McKinsey Social Initiative's Generation aims to get millennials into better jobs in fields that need more qualified workers.

Twenty-seven-year-old Jessica Miller could have easily become a casualty of the millennial job market. A single mother of three (ages 6, 7, and 8), she had taken a few courses at California University of Pennsylvania after graduating from high school in 2007, but as her student loans mounted, Miller stepped away from academia to work full-time.

From there, she held a series of low-wage jobs. In addition to working at fast-casual restaurant Qdoba, Miller says, "I was working as a cashier at a grocery store, then I worked at a day care for a few years."

She's not alone. As the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, millennial unemployment is at 11.5%, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's nearly triple the total U.S. unemployment rate, which stood at 4.7% in December.

Worse still, even many millennials with jobs are just scraping by. According to a recent Accenture study, 51% of 2014-2015 graduates are underemployed—holding jobs that don't require the college degrees they've earned—and that number has risen precipitously over the past 15 years. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found similar troubles among millennials whose academic careers terminated with high school diplomas; underemployment among that group stood at 33.7% last year, compared with 26.8% in 2007.

Making matters worse, according to EPI researchers, is the fact that the U.S. workforce used to be much richer in skilled positions (like dental hygienist or electrician) that offered health benefits and some sort of retirement plan to workers without college degrees or even high school diplomas. But these days, many are like Miller—working as food servers, cashiers, and in other low-wage jobs without benefits or overtime.

Miller originally had her sights set on a job in health care, because of the opportunities it presented for a sustainable career. So, anxious to find an alternative to her patchwork of service positions, she went to her local Goodwill Job Connection to see if there was anything available. That's where she heard about the Generation program.

Getting Young People Into "Good" Jobs

The program was developed by the McKinsey Social Initiative in 2015 to find and train unemployed or underemployed workers ages 18–29 and place them into better jobs in health care, retail/sales/hospitality management, information technology (IT), and skilled trades like construction or mechanics. The goal is to tackle the twin problems of unemployment and underemployment by putting millennials into the industries with the highest demand for workers.

The consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Generation's parent company, launched the nonprofit with an initial fund of $70 million and additional grants from USAID ($15 million) and Walmart ($3.2 million). The organization builds on McKinsey's other work in the nonprofit world, where there are only a few other private-sector efforts to solve these issues. McKinsey's competitor Bain and Company also has a nonprofit arm called the Bridgespan Group that works with organizations and philanthropists on other social-impact efforts. The field isn't especially crowded, though, so any dent Generation could make would represent a significant step forward.

Mona Mourshed, Generation's global executive director and vice president of the McKinsey Social Initiative's board of directors, says her team evaluated over 150 education-to-employment programs in 25 countries to create the model for its own program. They wanted it to scale rapidly and it has: What started out as a "graduating class" of 1,200 students at the end of 2015 swelled to over 9,300 students across five countries and 14 professions by the end of 2016.

In the U.S., Generation has served 1,100 students in 10 cities, 61% of whom are female and 85% are African-American or Hispanic/Latino, according to Mourshed. This already makes it one of the largest programs of its kind. However, she points out, "given the size of the problem, the solution needs to be able to serve hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of young people a year."

Interviews, Homework, And More Interviews

To qualify for Generation's assistance, U.S. participants must hold a high school diploma or GED or, like Miller, have some college courses under their belts. "Applicants are then selected based on a mix of intrinsics, effort, and employment standards for the profession," Mourshed explains.

"There were a lot of interviews," Miller says with a laugh, recalling the exercises, including role plays, that Generation uses to test applicants' interpersonal skills relevant to a specific job function. "The final step," says Mourshed, "is to independently complete their pre-work activities"—the remaining paperwork and other small tasks that are part of the application process—"and arrive on time at our training center."

During the eight weeks it took to train with Generation, Miller didn't work at the day care center, but she did some babysitting on the side to help support her family. She says that her Generation cohort of 10 students received a $200 stipend per week to cover basic living expenses while they were in training. (That's since been adjusted to $150 per week, although the program's training stipends vary quite a bit globally.)

