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One X user named Julia recently shared screenshots of an email exchange with her boyfriend in which she was, in her own words, “colleague-zoned.” In the now-viral post, which has over 15.4 million views at the time of writing, Julia penned in the caption: “Sent a document to my boyfriend’s work email so he could print it for me and got colleague-zoned.” Julia had emailed her boyfriend a document to print, ending her note with, “I love you! Please print this for me! Thanks,” and a red heart emoji. To which he formally responded: “Julia, thanks for reaching out. I have received your document and printed it on 8″ x 11″ paper. Will deliver to you later this evening to be signed. Thank you.” Of course, Julia responded as any girlfriend would. “Are you breaking up with me?” she emailed back. To which he wrote: “Keeping things professional. Just wanted to confirm that I have followed up on your request. Best regards.” Some speculated that his emails are likely monitored, hence the professionalism. That is a man who is locked tf in at work, one wrote. Others recognized the screenshots for what they are: a funny bit. And it turns out, many people apparently do this. My favorite time of year is when I email our HOA bill to my husband and he does this, one wrote. Its like professional flirting. Another added: Something about office speak with loved ones is so funny. Julia is not the only one who has found herself colleague-zoned. Another TikTok creator recently shared a screenshot of her text exchanges with her finance bro husband. Just got 2026 HC enrollment presentation. Lets get lunch/coffee again this weekend and discuss next year, he texted. Just sent to our Gmails so you can review ahead of time. As professional boundaries blur and work continues to bleed into our personal lives, it can be easy to accidentally slip into office speak when replying to a personal email or syncing calendars with your partner. You might circle back to Thanksgiving plans or touch base on what day the trash needs taking out. Some take things a step further and purposefully conduct monthly performance reviews of their romantic relationships, or discuss KPIs and OKRs with their significant others to align on future goals. It works for some. For others, perhaps its a sackable offense. As for Julia, to assuage concerns over her relationship, she later shared screenshots of a follow-up text exchange. Im crying. I just looked at my phone for the first time in like two hours. lmao. Are your emails actually monitored?? Or were you just being silly? she asked. Her boyfriend admitted, No, theyre not monitored at all. I was just being funny. Now entering: the colleague zone.
Category:
E-Commerce
If talent is the oxygen of a company, succession planning is the life-support system. Yet too many organizations treat it like an org chart exercise, waiting until someone resigns or retires before scrambling to find a replacement. When a leader walks out, the ripple effects are immediate: strategy stalls, teams lose momentum, and culture wobbles overnight. The bigger problem? Most companies arent ready when it happens. According to DDIs 2025 HR Insights Report, only 20% of CHROs say they have leaders prepared to step into critical roles, and just 49% of those roles could be filled internally today. That means most organizations are closer to a leadership crisis than they realize. This isnt just an HR issue; its a business continuity risk. The Spreadsheet Trap Too often, succession planning lives in a spreadsheet. Once a year, leaders review ready now candidates, check the box, and move on. But when someone exits suddenly, those names on paper dont always translate into reality. Ive seen it firsthand. At one company where I worked, the president resigned unexpectedly. On paper, there were successors. In practice, none were ready. The company scrambled to find an external hire, losing momentum and market confidence. Contrast that with PMI Worldwide (the owner of the Stanley brand), where culture and succession planning went hand in hand. The CEO and leadership team lived the values, held open forums, and celebrated wins. They didnt just plan for future leaders; they developed them into leaders. When growth accelerated, the bench was ready. One company had a spreadsheet. The other had a system. The difference was everything. The Succession Reality Turnover remains high. The Work Institute projects that 3540 million employees will voluntarily quit in 2025, even as overall quit rates soften. That includes top performers you cant afford to lose. Employee tenure is shrinking, too. For those under 35, the median is just 2.7 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Replacing leaders can cost up to 200% of their annual salary, per Gallup and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and it takes more than a year for new hires to become fully productive. To make matters worse, 38% of new hires leave within their first year, often before being considered for promotions. Meanwhile, DDI reports only 20% of HR leaders believe their workforce is future-ready. Without a deliberate pipeline, companies expose themselves to leadership gaps, stalled strategies, and avoidable financial hits. From Planning to Culture Succession planning isnt a list of names; its a culture of growth. That means development is ongoing, not episodic. Leaders are accountable for building their bench. Talent sharing crosses functions and geographies. Data guides investment in development. A proactive succession process signals to employees that advancement is real, not theoretical. It drives engagement, strengthens retention, and ensures seamless transitions when leadership inevitably changes. Most importantly, it tells your people: your future has a place here. Treat Succession Like a KPI The companies that succeed dont treat succession as a side project. They operationalize it. That means: Measuring it like a KPI. Leadership bench strength should be reviewed with the same rigor as financial results. At Amazon, where I led succession processes, leadership readiness was tracked as closely as customer metrics through indicators like internal promotion velocity, bench strength ratios, time-to-fill critical roles, and successor readiness scores. These metrics werent HR dashboardsthey were business metrics. Stress-testing before a crisis. Ask: If this leader left tomorrow, whats our real plan? If the answer is silence, youre not ready. Embedding it into daily development. Succession isnt built once a year in a talent review. Its built through mentoring, stretch projects, and intentional growth opportunities. What Great Succession Planning Looks Like Succession planning isnt about whos next in line. Its about creating a continuous flow of leaders when the business needs it most. Done right, it: Identifies high-potential employees early, using performance + potential, not tenure. Differentiates between ready now and ready in 12 years and develops both. Prepares for both planned exits (retirements) and unplanned ones (attrition, poaching). Aligns talent strategy directly to growth priorities. Assesses the impact of loss. If a leader leaves, what projects stall? What revenue streams are at risk? Balances internal with selective external hires. Leaders should review succession with the same urgency they give to financials. Ask yourself: Do our successors have the skills to succeed today? Are leadership capabilities aligned with future growth? Where are we most vulnerable to leadership gaps? Are we over-reliant on external hires at the expense of internal talent? If the answers are unclear, the plan isnt strong enough. The ROI of Getting It Right Effective succession planning delivers measurable returns. It helps retain top performers, enables smoother transitions, and strengthens culture. When employees see investment in their development, theyre more likely to stay and more likely to be ready. The numbers back it up. DDIs research shows companies with strong leadership pipelines are 2.4 times more likely to financially outperform their peers. Succession isnt a cost center; its a competitive advantage.
