U.S. household debt levels have reached an all-time high, according to the latest data released on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Debt includes all major categories, such as mortgages, car loans, credit card balances and student loans.

Total household debt hit a record high of $18.59 trillion from July through September of this year, a $197 billion (1%) increase from the previous quarter, per the report. Overall, debt has jumped by $4.4 trillion since the final quarter of 2019.

Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a statement that debt balances “are growing at a moderate pace,” pointing to the 1% increase. In a call with reporters, attended by ABC News, the researchers reported that although Americans’ overall household balance sheets remain “pretty strong,” younger borrowers are showing emerging signs of weakness.

For example, Americans’ student loan debt has hit a new record, totaling $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2025. Delinquency rates have sharply increased, with 9.4% of all student loan balances now considered 90 days delinquent or more, meaning borrowers are late or not paying at all. The percentage has increased from 7.8% in the first quarter.

Related: The Average Cost of a College Education Is $153,080. These Are the Majors and Careers That Provide the Highest Return on Investment.

Although student loan delinquencies are at a record high, delinquencies for auto loans and credit cards have not reached the peak levels seen in mid-2024, according to analysts.

However, credit card balances reached an all-time high in the third quarter of the year, growing by $24 billion to reach $1.23 trillion. Credit card debt grew nearly 6% compared to the same time last year.

Related: What Is ‘Doom Spending’? The Trend Takes a Toll on Personal Finances — and Members of This Generation Are Most at Risk.

Meanwhile, auto loan balances remained steady when compared to the previous quarter at $1.66 trillion, while mortgage balances grew by $137 billion compared to Q2 and totaled $13.07 trillion by the end of September, per the report.

The report was based on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Consumer Credit Panel, a nationally representative sample based on Equifax credit data. It provides insights into borrowing and debt trends for U.S. households.

U.S. household debt levels have reached an all-time high, according to the latest data released on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Debt includes all major categories, such as mortgages, car loans, credit card balances and student loans.

Total household debt hit a record high of $18.59 trillion from July through September of this year, a $197 billion (1%) increase from the previous quarter, per the report. Overall, debt has jumped by $4.4 trillion since the final quarter of 2019.

A younger colleague once asked me: “If you had to choose just one trait that makes the difference for fintech founders, what would it be?” My answer was simple: foresight, perhaps better put, a system of foresight.

With years of working across businesses — mostly in financial services, managing teams across continents and even investing in startups during my time as a VC, I’ve learned many leadership lessons. While all (making tough calls, clarity of vision, resilience, etc.) are important, in fintech, foresight stands out.

The stakes are uniquely high when running a fintech. Progress can feel painfully slow in the early days, with months or even years of quiet persistence. This is the silent period — when you’re building systems and processes behind the scenes, far from the public eye, albeit doing whatever is needed to ensure bills get paid and learning as much as possible about your target market without technology.

Then, almost overnight, everything accelerates. Opportunities open up, and growth surges. The leaders who thrive in those moments are the ones who had the foresight to anticipate what was coming.

It’s not about reacting to the present; it’s about preparing for what’s ahead, laying foundations strong enough to handle the pressure of explosive growth when it comes. The real question for any founder is this: How do you stay ready during the silence and hit the ground running when it breaks?

Related: 5 Quotes to Help You Maintain Entrepreneurial Persistence

Design for elastic scale, not max scale

The traditional business wisdom of “growing as you go” overlooks a critical reality that disruptive opportunities don’t wait. For a fintech, it’s not enough to be perfectly suited for your current customer base; you must build for at least 3-5x elastic headroom while capping cost to serve so that runway is protected.

Imagine a fintech with 10,000 customers. It runs flawlessly, with negligible to no complaints. The conventional advice is to scale operations gradually. But what happens when the market changes in an instant? What happens if a new government policy suddenly unlocks 10 million users for those ready to serve them?

The cautious planner, with just enough capacity for its current size, is overwhelmed. It loses the opportunity to a smaller player — the “dark horse” that had the foresight to invest in scalable technology and operational capacity from day one. Moments like these don’t reward caution; they reward preparation.

This is the essence of strategic foresight. While gradual growth has its place, a great leader understands that building for a “big bang” moment is not irresponsible; it’s the ultimate form of long-term investment tied to specific signals, policy change, partner distribution and unit economics thresholds.

Related: This Unconventional Strategy Is the Secret to Unprecedented Business Growth

Treat licenses as real options

With the exception of a few, I’ve yet to see a truly successful fintech that has stayed serving only one region. The very nature of this industry’s agility and scale means that being domiciled in just one place may be a recipe for being left behind. You must be willing to secure licenses well in advance of an expansion opportunity, once there are early signals of TAM validation and payback meets your hurdle.

While the immediate financial reward may not be obvious, the discipline to pursue these approvals early is what sets a great fintech apart. I like to put it this way: If you’re waiting until you need a license before you start working on it, you’re already too late.

In fintech, you can pour months of work and significant salaries into a project with no visible outcome until the very end. This requires a unique kind of leadership that is comfortable and can motivate a team during the silence of long approval cycles, no applause, no quantitative metrics and ambiguity — yet momentum is real if the system is in motion.

Empower your team with a clear vision

As a company scales, the founder cannot be a bottleneck, personally making every decision. This is where a clear vision becomes non-negotiable. It should be so ingrained that every team member can articulate the company’s “why” as if it were second nature.

From the earliest days of running Blaaiz, I made it a point to embed decision-making templates into our culture: “These are the things we do. These are the things we don’t. This is how we measure value.”

When our growth surges, this framework empowers the team to act with confidence. A strong vision allows the company to operate at the speed of its entire team, not just one person.

Related: 4 Lessons Learned from Building a Successful Fintech Company

Embrace the long game

Fintech is built on trust, and trust is built on resilient systems. The temptation for a small company is to cut corners and worry about infrastructure later, but “later” often arrives faster than you expect. It pays to invest in technology and best practices from day one, even if it feels like overkill. Leaders who build strong foundations early are the ones whose companies survive scaling.

The irony of an “overnight success” in fintech (the big partnership, the new license, the product launch) is that the real work has already been done, quietly, over many months of persistence.

It is safe to say that building a fintech company is not for the faint of heart. It requires a tolerance for delayed gratification, a stubborn commitment to foresight and the discipline to invest in structures before you need them.

For any entrepreneur stepping into this space, my advice is simple: Embrace the long game. Foresight, patience and clarity of vision will carry you further than speed or luck ever could.

