Soooo, do you Labubu? The furry creature went viral this year thanks to Dua Lipa, Blackpink’s Lisa, and Kim Kardashian all buying into the adorably bizarre, plushy monsters. The results were millions in sales, long lines, and frantic scrambles as people tried to get their hands on this latest trendy phenom.
Labubus Chinese parent company, Pop Mart, reported global revenue for Q3 (July through September) jumped by about 250% compared to a year earlier, and sales in America were up by more than 1,200%. But it goes beyond Pop Mart, as brands from South Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries are finding more inroads into American culture. Just as American cultural influence has spread around the world via Levis, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Apple, and more, now Asian brands are making it two-way traffic.
Mixue, a Chinese ice cream and tea chain that recently overtook McDonalds as the largest fast-food chain in the world, opened its first U.S. store in New York City in September. Luckin, a Chinese coffee chain, is coming for Starbucks after opening a shop in NYC, too. Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Tesla in EV sales globally last year and is eyeing American expansion. Korean skincare brand CosRX drives 90% of its revenue from international sales, with major traction among Gen Z Americans. Taiwanese restaurant chain Din Tai Fungwith 21 U.S. locationsnow has the highest average per-location revenue of any American restaurant chain$27.4 million per store.
[Photo: Freer/Adobe Stock]
A new report from global ad agency network TBWA looks at some of the qualities that drove these companies’ overseas success. The report takes a deep dive into how exports like K-pop, matcha, anime, and Labubus have rebranded Asia for a new generation of consumersand explores what U.S. brands can learn from it.
With the rise of K-beauty, J-beauty, and now in a world of Miniso and Pop Mart, we’re seeing brands from Asia really building emotional connection with consumers, says Jen Costello, TBWAs global chief strategy officer. Its not cheap, fast, low-cost, plastic crap, but it’s actually being supported by increasingly breakthrough products that have a real role in culture.
[Photo: BYD]
Found in translation
The report outlines four underlying cultural valuesdeep mastery, unapologetic emotion, thoughtful friction, and social etiquettethat the new wave of Asian brands are particularly strong in. These obviously arent exclusive to Asian brands, just common threads among them.
Deep Mastery
Deep mastery revolves around the idea that as culture is increasingly saturated by AI-generated content and digital art, consumers are craving skill-based learning, time-honored craft, and enduring expertise. One brand example is Toku Saké and its focus solely on doing “one thing exceptionally well,” which is creating slow-brewed, small-batch sake. The idea is that specialization, rather than expansion, can be the new growth strategy for brands.
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Unapologetic Emotion
Unapologetic emotion signifies a cultural pivot away from irony, sarcasm, and emotional detachment, where sincerity was often dismissed as “cringe.” The report says audiences are growing bored of performative nihilism, and find freedom in honest emotional expression. Here, Pop Mart’s Labubus are the brand example, rooted in the Japanese culture of kawaii (cuteness).
Thoughtful Friction
Thoughtful friction challenges the idea that speed and seamlessness equal freedom. Instead, the report contends, the promise of effortless everything leads to digital addiction, burnout, and waste. The report uses South Korea’s pay-as-you-throw food-waste system that requires residents to purchase special, volume-based bags, creating a daily constraint that incentivizes people to think twice before discarding waste and to buy only what they need.
Costello says the concept of thoughtful friction surprised her the most. It’s unusual for brands to reject effortless experience in favor of creating intentional friction. It’s counterintuitive to the way that a lot of brands think, she says. Especially for Western brands, it’s always about making it seamless. It is always about reducing friction. It is always about making it easy. But there is value in making people think for just a moment and having that be rewarding.
[Photo: 8th/Adobe Stock]
Social Etiquette
The report defines social etiquette as an outlook that counters the hyper-individualism encouraged by the main-character energy cultural narrative, which has led to widespread incivility. It functions as “soft infrastructure” to preserve social harmony. The report says marketers should recognize that after years of “casual everything,” clear codes of conduct feel “refreshingly helpful.” One example is how Singapore Airlines has built its relationship between crew and passengers with high mutual respect, and has even considered rewarding passengers who demonstrate good behavior on flights through its loyalty program.
New export confidence
Pop culture and our ability to share it has made the world a much smaller place. The report posits that these core values have played a significant role in Asian brands making inroads with Western audiences. It’s also supported by a boom in tourism. (Visits to Japan soared y 16% last year, and Japan, Thailand, and South Korea are among the top 10 destinations for Gen Z travelers, according to travel visa service Ztartvisa.)
Emmanuel Sabbagh, TBWA\Asias chief strategy officer, says this overall cultural boost has given brands from Asia more confidence in talking to international audiences. For many, this is the very first time theyre seeing appeal from the West, says Sabbagh. They feel way more confident to be who they are and to express who they are to the rest of the world. Its a big shift. They say that this is their way to go bigger, stronger, not changed for the West. They want to be more themselves.
Traditionally, Asian companies have been stronger on product than building brands, particularly ones that translate to the West. That challenge remains for many of them. Sabbagh says the brand culture in America is very mature, in terms of how the logo, experience, and story are all tied together.
