In a companys early days, culture is forged through proximityshared desks, late nights, and the push-and-pull of turning ideas into reality. Decisions happen on the fly, and everyone knows each other by name. But as you scaleespecially as a remote-first organizationthat sense of connection can quietly fade. Suddenly, you realize you cant attend every onboarding, celebrate every milestone, or even recognize every face on a Zoom call.
That moment should give you pause. In fact, if it doesnt, youre missing a red flag.
At Appfire, weve gone from a small crew to nearly 800 people across multiple continents. Our remote-first approach lets people work where they wake up, but it also brings a new set of leadership challenges. In a world defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), the old playbook of hallway conversations and impromptu lunches doesnt cut it. Staying connectedand relevantrequires intentional, adaptable systems for communication, empathy, and trust.
Heres what Ive learned (often the hard way): what works for 50 people absolutely breaks at 800. Here are four principles I rely on to keep our culture intact as we growno matter how turbulent or complex the environment.
Communicate Consistently to Anchor Culture
When you cant rely on physical presence, communication from leadership becomes your presence. Within my first month at Appfire, I started recording biweekly Loom videosshort, informal updates on everything from board meeting takeaways to customer feedback, industry trends, and whats keeping me up at night. Theyre deliberately unpolished. The point is authenticity, not production value.
But its not just about me talking at people. Company-wide meetingsvirtual or otherwiseare vital for transparency and alignment. Switch up the format: one month, an unscripted Q&A; the next, a focused all-hands on product milestones or wins. Routine is good, but predictability can breed apathy. Variety keeps people engaged and shows that leadership is present, listening, and investedeven across time zones.
In VUCA environments, these touchpoints become cultural anchorssteadying the ship when the waters get rough.
Lead with EmpathyEspecially Through Change
Growth brings change: new processes, shifting priorities, new faces. This can breed friction, especially when people feel overlooked or misunderstood. Empathy isnt just a soft skillits table stakes for leadership, particularly in uncertain or ambiguous circumstances.
You dont need every answer, but you do need to listenreally listen. Ask questions. Make it clear youre aware of the daily realities people face, whether theyre your tenth hire or your 900th. Empathy creates psychological safety, unlocking collaboration and innovationeven as the ground shifts beneath us.
And in a globally distributed, remote-first workforce, empathy means honoring differences: work styles, time zones, communication preferences. Flexibility and inclusion arent perkstheyre strategic imperatives in a complex world.
Assume Positive Intentand Seek to Understand First
As companies scale, silos form. Communication happens over Slack, Zoom, or emaileasy recipes for misinterpretation. My default? Assume positive intent. When something doesnt make sense, I encourage teams to seek understanding first, not just to be understood.
This mindset is a buffer against the ambiguity that naturally creeps in as organizations grow and evolve. Its especially critical during moments of changenew tools, shifting strategies, re-orgs. Curiosity over judgment fosters better collaboration, healthier conflict, and ultimately, stronger relationships.
As a leader, you have to model this. It sets the tone for everyone else, especially when things get messy.
Focus on What You Can Control
Lets be honest: the world isnt getting any simpler. Markets swing, technologies disrupt, geopolitics intrude. In a volatile, complex landscape, the temptation is to hunker down or get distracted by what you cant control. Resist it.
We cant manage macroeconomics or global events. But we can control the quality of our products, the strength of our partnerships, the depth of our customer relationships, and the authenticity of our culture. We can prioritize creating real value over chasing hype. We can show up for each other. Grounding teams in whats controllable fosters resilience, clarity, and focuseven amid chaos.
Intention Over Scale
Scaling isnt about headcount. Its about evolving how you lead when the old rules no longer apply. CEOs of remote-first, high-growth companies cant lean on proximity or familiarity. We have to be intentionalabout communication, empathy, trust, and clarity. These arent nice-to-haves. In a VUCA world, theyre the infrastructure of sustainable growth.
At Appfire, I may never know every employee personallybut I want every employee to feel like they know me. Not through perfect videos, but through a cadence of authentic, consistent leadership. Staying connected isnt about scale. Its about deliberate intention in the face of complexity and uncertainty.
Thats how you build a culture that scalesand survivesin a remote, unpredictable world.
Research shows that an employees perception of what makes an authentic leader is the most significant predictor of job satisfaction and happiness at work. And I experienced this firsthand when my boss said three simple words that changed everything.
You see, as a journalist, I was always accustomed to someone checking, editing, and approving every piece before publication. So when I asked my new boss yet another question about a piece of content I was working on, his response shocked me. He turned around and said, I trust you.
I was blown away because it was a huge shift. For the first time, Someone is encouraging me to trust my own judgement instead of seeking approval. It was the complete opposite of everything perfectionism had reinforced in me. And while that was a breakthrough moment for me, Id realized just how much perfectionism had shaped me leading up to that moment.
Thriving from failure
Back in 2011, I was living my dream. I was on stage at the New York Comedy Club, about to deliver my first five-minute stand-up set in America. Id memorized and rehearsed and memorized every word. After I delivered my first joke, my mind went completely blank. Nothing. For 30 excruciating seconds, I stood frozen like a deer in headlights. When I looked down at my palm for my SOS backup notes, all I saw was a giant smudge mark. My nervous, sweaty hands totally smeared the ink. I looked around the room, locked eyes with a friend, and took a desperate breath. Eventually, my jokes came flooding back. But I replayed that freeze for years on loop in my mind.
