 |
|
|
|||||
Brittany Poulin and Kate Adams each realized that the other was their work person when they met at their PR job six years ago on a Zoom call. Both zero in on a simple compliment Adams gave Poulin on a Lilly Pulitzer dress as the moment they knew. I was like, Oh, Poulin recalls. Thank you for recognizing that. Before long, it became apparent that the two shared a bond beyond fashion sense. They had similar backgrounds, common views, former straight-A students, grew up in Catholic households. And most of all, trust in each other. We never really had that conversation of, Okay, we’re a team. But I will defend her tooth and nail until my dying breath, Poulin says. And I know she’ll do the same for me. Since then, Poulin has traveled from her Orlando homebase to visit Adams in Boston; this past summer, they spent time together at Adams wedding at the Jersey shore. Lots has been written about the red flags to spot in coworkers: self-centered leeches, narcissists, energy vampires, bad bosses. But what about green flags for people you want to be around? How can you find the coworkers who uplift, advocate, help, and defend? These coworkersthese office alliesare more than simple happy hour pals. Theyre the anti-narcissistic stalwarts that can anchor you in the workplace, and help transform your entire career. In this story (for Premium members only), youll learn: How to spot those green flags that someone is a potential workplace ally or BFF Why this particular type of workplace friendship is vital to your career growth prospects and ultimate happiness The best thing you can do to make your workplace friendships stronger BUILDING BONDS Jim Harter, Gallups chief scientist for Workplace Management and Wellbeing, maintains that having someone whos a close workplace ally can deliver a number of benefits: boosting your confidence, standing up for you, championing you when youre not around, giving you honest advice, helping you network, and giving you a safe space to vent. Not to mention, having a ride-or-die in your corner helps job performance, provides perspective, and makes you happier overall, among other benefits. Gallup research from 2022 found that employees with workplace best friends are significantly more likely to be more productive, engage team members, and share ideas. Adams says she immediately admired Poulin, who has always been more senior in her work role, for her realness and good judgment when giving advice or speaking to coworkers or clients. I was like, This is someone I can trust. This is someone I can go to. And people really respect her at work for that, as well, she says. Each says they use the other as a sounding board when theyre trying to navigate a work situation, or to gauge their own reactions and responses. Navigating the waters of management sometimes can be a little weird, especially, I think, as women too, where you want to be liked and you don’t want to come off as being rude or being bossy, she says. She adds Poulin is honest with her from not just a workplace perspective, but from a friend perspective, too. IN SEARCH OF GREEN FLAGS We often stumble into office allyships naturally and without having to tryAdams compliment on that dress just organically blossomed into something more. But experts do cite some things to look for as you scan your workplace horizons for authentic, trustworthy people. Someone consistently displaying good character is one sign that this is someone you can trust, says workplace risk and culture strategist Kelley Bonner. They’re not just nice because it’s the boss or someone of high position. They’re like this regardless of people’s background and regardless of the setting, she says. Another green flag? They give credit where credit is due, Bonner says, or speaking up on someone elses behalf when something is unfair, like if a colleague tells an inappropriate joke. It shows consistency and integrity, she says. Also look for people who leave you feeling good, says friendship expert Shasta Nelson, author of The Business of Friendship. That is, they dont leave you drained, or filled with negativity. At the end of the day, who are the people that leave you feeling most accepted and most liked? she says. Whereas the red-flag opposite is someone who makes you feel like we never quite know where they stand. Other times, an office ally is someone who just meets you where you are. The number-one way you can connect with somebody, and this is coming from my therapy background, is just validating what it is they’re experiencing,” says licensed psychologist Candice Balluru, founder of The Workplace Psychologist. They may have deep insight into some aspect of your life where you need to be supported, such as being a working parent, or navigating a climb up the corporate ladder. And not just someone who listens to you vent about the RTO policy and agrees with yousomeone who might take another step with some sort of action, and follows through. Its one thing for a colleague to offer to introduce you to someone who can help, but when they actually make that introductionthat’s a sign that theyre invested in your success, the experts say. THE POWER OF THESE ALLIES Harter says that finding people who will be objective and honest with you about work situations is also important in building trust. If trust is built, critical feedback is more likely to be taken as constructive feedback, he says. So, is the process of seeking out office allies simply looking for the opposite of those toxic coworkers? Not exactly, says Nelson. It’s not just a bunch of one-off traits. Its the collective of these things being present, and that foundation being built incrementally and safely over time, she adds. And when you give these friendships room to grow, they can improve your life outside of work, too, says psychologist, professor, and friendship expert Marisa G. Franco, author of the New York Times bestselling book Platonic: How the Science of Attachment an Help You Makeand KeepFriends. To build true allyship, Franco recommends extending the friendship outside of the office by inviting your coworker to join you for a walk, drink, or meal, which she calls repotting,” term coined by friendship expert Ryan Hubbard. And just as repotting an already thriving plant makes it thrive even more, doing this with your office ally makes your friendship more lasting and sustainable, since youll become comfortable seeing each other in other settings. That’s going to make for a closer connection than if you’re only at work, she says. Balluru advises staying open to becoming allies with people who might not be your typical friend outside of the office, as well: Work is a controlled environment where you don’t really get to choose who you work with, she says. That provides opportunities to form friendships across generations, personality types, and other differences. Adams says the bottom line is to look for people who would get a thumbs-up from people who love you. So while you want to improve your ability to spot your next office allydont let your ability to spot toxicity rust, either. Look for someone who’s giving off an energy that your mom would be proud of, she advises. Steer away from the bad egg energy.
