Charter

03/01/2025

Each week in 2024, Charter AI reporter Jacob Clemente shared his "AI Tip of the Week," a suggestion for experimenting with AI for readers to try. To close out 2024, Clemente rounded up his favorite tips from the year, with an eye towards the tactics he still uses in his work.

Read his roundup here:

We went through every ‘AI tip of the week’ from last year—here are the ones we use the most.

03/01/2025

One way to start the year off right: the 'One Word' activity, inspired by One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page and Gordon’s work with the Clemson Tigers football team.

Since 2022, Charter has kicked off each year by picking both individual and team-wide words of the year, an exercise that has helped us accomplish both individual and team goals.

For example, Charter’s 2022 word of the year was “bold,” a reminder to spend time on stories, initiatives, and products that were innovative, exciting, and, well, bold. Individual words from 2022 include “try,” “empathy,” “persist,” and “expedition.”

In 2023, as we were focused on making Charter Pro an indispensable part of members’ work, we chose “essential” as our word of the year, with individual words like “generosity,” “ambition,” and “expand.”

Curious about trying the activity on your team? Read our "Pro TIp of the Week" on the one word activity for prompts to get you started: https://buff.ly/4iTtpc1

01/01/2025

Looking for a sense of purpose to drive you as you enter the new year? Hospice care doctor and writer Jordan Grumet offers a practical guide for doing so in 'The Purpose Code,' out next week. We took a look at 'The Purpose Code,' with an eye towards the most practical insights for our readers.

Check out our book briefing here:

Insights from 'The Purpose Code' by Jordan Grumet.

31/12/2024

Charter's best advice from our "Pro Tip of the Week" and "Steal This Idea" features throughout 2024, including:
👉 Roll out an "Offsite in a Box," inspired by Dropbox's practices.
👉 Use "white flagging" to gracefully exit conversations, from Isabel Berwick's 'The Future-Proof Career.'
👉 Make your office a school bus stop.

More on these tips and more:

Rounding up the best “Steal This Idea” and “Pro Tip of the Week” suggestions of the year.

30/12/2024

As 2024 comes to a close, we looked back at everything we've read for our book briefings and author Q&As throughout the year. We rounded up all of our favorite insights, advice, and case studies from 14 books we read this year, including Supercommumicators by Charles Duhigg, Over Work by Brigid Schulte, Never Lead Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, and more.

Read our year-end books roundup here:

The best advice from our book briefings, author Q&As, and more.

26/12/2024

What did the late Henry Kissinger have to say about an AI-enabled future?

"Its contributions—though hardly infinite—could be of such magnitude as to fulfill all of humanity’s basic needs and realize many of our hopes,” Kissinger writes in Genesis, co-written with Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt.

More takeaways and insights from Genesis:

Our takeaways from Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie, and Eric Schmidt.

24/12/2024

The new year is "“an opportunity for a reset and also renewal,” says Brooke Weddle, senior partner at McKinsey. That makes now a good time to set your team up for success with 2025 goals.

Read our Charter Pro guide for research-backed ways to make your 2025 goal-setting conversations as productive as possible, including:
👉 The role of simplicity in effective goals.
👉 The relationship between goals and employees' motivation and performance.
👉 A "cue card" template to help your managers talk to employees about performance.

Advice from McKinsey senior partner Brooke Weddle, based on McKinsey research on goals, performance, and motivation.

23/12/2024

Will 2025 be the "Year of the Duck?"

Stanford professor Nick Bloom thinks so. "My prediction is overall levels of working from home will remain flat at a macro level in 2025. But, below the stable aggregate figures, local battles will rage over hybrid policies, employees will quit, and CEOs will continue to debate this policy," he explains. "In a sense, it’s going to be the Year of the Duck—stable on the surface but frantically paddling below."

Read more of experts' predictions for work and leadership for the coming year, with insights from Chris Bedi (ServiceNow), Prithwiraj Choudhury (Harvard Business School), Edith Cooper (Medley, PepsiCo, Amazon), Stephanie Creary (Wharton), Annie Dean (Atlassian), Sabrina Farmer (GitLab), Aneesh Raman (LinkedIn), Brigid Schulte (New America's Better Life Lab), Liz Shuler (AFL-CIO), Anna Tavis (NYU's School of Professional Studies).

Predictions for AI, flexible work, meetings, and DEI from Nick Bloom, Edith Cooper, Brigid Schulte, Liz Shuler, and more.

20/12/2024

We’ve updated our Presidential Transition Policy Tracker, our guide to navigating new policies under the coming administration. This update includes more on:

👉 The potential end to temporary work authorization for millions of immigrants without permanent legal status.
👉 Policies and regulations to watch from state and federal regulators that could affect pay equity.
👉 The research that runs counter to “hard-core” culture arguments for a full-time return to office as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy attempt to end flexible work for federal employees.

Charter Pro members can explore the tracker here:

A roadmap for employers on which potential policy shifts require immediate action and which to monitor.

