledge your feelings about the loss, and not dismiss or hide from them. As with any kind of grief, before you can move forward, you must first mourn what you’re leaving behind.

Reframe the situation

When I spoke with Given about how she was handling the recent end of her long-time radio role, she explained that this year has been all about reframing the way that she looks at things. “When I start to get sad about losing the job I loved, I remind myself that the commute was really terrible,” says Given. “When I start to worry about what the future will hold, I challenge myself to think of the possibilities.” 

She emphasized that while uncertainty is scary, it also creates a blank canvas on which you can build something new. “I can no longer do the thing I’ve always done, which gives me the freedom to try the things I’ve always wanted to do,” says Given. “With the entire world upside down [due to COVID-19], could there be a better time to take a risk?” 

Reach out to your network

Social support is crucial in times of change and challenge. Isolation and loneliness are compounding factors that can accompany job loss, so it’s essential to connect with others in the wake of a layoff.

When my client Josh lost his job in a biotech company due to a merger, he asked people in his network to recall a time they had seen him at his best. He also invited them to identify the skills he was using to help him home in on his most marketable capabilities. Doing so allowed Josh to reconnect to supportive people and regain his footing during an incredibly difficult time.

Return to your values

Values are fundamental beliefs or principles about what you stand for, and can be considered the “essence” of who you are. Values—such as creativity, honesty, collaboration, personal development, and autonomy—underpin career decisions over the long term, though how you express those values and rank their relative importance can shift over time.

While values can help you find meaning and fulfillment in your work, they transcend your work identity and can also be expressed in many contexts outside of work. They’re another lens from which to view yourself during a career transition. That’s why grounding yourself in your values and vision is a powerful way to navigate uncertainty and regain a sense of self in the wake of a job loss. 

Brad, one of my clients who ran social media marketing for his tech company, was always interested in mentoring younger employees—particularly those who had fewer opportunities growing up that resulted in less exposure to the business world. Brad’s value of helping others laid the foundation for exploring other possible career options. His passion for diversity and inclusion guided him to start a consultancy aimed at assisting tech companies that wanted to diversify their engineering organizations. 

Do something unrelated to work

To regain your sense of identity after a layoff, it’s important to incorporate some activities that are potentially less frustrating and rejection-filled than looking for a job. When I coach professionals in transition, I’ve often observed how volunteering helps many rediscover a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Taking on a volunteer role can broaden your networks, and in some cases leads to concrete job opportunities. Most importantly, engaging in activities that are important to you and that help others can foster a sense of confidence, competence, and control over your life—qualities that may have felt shaky after being let go.

Job loss can usher in a corresponding loss of identity and shaken self-image—but keep in mind that what makes you unique isn’t determined solely by your job title or the organization to which you used to belong. Your work isn’t who you are; it’s just what you do. If you’re open to it, losing a job can reveal possibilities to explore sides of yourself that lay dormant until now.

Susan Peppercorn is an executive transition coach, corporate speaker, and writer. Download her free Career Fit Index.

Remote work has oodles of benefits for employers and employees alike: a larger talent pool, less overhead, flexible scheduling, and more.

There are some drawbacks, though, especially for hybrid companies with a mix of remote and in-office workers: potential communication issues, isolation for remote people on in-person teams, and culture challenges.

To address such drawbacks, of course, we have the now-ubiquitous video meeting. And while the technology’s come a long way, it’s still tough to replicate the feeling of being inside an office, from casual catchups to in-person meetings. Open offices, despite its many, many, many flaws, do offer a major benefit: the possibility of open dialogue between team members at all times.

Now, the race is on to build video technology that replicates constant communication between teams. Here’s a look at some interesting contenders.

Owl Labs: Meeting Owl 360-degree smart camera

Have you ever been on the remote end of a call that’s got 12 people packed in a distant, echo-y conference room with a corner-mounted camera so they all look like tiny smudges and you can’t tell who’s talking? If you plan to stay remote while your coworkers head back to the office, this unpleasant experience is in your future.

That’s a problem Owl Labs is trying to solve with its line of Meeting Owl cameras. There are two models—the $799 Meeting Owl (designed for small rooms) and the $999 Meeting Owl Pro (designed for large rooms)—which both look like… well, owls, if they’d been designed by Isaac Asimov. Their neatest trick (aside from being adorable): capturing videoconferences in 360 degrees.

[Animation: courtesy of Owl]That might not sound super exciting at first, until you realize that you can see everyone in the room up in a video strip that runs along the top of your window, and then a larger spotlight video section below that intelligently focuses on whoever’s talking. Better yet, if multiple people are talking, it’ll slide them in and out of the main video section, making it feel more like you’re in a real-life meeting.

The cameras integrate with popular videoconferences services such as Zoom, Slack, GoToMeeting, and others, and can be connected in pairs if you need to cover cavernous conference rooms.

Around: Bring Your Own Camera

Not everybody has the cash for an $800 owl-shaped camera, of course, but camera-equipped phones, tablets, and laptops sure aren’t hard to find.

The idea behind Around—which is currently free in public beta—is that sometimes the best camera-and-mic setup is the one closest to your face, regardless of where your workspace is located.

Imagine a team that needs to jump into a war-room of sorts to hammer out last-minute details on a launch. Everyone fires up Around, and people in the group show up in little video circles that block out distracting backgrounds and follow people’s heads as they speak. It makes collaborating via video easy because it gets the actual video part of it out of the way.

[Animation: courtesy of Around]Around leverages AI to frame your face in a small circle and to auto-mute common unwanted background noises like sirens, pets, and HVAC noise. It integrates with Slack and is available on just about every major platform as well: Windows, Mac, and Linux, plus iOS and Android, and directly via popular web browsers.

The company says it’ll always offer a free option, but paid plans look set to roll out later this year, so get in now while the gettin’ is good.

Video Window: Always-on common spaces

OK: you’re in the office and you need to speak with your remote co-worker on the double. Email’s too slow. Chat won’t get the context across. Phones are too old-timey.

Walk up to your company’s Video Window, which streams a constant view of the office for remote workers, and tap on the image of the remote worker you need to talk to.

On the remote worker’s end, the Video Window Remote app is up on a secondary monitor or tablet with the video turned on and the audio turned off. This way, he or she can see what’s going on in the office and notice when someone’s walking up to chat.

