Most companies operate like one-sided cubes—what the world sees is curated and polished, but the rest remains hidden, even to the people inside. Strategy becomes surface-level. Teams chase goals without grounding. Leaders lead without alignment.
In a world growing more complex and emotionally disoriented, that’s not just unsustainable—it’s dangerous. It’s time for a Strategy Renaissance. We need to move beyond sterile planning cycles and rediscover the human heart of strategy.
In this new era of work, meaning isn’t a bonus feature—it’s your sharpest edge.
The Great Divide Between Strategy and Meaning
We have long treated strategy as the realm of numbers and logic, while purpose was relegated to the marketing department or buried in mission statements no one remembers.
This divide has created companies that appear aligned on paper, but feel disjointed in practice. Metrics without meaning drive burnout. Planning without purpose breeds disengagement. And when disruption inevitably hits, strategies built only on spreadsheets crumble.
What endures? Shared purpose, collective clarity, and meaningful momentum.
Illuminate the Whole Strategy Cube
Imagine your organization as a cube. Each face represents a facet of identity: values, operations, leadership, culture, customers, and employees.
Most companies only illuminate one or two sides—the brand and the performance dashboard. The rest remains in the shadows. And when strategy reflects only the visible parts, it becomes hollow.
The companies that are thriving today are the ones brave enough to illuminate the whole cube. That means surfacing the hidden brilliance within teams, reclaiming the narratives that shape culture, and embracing the messy, multidimensional nature of real human work.
I advised a global biotech company whose strategy had become siloed, driven by financial targets but disconnected from employee experience. Through facilitated dialogue sessions, we helped the executive team rediscover their collective purpose.
Within months, they restructured their planning process around a set of guiding principles, resulting in a 22% improvement in employee engagement scores and a renewed sense of cohesion across departments.
When you bring every side of the cube into the light, strategy becomes not just aligned, but alive.
Dialogue Before Direction: The Campfire as a Strategic Tool
Strategy doesn’t start with a spreadsheet. It begins with a story. Before defining your next bold move, gather your people around a campfire—not a literal fire (though that helps), but a space of intentional dialogue where people can share pivotal moments, hopes, fears, and what really matters.
I love simple questions that wind up having complicated—or at least not straightforward—answers. Astronomers twist themselves into knots, for example, trying to define what a planet is, even though it seems like you’d know one when you see it. The same is true for moons; in fact, the International Astronomical Union, the official keeper of names and definitions for celestial objects, doesn’t even try to declare what a moon is. That’s probably for the best because that, too, is not so easy.
What about stars, though? Do they also confound any sort of palatable definition?
In a very broad sense, a star is simply one of those twinkling points of light you can see in the night sky. But that’s not terribly satisfying in either lexicological or physical terms. After all, we also know the sun is a star—but, by definition, we never see it in Earth’s night sky, and it’s certainly not a dot (unless you’re viewing it from well past Pluto, that is).
If such a basic definition leaves us a bit dry, then perhaps we can do better. From centuries of scientific observations and theoretical physics, we can say more. Stars are massive, hot and roughly spherical. They’re held together by their own gravity, and they consist of plasma (gas heated so much that electrons are stripped from its constituent atoms). And, of course, they’re luminous. They shine, which is probably their most basic characteristic.
That’s descriptive, certainly, but still doesn’t really tell us what a star is. What makes one different from, say, a planet? Can there be a smallest star or a biggest one?
To sensibly answer such questions, we need to understand the core mechanism that makes a star luminous in the first place. Then we can use that understanding to better define what is or isn’t a star.
Historically, astronomers were in the dark about this for quite some time. Many mechanisms were proposed, but it wasn’t until the early 20th century that quantum mechanics came to the rescue and introduced humanity (for better or worse) to the concept of nuclear fusion. In this process, subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons—and even entire atomic nuclei—could be smashed together, fusing to form heavier nuclei and releasing an enormous amount of energy.
In a star’s core, fusion takes terrific temperature and pressure that is provided by the crushing gravity of the star’s overlying mass. For a star to be relatively stable, the outward force of the energy generated by fusion in its core must be balanced by the inward pull of the star’s gravity.
There are a couple of different pathways for fusion to occur in stars like the sun, but in the end they both yield essentially the same result: four hydrogen nuclei (each a single proton) plus various other subatomic particles fuse together to form a helium nucleus, and this process blasts out a lot of high-energy radiation as a byproduct. In the sun, this process converts about 620 million metric tons of hydrogen into helium every second. That creates enough energy to, well, power a star.
