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Yes, its that time of year again: when we dont just wrap up one chapter but start anticipating the next, determined to begin with something that resembles a clean slate. The ritual is familiar: a little reflection, a little optimism, and a list of promises to our future selves. New Years resolutions are extremely popular, particularly relative to their low execution rate. According to a recent 2025YouGov survey, 31% of U.S. adults can be expected to set at least one resolution for the new yearwith the highest participation among younger adults (under 30), of whom 58% say they will make a resolution. Saving money emerges as the single most common New Years resolution among Americans (26%), followed closely by goals related to health and well-being: 22% plan to improve physical health, 22% want to exercise more, another 22% aim simply to be happier, and 20% intend to eat healthier. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} The benefits without the work New years resolutions reveal a painful truth about change, namely: everybody seems to love change, until they have to do it. Indeed, even when people say they want to change, what they actually want is to have changedin other words, to enjoy the benefits of having changed or having achieved the desired transformation, but without the painful and effortful work of undergoing the process to achieve it. We are, in essence, creatures of habits, and though every habit was once a new behavior, it is hard to unlearn behavioral patterns and dispositions that have become defining habits. In the famous words of Samuel Johnson, the chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. Although New Years resolutions may seem like trivial once-a-year occasions, they paint a bleak picture about our capacity to change. Consider that these are typically borne out of a genuine desire to improve ourselves, and are motivated by intrinsic or at least personal motives, rather than people telling us to change or evolve. In theory, this should put us in an ideal position to achieve our goals, since all change is fundamentally the product of our own desire or will to changethat is, the only way to get someone to do something is to get them to want to do something. Hard to keep In practice, however, we do a dismal job holding our resolutions and are generally likely to break them and then recycle them in future years. In a longitudinal study of 200 resolvers, 77% had maintained their resolutions after one week, but this dropped to 55% after one month, 43% after three months, 40% at six months, and only 19% still held to them after two years. Another study provides more reasons for optimism: it tracked 159 people making New Years resolutions and 123 similar non-resolvers for six months. Both groups had comparable backgrounds and goals (mainly weight loss, exercise, and smoking cessation), but their outcomes diverged sharply: 46% of resolvers were still successful at six months, compared with just 4% of non-resolvers. Among resolvers, higher self-efficacy, greater readiness to change, and stronger change skills predicted success, and those who succeeded relied more on practical cognitive-behavioral strategies than on emotional or awareness-raising tactics. The authors conclude that New Years resolutions offer a valuable natural window into how real behavior change unfolds. The connection to organizational change That said, when we look at most organizational change interventions (especially the ubiquitous attempts to develop or transform leaders), there are even fewer reasons for optimism. Heres why: (1) Leadership change interventions are rarely driven by internal desire.When organizations ask leaders to change, they usually want them to change in a specific way, aligned with the business agenda. This means the change is externally imposed rather than intrinsically motivated. Unsurprisingly, meta-analytic research shows that intrinsic motivation dramatically increases the success of behavioral change interventions, while externally imposed change often produces compliance without real transformation. (2) Measurable outcomes or quantifiable metrics are often lacking.Many leadership development programs still rely on vague perceptions of improvement or on self-reported progress, rather than objective before-and-after data. Organizations often over-index on participation, sentiment surveys, or anecdotal indicators, while ignoring behavioral KPIs or longitudinal performance outcomes. Success becomes conflated with completion, and leaders often receive credit for attending a program rather than actually changing. (3) Personality often stands in the way of change.Most leadership behaviors that organizations want leaders to change, such as listening more, dominating less, delegating better, becoming less impulsive, or being more emotionally regulated, are deeply rooted in personality. And personality is highly stable. Leaders dont micromanage, interrupt, or avoid conflict because they forgot how to behave differently; they do so because these tendencies are their psychological defaults. Asking someone to act against their personality is rarely sustainable unless supported by strong motivation, environmental scaffolding, and ongoing reinforcement. (4) The environment often pushes leaders back to old habits.Even when leaders make progress, the organizational context often pulls them back. If incentives, culture, role expectations, team dynamics, and senior-leader behaviors remain unchanged,new habits cannot survive. A leader may return from a development program eager to delegate more, only to find that the culture rewards heroic overwork, rapid responsiveness, and being in control. In such contexts, reversion to old habits is almost guaranteed. What works And yet, well-designed leadership development interventions do work, typically yielding average improvements of around 30% for approximately 30% of leaders. Crucially, they tend to share certain characteristics: (1) They are enhanced and supported by a coach.Coaching meta-analyses show significant positive effects on behavioral change, goal attainment, and leadership effectiveness. Coaches help leaders translate insight into action, apply new behaviors in context, and stay accountable. (2) They rely on high-quality, evidence-based coaching and expert change professionals.The expertise of the coach matters. Effective