That experience taught me that perfectionism isn’t protection at all. Far from it. It’s actually a trap. We think we’re safe when weve mapped everything out, but it’s actually the opposite. If we forget one tiny point, everything unravels quickly.
Research distinguishes between excellence-seeking perfectionism (driven by high standards) and failure-avoiding perfectionism (driven by fear and concerns). So many of us are trapped in the latter, with this fear disconnecting us from our authentic voice. This kind of perfectionism is sneaky because it disguises itself as high standards. And its also very, very convincing.
Trying to meet an impossible standard
I see this pattern constantly. One leader at a recent presentation skills workshop was convinced she needed to get everything right. But when I asked, According to who? she couldnt answer. We laughed, her shoulders dropped, and she smiled. Her entire presence shifted. Authentic leadership requires presence, vulnerability, honesty, and trust. But its rigidity that causes fear-driven perfectionism.
When youre trapped in perfectionism, youre chasing an impossible standard, instead of leading from a true place. And teams can feel that disconnect. After I froze on stage in New York, I made a decision. I would never memorize another performance. Instead, I learned to be present, trust myself, and adapt. And the result was always better performances and much deeper connections because I was finally in the room with my audience instead of being trapped in my head. The antidote to perfectionism isn’t lowering our standards. It’s raising authenticity.
Preventing perfectionism from getting in the way
Ive learned that below are the key steps to follow if you want to prevent perfectionism from getting in the way of your success:
Own your mistakes openly. When you admit your mistakes, you give others permission to stop hiding theirs and start learning from them instead.
Share what didnt work. I tell leaders about bombed pitches and lost rooms. Failure can build connections very quickly.
Say I dont know. When someone asks you something you haven’t considered or you dont have the answer to, admit it. This creates the space for honest connections.
Get comfortable with version #1. My comedy coach Judy Carter said, Get your ideas out there because you can always make them better. At the end of the day, done is way better than perfect.
When my boss said those three words to me, he gave me something powerful. And thats permission to trust myself. Sure, perfectionism might make you look good, but authentic leadership is what actually transforms people and is what allows you to build true connections and relationships that will last for years to come.
Headlines alternate between massive AI investments and reports of failed deployments. The pattern is consistent across industries: seemingly promising AI projects that work well in testing environments struggle or fail when deployed in real-world conditions.
It’s not insufficient computing power, inadequate talent, or immature algorithms. Ive worked with over 250 enterprises deploying visual AIfrom Fortune 10 manufacturers to emerging unicornsand the pattern is unmistakable: the companies that succeed train their models on what actually breaks them, while the ones that fail optimize for what works in controlled environments.
The Hidden Economics of AI Failure
When Amazon quietly rolled back its “Just Walk Out” technology from most U.S. grocery stores in 2024, the media focused on the obvious: customers were confused, technology wasn’t ready, labor costs weren’t eliminated as promised.
But the real lesson was subtler and more valuable. Amazon’s visual AI could accurately identify a shopper picking up a Coke in ideal conditionswell-lit aisles, single shoppers, products in their designated spots. The system failed on the edge cases that define real-world retail: crowded aisles, group shopping, items returned to wrong shelves, inventory that constantly shifts.
The core issue wasn’t technological sophisticationit was data strategy. Amazon had trained their models on millions of hours of video, but the wrong millions of hours. They optimized for the common scenarios while underweighting the chaos that drives real-world retail.
Amazon continues to refine the technologya strategy that highlights the core challenge with visual AI deployment. The issue wasn’t insufficient computing power or algorithmic sophistication. The models needed more comprehensive training data that captured the full spectrum of customer behaviors, not just the most common scenarios.
This is the billion dollar blind spot: Most enterprises are solving the wrong data problem.
Focusing on the right data, not just more data
Enterprises often assume that simply scaling datacollecting millions more images or video hourswill close the performance gap. But visual AI doesnt fail because of too little data; it fails because of the wrong data.
The companies that consistently succeed have learned to curate their datasets with the same rigor they apply to their models. They deliberately seek out and label the hard cases: the scratches that barely register on a part, the rare disease presentation in a medical image, the one-in-a-thousand lighting condition on a production line, or the pedestrian darting out from between parked cars at dusk. These are the cases that break models in deploymentand the cases that separate an adequate system from a production-ready one.
This is why data quality is quickly becoming the real competitive advantage in visual AI. Smart companies arent chasing sheer volume; theyre investing in tools to measure, curate, and continuously improve their datasets.
First-hand experience
As the CEO of a visual AI startupVoxel51these challenges are something Ive lived first-hand. My co-founder and I started the company after seeing how bad data derails AI projects. In 2017, while working with the city of Baltimore to deploy vision systems on its CitiWatch camera network to aid first responders, we experienced the pain of creating datasets, training models, and diagnosing failures without the right tools. That work inspired us to build our own platform, which became FiftyOnenow the most widely adopted open source toolkit for visual AI with more than three million installs. Today, more than 250 enterprises, including Berkshire Grey, Google, Bosch, and Porsche, use it to put data quality at the center of their AI strategy. Here are just a few outcomes:
Allstate improved data quality in vehicle damage inspection by automating the pipelinesegmenting parts, detecting damages, and matching repair costsreducing hours of manual effort while ensuring consistent results.
Raytheon Technologies Research Center organized and filtered large research datasets to surface meaningful patterns in complex image attributes, turning noisy data into usable insights.