So start building today for the future you can’t yet see, because when the silence breaks, only foresight will keep you standing.

A younger colleague once asked me: “If you had to choose just one trait that makes the difference for fintech founders, what would it be?” My answer was simple: foresight, perhaps better put, a system of foresight.

With years of working across businesses — mostly in financial services, managing teams across continents and even investing in startups during my time as a VC, I’ve learned many leadership lessons. While all (making tough calls, clarity of vision, resilience, etc.) are important, in fintech, foresight stands out.

When Catherine Morrissey, president of cashmere-focused women’s clothing brand White & Warren, stepped into her current role, she had a keen sense of her priorities — an ethos she attributes to her mother, Susan White Morrissey, the company’s founder and CEO.

“From the day I started at White & Warren, I saw firsthand how much attention to detail my mom brought to everything,” Morrissey tells Entrepreneur. “She didn’t miss a thing when it came to quality — whether it was a sweater’s tension, uneven linking, the spacing on a line sheet or data that didn’t add up. I quickly learned to adopt that same mindset.”

Susan White Morrissey and Barbara Warren co-founded their New York City-based, namesake fashion brand in 1997 with a clear goal: to make cashmere more accessible at a time when the fabric didn’t enjoy the popularity it does now.

Related: ‘We Got So Many DMs’: This 27-Year-Old Revamped Her Parents’ Decades-Old Business and Grew Direct-to-Consumer Sales From $60,000 to Over $500,000

“I’ve always had a heavy hand in the creative side.”

Although Catherine Morrissey hadn’t always anticipated working at her mother’s company, she grew up surrounded by the fashion industry (her father was an executive vice president at Macy’s) and developed a passion for it.

She launched her career as an assistant merchandiser at Calvin Klein and became an associate designer there. Then, in 2011, after her father’s sudden passing, she joined White & Warren as director of merchandising.

“I was leading merchandising and ultimately overseeing design as well,” Morrissey recalls. “Even today, it’s still very much a part of what I’m doing — I’ve always had a heavy hand in the creative side.”

Related: These Brothers’ Business Solves a ‘Very Difficult’ Shopping Problem — And Boasts Over $100 Million in Annual Sales

Morrissey has a BFA in illustration, and she credits her instinct for art with giving her an advantage in an industry that’s defined by the visual. Her creative sensibility allows her to bridge the gap between what a business needs and what it’s trying to communicate — and help the design team execute that vision, she says.

White & Warren relied on a wholesale-dominant business model for decades, and it served the company well during that time. The brand boasts partnerships with nearly 600 retailers across the globe and has sold more than 300,000 units of its beloved cashmere travel wrap, which requires 51 steps to craft and costs $385.

Still, like many established brands, White & Warren needed to adapt to the shifting retail landscape and rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) to sustain its growth trajectory.

Related: She Saved a Sweet Company and Grew It to $20 Million a Year. But She Never Liked Its Name — Decades Later, It’s Getting a Makeover.

When Morrissey became White & Warren’s president in 2018, she committed to a rebrand that would usher the decades-old company into its next era.

Previously known as “White + Warren,” the brand swapped the plus for an ampersand and underwent a website and product refresh. Now, one of Morrissey’s biggest goals is to build with the company’s long-term growth and future-proofing in mind, she says.

“Our rebrand laid the groundwork.”

White & Warren plans to double its revenue over the next three to four years, with most of that growth coming from its direct-to-consumer channel. “Our rebrand laid the groundwork,” Morrissey says. “Now it’s about deepening our customer relationships and investing in the kind of storytelling and product innovation that drive lasting loyalty.”

Several key steps have helped White & Warren make the most of its rebrand and get closer to its ambitious revenue goal, Morrissey says.

1. Take advantage of financial autonomy

When Morrissey’s mother launched White & Warren, she had the support of a silent family fund investor who helped her get the business off the ground but wasn’t involved in daily operations.

Susan White Morrissey bought the company outright in 2015 — and it was a game-changer.

“[That gave] us full autonomy to make decisions about the brand’s future,” her daughter explains. “That independence allowed us to invest where we needed to, chart our own path and set the foundation for growth.”

Morrissey acknowledges that some level of risk always comes with growing a business. For example, as White & Warren shifted from predominantly wholesale to ecommerce, the company had to purchase more inventory, which could go unsold.

That’s when being in full control of the business’s funds and able to spend marketing dollars strategically becomes even more valuable: It’s critical to keep the bottom line healthy enough to support the next year’s operations, Morrissey says.

Related: 5 Ways Numbers-Phobic Entrepreneurs Can Handle Small Business Finance With Ease

2. Tell the right story to the right customers

As White & Warren entered its next phase, it continued to position itself as an authority in the women’s knitwear space — “the New York cashmere brand” with timeless design and trusted quality, Morrissey says.

That had always been the brand’s defining story, but the way it was told, and who was hearing it, had to change. White & Warren needed to broaden its appeal and reach a new generation of women: the older millennial.

In the past, White & Warren relied heavily on editorial and ecommerce content, but in the past year, the brand has increasingly embraced user-generated content (UGC) and employee-generated content (EGC) across social media.

“There was a complete shift in consumer behavior, really responding to that,” Morrissey explains, “and [the customer] knowing what she wanted. We realized she wants to be able to relate to the brand more and see real people wearing it.”

The brand plans to continue with its “fresh lens” of storytelling for the next generation as it builds on its community-driven channels, Morrissey says.

Related: Ignore This Self-Sabotaging ‘Instinct’ If You Want to Tell Your Brand’s Story Effectively, Marketing Expert Says

3. Don’t be afraid to evolve — then do it again

White & Warren is a heritage brand with nearly 30 years of history under its belt, but that doesn’t mean it should remain static, Morrissey stresses.

“We always have to evolve to stay relevant and meet the consumer where she is today,” Morrissey says. “To not continue to evolve is to risk losing relevancy.”

That’s why the brand has embarked on a strategic product expansion meant to serve existing customers and attract new ones. White & Warren recently launched its knit outerwear collection and has a seasonal capsule collection, “a casual, sporty take on elevated athleisure,” set for release in January.

Related: The 9 Essential Steps to Expanding Your Product Line and Scaling Your Business

White & Warren also plans to relaunch its men’s collection in the fall, and anticipates making it a permanent feature by thinking about it as a service to the brand’s predominantly women customers. What is she reaching for? Is she throwing a men’s sweater into the cart as she’s shopping for herself?