coaches draw on validated psychological frameworks, provide accurate diagnosis, challenge constructively, and avoid the vague platitudes common in low-quality coaching. (3) They ensure the organizational context and incentives align with the change expected.If new behaviors are not reinforced (or worse, if the organization rewards the opposite behaviors) change will not stick. Structural alignment (incentives, culture, team expectations) is a critical amplifier. (4) They leverage the science of behavioral change.Small habit formation, nudges, friction reduction, implementation intentions, environment design, and regular prompts all increase the likelihood that new behaviors will persist. (5) Most importantly, they select the right leaders to invest in.Coachability, which largely boils down to openness to feedback, willingness to self-reflect, humility, and a genuine desire to improve, is one of the strongest predictors of leadership development ROI. Whatever you think of personalities like Trump or Musk, its clear they have little appetite for being coached. In contrast, leaders who are curious, self-aware, and eager to grow are far more likely to change. Viewed through this lens, New Years resolutions and leadership development are two versions of the same psychological phenomenon: most people want the outcomes of change without the discomfort of transformation. Leaders, like the rest of human beings, start the year with good intentions, but only a minority translate those intentions into new habits. Perhaps the most important New Years resolution for leaders, then, is not to change everything, but to commit to the small, unglamorous, sustained behaviors that actually make change possible. After all, lasting leadership growthlike lasting personal changeis less about setting resolutions and more about building habits that survive past January, and perhaps even until the next decade. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Changing prices for what the market will bear has long been a staple of pricing for everything from airplane seats to a gallon of gas to hotel rooms. Indeed, an entire field of so-called dynamic pricing exists to figure out how to extract the most profit from the most willing customers has now emerged. But were at an inflection point now in which such practices are going from the exception, and for relatively few items, to the norm. The regulatory framework is at the moment right in the midst of figuring out what the guardrails will be. The Intermediary Industrial Complex Remember when a gallon of milk cost the same for everyone who walked into the store? That quaint notion is rapidly becoming as obsolete as the paper price tag itself. Retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and servicesfrom a person’s location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage. We’re witnessing the emergence of a pricing ecosystem where your browsing history, zip code, and even the speed at which you scroll through a web page can determine what you pay. Companies like Revionics, PROS, and Bloomreach are building the infrastructure for a world where pricing becomes as personalized as ones Netflix recommendations. The Federal Trade Commission found that the intermediaries worked with at least 250 clients that sell goods or services ranging from grocery stores to apparel retailers. This isn’t a niche practiceit’s becoming the operating system for modern commerce. Consider this scenario from the FTC’s findings: A consumer who is profiled as a new parent may intentionally be shown higher priced baby thermometers on the first page of their search results. This opens the door to algorithmic exploitation of vulnerability. When your recent searches reveal a sick child, the system is programmed to catch you at the moment youre likely to be least price-sensitive. The regulatory response is crystallizing around three distinct vectors. First, consumer protection law challenges the fundamental fairness of charging different prices to different people for identical products. The Robinson-Patman Act, dormant for decades, may find new life in addressing digital-age price discrimination. It was originally intended to help small vendors compete with large ones by forcing everybody to compete on the same playing field when it came to pricing, eliminating predatory pricing by large players. Second, those who support stronger privacy laws question whether using granular personal data for pricing decisions constitutes an unfair practice. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that predatory pricing is only possible because our privacy laws are so weak. Americans, they suggest, deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, for instance, charging higher prices to those already in the parking lot (as Target has been accused of doing) or to those with fewer alternative options, as Staples has been accused of doing. Third, antitrust concerns emerge as companies with the power and resources to engage in surveillance pricing may trigger competition concerns. Only the largest companies have sufficient data to perfect these systems, potentially creating insurmountable competitive moats. Further, the algorithms used to set prices can act as signals that allow firms to effectively collude, even if they dont do so explicitly. With everything else becoming dynamic, perhaps the era of fixed prices is over Here’s the strategic contradiction companies must navigate: The same data capabilities that enable personalized servicethe holy grail of customer experiencealso enable personalized exploitation. Every company talks about “customer-centricity,” but surveillance pricing reveals the tension between serving customers better and extracting maximum value from them. Forward-thinking companies might find competitive advantage in explicitly rejecting surveillance pricing. “Same price for everyone” could become the new “organic” or “fair trade”a trust signal that commands its own price premium. Costco’s membership model already embodies this principle: pay to enter a space where prices are transparent and universaland Costco has long set a ceiling on how much margin it extracts from its member-customers. We’re in a brief window where surveillance pricing is technologically possible but not yet legally constrained. Companies experimenting with these tools should assume that window will closethe only question is how quickly and how completely.
