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A few years ago, our team was preparing to launch a major update when we hit an unexpected snag. The accessibility team flagged that our new voice search featurewhile technically impressivewas failing users with speech impairments. Marketing was eager to highlight the cutting-edge AI capabilities. Engineering was proud of the breakthrough. But for a significant portion of our community, this “innovation” was actually a step backward. This moment crystallized something I’d been thinking about for years: product development never happens in a vacuum. Every decision we make sits at the intersection of three powerful forces I call the three P’s: People (the communities we serve), Politics (the internal dynamics and external pressures that shape our work), and Product (the manifestation of our choices, trade-offs, and values). Great product leadership isn’t about avoiding these tensionsit’s about navigating them without losing sight of our purpose or compromising our values. The companies that do this well don’t just build better products; they build products that genuinely improve lives and change society. P1: PeopleThe Customer at the Center When we talk about “users,” we often default to thinking about individual consumers. But every product decision ripples outward, affecting not just individual users but entire communities, families, and society at large. Take something as seemingly simple as a default setting. When we design the TV home screen, we’re not just organizing appswe’re shaping how families spend their evening hours together. Do we prioritize the latest blockbuster movies, or do we surface educational content? Do we make it easy to discover local news, or do we default to global content? These choices affect real conversations happening in real living rooms. The rise of inclusive design has taught us that accessibility isn’t just a moral imperativeit’s a business one. When we design voice controls with speech impairments in mind, we didn’t just serve users with disabilities; we created features that helped anyone using the TV in a noisy environment or trying to search quietly while others were sleeping. Designing for the margins often leads to innovations that benefit everyone. But where it gets tricky is balancing individual desires with collective needs. Our data might show that users spend more time on certain types of content, but does that mean we should optimize for maximum engagement, or should we consider the broader implications of what we’re promoting and how do we balance these? The biggest risk I see among product teams is designing for internal stakeholders instead of external users. It’s easy to fall into the trap of building what impresses investors, what satisfies regulatory requirements, or what looks good in quarterly reviews. But products built for boardrooms rarely succeed in living rooms. P2: PoliticsThe Power Structures Around the Work Let’s be honest about something most product leaders don’t like to discuss: every product decision is political, in the sense that it involves navigating competing interests, conflicting priorities, and power structures both inside and outside our organizations. Internally, we’re constantly balancing conflicting roadmaps. The business development team wants partnerships that drive revenue. The engineering team wants to optimize for performance. The design team advocates for user experience. Legal wants to minimize risk. Each perspective is valid, but they often point in different directions. I learned this lesson early in my career when we were deciding whether to optimize for channel placement. The partnership team saw revenue opportunities. The user experience team worried about bloatware. The content team wanted to ensure quality standards. The regulatory team flagged antitrust concerns. No single stakeholder was wrong, but finding a path forward required understanding how all these perspectives intersected. External politics add another layer of complexity. We operate in an environment of increasing regulatory scrutiny, shifting cultural expectations, and evolving privacy norms. What was acceptable product behavior five years ago may be considered invasive today. What satisfies regulators in one market may be irrelevant or counterproductive in another. The challenge isn’t to eliminate these political pressuresthat’s impossible. The challenge is to navigate them with transparency and integrity while staying true to our core mission. This means having difficult conversations about trade-offs, being clear about our decision-making criteria, and sometimes accepting that we can’t make everyone happy. P3: ProductThe Expression of Everything Here’s the reality that many product leaders struggle to accept: your product is never neutral. Every feature you build, every default you set, every interaction you design is an expression of your values and priorities. The product is where the rubber meets the roadwhere all the considerations about people and politics get translated into actual user experiences. Consider the fundamental tensions that every product grapples with: privacy versus personalization, freedom of expression versus content moderation, centralized control versus decentralized empowerment. There’s no “right” answer to these trade-offs, but there are thoughtful approaches and thoughtless ones. When we were designing product recommendation engines, we had to wrestle with this directly. More personalization meant better recommendations but also meant collecting more data about viewing habits. How much personalization was worth how much privacy? The answer wasn’t in our analyticsit was in our values and our understanding of what our users genuinely needed from the product. The most important product decisions are often invisible to users. What you choose to default to, what you decide to hide, what you make easy versus what you make difficultthese are ethical and strategic choices that shape behavior in profound ways. Every “minor” UX decision is actually a statement about what you think is important. This is especially true as we integrate AI into our products. The algorithms we build don’t just process datathey shape attention, influence decisions, and ultimately affect how people spend their time and mental energy. With that power comes responsibility. The Two Questions That Cut Through Complexity After years of navigating these tensions, I’ve come to rely on two core questions that can cut through almost any complexity: “What do our customers really want?” “What’s the best strategy for meeting our goals in a way that is in line with our values?” These might sound simple, but they’re deceptively powerful. The magic happens when you ask both questions together. The first question forces us to look beyond surface-level data and really understand the deeper needs and contexts of the people we serve. The second question ensures that we’re not just chasing metrics or market pportunities, but building something we can be proud of. The 3Pspeople, politics, and productwill always be in motion, and they’ll often be in tension with each other. But the tension is where the interesting work happens. It’s where we’re forced to think more deeply, design more thoughtfully, and lead more intentionally. True product leadership means being willing to have difficult conversations, to push back on stakeholders when necessary, and to make decisions that serve long-term value over short-term convenience. The companies that navigate the 3Ps well don’t just build successful productsthey build products that make the world a little bit better. The choices we make in conference rooms and code reviews ultimately play out in living rooms and communities around the world. In a time when technology’s impact on society is under increasing scrutiny, that’s not just good business. It’s essential leadership.