The company isn’t spending on marketing for that men’s collection just yet, though, Morrissey notes.

“We’re not going crazy with category expansion,” Morrissey says, “but how do we build out the world of White & Warren a bit more, outside of the sweater and accessory space? The knit outerwear was our first test in this — and it’s doing quite well.”

“The people who stand out are the ones who go beyond their job description.”

As Morrissey continues to scale White & Warren and meet modern consumers where they are, she has the advantage of leading alongside her mother, who’s still very much involved in the business today, and with her lessons in mind.

A significant one she’s taken to heart is to lead by asking questions, guiding others to make their own decisions instead of just giving them the answers.

Cultivating an open-minded, inquisitive mentality is invaluable for anyone who aspires to launch and grow their own career in the fashion industry, according to Morrissey.

“The best thing you can do starting out is to be curious and learn from every experience: Ask questions, pay attention to details and don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves,” Morrissey says. “The people who stand out are the ones who go beyond their job description and show they’re invested in learning.”

This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of running a business as a woman.

When Catherine Morrissey, president of cashmere-focused women’s clothing brand White & Warren, stepped into her current role, she had a keen sense of her priorities — an ethos she attributes to her mother, Susan White Morrissey, the company’s founder and CEO.

“From the day I started at White & Warren, I saw firsthand how much attention to detail my mom brought to everything,” Morrissey tells Entrepreneur. “She didn’t miss a thing when it came to quality — whether it was a sweater’s tension, uneven linking, the spacing on a line sheet or data that didn’t add up. I quickly learned to adopt that same mindset.”

Decentralized finance began with the bold idea that money could move as freely as information. By proving markets could function on shared infrastructure, DeFi drew billions in capital and talent, opening a new frontier for financial innovation.

As DeFi matured, it became clear that scaling required the infrastructure, safeguards and regulatory frameworks that underpin traditional finance. PayFi, short for Payment Finance, represents this evolution. It combines the programmability of blockchain with the trust and oversight of regulated systems, connecting innovation with compliance to bring blockchain payments into mainstream finance.

We’re already seeing this shift in the real world. Ecommerce platforms like Shopify support crypto payments at checkout, several neobanks are built on blockchains, and a growing number of credit and debit cards enable purchases directly from digital asset wallets.

For entrepreneurs, payment providers and financial executives, understanding this convergence is no longer optional. It will define the next decade of financial innovation.

Related: What It Will Actually Take to Bridge the Gap Between DeFi and Traditional Finance

The shift from DeFi to PayFi

DeFi demonstrated the power of open financial systems, unlocking new models for lending, trading and asset management. Yet, real-world integration stalled due to compliance gaps, fragmented liquidity and complex user experiences.

PayFi bridges DeFi’s experimentation with the institutional infrastructure required for mass adoption. While DeFi remains largely experimental, its core concepts, such as composable lending and tokenized asset strategies, may eventually strengthen regulated implementations built around stablecoins and compliant digital interfaces.

Businesses today operate in a global economy that demands instant settlement, transparency and cost efficiency. Yet, even with contactless payments and mobile wallets, many financial transactions still rely on outdated infrastructure. Cross-border payments, for instance, remain slow and expensive, requiring multiple intermediaries.

PayFi uses blockchain technology to eliminate these frictions. Transactions can settle in seconds rather than days, and costs can be reduced dramatically. More importantly, PayFi achieves this without sacrificing oversight or consumer protection. It borrows the best features of both DeFi and TradFi, the speed and flexibility of blockchain with the compliance, governance and auditability of regulated finance.

This approach is already being tested in real markets. In the UAE, for example, leading banks are partnering with regulated digital asset infrastructure providers to introduce blockchain-enabled payment and settlement solutions within existing financial systems. These models are not theoretical. They are live, licensed and reshaping how institutions move money across borders.

Building blocks of PayFi

The architecture of PayFi is built on three key innovations:

1. Stablecoins: These are digital tokens pegged to fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar. When regulated and fully backed, they provide the stability of traditional currency with the efficiency of blockchain.

2. Smart contracts: These are self-executing programs that automatically enforce agreements. They can power everything from instant payroll to supply chain settlements without the need for manual reconciliation.

3. High-speed blockchains: New networks can now handle thousands of transactions per second for negligible fees, making blockchain competitive with traditional payment networks.

Together, these components enable a new generation of financial products that are programmable, transparent and inclusive. For businesses, this means faster settlement cycles, improved liquidity management and access to global markets through interoperable digital assets.

Related: How Traditional Institutions Can Lead the Next Phase of Blockchain Finance

Learning from TradFi’s playbook

For PayFi to succeed, it must integrate the hard-won lessons of traditional finance while preserving DeFi’s spirit of innovation. DeFi’s early years highlighted the power of open systems but also the need for stronger governance and risk management. TradFi, by contrast, earned its resilience through regulation, capital discipline and customer protection. The next wave of tokenized finance will thrive not by rejecting these principles, but by reimagining them for the digital age.

Consider the parallels with money market funds (MMFs). Both MMFs and stablecoins aim to maintain value stability and liquidity. The key difference is that most stablecoins do not pay yield, which means they are less incentivized to take on risky assets. Borrowing from the regulatory frameworks that govern MMFs, such as liquidity buffers, transparency standards and independent audits, could make stablecoins more resilient without stifling innovation.

Equally important is how financial institutions approach risk. Tools like repurchase agreements (repos) are common in traditional markets for managing short-term liquidity. When undertaken between credible counterparties and fully collateralized by high-quality assets like U.S. Treasuries, they provide flexibility without undermining stability. Applying these same principles within regulated stablecoin frameworks allows issuers to manage reserves efficiently while maintaining transparency.

A roadmap for business leaders

Business leaders, fintech founders and institutional investors looking to stay ahead of this shift can take several proactive steps:

1. Build with compliance in mind: Regulation is increasingly being recognized as a foundation for responsible innovation. Businesses should integrate compliance and auditability into their architecture from day one. Aligning with frameworks such as those developed in the UAE, Singapore and Europe will enable sustainable scalability.

2. Focus on user trust and experience: The success of any financial technology depends on confidence and ease of use. Beyond strong safeguards like dispute resolution, clear disclosures and fraud prevention, the next phase of adoption will require user-friendly interfaces and seamless experiences that match the familiarity of traditional banking. Simplifying interaction while maintaining transparency will help users adopt blockchain-powered solutions with greater confidence.