A Fortune 500 agriculture tech company curated training data from harvesters to improve grain segmentation, capturing edge cases like unhusked and sprouting kernels for more robust models.
A Fortune 500 company curated visual data to detect defective screens before shipment, preventing costly recalls and customer returns.
SafelyYou shows the impact of this approach. The companys system helps care delivery in senior care facilities with models that help reduce fall-related ER visits by 80%. The key wasnt just massive scale60 million minutes of videobut the ability to curate variations in how seniors actually fall: different lighting, speeds, body types, and obstacles. By automating checks for annotation mistakes and model blind spots, they cut manual review by 77%, boosted precision scores by 10%, and saved up to 80 developer hours each month.
The Path Forward
For executives evaluating visual AI investments, the lesson is clear: success is driven not by bigger models or more compute, but by treating data as the foundation. Organizations that prioritize data quality consistently outperform those that focus primarily on technology infrastructure or talent acquisition.
Investments in data collection, curation, and management systems are the levers that truly move the needle. By embedding scenario analysis into data strategymodeling how different data quality, diversity, or labeling scenarios impact performancecompanies can anticipate risks, optimize resource allocation, and make more informed AI investments.
Ultimately, the most successful visual AI initiatives are those that integrate rigorous data practices with forward-looking scenario planning, ensuring that models deliver reliable performance across a range of real-world conditions.
Early in my (Chantals) career, my manager, Scott, shared something in my annual review that Ill never forget. My sarcastic sense of humor made some people uncomfortable. He recommended that I “tone it down a bit.”
I felt embarrassed and defensive. Since I was young, Id always leveraged humor to connect and signal mental acuity. The feedback made me question what I thought I knew. Was my presumed superpower actually a liability? The conversation rattled me, and I didnt know what to do with the feedback.
So often, early-career professionals enter the workforce and receive technical feedback from managers: fix code this way, prepare for a check-in using this template, sequence slides like this for a presentation. This type of feedback is helpful. Too often though, managers are nervous to share behavioral feedback (like what Scott gave to me). They worry that itll come across as too subjective and therefore not valid or offensive to the receiver. These are reasonable concerns, but unfortunately, perception can impact how your career progresses. It might be jarring (and unfair) to receive this kind of feedback, but you can actually use it to your advantage.
If youre lucky enough to have a manager who gives behavioral feedback, heres how to move from unproductively rattled to productively responsive. This way, you can leverage the feedback to grow professionally.
Be open (not defensive)
As humans, we are wired to self-protect ourselves from danger. Research shows that feedback activates the brains threat response. As a result, it can be difficult to accept feedback.
To resist a fight, flee or freeze reaction, start by giving yourself grace. As humans, we all have blind spots. That doesnt mean were not good enough the way we are. Then remind yourself that every piece of feedback is one persons perspective, not a fact. Were allowed to hold it at arms length, examine it, and decide if accepting it would support our professional development. When we are “at choice,” we can treat feedback with curiosity, which encourages growth.
Practice gratitude
Saying thank you releases dopamine and contributes to overall well-being. This is a great antidote to the “fear of not being good enough,” which we often experience when confronted with difficult feedback. Take a moment to appreciate the thoughtfulness of the person who is trying to help you develop and explicitly thank them. This might sound like, I imagine sharing that feedback was difficult, and Im really grateful you did. Its important I understand how Im experienced by others. Thank you.
Ask open-ended questions
Resist asking the feedback deliverer for numerous examples to back their point. Remember, its not a litigation. This approach will ensure that you dont receive useful feedback from them in the future. Instead, get curious about their experience of you with follow-up questions like, How did that affect you? What else feels important for me to know? What advice, if any, do you have for me?
Resist doing the opposite
When we receive difficult feedback, it can be tempting to respond by doing the opposite of what weve been doing. But, critical behavioral feedback we receive is often an overdone strength, not a behavior to abandon entirely.
For example, one client, Izzy, exuded optimism. She always saw the best in colleagues or opportunities and could frequently be heard saying, Dont worry, itll all work out! and Sure, its possible, no problem. Unfortunately, over time, her relentless positivity started eroding her reputation. Some people perceived her to be naive and thought that she lacked critical thinking skills.
Upon hearing this feedback, Izzy felt self-conscious and began to shift her behavior in a dramatic way. She wanted to prove that she could operate with a skeptical eye, It sounds like I should always be the devils advocate in the room, she said. But this reaction would have created a host of other issues. Other colleagues suddenly saw her as overly negative or even inauthentic. Instead, to support Izzys growth, we worked together to invite a little more critical judgment into her leadership to complement her gift of seeing whats possible.
When you get tough feedback, instead of over-dialing, figure out specific behaviors that you might be exaggerating. And then, rather than trying to adjust the dial by 180 degrees, try to change it by just 20 degrees.
Make small adjustments
How do you adjust just 20 degrees? Experiment with new behaviors. Make the experiments small, easy, and playful so they feel appealing versus daunting.
For example, my client, Drew, received feedback that he “talked too much and came off as a know-it-all in meetings.” So he decided to conduct an experiment. For a week, he committed to practicing affirming someone elses idea and asking a curious question when someone contributed in meetings before saying what he thought. This sounded like, “Lisa, I see how that could help progress things. Who else do you think we could involve to make it happen?“
At the end of the week, he reflected on how it went, what he learned, and what he wanted to do more or less of the next week. This type of experimentation enabled incremental growth that led to meaningful shifts in how others saw him.
