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Spin has its limitations. Lots of people can easily detect the stink of bad news lingering just beneath the potpourri of spin that suggests the news is actually not so bad. What works even better than spin at deflecting criticism, however, is never letting bad news get out in the first place. Donald Trump understands this concept all too well. Over the past few months, hes repeatedly fired government officials just for releasing, in the routine course of their duties, information thats unflattering to his administration. The idea seems to be that these firings both cast doubt on the competence of those delivering the bad news, and instill fear in others who might uncover more in the future. Unfortunately for Trumps 340 million constituents, though, several organizations have already used this same strategy in the private sector and ended up failing spectacularly. Long before he was president, Trump put a high premium on keeping a team of Yes Men in tow. “I value loyalty above everything else, he wrote in his 2007 tome, Think BIG and Kick Ass in Business and Life. More than brains, more than drive and more than energy.” That mindset appears to have persisted into his second presidential term. Earlier this year, Trump screened White House job seekers and Department of Justice lawyers for loyalty, and stocked his staff with sycophants. Its not unusual these days for Cabinet meetings to function as a marathon of presidential toasts that sound somewhere between a paternal eulogy and the most reverential kind of gospel song. Being flanked by flunkies at all times, though, has apparently not streamlined the national narrative enough. This administration has lately gone a step further and sidelined anyone in a government role who presents data that contradicts the president. Removing reality from the ranks The first to go was acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, Michael Collins, along with vice chair Maria Langan-Riekhof. Together, they had overseen an intelligence assessment in May that ran counter to Trumps claims that the gang Tren de Aragua was operating in close alignment with the Venezuelan government. (Trump had used that claim earlier to justify deporting suspected Tren de Aragua members from the U.S. without due process.) After removing both experienced career officials from their duties, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard went on to fill Collinss role with a vocal Trump supporter and deep state critic. Next, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after she delivered a July jobs report that was not to the presidents liking. In the report, McEntarfer revised down the surprisingly robust labor statistics for the first two months following Trumps Liberation Day tariff bonanza back in April, and calculated dismal numbers for July as well. This dataset apparently conflicted too much with Trumps perception of the U.S. labor market this summer, and he intervened directly. If those offending numbers end up revised in the opposite direction next month, Trump will have his as-yet-unconfirmed replacement for leading BLS, Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni, to thank for it. Now the purges are ramping up. Just this past week, on August 22, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse from his role as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Kruses only transgression appears to be his agencys assessment of the damage a U.S. military strike inflicted on three of Irans nuclear facilities back in June. Trump had previously stated, over and over, that the sites had been obliterated, and the DIAs report undermined the presidents claimssomething verboten in Trumps orbit. The agencys leader clearly had to go. Finally, on Tuesday, August 26, the Federal Emergency Management Agency suspended around 30 of the 36 employees who signed their names to a letter delivered to Congress the previous day warning that the administrations budget cuts had reduced the agency to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels of disaster readiness. These likely wont be the last bearers of bador even just factualnews to be punished by this administration. If history is any indication, though, these purges will harm Trump (and, lets face it, the rest of us) in the long run. All organizations need at least a modicum of brutal honesty within their ranks to counterbalance the enthusiasm and optimism of true believers. Although the stakes of the U.S. government are obviously much higher than those of any corporation, Trump could learn a lot from businesses that made a similar practice of axing in-house truth-tellers in the recent past. Enron The Enron scandal is one of the most notorious instances of corporate fraud in the 21st century. The companys top executives deliberately manipulated financial data, which led, ultimately, to Enrons collapse into bankruptcy and wiped out billions in employee pensions and investor funds in the process. Before it all fell apart, founder Kenneth Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling were able to inflate their profits and hide their massive debt only by sidelining internal whistleblowers. Then-vice president Sherron Watkins, for instance, was moved off the executive floor andgiven diminished duties after circulating a memo warning that Enron could “implode in a wave of accounting scandals,” while in-house risk assessment expert Vincent Kaminskis team was transferred to a different department and told that in urging against shady practices they had acted like cops. Perhaps it takes a team within an organization acting like cops, though, to help avoid incurring a