3. Choose infrastructure that bridges both worlds: Collaborating with regulated digital asset providers allows institutions to integrate blockchain-based services safely. It also ensures operational continuity across multiple jurisdictions while maintaining full regulatory oversight.

Related: The Future of Financial Services Will Be Defined By This One Shift

The bigger picture

PayFi marks a fundamental upgrade in how value moves through the global economy. It is not about replacing existing systems but modernizing them. As institutions, regulators and innovators collaborate, finance becomes faster, more transparent and more inclusive. Banks bring trust and scale; fintechs contribute speed and creativity.

For entrepreneurs, the message is clear. The future of finance won’t be shaped by choosing sides between crypto and traditional finance. It will be led by those who know how to combine technological innovation with regulatory maturity. PayFi represents this pragmatic middle ground, a synthesis of speed and trust that defines the next chapter of digital finance.

Decentralized finance began with the bold idea that money could move as freely as information. By proving markets could function on shared infrastructure, DeFi drew billions in capital and talent, opening a new frontier for financial innovation.

As DeFi matured, it became clear that scaling required the infrastructure, safeguards and regulatory frameworks that underpin traditional finance. PayFi, short for Payment Finance, represents this evolution. It combines the programmability of blockchain with the trust and oversight of regulated systems, connecting innovation with compliance to bring blockchain payments into mainstream finance.

Consumers are drowning in the same old content. In this sea of sameness, every scroll, click and inbox ping delivers AI-generated messaging that looks polished but often feels eerily the same. AI makes it easy to churn out endless blog posts, ads and social captions, but algorithms optimize for keywords and patterns, not originality. The result? Safe, boring, uninspired marketing that feels, well, soulless.

For brands, the promise of AI efficiency comes with the hidden cost of losing a distinct voice and authentic connection. In chasing speed and scale, many brands risk losing the very thing that makes them memorable: their humanity.

Related: Why AI Makes Your Brand Voice More Valuable Than Ever

What the rise of AI “sameness” results in

Erosion of trust: The annual global survey conducted by Edelman and the Edelman Trust Institute assessing public trust in institutions (business, government, media and NGOs) revealed that AI is at a trust inflection point. In some countries, trust is high; in others (like the U.S.), people are much more cautious. Responsible governance, transparency and proving value are more critical than ever for marketing success.

“Heartless” brands devoid of personality: Narratives without lived human experiences and emotion may be technically proficient, but will fall flat with audiences. Brands that show humor, personality and relate quickly to pop culture and current events can be nimble and able to communicate in human ways that AI cannot.

Emotionally hollow content: Robots can’t make people laugh or feel joy, trust, fear or empathy. Only people can do that. Brands that communicate with emotionally compelling content and inspire people to act turn customers into brand advocates. In short, authenticity matters.

Brand detachment: A 2024 study by NielsenIQ (NIQ) found that in ad evaluations, consumers “intuitively identified most of the AI-generated ads” and rated them less engaging (described as more “annoying/boring/confusing”) than traditionally produced ads. This is evidence that people often sense AI involvement in marketing creative and are more likely to view the brand as detached from reality or fake.

Lack of human storytelling: People remember stories and forget statistics and details. AI cannot tell real stories; it is merely an echo chamber for what is already on the internet. The Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab claims that “people remember stories up to 22 times more than facts only.” Storytelling in marketing informs and persuades, while AI can create suspicion and erode trust in a brand.

Commoditization: If every brand uses the same tools the same way, differentiation disappears. AI can reduce costs today, but sacrificing authenticity and quality erodes loyalty tomorrow.

Related: Authenticity Beats AI — Why Using Real People in Your Content Can Generate 35% Higher Conversion Rate Compared to AI-Generated Content

Examples of brands getting it right

There is light in the darkness of sameness. Here are a few brands that continue getting it right, year after year.

Spanx:

Most women know the story of Sara Blakely, who founded Spanx with $5,000 and a pair of scissors, cutting the feet off pantyhose to solve an age-old personal problem. Her self-made journey, often told with humor and humility, remains at the heart of Spanx’s positioning as an empowering women-led company.

The brand has continued to evolve and expand its undergarment line into a full fashion brand while maintaining the same value proposition: uncompromised, chic, comfort.

Warby Parker:

Founded by four Wharton students who wanted to make eyewear fashionable, yet accessible and affordable, Warby Parker has grown to approximately 300 brick-and-mortar stores with a robust ecommerce business.

Their origin story was born from the frustration of paying $700 for eyeglasses. They lead with a purpose-driven focus that connects consumers to their “buy a pair, give a pair” mission. They consistently tie their brand to democratization and social good and continue to drive emotion through storytelling.

Keeping humanity at the center

There are some simple things brands can do to protect their humanity. If you don’t have an internal policy for how and when AI should be utilized in developing marketing strategies and content, it’s a good time to create one. At Fletcher, we follow these standards:

• Use AI as an assistant, not an author: Let technology handle efficiency tasks but put humans in charge of voice and vision.

• Elevate lived experience: Share stories from employees, customers and founders that AI could never generate.

• Create personalization on purpose: Slower, more thoughtful touches like Q&As, real-time engagement and personalized marketing recommendations stand out.

• Keep brand values front and center: Make sure your content reflects beliefs and customer promises, not just keywords.

• Audit your messaging: If it feels like anyone (including a robot) could have written it, it is time to add more soul.

• Be transparent: Let clients and your audiences know when AI helped generate the content they are consuming.

Related: AI Is Flooding Feeds With Fakes. Here’s What Real Brands Need to Stand Out

Humanity for the win!

Let’s face it. Customers don’t just buy products; they buy stories, values and experiences. The human touch shows up in vulnerability, humor, nuance and emotional connection — and AI struggles to replicate those intangibles. In fact, the more AI floods the market, the more powerful authentic voices become. Think of how handwritten notes stand out in a digital world.

AI is here to stay, and it will reshape how we create and communicate. But brands that outsource too much of their humanity risk blending into the cesspool of sameness. The future won’t belong to the brands that sound the most efficient. It will belong to those that sound the most human.

Entrepreneurs and marketers alike should ask themselves: Will my brand be remembered for its algorithms, or for its authenticity?