[Image: courtesy of Video Window]The remote worker can also just unmute to try to get someone’s attention or tap the “knock” icon, which makes a knocking sound on the office Video Window. Multiple in-office Video Windows can be connected together as well, making for quick site-to-site communication, and there’s a cool-looking whiteboarding feature.

Now, this is a software-based offering from the company Collaboration Squared, but you’ll need to supply some slightly-specialized hardware for an office-based Video Window: namely, a touch-capable display, computer, and webcam.

Obviously the bigger, faster, and higher-resolution the better—the company recommends a 65-inch or larger touch display (which cost thousands), Intel i5 or up processor, and 4K webcam—but does mention that it’ll run on commodity hardware, even using just a mouse and keyboard instead of touch if you’re on a budget.

Pricing is a flat $2,400 per office device, per year. The Video Window Remote app, which runs on standard tablets, phones, and computers, is free.

Earlier this year, Barack Obama became the first American president to launch a podcast. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Almost every high-profile job these days, ranging from movie star to talk-show host, is now technically a stepping stone to society’s true highest rung: podcast host. But among eligible former presidents who might have first crossed the rubicon, Obama seems particularly suited to it. Renegades: Born in the U.S.A.—the show he created with Bruce Springsteen, a sort of ne plus ultra of dad bait—hails from Higher Ground, the production company the 44th president formed with his wife Michelle (who also has a podcast), to facilitate their creative ambitions. The Springsteen collab joins a robust slate of other projects in a burgeoning media empire that spans books, TV shows, feature films, live events (pre-COVID-19), and an upcoming stint hosting Saturday Night Live. (That last part isn’t true, at least as far as Fast Company knows, but who wouldn’t believe it?)

[Photo: Renegades: Born in the USA]This year has seen Higher Ground transform from what might have initially been written off as a vanity production shingle—Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos was a big supporter of the Obamas, and his wife served as Ambassador to the Bahamas from 2009 to 2011—into a rather active content creation hub. They released one kids series in the spring, another on July 4, and have yet another scheduled for next month. In addition, the Kevin Hart feature Fatherhood, acquired on the festival circuit early this year, bowed in June. At least seven more projects have also been announced recently and are in development.

Although most Hollywood producers follow their taste for material or work within a defined genre, there are a few who have sought to create a niche out of developing socially redeeming material. Perhaps the best known of these is Participant Media, which builds impact campaigns around the films it makes, such as RBG and John Lewis: Good Trouble. Another upstart production company, One Community, which made Michael B. Jordan’s Just Mercy, has positioned itself as “impact first,” using its content to amplify the change it wants to see in the world.

What change does the President turned mogul—and his ascendant mega-influencer spouse—want to achieve with this torrent of projects? Does the Obamas’ output add up to more than just extra tiles on the Netflix homepage?

Producer-in-Chief

At the beginning of his post-presidency era, Obama seemed to split the difference between his two immediate predecessors. Like Bush, he withdrew from the spotlight—with the exception of an eyebrow-raising kite-surfing vacation on Richard Branson’s private island—and into writing his presidential memoir. Like Clinton, he took high-paid speaking gigs, some of them to Wall Street firms, earning as much as $400,000 a pop, and shoring up funds for his foundation.

Anyone curious about what he would do long-term, though, could only speculate.

“I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the most important thing I could do for my next job,” he told a panel of young community organizers in April 2017. “[There are] all kinds of issues that I care about and issues I intend to work on. But the single most important thing I can do is help in any way [to] prepare the next generation of leadership to take their own crack at changing the world.”

This declaration is vague and positive in a quintessentially Obama-esque way. A lot of things could be described as “preparing the next generation of leadership.” Lining up more Wall Street speeches could technically qualify. To which version of preparation would the former president devote himself as a civilian?

The answer arrived in May 2018.

[Photo: The White House]Just two months after revealing a joint book deal with Penguin Random House worth $65 million, Barack and Michelle Obama announced their deal with Netflix. For an undisclosed sum, the former first couple would be cultivating and shepherding scripted and unscripted series, documentaries, and feature films. Although this would appear on its face an unconventional post-presidential career pivot, with a reality-television host in the White House ripping up the presidential playbook, perhaps the post-presidential formula of ranch retirement and occasional shuttle diplomacy deserved a shakeup, too.

Americans have always been curious about their presidents’ tastes, but no one had quite leaned into that bit of voter relatability more than Obama, with the president regularly releasing summer reading lists and end-of-the-year playlists. Producing content of his own was theoretically a fitting follow-up project for a presidency marked by mavenhood.

In both an early NYT scoop about a potential Netflix deal, and the eventual announcement confirming it, Michelle Obama and senior advisor Eric Schultz used identical language to describe how the former First Couple has “always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire.”

All politicians rely on storytelling in one way or another, spinning yarns about themselves, their constituents, and the entire world. Obama, however, is rare among politicians in that he was already the author of a memoir before he ever held office—a literary one to boot, not just the typical boilerplate campaign tome. Storytelling was key to his early success as a politician, and a lens through which to refract his worldview.

“I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story. That I owe a debt to all of those who came before me. And that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible,” he famously said at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

But how would he and Michelle use the power of storytelling to inspire people in the Trump era?

Higher Brow

The only hint anyone had about what to expect from the Obamas’ output at that point is their production company, Higher Ground, which name-checks a universally beloved Stevie Wonder track and nods to Michelle Obama’s most famous quote. It would be another year before Netflix revealed anything further.

In late April, 2019 the streaming service announced an initial set of offerings. These included: American Factory, a blunt look at the incompatibility of a globalized economy; Waffles + Mochi, a children’s show about the virtues of eating healthily, featuring puppets, celebrities, and occasionally Michelle Obama; and Bloom, a class-focused drama set in the fashion world of post-WWII New York City. It looked as though Higher Ground’s material would offer insight into the challenges facing Americans, further plumb the Obamas’ personal interests, and provide some high-brow fun as well. Essentially, it would be a line drive right down the middle.