[Photo: Sundry Photography/Adobe Stock]
Thats where brands from the East are not as strong as they should be, Sabbagh says. Even a brand as big as Uniqlo, think about how they can go bigger into what is the promise, what is the real brand platform, what people will look for in that specific brand.” Sabbagh adds that many Asian brands hyper focus on process and manufacturing, but that leaves incredible white space for them to grow on the brand side of things. “The brand is what they are missing as the vehicle to go to the other side of the world and to be stronger in their own market,” he says.
The aim of the report isnt to get Western brands to mimic their Eastern counterparts, but rather to use their success to identify insights that work for their own audiences. The whole point is to make sure that you’re not just trying to hold up a mirror to these values, but find your version of it, find your truth in it, find what makes it real for you, says Costello. This isnt about going out and trying to replicate exactly what Pop Mart or Miniso have done.
Two new data centers in Silicon Valley have been built but cant begin processing information: The equipment that would supply them with electricity isnt available.
Its just one example of a crisis facing the U.S. power grid that cant be solved simply by building more power lines, approving new power generation, or changing out grid software. The equipment needed to keep the grid runningtransformers that regulate voltage, circuit breakers that protect against faults, high-voltage cables that carry power across regions, and steel poles that hold the network togetheris hard to make, and materials are limited. Supply-chain bottlenecks are taking years to clear, delaying projects, inflating costs, and threatening reliability.
Meanwhile, U.S. electricity demand is surging from several sourceselectrification of home and business appliances and equipment, increased domestic manufacturing, and growth in AI data centers. Without the right equipment, these efforts may take years longer and cost vast sums more than planners expect.
Not enough transformers to replace aging units
Transformers are key to the electricity grid: They regulate voltage as power travels across the wires, increasing voltage for more efficient long-distance transmission, and decreasing it for medium-distance travel and again for delivery to buildings.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that the U.S. has about 60 million to 80 million high-voltage distribution transformers in service. More than half of them are 33-plus years oldapproaching or exceeding their expected lifespans.
Replacing them has become costly and time-consuming, with utilities reporting that transformers cost four to six times what they cost before 2022, in addition to the multiyear wait times.
To meet rising electricity demand, the country will need many more of themperhaps twice as many as already exist.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. says the lead time, the wait between placing an order and the product being delivered, hit roughly 120 weeks (more than two years) in 2024, with large power transformers taking as long as 210 weeks (up to four years). Even smaller transformers used to reduce voltage for distribution to homes and businesses are back-ordered as much as two years. Those delays have slowed both maintenance and new construction across much of the grid.
Transformer production depends heavily on a handful of materials and suppliers. The cores of most U.S transformers use grain-oriented electrical steel, a special type of steel with particular magnetic properties, which is made domestically only by Cleveland-Cliffs at plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Imports have long filled the gap: Roughly 80% of large transformers have historically been imported from Mexico, China, and Thailand. But global demand has also surged, tightening access to steel, as well as copper, a soft metal that conducts electricity well and is crucial in wiring.
In partial recognition of these shortages, in April 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy delayed the enforcement of new energy-efficiency rules for transformers, to avoid making the situation worse.
Further slowing progress, these items cannot be mass-produced. They must be designed, tested, and certified individually.
Even when units are built, getting them to where they are needed can be a feat. Large power transformers often weigh between 100 tons and 400 tons and require specialized transportsometimes needing one of only about 10 suitable super-heavy-load railcars in the country. Those logistics alone can add months to a replacement project, according to the Department of Energy.
Enormous railcar like this one in Germany are often needed to transport high-voltage transformers from where theyre manufactured to where theyre used. [Photo: Raimond Spekking via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0]
Other key equipment
Transformers are not the only grid machinery facing delays. A Duke University Nicholas Institute study, citing data from research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, shows that high-voltage circuit-breaker lead times reached about 151 weeks (nearly three years) by late 2023, roughly double pre-pandemic norms.
Facing similar delays are a range of equipment types, such as transmission cables that can handle high voltages, switchgeara technical category that includes switches, circuit breakers, and fusesand insulators to keep electricity from going where it would be dangerous.
For transmission projects, equipment delays can derail timelines. High-voltage direct-current cables now take more than 24 months to procure, and offshore wind projects are particularly strained: Orders for undersea cables can take more than a decade to fill. And fewer than 50 cable-laying vessels operate worldwide, limiting how quickly manufacturers can install them, even once they are manufactured.
Supply-chain strains are hitting even the workhorse of the power grid: natural gas turbines. Manufacturers, including Siemens Energy and GE Vernova, have multiyear backlogs as new data centers, industrial electrification, and peaking-capacity projects flood the order books. Siemens recently reported a record $158 billion backlog, with some turbine frames sold out for as long as seven years.
Alternate approaches
As a result of these delays, utility companies are finding other ways to meet demand, such as battery storage, actively managing electricity demand, upgrading existing equipment to produce more power, or even reviving decommissioned generation sites.
Some utilities are stockpiling materials for their own use or to sell to other companies, which can shrink delays from years to weeks.
There have been various other efforts, too. In addition to delaying transformer efficiency requirements, the Biden administration awarded Cleveland-Cliffs $500 million to upgrade its electrical-steel plantsbut key elements of that grant were canceled by the Trump administration.
Utilities and industry groups are exploring standardized designs and modular substations to cut lead timesbut acknowledge that those are medium-term fixes, not quick solutions.
