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Fast Company
14 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Top 8 leadership books of 2025 so far
BY Whether you're managing a team or leveling up your own skills, these eight leadership books are among this year's most essential reads. The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance By Zach Mercurio Filled with practical advice and helpful exercises, The Power of Mattering gives leaders at all levels the skills they need to revitalize their teams—and entire organizations—by showing people that they matter. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Zach Mercurio, in the Next Big Idea App, or view on Amazon. The Doors You Can Open: A New Way to Network, Build Trust, and Use Your Influence to Create a More Inclusive Workplace By Rosalind Chow Carnegie Mellon organizational behavior researcher Rosalind Chow, PhD, introduces the novel concept of sponsorship. While mentorship can change mentees for the better through valuable coaching and encouragement, sponsorship takes it one step further—sponsors can change the social environment around their protégés by actively advocating for, raising the social visibility of, and protecting them. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Rosalind Chow, in the Next Big Idea App, or view on Amazon. Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee By Wes Adams and Tamara Myles A powerful revelation that finding meaning at work is the true driver of employee well-being, high performance, and even profit, and a practical road map to make it the cornerstone of your leadership approach. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by coauthors Wes Adams and Tamara Myles, in the Next Big Idea App or view on Amazon. Managing Up: How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge By Melody Wilding A career coach's indispensable guide to navigating power dynamics, building effective relationships with higher-ups, and earning more authority, freedom, and confidence at work. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Melody Wilding, in the Next Big Idea App, or view on Amazon. You're the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need) By Sabina Nawaz Turn the hidden pressures of management into astonishing results and become the boss everyone wants to work for. This must-read guide from elite executive coach Sabina Nawaz reveals the leadership secrets of highly successful managers. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Sabina Nawaz, in the Next Big Idea App, or view on Amazon. Masters of Uncertainty: The Navy SEAL Way to Turn Stress into Success for You and Your Team By Rich Diviney Retired Navy SEAL commander and performance expert Rich Diviney reveals a revolutionary method for training individuals and teams to perform at their best, no matter what. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Rich Diviney, in the Next Big Idea App, or view on Amazon. No One Is Self-Made: Build Your Village to Flourish in Business and Life By Lakeysha Hallmon This inspirational guide dares to dismantle the myth of individualism and reveals how collective support can shatter systemic barriers to success. It's a bold road map for entrepreneurs and leaders determined to rewrite the rules of business. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Lakeysha Hallmon, in the Next Big Idea App, or view on Amazon. Why Are We Here?: Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants By Jennifer Moss A deeply human account of how our relationship with work has changed and a guide for leaders who want to make things right. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Jennifer Moss, in the Next Big Idea App, or view on Amazon. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. The early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today. ABOUT THE AUTHOR The best new nonfiction book summaries in 15 minutes, directly from the authors. Book club curated by Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink. More
Fast Company
15 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
AI isn't replacing your workforce. It's redefining it.