The rollout of these projects so far has been marked by a kind of frictionless efficiency uncommon to government matters. American Factory won the Best Documentary Oscar in 2020, blasting a prestige gloss over the entire enterprise. Michelle Obama continued her transformation into a trusted guru of social-consciousness, launching The Michelle Obama Podcast on Spotify and adapting her bestselling memoir, Becoming, into a Netflix special. Higher Ground also began acquiring more features at film festivals, including Hart’s Fatherhood, and the forthcoming Worth, a patriotic tear-jerker about the 9/11 Victims Fund starring Michael Keaton. The company’s slate of originals is rapidly expanding as well, and now includes a series of love stories about Black teenagers, a feature adaptation of the Pakistani-penned bestseller Exit West, and a kids show applying the Doc McStuffins formula to scientists.

Some of these projects are exactly what you’d expect. We The People, a Schoolhouse Rock update released earlier this summer, and which I need not even mention features Lin-Manuel Miranda, is more on-the-nose than rhinoplasty. Civic-minded kumbaya for kids. In one episode, a young woman registering voters is slightly intimidated by a young man decked out in hip-hop regalia . . . only for him to smile, revealing bejeweled gold fronts that read “I voted.”

Some of the upcoming projects are head-scratchers. The G-Word, a loose adaptation of Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk, caused a stir in 2020 when Insider incorrectly characterized it as “a Netflix comedy series about the ‘chaos’ that occurred when Trump came into power.” This description had the Obamas taking a momentary break from going high, to fire back at their chief antagonist. It didn’t seem like a particularly wise move, and definitely not a necessary one, but it was at least an interesting direction for the pair to go in. The show’s actual logline—a part documentary, part sketch-comedy look at how government really works, hosted by Adam Ruins Everything creator Adam Conover—sounds like a joke premise Ben Shapiro might suggest when talking about what liberals watch on TV.

The Brand called Obama

The most representative project in Higher Ground’s repertoire is probably Overlooked, an anthology series examining some of the more incredible lives left out of the obituary section of the New York Times over the years. If there’s a unifying theme to the Obamas’ itinerary overall, it’s an emphasis on drawing attention to lives and perspectives too often left out of the American entertainment landscape: devoted single Black fathers, refugees, disabled athletes, and America’s indigenous population. Getting these kinds of stories into the televisual bloodstream is a noble cause. Most of them, however, don’t scan as hidden gems found in the rough but rather obviously worthy projects that would have found homes anyway. Why do they need a Presidential Seal of Approval, if not for that?

Perhaps the Obamas are just voracious consumers of content as well as canny curators, who find being on the supply side “a more palatable way to make money than the paid-speech circuit,” as the former president reportedly said. The pair has plenty of other ways to generate revenue, of course—albeit mostly in other parts of the media business. They can parlay a book into an arena tour, a podcast into a book, and a book into a Young Adult version of itself. But branching out into film and television production is not only lucrative, it’s also perhaps something in between fulfilling job and brand-burnishing exercise. It’s a chance to program an official Obama summer watchlist totally from scratch.

This collaboration has been carefully packaged, however, as a matter of purpose; a mission to inspire through storytelling. In reality, it’s more like a holistic, worldview-signifying imprimatur. Any loftier framing than that is just a testament to the power the Obamas’ storytelling has to inspire themselves.

Yesterday much of the world looked on in horror as the Taliban took the Afghan capital of Kabul and with it, control of the entire country. The Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan took little more than a week after U.S. forces withdrew from the country after two long decades.

The consequences for the Afghan people will be immediate. As for the rest of the world? Many are predicting that a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan could once again become a hotbed of terrorist activity that could see plots of the scale of 9/11 happen again.

While governments around the world are still rushing to digest what Afghanistan’s fall means from a geopolitical perspective, here’s how newspapers around the globe have already covered the fall of Afghanistan.

Tomorrow’s USA TODAY front page is hard to look at.

For 18 of the 20 years of America’s war in Afghanistan, I was a reporter and editor in a military town.

We covered every angle of the post-9/11 war on terror, particularly its toll in lives.

Today was heartbreaking. pic.twitter.com/zarLP5yrIj

— Matt Leclercq (@Matt_Leclercq) August 15, 2021

Tomorrow's @nytimes Front Page. #Taliban #Afghanistan #Kabul #Afghanishtan #KabulAirlift #20years pic.twitter.com/6YNBPsabK5

— Rohit Sharma (@DcWalaDesi) August 16, 2021

Take an early look at the front page of The Wall Street Journal https://t.co/nuCO0ciOnY pic.twitter.com/kqDphtG4qq

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) August 16, 2021

Los Angeles Times
Published in Los Angeles, Calif. USAhttps://t.co/XDnpuaVG45
Post date : 16/8/2021 14:30:54 pic.twitter.com/Lvb17dMfHI

— News Front Page (@News_FrontPage) August 16, 2021

Just published: front page of the Financial Times international edition Monday August 16 https://t.co/gjMXJnkUDW pic.twitter.com/8OtCuKAY5E

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) August 15, 2021

Happy day, readers! Please enjoy today's front page. Read all these stories on https://t.co/qUf46kEbMt. Enjoy ad-free reading with Premium Plus: https://t.co/WBVBBe4Zt3. pic.twitter.com/KBwQqi6wVI

— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) August 16, 2021

Today's front page signals the end of the 20-year Western experiment to remake #Afghanistan.
On Sunday, the Taliban swept into Kabul after the government collapsed and the country's embattled president joined an exodus of his fellow citizens and foreigners. pic.twitter.com/AWQo1chb6m

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) August 15, 2021

Tomorrow's front page:

Kabul falls: US military admits “there was no assessment pessimistic enough’

You can't buy a revolution, but you can subscribe to the only paper that's fighting for one: https://t.co/hxrtOVmwoD pic.twitter.com/C90hCwfuDu

— davo (@davo_shire) August 16, 2021

Our Front Page splash today "Triumphant Taliban take Kabul as president flees". Islamists demand 'absolute power'. With @scribblercat @Charlie_Faulk & @hzeffman #Kabul #Afghanistan #Taliban pic.twitter.com/ytHfNObwiy

— Haroon Janjua (@JanjuaHaroon) August 16, 2021

#FrontPage today: Taliban assume total control of Afghanistan; India unveils $1.35tr infrastructure plan; Burns, tears as Beirut medics treat fuel blast victims; 100-day plan to boost Emirati jobs in private sector… For more latest news check: https://t.co/js8VOvuhFF pic.twitter.com/f3tiubVarD