Large government incentives, including grants, loans, and guaranteed-purchase agreements, could help expand domestic production of these materials and supplies. But for now, the numbers remain stark: roughly 120 weeks for transformers, up to four years for large units, nearly three years for breakers, and more than two years for high-voltage cable manufacturing. Until the underlying supply-chain choke pointssteel, copper, insulation materials, and heavy transportexpand meaningfully, utilities are managing reliability not through construction but through choreography.
Morgan Bazilian is a professor of public policy and director at the Payne Institute, Colorado School of Mines.
Kyri Baker is an associate professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Whats one thing every leader can do to make sure employees are happy at work and engaged with their jobs? Make sure they can trust in you, your organization, and one another. Thats the finding in a 2024 meta-analysis of studies with more than 1 million participants. When leaders seek to improve employee well-being, they typically think about things like remote work, flexible schedules, and wellness offerings such as gym memberships. But trust may be the most valuable perk of all.
A 2024 meta-analysis by an international research team led by Minxiang Zhao and Yixuan Li of the Renmin University of China psychology department examined 132 studies on trust from around the world. The studies had a total of more than 1 million participants. The researchers focused on two types of trust, interpersonal trust and institutional trust, exactly the two types that can occur in workplaces. They found that both types of trust correlate with social, psychological, and to a lesser extent, physical well-being.
If trust is so important, how do you get more of it? Unlike some other things, you cant mandate trust, and you cant demand that employees trust you, your company, or one another. But you can provide a workplace culture where trust can flourish. Here are some ways to do that.
1. Be transparent
If you want employees to trust you and your company, its obviously important to treat them fairly. But its almost as important to let them know whats going on. You may have to find a delicate balance between sharing competitive information and keeping too much to yourself. But half the employees in a recent survey said lack of information about what was going on at their companies was their biggest source of stress. Keep that in mind when considering whether to share bad news.
2. Be predictable
Many years ago, a CEO known for turning troubled companies around told me that his employees should never have to guess how he would answer a question. He told them his top priorities so they could always predict what he would say. He never wavered from those priorities.
We may be fascinated with leaders like Elon Musk who often change their minds. But we trust those like Warren Buffett, who consistently say the same things year after year. The more they can predict what you will say and do, the easier it is for employees to trust you.
3. Be trusting yourself
It may be hard for employees to trust you if, say, they know youre using software to monitor their keystrokes. Admittedly, treating employees with trust can backfire in the short term if you trust the wrong person. But in the long term, research shows that more trusting organizations tend to perform better, even in the often mistrustful retail industry.
I believe the reason for this is that, while we can easily see the cost of employee dishonesty when it happens, we dont always recognize that our mistrust comes at a high cost as well. If an employee has their bag searched every time they leave work, they wont feel the same trust or affection for the company that they otherwise might. And its human nature for them to try to figure out a way to sneak items out despite the search.
4. Help employees trust one another
Setting up competitions that pit employees against each other for important things like compensation can bring about acrimony and mistrust among them. Here again, the short-term gain may not be worth the long-term loss. Employees who trust their coworkers are more likely to collaborate effectively with them. Theyre also likely to be happier, and to stay in their jobs. Relationships at work are often the biggest deterrent to leaving a company.
You can help foster those relationships by asking people to collaborate on important projects and letting them share the credit equally. You can also create teams across different functions so that employees get to know their colleagues outside their immediate areas. And of course, any opportunity for employees to socialize, get together outside of work, or work together on community projects can help create those relationships and that trust.
In my book Career Self-Care, I explore workplace happiness, and how relationships at work can contribute to that happiness or detract from it. The more employees can trust in you, your company, and one another, the happier and less burned out theyll be. Its your job as a leader to make that happen.
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The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists re their own, not those of Inc.com.
Minda Zetlin
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
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Tim Cook has led Apple for the past 14 years. In that time, the company’s market cap has jumped from $348 billion to $4 trillion. While his predecessor, Steve Jobs, might have been a leader in the field of innovation, few CEOs have shown the business acumen of Cook. But according to a report in the Financial Times, Cook’s run as CEO could be over as soon as next year.
The report has set off a guessing game as to who will take over the tech giant when Cook departs. (Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the FT story.) The name most commonly mentioned is John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, though reportedly no final decisions have been made yet.
Ternus wasn’t always the first choice. Jeff Williams was once seen as Cooks most likely successor, but he ended his operational responsibilities in July and plans to retire in the next six weeks. Craig Federighi, Apples senior vice president of software engineering, and Greg Joswiak, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, have also been mentioned as possible successors in the past.
However, both the Financial Times and Bloombergs Mark Gurman have said Ternus is the heir apparent. So who is the person who could inherit Apple as it approaches its latest crossroadswith product design more important than ever and AI coming to the forefront?
Meet John Ternus
At just 50, Ternus is the youngest top executive at Apple, but he’s hardly a newcomer. He has been with the company for nearly 24 years, leading the hardware engineering division since 2013. That puts him in charge of the teams behind the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Mac, and more.
Over the past five years, he has become a more visible presence at Apple events, unveiling the iPhone Air in early 2025 and showing off Apple’s first silicon chip, the M1, in 2000. His engineering background could assuage critics who have complained Apple has become a less revolutionary company under Cook’s leadership (despite the hundreds of products released during his tenure).
Ternus started his career in tech at Virtual Research Systems, working on VR headsets for four years before joining Apple in 2001, which let him work on several products that would prove to be iconic for the company. By 2013, he was overseeing Mac and iPad development and added the iPhone hardware to his list of supervised products in 2020.
