My daughter accidentally left hiking boots and a sleeping bag in the overhead bin on a flight to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) over the weekend. She was running to catch a flight and called, panting, looking for help.

Let’s talk about trees. Kids climb trees, instinctively. Kids love jumping in piles of leaves. Adults are wowed by leaves falling to the ground in autumn. Everyone knows what a tree is, without any explanation. People have relationships with trees.

Insistent, sustained, clear, and effectively communicated public outrage has always been an essential force behind systemic change in democratic societies.

The challenges and opportunities of climate change are actually one and the same. Because the causes and consequences are everywhere—literally, from shifting allergy seasons to extraordinary wildfires.

In business, and in life, we do what we measure. And we’re better at measuring some things than others. How well do we measure the emotions of our team members? How good are we at even understanding our own emotions?

I managed a company through two coups in Moscow. It taught me something most leadership books miss.

The pressure on leaders to ‘do something’ is intense and unrelenting. "Change that language." "Have legal look at that first." "That approach won’t work anymore."

The leaders of our most prestigious corporations can’t have it both ways. Having been granted status as ‘legal persons’ in 1886, corporations have the right to “free speech” that cannot be abridged.

Want to know a common leadership risk that’s easily fixable? Overreacting to a small group that sounds louder than it actually is. Stop doing that and see what happens.

There’s a big difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a physiological function. Listening is a strategic act. It requires focus, curiosity, and the willingness to be changed by what you learn. And in stakeholder engagement, that difference matters—a lot.

Risks get a bad rap. We often treat them like problems to avoid rather than as behavior and design challenges. The issue isn’t whether risk exists, but who bears the cost and who reaps the benefits. In our current system, that cost of burden often falls on the shoulders least equipped to carry it.

The average consumer is drowning in digital noise. Create an account. Accept cookies. Confirm your email. Opt out (again). Algorithms track every click while curated ads chase us across platforms. For all the talk about data, many organizations still fail at the most essential task—actually understanding the people they’re trying to reach.