— Gulf News (@gulf_news) August 16, 2021

The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph:

'The West flees as Kabul falls to Taliban'#Kabul #Afghanistan #Taliban #KabulHasFallen #طالبان pic.twitter.com/glNQKQGcW8

— پاکستان اردو نیوز (@sb_qureshii) August 15, 2021

Vatan-e Emrooz blames the US for the Taliban’s expansion in Afghanistan with its front page: “The United States of Taliban” pic.twitter.com/B0LCzV6S0v

— Omer Carmi (@CarmiOmer) August 14, 2021

Here's the @guardian front page, for Monday 16 August 2021. #Kabul #Afghanistan #Talibans pic.twitter.com/v2xDmE3tWV

— Illia Djadi (@idjadi) August 15, 2021

Front page of Daily Mail "After 20 years, Afghanistan abandoned in days" "what the hell did they all die for?" pic.twitter.com/wmngBukOat

— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 15, 2021

Monday front page of Arab News says it all. pic.twitter.com/axTEggVcpK

— Adam Fitzgerald (@_AdamFitzgerald) August 16, 2021

Good morning! Here’s today’s front page and headlines: pic.twitter.com/lJdelUI0Zy

— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) August 16, 2021

It took 20 years to change front page story @washingtonpost #Kabul #afghanistan pic.twitter.com/eqMuSfQaZM

— Nasir Mehmood Kiyani (@NM_Kiyani) August 16, 2021

The old phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” may need a makeover.

Parting Stone is a “death tech” startup that can turn the cremated remains of your loved ones into “solidified remains” that resemble smooth, stone-like objects but are in fact almost 100% ashes. Self-described as the first company to provide such a complete alternative to ashes, Parting Stone allows for a more meaningful experience that can be held comfortably, shared with others, displayed, or even scattered. It also fits into an ever-growing death care industry—expected to be worth about $68 billion by 2025— that is increasingly catering to the desire for more personalized, meaningful, and often sustainable ways to honor the departed.

[Photo: Courtesy Parting Stone]Parting Stone’s patent-pending technology was developed with ceramic engineer Chris Chen of Los Alamos National Laboratory. It involves a few simple steps following cremation. After arriving at the Parting Stone lab in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the full amount of cremated remains is refined through a milling process that turns the ashes “from a granular consistency to a really fine powder,” explains founder Justin Crowe. After that, a small amount of water and a “glass-like binder” helps turn the powder into a clay-like substance that is formed and placed in a kiln before being polished and returned to the family.

Typically, the remains from an average adult weigh about 4 to 8 pounds, or what Crowe says equates to about 10 cups. “All we do is take that material and compress it into solids,” he says. In the end, the family gets between 40 and 60 stones. Sizes vary from that of a thumbnail to the size of your palm, and colors range from one person to the next, from white to light-green hues, with the occasional deep blues, chocolate browns, or even lavender with speckles of blue.

[Photo: Courtesy Parting Stone]Crowe says these colors are completely natural and not at all influenced by the firing process. The company is doing research to identify the reasons, but Crowe’s team has a few theories that range from the medication people were taking, to their diet and lifestyle, to medical implants they may have had.

Parting Stone officially launched in 2019, but Crowe came up with the idea in 2014 when his grandfather passed away. “That was the first death in my life,” he says, adding that “his remains felt meaningless. I wanted to feel a connection with them, but I didn’t want to look at them.”

After that, Crowe set out to understand other people’s experiences with death and loss. Typically, cremated remains come in a bag, and Crowe quickly realized this level of care doesn’t match the love people have for those they’ve lost. “We don’t accept this experience in any other part of modern life. Why are we accepting it for people we love?” he says.

In 2017, about 55% of bodies in the U.S. were cremated rather than buried, and according to the Cremation Association of North America, the number of people choosing cremation over burial is predicted to rise to 60.7% by 2024. Meanwhile, about 25% of the U.S. population, or 75 million Americans, choose to keep the cremated remains of their loved ones in their homes. Those people, Crowe says, “they get it.”

[Photo: Courtesy Parting Stone]When a family chooses the urn, Crowe says, “what they get is the end of the experience.” With Parting Stone, “it’s the beginning of their experience,” he notes, referencing the sheer portability of the stones, and how easy it is to share them with friends or other family members. “It’s a canvas for the experience, not the experience itself.”

That experience costs $695 for adults, and around $300 for pets. Compared to an urn, the service is costlier, but Crowe believes that a collection of stones provides a more meaningful connection. “The trend that is clear right now is that people want death to feel personalized,” he says.

In the last decade, this quest for more meaningful, alternative solutions to traditional burial and cremation has translated into a multimillion-dollar industry and a sea of death tech startups. Ashes can now be repurposed into diamonds, pressed into vinyl records, or even scattered into fireworks. A more down-to-earth experience involves spreading the ashes under a redwood tree in a 20-acre forest.

[Photo: Courtesy Parting Stone]Parting Stone is a public benefit corporation, whereby a company’s very purpose is to combine for-profit services with the pursuit of social good. In 2019, the company received a $100,000 grant from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to study the environmental impact of scattering stones compared to ashes. Conclusive results should be ready next January, but initial data shows that solidified remains have a lower pH level, and therefore a lower impact on the environment, than cremated remains, which are considered highly alkaline, with a pH level close to that of ammonia.

About a third of Americans whose loved ones have chosen cremation end up scattering the ashes—and almost 20% do so at non-cemetery locations—so Parting Stone may have a meaningful impact on the environment. But for Crowe, it’s also “a matter of user experience,” he says, hinting at that dreadful moment when people don’t check the direction of the wind before scattering the ashes.

Crowe remembers an epiphany he had at a business incubator conference. “I had a stone made from human remains, and about 200 people asked me to hold it,” he says. “All we did was change the form of remains and it made them comfortable, desirable. This is a design solution.”