He is said to be well-liked at the company and by Cook, helping to contribute to product road maps and future strategies for Apple.
Will Cook retire?
Cook turned 65 this month, which has warmed up the talk of his eventual retirement, but he has previously downplayed questions about whether he plans to step down.
In January, Cook was a guest on the Table Manners podcast and said his retirement, whenever it should happen to occur, wont meet the traditional definition. He added he likely has many years left at Apple, though with the caveat that he doesnt want to be a CEO for the rest of his life.
I dont see being at home doing nothing and not [being] intellectually stimulated and thinking about how tomorrow can be better than today, he said. I think Ill always be wired in that kind of way and want to work.
If it seems like everything is getting more expensive, you’re right. Thanks to inflation (up 3%), which has affected goods from food to gas (for which prices are up 4.1%), you can now add the post office to the the long list of places where you’ll have to pay more.
Here’s what to know.
What’s happening?
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is planning to increase the price of shipping. The good news is, the changes won’t affect your holiday packages and won’t raise the price of stamps. The changes go into effect next year on January 18, pending a review by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC).
How much will prices go up?
The move will raise prices approximately 6.6% for Priority Mail, 5.1% for Priority Mail Express, 7.8% for USPS Ground Advantage, and 6% for Parcel Select.
Although mail price increases are based on the consumer price index, shipping prices are primarily adjusted according to market conditions, USPS said in a news release.
Why is the post office raising prices?
The price hike is aimed at generating revenue for the ailing U.S. Postal Service. It’s part of its 10-year “modernization and transformation plan” to make the agency financially sustainable over the long term, and able to continue delivering mail and packages at least six days a week.
It comes as USPS posted a $9 billion loss for the 2025 fiscal yearwhich is actually a better financial outcome than last year, when it lost $9.5 billion.
One thing to note: USPS relies on revenue from its postage, products, and services to keep it afloatnot tax dollars.
How can I find out more about the new prices?
The complete USPS price filing, with prices for all products, can be found on the PRC’s website at prc.arkcase.com/portal/filings, or on USPSs website at pe.usps.com/PriceChange/Index.
Its happened to you countless times: Youre waiting for a website to load, only to see a box with a little mountain range where an image should be. Its the placeholder icon for a missing image.
But have you ever wondered why this scene came to be universally adopted?
As a scholar of environmental humanities, I pay attention to how symbols of wilderness appear in everyday life.
The little mountain iconsometimes with a sun or cloud in the background, other times crossed out or brokenhas become the standard symbol, across digital platforms, to signal something missing or something to come. It appears in all sorts of contexts, and the more you look for this icon, the more youll see it.
The icon has various iterations, but all convey the same meaning: An image should be here. [Image: Christopher Schaberg/CC BY-SA]
You click on it in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint when you want to add a picture. You can purchase an ironic poster of the icon to put on your wall. The other morning, I even noticed a version of it in my Subarus infotainment display as a stand-in for a radio station logo.
So why this particular image of the mountain peaks? And where did it come from?
Arriving at the same solution
The placeholder icon can be thought of as a form of semiotic convergence, or when a symbol ends up meaning the same thing in a variety of contexts. For example, the magnifying glass is widely understood as search, while the image of a leaf means eco-friendly.
Its also related to something called convergent design evolution, or when organisms or cultureseven if they have little or no contactsettle on a similar shape or solution for something.
In evolutionary biology, you can see convergent design evolution in bats, birds, and insects, which all utilize wings but developed them in their own ways. Stilt houses emerged in various cultures across the globe as a way to build durable homes along shorelines and riverbanks. More recently, engineers in different parts of the world designed similar airplane fuselages independent of one another.
For whatever reason, the little mountain just worked across platforms to evoke open-ended meanings: Early web developers needed a simple shorthand way to present that something else should or could be there.
Depending on context, a little mountain might invite a user to insert a picture in a document; it might mean that an image is trying to load, or is being uploaded; or it could mean an image is missing or broken.
Down the rabbit hole on a mountain
But of the millions of possibilities, why a mountain?
In 1994, visual designer Marsh Chamberlain created a graphic featuring three colorful shapes as a stand-in for a missing image or broken link for the web browser Netscape Navigator. The shapes appeared on a piece of paper with a ripped corner. Though the paper with the rip will sometimes now appear with the mountain, it isnt clear when the square, circle, and triangle became a mountain.
Two little mountain peaks are used to signal “landscape mode” on many SLR cameras. [Image: Althepal/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY]
Users on Stack Exchange, a forum for developers, suggest that the mountain peak icon may trace back to the landscape mode icon on the dials of Japanese SLR cameras. Its the feature that sets the aperture to maximize the depth of field so that both the foreground and background are in focus.
The landscape scene modevisible on many digital cameras in the 1990swas generically represented by two mountain peaks, with the idea that the camera user would intuitively know to use this setting outdoors.
Another insight emerged from the Stack Exchange discussion: The icon bears a resemblance to the Microsoft XP wallpaper called Bliss. If you had a PC in the years after 2001, you probably recall the rolling green hills with blue sky and wispy clouds.
The stock photo was taken by National Geographic photographer Charles ORear. It was then purchased by Bill Gates digital licensing company Corbis in 1998. The empty hillside in this picture became iconic through its adoption by Windows XP as its default desktop wallpaper image.