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A view of our sun, as seen by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. NASA/Goddard/SDO
You’re mid-sentence in a meeting, sharing an idea or outlining a strategy you’ve been thinking through for weeks, then it happens. Someone jumps in, cuts you off, and shifts the conversation. You fade out while they take the spotlight.
It’s frustrating, but even more so when it’s subtle. Maybe you weren’t shouted over, but you were redirected, ignored, or sidelined. Over time, it takes a toll on confidence, clarity, and leadership presence.
So, how do you know it’s happening—and how do you stop it? Here are five signs you’re being talked over in meetings, plus practical strategies to reclaim your voice and authority.
1. You’re constantly “circling back” to what you were saying.
If you often hear yourself say, “As I was saying earlier,” or, “Just to finish that thought,” you’re probably being interrupted more than you realize. These polite reentries signal you’ve been cut off—and trained to work around it.
What to do: Don’t just circle back—own the space. Use direct language. “I’d like to finish my point before we move on,” or, “I wasn’t finished with that thought—let me complete it.” It’s not rude. It’s reclaiming your airtime.
2. You’re the idea originator, but someone else gets the credit.
You suggest something early in the meeting. Ten minutes later, someone repeats it—and suddenly it’s a brilliant new direction. This isn’t just annoying—it’s a visibility issue.
What to do: Speak up—gracefully but clearly. Stating, “Thanks for building on my idea from earlier,” signals ownership without confrontation. And when others do this to your colleagues, amplify them, too. It builds a culture of mutual respect.
3. You’re interrupted before you finish a full sentence.
This one is easy to spot—but easy to dismiss. If you rarely get through your full thought before someone else jumps in, you’ve been conditioned to shrink your communication. You may start to self-edit, speak faster, or say less.
What to do: Pause, then continue. “I’d like to finish my point,” is powerful and direct. And don’t speed up or apologize. Take your time. If someone consistently interrupts you, address it privately: “I’ve noticed I’m often cut off mid-thought. Can we be more mindful of giving each other space?”
CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration is dismantling a 35-year-old effort to track global climate change that was used to shape regulations and policies across the government.
Federal employees at the U.S. Global Change Research Program were removed from their positions Tuesday, and a government contract with ICF International, which has supported the National Climate Assessment for years, was severed, according to two former officials who were granted anonymity to avoid reprisals.
The move marks a key step by the administration to undermine federal climate research as it rolls back environmental regulations and promotes additional fossil fuel production.
The program was established by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. In addition to climate science, it focused on land productivity, water resources, fisheries, ecosystems, and the atmosphere. Its most visible product was the National Climate Assessment, a Congress-mandated report that comes out every four years and is used to help shape environmental rules, legislation, and infrastructure projects.
Decades ago, the program identified how a depleted ozone layer was harming Americans, leading to regulations to address the issue.
The next version of the National Climate Assessment is due late next year or in early 2027.
The changes mirror the writings of Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who wants to eliminate the program so its work can’t be used to bolster federal climate regulations in court battles.
Vought wrote a chapter in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has been closely followed by President Donald Trump, in which he outlined how to “reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research programs.”
The chapter spells out how the program could make it harder to enact pro-industry policy and fight court battles that challenge environmental regulations. The USGCRP would “be confined to a more limited advisory role,” he wrote.
“USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control,” the chapter said.
Under Vought’s proposal, OMB would help select researchers to produce a National Climate Assessment that relies on a small pool of scientists who question humanity’s contributions to climate change and give equal weight to industry-produced studies.
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U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a question as he visits Chez What Furniture Store, which was damaged during Hurricane Helene on September 30, 2024, in Valdosta, Georgia. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Sometimes, being a leader means making tough calls—ones that aren’t popular, and sometimes even get misunderstood. You’ve probably heard the saying, “If everyone likes you, you’re not really leading.” Fair enough. But what do you do when you hear that no one wants to work with you?
Maybe it comes up in passing from a colleague, or maybe it hits harder in a 360 review. Either way, that kind of feedback can sting. It’s that gut-punch moment where you think, Wait . . . what? You’ve been putting in the work, prioritizing the team (at least in your mind), but somehow people aren’t seeing it. They don’t get the pressure you’re under, the decisions you’ve had to make, or why things played out the way they did.
Here’s the hard truth: Perception is reality. You might feel like you’re doing everything right, but if your team feels disconnected or frustrated, their experience is what matters most. It’s time to pause, reflect, and figure out how things veered off course.
No, it’s not fair. And no, you can’t fix it overnight. But you can make a plan to rebuild trust, reconnect with your team, and start turning things around—one step at a time.