The chocolate industry has problems. Twenty years after promising to phase out the “worst forms” of child labor on cocoa plantations, chocolate brands still haven’t succeeded. In Ivory Coast, where a third of the world’s cocoa is grown, rainforests are plowed down for cocoa plantations; in the last 50 years, the country has lost more than 80% of its forests, mainly to cocoa production. By some estimates, the carbon footprint of chocolate isn’t far behind meat and dairy, making it worse for the climate than most foods. Climate change is also making cocoa harder to grow.

But what if a chocolate bar could be made from other plants instead? QOA, a Germany-based startup now part of the tech accelerator Y Combinator, makes cocoa-free chocolate using “precision fermentation” of other ingredients. Over a little more than a decade, the company hopes to fully replace the cocoa used in mass-market products.

Cofounder Sara Marquart, a food scientist who previously worked at another startup creating coffee-free coffee, began working on the project earlier this year with her brother, an entrepreneur who wanted to find more meaningful work than his previous consulting firm. “We started making chocolate in my brother’s kitchen,” she says. “We bought seven Thermomixes and set them up on my brother’s table.”

Along with a tiny team of scientists, she started analyzing the flavor of cocoa. “Pretty much every food has a fingerprint, like a human has a fingerprint, right? It’s very unique,” she says. “We analyze the fingerprint of raw cocoa, fermented cocoa, roasted cocoa, to understand what is making cocoa this unique little bean that has so much flavor?” Then they did the same analysis of byproducts from food production, such as the residues left after pressing sunflower seeds to make oil. By fermenting a handful of these ingredients, they were able to “extract the building blocks of the flavor,” she says. “And then we reassemble that in a big brewing tank. You can think of it like beer brewing, in a way.” After fermentation, the final product can be roasted and dried like conventional cocoa.

The flavor took time to get right. In taste tests of an early version, the sample chocolate got low scores, with an average rating of 4.9 out of 10. “One of the people commented that she had to brush her teeth three times,” Marquart says. But as the team reworked the formula and sent new samples out to the same random group of testers, the ratings doubled. The team then went to chocolate sensory experts at a research organization called Fraunhofer, who said that they couldn’t distinguish between the startup’s version of chocolate and conventional chocolate. “Then we were like, okay, now we’re ready to launch,” she says.

They’ve now started talking with major chocolate brands. “The best feedback that we got is that from a person who was super skeptical, like, ‘Yeah, you can never never do that,’ when we first talked to him,” she says. “And then he tastes it and he wrote us an email the next morning saying, ‘Hey, guys, how can we collaborate?”

The startup plans to also launch its own brand to help make more people aware of issues like child slavery in cocoa production. (In a common case, children living in Mali might be recruited for work and told they’ll be well paid, and then trafficked across the border to Ivory Coast, where they’re forced to work without pay for years, and isolated from other child workers.) “I think only a few know about the child labor, and even less know about the climate impact,” she says. They’re working with a Michelin-starred chef, for example, to showcase how the chocolate can be used. But the primary goal is to replace the cocoa in mass-market candy and other chocolate products. Pilot tests with bigger brands are likely to begin next year.

By using byproducts as ingredients, QOA can shrink the carbon footprint of chocolate. But produced at scale, the cocoa replacement can also be less expensive that the real thing. The intent isn’t to replace sustainably-produced single-origin chocolate. “We love chocolate, we love cocoa, and we love the product that is produced in a sustainable and just way by small-stake farmers,” says Marquart. “The only problem is that it’s not a scalable approach to make chocolate for the global consumption of chocolate. We’re just wanting to offer a solution for mass market chocolate that we can skip the CO2 footprint and the child slavery.”

When I founded Pipeline Equity in 2017, one of my first priorities was finding the right people for the right positions. Geography wasn’t going to limit my search, so I decided we would become a remote-friendly company. Today, we are 100% remote with employees spanning six time zones. They live in urban centers, small cities, and suburbs. You can find them on the East Coast, West Coast, and everywhere in between. And regardless of their geography, they earn equal pay for equal work. At Pipeline Equity, we believe pay is a function of value. As such, people should receive wages based on the value they provide to the organization, not based on their physical location or time spent in the office. Here’s why. 

Knowledge workers deserve equal pay for equal work, regardless of location

Let’s start with the basics. What does it mean to pay someone fair and equitable wages? Many organizations struggle to answer this question, and we know that because we see it in the data. 

Recently, on August 3, we recognized Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. It represents the extra seven months and three days into the 2021 calendar year that Black women had to work to earn what non-Hispanic white men earned in 2020. They make 63 cents on the dollar. Latinas experience even greater pay inequity. This year their Equal Pay Day, which falls on October 21, meaning they earn just 55 cents on the non-Hispanic white man’s dollar.

Breadwinner moms (who support 40% of U.S. households with children under the age of 18) face some of the deepest intersectional pay gaps. In fact, my research found that Black breadwinner moms have the largest gender pay gap of any women in the U.S. They earn 44 cents for every dollar earned by white breadwinner dads.

If we keep digging, we find evidence of pay equity across all education levels. Despite making up 50.2% of the college-educated workforce, women receive an average of 26% less pay than their male counterparts in comparable jobs. As educational attainment levels rise, so too does the severity of intersectional pay inequity. Women with bachelor’s degrees earn 71.4% of what men with bachelor’s degrees earn, whereas women with graduate degrees earn 69.1% of what men with graduate degrees earn. 

If you think you’re not affected by pay inequity, think again. Pay inequity is more than an individual issue of fairness. When companies don’t pay equitable wages, they stifle economic growth and business performance. 

Pay equity stifles economic growth for all 

Intersectional pay inequity costs the U.S. economy $512 billion. And that’s not all because wages have both supply-side and demand-side effects. 

Wages determine everything from the level of healthcare you receive to the quality of food, education, and housing you have access to. It impacts your ability to save for retirement, pay down student loans, open a business, and run for political office. 

These household issues flow back into the larger economy. Our economy takes a hit when people don’t receive the income they deserve. In addition to strengthening the U.S. economy by $512 billion, closing the intersectional gender pay gap would: 

• Lift 50% more working women out of poverty. 
• Cut the Social Security shortfall by 35%, or $4.7 trillion. Higher wages earned during working years put more money in women’s retirement accounts. 
• Reduce dependence on social welfare programs. Women head 72.9% of households enrolled in Medicaid because their lower wages inhibit their ability to afford healthcare.
• Reduce student loan debt. Women make up 57% of undergraduates yet hold 67% of all student debt. 
• Strengthen the middle class. The share of breadwinner mom households has increased by 166% since 1970. Middle-class families depend on the wages of breadwinner moms.

