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At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we enable high-level women to mentor each other to achieve personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organizations founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring. This month, I introduce you to Malika Begin, the CEO and founder of Begin Development, an organization development firm based in Malibu, California. Known for her signature approach to building heart-centered, high-performing cultures, Malika partners with leading organizations to strengthen executive teams, design transformational leadership programs, build cross-functional trust, and create systems where people and performance thrive together. Malika believes the most effective leaders of the future will not only embrace technology but will also deepen their humanity. In her words, Self-awareness isnt softits strategic. Q: Everyones talking about AI, productivity, and innovation. Why talk about self-awareness right now? Malika Begin: Because the more the world automates, the more human leadership matters. AI can replicate skills, but it cant replicate self. When everything is shifting around you, knowing who you areyour values, your patterns, and your impactbecomes your anchor. You have to be clear on your motivators, how you engage with others, and how you distinctly move through the world. AI can replicate skills, but it cant replicate self. Brené Brown often says that leadership used to be about muscle, then brains, and now its about heart. I couldnt agree more. The heart of leadership is self-awareness. Its empathy. Its the courage to show up as you are. The leaders who know themselves and are committed to continued growth and development make better decisions, build stronger teams, and create workplaces where people actually want to stay and invest. Q: Youve said that professional assessments are mirrors, not boxes. How does that fit into this idea of human and heart-centered leadership? Malika: Tools like CliftonStrengths, DiSC, Strengths Deployment Inventory, or Enneagram dont define you; they describe you. They give you language for what you already sense about yourself. The point isnt to label people but to understand patterns: how you lead, how you communicate, how you react under stress. That insight is gold right now. When you can name your wiring, you can also recognize it in others. Thats what builds trust, belonging, and compassion, everything that makes a team feel human and valued again. The value isnt in the label, its in the insight. Q: So, self-awareness is also about connection? Malika: Completely. Self-awareness is the gateway to empathy, and empathy is the gateway to performance. Gallup found that teams that focus on their strengths every day are six times more engaged and 12% more productive. But thats only part of the story. Leaders who understand their own style and the styles around them create psychological safety, clearer communication, and faster trust, which directly translates to lower turnover, higher collaboration, and stronger results. People dont just work better; they work together better. In a business environment where retention, engagement, and innovation drive profit, that kind of relational intelligence has real ROI. You cant automate trust. You have to build itand self-awareness is where it starts. If AI is scaling data, then self-awareness is how we scale connection. We talk a lot about psychological safety, but it starts with emotional honesty. You cant create a sense of belonging if youre disconnected from yourself. Q: You tell leaders, Stop auditioning for roles that were never meant for you. What do you mean by that? Malika: Its freedom. When you know who you are, you stop wasting energy trying to be everything to everyone. You make decisions that align with your values. You build relationships that align with your strengths. In a world thats constantly shifting, self-awareness is your competitive edge. Author Tasha Eurich told the Harvard Business Review in a podcast that self-awareness is the meta-skill of the 21st century. The best leaders arent defined by certainty; theyre defined by clarity. Q: Whats one practical way to start developing this skill? Malika: Write your superpower statement. Its one or two sentences that capture you at your besthow you show up and the value you bring. Something like: Im at my best when Im focused on possibilities and relationships. My positivity helps others feel seen and confident in their own strengths. Its not bragging. Its clarity. And clarity builds confidence. Clarity is contagious in your organization, and its the thing organizations need now more than ever. Q: If you had to summarize your philosophy of leadership in one line? Malika: When you know yourself, you stop performing and start connecting. The future belongs to leaders who lead with heart, who pair self-awareness with empathy, courage, and authenticity. Machines might build efficiency, but humans build meaning and connection. The meaning and connection are everything. Larraine Segil is founder, chair, and CEO of the Exceptional Women Alliance.