Category:
E-Commerce
Just before Fridays draw for the FIFA mens World Cup 2026 group stage, Visa is launching an artistic update to its sponsorship of the tournament. The brand just announced a new partnership with Pharrell Williams Joopiter auction and e-commerce platform, on a new World Cup-themed art collection, featuring 20 different artists from six continents. The collection aims to show how creativity drives commerceand how artists are the entrepreneurs shaping communities and culture around the world. Visa has unveiled the first five pieces in the collection at an exclusive Miami showcase called The Art of the Draw, hosted by multidisciplinary creator KidSuper. The showcase features the works of artists Darien Birks, Nathan Walker, Cesar Canseco, Ivan Roque, and Rafael Mayani. The rest of the collection is set to come before the tournament kicks off in June. Cesar Canseco [Image: courtesy Joopiter/Visa] Visa chief marketing officer Frank Cooper III says this collection embodies the brands overall approach of using its sponsorships to not just leverage the fan experience around an event like the World cup, but actually add to it. Darien Birks [Image: courtesy Joopiter/Visa] It’s allowing artists to do what they do best, which is to help us to see things differently and to provoke conversation in ways that may not get provoked through just casual interaction, says Cooper. So for me, this opens the aperture of how you can think about the World Cup and football. Ivan Roque [Image: courtesy Joopiter/Visa] Add value, not ads Visa first signed on as a World Cup sponsor back in 2007. This will be Coopers second tournament with the brand, having joined shortly before the 2022 World Cup. Nathan Walker [Image: courtesy Joopiter/Visa] Back in 2023, in one of his first interviews as CMO, Cooper told me that one of the things he really wanted to do around sponsorship was to move away from what he called cultural adjacency, borrowing equity and trying to get a halo off that, and creating awareness by being the proud sponsor of something. Im not dismissing that, he said. I think it has a role, but can we actually add value to fans, the athletes, or artists experience? Can we figure out ways that are less interruptive and more about creating momentum around things people want to do? Otherwise, you start to fade into the background and become wallpaper if people see it too much. There is value in traditional sponsorship, but theres more value in delivering something that would not happen unless we were there. Thats the playbook. Since then, Cooper has led the brand into music and sports, with a pre-Paris Olympics Post Malone concert at the Louvre, and Benson Boone at The Kennedy Space Centers Rocket Garden, as well as compelling projects in Formula 1, NFL, and the Olympics. Rafael Mayani [Image: courtesy Joopiter/Visa] The mindset that we have is less of, Can I interrupt an experience or insert ourselves into an experience in a way that disrupts people? And more of, Can I create original intellectual property that actually makes the experience better? he says. This is where supporting artists from around the world to create a collection that shows the connection between creativity and sports culture comes in. The Art of the Draw is just the latest piece of work Visa has done around next summers World Cup, and it wont be the last. So far, the brand has given its cardholders exclusive early access to World Cup tickets through its Visa Presale Draw back in September. In June, the brand opened the first of six soccer parks throughout the United States in San Francisco, in partnership with Bank of America and Street Soccer USA. And in September, Visa signed Barcelona and Spain star Lamine Yamal as a global ambassador. View this post on Instagram Logo Soup Major sports events like the World Cup have long been drenched in ads from sponsors, from logos on the field to exclusive products and services at the games. Cooper says there is still value in this type of traditional brand presence, but whats changed over the years is what else is required to give that presence value. What has changed is that there’s very little value given to just the pure advertisement, says Cooper. It becomes like logo soup. What is probably the most important thing is that fans are asking for the brands that they care about the most, who are connected to these events like the World Cup, to understand the cultural nuances. If you’re going to be involved, you better understand it. This is where the level of detail in a brands involvement, particularly in fan culture, is key. As Men In Blazers cofounder Roger Bennett told me in August, brands need to get involved in soccer early and often, in order to be more than a tourist at the World Cup in fans eyes. Cooper knows this, too. He knows the difference between churning out generic promo T-shirts for fans, and teaming with a local designer for a limited-edition drop. Thats also the strategy behind The Art of the Draw. What I’m seeing is that fans increasingly are really, really smart about which brands understand the cultural nuances of the activity that they’re engaged in, he says. And so what we are trying to do is become much more aware of those cultural nuances, how to tease them out, and how to produce something that actually delivers value in that context.
Category:
E-Commerce
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