Business performance suffers from pay inequity

And let’s not forget that consumer spending drives 70% of the U.S. economy. Businesses rely on healthy wallets to hit performance targets. Plus, from a labor supply perspective, it’s advantageous for businesses to pay employees equitable wages. 

After all, women are the most educated cohort in the labor force, and 72% of them said they would not apply to work at a company where a gender pay gap exists. Moreover, “slow salary growth” was the third most common reason women gave for leaving a career in STEM. (In first place was “lack of career growth.”) Companies risk alienating at least half the talent base by failing to pay equitable wages. 

Which brings us full circle. What does it mean to pay people equitable wages? It means paying people based on the value they bring to the organization. Not their gender. Not their race, ethnicity, or age. Not their proximity to leadership. And certainly not their zip code.

Location-based compensation opens a Pandora’s box 

By paying workers regardless of their location, companies can reduce the amount of surface area for bias to creep into compensation decisions. They can also reduce the amount of complexity that goes into making these compensation decisions.

For instance, how do you measure the cost of living? We need a standard, equitable system for calculating the cost of living—not one based on the whims of exclusionary indexes. Besides, people don’t allocate their budgets identically. 

Some people enjoy dining at high-end restaurants. Others appreciate home-cooked meals. Some people spend money on luxury cars. Others are content with public transportation or ride-sharing. And what about the number of dependents someone has? An employee with four children will spend more money on education than an employee with no children. How does that factor into the cost of living? 

What if someone moves from a high cost-of-living location to a low cost-of-living location? Must they take a pay cut? And what if some employees want to work remotely while others don’t? Will those who decide to stay remote see their income drop as a result of choosing what’s best for them?  Already it appears Google employees who choose to work from home permanently could face a 15% to 25% salary reduction. 

Paying people based on the value they deliver to the company—not geography—is the equitable and easier way to go. 

Pay equity for remote workers is win-win, not a zero-sum

As more companies adopt remote and hybrid work arrangements, it’s important to underscore the financial upside of giving employees the autonomy to work from anywhere. In one of the most comprehensive studies conducted on the topic, Global Workplace Analytics found that the average U.S. company can save $11,000 per year for every remote-hybrid employee. 

For a company with 1,000 employees working remotely, that’s over $1 million in savings per year. These massive savings stem from a combination of increased productivity, increased business continuity, reduced office costs, reduced absenteeism, and reduced turnover. 

Employees can save upwards of $6,400 per year by not having to allocate budget on transportation, work clothes, or meals. Plus, 73% of employees say they are very successful working from home and report greater well-being under these arrangements. 

Allowing knowledge workers to work remotely—and paying them equitably for doing so—makes sense. It’s time we reimagine what work and compensation look like in the digital economy. Geographic location shouldn’t determine an employee’s worth. 

Katica Roy is the CEO and founder of Pipeline Equity. 

This past week while recording a podcast, the host asked how I would advise someone trying to challenge their company’s return-to-office plans. It’s a simple question with a complicated answer, which we keep trying to solve in a binary way: either work hybrid or in the office. This oversimplification misses the opportunity to evolve company culture.

Many toddlers have a toy that is a box with openings cut out for different shapes. Circle, square, star, and diamond blocks are to be pushed through each respective opening. Children can spend hours trying to unsuccessfully smash the square through the circle opening before finding the right shape. 

That feels a bit like the time we are in now. Employees are the blocks and employers keep trying to push them through the openings with their return-to-office plans. Companies assume employees are the same shape they were in February 2020, not recognizing the changes of the past 16 months. Through a transformation of personal and professional values, the shape of their nonnegotiable demands is remarkably different. Trying to force the shape into the wrong opening just doesn’t work. 

Let’s say you cross paths with a colleague you hadn’t seen in 10 years. You wouldn’t automatically assume they had the same knowledge, skills, experience, and motivation as they did 10 years prior. You would recognize they had evolved and would want to learn about who they are today. 

Some employees had many years’ worth of transformation and growth in the past year and a half. Values were sharpened, behaviors refined, and clarity was gained. Yet leaders are making assumptions that employees and teams are the same shape as they were in February 2020 and missing this opportunity to evolve. 

Both employees and companies are midair between two trapeze bars. Employers are trying to define return-to-office strategies so employees can plan for the months ahead. Employees are looking at their nonnegotiables and defining their point of no return. We’ve released the first trapeze and are in motion towards the second, unable to go backward. There are two options. Try to grab the second trapeze and evolve approaches to work, or experiment with different options, and trust the safety net. Still, many leaders are kicking to turn back and grab the first trapeze bar because of five culture myths.

Myth 1: We can ‘fix’ culture

This makes culture sound like an initiative with an endpoint. Culture continually shifts and is reinforced or discouraged through the actions of each employee. You are never done shaping culture. Healthy cultures are agile enough to make real-time adjustments to support the employee and business outcomes.

Myth 2: Virtual or hybrid work erodes culture or causes the loss of culture

Remote work doesn’t kill company culture. If your culture isn’t working, it is a symptom of larger issues. There were already things not working in your culture before February 2020. You just either didn’t notice or didn’t experience enough discomfort to make changes. They will surface again until you address them. 

Myth 3: There is a perfect organizational design

Companies spend millions every year making changes, only to change them back a few years later. Focus less on the design and more on equipping leaders and teams to be agile across a variety of circumstances. There isn’t one perfect working location that will solve all problems. Instilling healthy behaviors of frequent check-in conversations and tools to embrace constructive conflict helps leaders navigate a variety of challenges.

Myth 4: Leaders have to see their employees to control their work

Control results in worse performance and will likely cause your employees to quit or disengage if they stay in their job. If leaders have to physically see employees, their company hasn’t equipped them with expectations or skills to be effective. Great leaders recognized the pivots needed to keep each team member engaged and performing, and intentionally dedicate time to replace informal interactions. 