The importance of feedback
All of us need to receive feedback to hone and continue to grow our skills. For me (Chantal), I started paying closer attention to the way my humor landed with colleagues. I started noticing when my sarcasm enhanced connection and the times when too much levity diminished psychological safety or signaled less professional behavior. Scotts feedback equipped me to use my superpower more skillfully and navigate the nuanced professional realmwith greater effectiveness.
Ultimately, we must all know if our humor isnt landing, our communication is too blunt, or our empathy is overbearing. When we have the courage to hear about how others see us at work and are willing to adjust our behavior, were able to have a bigger impact in our careers and in life.
Twenty-five years ago, Google unveiled Adwords, which pledged to enable advertisers to quickly design a flexible program that best fits [their] online marketing goals and budget, Google cofounder Larry Page said at the time.
The principle was simple. AdWords allowed advertisers to purchase individualized, affordable keyword-based advertising that appears alongside search results used by hundreds of millions of people every day.
That decision was a game changer for Google. Advertising now accounts for around three in every four dollars of revenue the company has made so far this year, growing 10% in the last year alone. The product, since renamed Google Ads, has powered the company to prosperity, cementing its position at the top of the search space.
But a quarter of a century on, artificial intelligence could force an overhaul of Google Ads.
The shift from traditional search to AI answer engines represents the greatest challenge to Google’s $200 billion monetization engine we’ve ever seen, says Aengus Boyle, vice president of media at VaynerMedia, a strategy and creative agency set up by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk.
Thats not because competitors are siphoning away users from Google: The companys global daily active users are up 13% year on year, with nearly 2 billion people logging on to Google services every day, according to Bank of America estimates. But because Google is starting to layer in AI-tailored answers into the front page of its search resultsoften above the advertisements and blue links to sources that helped make its name over the last 25 yearsits ability to bring in ad revenue could take a serious hit. If AI answers start replacing traditional Google searches, thats a real threat to the whole cash engine, says Fergal O’Connor, CEO of Buymedia, an ad platform company. Google makes most of its money from ads tied to clicks. The more queries, the more ad space, the more revenue.
The problem is that AI summaries of search results make it less necessary to click through to websites. So far, thats been to the consternation of website owners, who rely on visits to their websites in order to sustain their business models. In time, it could harm Google itself. If people stop clicking through to sites because they get what they need from an AI summary, that entire model takes a hit, OConnor says.
Of course, Google will obviously try to wedge ads into the AI answers, notes OConnorand indeed, the company is already doing sobut he says its not a like-for-like comparison. One generative answer replaces a full results page of ad inventory, so its fewer impressions, fewer clicks, and less data flowing through the system, he explains.
However, if anyone is best placed to capitalize on those changes, its Google, Boyle predicts. Their clearest advantage lies within Google Adswhich has allowed them to integrate ads into new AI discovery surfaces, like AI Overviews and AI Mode, faster than any of their competitors in the space, he says.
OConnor believes that Google will adapt to the new norm, with AI being alteringbut not terminalto the future of advertising.
If people genuinely stop Googling and start asking, the whole search economy has to reinvent itself, OConnor says. But if you’ve been around the digital ad space for a few decades, you’ll know that we’ve survived a few events that were billed as being apocalyptic to the industry.
Google has had 25 years to understand how best to target and present ads to its users and to squeeze out everything it can from the ad industry. Its best placed to secure another 25 years of dominance, even if it requires some changes.
In what is somehow a real-life event and not an overwrought metaphor for the state of American democracy, earlier this week, work crews began tearing down the East Wing of the White House in order to make room for President Donald Trumps planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition. Previously, Trump had said that the project would not interfere with the existing building, which now appears to be accurate only in the sense that by sometime this weekend, the East Wing will no longer exist.
The ballroom, which has an estimated cost of $250 million and a conspicuously uncertain completion date, will allow a president who feels most comfortable holding court at his chintzy Florida social club to enjoy a reasonable facsimile in D.C., complete with gold and crystal chandeliers, a gold-accented ceiling, and gold floor lamps.
For months, Trump has boasted that he wouldnt pay for the ballrooms construction using public resources, which is perhaps the plans only saving grace. But as the government shutdown enters its fourth week and millions of federal workers continue to go unpaid, the president has opted for a financing model that is grotesque and insulting in a different way: passing the tab along to a menagerie of wealthy opportunists eager to curry favor with a president who values personal fealty above all else.
Trump has fantasized for years, even before he entered politics, about being the man who expanded the White House, and reportedly reached out to the Obama administration in 2010 to offer to build a ballroom himself. He also claims to have approached the Biden White House with the same offer, which, given their history, is a conversation I assume would not include much by way of small talk.
Now that Trump is president for a second time, hes been champing at the bit to follow through. Shortly after taking office, he mused about building his beautiful, beautiful ballroom, and in August, he told reporters who spotted him walking on the White House roof that he was looking for more ways to spend my money for the country. Trump has also said that managing the business of real estate is relaxing for him, an interesting insight into his priorities that is, in my view, bad news for anyone who hopes hes working diligently to reopen the government he runs.
Last Wednesday, Trump hosted a dinner at the White House to court deep-pocketed prospective donors to underwrite the ballroom project, which he variously described to them as phenomenal and totally appropriate. The guest list, according to The New York Times, included representatives from many of the Big Tech brands that distanced themselves from Trump during his first White House tenure, and are now doing their best to make him forget about it: among others, Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, Meta, and Microsoft. Also well-represented at dinner was the crypto industry, whose luminaries are by now used to opening their checkbooks whenever Trump asks. Representatives from Coinbase, Ripple, Tether were in attendance; so were the Winklevoss twins, who now run the crypto exchange Gemini, and Charles and Marissa Cascarilla, whose company, Paxos, is the blockchain partner for PayPal.
