Extreme heat, drought, wildfires, floods, record-low rivers, and rising energy demand have defined much of the summer of 2026. But for businesses, the important story isn’t simply that weather records are being broken.

Six weeks after a global manufacturer’s leadership team approved a group of promising new ideas, someone asked for an update. There wasn’t one.

The European Commission’s latest Joint Actions on Compliance of Products (JACOP) project offers a useful starting point for understanding why products can still fail environmental compliance checks even when manufacturers have established compliance programs.

I tried to achieve some balance in my life by taking a few days off to go fishing on Lake Erie with my son. We chartered a boat for three days—just the two of us.

As the leader of a high-performing team, how you distribute and balance work for members of that team is a critical success factor. It needs to be done fairly. Note, I didn’t say equally.

From disagreements over the right strategy to heated recriminations following a project failure, conflicts are a regular part of business life. But most leaders and teams view conflict as a negative that should be avoided at all costs.

The ongoing AI boom seems to permeate, and sometimes call into doubt, every aspect of almost everybody’s profession.

Ask a leadership team how many hours went into last quarter’s operating review. Then ask how many of those hours went into a problem the team had already solved once before. Watch how the room reacts to the second question.

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
—Michael Corleone, The Godfather: Part III

In industrial manufacturing, quality failures carry consequences far beyond the factory floor. A single defect can trigger warranty claims, production downtime for customers, costly recalls, and long-term damage to brand reputation.