Get the data
Yeah, this part’s going to be uncomfortable—but if you’ve heard that no one wants to work with you, it’s time to figure out why. You’ve got a couple of options. If you haven’t already done a 360 review, that’s a good place to start. Or you can reach out to a trusted advisor or mentor and ask for some honest feedback.
One thing you don’t want to do? March straight over to your team and start digging for answers. That’ll likely come off as defensive—or worse, accusatory—and it won’t help your case. Instead, talk to someone outside the situation. Ideally, someone who knows you well but isn’t directly impacted by your leadership style. You want perspective, not more tension.
I worked with one client who’s a strong, passionate leader, but sometimes that passion got the best of him. For instance, when his team would present him with ideas, my client would shout them down if he thought those ideas wouldn’t work. His team felt overwhelmed, and eventually, no one wanted to work with him. My client wasn’t aware of the pattern and had no idea his team felt so discouraged. His 360 revealed to him how much his reactions were demoralizing his team; my client learned to soften his delivery, slow down, and listen more.
It is rare to read about “spectacular progress” or a “once-in-a-century” result in mathematics. That’s for good reason: if a problem has not had a solution for many years, then completely new approaches and ideas are usually needed to tackle it. This is also the case with the innocent-looking “Kakeya conjecture,” which relates to the question of how to rotate a needle in such a way that it takes up as little space as possible.
Experts have been racking their brains over the associated problems since 1917. But in a preprint paper posted in February, mathematician Hong Wang of New York University and her colleague Joshua Zahl of the University of British Columbia finally proved the three-dimensional version of the Kakeya conjecture. “It stands as one of the top mathematical achievements of the 21st century,” said mathematician Eyal Lubetzky of N.Y.U. in a recent press release.
Suppose there is an infinitely narrow needle on a table. Now you want to rotate it 360 degrees so that the tip of the needle points once in each direction of the plane. To do this, you can hold the needle in the middle and rotate it. As it rotates, the needle then covers the surface of a circle.
But if you are clever, the needle can make its 360-degree journey while taking less space. In 1917, mathematician Sōichi Kakeya wanted to investigate the smallest area required to rotate the needle. For example, by rotating not only the outer end of the needle but also its center, you can obtain an area that corresponds to a triangle with curved sides.Years later, mathematician Abram Besicovitch made an unexpected discovery. If you keep moving the needle back and forth like a complex parallel parking maneuver, the surface that the infinitely narrow needle covers can actually have a total area of zero.
The Dimension of an Area of Zero?
From there, experts began to wonder what dimension this “Kakeya surface” has. Usually surfaces in a plane, such as a rectangle or a circle, are two-dimensional. But there are exceptions: fractals, for example, can also have fractional dimensions, meaning they can be 1.5-dimensional, for instance.
Because the Kakeya surfaces can look very jagged, the question of dimensionality is an obvious one. In fact, it has implications for many other areas of mathematics, including harmonic analysis, which breaks down complicated mathematical curves into sums of simpler functions, and geometric measure theory.
In fact, in 1971 mathematician Roy Davies was able to prove that the Kakeya surface is always two-dimensional, even if its area vanishes. But in mathematics, people are interested in general results. The experts wanted to solve the problem in n dimensions—does a needle that is rotated along all n spatial directions always cover an n-dimensional volume? This hypothesis is now known as the Kakeya conjecture.
The White House and DOGE have sought to eliminate thousands of jobs from the Forest Service. The wildland firefighting force is one of many targets within the agency.
President Donald Trump’s executive orders shrinking the federal workforce make a notable exception for public safety staff, including those who fight wildland fires. But ongoing cuts, funding freezes, and hiring pauses have weakened the nation’s already strained firefighting force by hitting support staff who play crucial roles in preventing and battling blazes.
Most notably, about 700 Forest Service employees terminated in mid-February’s “Valentine’s Day massacre” are red-card-carrying staffers, an agency spokesperson confirmed to ProPublica. These workers hold other full-time jobs in the agency, but they’ve been trained to aid firefighting crews, such as by providing logistical support during blazes. They also assist with prescribed burns, which reduce flammable vegetation and prevent bigger fires, but the burns can only move forward if there’s a certain number of staff available to contain them. (Non-firefighting employees without a red card cannot perform such tasks.)
Red-card-carrying employees are the “backbone” of the firefighting force, and their loss will have “a significant impact,” said Frank Beum, a board member of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees who spent more than four decades with the agency and ran the Rocky Mountain Region. “There are not enough primary firefighters to do the full job that needs to be done when we have a high fire season.”
