Impact Council

As we put 2023 firmly in the rearview mirror, it’s also time to leave our old ways of thinking in the dust. For too many business leaders, last year’s rallying cry was “We have to do something about AI, and we have to do it now!” The truth is, spending your time and energy on new and improved technology doesn’t mean anything unless you have a goal in sight. Here’s an example: Imagine Michelangelo with a hammer and a rock. He’d surely envision and create something beautiful and meaningful—and with improved tools, he’d…

As the buzz around generative AI (GenAI) has begun to quiet from the fever pitch it reached over the past year, business leaders and their teams are taking a step back and evaluating the technology with a more sober perspective. After a year of dominating news cycles and dinner conversations alike, GenAI is no longer a novelty—it’s being implemented in businesses every day. A recent Gartner survey found that 55% of organizations report they’re increasing investment in GenAI.  As more and more teams are discovering the…

America’s healthcare system is on the brink. Cracks exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic nearly four years ago have grown and multiplied. Many healthcare systems are operating at a loss, causing hospitals to limit their services or even close, with these lapses in healthcare availability hitting rural and underserved communities the hardest. Healthcare worker staffing shortages are causing declines in care quality and availability nationwide, contributing to an increasing sense of job dissatisfaction and career flight for…

In any high-growth company, there comes a point when the founders, CEOs, and other company leaders are required to scale their own roles to support business growth. This effective “self-scaling” usually comes down to three questions: What does the company need? When is it time to let go? Where to next? Here’s how I saw it play out in my career and what I learned along the way.What does the company need?When I started at Lucid over a decade ago, I met with our cofounders, Karl Sun and Ben Dilts, in a basement in Utah and…

If you are an executive planning for 2024, your scenario planning likely still includes the dreaded “R” word (recession), or at least predictions of slower growth. Add to that the continued emphasis on profitable growth, now the gold standard for business outcomes, and there is no shortage of proposed change initiatives on the table. Effectively the equivalent of New Year’s resolutions for companies, the real challenge is how to get your company to commit to the change that will yield break-through performance. Change is…

As 2024 nears, it’s time to look ahead to what this year may bring in terms of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity costs are predicted to rise globally to $10.5 trillion by 2025 as cybercrime becomes more sophisticated. No doubt we will see more artificial intelligence (AI) being leveraged for nefarious uses, and social engineering-style attacks such as phishing are also likely to rise. Here are five predictions for what 2024 will bring.1. Advanced phishingWe’ve already seen AI begin to be leveraged, but it’s unlikely that it…

If you’re not conducting business experiments with generative AI right now, you’re probably at least thinking about it. Some businesses are exploring hundreds of use cases—and even identifying 5 or 10 that have outsize impacts on the business can be enough to drive real revenue growth, reduce costs, or both. Those kinds of results make it easy to see why there’s so much hype around generative AI. While it’s important to have guidelines in place to counter the risks—concerns…

You can’t go a step in the advertising and marketing world these days without running into someone’s hot new application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. It’s the shiny new object of the moment that has captured our attention, and it’s driving agencies and brands into a mad dash to be first to market.Admittedly, AI can offer us lots of advantages and innovations, and I gladly acknowledge that it’s important for the future of business. However, just like when we raced to be the first to launch branded NFTs,…

As we come to the end of a year marked by hype and turmoil, it’s becoming more and more clear that artificial intelligence isn’t magic. No amount of holiday wishing will suddenly give AI the power to put the perfect gift under the Christmas tree—or fuel meaningful automated experiences all eight nights of Hanukkah. But that doesn’t mean AI and automation can’t make the holidays a little brighter for businesses. In fact, the areas where AI has proven to have the most impact—like getting people what they need faster and…

Over the course of my career managing teams at some of the largest enterprise tech companies, I’ve witnessed the vital role employee experience plays, not only in defining a great corporate culture but also in driving the impact a company can make on the world. This point is especially true for the jobs that underpin our economy, such as manufacturing, transportation, construction, and agriculture, where the work is physically demanding and often dangerous. Because these industries represent 40% of our gross domestic…