[Image: Microsoft]
Mountain riddles
Bliss became widely understood as the most generic of generic stock photos, in the same way the placeholder icon became universally understood to mean missing image. And I dont think its a coincidence that they both feature mountains or hills and a sky.
Mountains and skies are mysterious and full of possibilities, even if they remain beyond grasp.
Consider Japanese artist Hokusais 36 Views of Mount Fuji, which were his series of paintings from the 1830sthe most famous of which is probably The Great Wave off Kanagawa, where a tiny Mount Fuji can be seen in the background. Each painting features the iconic mountain from different perspectives and is full of little details; all possess an ambiance of mystery.
I wouldnt be surprised if the landscape icon on those Japanese camera dials emerged as a minimalist reference to Mount Fuji, Japans highest mountain. From some perspectives, Mount Fuji rises behind a smaller incline. And the Japanese photography company Fujifilm even borrowed the namesake of that mountain for their brand.
The enticing aesthetics of mountains also reminded me of the environmental writer Gary Snyders 1965 translation of Han Shans Cold Mountain Poems. Han Shanhis name literally means Cold Mountainwas a Chinese Buddhist poet who lived in the late eighth century. Shan translates as mountain and is represented by the Chinese character , which also resembles a mountain.
Han Shans poems, which are little riddles themselves, revel in the bewildering aspects of mountains:
Cold Mountain is a houseWithout beams or walls.The six doors left and right are openThe hall is a blue sky.The rooms are all vacant and vague.The east wall beats on the west wallAt the center nothing.
The mystery is the point
I think mountains serve as a universal representation of something unseen and longed forwhether its in a poem or on a sluggish internet browserbecause people can see a mountain and wonder what might be there.
The placeholder icon does what mountains have done for millennia, serving as what the environmental philosopher Margret Grebowicz describes as an object of desire. To Grebowicz, mountains exist as places to behold, explore, and sometimes conquer.
The placeholder icons inherent ambiguity is baked into its form: Mountains are often regarded as distant, foreboding places. At the same time, the little peaks appear in all sorts of mundane computing circumstances. The icon could even be a curious sign of how humans cant help but be nature-positive, even when on computers or phones.
This small icon holds so much, and yet it can also paradoxically mean that there is nothing to see at all.
Viewing it this way, an example of semiotic convergence becomes a tiny allegory for digital life writ large: a wilderness of possibilities, with so much just out of reach.
Christopher Schaberg is a director of public scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
What does it mean to be smart or dumb? Few questions are more deceptively complex.
Most of us have strong opinions about what those words mean, but scratch the surface and it becomes clear that smart and dumb are slippery, subjective constructs.
What seems smart to one person may strike another as naive, arrogant, or shortsighted. Worse still, our own perception of whats smart can shift over time. Yesterdays clever decision can look like todays regrettable blunder. Take Jay Gatsby, for instance. His grand plan to reinvent himself, amass a fortune, and win back Daisy once seemed like the height of romantic intelligence; but in the end, it revealed itself as delusional folly, built on illusions as fragile as the dream he chased.
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For a famous path reversal (from allegedly dumb to obviously smart), consider Forrest Gump, whose simple, seemingly naive choices (e.g., running across America or investing in some fruit company) looked foolish to everyone around him. Yet his lack of overthinking and unpretentious sincerity led him to happiness, wealth, and a kind of quiet genius that outsmarted all the so-called smart people.
In hindsight, we often discover that our supposed genius was merely luck, and our dumb mistakes were actually learning opportunities in disguise.
In short: Being smart isnt a fixed trait; its a moving target defined by outcomes, context, and time. In line with that, we tend to withhold judgment until weve seen enough evidence. After all, anyone can have flashes of brilliance or moments of foolishnesswhat matters is the overall pattern. Thats why we evaluate intelligence not by a single act, but by the consistency of choices and behaviors over time.
The science of adaptability
Charles Darwin famously noted, It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.
Along the same lines, psychologists (who are often largely footnotes to Darwin) have a relatively simple and more objective way to define smart versus dumb behavior: adaptability. In that sense, what we call “intelligence” is largely the capacity to adjust ones behavior to achieve desired outcomes in a changing environment. In other words, smart behavior increases your chances of success, survival, or well-being. Dumb behavior does the opposite.
When faced with different options, the smartness of your choice can be judged by its consequences. If your decision enhances your opportunities, relationships, reputation, or resilience, its smart. If it narrows your prospects or makes your life worse, its dumb.
Crucially, this definition also accommodates social consensus. One persons opinion may be biased, but when many independent observers agree that an action was wise (or foolish), that consensus is usually a good proxy for truth. You can fool some people some of the time, but not everyone all the time.
IQ vs. EQ: 2 pathways to smart behavior
When it comes to predicting whether people will behave intelligently or not, two psychological constructs stand out: IQ and EQ.
IQ (intelligence quotient) reflects cognitive abilitythat is, how effectively you learn, reason, and solve abstract problems. Its the single best predictor of performance in well-defined, rule-bound contexts such as school exams, technical analysis, programming, or chess. People with higher IQs tend to make better decisions when the problem has a right answer.