Category:
E-Commerce
Were in an age where AI-fueled rapid prototyping and sleek direct-to-consumer startups seem to capture all the attention. But some of the most profound design disruptions didnt start in a founders garage or in the algorithms of artificial intelligence; they were born in the aisles of mainstream consumer stores like Target. In the late 1990s, my company, Michael Graves Design changed the conversation around design with a teakettle that was joyful, affordable, and elegant. It didnt just sit on a stove, it stood for a new idea: Good design was not a luxury, but a right. Targets Design for All programs went on to define America’s expectation that great design should be available to everyone. Design evolved from a styling afterthought into a corporate strategy, and the democratization of design was born. Today, democratic design ethos feels more urgent than ever. As consumers increasingly expect thoughtfulness, beauty, and accessibility from the products they buy, heritage brands have a chance to reclaim center stage. To do that, they need to go beyond nostalgia, and beyond quips like design thinking. They need to lean into design as disruption, using proven frameworks like participatory design, value-sensitive development, and service ecosystems to create meaningful, mass-market innovation. Lets break that down. THE NEW COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: LET THE CONSUMER LEAD The notion of democratic product design is simple: Give consumers a genuine voice in the design process. Many brands have shown that when you allow customers to vote on product features, brands send the powerful signal, were building this with you, which can shift loyalty to your brand and deter competitors from catching up. But the magic only works when the vote is real, shaping what comes next. For legacy brands, this is a powerful opportunity. You dont need to reinvent yourself to resonate; you need to open the design conversation. To us, this means engaging our community to test prototypes to evaluate proposed functional enhancements, to choose colors and finishes, and to ask customers for product categories to explore. DESIGN WITH, NOT FOR: COCREATION AS BRAND STRATEGY The next layer is cocreation, a participatory design methodology drawing from users lived experiences to inform what gets designed and manufactured. Consumers are hyper-attuned to authenticity. Cocreation does more than generate goodwill. It transfers creative ownership, builds emotional stakes, and cultivates a tribe, not just a customer base. Recently, our community helped choose between different finish options for a new teakettle design. Their choice, brushed brass, wasnt what we expected. That insight is shaping our launch and will deepen customer buy-in. When evaluating your own product development process, think of it in four pillars: Dialogue: Do we invite open, two-way feedback? Access: Are we sharing tools and context with users? Transparency: Do users know how their input affects outcomes? Shared risk/reward: Are they more than just participants? By deploying this framework, our community shares product ideas and their own life hacks for existing items, and this helps shape mass produced designs. THE CASE FOR VALUE-SENSITIVE DESIGN Design isnt neutral. It carries implicit signals about who its for, what it enables, and what it assumes. Thats where value sensitive design (VSD) comes in: an ethical design approach adapted from technology design, embedding values like accessibility at every phase of development. VSD begins with a set of human values. From there, you iterate: Conceptual investigation: What values are at play? Empirical research: What do users want or need? Technical exploration: How can we embed these values in the final design? We used VSD to create a line of bathroom safety products for Pottery Barn. These product types, including grab bars, are often stigmatized and overlooked. No one necessarily wants a grab bar. VSD helped us turn these functional aids into affirming, well-crafted objects with functional enhancements, like combining them with a toilet paper or towel holder. The designs reflect other consumer fixtures, with materials, proportions, and lines reflecting style, cache, and aspiration. Customers shared that these aids dont scream medical. They look like they belong in a thoughtfully designed home, not a hospital. People can finally choose to equally value safety and style. Thats VSD in actiondesigning dignity into daily life. THINK ECOSYSTEM, NOT ENDCAP Brands must recognize that products are no longer isolated SKUs, theyre part of a broader service ecosystem. A teakettle isnt just a tool. It starts your morning ritual, fills your kitchen with sound and steam, and maybe even appears in your next Instagram story. Understanding that web, and intentionally designing within it, multiplies product resonance. A product lives in routines, rituals, and spaces. When we honor that, we make more than goods. We make meaning. Legacy brands can lead hereby connecting thee dots into a more cohesive user experience. THE PLAYBOOK: FROM LEGACY TO LOYALTY Democratizing design isnt a campaign, its a commitment. Heres how legacy brands can turn that into a strategy: Step 1: Run consumer-driven design sprints, votes, submissions, and A/B tests early in the product development cycle. Step 2: Activate cocreation programs with transparency and shared creative ownership. Step 3: Integrate values mapping and empathy interviews into the design brief generation stage. Step 4: Position each product within a lifestyle ecosystem: rituals, routines, and cultural meaning. Step 5: Measure not just sales, but sentiment, engagement, loyalty, and brand pride. HERITAGE ISNT A HURDLE, ITS A LAUNCHPAD The best design doesnt demand attention, it earns it over time through usefulness, delight, and emotional clarity. Legacy brands are uniquely poised to champion that mission by doubling down on the radical idea that good design belongs to everyone. Design isnt the garnish, its the strategy. And legacy brands that democratize that strategy by inviting their customers in wont just stay relevant, theyll take advantage of their inherent scale to lead again. Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
Category:
E-Commerce
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