Also listening to Trumps pitch were a handful of big-name companies with lucrative government contracts, whose executives even more of an incentive to contribute to the presidents latest vanity project. Lockheed Martin, for example, holds multiyear defense contracts worth billions of dollars; the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton does business almost exclusively with the federal government; Peter Thiels Palantir, which has been an integral part of the U.S. defense and intelligence infrastructure for years, recently inked a $10 billion contract to provide software support services to the Army for the next decade. Under this administration, it appears that an implicit condition of continuing to do business with the government is doing little favors for Trump upon request.
Even bit players in the MAGA universe who have good reason to believe they are already in Trumps inner circle still felt compelled to show up: Kelly Loeffler, the former Georgia senator whom Trump appointed to lead the Small Business Administration; Benjamin Leon, Jr., whom Trump has nominated to serve as ambassador to Spain, and the Lutnick family, whose patriarch, Howard, is currently the Secretary of Commerce. On the one hand, it feels remarkable to me that a sitting Cabinet member would perceive no optics problems with allowing his boss to solicit his family for cash on an ongoing basis. On the other hand, given this presidents history of firing Cabinet members who do not conduct themselves at all times as vassals privileged to be in his presence, obediently attending is probably the prudent choice.
A final list of donors has yet to be released, but Trump says the project is fully funded. Per CBS News, Google, Booz Allen, and Palantir (among others) have all agreed to donate, as has Lockheed Martin, which has given somewhere north of $10 million. And in his remarks at the dinner last week, which was advertised on gold-lettered invitations exhorting recipients to help establish the magnificent White House Ballroom, Trump praised unnamed attendees for being really, really generous, and insinuated that some in the audience had given as much as $25 million.
A pledge form obtained by CBS News allows donors to The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House to pay in a lump sum or on a three-part installment plan, and teases that they willbe eligible for some sort of recognition, which could entail etched signage on the ballrooms exterior. There is probably no better illustration of the Trump administrations approach to governance than gut-renovating the Peoples House by adding a co-branded, corporate-sponsored wing to it.
One of the larger confirmed donations so far reveals just how high the stakes can be for those whom Trump asks to give. About $22 millionroughly 10% of the total price tagcomes from the money YouTube agreed to pay Trump last month to settle a lawsuit he brought over the companys decision to suspend his account in the aftermath of January 6. If you are keeping track at home, this means that a Silicon Valley giant that was kicking him off its platform four years ago is now waving the white flag in the form of an eight-figure check. At the dinner, Trump could not resist obliquely celebrating his reversal of fortune one last time: Its amazing the way a victory can change the minds of some people, he said, according to The New York Times.
Officially, YouTube wrote its check to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit involved in funding the ballrooms construction. But the takeaway from this episode is pretty clear: The people and companies Trump solicits can either surrender what amounts to a rounding error on their balance sheets, thus earning Trumps praise and enjoying a significant tax write-off. Or they can pass, and run the risk that Trump turns around and uses the legal system to shake them down for even more.
Wealthy people buying access to power is not new; for that matter, neither is wealthy people spending their money on decor that was already garish four decades ago. But the presidents preoccupation with rebuilding the White House in his imageand his supporters willingness to chip inlays bare the extent to which decisions in this administration are getting made by people who have no idea what life is like in this country for those who are not billionaires. Trumps government might not be open, but it is as for sale as it ever was, for anyone who can afford to pay the price.
Insincerity is the mother of deceit. Whenever we say something we don’t mean, we tell a lie. It may be a small misrepresentation, but its still a lie as we are being dishonest to hide what we truly think and feel. Repeated insincerity breaks down trust, communication, and understanding.
So why do organizations, often without even knowing it, encourage insincerity in their employees? The answer lies a little with social media and a lot in narcissism.
NARCISSISTS, NARCISSISTS, EVERYWHERE
Since the early 1980s, psychologists have been tracking a steady rise in narcissism: a growing self-consciousness and preoccupation with our image and what other people say about us. The exact cause remains unclear.
Changes in parenting styles, increasing individualism, and a cultural obsession with self-esteem have all been blamed. Social media has accelerated the trend, but the rise started well before the likes of Facebook arrived, with one large study of college students finding a 30% increase in levels of narcissism in the 25 years leading up to Facebooks launch.
Whatever the cause, the effect has been widespread. People have grown more sensitive to how others view them. You can see it in how people curate a personal brand on Instagram and a professional one on LinkedIn. Cancel culture and political leaders appearing to prize loyalty over competence have hammered home the message: Be careful what you say and do or risk the consequences. Even if it isnt top of mind, the pressure sits in our culture and shapes our behavior.
ORGANIZATIONS, TOO
And its not just individuals that are becoming more narcissistic, but organizations, too. Because around the same time as psychologists started tracking rises in individual narcissism, they also identified what has come to be called organizational narcissism. Firms increasingly seek visible loyalty from their employees, and emphasize the importance of everyone being aligned and on the same page. As with individuals, organizations have always focused on image to some degree, but evidence suggests they are doing so more than ever before.