Myth 5: If we send out a culture survey now it will be negative

Leaders want to avoid, delay, and peer between their fingers at culture survey results when they think it will be negative. Culture surveys shouldn’t be sent to only provide positive responses. Withholding sending or sharing results only erodes trust. You should be listening to your organization with increased frequency in times of challenge.

What leaders can do now

Don’t solve complex problems with binary options. Work location decisions are being made at the company level in an attempt to be equitable. However, not everyone is the same shape. Either/or decisions miss the exploration of nuances. Companies can equip managers and teams to make these decisions at their individual levels. 

Embrace experimentation. The safety net is there to catch you as you try different things. Not everything will or should work and that is okay. Evolution and performance come with experimentation. Test different configurations of work location at the team level. Collectively reflect on what worked and didn’t and decide the path forward.

Reframe your problems into “How might we . . .” I’ve heard the protest: “People in the office will have informal interactions that give preferential treatment in career advancement.” Reframe that as a problem to solve and ask: “How might we ensure everyone has informal interactions and career opportunities?” Instead of listing obstacles, explore how you might solve for each circumstance. 

Take a hard look at your meetings: Your average employee is only authorized to approve a few hundred dollars, yet anyone can schedule a meeting that costs tens of thousands of dollars in time. Teams should protect meetings for discussions and decision-making, not updates. Give each team member 100 points to allocate across their weekly meetings in terms of value. Review and discuss the distribution to see what shifts or cancellations are necessary.

The reverse offsite: Some teams are holding an in-person day-long meeting once or twice a month. They find they are able to cancel many standing meetings and use technology in between for updates. They maximize their time together and minimize their time spent in ongoing virtual meetings.

There is no perfect design or location for work. However, this is an opportunity for each team and company to explore new and better ways of working to improve performance.

Karen Eber is the CEO and chief storyteller of Eber Leadership Group, a talent development boutique. She is also an international consultant, keynote, and TED speaker. 

We’re at that point in the year when bright-eyed intentions start to go a little sideways.

The bullet journals begun so diligently in January gather dust.

The morning meditation sessions get shorter and shorter.

Those resolutions made a mere months ago seem, in retrospect, far too cumbersome.

Enter: Kaizen.

The Japanese term meaning “improvement” requires no apps, journals, or time commitments, but rather a subtle shift in the way you operate.

First coined as a business tool after World War II, Kaizen has come to represent a philosophy of continual progress—a constant recalibration that yields slow but steady improvements, like an ever-hastening tortoise. The goal is a smoother process and increased productivity, which then makes your larger goals more possible.

Kaizen is traditionally employed in the workplace—the most common example is the Toyota factory line, on which all employees are constantly working to improve the process—but the philosophy can translate to most areas of life.

Want to improve your money skills? Finally establish a writing routine? Get more work done in less time? Consider Kaizen.

The philosophy writes Alan Henry on Lifehacker, can be distilled into six steps: standardize, measure, compare, innovate, standardize (again), repeat. Put simply, it’s the practice of thinking about what you’re doing, looking for ways to improve it, making those changes, then continuing to act upon them.

“Kaizen is not change for change’s sake,” Henry writes. “It’s deliberate, constant improvement, and changes that don’t actually bring you rewards shouldn’t be made. Productivity is a double-edged sword after all. You can spend more time trying out new things and researching new tools than you would actually doing your work.”

Instead, you’ll want your changes to help you out in some way—by eliminating busywork, for example, or establishing accountability.

Interested? Here’s how to incorporate the philosophy into your daily life.

Start Small

Change is exciting! The possibilities seem endless! But pause before you get carried away, since tackling too big a task can lead to frustration or stalling when things don’t move as quickly as you’d hoped.

Instead of trying to improve your largest, most important project, start with something manageable, like your lunch routine.

Say you buy lunch most days each week. Rather than vowing to make lunch every day for the next month, look at why you’re buying lunch so often. Is it a matter of convenience? Boredom? Does the small splurge help keep your budget on track in other ways? Once you’ve figured that out, take a small step toward improvement. Perhaps you bring lunch on Mondays, while your motivation is high. Or maybe you just switch to a cheaper option and continue to buy lunch.

Once you’ve made that first small change, you can prepare for the next shift, then the next.

Remember: The focus is on progress, not an overhaul.

Find Focus By Auditing Your Time

Once a week or so, scan your recent tasks for ways to improve. You may find yourself spending hours fielding emails, for example, or regularly waiting on input from colleagues before you can really get cracking.

Outside of work, you might realize that heading home, rather than straight to the gym, usually means you skip your planned workout.

Tools like your phone can help clue you in to time spent swiping through social media, or checking email, while keeping track of your day’s activities can give you an idea of what gets done in 24 hours.

Once you have a better picture of how you spend your time, you can adjust accordingly. The same goes for in-the-moment realizations, too: If you get halfway through a task only to realize things could be far easier than you’ve made them, pause and jot that thought down. The next time you go to perform that task, make the necessary adjustments and see how things go. Remember, it’s all about the small pivots.

Get Feedback

The term “performance review” sends a shiver down even the straightest of spines, but asking for more casual feedback can be gamechanger. A boss or co-worker’s perspective can offer much-needed distance, and help you to see potential in hidden places. And as you look at what to change and how, don’t forget to consider the way that others do things.

Progress doesn’t always require reinventing the wheel.

Consider a Kaizen Blitz

In corporate-speak, a short period of rapid improvement is referred to as a “Kaizen Blitz.” A group of employees will focus on one particular pain point—say, a clunky payroll system—and rework the process to remove the hold ups within a few days, following a set of guidelines.

The business approach is a multifaceted battle plan, but you can apply the same idea to your own life.

Say you typically pay your bills over the course of each month. Some are online only, while others come as paper statements. You pay your internet from one account, and credit card from another. You have a hazy idea of how it all comes together.

After your next payday, try a Kaizen Blitz: Take a look at what’s been working so far, streamline payments, centralize accounts, create a spreadsheet or two, and clean everything up. You’ll get everything done for that month, and set yourself up for future success. The key is to stay small, reworking tiny tasks that make a large impact overall.

Leave Room to Waste Time

Let’s face it: 100% productivity is a recipe for burnout. Sometimes we need to do things inefficiently to give us time to process, or to discover something we would have otherwise skipped over.