Consumers are drowning in the same old content. In this sea of sameness, every scroll, click and inbox ping delivers AI-generated messaging that looks polished but often feels eerily the same. AI makes it easy to churn out endless blog posts, ads and social captions, but algorithms optimize for keywords and patterns, not originality. The result? Safe, boring, uninspired marketing that feels, well, soulless.

For brands, the promise of AI efficiency comes with the hidden cost of losing a distinct voice and authentic connection. In chasing speed and scale, many brands risk losing the very thing that makes them memorable: their humanity.

Joe Spector and his family immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union, now Uzbekistan, in 1990, when Spector was 10 years old. When they arrived in Fremont, California, the family lived in low-income housing and relied heavily on welfare and food stamps as they adjusted to their new life.

“Coming to America was like going to Mars,” Spector tells Entrepreneur. “It’s really a different planet.”

Basic things like culture and clothing were different, but Spector also noticed a difference in the classroom. In the Soviet Union, kids were told not to ask questions, but in the U.S., teachers encouraged students to ask questions and be curious.

“That alone highlights the freedoms that we have in this country,” Spector says.

Related: This 29-Year-Old Founder Took a $150,000 Pay Cut to Become CEO of His Own Startup. Here’s Why He Says It Was Worth It.

Spector’s limited finances played a role in major life decisions, like deciding to finish college — which he was paying for himself — in three years instead of four.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in business in 2001, Spector moved to New York to work for JPMorgan as an investment banker. He ended up making over $200,000 in salary at just 25 years old.

“I made money to justify the sacrifice my parents made to come to America,” he says.

After five years at JPMorgan, Spector left to obtain his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. It was in business school that he found a community of entrepreneurs, some of whom were also immigrants. “I think seeing that is the first time I truly realized that I could be an entrepreneur as well,” he says.

Related: She Moved to the U.S. at 17 and Worked at a Gas Station — Then Became CEO of a $1 Billion Brand

Spector graduated from Wharton in 2007 and spent the next decade in the San Francisco Bay Area building businesses, including a failed dating website, and working at various startups in sales and business development roles. He honed his network and his skills.

In 2017, Spector co-founded telemedicine company Hims & Hers, an over-the-counter prescription drug startup, now a publicly traded $9.3 billion company. Spector says his starting salary at the company was $150,000 in 2017, and he made $210,000 when it went public in January 2021.

His salary might seem below average for a fast-growing Silicon Valley startup, but Spector believed in the mission of Hims & Hers: to make healthcare more affordable.

“I think generally anything around healthcare affordability is meaningful to me, having grown up on welfare and food stamps when my family first came to the United States,” Spector says.

There was only one issue, and it wasn’t the salary or mission — Spector was senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Hims & Hers, not CEO. The chief executive title belonged to his co-founder, Andrew Dudum.

“Look, at Hims, I wasn’t the CEO,” Spector says. “Ultimately, I wanted to build a business with a point of view and intentionality on culture that I couldn’t have when I was at Hims.”

Spector decided to leave Hims & Hers in February 2021, one month after it became a publicly traded company. He had spent his whole career at early-stage companies, and says feeling like he was a “cog in a wheel” at a big public firm was unappealing.

Related: She Took Her Business From a $5,000 Investment to Over $1 Million in Revenue — Here Are Her 3 Profit Hacks for Small Business Owners

Spector went on to found Dutch, a telehealth platform connecting pet owners to veterinarians for a single annual subscription fee. Spector’s decision to pursue Dutch came from personal experience. His family adopted a corgi named Eddie during the Covid-19 pandemic. Very quickly, the vet bills racked up — Eddie got into some trail mix, leading to a $2,000 urgent care vet visit.

From his experience building Hims & Hers, Spector predicted that pet healthcare could be more affordable, leading to his idea for Dutch, a platform that charges a flat fee for unlimited telehealth vet care. Dutch offers a year of care, with unlimited virtual calls with a veterinarian for up to five pets, for $132.

Spector launched Dutch in July 2021 after raising $5 million in seed funding from Forerunner Ventures. As CEO of Dutch, he now makes $280,000 a year, a step up from his salary at Hims & Hers. More importantly, he views his work at Dutch as a “more important calling” than what he was doing at previous companies.

“At Dutch, 50% of our clients report that they haven’t been to a vet in over three years,” Spector says. “It’s crazy. In terms of giving back, it’s a more incredible opportunity than anything else I’ve done.”

Related: His College Side Hustle Made $12,000 on Amazon in 2 Weeks — Then It Surpassed $250 Million

The startup has seen its revenue double year-over-year for the past three years and is now “almost profitable,” according to Spector. “We’re getting there,” he says.

Spector describes the most fulfilling aspect of building Dutch as the excitement and satisfaction of solving new challenges.

“I love being part of something new,” he says. “That’s the hardest part, but it’s also just the most professionally satisfying when you figure things out for the first time.”

Related: My Business Tapped Into a Misunderstood Market and Made $760,000 in Year 1

Joe Spector and his family immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union, now Uzbekistan, in 1990, when Spector was 10 years old. When they arrived in Fremont, California, the family lived in low-income housing and relied heavily on welfare and food stamps as they adjusted to their new life.

“Coming to America was like going to Mars,” Spector tells Entrepreneur. “It’s really a different planet.”

The transition to hybrid work environments produced an unexpected communication issue that workers needed to solve in order to stay connected.

When offices closed due to the pandemic, most leaders focused on technology because the shift to hybrid work environments transformed employee work locations and organizational goal definitions. That created a leadership shortage. It extends past the quantitative metrics that track productivity and employee participation. It’s about clarity, and leaders who excel in this ability will establish the direction for leadership achievement during the upcoming decade.

Many leaders made a quick transition to technology solutions when offices shut down. The question they asked was about how to keep relationships, and not “Do we still understand what matters?“

Available tools operated correctly at the beginning of the process, and we saw video calls functioning as the main tool for conducting meetings and taking over the traditional practice of in-person meetings. Shared documents served as the digital equivalent of whiteboards, which people used to use in the past. The force no one could see started to break apart.

People exchanged more messages, yet their ability to understand each other stayed the same.

Hybrid work hadn’t created a communication problem. It had exposed a clarity one.

I’ve dedicated more than 20 years to assisting executives and senior leaders with their leadership during times of organizational change and transformation, and leadership clarity remains the only constant that emerges throughout all changes because team members lose confidence when leaders become unclear.