EQ (emotional quotient), on the other hand, captures the capacity to understand and manage emotions, both your own and others. It predicts success in less structured, interpersonal domains: leading teams, negotiating, managing conflict, or handling stress. In these fuzzy, ambiguous situations, there are rarely clear right answers, and emotional intelligence helps navigate the gray zones.
Both forms of intelligence matter. IQ helps you see patterns; EQ helps you see people.
False stereotypes: book-smart vs. street-smart
Part of the reason people resist IQ is that they equate it with cold, academic, or impractical intelligence: the book-smart but clueless archetype. Think of high-IQ figures who made disastrous real-world choices: the Enron executives with MBAs from top schools who engineered their own collapse, or Nobel laureates who lost fortunes day-trading because they overestimated their models. Brilliant analysts but poor decision-makers.
Conversely, high-EQ individuals (likable, empathetic, persuasive) are often celebrated as street-smart. They can read a room, defuse tension, and influence others. Yet this doesnt mean they always make wise choices either.
Importantly, research shows that IQ and EQ are largely uncorrelated. You can be high on both, low on both, or excel in one and lag in the other. Theyre complementary toolslike having both a hammer and a screwdriver. One wont replace the other, but together they let you handle a wider range of problems.
Why high-IQ people do dumb things
So why do objectively intelligent people sometimes behave foolishly? A few recurring patterns explain it.
Overconfidence in reasoning. High-IQ individuals often trust their logic too much, ignoring emotional or contextual cues. This cognitive arrogance leads to blind spots, especially in social or moral dilemmas.
Complexification. Smart people can overcomplicate simple problems, mistaking verbosity or abstraction for insight. They build intricate arguments to justify poor decisions. True intelligence is making complex things simple, rather than vice versa.
Confirmation bias. The cleverer you are, the better you become at rationalizing your mistakes. Intelligence amplifies self-deception when ego is at stake. Too often, smart people are more interested in lubricating their egos than in making the right decisiontheir desire to feel smart may surpass their appetite for getting to the solution of a problem.
Risk illusion. Intelligent people often feel they can outsmart uncertainty, taking reckless bets (financial, professional, or personal) under the illusion of control. In particular, when intelligence combines with narcissistic tendencies, it may lead to intellectual underperformance at the expense of grandiosity.
Narrow optimization. They focus on optimizing a specific variable (e.g., efficiency, profit, prestige) while ignoring broader consequences. A smart business strategy that erodes trust or well-being isnt smart in the long run.
In short, high IQ can make you better at justifying dumb ideas, as well as defending your arguments and actions against others, leading to the smartest person in the room syndrome.
When emotional intelligence backfires
EQ provides no immunity against stupidity either. In fact, its virtues can become liabilities when taken too far.
Empathy surplus. Being too attuned to others emotions can make you overly accommodating or reluctant to deliver hard truths.
Agreeableness overdrive. High-EQ people often avoid conflict, even when confrontation is necessary to prevent bigger problems later. And people who focus on avoiding conflict end up causing a great deal of conflict in the long run.
Emotional manipulation. The dark side of EQ is Machiavellian charm, using emotional awareness to manipulate rather than connect.
Compassion fatigue. Caring too much can lead to burnout, especially in leadership or caregiving roles. In any job or organization, especially in competitive settings, if you optimize for getting along, you will impair peoples appetite for getting ahead.
Emotional suppression. Some emotionally mature individuals regulate so well that they disconnect from their authentic feelings, losing spontaneity and creativity.
In essence, EQ without boundaries can make you a nice foolliked by everyone, exploited by many.
The meta-skill: coachability and learning
If IQ and EQ help you make smart choices, what helps you stay smart? The answer is coachability, the willingness and ability to learn from mistakes. This meta-skill distinguishes the chronically dumb from the progressively smart. Everyone makes errors; only the adaptable learn from them.
Here are five evidence-based ways to improve your decision-making intelligence.
Seek feedback relentlessly. Smart people solicit criticism before failure makes it unavoidable. The goal isnt to be right; its to actually get better (evolve, develop, grow, etc.).
Distinguish process from outcome. A good decision can lead to a bad result, and vice versa. Evaluate how you decided, not just what happened.
Question your certainties. Treat your beliefs as hypotheses to test, not truths to defend.
Balance emotion and logic. Before major decisions, ask: Am I thinking clearly and feeling right about this? IQ and EQ can actually work together to improve outcomes, but you will need to manage this tension and turn them into allies.
Study your own patterns. Keep a decision diary, record choices, predictions, and outcomes . . . or at least reflect, get feedback, assess, and recalibrate. Over time, youll see which biases or emotions trip you up.
In short, the smartest people arent those who never err; theyre the ones who systematize their learning from errors. What ultimately separates wisdom from folly isnt intellect or emotion alone, but the capacity to adaptto learn, recalibrate, and improve.
As author and Harvard professor Amy Edmondson compellingly illustrates: In the end, smartness is less about having the right answers and more about asking better questions after youve been wrong. The truly intelligent person is not the one who avoids dumb mistakes, but the one who refuses to repeat them.
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The most enduring leaders arent the ones with flawless résumés. Theyre the ones whove been tested, humbled, and reshaped by failure.
From an early age, I trained intensively to become a professional ballet dancer. Ballet wasnt just a passion. It was my identity, my future, my entire world. Until an audition in Vienna changed everything. A sudden injury ended the career I had spent years building.