Broad social forces play a role. Leaders, like individuals, now obsess over reputation. Social media and cancel culture have forced firms to guard their online image. With any message able to spread globally in seconds, firms understandably try to control what employees say about them. Some positive factors, such as organizations investing more in motivating and communicating with employees feed into this. But less positive factors matter to. If todays CEOs are more narcissistic or image-conscious than they were 30 years ago, then they may create a culture in which perceived disloyalty is less tolerated.
All this drives organizations to demand affirmation and alignment from employees. What started as a growing awareness of brand image and employee motivation has often morphed into a preoccupation with positivity and controlling what gets said. Even when firms don’t demand this, because individuals have become more image-conscious, employees may nonetheless perceive organizations as requiring these things.
An environment in which everyone is positive about a firm can be a good thing. But it is too easy for it to tip to become toxic for individuals and dangerous for the organization.
SIGNS AND SOLUTIONS
The warning signs of organizational narcissism resemble the symptoms found in individual narcissism. A preoccupation with image and what people say, punishing perceived disloyalty or noncompliance, and reacting negatively to questioning. What matters most is not whether firms behave this way, but whether employees believe they do.
The consequences are always damaging. Just as with individuals, organisational narcissism erodes trust, communication, and understanding. Studies show that trying too hard to create a culture of positivity can undermine information flow and decision-making, making them blind to their weaknesses.
Some argue that organizational narcissism is an inevitable consequence of a capitalist-driven need to succeed against all competition. They may be correct to some degree. But not entirely. Firms can avoid a slide into overdone loyalty and positivity.
The writer Somerset Maugham once said, “What we call insincerity is often just a method by which we can avoid an unpleasantness.” By “unpleasantness” he meant a disagreement. And that disagreement is exactly what breaks insincerity. Leaders and organizations, must actively seeking out, encourage, and reward debate and questioning. They must step back from a preoccupation with whether internal communications make leaders look authentic and inspiring. Instead, they should focus on whether they enable employees to be authentic and inspiring themselves.
Because there’s only one thing worse than a negative and disgruntled employee, and that’s an insincere one.
The Washington, D.C., architectural firm that President Donald Trump tapped to design his White House ballroom is known for its ornamental, classical architecture, but the firm’s work is not generally known, even by design aficionados.
Crews are now demolishing the entirety of the East Wing for an expansive, $250 million new space designed by McCrery Architects, which compared to the detailed, hi-fi portfolios of today’s most prominent architectural firms, has a strikingly light online footprint.
The firm’s site shows only contact information for new commission inquiries and a slideshow of work that includes artist renderings of the planned ballroom. There’s no longer a list of its projects, but an archived list reveals a CV that leans ecclesiastical. Its Instagram account is bare. “Committed to Tradition and Excellence,” its bio reads, but there are no posts.
The firms portfolio is heavy on churches, and it’s now fast building up public-sector work, driven by a love of classical American architecture.
“The very best American architecture is classical architecture once made American,” James McCrery, the firms founder and principal, said last year during a talk at the conservative Hillsdale College. “Americans love classical architecture because it is our nation’s formative architecture and we love our nation’s formation.”
Here are some of the firms most notable projects, as its work on one of the most iconic buildings in the U.S. gets underway.
Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, Tennessee [Photo: Nheyob/Wiki Commons]
Ecclesiastical architecture
Catholic churches are the most common building type in the firm’s portfolio.
McCrery Architects has designed several houses of worship, including the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville, Tennessee; Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Our Lady of the Mountains in Highlands, North Carolina.
St. Mary Help of Christians, Aiken, South Carolina [Photo: Jude.anthony1972/Wiki Commons]
The firm’s design for St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina, won the John Russell Pope Award in 2017 for the traditional architecture contest’s Ecclesiastical Design over 3,000 square feet category. In a 2015 reflection about the building, McCrery said the church was “designed to encourage and strengthen all in the Faith . . . [and] intentionally made to be beautiful,” which typifies his and his firm’s approach to design.
This year, McCrery Architects was awarded for the baptismal font at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Gloversville, New York.
Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, North Carolina [Photo: Farragutful/Wiki Commons]
McCrery’s work in academia
McCrery Architects designed the University Saint Mary of the Lake Feehan Memorial Library in Mundelein, Illinois, and the Saint Thomas Aquinas Chapel at the University of Nebraskas Saint John Newman Center in Lincoln.
Public-sector work
The firm’s government work has grown from designing a statue pedestal and gift shop to making one of the biggest changes to the most famous federal government building in the U.S. Here are the details.
[Photo: Architect of the Capitol]
McCrery designed the pedestal for California’s statue of Ronald Reagan for the National Statuary Hall Collection in 2009. Each state can send two statues to the collection at the U.S. Capitol, and McCrery made the Tennessee Rose marble pedestal for artist Chas Fagan’s statue of the late president and former California governor and actor. The pedestal includes concrete pieces from the Berlin Wall.
McCrery’s firm also designed the U.S. Supreme Court’s book and gift shop, and, according to the Catholic University of America, the North Carolina state legislature commissioned the firm to create a master plan for its historic State Capitol Grounds.
The White House ballroom
The firm’s White House project is now its most visible workand it’s most controversial.
[Rendering: whitehouse.gov/McCrery Architects]
The sudden demolition to make room for a privately funded addition shocked at least one former White House resident, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation asked the Trump administration and National Park Service to pause until plans can go through the legally required public review processes that it says include consultations, reviews, and public comment.