Category:
E-Commerce
Leadership is becoming both easier and harder. Artificial intelligence has revolutionized how we work, especially over the past year, as its transitioned from a secret aid to a welcomed enterprise partner. As a partner, it streamlines work processes, leaving more time for big-picture decisions and strategizing. Each decision, in turn, becomes more impactful. And honestly, it can be overwhelming. Leaders need people around them who challenge their thinking and keep their foot on the gas for innovation. According to Harvard Business Impacts 2025 Global Leadership Development Study, respondents are looking for more strategy and creativity from leaders. People now deem skills like leading change, fostering innovation, strategic thinking, and decision making more important than last year. These insights reveal the expectations people have about business needs. How can leaders ensure they meet these expectations and rise to the occasion? They can either ask people or technology. The catch is, theyre both likely to agree with you. With people, it’s human nature to agree. Team members get in the habit of wanting to impress their boss, avoid confrontation, and be nice. Ive seen this firsthand in the two years since I became a CEO. While it can be a nice ego boost, Ive become apprehensive about any type of perennial support. WHY YES IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Yes might be one of the most positive words in the world, but in the business world, it can be counterproductive. Why? Because its overused. We hear it too much, especially in leadership. Sometimes its hard to tell when a person is being supportive of a genuinely great idea, or if theyre just afraid to ruffle any feathers. AI has intensified this concept. Large language models (LLMs) are the ultimate yes man. Ive found they reinforce my perspective by default unless explicitly instructed to counter me. They often double down, even giving me some of my most complimentary feedback. Even when chatting with colleagues online, its so easy to merely react with a thumbs-up emoji over Slack, exacerbating this phenomenon. People and LLMs have both been trained to agree. But progress stems from challenging that status quo. Leaders responsibility now entails building teams that question both human and technology-generated work. Our value lies in asking the nuanced questions that an algorithm cant. HOW TO BREAK THE LOOP Break the loop by finding ways to incorporate dissent. For me, this opportunity arises whenever we do biannual planning at Scribd, Inc. Its a chance to dig into the nitty gritty, strategize, explore different paths, and think big. And its where I try to ensure we dont fall into the trap of silence after someone asks, Any questions? I dont pretend to know it all, but here are a few guidelines Ive found beneficial to encourage this kind of open, strategic conversation. 1. Admit your mistakes. When youre open, it reassures people that imperfection is okay. Make it clear that youre not perfect, that you dont know all the answers, and you sometimes make mistakes. This can prompt others not just to vocalize their own mistakes, but to feel comfortable pushing back and engaging in productive debate as a partner. 2. Foster a culture that treats mistakes as learnings. One thing I love at Scribd is that everyone regularly shares their wins as well as their setbacks, whether in a company all-hands, monthly metrics meetings, or just a quick update in Slack. Beyond the transparency, this allows teams to highlight what they learned when something didnt go as planned. Ultimately, thats a win. When people are afraid to fail, they become scared to try anything new. A culture of learning counters this. 3. Bring in the devils advocate. Encourage what if questions to promote deeper conversations. Model this behavior. After you propose something, instead of closing with What do you think?which can yield a one-word answerask a conversation starter like, What are the potential outcomes here, positive and negative? 4. Give context. Instead of issuing vague asks that result in employees spinning their wheels to deliver something over-the-top or not aligned with your vision, include the why. Share your intent. Where ultimately do you want to end up? This calibrates the end state, and allows the team freedom to execute. 5. Encourage your people. Build a good team around you. Make them experts in their area. Include them in decisions. Stimulate debate. Get a variety of different types of people. Encourage them to instill this behavior in their own teams. In todays world, we all need to work a little harder to break out of our comfortable bubble. Be open to learn, debate, and be wrong. And start looking at disagreement as positive. Tony Grimminck is CEO of Scribd, Inc.