That moment could have marked the end of my story. Instead, it became the beginning of a new one. I pivoted into finance and marketing, building a career at American Express and Amazon. Today, I advise boards and CEOs on succession, governance, and talent strategy at Egon Zehnder, one of the worlds preeminent global leadership advisory firms.
One truth has stayed with me throughout this journey. Setbacks arent detours. Theyre gifts. And if you havent failed in a meaningful way, you may not be ready to lead yet.
Setbacks clarify what matters
When things dont go as planned, its a moment that forces reflection. Perhaps youve been passed over for a promotion, convinced you were the most qualified candidate. Or the product you thought would set a new sales record didnt perform as well as expected, and customers were underwhelmed.
Suddenly, you start asking different questions. Are you communicating your impact clearly? Have you built strong sponsorship? Are you recognized as a leader or just as someone who executes well? Can you pivot quickly and creatively based on changing circumstances?
Failure shakes our sense of certainty and exposes how fragile our narratives about ourselves can be. It reminds us that success isnt always linear, and performance doesnt speak for itself. These moments are hard, but they also teach us the difference between doing good work and being seen as ready to lead.
Resilience isnt built in moments of triumph. Its forged by challenges
Mary Barra, now CEO of General Motors, rose through engineering and manufacturing at a time when few women held those roles. Her experience proved essential in 2014, when GM faced a major crisis over ignition-switch failures. Barra didnt deflect blame. She addressed Congress directly, took responsibility, and began reshaping the companys culture.
That could have been a defining failure. Instead, it became a defining moment.
Barras story is a reminder that leadership isnt about never being questioned. Its about responding to challenges with clarity, consistency, and a willingness to grow. Ultimately, resilience is built in the quiet, difficult moments when no one is cheering you on.
Conviction without listening is arrogance
Jeff Bezos once said Amazon succeeds by being stubborn on vision, flexible on details. That mindset helps explain how even a product like the Fire Phone, a commercial failure, still served a strategic purpose.
Rather than doubling down on a misfire, Amazon listened to customer feedback, learned from the experience, and used those insights to develop Alexa. The distinction matters: Conviction without listening is arrogance. But conviction that adapts based on what customers are telling you? Thats leadership.
Passion, unfortunately, doesnt replace market truth. Tenacity can easily turn into tunnel vision. As leaders, our job is not just to have ideas. Its to make sure those ideas matter to someone else. If were not listeningto our teams, to our customers, to the world around usthen were building in a vacuum.
Ideas only matter if others believe in them
In my work advising CEOs and boards, I meet leaders with really good ideas who struggle to influence others. They know what needs to be done, but they cant bring people along. Thats not a strategic problem. Its a leadership problem.
Influence starts with empathy. The ability to see what others value, where they hesitate, and how to connect with them. Often, that empathy is forged through failure. When leaders fall short, theyre forced to see blind spots, hear hard truths, and confront the real impact of their decisions.
Consider Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. After early stumbles in Microsofts mobile strategy, he leaned into a more collaborative, learning-oriented culture that valued listening over ego. That shift helped him rebuild trust internally and reposition Microsoft as a more agile, empathetic company.
Nadellas story is a powerful reminder that failure isnt just a test of resilience. Its a chance to become the kind of leader others actually want to follow.
Failure builds humanity. And humanity builds leadership
Many of todays most respected leaders have careers marked by public missteps and personal reinventions. In the process, theyve developed resilience and deeper empathythe foundations of strong leadership.
Because setbacks dont just humble you, they humanize you. And leadership without humanity doesnt last.
Ballet is still a part of me. I attend performances. Some of my closest friends are dancers and choreographers. In a twist of lifes full circle, I now have a daughter who is already a more talented dancer than I ever was. Watching her on stage reminds me that what I once thought was the end of my story was really the beginning of hers.
Thats the unexpected gift of setbacks. They dont just close doors. They open better ones. But only if youre willing to walk through them without the armor of perfection.
Your best chapter may begin in your hardest moment
As I advise CEOs and boards navigating complexity, I see a clear pattern. The most effective leaders are the ones whove been tested by hardship and hold their conviction while remaining open to challenge. Theyre the ones who understand that every stumble is an opportunity to rethink, reframe, and reemerge more strongly.
In a world of relentless disruption, we need leaders who can metabolize failure into progress. We need leaders who understand that credibility isnt built on being right all the time, but on how you respond when youre wrong.
So if youre facing a setback, dont rush to move past it. It could very well be the greatest gift you receive on your leadership journey. Embrace it, learn from it, and let it remake you.
Because the story you planned might not be the story youre meant to live. And your best chapter may be the one that begins right after your biggest setback.
Its been 70 years since Douglas McGregor sketched a management theory at MIT Sloan that leaders still ignoreand their teams pay the price.
Known as Theory X and Theory Y, McGregors framework built on Abraham Maslows work on employee self-actualization, and it quickly became one of the foundational texts of modern management thinking.
In McGregors theory, leaders fall into two camps. Theory X managers assume that employees are inherently lazy, need constant supervision, and would rather coast along than contribute. Theory Y managers, by contrast, see employees as self-motivated, responsible, and capable of growth if given the right environment.
And the kicker is that both kinds of managers usually get exactly the employees they expect, no matter who they originally hired.