BY Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a boardroom priority—and a boardroom anxiety. At one end of the spectrum, it's lauded as the ultimate growth engine; on the other, it's feared as a threat to jobs and human judgment. But for leaders charting a future-ready course, the real opportunity lies in reframing the conversation. AI isn't about replacement. It's about amplification. The organizations winning with AI aren't deploying it for novelty—they're using it to strategically enhance productivity, innovation, and resilience. The shift is no longer about technology for its own sake. It's about business outcomes. In a global landscape shaped by rapid disruption, AI is becoming the lever that helps companies not only respond but get ahead. THE STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE: AUGMENT, EMBED, ENABLE Three principles are emerging as foundational for executive-level AI strategy: Augment human potential – AI creates leverage. AI surfaces insights and automates repeatable tasks, freeing employees and teams to focus on creativity, building relationships, solving problems, and making decisions. But this is a two-way relationship: Human oversight remains essential to guide AI with context, ethical reasoning, and strategic judgment. Augmentation, rather than automation, is where AI returns immense value. Organizations must resist the lure of full automation in favor of human-machine collaboration, where AI enhances rather than replaces human judgment. This approach builds trust and enables better decision-making at every level of the enterprise. Embed intelligence into the flow of work – The most successful implementations of AI are invisible. They're built directly into the tools, platforms, and processes employees already use. This reduces friction, boosts adoption, and avoids the risk of forcing cultural or operational overhauls. Embedding AI also accelerates time-to-value, delivering measurable impact without disrupting business continuity. By integrating AI into the product design lifecycle, CRM systems, supply chain platforms, and customer service tools, companies can improve speed and responsiveness while minimizing disruption to established workflows. Enable Scalable, Enterprise-Wide Adoption – AI maturity doesn't come from isolated pilots. It requires a foundational capability across people, platforms, and proprietary data. That means investing in infrastructure that supports AI at the edge, in the cloud, and across the enterprise—and empowering teams to build models tailored to unique business needs. Leaders must ensure the business owns its AI evolution, and doesn't just rent it. Data governance, security, and explainability are no longer optional – they are prerequisites for scale. Executives must prioritize cross-functional alignment between IT, legal, HR, and operations to drive trustworthy, compliant AI adoption. AI ADOPTION REQUIRES LEADERSHIP ACROSS FOUR DOMAINS To build on this strategic framework, AI adoption requires leadership across workforce development, AI innovation hubs, applied AI productization, and ecosystem empowerment. Workforce Development – Upskill and reskill teams to embrace AI tools and workflows. Future-ready organizations foster a culture of continuous learning—not just technical expertise, but creative AI fluency. Training programs should span from frontline workers to senior leadership, ensuring that everyone understands how to use AI responsibly and effectively. AI Innovation Hubs – Carve out space for experimentation and co-creation. Internal labs, like the Siemens AI Lab, accelerate innovation while managing risk by offering guidance, specialized training programs, innovation incubators, and patented technologies. Innovation hubs also play a critical role in fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration and fast-tracking new ideas into real-world applications. Applied AI Productization – Deploy pilots and then go beyond to drive AI directly into the product and service experience. Embedding AI into software, manufacturing, and products improves operational performance, customer outcomes, and lifecycle value. From predictive maintenance in manufacturing to intelligent recommendations in retail, AI can unlock entirely new business opportunities, but only when it's integrated into the core value proposition. Ecosystem Empowerment – Independent software vendors and solution partners must be equipped to integrate AI into enterprise environments with minimal friction. Scalable enablement platforms make AI adoption repeatable and cost-effective. In a partner-driven economy, empowering the ecosystem ensures that innovation is not only centralized but also distributed—expanding the impact of AI beyond internal teams to customers, partners, and communities. AI is not an IT initiative; it's a business transformation imperative. And like any strategic shift, success depends on leadership's ability to connect technology to people, processes, and purpose. C-suite leaders must be both evangelists and stewards, championing AI's potential while safeguarding against misuse. The companies leading the next era won't be those that simply adopt AI. They'll be the ones that embed it wisely, scale it broadly, and use it to unlock human potential and tangible value at every level of the organization. Ultimately, leadership in the age of AI isn't about replacing people. It's about reimagining what people can achieve with intelligent tools, empowered teams, and a clear sense of purpose.