ProPublica spoke to employees across the Forest Service, which manages an area of land nearly twice the size of California, including staff working in firefighting, facilities, timber sales, and other roles, to learn how sweeping personnel changes are affecting the agency’s ability to function. The employees said cuts, which have hit the agency’s recreation, wildlife, IT, and other divisions, show the Trump administration is shifting the agency’s focus away from environmental stewardship and toward industry and firefighting.
But notwithstanding Trump’s stated guardrails, the cuts have affected the Forest Service’s more than 10,000-person-strong firefighting force. Hiring has slowed as there are fewer employees to get new workers up to speed, and people are confused about which job titles can be hired. Other cuts have led to the cancellation of some training programs and prescribed burns.
“It’s all really muddled in chaos, which is sort of the point,” one Forest Service employee told ProPublica.
“This agency is no longer serving its mission,” another added.
The employees asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
The Forest Service did not respond to questions about the impact of cuts other than to clarify the number of terminated employees. The Forest Service spokesperson said about 2,000 probationary employees — typically new staff and those who were recently promoted, groups that have fewer workplace protections — were fired in February. Others with knowledge of the terminations, including a representative of a federal union and a Senate staffer, said the original number of terminated employees was 3,400, but that decreased, likely as workers were brought back in divisions such as timber sales.
The White House and a representative from the Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to requests for comment.
In early March, an independent federal board that reviews employees’ complaints compelled the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent department, to reinstate more than 5,700 terminated probationary employees for 45 days. During their first weeks back on the payroll, many, including Forest Service personnel, were put on paid administrative leave and given no work.
The administration and DOGE continue working toward layoffs amid court challenges to their moves. Word circulated throughout the Forest Service in March that departmental leadership had compiled lists containing the names of thousands of additional Forest Service employees who could be soon laid off, according to some workers.
Additionally, understaffing in the agency’s information technology unit is threatening firefighting operations, according to an agency employee. In December, the branch chief overseeing IT for the agency’s fire and aviation division left the job. The Department of Agriculture posted the job opening, describing the division as providing “support to the interagency wildland fire community’s technical
needs.” This includes overseeing software that firefighting crews use to request equipment — everything from fire-resistant clothing to hoses — from the agency’s warehouses so first responders have uninterrupted access to lifesaving equipment.
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Photo illustration by Emily Scherer. Source images: Forest Service, Department of Agriculture.
Is micro-management, a lack of career progression, and workplace boredom getting you down? The answer may lie in understanding the symptoms of ‘rust-out’. According to the old adage, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. However, most of us know that’s not strictly true. Even if you enjoy aspects of your job, it’s combined with stress and pressure, whether that’s urgency overload or feeling like an outsider in your workplace. Throw in a toxic boss and the rise of quiet quitting, and it’s easy to see how just a few taxing elements can build into overwhelm and disillusion.
We know already that burnout is a giant generational problem impacting almost half of UK adults, but experts are also now pointing to a rise in ‘rust-out’: the condition of being chronically under-stimulated, uninspired, and unsatisfied at work.
“Do you find yourself clock-watching as the end of the workday approaches, counting down until finish time? Are Monday mornings a particular grind as you find it difficult to motivate yourself to get going because nothing feels challenging or stimulating? If so, you might be experiencing rust-out,” explains Sharon Peake, founder of gender equality consultancy Shape Talent.
According to Peake, when we are in roles that provide the right level of immersion and stimulation in our work, we experience a phenomenon called ‘flow’, where the level of challenge of the work aligns with our capability and motivation and we become completely absorbed in our work, leading to a sense of wellbeing and positive energy connected with our job. With burnout, the demands of the role exceed our time, ability, and resources; however, and when the demands of the role are lower than our skills and ability, we can experience boredom, frustration, and, ultimately, rust-out.
Rust-out is also more likely to affect women than men due to the unique workplace barriers that women experience, such as the double burden of paid and unpaid (domestic) work. This often leads highly capable and experienced women to return to work part-time, working at a lower level of responsibility after maternity leave, or even opting out of the workforce.
“Rust-out can leave employees feeling uninspired at work and stagnant in their careers, with repetitive meetings and admin taking a mental toll,” adds Becca Moore, associate director at recruitment consultancy Michael Page. “Our recent survey of 5,000 UK workers revealed that ‘a sense of purpose’ was a key driver for happiness in the workplace (48%), but concerningly, just a quarter of UK workers (24%) say they are hugely passionate about their career.”