visit from actual cops. Theranos In the 2010s, Elizabeth Holmes cultivated Steve Jobs comparisons by saying shed developed a miracle device that conducted instant blood tests from miniscule samples. Her company, Theranos, was valued at $9 billion at its peak. The only problem? The device barely existed. In a doomed quest to hide that fact from outside eyes, or buy time until the team could figure out some kind of Hail Mary fix, top brass at Theranos pushed back on dissenters. According to research engineer Tyler Shultz, company leaders, including Holmes and her deputy, Ramesh Sunny Balwani, aggressively dismissed internal warnings. Employees like Shultz and lab worker Erika Cheung faced harassment for raising concerns, prompting them to quit the company and leak details to the press. As it turns out, while upper management may not always be receptive to internal warnings, reporters often will be. Boeing The worlds largest aerospace company kicked off 2024 with a terrifying midair malfunction on an Alaska Airlines flight, and ended the year with a jet crash disaster in South Korea. Both incidents followed a pair of deadly crashes of Boeing 737 Max planes in 2018 and 2019. As a result of all the chaos, Boeing became the subject of a June 2024 Senate hearing about the companys broken safety culture. During the hearing, now-former CEO Dave Calhoun admitted that Boeing had previously retaliated against employees who came forward with safety concerns. Many aggrieved whistleblowers have also attested to that fact. John Barnett, for instance, a former quality control manager at Boeing, reportedly shared his safety concerns with supervisors, who responded by ignoring him and then harassing him. (Prior to his death by suicide in 2024, Barnett had been suing the company for retaliation.) Quality engineer Sam Salehpour meanwhile claimed last year that hed repeatedly raised concerns about alleged manufacturing shortcuts at Boeing starting in 2020 only to be told “to shut up”; he then transferred to a different role. Several other employees have similar stories. As a result, Boeings reputation has taken a massive hit. Whenever it comes out that an organization retaliated against objection-raisers on the path to avoidable catastrophe, that organization comes off as desperate, vindictive, and dishonest; not merely unmoored from reality, but actively opposed to it. The U.S. government is currently operating as exactly this kind of organization. And just like in those other examples, it will eventually become public knowledge that catastrophe was avoidablebut only after its already happened.
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E-Commerce
In the early morning hours of August 26, South African long-distance runner Sibusiso Kubheka became the first person to complete a 100-kilometer run (thats 62.14 miles) in less than six hours. He beat the previous world record by 6 minutes and 15 seconds. The race featured five of the planets fastest endurance runners at the Nard Ring high-performance test track in Lecce, Italy. With a time of 5 hours, 59 minutes, and 20 seconds, 27-year-old Kubheka not only has expanded the limits of what we thought humans were capable of in terms of distance and speed, but also made one helluva commercial for Adidas. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) The run is part of a broader project by the brand called Chasing 100, in which Adidas worked to fine-tune its apparel and footwear in order to break the 100-kilometer record. If this sounds familiar, then youve likely seen Nikes 2017 documentary Breaking2, chronicling its thn-failed attempt to break a 2-hour marathon. Or its newest series airing on Prime called Breaking4, about Kenyan runner Faith Kipyegons quest to be the first woman to break the 4-minute mile. The Breaking2 livestream event attracted more than 20 million viewers and racked up 2 trillion social impressions months before the doc even aired on National Geographic. [Photo: Adidas] Chasing100 is the latest entry in this arms race of branded stunt running content that is pushing athletes, sports science, running tech, and designers into new and exciting places. Just as important, these are benchmarks for the brands involved to showcase their innovation chops to customers and potential customers around the world. Running is a pursuit of fine margins, with brands of many sizes racing for the throne. Here, Adidas has tossed down a gauntlet it hopes will boost its brand image among everyone from elite runners to everyday joggers. [Photo: Adidas] Designing for a world record The four other athletes who took part in the race were previous 100-kilometer world-record-holder Aleksandr Sorokin of Lithuania, Jo Fukuda of Japan, current 80-kilometer world-record-holder Charlie Lawrence of the U.S., and former 50-kilometer world-record-holder Ketema Negasa of Ethiopia. Adidas worked with each one to customize its Adizero Evo Prime X, fine-tuning the shoes to fit each runners distinctive style. The runners also utilized the brands Ultracharge system, which puts the shoes in a pressurized container for several days ahead of the race to give the midsole foam increased responsiveness. [Photo: Adidas] The runners werent the only ones racing. Harry Miles, Adidass director of football innovation, said the process of designing these custom shoes began in February and testing took place in July. The company shrunk its R&D-to-production schedule significantly, thanks to new methods and tech that allowed for the creation of the shapes and materials much more quickly than ever before. Miles is cagey about the new methods, calling them the brand’s “secret sauce.” We wanted to build the most innovative shoe we’ve ever built for these conditions, Miles says. But we didn’t want to make it easy. We wanted to make it a tough test for the product and also the athletes, to prove that they can do something that most people think is impossible. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) On the apparel side, racers used the Climacool system to cool down their core body temperatures before running in the heat and humidity of southern Italy. Its the same combination of cooling and insulating techwith a cooling vest and insulation jacketworn by the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team. [Photo: Adidas] Each runner had their own cooling neck bands, which could be swapped out and refreshed during the race. The Clima 3D singlet features 3D-embossed material (like small rubber nubs) body-mapped to areas of the shirt with the highest skin contact and sweat production to improve airflow, sweat evaporation, and cooling. [Photo: Adidas] The TechFit shorts feature stiffening bands strategically placed for each runners body to stabilize the hips, supporting running economy and endurance. Commercial versions of both the shorts and singlet will be available to the public sometime next year. Margherita Raccuglia, Adidass director of athlete performance, led the apparel team. She says that endurance, speed, and heat management were the three main factors in the design process, along with a fair amount of customization for each individual runner. [Photo: Adidas] There is a certain amount of familiarizationand adaptation to the product that is not to be underestimated because, of course, there is always the physiological and physical performance, but there is also the cognitive part [of the] performance, Raccuglia says. Athletes are very ritualistic, and they love their routine. Even a centimeter off in their socks is going to put them off. So our job and our challenge throughout the process was really to fine-tune the product into the best possible performance while still being something that the athletes feel comfortable with. Both Raccuglia and Miles credit the rapid prototyping their teams were able to do with giving the athletes equipment that was optimized for their bodies. The approach is really going back to the basis of what Adidas is and what our fundamentals are, which is only the best for the athletes, Miles says. Really being there and crafting it with them. The most difficult part to solve is the final 5%, right? But that’s also where you just have to kind of roll up your sleeves. [Photo: Adidas] Process vs. Results A project like this is about accomplishing multiple goals simultaneously. For the runners, it is the athletic achievement. For the product designers and engineers, it is a massive investment and opportunity in R&D. And for the brands, more than anything else, it is myth-making. Embracing and aiming for impossible goals will appeal to any athlete or sports fan. So documenting the process and telling the whole story creatively is (or should be) inextricable from the goal of breaking a performance record. It’s truly exciting to go after what is going to be the fastest 100-kilometer run in history, but really showcasing that process is also a critical piece, says Marc Makowski, senior vice president of creative direction and innovation at Adidas. We start by looking at moments that really shape what the future of sport is going to look like, and then use an opportunity like Chasing100 to bring together the most daring designs we’re creating. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) Chasing and Breaking In both of Nikes Breaking projects, the brand not only designed and worked on equipment to help the runners achieve their goals but also picked locations with optimal conditions to break records. Adidas took a different approach, choosing southern Italy in the summertime in order to have an intentionally challenging environment for the race. The strategy was to push the runners and their gear to the edge of their abilities. The learnings are almost endless for the team moving forward, Makowski says. There are so many things here that will inform the next generation of endurance- and speed-related projects. So far, Adidas has been putting out social content around the race and Kubhekas accomplishment. There are plans to launch a long-form piece of content in the coming weeks that will tell the story behind the new record. It will be interesting to see just how much this new storyand how its tolddiffers from Nikes Breaking work. In some ways, there is a pretty clear formula to work from: Introduce audiences to a cast of charactersthe runners, designers, engineers, and support staffand use the buildup to the race to establish emotional stakes. View this post on Instagram A post shared by adidas (@adidas) This type of blockbuster, event-driven content is where giants like Adidas and Nike have an advantage over challengers like Brooks, Saucony, Asics, On, and Hoka. Both brands trace their roots to track and field. Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon. Adolf Dassler and Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Their scale as global brands, now across many different sports, fuels their ability to flex that strength in telling these specific stories in running. With Chasing100, Adidas has collected the characters, from the runners and their backstories to company insiders like Miles and Raccuglia. Now it needs to truly convey the drama and gear-nerd design process in a compelling way. If it can do that, we may just be embarking on an intriguing arms race of running content that will straddle sports storytelling and brand innovation in new ways. On your mark, get set.
