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Were living through a seismic workforce disruption. Business leaders are poised to have a significant impact on the way our economy is shaped over the next decade. You already see it with the big company CEOs creating a cult of celebrity far beyond anything weve seen historically, but this phenomenon cascades down to all leaders across companies. Today, however, your personal brand is built in authentic micro-momentshow you lead meetings, navigate change, and bring others along. What story are you telling?Earlier this month, I sat down with Marissa Andrada and Al Dea at Guilds Opportunity Summit to discuss why personal brand building is no longer optional for leaders who want to drive meaningful impact. DOES PERSONAL BRAND NEED A REBRAND? The concept of a personal brand can sound like a marketing buzzword. But if you write it off as such, youre going to fall behind. We arent advocating for leaders to break out their tripods at a conference and do the latest Taylor Swift TikTok dance (but if thats authentic to you, go for it). Your personal brandor leadership signature if you really want to avoid the b wordis built through micro-moments: the tone you bring to a meeting, the decisions you make, and how you develop and support people during times of transformation.As Al put it, Every stakeholder conversation is a chance to show people what youre about. That starts with understanding the beliefs and motivations that drive others. People can only see things from their seat, he added. If you want them to see things from yours, you first need to see things from theirs. ELEVATE YOUR WORK THROUGH STRATEGIC STORYTELLING Personal brand canand shouldcoexist with humility. For the introverts among us, this isnt about self-promotion. Its about translating your teams impact into stories that resonate with the business. Strategic storytelling connects people to purpose. It transforms complex initiatives into narratives that inspire action and resonate with the business. As leaders, we can help our teams do this by focusing on what I call the three Cs: clarity, commitment, and consistency.Clarity: Clear really is kind. Strip out jargon and acronyms. Ask yourself: Would the average employee understand what Im trying to say? If not, simplify.Commitment: Audiences can sense when youre reciting a script versus speaking from conviction. Belief cant be fakedand when leaders try, trust erodes fast. Consistency: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your leadership signature wont be either. Words and action, over a sustained period of time, reinforce your stated values. The small, unseen momentshow you respond to challenges, how you show up when no ones watchingcreate the foundation of your credibility. 2 SHIFTS TO BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND FOUNDATION Mindfully consider your personal style and how you want your brand to show up. Gut-check that with others. Ask yourself: What do you want others to say about your leadership? Does that align with the feedback I receive? If not, where are there gaps and how can I work toward reconciling them? Here are two shifts you can make today to create that foundation. 1) Ground in outcomes Too often, leaders fall into the same traps we coach early-career workers to avoid on their resumes. Shift away from the activity, into the outcome. Activity: We led a large-scale software integration this quarter. Outcome: We transformed how our company connects people strategy to business results.Leading with outcomes helps to contextualize the weight and the why behind your teams work, building credibility with the listener. 2) Mind your language On our San Diego panel, Marissa shared a story of her time at Universal Studios. Early on, she introduced herself to business leads with HR-speak: Im here to help develop a new performance management and talent planning process. She received clear, actionable feedback that the corporate jargonwhat she jokingly called corponicswas not resonating. The very colleagues she was trying to rally did not know what she was saying.Taking their feedback, she dropped the lingo, and recalibrated to human-first language. Instead of succession planning, she said, Were growing fast. When youre ready for your next role, how do you ensure someones ready to step into your seat? AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP IN AN ERA OF ERODED TRUST Personal brands can no longer be “crafted” in a conference room with a team of external consultants. Todays workforce is skeptical, discerning, and exhausted. Decades of information overload, polarization, and change have left employees craving authenticity and wary of anything that feels performative. People are drawn to leaders who reflect their stated values through daily interactions. If you think your leadership brand only lives on LinkedIn, youre tracking the wrong KPIs. Do your public posts reflect the experiences your customers and teams are having privately? The leaders who will define the next decade are those whose public narratives match their private behaviors. When leaders clarify their values, master storytelling, and lead with authenticity, they dont just strengthen their own brandsthey rebuild trust in business itself. One example Marissa shared in San Diego, was her time as chief people officer at Chipotle and the experience of partnering with Guild to transform their employee tuition reimbursement program into an initiative that reinforced the companys belief in peoples potential. The result? Measurable business outcomes. Chipotle saw stronger retention and greater internal mobility made possible by the new skills through education. THE BIGGER PICTURE Building a personal brand isnt about self-promotion. Its about creating alignment between who you are, how you lead, and the impact you create. By cultivating clarity of values, mastering the art of strategic storytelling, and leading with authenticity, todays executives can build personal brands that elevate their voices and strengthen trust in their organizations. In doing so, leaders transform branding from an exercise in visibility into a discipline of influence anchored in purpose. Rebecca Biestman is CMO of Guild.