It doesn’t just affect our morale. As Sarah Markham, a workplace culture expert and founder of Calm In A Box, tells Stylist, when we lose a sense of purpose or feel our work isn’t meaningful, it can cause us to ‘doom loop’, when we repeat unhelpful stories about ourselves. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should fear every office lull and less-than-fascinating project. Most of us will experience some kind of tedium at work, but rust-out relates to chronic boredom that is so serious it can be detrimental to both your mental and physical health.
How to navigate rust-out at work
In 2023, a Gallup study found that only 33% of employees feel like they are thriving at work. And with micromanaging bosses, the deskilling of jobs, unnecessary bureaucracy, and fewer promotion opportunities, it’s easy to see why.
As Peake explains, the impact of being under-stimulated at work leads to a lack of engagement, boredom, reduced workplace performance, and in some cases, it can even result in anxiety and diminished confidence as the individual starts to question their own capability. So it’s important to act as soon as you sense rust building.
Moore agrees: “When you start to feel the impact of rust-out, it’s critical that you act sooner rather than later. What are the tasks that you used to love doing? What would you like to do more of? What excites and challenges you? Set up some time with your manager to talk through the areas that you’d like to develop and anything that you might like to change.
According to Moore, being open and honest about what motivates you will help your manager delegate tasks and opportunities that better align with your goals and sense of purpose. “It’s a win-win, as they will end up receiving better quality work from you as a result,” she says.
“Finding ways to get better alignment between your capability and work challenges is key,” Peake continues. “Could you get involved in special projects or assignments that will stretch you more? Sometimes extracurricular learning, such as a course of study, can help to provide the missing stimulus. But if none of this is right for you, then it may be time to find a new job and workplace that better meets your needs.”
CLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump on Tuesday made an unprecedented peacetime intervention in the electricity sector, using executive orders to force aging coal-burning plants to stay open and feed soaring energy demand from American tech companies.
At a White House signing ceremony that resembled a campaign-style rally, Trump signed orders squarely aimed at reviving coal mining and coal power, which have both been in decline for more than a decade. Among other things, they direct Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to identify which regions are at risk of electricity shortages and bar the shutdowns of coal plants deemed essential.
“Unlike wind and solar, coal plants can run 24 hours a day in rain, sleet or snow,” Trump said, flanked by rows of coal miners donning hard hats. “From now on, we’ll ensure our critically needed coal plants … remain online and fully operational.”
The president signed a total of four executive orders after a speech that downplayed the danger of climate change, blasted the “green new scam,” lauded “beautiful clean coal,” and attacked past administrations pursuing tough pollution standards and for making it harder to mine for coal.
The announcement was quickly followed by a slew of policy shifts, including the Interior Department’s lifting of a ban on leasing in the Powder River Basin, one of the biggest coal-producing hubs in the nation. Conservation groups immediately warned the orders would catapult carbon emissions and dangerous pollution.
“Trump’s attempt to bail out coal is a recipe for raising prices for consumers,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, public lands director at the Center for American Progress. “Coal’s decline was a problem of economics, and its revival only works if prices increase. These executive orders threaten to make energy costs higher for Americans while continuing to ignore real solutions to energy independence.”
Through his order, Trump reiterated the need to meet the demand of the tech industry build-out of data centers. The nation’s ability “to remain at the forefront of technological innovation depends on a reliable supply of energy from all available electric generation sources and the integrity of our nation’s electric grid,” Trump’s order states.
But the pace of electricity demand to serve future data centers is still guesswork. The centers could consume between 7 percent and 12 percent of U.S. electricity output in 2028, from 4.4 percent now, according to estimates. Total peak power demand for centers could range from 74,000 to 132,000 megawatts in 2028.
In the meantime, tens of thousands of megawatts of coal plant capacity were expected to shut down through the end of the decade. Coal generation that accounted for half of U.S. electricity in 2001 is now at about 15 percent. Most of the planned or proposed generation to replace it has been solar or wind power, along with battery storage. But the projects have struggled to get under construction. And they now face a more hostile Trump administration.
Power companies looking to build new natural gas generation are also seeing longer wait times for turbines. That makes the next few years a time of unusual risk for power operations, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the interstate grid’s security monitor.
‘Go through hell’
Wright’s review of what coal generation is needed and where is due in 90 days. No other deadline were set for taking action under the order. Trump’s action is tied to a 90-year-old provision in the Federal Power Act, section 202(c), that was written for wartime use, according to legal scholars, but has been used in recent decades in short-duration grid emergencies.
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President Donald Trump speaks Tuesday during an executive order signing ceremony related to expand the mining and use of coal in the United States in the East Room of the White House. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
[Images: Svitlana/Adobe Stock; Tartila/Adobe Stock]
[Source Illustration: Freepik]
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James' World 2 