The rule about work hours remained unchanged after the introduction of hybrid work arrangements, and the situation reached an extreme point, which made almost everything completely visible … almost.

Related: Yes, We’re Still Messing Up Hybrid Work. Here’s Where Exactly We’re Going Wrong.

The hidden cost of unclear leadership

Leaders discovered through hybrid work that being present in the office doesn’t guarantee professional advancement. Many organizations introduced fresh platforms, dashboards and new methods in order to maintain alignment. The productivity metrics, though, produced results that ran counter to what teams had expected, and three distinct things happened:

• Workloads increased.

• Decision-making slowed.

• Accountability blurred.

The problem came from factors that went deeper than employees being unwilling to work or lacking motivation.

It was noise.

Team members need to be physically close to each other in order to achieve clarity in a physical office setting. You can quickly check in with someone at their desk to get the latest information and fill in any gaps in your knowledge. The hybrid work model took away many of the traditional workplace interactions, which made it clear that when systems lack clear standards, team members end up interpreting directions based on their own understanding.

The result was that what had always looked like “excellent” strategies lost traction as people started creating their own versions of reality.

What most leaders still get wrong

A common belief by leaders, one that grew stronger with the rise of hybrid work, was that people would understand information better if it was shared many times, even though this was never actually proven.

For instance, the transformation leader of one particular organization started three transformation programs during a span of six months, and each one sounded inspiring.

The slide for each transformation project included three main components:

• A purpose slide that explained the mission.

• A timeline outlining milestones.

• A team assignment that defined contributors.

Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, by the third launch, the target audience became unclear about which priority mattered most.

The leader thought that people needed to understand the message precisely in order for clarity to emerge. It required all members to share the same understanding of project goals to succeed.

Leaders assume that if they’ve said it, it’s clear.

Most hybrid teams deal with this “quiet breakdown in clarity” (over time) as their main challenge, and the hybrid model reveals that people often understand their core responsibilities better than specific instructions their leaders give them.

Clarity as the core leadership skill

The shift to hybrid work, as I wrote in my book Hybrid Leadership, goes beyond changes to just structure or process. It touches and impacts how people behave at a deeper level. Assessments revealed a gap in leadership skills that many leaders didn’t even realize they had, especially when it came to clarity.

Leadership success in the hybrid work environment now depends on delivering clear direction instead of maintaining strict “authority.” The time zone differences between team members and their work priorities and tools make it impossible for supervision to function as a substitute for core organizational values.

A leader’s ability to communicate well comes from skill, not charm, and the real problem lies in their system itself.

• The most effective leaders don’t motivate through energy. They help people maintain their concentration and focus.

• Clarity connects effort to purpose. Great systems allow users to view their daily work assignments and understand how they contribute to organizational targets.

Something I noted was that hybrid work arrangements have stripped leadership down to what truly matters. The leaders who succeeded in this new way of working didn’t rely on endless meetings. Their systems were strong enough to capture meaning clearly.

Along with that, their teams rapidly gained shared visibility into decisions. Leaders created open priorities that everyone could see and defined clear accountability for each person.

It was the proverbial “win-win.“

Leaders who built loyalty through their actions instead of using force reached the peak of success in their roles.

Related: Employers: Hybrid Work is Not The Problem — Your Guidelines Are. Here’s Why and How to Fix Them.

The 3 layers of clarity

Teams need to maintain ongoing knowledge of evolving hybrid work rules to succeed in this modern work environment. To do this, successful hybrid systems need three connected layers that work together as a cohesive unit.

1. Strategic clarity: All team members understand the core reason behind their work assignments. The framework creates direct connections between business activities and performance results. People tend to choose actions over meaningful change when this clarity layer is missing.

2. Operational clarity: Every team member knows exactly what actions they need to take to finish their work. The framework provides guidance for establishing decision authority, defining project schedules and determining when to pause work because of assumptions.

3. Relational clarity: Every group member understands their responsibilities and what they should receive from others. Trust allows teams to move fast because they rely on each other to deliver.

When one layer collapses, confusion multiplies, and you’ll hear it in questions like:

• “Who’s leading this?“

• “Are we still doing that project?“

• “Wasn’t that decided last week?“

The symptoms are evidence that people lack proper expectations, rather than there being a poor performance issue.

Alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a system you intentionally design.

Building clarity into daily leadership

The path to achieving clarity doesn’t require slowing down, but it does require removing friction before it grows.

Leaders can start using these three habits right away:

1. Start every project and meeting by defining the main problem. A single question, “What problem are we really solving?” prevents major system inconsistencies.

2. Replace “Do you understand?” with “Can you show me how you’ll move this forward?” The second question helps uncover misunderstandings early and builds shared confidence.

3. End each week with reflection. Ask, “What’s clearer now than it was on Monday?” This one habit builds a culture of continuous clarity and progress.

These small habits create what I call “clarity loops,” short, intentional patterns that strengthen mutual understanding through repetition. The team stays focused on results instead of progress updates, and when clarity becomes a rhythm, performance stops depending on proximity.

From information to impact

Leaders encounter difficulties when they try to transform existing information into practical outcomes through hybrid work tools.

The main reason is the fact that technology enhances whatever already exists.

• If your team is aligned, tools amplify that alignment.

• If your team is unclear, tools amplify confusion.

Clarity bridges those two realities. It turns data into decisive action and helps people see how their contribution fits into the whole.

I’ve written before about how AI is transforming decision speed and that the speed of decision-making generates value only when it’s based on complete comprehension. The acceleration process requires clear definitions of which elements need to be accelerated.

Clarity isn’t a soft skill. It’s infrastructure.

Your strategy determines if your plan will advance or stay in a state of inactivity.

The real shift in leadership expectations

The implementation of hybrid work systems created changes that reached further than organizational structure.

It changed expectations.

Leadership evaluation practices shifted their focus from tracking presence to assessing performance (a big difference). As a result, the three essential elements that define effective leadership now are:

• Clarity

• Consistency

• Trust

This change is permanent, and leaders who base their power on authority will continue to struggle to motivate their teams. On the other hand, leaders who lead through clarity will create momentum naturally.

When leaders maintain daily focus, they achieve alignment effortlessly, and people understand their priorities, their position and their role in making a difference. The added benefit for you as a leader is that you’ll have more time to lead instead of managing.

Related: Why Clear Leadership Beats Cutting-Edge Tools Every Single Time

The future of clarity

The shift to hybrid work revealed existing differences between remote and office-based employees. The principle behind it can be summed up in one word: Clarity.