[Rendering: whitehouse.gov/McCrery Architects]
Trump’s White House makeover parallels his attempts at expanding presidential and state power, and represents an outward, physical manifestation of a wider Trump project to remake the presidency and leave a mark in his second term.
Like using emergency economic powers to impose tariffs or sending National Guard troops into U.S. cities, Trump’s power plays today feel anything but precedented or traditional. Traditional, though, is exactly what the architect who designed his grand ballroom is trained in.
Paris Hiltons been an entrepreneur, a reality TV star, a DJ, an author, a model, a singer, and an activist. But she says school felt like torture.
Sitting still under fluorescent lights surrounded by beige walls made me feel trapped instead of inspired, she tells Fast Company via email. Traditional environments were too flat, too uniform, and too quiet to support the way I think.
It wasnt until after being diagnosed with ADHD in her late 20s that Hilton began to understand how to hone her energy and creativity and how the physical spaces where she worked impacted her ability to focus.
Over the years, Ive learned that when a space feels alive, so do I, she says.
Data from 2024 shows that almost a fifth of Americans are neurodivergent. According to 2023 research from Deloitte, over half of Gen Z workers identify as such. Yet even as awareness of neurodivergence in the workplace grows, most employers still struggle with fully accommodating these communities: 93% of workers in these groups say they burn out because of it. Over a third even hide their status altogether, out of fear of being stigmatized.
[Photo: Ashley Osborn]
And with ADHD specifically, recent surveys show that one in four Americans suspect they have it, but are undiagnosed (and diagnoses are rising). Studies also suggest people with ADHD are more creative, and that they also thrive as entrepreneurs.
But because of their challenges with executive functions like attention, time management and emotional regulation which can cause heightened sensitivity to stimuli like noise and light, and can be exacerbated when they feel physically constrained most workplaces still unintentionally work against them.
Hilton and her partner, the neurodivergence nonprofit Understood.org, offer valuable insights into:
The big companies already reimagining their offices to be more inclusive
What psychologists and design experts advise to best create offices for these groups
How inexpensive and low-barrier making these changes can be
As neurodivergence awareness has increased in recent years, businesspeople besides Hilton have opened up about their neurodiversity. Bill Gates opened up earlier this year about having ADHD, and Richard Branson, who is autistic, champions causes for the autism community.
But the discussion around how most workspaces arent designed to best accommodate neurodivergent workers has only gained traction relatively recently.
Thats what inspired Hilton to design one herself, collaborating with neurodivergence nonprofit Understood.org on the design of her home, and the new headquarters of her entertainment company, 11:11 Media. The neurodivergent-friendly workspace in Los Angeles features seats that enable different postures and a variety of chairs to choose from, sensory-friendly lighting designed to minimize glare and flickering, natural materials like plants and wood (which research has found effective in combating ADHD symptoms) and play areas that encourage free movement. Theres also the Sliving Sanctuary, a cozy space with weighted blankets and flicker-free lighting for brain breaks.
It was a chance to build a space that celebrates different ways of thinking and working, Hilton says.
Typical spaces constraint atypical brains
The wrong workspace can affect anyones productivity, but thats especially true among the neurodivergent, a classification that includes those with ADHD, dyslexia, autism and other cognitive differences.
Recently, more high-profile companies have taken similar steps to make their spaces more accommodating to neurodiverse workers, like Etsy, SAP and Microsoft. But theres still lots to do to help close the gap, activists argue especially since such a huge swath of the workforce is neurodivergent, and traditional offices make them distracted and unproductive at best, burnt out and underemployed at worst. And as more and more companies push for return-to-office, many workers in this group may again face the challenges of working in spaces that simply werent designed for them.
[Photo: Kevin Ostajewski]
In a lot of workspaces, we see things like open floor plans, which can be extremely distracting, says psychotherapist Sarah Greenberg, Understoods vice president of expertise and strategic design. Many workers have long found open floor plan offices noise levels and chaotic setting difficult to work in, particularly those in the deaf and autistic communities.
Greenberg adds: We see a lack of natural light, which can really halt inspiration. We see limited places to move, which can make it really hard when the neurodivergent brain needs that to bring our best selves to work. For those with ADHD, even stiff chairs can feel restrictive, making it harder for them to concentrate and ultimately perform their best.
In school we were told, stay in your chair, you need passes to use the restroom. Aspects of that culture have bled into workplaces, says Dr. Andrew Kahn, psychologist and associate director of expertise and strategic design for Understood. When neurodivergent individuals feel constrained physically, they often also feel constrained mentally, which can stifle innovation, creativity, focus and productivity.
[Photo: Kevin Ostajewski]
But this cohort has a unique way of thinking that can prove a significant asset. A new study from the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology in the Netherlands found that ADHDers tendency for their minds to wander can actually lead to more creativity and innovation. Allowing these folks to bring their gifts to the table requires spaces designed to meet their unique needs.
It can be the difference between needing to stay home in order to get anything done, or actually being able to be [productive] in that shared space, Greenberg says. It can be game-changing.
Low-lift changes that make a big difference
Creating a more inclusive space, however, doesnt necessarily require the resources of an heiress or celebrity. Research suggests many of the most impactful accommodations cost $500 or less.
For example, standing desks and tactile items like fidget toys have been proven effective in enabling those with ADHD to channel their excess energy without breaking concentration. Noise-cancelling headphones can help block out distractions for those with sound sensitivity. Research also suggests offering a variety of chairs like bean bag chairs, couches and even yoga mats or chairs that can be used in a multitude of positions can make them feel less constrained, both physically and mentally.