Category:
E-Commerce
Deadly and destructive flash flooding in Texas and several other states in July 2025 is raising questions about the nations flood maps and their ability to ensure that communities and homeowners can prepare for rising risks. The same region of Texas Hill Country where a flash flood on July 4 killed more than 130 people was hit again with downpours a week later, forcing searchers to temporarily pause their efforts to find missing victims. Other states, including New Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Iowa, also saw flash flood damage in July. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agencys flood maps are intended to be the nations primary tool for identifying flood risks. Originally developed in the 1970s to support the National Flood Insurance Program, these maps, known as Flood Insurance Rate Maps, or FIRMs, are used to determine where flood insurance is required for federally backed mortgages, to inform local building codes and land-use decisions, and to guide flood plain management strategies. In theory, the maps enable homeowners, businesses, and local officials to understand their flood risk and take appropriate steps to prepare and mitigate potential losses. A federal flood map of Kerrville, Texas, with the Guadalupe River winding through the middle in purple, shows areas considered to have a 1% annual chance of flooding in blue and a 0.2% annual chance of flooding in tan. During a flash flood on July 4, 2025, the river rose more than 30 feet at Kerrville. [Image: FEMA] But while FEMA has improved the accuracy and accessibility of the maps over time with better data, digital tools, and community input, the maps still dont capture everythingincluding the changing climate. There are areas of the country that flood, some regularly, that dont show up on the maps as at risk. I study flood-risk mapping as a university-based researcher and at First Street, an organization created to quantify and communicate climate risk. In a 2023 assessment using newly modeled flood zones with climate-adjusted precipitation records, we found that more than twice as many properties across the country were at risk of a 100-year flood than the FEMA maps identified. Even in places where the FEMA maps identified a flood risk, we found that the federal mapping process, its overreliance on historical data, and political influence over the updating of maps can lead to maps that dont fully represent an areas risk. What FEMA flood maps miss FEMAs maps are essential tools for identifying flood risks, but they have significant gaps that limit their effectiveness. One major limitation is that they dont consider flooding driven by intense bursts of rain. The maps primarily focus on river channels and coastal flooding, largely excluding the risk of flash flooding, particularly along smaller waterways such as streams, creeks, and tributaries. This limitation has become more important in recent years due to climate change. Rising global temperatures can result in more frequent extreme downpours, leaving more areas vulnerable to flooding, yet unmapped by FEMA. A map of a section of Kerr County, Texas, where a deadly flood struck on July 4, 2025, compares the FEMA flood maps 100-year flood zone (red) to First Streets more detailed 100-yea flood zone (blue). The more detailed map includes flash flood risks along smaller creeks and streams. [Image: Jeremy Porter] For example, when flooding from Hurricane Helene hit unmapped areas around Asheville, North Carolina, in 2024, it caused a huge amount of uninsured damage to properties. Even in areas that are mapped, like the Camp Mystic site in Kerr County, Texas, that was hit by a deadly flash flood on July 4, 2025, the maps may underestimate their risk because of a reliance on historic data and outdated risk assessments. Political influence can fuel long delays Additionally, FEMAs mapping process is often shaped by political pressures. Local governments and developers sometimes fight high-risk designations to avoid insurance mandates or restrictions on development, leading to maps that may understate actual risks and leave residents unaware of their true exposure. An example is New York Citys appeal of a 2015 FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps update. The delay in resolving the citys concerns has left it with maps that are roughly 20 years old, and the current mapping project is tied up in legal red tape. On average, it takes five to seven years to develop and implement a new FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map. As a result, many maps across the U.S. are significantly out of date, often failing to reflect current land use, urban development, or evolving flood risks from extreme weather. This delay directly affects building codes and infrastructure planning, as local governments rely on these maps to guide construction standards, development approvals, and flood mitigation projects. Ultimately, outdated maps can lead to underestimating flood risks and allowing vulnerable structures to be built in areas that face growing flood threats. How