Kaizen is all about making progress—not turning you into a machine. Be sure to avoid changing too much at once, and consider using any gained free time to go for a walk or take a bathroom stall dance break, rather than taking on more work.

Just as small steps can lead to massive progress, so too can small breaks prevent massive burnout.

This article originally appeared on Shine and is reprinted with permission. You can download the Shine app here for daily self-care support, personalized to you. Explore meditations, articles, and more to help you calm your anxiety and feel more confident at work.

More From Shine:
5 Lessons Startup Co-Founders Learn in Their First 5 Years
4 Science-Backed Reasons to Say Your Self-Talk Out Loud
2020 Made It OK to Talk About Our Mental Health. We Can’t Stop Now.

Update Sunday, 8:48 a.m.:

According to Virgin Galactic, the flight has been delayed 90 minutes due to overnight weather. It’s now scheduled for 10:30 a.m.

Original post:

It’s the weekend after Independence Day, and the Brits are maybe, finally, getting us back for that whole Revolutionary War thing. Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, an English business magnate extraordinaire and Buckingham Palace knight, will be launching himself into outer space nine days ahead of American billionaire and Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos.

Branson is set to blast off this Sunday, July 11, around 9 a.m. EST, courtesy of his own Virgin Galactic spaceflight company and its VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo.

When Branson revealed his surprise plans this month—mere weeks after Bezos—we got the mega-billionaire space race we never asked for. Branson, for his part, insists his ambitious timing has nothing to do with beating Bezos’s Blue Origin to the suborbital cosmos, but he’s still a man who has tried multiple times to break various world records (e.g., fastest crossing of the English Channel in an amphibious vehicle, which he holds; attempted fastest Atlantic Ocean crossing, which concluded with a helicopter rescue).

Nevertheless, his flight promises to be a landmark moment for commercial space travel, and the whole world has a front-row seat.

The launch—which is occurring, prophetically, near the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico—will be broadcast globally. You can watch the livestream on Virgin Galactic’s YouTube channel. We’ve also embedded it below.

You would be forgiven for thinking billionaires in space are becoming commonplace, but it’s worth remembering that Branson, like Bezos, will be taking real risks when he rockets to the edge of space at 2,400 mph, suspends briefly in microgravity, and then carefully glides back down to the runway (the whole process takes about an hour). We’re wishing him a safe flight!

With the vaccine rolling out, many of us are seeing our friends, family, and coworkers for the first time in a year and a half. Determined to burn their sweatpants and emerge with a whole new look, many are looking to replace their wardrobes, get new haircuts, or try out bold new makeup. One thing that shouldn’t be forgotten: scent. To me, a new scent can feel transformational, a subtle way to announce a new identity to the world. Here are a few that our editors love.

[Photo: courtesy Violet Grey]Dark Is Night by Henry Rose
On a cool summer night, senior editor Amy Farley loves Dark Is Night, a scent from one of our favorite perfume houses, Michelle Pfeiffer’s clean fragrance line Henry Rose. “When it first comes out of the bottle, it’s a decadent, woody vanilla blend,” Farley says, adding that it lightens into a sweet and breezy scent after a few minutes. Henry Rose’s latest scent, Windows Down is also perfect for a summer’s day, with notes of grapefruit, bergamot, and earl grey tea that dry down to a subtle, fruity scent.

Dark is Night - $120Windows Down - $120

Clémentine California Pure Perfume by Atelier Cologne
For a light, citrusy summer scent to wear in the heat, Fast Company art director Chelsea Schiff loves French perfume company Atelier Cologne’s Clémentine California Pure Perfume. “Every so often you wake up to an overcast day and it just makes you feel—for lack of a better word—blah. Those are the times I reach for this scent,” she says, adding that the clementine scent reminds her of Vespa rides along the Italian coast.

Clementine California - From $80

[Photo: courtesy Henry Rose]Mojave Ghost by Byredo
Those easily overwhelmed by strong fragrance may like Stockholm luxury brand Byredo’s subtle Mojave Ghost. The sophisticated woody and floral scent smells clean, like you just stepped out of a very fancy shower. Plus, the chic, minimalist (and pricey) bottle looks great on a vanity.

Mojave Ghost by Byredo - $270

L’Eau Eau de Toilette by Jimmy Choo
When social media producer (and my Hit the Ground Running podcast cohost) Christina Royster wants to feel luxurious, she turns to Jimmy Choo’s signature floral scent. “I wear it on date nights or days when I need a boost of confidence. I only need a few sprays onto pulse points for this scent to make an impact,” she says.

L'Eau by Jimmy Choo - From $60

Lost Cherry by Tom Ford
Recommender writer Rachel Raczka loves the sweet, sultry, and overpowering effect of Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry, a warm and spicy perfume that smells like cherry, almond, and vanilla. A bonus? The perfume’s staying power. “A light spritz of this at the nape of my neck and in my belly button lasts all day,” she says.

Lost Cherry by Tom Ford - From $75

[Photo: courtesy Violet Grey]Functional Fragrance by the Nue Co
The Nue Co’s Functional Fragrance is designed to do more than just make you smell good—the brand claims that the blend of clean, woody, and spicy scents can help destress the mind. Developed with perfumer Frank Voelkl, one of the noses behind Le Labo’s iconic Santal 33, the subtle scent incorporates notes of iris, palo santo, and green cardamom.

Functional Fragrance by The Nue Co - $95

Sailing Day from Replica by Maison Margiela
Staff editor Lara Sorokanich became obsessed with finding a new signature scent this summer, and turned to a sample set for help. Maison Margiela’s $35 Discovery Set contains 10 samples of the company’s intriguing and unusual perfumes that smell like everything from springtime in the park to barber shops to old libraries. “To my surprise, the unisex Sailing Day is my absolute favorite: To me, it smells like a cool ocean breeze on a hot summer day, fresh and bright and full of promise. Which is to say, it feels exactly like summer 2021,” she says.

Sailing Day by Replica - $135

Fast Company’s Recommender section is dedicated to surfacing innovative products, services, and brands that are changing how we live and work. Every item that we write about is independently selected by our editors and, wherever possible, tested and reviewed. Fast Company may receive revenue from some links in our stories; however, all selections are based on our editorial judgment.