Category:
E-Commerce
Enterprises across the globe are pouring an estimated $1.5 trillion into artificial intelligence, and the results are already significant: AI has added more than $400 billion to the U.S. economy alone. Yet beneath these headline numbers lies a less celebrated truth. Most GenAI projects (95%) are failing to deliver a return on investment. This disconnect isnt a technology problem. Its a transformation problem. And the fix is not coming from the boardroom or the IT department. Its coming from the cubicles, the customer service desks, and the HR teamsthe employees who know firsthand where bottlenecks and opportunities exist. THE BOTTOM-UP AI MOVEMENT New data, based on a survey of 200 IT executives at billion-dollar U.S. companies that we conducted, reveals a quiet but historic shift in how innovation happens. For the first time, non-technical employees are driving the adoption of agentic AI, systems that can act on their own, make decisions, and automate complex workflows, at a scale weve never seen before. A staggering 91% of executives say that non-technical staff are playing a larger role in AI projects than they did in any previous wave of technology adoption. These arent hypothetical use cases or innovation theater projects. The majority (78%) of these initiatives are laser-focused on solving real, persistent, everyday challenges. From automating repetitive workflows to surfacing insights buried in mountains of data across numerous systems, employees are using AI to reduce their digital friction and return their focus to projects they are passionate about and drive the business forward. The results of our research78% of leaders reported that agentic AI has already caused a significant transformation in at least one part of their operations. This isnt about incremental change; its about reimagining how work gets done. A CHANGING CORPORATE POWER STRUCTURE This shift isnt just technical. Its changing the structure of organizations. For decades, IT departments have been the gatekeepers of new technology, often operating as the tallest tower in the enterprise. But the data shows that it is changing fast. Only 38% of executives now believe IT will be the department most responsible for AI innovation in the next three years, based on our survey results. The old notion of shadow IT, where teams bypass official channels to use their own tools, has long been viewed as risky or even reckless. But now, this approach is being recognized for what it really is: A sign that employees across the business are hungry for solutions, and they are willing to take the initiative to get them. Other business teams, such as operations, human resources, and customer service, are stepping up as leaders in AI-driven change. This redistribution of power is making organizations more agile and responsive, and its opening new avenues for career advancement. Four in ten executives expect AI to create upward mobility for all employees, not just technical specialists. THE HUMAN SIDE OF AI TRANSFORMATION This bottom-up shift presents new cultural complexities. While 89% of employees are receptive to AI tools, theres a strong preference for integration into existing workflows. Our survey reveals that 65% favor AI enhancing current processes over forcing a complete overhaul. This approach highlights a key tension: incremental improvement versus bold transformation. The most forward-thinking companies are designing AI around people, not the other way around, and as one IT executive put it in their response to our survey, [Agentic AI is] going to challenge the way we work today, but also open a new front door to smarter, faster, and more collaborative ways of working. Leaders must recognize the cultural and structural impact of agentic AI, and the companies that succeed will be those that embrace these shifts while keeping people and purpose firmly at the center. Balancing immediate adoption with the potential for true innovation requires a delicate touch. Leaders need to meet employees where they are while inspiring them to envision a future in which AI amplifies their capabilities, enabling them to focus on supervising systems and applying judgments in complex scenarios. WHAT COMES NEXT First, leaders should recognize that the most successful AI initiatives arent handed down from the top, they bubble up from the front lines. Organizations that empower employees to identify problems and experiment with solutions will outpace those that rely on mandates and one-size-fits-all platforms. Second, the IT departments role must evolve. Rather than acting as a gatekeeper, IT can become an enabler, providing guardrails, tools, and support while giving other departments the freedom to innovate. Finally, leaders must address the cultural hurdles that come with any major change. That means investing in education, building trust in new tools, and ensuring that every employee, regardless of technical background, has a chance to participate in the AI future. AIs real promise isnt in algorithms or hardware. Its in unleashing the creativity, expertise, and ambition of every person in the organization. The future of enterprise AI is bottom-up, not top-down. And the companies that embrace this shift will be the ones that truly transform. Bhavin Shah is the CEO of Moveworks.
