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Look at him! What a boy boss. 💅 Sounds strange, right? That’s because we never say boy boss. We don’t need to. The default assumption is that a boss is a man. But terms like girl boss, power woman, or She-EO exist because we still feel the need to highlight when a woman holds a leadership position. While often well-intentioned, these labels actually reveal how deeply gendered our language is—and how much work we still have to do. 🙌 Language is a powerful tool. It doesn’t just reflect reality; it shapes it. When we add qualifiers like girl or she to leadership roles, we reinforce the idea that women in these positions are exceptions rather than the norm. These words, instead of empowering, subtly remind us that leadership is still seen as a male default. True empowerment isn’t about adding a gendered prefix—it’s about removing the assumption that leadership has a gender at all. It’s about making sure that when we say boss, CEO, or leader, we automatically picture women just as often as men. ✨ That’s why gender-inclusive language matters, but even more importantly, language as a whole is a tool for change. The way we speak about leadership, ambition, and success influences how the next generation sees their possibilities. If we want a world where women in power are the norm, we have to start by speaking like it. 💥 So let’s move beyond girl boss and just say boss. Let’s recognize women in leadership not as exceptions, but as leaders. Because words don’t just describe the world—they create it. 💫 #LanguageMatters #GenderEquality

Beautiful design is now a commodity. I've spent the last 24 hours with ChatGPT 4o images, and it's clear we've entered a new reality: "Execution is cheap, ideas are everything." For decades, we were told the opposite. Everyone had ideas. Few could execute them well. The ability to turn a concept into reality separated the winners from the dreamers. But in an AI world, it's completely flipped. When anyone can execute at 90% perfection with the right prompts, the limiting factor becomes the quality of your ideas. The creative direction. The strategic insight. The unique perspective. The most successful companies I'm seeing are shifting resources from production to ideation. Less time pushing pixels, more time exploring concepts. They're running 20-30 creative directions where they used to do 2-3, because the cost of trying ideas has collapsed. In a world where anyone can create a beautiful website, logo, or packaging, the winners are focusing on the things AI can't (yet) simulate: I think it's authentic relationships, innovative products, and unique perspectives. The real advantage is in knowing when to break the rules of good design in ways that resonate emotionally. The human touch is becoming less about execution and more about strategic deviation from the optimized norm. This is creating strange new dynamics in hiring too. When I started our design agency LCA, we hired for world class technical skills - mastery of tools, execution ability. But now we care more about hiring for conceptual ability and creative direction. People who consistently generate novel ideas rather than perfect executions. Obviously, top tech skills still matter, but way less. As AI makes "good enough" design accessible to everyone, the market is splitting. At the low end, good enough is actually good enough. But at the high end, there's a premium on the truly unexpected - the ideas an AI wouldn't generate because they break conventional patterns. I think we're heading toward a bifurcated creative world: automated beauty for most purposes, with human creativity focused on creating the unexpected, the ideas and approaches an AI wouldn't think to try because they don't follow established patterns of "good design." The challenge for most of us now isn't "how do we execute this idea?" but "which ideas are actually worth executing?" Like this Sam Altman meme that @phill__1 on X created. Really smart. Execution is cheap, ideas are everything. Tremendous alpha in it. You're an idea person now. We all are? Note: we wrote a book on designing products in the AI age and giving away the PDF for free here https://lnkd.in/dpSWbkhN

About four months ago I moved to very rural Devon and adopted one of the world's weirdest hybrid working patterns 🏡 For three weeks of the month, we work from home in Devon 🚆 For one week of the month, we get the train to London and spend time doing in person meetings and with the team in the office The world gets so caught up in binary debates like "full time office versus full time remote" that we forget the majority of people want something in the middle For me, I get the best of both worlds - a week of in person collaboration, connection, and energy, followed by time in the countryside and enough space to have our own home office It wouldn't be for everyone, but I love it We all thrive in totally different working environments, and binary debates don't account for that In person connection is so important, but it doesn't need to be every day Each company will have a perfect blend (ours at Flexa is one day per month) and if companies are clear and transparent about their balance of in person and remote working, then they'll find the employees that want to work in that way too There is no right or wrong answer, but there is a right way to hire: transparently 💎 #HybridWorking #FlexibleWorking #FutureOfWork

Did you know that most people believe they're less biased than their peers? That belief itself is a perfect example of #ConfirmationBias at work. Confirmation bias refers to the fact that we are better able to hear and remember information that confirms what we already think compared to information that challenges those beliefs. If that sounds abstract, let’s look at a real-world risk of confirmation bias. When I was young, newspapers, TV and radio were the only sources of news and many aimed to provide balanced reporting in order to appeal to wide audiences. Most people watched the same national news broadcasts, creating common information grounds despite political differences. Today's digital platforms have fundamentally changed this dynamic by providing unlimited content choices without editorial oversight, allowing users to find like-minded perspectives and easily avoid information that challenges their views. This fragmentation is amplified by personalisation algorithms that learn your preferences and serve more of the same content. A 2021 study found that platforms with stronger content curation (like Facebook and X) create more pronounced "digital echo chambers" than those with user-controlled feeds. As Cass Sunstein observed, these echo chambers lead to "group polarization" - when like-minded people discuss issues, their views become more extreme due to: 👉 A narrower range of news sources leading to information blind spots 👉 Reinforcing beliefs independent of factual accuracy 👉 Limiting exposure to different views and perspectives In other words, the current digital media landscape plays directly into our confirmation bias by allowing us to choose individualised news that delivers information congruent with our existing beliefs, feeding polarisation and eroding social cohesion. This is ironic because confirmation bias may have developed in humans in order to promote social cohesion. For early humans, survival depended on strong group bonds. Cooperation improved chances of finding food, defending against threats, and raising offspring. However, maintaining group unity required agreement on shared beliefs, values, and norms. If individuals constantly questioned group beliefs, it could lead to division and conflict, reducing the group’s survival chances. Confirmation bias helped support social cohesion by 👉 Strengthening group identity by reinforcing a shared worldview and creating a sense of belonging and trust 👉 Reducing social friction by filtering out information that could challenge the group’s beliefs and lead to tension and instability 👉 Promoting cooperation as people who believe in their group’s values are more likely to defend and support one another In other words, confirmation bias is a fundamental part of human cognition that has far-reaching implications for us as individuals and as a society. My colleague Dr. Paul Penn has a great video if you have a few minutes and want to learn more (link below).