The ability to understand things clearly doesn’t require complete knowledge. It’s about helping people see what remains true despite the confusion.

Leaders who excel in the hybrid era achieve success through their actions rather than visibility. They’re the ones who make direction simple and progress possible.

As a leader, your individual dedication to clarity builds trust, strengthens culture and fuels long-term career growth.

That’s how you lead — and lead authentically — now.

When I first met my chief of staff, Bojana, she told me about her experience growing up in Serbia. Like many people outside the traditional centers of global finance, she never had access to the full range of banking and investment opportunities that people in New York, London or San Francisco take for granted.

Credit was limited, mortgages were difficult and opportunities to invest in global markets were almost non-existent. For Bojana, and for billions of others in emerging economies, traditional finance has always felt like a system designed for someone else.

This is why tokenization matters. The digital revolution did not just change how we do business. It redefined ownership itself. The most powerful innovation of our time is not simply that information, music or even money can be turned into code, but that these assets can now be represented and exchanged in ways that bypass the limits of traditional finance.

Tokenization represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to open access to people who have been excluded for decades.

Ownership today is no longer about physical possession. Tokenization makes ownership verifiable, portable and divisible. Consider real estate. In the past, a property deed in Belgrade or Lagos might have been locked away in a government archive, accessible only to banks or the wealthy. Now, that same property can be tokenized and divided into thousands of shares, opening investment opportunities to people everywhere. Someone in Serbia or Nigeria could invest alongside someone in London.

Related: The $16 Trillion Revolution That’s Unlocking the Next Generation of Finance

This change matters most in emerging markets, where traditional financial infrastructure often lags behind. Billions of people remain unbanked or underbanked, unable to access credit or investment products that are standard in the West.

The most obvious and immediate application of tokenization is in remittances. Stablecoins enable migrant workers to send money home reliably, without losing up to 10% in fees — a significant savings for families struggling to make ends meet. The same applies for businesses: as commentators have noted, Indian companies are using stablecoins like USDT on TRON or Polygon to bypass delays and FX losses, enabling them to employ freelancers anywhere in the world.

Tokenization allows them to leapfrog those barriers. Yet its most significant benefit isn’t in moving money to the financially disadvantaged, but in helping them out of poverty.

For example, a young entrepreneur in Belgrade can crowdfund by issuing tokens to a global community. An artist in Manila can sell their work through Mirror and engage directly with fans worldwide. A farmer in Kenya could tokenize future crop yields and raise capital without depending on local lenders charging predatory rates.

Related: The Future of Finance Won’t Be Built on Innovation Alone — Here’s What It Will Depend On Instead

The same transformational benefits apply upstream, in education. Students can crowdfund tokenized scholarships, while universities can tokenize endowments, creating radical new funding structures and to rebuild in a more open, digital way. On a more personal level, families can raise support for medical costs, not only bypassing local limits to capital access but also enhancing the security of sensitive medical information.

Not everything has to be a matter of life and death, however. Perhaps the most compelling on-ramp for mass tokenization adoption is in the consumer sphere. The demand for personalization has already reshaped expectations everywhere. Tokenization goes further by transforming static goods into programmable assets.

Once represented digitally, they can carry layers of value such as access rights, time-based promotions or services that travel with the asset itself. Companies that continue to sell static products will find themselves trapped in outdated models. Those who embrace dynamic ownership experiences will become the leaders of tomorrow.

Gaming offers a glimpse of what this future looks like. In-game assets, once nothing more than pixels, can now be NFTs, legally owned by players. These assets can be traded or transferred across games, creating vibrant marketplaces and new forms of community.

Online gaming universes like Illuvium, for example, enable players to trade in-game resources such as land and fuel, and to take them from one game to another. By enabling value to flow between parties, it creates a real, concrete economy where anyone can participate, generating some $72M in ‘land’ sales in 2022 alone. Gamers in Southeast Asia already earn a livelihood through play-to-earn ecosystems, proving that tokenization can rewrite the rules of work and ownership.

Related: How Traditional Institutions Can Lead the Next Phase of Blockchain Finance

Loyalty programs are another example. Instead of points locked in a single airline or brand, tokenized rewards can be verified and used across platforms. Imagine someone in Serbia earning travel miles and then being able to trade them for digital goods or services elsewhere in the world. What begins as a loyalty scheme becomes a portable financial asset.

In the creative industries, the impact is equally transformative. Tokenization finally allows artists everywhere to capture more of the value they create. An independent musician in Belgrade does not have to depend on Western platforms to distribute music or get paid. By putting their work on-chain, they can sell directly to fans, create new revenue models and build resilient communities around their art.

The moat around a business is no longer just the quality of its product; it is about the economic opportunities it creates for its users. That’s what’s so radical about tokenization: these new marketplaces, communities and even digital universes are the foundation for a renewal of capitalism based on equal access and opportunity for all. Some call this Web3, others call it decentralization. The name does not matter. What matters is that tokenization offers inclusion at a scale traditional finance never has.

This is not about becoming a blockchain expert. It is about recognizing that ownership itself is being rewritten. Global corporations and banks are building blockchain services, but the beauty of tokenization is that it is not limited to them. It is available to anyone with an internet connection. That makes it a revolution not just for the West, but for the billions who have been left outside the gates of traditional finance.

Related: Why AI and Blockchain Are About to Transform the Way We Talk About Compliance

Tokenization is not speculation. It is a transformation. It is a tool that will empower the next generation of entrepreneurs, artists and communities, from Belgrade to Bangalore to Bogotá. It is how we can finally build an economy that does not exclude people like Bojana, but one that gives them the same opportunities as anyone in the world.

Above all, tokenization is the superpower that allows us to own our future.

When I first met my chief of staff, Bojana, she told me about her experience growing up in Serbia. Like many people outside the traditional centers of global finance, she never had access to the full range of banking and investment opportunities that people in New York, London or San Francisco take for granted.

Credit was limited, mortgages were difficult and opportunities to invest in global markets were almost non-existent. For Bojana, and for billions of others in emerging economies, traditional finance has always felt like a system designed for someone else.

Four years ago, the median age at which people purchased their first home in the U.S. was 33 years old. Now the age has sharply increased to 40 years old, a record high, according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) survey of home transactions from July 2024 through June 2025.