19/12/2024

When it comes to advancing DEI initiatives, “in order to know what you can and can't do and how to do it effectively, you need to understand what's going on in the legal landscape and how the risks in that area have shifted,” says David Glasgow, executive director of NYU Law's Meltzer Center.

In an interview with Charter Pro, Glasgow shared the ways organizations can use legal literacy to build confidence in their DEI strategy and empower employees to act as advocates for their programs, no matter their functional area or level. Read his advice here:

A framework for equipping workers to assess legal risk and giving them confidence in DEI efforts from David Glasgow, executive director of NYU Law's Meltzer Center.

18/12/2024

Last week, Charter editor-in-chief, Kevin Delaney and head of workplace strategy and innovation, Massella Dukuly, shared the latest research and insights for strategizing, planning, and budgeting for talent and the workplace in 2025.

During this session, they addressed the most critical topics that top executives and researchers are focusing on, including:
- Talent strategy, hiring practices, organizational structures, and skill requirements amid the expanded usage of AI
- Strategies for navigating policies initiated by the new US administration, including any changes to immigration and workplace rules
- Doing more with less for employee-wellness initiatives and benefits

Charter Pro members can watch it now:

An update on talent strategy, hiring practices, organizational structures, and skill requirements amid AI; strategies for navigating policies of the new US administration, and more.

17/12/2024

An AI tip from Siobhan Savage, a co-founder and CEO of workforce-intelligence platform Reejig: When creating content, start by prompting ChatGPT to act like a top New York Times journalist.

She offers a prompt to use: "Imagine you're a New York Times journalist. I'm going to give you this topic and you've got to interview me."

Then, answer the questions as you would when talking to a journalist and use your answers as the outline of your project.

More from our interview with Savage, including more on how Reejig uses AI internally:

Lessons learned about the sweet spot between automation and a human touch.

16/12/2024

In yesterday's Charter Briefing, Rishad Tobaccowala, author of the forthcoming book Rethinking Work, shared his six C's, the six essential skills for managers of the future: cognition, creativity, curiosity, collaboration, convincing, and clarity.

Read our interview with Tobaccowala:

The practices of the best managers in the future. The portion of workers who comply with full-time in-office requirements. Marathon times as resume fodder.

11/12/2024

Last week, Charter and LifeLabs Learning co-hosted a webinar, "Leading Change in the Age of AI: Brain-Friendly Change Management Strategies," to help leaders gain the necessary skills to lead through change.

Watch a recording of the webinar to:
—Learn the key skills to lead and reinforce change initiatives, powered by AI
—Practice your change messaging skills
—Leave with a strategic change checklist, ready for use in an AI-driven world

A webinar on change management, in partnership with LifeLabs Learning.

10/12/2024

Policy changes in the next administration could endanger progress on closing the gender pay gap, says Christine Hendrickson, former employment lawyer and current VP at Syndio, a pay-equity and pay-reporting software company.

“The changes could be potentially very wide and sweeping and impact not only pay equity, but also many kinds of non-discrimination and affirmative action obligations,” she told Charter Pro.

What policies to keep an eye on, and how to design your compensation strategy to stay ahead of policy changes on the local, state, and federal level:

Predictions for how the presidential transition will affect state and federal legislation on pay equity.

09/12/2024

What's behind the gender gap in AI adoption?

According to Solène Delecourt, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, it could be caused by any number of factors, including:

1️⃣ "AI, stereotypically, seems to be very male-typed," she says. "So maybe women identify less [with it], feel less interested, or feel like they don't belong. This is not on the women themselves, this is on the constraints that women operate under."

2️⃣ "It could also be something about the time available to experiment with the tools," Delecourt points out. "There are many different papers showing that women are more time constrained because they are also doing a lot of chores, and there is inequality in terms of who takes care of household work or of the children, or even that the cognitive labor of the household tends to be primarily carried by women."

3️⃣ "A third possibility is something about guilt—that women may feel like it's cheating to use ChatGPT," she speculates. "Maybe this is something that women are more susceptible to than men."

More from our interview with Delecourt, including lessons from a recent paper she co-authored on the AI adoption gender gap:

Tactics for narrowing the gender gap in AI adoption. Tracking the next administration’s impact on workplaces. “Hype reels” for your employees.

06/12/2024

Have you read Charter's newest playbook, "Culture in a Time of Change?" Download it now for case studies on how organizations have navigated transformation with their culture as their north star, with lessons from LHH, Atlassian, Microsoft, and Deloitte.

Thank you to our sponsor, Phillips Morris International, for making this project possible. Download "Culture in a Time of Change" below:

A new research playbook from Charter filled with case studies of how companies including Atlassian, Deloitte, LHH, and Microsoft have actively shaped organizational culture to support specific strategic shifts.

05/12/2024

Wondering how the upcoming presidential transition might reshape workplaces and the business environment?

To help organizations prepare for a shifting policy environment, Charter launched our presidential transition policy tracker, which details policies to keep an eye on, the potential impact on workplaces, and recommended actions for organizations. It's your cheat sheet to repond to uncertainty and change with agility and care.

Charter Pro members can access it here:

A roadmap for employers on which potential policy shifts require immediate action and which to monitor.