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E-Commerce
Lets be honest: When we talk about workplace equity, menopause rarely makes the agenda. But it should. This life stage impacts half the workforce, often right when women are at the peak of their careers, influence, and leadership. As a CEO and advocate for womens health, Ive seen firsthand how menopause becomes an invisible career barrier. And now the data backs it up: Ignoring menopause in the workplace isnt just a health oversight, its a systemic equity issue. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, full-time, year-round working women earn only 81 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024, a gap thats actually widening. The year before, women earned almost 83 cents for every dollar. That should stop us in our tracks. Menopause often coincides with a critical phase in a womans career, when experience, insight, and leadership potential are at their highest. But symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, hot flashes, and mood swings can disrupt work and energy levels. The issue isnt the symptoms, its the silence surrounding them. Women are expected to power through. Some do, but for many it turns into what is known as the midcareer cliff. Women begin quietly stepping back, missing promotions, or leaving leadership roles altogether. This isnt just personal loss, its organizational erosion. When experienced women exit, we lose innovation, mentorship, and momentum across the pipeline. THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE Lets be clear: Supporting women through menopause isnt a favor. Its a business imperative. If we want strong, competitive, resilient organizations, we need more women in leadership roles at every age, including midlife and beyond. Heres how companies can show up: 1. Make menopause part of the conversation Start normalizing it, openly, not awkwardly. Include menopause in DEI and wellness conversations just like we do with maternity or mental health. Train managers. Create employee resource groups. Let women share experiences, not suffer in silence. 2. Back words with policy Talking is great, but action matters. Promote flexible work options, access to hormone therapy or menopause specialists, and comprehensive benefit programslike what we did recently at Beacon Wellness Brands in partnership with Midi Health. These arent perks, theyre proof points. 3. Measure what matters If youre not tracking retention and promotion by age and gender, youre missing the story. Look at your data. If mid-career women are quietly disappearing, menopause might be a hidden factor. At Beacon Wellness, we believe real equity means meeting women where they are. That includes menopause. When we normalize and support this stage, women can keep leading, innovating, mentoringand building the future of work. Equity isnt a box to check off, its something you nurture over decades. And if were serious about closing the wage gap, we have to support the years that define a womans legacy, not just her entry. Workplaces that support women ultimately strengthen their entire organization. Maria Warrington is the CEO of Beacon Wellness Brands.