What McGregor was tapping into was the fact that certain beliefs have an uncanny way of turning into real, measurable effects on human behavior. Whether its placebo studies in medicine or examining how teachers’ expectations impact classroom performance, the science is unambiguous about how far-reaching effects simple expectations can have.
The psychology behind high expectations
Psychologists were among the first to observe and take note of the feedback loops that expectations set off.
Take the now-famous study by Rosenthal and Jacobson in 1968. Elementary school teachers were told that a group of randomly selected students had been identified as “late bloomers” who were about to show remarkable academic growth. The result surprised even the researchers themselves. Those students did indeed outperform their peers, in part because the teachers, subconsciously or not, started treating them differently by offering more encouragement, more patience, and more challenging material.
The students responded in kind, rising to the challenge now that someone in authority believed them capable of meeting it. The only thing that had changed was the expectations.
Journalist David Robson chronicles just how far this phenomenon goes in The Expectation Effect, a book that should be required reading for leadership. From placebo heart surgeries that deliver real relief to workouts that burn more fat just because people believe theyre working harder, Robson lays out the scientific evidence showing how our expectations construct reality around us.
The psychology behind the effect is simple: Your brain doesnt sit around waiting for input like a neutral recordkeeper. It ceaselessly guesses and simulates what might happen so that you can be prepared for whatever comes across your desk. At each moment, the brain is busy constructing an internal map of whats likely to happen, and then it updates that map based on whatever comes next.
Its no surprise to find that our expectations prime the brains sensory and emotional circuits almost as if its already happening. If you are expecting pain, the amygdala lights up before you even stub your toe. If you expect failure, your cortisol rises, your attention narrows, and your working memory takes a hit before youve even started the task. Expect a sense of existential dread and meaninglessness at work? Here you go, says the brain, lowering your dopamine levels until motivation plummets because your brains prediction model no longer sees a reason to invest cognitive effort.
Thats why a sugar pill can relieve chronic pain, why sham surgeries produce real outcomes, and why a warm-up jog feels harder if you think it’s the workout. The experience conforms to the prediction, and belief becomes biology.
When leaders talk about setting the tone or creating a culture of excellence, theyre not that far from hitting upon something truly powerful. If we accept that expectations change biology, cognition, and motivation, then leveling them appropriately becomes one of leaderships central tasks.
Be careful what you expect, because you might get it
If you walk into a boardroom assuming your team lacks ambition, youll subconsciously act like it by designing processes that assume failure. Your team, in turn, will riseor in this case, sinkto the level you’ve set. Welcome to management by cynicism.
Nelson Repenning, an MIT Sloan School of Management professor and coauthor of the new book Theres Got to Be a Better Way, has spent his career helping leaders break out of this cycle. He advises leaders to expect moreand betterfrom their people as a starting point.
When people fail, we treat it like a character flaw. But in most organizations, failure is a design problem, he says. The question every leader should ask isnt why did they screw up? Its what about our system made it easy to screw up?
Repenning and his longtime collaborator Don Kieffer argue that modern management has become too disconnected from the work itself. Youd be amazed how many executives cant describe how the work actually gets done, Kieffer says. Its like trying to fix a car without opening the hood. These leaders cant set a good expectation because theyre so far removed from reality to begin with.
Without that intimacy, leaders default to assumptions, not expectations. Before long, youre managing caricatures of your team instead of the real people doing the work.
Anyone can ask for a 17% increase in revenue and expect it to happen, Repenning says. But thats not a healthy way to set goals, let alone a culture of expectations. Leaders need to know what they are asking for, and they need to understand how powerful the expectations they set are. This is where too many leaders trip over their own lofty visions. They expect more, but enable less. Perhaps some even care less.
Repenning calls this the paradox of servile leadership: Great leaders dont set expectations and step back. They ask, What do you need from me to get there? Then they go and move those boulders.
The accompanying leadership model isnt that much more complicated. Set the target, communicate belief, and then roll up your sleeves to start fixing whats brokenwhether its systems, workflows, org charts, tools or, yes, your assumptions.
McGregor and Maslow would be nodding along if they were still with us. Decades before we started talking about psychological safety and employee empowerment, they argued that the job of management was to unlock people’s natural drive. Give them autonomy and show them how their work connects to a bigger picture. Eliminate the management by the stopwatch, and start practicing management by the soul.
Expectation is freedisappointment is expensive
If you expect your team to take shortcuts, youll create a culture of cutting corners. If you expect your team to challenge ideas, theyll innovate. If you expect mediocrity, youll be surrounded by it.
And the inverse holds, too. When leaders believe in their people, when they really believe in their capacity to achieve, something remarkable happens. People stretch to meet the expectations, and trust begins to compound. Done right, simply expecting greatness might do more than any retreat or bonus ever could, Repenning ays. But expecting isnt enough. You still have to earn it.
Thats the fine print of McGregors theory, and the trap too many leaders fall into. They want the results of Theory Y, but still manage like they believe in Theory X. The message that sends is: I dont really think youve got it in you. But prove me wrong. Thats not leadership. Thats abdication. And now you know how to do better.
It should be shocking to nobody that were dealing with an absolute surplus of AI consumables. Breakthroughs. Policy changes. New tools that promise to “10x your productivity.”
Most of it is either too technical, too abstract, or just plain filler. You don’t need another wall of text, you need the signal.
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This weekly digest strikes a nice balance, covering the major research breakthroughs alongside the applied use cases.
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