Category:
E-Commerce
When using AI, most of us worry about the technology hallucinatingtelling us lies, misinformation, or nonsense that it presents as fact. But legendary fashion designer Norma Kamali has no such fear. Over the past two years, Kamali has been using AI extensively in her work. Kamali, who recently celebrated her 80th birthday, partnered with computer scientists to create an AI platform based on her five decades of work as a designer, and she also took an AI course at MIT to better understand how the technology works. “These scientists asked if they could download my brain,” she says. “They would isolate my intellectual property, brand history, and archive. At first I said, “No way.” But I’ve come to see the possibilities for my brand.” Kamali has used her AI platform to design pieces for her own collection, including variations of her famous Sleeping Bag Coat. But she says that as she interacts with the AI, some of her favorite moments are when it hallucinates, generating bizarre images that explode with a strange kind of creativity. “The image is always a surprise,” she says. “If I say something like, I’d like to put a fishtail on this swimsuit worn with a sleeping bag coat, the AI goes crazy. It’s beyond gorgeous in the most art tech, fashion way.” As AI companies continue to refine the technology with the aim of eliminating mistakes, Kamali believes its only a matter of time before hallucinations no longer occur. But she says she’ll be sad when that time comes. In many ways, her open-minded approach to AI is a microcosm of her openness as a designer, which has paved the way to all kinds of unconventional, creative collaborations. “AI, for me, has been a really joyous experience,” she says. “We’re in this little moment in history that will eventually disappear. But then we’ll find other things to excite us.” [Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Fast Company] Kamali launched her label in 1976 and became an overnight sensation when Farrah Fawcett wore one of her red bathing suits in a poster that same year. It’s ironic to Kamali that she first made her name with a swimsuit because she really didn’t like the version that Fawcett had purchased. “I would use my shop as a lab, making six of a new style to test and see what sold,” she recalls. “I had no idea she had come in and bought that one. I really hated it: I didn’t like the fit or anything about it, and quickly took it out of the shop.” Kamali is proudest of the moments when she’s been willing to innovate and explore ideas that to others may have seemed unconventional. She’s often proven to be far ahead of her time. In the early 1970s, for example, she created the Sleeping Bag Coat, inspired by a camping trip. The coat became iconic (its on display at MoMA), at a time when most coats were made of wool. It ended up being a precursor to the puffer coats that are now ubiquitous around the world in cold weather. Another cutting edge-design was her line of Sweats sportswear, which she launched in the 1980s. It was designed to be worn outside of the gym, three decades before the “athleisure” trend would take over modern life. Kamali hasn’t just been willing to take risks with design, she’s also been willing to try new things at retail. In 2003, Target began collaborating with designers to create more affordable versions of their clothing, starting with Isaac Mizrahi and Michael Graves. Walmart, on the other hand, was not known for being particularly design-oriented. But in the early 2000s, Kamali met with a Walmart buyer who proposed a partnership. Much like with AI, Kamali took a minute to think about it before she embraced it. “I was like, Oh my God, I’ve never been to Walmart,” she recalls thinking. Then she realized there was a need for smart, fashion-forward clothes at an affordable price point. She grew up going to public schools in New York City, and she knew there were many parents who didnt attend parent-teacher meetings because they didn’t have the right clothes. There were also teachers who couldnt afford to buy professional-looking clothes on their salaries. “I felt that teachers should dignify the position, and look amazing in front of the kids in their class,” she says. So Kamali created a wardrobe that was everything an adult would need to walk into a school and look polished: a trench coat, a white collared shirt, black trousers, ballet slippers, and pumps. She also worked hard to find manufacturers who could create these products at the best possible quality given the price point, which was less than $20 per item. The popularity of the collection became clear when Kamali noticed that people were reselling these products on eBay for upwards of $200 apiece. Ultimately, Kamali believes the success of her business has been all about being open to going in unconventional directions, and not following the status quo within the industry. This is another moment when she can redefine her work, and Kamali doesn’t want to miss the chance to engage in new creative outlets. There’s a lot of fear, but there’s so much more opportunity,” she says. “I’m having a wonderful time playing around with [AI] and asking it to play with my ideas.