Fast Company
2 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Fast Company's Best Dressed in Business
BY It took me 35 years before I learned how to dress well. And it took about that long to learn who I was. That timing is not a coincidence, as anyone on our inaugural Best Dressed in Business list will tell you. For the first time in our three-decade history, Fast Company is celebrating fashion across the world of work: eight remarkable individuals ranging from athletes on the court of the WNBA to designers in the C-suite of Seoul to innovators at Apple. This editorial initiative is not about whether quiet luxury or that cut of jeans is still in. It's not about labels or influencers, either. It's about celebrating those who are comfortable enough in their skin to stunt across the professional world. Because most of all, dressing well requires knowing oneself. In some ways, the timing of this package couldn't be more fraught. Both high fashion and fast fashion are encountering new challenges in the face of shifting consumer tastes. But never before has culture afforded us the license to dress in so many different ways for any given circumstance. We live in an era of unbridled self-expression, fueled by social feeds and global retailers moving too fast to keep track of. This is an advantageous moment for individualism: There is no wrong way to dress anymore, and there are countless right ones. For a lucky few, work offers a path toward self-actualization. And the way we dress for that occasion is something we are here to celebrate. —Mark Wilson Mauro Porcini, chief design officer, Samsung Mauro Porcini became the world's first chief design officer at 3M, before taking the role at PepsiCo and, now, at Samsung. But as a designer seated in the boardroom, he admits to being constantly pulled between two worlds. His style captures this duality, and has served as a tool to be taken seriously as a creative in business—while helping him find peace within himself. Emma Grede, fashion entrepreneur Emma Grede is a mother of four who has spent most of her career building a fashion empire behind the scenes—and behind the Kardashians. As the cofounder of Good American, Skims, and Off Season, she's created a constellation of brands that reach into the closets of people around the world. But she's still managed to become a style icon in her own right by creating a rotation of classic pieces that she mixes and matches. Read more Angel Reese, forward, Chicago Sky As an all-star forward for the Chicago Sky, Angel Reese is one of the most dominant players in the WNBA. But her draft class did more than add fresh competition to the league when it arrived with a splash in 2024. It awakened the spectacle of the sport, celebrating the uniqueness of players who broke free from their uniforms with expressive pregame tunnel walks. Salehe Bembury, shoe designer One of the most in-demand designers in sneakers, Bembury has collaborated with New Balance, Crocs, Versace, Moncler, Vans, and other brands. With an aesthetic rooted in a combination of outdoor lifestyle and funky, organic shapes, Bembury has reimagined streetwear as something as biological as it is mechanical. His personal style is equally interesting.
Fast Company
2 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
The case for making AI your creative brainstorming partner
BY Listen to this Article More info 0:00 / 6:00 Creativity has been heralded as our last irreplaceable skill, the one thing machines could never touch. Yet in offices everywhere, teams hit the same walls: blank screens, stale ideas, the exhausting churn of brainstorming sessions that go nowhere. The promise of human ingenuity feels increasingly at odds with the reality of modern work, where the demand for fresh thinking has never been higher, but the conditions for producing it have never been worse. It's awkward to admit, but we're not brainstorming the way we used to. It's not that we've lost the ability. Creative thinking remains the lifeblood of everything from product development to marketing campaigns. But the uncomfortable truth is that we no longer have the luxury of time for the classical creative process. The slow simmer of ideas, the meandering discussions, and the trial and error that once defined innovation have been compressed into frantic sprints. We're still creative, but we're drowning in the busywork that keeps us from accessing that creativity when we need it most. We're in the decade of the creative bottleneck For years, innovation has unfolded at a breakneck pace, but the evidence suggests things are slowing. The low-hanging fruit of the digital revolution has been picked, and the next wave of breakthroughs requires more than incremental tweaks. Yet the very systems meant to foster creativity have become clogged with bureaucracy and inefficiency. Consider the latest estimates on how knowledge workers spend their time: they waste 3.6 hours each week managing internal workplace communication, another 2.8 hours searching for or requesting information they need to do their jobs, and an additional 2.2 hours trapped in unnecessary or unproductive meetings. That's nearly a full day every week lost to process rather than progress. White-collar workers, especially in tech, were supposed to be the disruptors—the ones breaking old models and inventing new ones. Instead, they've become administrators of their own stagnation. We can't create more time, but we can rethink what creativity actually is At its core, creativity isn't the romanticized lightning strike of inspiration—it's a grueling, mechanical process. It requires grinding through bad ideas, hitting dead ends, and enduring countless revisions before arriving at something worthwhile. The hardest part? Ideation—the raw generation of new concepts. Humans aren't wired to produce fresh ideas on demand. Our brains cling to familiar