Category:
E-Commerce
A new study from MIT that shows that AI might be poised to replace a lot more jobs than what initial estimates might predict. According to researchers, a hidden mass of data reveals that AI is currently capable of taking over 11.7% of the labor market. The new estimate comes courtesy of a project called The Iceberg Index, which was made through a partnership between MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a federally funded research center in Tennessee. According to its website, the Iceberg Index simulates an agentic U.S.a human-AI workforce where 151M+ human workers coordinate with thousands of AI agents. In simpler terms, the tool is designed to simulate precisely how AI is poised to disrupt the current workforce, down to specific local zip codes. The Iceberg Index model treats Americas 151 million workers as individual agents, each categorized by their skills, tasks, occupation, and location. In total, it maps more than 32,000 skills and 923 occupations across 3,000 counties. In an interview with CNBC, Prasanna Balaprakash, ORNL director and co-leader of the research, described this as a digital twin for the U.S. labor market. Using that base of data, the index analyzes to what extent digital AI tools can already perform certain technical and cognitive tasks, and then produces an estimate of what AI exposure in each area looks like. Already, state governments in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Utah are using the index to prepare for AI-driven workforce changes. Here are three main takeaways from the study: AI is more pervasive in the workforce than we think Perhaps the biggest finding from the study is the discovery of what it calls a substantial measurement gap in how we typically think about AI replacing jobs. According to the report, if analysts only observe current AI adoption, which is mainly concentrated in computing and technology, theyll find that AI exposure accounts for only about 2.2% of the workforce, or around $211 billion in wage value (the report refers to this as Surface Index). But, it says, thats only the tip of the iceberg. By factoring in variables like AIs potential for automation in administrative, financial, and professional services, the numbers rise to 11.7% of the workforce and about $1.2 trillion in wages (this calculation is referred to as Iceberg Index). The studys authors emphasize that these results only represent technical AI exposure, not actual future displacement outcomes. Those depend on how companies, workers, and local governments adapt over time. The AI takeover is not limited to the coasts Its fairly common to assume that the most AI job exposure is concentrated in coastal hubs, where tech companies predominantly gather. But the Iceberg Index shows that AIs ability to take over work force tasks is distributed much more widely. Many states across the U.S., the study shows, register small AI impacts when accounting solely for current AI adoption in computing and tech, but much higher values when other variables are taken into consideration. Rust Belt states such as Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee register modest Surface Index values but substantial Iceberg Index values driven by cognitive workfinancial analysis, administrative coordination, and professional servicesthat supports manufacturing operations, the study reads. How this data can actually make a difference Now that MIT and ORNL have successfully established the Iceberg Index, theyre hoping it can be used by local governments to protect workers and economies. Local lawmakers can use the map to source fine-grain insights, like examining a certain city block to see which skill sets are most in use and the likelihood of their automation. Per CNBC, MIT and ORNL have also built an interactive tool that lets states experiment with different policy leverslike adjusting training programs or shifting workforce dollarsto predict how those changes might affect local employment and gross domestic product. The Iceberg Index provides measurable intelligence for critical workforce decisions: where to invest in training, which skills to prioritize, how to balance infrastructure with human capital, the report reads. It reveals not only visible disruption in technology sectors but the larger transformation beneath the surface. By measuring exposure before adoption reshapes work, the Index enables states to prepare rather than reactturning AI into a navigable transition.
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E-Commerce
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits declined last week in a sign that overall layoffs remain low, even as several high-profile companies have announced job cuts. U.S. applications for unemployment benefits in the week ending Nov. 22 dropped 6,000 from the previous week to 216,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The figure is below the 230,000 forecast by economists, according to a survey by data provider FactSet. Applications for unemployment aid are seen as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS and Amazon typically take weeks or months to fully implement and may not yet be reflected in the claims data. The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, dropped 1,000 to 223,750. For now, the U.S. job market appears stuck in a low-hire, low-fire state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but has left those out of work struggling to find a new job. The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the week ending Nov. 15 rose 7,000 to 1.96 million, the government said. The increase is a sign that the unemployed are taking longer to find new work. Last week, the government said that hiring picked up a bit in September, when employers added 119,000 new jobs. Yet the report also showed employers had shed jobs in August. And the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level in four years, as more Americans came off the sidelines to look for work but did not all immediately find jobs. On Tuesday, the government reported that retail sales slowed in September after three months of healthy increases. Consumer confidence plunged to its second-lowest level in five years, while wholesale inflation eased a bit. The data suggests that both the economy and inflation are slowing, which boosted financial markets’ expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce its key interest rate at its next meeting Dec. 9-10. Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
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E-Commerce