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Your company has rolled out AI like its a new office uniform. Everyones using it. And unlike most uniforms, people are using it even when they are told not to. As a result, your inbox clears itself, your reports write themselves, and meetings collapse into neat little summaries at the click of a button. You may be even be fantasizing about sending your digital clone to those pointless meetings, and perhaps your colleagues have done so already (which may explain their perfect attendance record). And yet, theres a difference between outsourcing pointless tasks to AI, and making work better (which also requires you to figure out what to do with the time you save). Plainly put, if you are running faster in the wrong direction you will only get to the wrong place faster. This may explain the recent resurgence of an old paradox, Robert Solows law, which in the late 1980s noted that You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” What are you really using AI for? Right now, most companies treat AI like an espresso shot for knowledge workers. A jolt to help fire off emails, draft decks, or summarize meetings. It feels like magic, but magic tricks dont grow the bottom line. Saving a few minutes here and there is like sweeping the kitchen when the roof is leaking. Part of AIs seduction is its smooth, conversational interface. Ask, and you shall receive. But business value doesnt appear by asking polite questions: It usually requires hard structural change. And so far, AIs biggest impact has been making existing processes leaner, often by replacing the interns and juniors who used to do that work. Think of it as corporate liposuction: It trims the fat, but it doesnt build new muscle. To be sure, as the great Peter Drucker noted, there is nothing so useless as to make more efficiently what should not be done at all, which may explain why, in a resurgence of Solows law, AI is everywhere except in the productivity stats. Cutting costs makes humans twitch Behavioral economists call it loss aversion: We hate losing more than we enjoy winning. Announce that AI will eliminate jobs, and people panic, even when the math adds up. History, though, shows a different pattern: As old tasks disappear, new ones emerge. Just as the rise of spreadsheets created a need for finance analysts, AI will create demand for data governance, ethics, and human oversight. The long arc of technology bends toward job growth, but the bumps along the way are brutal. The real promise of AI isnt subtraction, its addition Netflix recently used generative AI to add an impossible scene to a show, something too costly and complex with traditional methods. Thats the story leaders should chase: holding baseline costs steady and producing something better. AI at its best is not a fancier calculator; its a time machine that lets you create what yesterday was impossible. So what makes a great AI project? Right now, too many organizations are wandering around with a hammer, mistaking everything for a nail. A CEOs blanket mandate, everyone must use AI, is like ordering an army to march without telling them where the battle is. Great AI projects share three ingredients: Volume: Attack the most common, repetitive activities that drive your business. Shave seconds off the thing done a million times, and youve found your goldmine. Variability: Raise the floor. Get average performers closer to your best. Its like tightening a symphony so fewer notes are off-key. Human Glue: Fix the broken joints between systems. AI shines when it eliminates the soul-crushing cut-and-paste that holds organizations hostage. But heres the kicker: speeding up one cog in a broken machine doesnt make the whole machine run better. Unless you reimagine end-to-end processes (often across teams and departments) youre just moving bottlenecks around, and should really not expect great results. Data: the ceiling that caps your ambitions AI is like a gourmet chef: It can cook only with the ingredients you give it. If your data is stale, inconsistent, or scattered across warring silos, dont expect a Michelin-starred meal. Most firms have exquisite data in a few areas (finance, operations), but HR and talent data? Thats like a pantry filled with mystery cans. You know who got promoted, but not why. You feel when a team clicks, but cant quantify it in machine-readable terms. Without proprietary, well-structured data, your competitive advantage is just reheating the same meal as everyone else. Culture: the silent killer Even the sharpest AI project can crash into an organizations immune system. A culture obsessed with cost-cutting breeds fear. Misaligned incentives choke collaboration. A weak communication culture makes change management impossible. Remember, 80% of change projects fail, and AI doesnt get a free pass (it is still a change management task, and very much led by humans). Layoffs may feel like the obvious shortcut, but decades of research show that slashing headcount first is like burning the furniture to heat the house. It buys a little time, but undermines long-term survival. Leaders need to show courage, humility, and clarity. Employees, meanwhile, can choose to be architects of change instead of passive victimsreimagining work, learning new skills, and using AI as a career lever rather than a threat. Doin Better Right now, too many firms are playing the corporate equivalent of toddler soccer: everyone chasing the ball, no strategy, lots of shouting. Winning with AI depends on three foundations: The right technology, deployed against the right problems The right data, accurate and unique The right culture, aligned and prepared for change Everything else is noise. The lesson is clear: AI is not the main course, it is the fire. It can burn the house down, or it can cook a feast no one thought possible. What separates the two outcomes is not the cleverness of the algorithms, but the imagination of the people deploying them. If leaders see AI only as a knife for trimming costs, they will eventually cut into the bone of their own organizations. But if they see it as a telescope (an instrument that lets us glimpse horizons we couldnt see before) then AI becomes a catalyst for growth, innovation, and human potential. The future wont be won by those who use AI most quickly, but by those who use it most wisely: to create new value, to elevate human talent, and to turn technological possibility into strategic reality.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||