patterns, get stuck in ruts, and freeze under pressure. But this is precisely where AI excels. Where we see a blank page, an AI sees infinite permutations. Where we fatigue after a dozen iterations, an AI can generate thousands without losing focus. Here's the real opportunity: if improving an idea by 5% used to take two weeks of human deliberation, what happens when AI can deliver that same 5% gain in 30 minutes? Suddenly, those incremental improvements compound exponentially. The bottleneck isn't the quality of our thinking; it's the speed at which we can cycle through possibilities. AI is actually very good at the creative process Where AI thrives is in the parts of creativity that humans find most draining: the relentless generation of variations, the cold-eyed evaluation of options, the pattern recognition across vast datasets. These are the unglamorous foundations of innovation, the behind-the-scenes work that makes the 'aha' moments possible. Think about it. Humans can run at 15 mph tops; cars can go 200 mph. We don't insist on sprinting everywhere just to prove our legs work. We use technology to extend our natural capabilities. Why should thinking be any different? Humans simply aren't built to crank out a hundred versions of a logo, or a thousand variations of a marketing message, then dispassionately select the strongest. Our attention falters, our judgment clouds, our patience wears thin. But for AI, this is trivial. It doesn't need coffee breaks or pep talks. It doesn't get attached to pet ideas or succumb to groupthink. It just generates, analyzes, and iterates—exactly the skills needed to break through creative logjams. This isn't about replacing human judgment. It's about augmenting it. The real value of AI lies in its ability to handle the brute-force labor of creativity, leaving us free to focus on what humans do best: refining, contextualizing, and applying ideas with taste and strategic insight. It's the difference between digging a foundation with a shovel and using an excavator. The end goal isn't the tool— it's the building. We don't have to cede complete creative control To be clear, this isn't about surrendering creativity to machines. AI lacks our intuition, our cultural awareness, our understanding of human nuance; the very qualities that make our best ideas resonate. The breakthroughs of the next decade won't come from AI working alone, but from humans wielding AI as the ultimate creative accelerator. The real paradigm shift is recognizing that AI isn't here to replace human creativity, but to unstick it. For years, we've treated brainstorming as a sacred ritual, as if the magic were in the method rather than the outcome. But what if the magic is actually in removing the friction between thought and execution? We need to let machines do what they do best (generating and sorting possibilities at superhuman scale) so we can focus on what we do best (selecting, shaping, and elevating the best ideas). The next big idea might be waiting in iteration #387—and thanks to AI, we might actually have time to find it. The early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kevin Li is the SVP, Product Strategy & Operations at Optimizely, where he leads product strategy, including the strategic roadmap, new product launches, as well as M&A and corporate development. More
Fast Company
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
The ‘Vogue' AI model backlash isn't dying down anytime soon
BY Listen to this Article More info 0:00 / 3:41 AI -generated 'models' have now made their way into the hallowed pages of Vogue. In the August print edition of Vogue, a Guess advertisement features an almost-too-perfect model wearing a striped dress and a floral playsuit from the brand's summer collection. In very small print, it notes that she was created using AI. While Vogue states the AI model was not an editorial decision, the fashion magazine has still faced considerable backlash online. Some critics have gone so far as to call it the 'downfall of Vogue.' Although the AI-generated model appeared in an ad campaign rather than a fashion editorial, for many, that's beside the point. 'Note to publications doing things like this: it makes you look cheap and chintzy, lazy and hasty, desperate and struggling,' another user wrote. This isn't the first time an AI model has appeared in Vogue. The June 2024 Vogue Portugal issue featured an AI-generated model on its cover, while the May 2023 edition of Vogue Italia used AI to create the background of a cover starring Bella Hadid. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in our daily lives and workflows, it's now infiltrating both digital and even analog media. Fast Company previously reported that one in three Gen Z consumers now make purchasing decisions based on recommendations from AI-generated influencers, according to research from Whop, a marketplace for digital products. Could the same apply to AI-generated models? Seraphinne Vallora, the company behind the ad, created the AI model after being approached by Paul Marciano, Guess's co-founder, via Instagram DMs. Their Instagram page, which has over 225,000 followers, features hundreds of similar AI-generated supermodels—all conforming to the same Eurocentric beauty standards, devoid of human flaws or unique features. The founders told the BBC they've attempted to feature more diverse models, but those posts failed to gain traction. (Fast Company has reached out to Vogue, Guess, and Seraphinne Vallora for comment.) As one X user wrote, 'as if beauty standards haven't become unrealistic enough, now girls will be competing with and comparing themselves to women who aren't even real. incredible work everyone.' The early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today. Sign up for our weekly tech digest. SIGN UP This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Privacy Policy
