MELISSA MARASCO

Two powerful forces are colliding in the modern workplace, and the timing couldn't be more striking: a generation socialized on instantaneous feedback is meeting an AI revolution that's fundamentally reshaping how we evaluate performance. The Performance Distribution Problem Traditional performance reviews operated on a bell curve - some employees excelled, most performed adequately, some struggled. AI is compressing that distribution in unexpected ways. Research from MIT and

The psychology of power is undergoing a fundamental transformation. For decades, executive presence meant projecting certainty, commanding rooms, and demonstrating unilateral authority. But a new leadership paradigm is emerging—one that distributes power, acknowledges uncertainty, and treats influence as a shared resource rather than a zero-sum game. For executive communicators, this shift demands we completely rethink how our leaders show up. The Shifting Power Dynamic Resea

For too long, communications has been misunderstood as a transactional discipline—a simple game of pitching stories and collecting press clips. But that narrow view fundamentally misrepresents what great communicators actually do. Communications isn't just about earning media coverage; it's about playing reputational chess, where every move shapes how stakeholders perceive your organization, often three or four steps ahead of the immediate moment. David Ogilvy famously said,

In an age where consumers encounter thousands of marketing messages daily, something interesting is happening: the brands that resonate aren't just selling products—they're inviting us into fully realized worlds. World building, a concept borrowed from fantasy literature and film, is emerging as a powerful framework in brand communications. The underlying psychology is fascinating: our brains process narrative immersion in remarkably similar ways, whether we're exploring the