NAR released its annual report of home buyers and sellers on Tuesday, painting a picture of a housing market dominated by older buyers who are able to make bigger down payments and pay for homes in cash.

Meanwhile, younger Americans are struggling to become homeowners, encumbered in part by rising home prices and high mortgage rates. The median price of a home in the U.S. reached $415,200 in September, up more than 50% since 2019, per Bloomberg. Mortgage rates are double where they stood in 2021, reaching 6.17% at the time of writing for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages compared to 2.9% in the first half of 2021.

“The implications for the housing market are staggering,” Jessica Lautz, NAR’s deputy chief economist and vice president of research, said in a statement. “Today’s first-time buyers are building less housing wealth and will likely have fewer moves over a lifetime as a result.”

Related: Barbara Corcoran Says This Is the Interest Rate Magic Number That Will Make the Market ‘Go Ballistic’

Close to one-third of first-time home buyers (32%) were between 25 and 34 years old, while one-fourth (25%) were between 35 and 44 years old. The NAR noted that in the 1980s, the typical first-time buyer was in their late 20s.

The trend of delaying home ownership until later in life has a long-term financial impact. When people delay buying a home, they miss out on the money they could have gained as the home’s value increases. Shannon McGahn, NAR executive vice president and chief advocacy officer, said in a statement that Americans can lose “roughly $150,000 in equity,” or $150,000 in financial value that could have been built over time, by delaying buying a home to age 40 instead of 30.

NAR recorded that first-time buyers represented only 21% of the U.S. housing market from July 2024 to June 2025, the lowest percentage since NAR began collecting this data in 1981.

Related: There’s One Week a Year Where Home Sellers Can Get $27,000 More than Usual

First-time home buyers indicated that high rent prices and substantial student loan debt delayed their purchase of a home. The average rent for an apartment in the U.S. is $1,750 for an average apartment size of 908 square feet, while the average student loan debt is $39,375 in the U.S.

NAR conducted the study in July, mailing a 120-question survey to 173,250 recent home buyers who purchased a home between July 2024 and June 2025. The sample was randomly selected to be geographically representative of sales across the U.S. NAR received a total of 6,103 responses to the survey.

Four years ago, the median age at which people purchased their first home in the U.S. was 33 years old. Now the age has sharply increased to 40 years old, a record high, according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) survey of home transactions from July 2024 through June 2025.

NAR released its annual report of home buyers and sellers on Tuesday, painting a picture of a housing market dominated by older buyers who are able to make bigger down payments and pay for homes in cash.

Most people think that babies sit, crawl, stand, walk, then run, in that order. I agree that the path has a certain logic. But those who have experience with children have seen babies who crawl before they can sit, and some who skip crawling altogether. In this most basic sense, each baby has their own Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

ZPD is the gap between what someone can do on their own and what you can help them do with support (i.e., through coaching, training and so forth). Research shows that you can bring about learning in the ZPD — it’s the “sweet spot” in someone’s capacity for growth.

The watchful and thinking baby manager can see the signs and direction of their charges’ progress and help them along. Those who aspire to walk can be given a push toy to practice on. Those who want to stand before they can even sit (my youngest exhibited this at four months, much to our alarm) can be given opportunities to practice that, too.

The key is to give support to people within their ZPD, and not, say, try to teach a sitter how to run.

Related: Workplace Learning Is Broken. These 5 Steps Tell You How to Fix It.

Professional ZPD

How do you know someone’s ZPD? You have to test it.

ZPD in adults at work can be easier to assess, since being responsible and having professional standards are generally assumed goods in the working world, and most professionals will try to do their reasonable best. And yet experience shows that even professional ZPD varies tremendously.

Recently, my team decided not to renew a term employee who was chronically tardy. I do mean irredeemably, habitually tardy, even to weekly team meetings where nobody is late. Losing your job because you cannot wake up on time is a crying shame. But it was an adaptation that was outside of this person’s ZPD.

By contrast, I once had an intern who was high school age but had an uncanny ability to build financial models. I found out when I asked her to build a Discounted Cash Flow in Excel. I gave her a webpage to read and the assignment. She came back in hours with a wonky model that gave the right answer. The area to test became whether she could build a standardized version of her model, using generally accepted modeling conventions. Her ZPD was huge in this realm.

Try, try again — with some people

Most managers know what their employees are good at already. But do you know the ZPD of your direct reports? Their ability to do things they have not before, how efficiently they can pick up new skills and with how much guidance?

If you know, then you, as the manager and coach, can be smarter about whom you invest in training and developing — with whom you “try, try again.” You already know who you can ask to do certain things, and the quality of the work that will return. With ZPD, you can test your individual team members’ capacity for growth. You can calibrate how much of your time is needed to get their growth going.

How to test ZPD

Here’s one straightforward way to test ZPD: the Think Aloud Protocol.

1. Give your team member a task they’ve never done before.

2. Ask the person to talk through their thinking as they attempt this new task. Welcome their questions along the way.

3. Listen actively to spot where they struggle and where they might benefit from direct coaching.

4. Provide them that coaching in real time, and ask them to keep talking through how to complete the task.

5. When you reach a good stopping point, ask them to return later and repeat the same task. It might be appropriate to ask them to do some additional follow-up on their own.

6. Repeat steps 2-4. This will test their retention, as well as build on the progress made.

7. If the person’s written skills are better than their verbal skills, this process can also be done through a chat platform. The key is that it happens in real time.

Related: A ‘Culture of Coaching’ Is Your Company’s Most Important Ingredient for Success

I encourage all managers to use the Think Aloud Assessment on a daily basis to continually assess the growth and abilities of their team.

This, in turn, will enable you to strategically invest in each of them. When the team’s goal is doing more in less time at a higher quality (when is it ever not?), your team will reap the gains from your investing more in the big ZPD people. It will also signal to you when to stop investing, as my team learned with the person for whom on-timeness was outside of her ZPD.

It’s an oft-repeated adage that you get what you measure. If you consistently measure your team’s ability to learn, you’ll find that their growth tends to improve.

Most people think that babies sit, crawl, stand, walk, then run, in that order. I agree that the path has a certain logic. But those who have experience with children have seen babies who crawl before they can sit, and some who skip crawling altogether. In this most basic sense, each baby has their own Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

ZPD is the gap between what someone can do on their own and what you can help them do with support (i.e., through coaching, training and so forth). Research shows that you can bring about learning in the ZPD — it’s the “sweet spot” in someone’s capacity for growth.