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E-Commerce
Is your team intimidated by you? And if they are, how would you know? Many leaders unintentionally or unconsciously create an environment thats unnecessarily fear-based, whether through their communication style, decision-making, or even the pace they expect from their team. A study by OnePoll and HR software company Bambee found that 60% of U.S. workers feel too intimidated to go to their boss or manager with an issue theyre having. Thats significant, cosidering bosses have a disproportionate impact on employee well-being. The Workforce Institute at UKG found that a managers influence on an employees mental health is equal to that of an employees spouse or partnerand greater than that of an employees doctor and therapist. The good news is that once you become aware of behaviors that could be perceived as intimidating to your team, you can focus on changing them. Speaking in declaratives When it comes to inviting input, theres a universal truth: The more polished, finished or done something appears, the less likely people are to give feedback on it. The feeling is that the window for real input has closed. Similarly, when you speak in declaratives in meetings, like This is the plan, or That wont work, your forceful language tells the group to comply, that things are already decided. Instead, leave some thoughts unfinished to open up conversations. Rather than Were going to move forward with X approach, say Heres what Im thinking, but Im open . . . or Im leaning toward this direction. What am I missing? Intimidation will lessen when people see that your thinking is still taking shape. Inhibiting disagreement You say you want open discussion. But if you get defensive or look annoyed when people challenge the norm, its only going to breed caution. Your employees will read your level of receptiveness and stay quiet next time. Instead, normalize respectful disagreement. Try Thats a valuable challenge, Jane, keep it coming . . . or Im glad you raised that, Marco. Such responses will make it unmistakably clear, in real time, that you see disagreement as a form of group engagement. While youre at it, try to keep a neutral facial expression even as you ponder challenging views: no frowning, eye-rolling, or grimacing. Conveying calm acceptance and curiosity is what youre after. Keeping interactions all business If your touchpoints with people feel stiff and scheduled, youre missing out big-time on opportunities to build trust. You can maximize casual interactions like walking to a meeting together, Slack check-ins, or hallway chats by showing curiosity and interest. For example, you can make a callback to something they mentioned to you earlier, like How are the college tours going? or How did last weeks soccer tournament go? This shows that you actually listen and instantly creates a more humanistic tone. You can also resist jumping right into work in team huddles. To create a friendlier feel, kick off by asking the group a question thats not limited to work: Whats a win youve had recently, personal or professional, big or small? Overspeaking If you want your team to speak up and contribute their best thinking, they need spaces, gaps, and pauses in the conversation to do that. Instead of narrating every meeting like its a nature special, intentionally leave some openings. You might say Whats your read on this? while you pause and visually scan the group with an anticipatory look, or ask everyone to share one opportunity they see with the new direction and one concern they may have. You can even divvy up the agenda in advance if you want to ensure multiple people have speaking roles. Pretending youre perfect I can guarantee youve had a pie-in-the-face moment that was a prime learning experience. When youre trying to communicate a message to the team, pull from a personal story (even better if you werent the hero). Maybe you under-communicated on a project, which led to a misunderstanding. Or failed to ask for help once and spent three days unnecessarily troubleshooting an issue yourself. Perhaps a disruptive, company-wide change that your team is stressed about is also making you a little nervous. Sharing some of your concerns and face-plants helps you build trust and keep it real (yes, even that time you accidentally said Love you when signing off from a Zoom meeting). Being intimidating is often unintentional. But if no ones challenged you in a while, it might be a sign that your team is feeling the pressure to suppress their real thoughts and feelings. Humanize your leadership by integrating these small actions, and youll shift the atmosphere to one that feels safe, not severe.
Category:
E-Commerce
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