technology advances can help New advances in satellite imaging, rainfall modeling, and high-resolution lidar, which is similar to radar but uses light, make it possible to create faster, more accurate flood maps that capture risks from extreme rainfall and flash flooding. However, fully integrating these tools requires significant federal investment. Congress controls FEMAs mapping budget and sets the legal framework for how maps are created. For years, updating the flood maps has been an unpopular topic among many publicly elected officials, because new flood designations can trigger stricter building codes, higher insurance costs, and development restrictions. A map of Houston, produced for a 2022 study by researchers at universities and First Street, shows flood risk shifting over the next 30 years as climate change worsens. Blue areas are todays 100-year flood-risk zones. The red areas reflect the same zones in 2050. [Image: Oliver Wing et al., 2022] In recent years, the rise of climate risk analytics models and private flood risk data have allowed the real estate, finance and insurance industries to rely less on FEMAs maps. These new models incorporate forward-looking climate data, including projections of extreme rainfall, sea-level rise and changing storm patternsfactors FEMAs maps generally exclude. Real estate portals like Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, and Homes.com now provide property-level flood risk scores that consider both historical flooding and future climate projections. The models they use identify risks for many properties that FEMA maps dont, highlighting hidden vulnerabilities in communities across the U.S. Research shows that the availability, and accessibility, of climate data on these sites has started driving property-buying decisions that increasingly take climate change into account. Implications for the future As homebuyers understand more about a propertys flood risks, that may shift the desirability of some locations over time. Those shifts will have implications for property valuations, community tax-revenue assessments, population migration patterns, and a slew of other considerations. However, while these may feel like changes being brought on by new data, the risk was already there. What is changing is peoples awareness. The federal government has an important role to play in ensuring that accurate risk assessments are available to individuals and communities everywhere. As better tools and models evolve for assessing risk evolve, FEMAs risk maps need to evolve, too. This article, originally published July 12, 2025, has been updated with another round of flooding in Texas on July 13. Jeremy Porter is a professor of quantitative methods in the social sciences at the City University of New York. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
The feeling that you’re not quite qualified enough for a job, yet somehow managed to slip through the cracks without anyone noticing, is known as imposter syndrome. The sneaky form of self-doubt can show up across occupations (and even outside of work). But while imposter syndrome was once thought to impact women at higher rates then men, a new study reveals work environments, not an individuals gender, may be what’s actually fueling the phenomenon.The research, which was published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, included six experimental studies on how competitive work environments can cause an employee to feel like an imposter. The researchers surveyed employees on how competitive their work environment was, while also collecting information on age, gender, educational level, experience level, and how competitive their personalities were. The researchers found employees were more likely to admit to feeling like imposters when they worked for an organization that emphasized competition over cooperation. Likewise, those who expressed feelings of imposter syndrome were also more likely to compare themselves to colleagues that were performing better than them. Previous research has suggested that women have higher rates of imposter syndrome. However, while women may still experience gender discrimination at work, the new research rejects the idea that imposter syndrome is inherently female. “Our findings nuance this gendered perspective as we find no evidence that women report higher levels of impostorism and/or that competitive work climates differently impact mens versus womens impostorism,” the researchers wrote. Imposter syndrome is not just a minor annoyance for those who experience itit can seriously affect mental health. The feeling of not being capable, qualified, or good enough, can lead to upticks in anxiety, depression, burnout, as well as the inability to even enjoy hard-earned successes at work. The report called for workplaces that are prone to fostering imposter syndrome in employees to examine their practices, choosing cooperation and inclusiveness over a competitive culture, rather than placing blame on employees who dont feel good enough.
Category:
E-Commerce
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