For the ADHD brain if you cant see it, it doesnt exist, Greenberg says. For example, in your office supply area, using clear bins that are clearly labelled takes away that cognitive load. Greenberg explains that short-term memory and organization are both challenges for people with ADHD, and that a little extra support with both can go a long way.
When it comes to design, it’s not about having interior decorating skills, its about understanding the neurology of brains that think differently and then applying those best practices to the physical container in which we do our work, Greenberg says.
Hiltons workspace takes into account things like noise control, natural lighting, visual stimuli and textures. Standing desks and alternative workspaces are available throughout the office, and staff are encouraged to move to the workstation that best suits the task at hand.
The 25-person staff of the LA-based media company, which promotes customer brand voices and social causes through film, TV and other media, are also surrounded by natural materials, like plants, flowers, wood, and a living wall.
Hilton says that the effort she put into creating the space isnt just about enabling herself and her staff to do their best work. Its about pushing a bigger conversation forward.
I want 11:11 Media HQ to be a model for whats possible when we prioritize the needs of those who are neurodivergent, she says.
People with ADHD or other neurodivergent traits are often some of the most imaginative thinkers in the room.
Hurricanes are Americas most destructive natural hazards, causing more deaths and property damage than any other type of disaster. Since 1980, these powerful tropical storms have done more than US$1.5 trillion in damage and killed more than 7,000 people.
The No. 1 cause of the damages and deaths from hurricanes is storm surge.
Storm surge is the rise in the oceans water level, caused by a combination of powerful winds pushing water toward the coastline and reduced air pressure within the hurricane compared to the pressure outside of it. In addition to these factors, waves breaking close to the coast cause the sea level to increase near the coastline, a phenomenon we call wave setup, which can be an important component of storm surge.
Accurate storm surge predictions are critical for giving coastal residents time to evacuate and giving emergency responders time to prepare. But storm surge forecasts at high resolution can be slow.
As a coastal engineer, I study how storm surge and waves interact with natural and human-made features on the ocean floor and coast and ways to mitigate their impact. I have used physics-based models for coastal flooding and have recently been exploring ways that artificial intelligence can improve the speed of storm surge forecasting.
How storm surge is forecast today
Today, operational storm surge forecasts rely on hydrodynamic models, which are based on the physics of water flow.
These models use current environmental conditionssuch as how fast the storm is moving toward shore, its wind speed and direction, the timing of the tide, and the shape of the seafloor and the landscapeto compute the projected surge height and determine which locations are most at risk.
Hydrodynamic models have substantially improved in recent decades, and computers have become significantly more powerful, such that rapid low-resolution simulations are possible over very large areas. However, high-resolution simulation that provide neighborhood-level detail can take several hours to run.
Those hours can be critical for communities at risk to evacuate safely and for emergency responders to prepare adequately.
To forecast storm surge across a wide area, modelers break up the target area into many small pieces that together form a computational grid or mesh. Picture pixels in an image. The smaller the grid pieces, or cells, the higher the resolution and the more accurate the forecast. However, creating many small cells across a large area requires greater computing power, so forecasting storm surge takes longer as a result.
Forecasters can use low-resolution computer grids to speed up the process, but that reduces accuracy, leaving communities with more uncertainty about their flood risk.
AI can help speed that up.
How AI can create better forecasts
There are two main sources of uncertainty in storm surge predictions.
One involves the data fed into the computer model. A hurricanes storm track and wind field, which determine where it will make landfall and how intense the surge will be, are still hard to forecast accurately more than a few days in advance. Changes to the coast and sea floor, such as from channel dredging or loss of salt marshes, mangroves or sand dunes, can affect the resistance that storm surge will face.
The second uncertainty involves the resolution of the computational grid, over which the mathematical equations of the surge and wave motion are solved. The resolution determines how well the model sees changes in landscape elevation and land cover and accounts for them, and at how much granularity the physics of hurricane surge and waves is solved.
AI models can produce detailed predictions faster. For example, engineers and scientists have developed AI models based on deep neural networks that can predict water levels along the coastline quickly and accurately by using data about the wind field. In some cases, these models have been more accurate than traditional hydrodynamic models.
AI can also develop forecasts for areas with little historical data, or be used to understand extreme conditions that may not have occurred there before.
For these forecasts, physics-based models can be used to generate synthetic data to train the AI on scenarios that might be possible but havent actually happened. Once an AI model is trained on both the historic and synthetic data, it can quickly generate surge forecasts using details about the wind and atmospheric pressure.
Training the AI on data from hydrodynamic models can also improve its ability to quickly generate inundation risk maps showing which streets or houses are likely to flood in extreme events that may not have a historical precedent but could happen in the future.
The future of AI for hurricane forecasting
AI is already being used in operational storm surge forecasts in a limited way, mainly to augment the commonly used physics-based models.
In addition to improving those methods, my team and other researchers have been developing ways to use AI for storm surge prediction using observed data, assessing the damage after hurricanes, and processing camera images to deduce flood intensity. That can fill a critical gap in the data needed for validating storm surge models at granular levels.
As artificial intelligence models rapidly spread through every aspect of our lives and more data becomes available for training them, the technology offers potential to improve hurricane and storm surge forecasting in the future, giving coastal communities faster and more detailed warnings about the risks on the way.
Navid Tahvildari is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Florida International University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