Category:
E-Commerce
In a recent meeting with a large retailer, my contact shared that each buyer on her team receives over 100 emails daily referencing data on a variety of topics, from out-of-stock issues and inaccurate pricing to recommendations for driving e-commerce. On the supplier side, the situation is similar: delivering Monday morning reporting to retailers, preparing for line reviews, monitoring out-of-stocks, and pushing new promotions. Emails and Excel are still the primary drivers of the $5 trillion retail industry, in the U.S. alone. The opportunity for error in complex retail supply chains is immense. If demand forecasting and inventory management across thousands of store locations are inaccurate, the cost is tremendous. The combined cost of overstock and out-of-stocks are $1.77 trillion globally, just in 2023. These if only moments are coordination failures, and the root cause lies with siloed data and manual processes. Tariff uncertainties, climate change, and geopolitical instability are driving additional waste and operational inefficiencies that strain an industry already operating on razor-thin margins. The disconnect between retailers and suppliers is unsustainable and presents the most challenging operational issue across highly complex retail supply chains. COLLABORATIVE AI AGENTS Improved collaboration between retailers, suppliers, and AI technology can overcome disconnects. Those gaps can be between product design, procurement, marketing and promotional planning, and product distribution. AI is often described as something a single company should leverage, but verticalized AI agents that specialize in retail can streamline manual tasks and facilitate collaboration across multiple companies so humans can spend time on what drives the business: being strategic. Collaboration is at the core of a successful retail strategy. Agentic AI will change the way retailers and suppliers communicate and collaborate by surfacing alerts and making autonomous decisions that give retail the optimization boost it needs. It will not completely hand over management to agents, but it will enable humans to focus on higher level collaboration and informed decision making. Currently, retailers, suppliers, and distributors each hold only a slice of the truth, thanks to complex workflows, fragmented data, and cross-company processes that lack connectivity, transparency, and context. AI agents can automate, negotiate, coordinate, and problem solve across organizational boundaries. They turn coordination into a competitive advantage. Companies that master agentic AI orchestration will (finally) gain complete visibility and optimization. AI agents will become specialized AI teammates that coordinate across organizations to achieve shared goals and resolve problems independently and proactively. These autonomous agents can share insights (without exposing sensitive raw data), adapt to changing conditions in real time, and offer a path forward for retailers and their consumer packaged goods (CPG) partners to achieve immediate and long-term operational goals. Notably, an agentic AI network requires more than technology itself. Many organizations focus on the latest agent-to-agent and multi-agent tools and frameworks, such as A2A, Microsoft AutoGen, or CrewAI. These tools support autonomous actions and support cooperation between AI agents, but they do not solve the more complex problem of building trust and standard AI operating procedures across companies. Beyond the base technologies, these networks need a governance framework. Large enterprises are already adopting standards such as ISO 42001 and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. These provide essential guidance, but they do not create the integral shared smart contract, a set of agreed-upon rules and goals that everyone trusts. Once this advanced framework is established, agents can take independent actions within predefined boundaries to work towards common goals shared by retailers and suppliers. For example, price optimization is a critical joint business objective where AI agents can help. By tracking inventory levels, monitoring competitors pricing, and analyzing consumer behavior patterns, agents can recommend pricing adjustments when needed and offer ways to optimize promotional spend to help retailers and suppliers deliver value to their consumers while preserving profitability. AI AGENTS IN ACTION AI agents can address and solve coordination failures across many aspects of retail supply chains. Reducing out-of-stocks: Every empty shelf means lost sales, weakened brand loyalty, and an open door for competitors to capture the shoppers choiceand purchase. Demand forecasting, which relies heavily on lagging data, often misses real-time shifts in demand, resulting in incorrect ordering. For example, phantom inventory (inventory noted as in-store but not actually on shelves due to misplacement), results in misaligned forecasts. AI agents can improve out-of-stock rates and deliver value directly to the bottom line for CPGs and their retail partners. Manage trade promotions: Trade promotions are one of the CPGs largest P&L investments, but they quickly become discounts that drain profits. Poor measurement and inconsistent analysis lead to unprofitable promotions being repeated. CPGs often deploy a one-size-fits-all approach to promotion, offering discounts across categories rather than accounting for shopper and pack dynamics. PwCs recent 2025 Future of Consumer Shopping Survey predicts that the most successful CPG companies will leverage AI to optimize pricing and promotion strategies in the coming years, unlocking significant incremental sales and margin uplift. E-commerce execution: Poor e-commerce execution wastes advertising spend and causes CPGs to cede the digital shelf share to the competition. Attribution and measurement are often muddied by limited cross-channel visibility. Messy product catalogs, missing attributes, or inconsistent product mapping can degrade (re)targeting campaigns. The Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey reports that marketing leaders are increasing their investment in GenAI to improve the efficiency of marketing tasks. By improving media spend effectiveness, AI can support brands in transforming wasted spend into profitable, scalable growth. UNPRECEDENTED COLLABORATION Collaborative AI agents designed for retail represent a significant structural shift in how the industry operates. The most challenging pain points and time-sensitive decisions that were if only we knew moments will be replaced by unprecedented ross-organizational collaboration, driven by informed and autonomous agents, allowing humans to focus on strategy. Are Traasdahl is CEO and founder of Crisp.
Category:
E-Commerce
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