Miller also recalls doing homework alongside her three elementary schoolers. The state-mandated coursework for certified nursing assistants (CNAs) focuses on patient care, so Miller and her classmates learned about infection control, safety procedures, and communication skills. Generation's instructors also taught such clinical skills as how to take vital signs, bathe, and move patients. By the time she'd completed the program, Miller remembers one of her children telling her, "Congratulations, mommy, you worked very hard."

In less than a month, Miller landed a job as a CNA at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and has since been promoted to patient care technician.

Although her shifts are 12.5 hours long and she sometimes works nights, as the sole breadwinner, Miller says she's grateful to be making twice the minimum wage and to get paid time off. Generation reports that on average, its U.S. graduates make four times more than they did before the training. Nearly one-third (27%) are parents like Miller, and of those, 99% were previously living in poverty.

One of Generation's main challenges (and priorities) is keeping its training programs accessible, and it helped Miller cover the costs. "It was a tremendous help to not have to get another loan," she emphasizes. Despite being in college for just one semester, Miller struggled to gradually pay off a $2,000 loan, which ballooned over time to $7,000 with interest. The CNA program Miller completed is one of Generation's priciest, at an average of $5,500 per student, because the government caps class sizes for CNA trainees at 10 students and mandates eight weeks of instruction. (Other programs Generation offers, like hospitality and retail, are shorter, accept larger class sizes, and subsequently cost less than $2,500, Mourshed explains.)

With an 84% employment rate overall, Generation's reports show that 90% of its CNA grads earn their certifications, 80% outperform their peers in the field, and 80% are still working six months out. The data shows that they are two to three times cheaper to train and recruit than other CNA graduates, which represents a win for Generation's employer partners.

Looking ahead, Miller says she'd like to be an in-home aide so she can work with fewer patients and have more one-on-one time with each. Eventually, she'd like to become a registered nurse.

Making The Most Impact

But for the time being, Miller keeps circling back to gratitude. "Last year I paid off my loans in full," she says with no small amount of pride. No wonder, since last year's college graduates entered the workforce with an average of $35,051 in student loan debt—the highest in history, according to Edvisors, a website that provides information to parents and students about college costs and financial aid.

Such massive amounts of debt can force young people to make career choices they otherwise wouldn't consider, as Miller knows well. The Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration (ETA) supports a wide variety of job training programs, including the Job Corps, founded in 1964 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty." But the employment data makes clear that government efforts haven't solved the tangle of problems that young people like Miller now face. The nation's largest comprehensive residential education and job training program (for at-risk youth ages 16–24) is still narrower in focus than Generation's, whose nonprofit/public/private approach may prove better suited to making a sustainable difference.

If that's Mourshed's hope, she's still candid about the challenges ahead. Generation's difficulty collecting return-on-investment data is just one example. That demanded working closely with employers and with research partner Gallup. "With time, we have developed a better understanding of how to collect this data—measures like productivity and quality—accurately, and with a minimal burden to the employer," she says.

Quality assurance, says Mourshed, is also "a significant challenge that comes with scale." To ensure students have experience in every classroom no matter where in the world they sit, Generation has added an onboarding curriculum and continuous coaching resources for its instructors. It's also added classroom recording features across its entire network of sites.

"Our goal is to connect [young people] with skills and jobs that have a career pathway," Mourshed emphasizes, "so that they can fundamentally change their life trajectory." Generation is quickly discovering that's no small task, but just like its program graduates, it's putting in the work.

The secrets behind four-minute meetings and scrapping your to-do list.

Of all our available resources, everyone has the same number of hours in a day. Some, however, happen to get more done. Are they faster or smarter? Do they have more help? Perhaps. But they've also learned tricks that can help them stretch time and eliminate the unimportant.

Here are six things super-productive people do every day to maximize their results and success:

1. They Start With A Morning Routine

Consistency and routine are helpful for starting the day in a proactive mode. While the tasks vary, productive people have found a set of activities and order that works for them.

Serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, author of #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness, wakes up at 6 a.m. every day and follows the same routine. "I start my day by consuming quite a lot of information," he writes. "I go to TechMeme and check out the headlines. I read Jason Hirschhorn's email newsletter, MediaREDEF. Then I hit the news outlets . . . the main site that I focus on during this time is Nuzzel, an aggregator of headlines and links that my circle is sharing."

After checking his Twitter and Instagram feeds, he heads to the gym for a workout with his trainer, returns home to connect with his family before they start their day, and then prepares for the first meeting of the day.

"By the time I step into that first meeting, so much is going through my head already," he writes.

2. They Block Out Time And Tackle Important Tasks

Productive people understand the difference between important and urgent tasks. The former moves businesses forward while the latter puts out fires. It can be tempting to fill your day with urgent tasks because fires seem important in the moment, but you'll never innovate or achieve more if you don't move beyond what is and into what can be.

Each year Gary Keller, author of The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results and founder of Keller Williams Realty, identifies his most important task and blocks out the first four hours of every day to focus on it.

"The key is time. Success is built sequentially. It's one thing at a time," he writes in his book.

To identify his "one thing," Keller looks at his goals for the year and asks himself, "What's the one thing which, when tackled, will make everything else I have to do easier or unnecessary?" He then protects the first four hours of his workday to do only that one thing.

Keller has used the technique to write books as well as grow his company to the largest real estate franchise, and believes that until his top priority is done, anything else is a distraction.

3. They Maximize The Use Of Their Calendar

While to-do lists are nice for capturing information and activities, productive people don't run their day from one, says Peter Bregman, author of Four Seconds: All the Time You Need to Replace Counter-Productive Habits with Ones that Really Work. Instead, Bregman suggests scheduling any and all to-do list tasks on a calendar and using that as a blueprint.

"Decide when and where you will do something, and the likelihood that you'll follow through increases dramatically," he writes on his blog. "The reason we're always left with unfinished items on our to-do lists is because those lists are the wrong tool to drive our accomplishments."

Calendars help you prioritize, says Bregman. "What is it that really needs to get done today? What important items have you been ignoring? Where can you slot those things into your schedule?" he writes. "A calendar is finite; there are only a certain number of hours in a day. That fact becomes clear the instant we try to cram an unrealistic number of things into a finite space."

4. They Look At Their Day In Minutes, Not Hours

Calendars are often divided into 30- or 60-minute increments, but productive people like to dial activities down even further, eliminating the chance that time goes unscheduled.

Grant Cardone, author of The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure, learned that Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, divided his day into 15-minute increments and introduced the concept into his own schedule.

When you divide up an hour, you multiply the available time, Cardone says. "[Greenspan] didn't let white space on that calendar, he knew white space was a problem because—white space, nothing in the 15 minutes—was a waste of time," he says in a video on his website.

Vaynerchuk also dials down his schedule into small increments. "Every minute counts, so my schedule is planned down to the second," he writes. "And I'm not kidding: I've had, and continue to have, three- and four-minute meetings. You have to use every second you get in a day."

5. They Turn Off Email

We all know that email can be a time suck, but few of us do anything about it. A recent study by Adobe found that the average person spends 7.4 hours per weekday on email, which means we're always fielding messages from our inboxes. Productive people, however, aren't slaves to technology, says Jason Jennings, author of Less is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity.

"Most super-productive people only check their email two or three times a day," Jennings told Prevention magazine. Schedule email time on your calendar and process it in time blocks.

Related:One CEO's Secret To Checking Email Just Once A Day

Constantly checking email also makes you less productive answering it, according to a study from the University of British Columbia. In an experiment, participants were put into two groups, with one told to check email three times a day and another told to check it as often as they wanted.

The group that checked email three times a day reduced the amount of time they spent answering messages by 20%. They also reported feeling less stressed than before.

6. They Practice Self-Care

You can't be productive if you're not healthy. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson wakes up at 5 a.m. every day and exercises. "I definitely can achieve twice as much by keeping fit," Branson said in an interview with FourHourBodyPress. "It keeps the brain functioning well."

While some people like to workout before they head to the office, fitting in exercise during the workday is also effective. A study at Leeds Beckett University in the U.K. found that employees who used onsite gyms for daytime sweat sessions were more productive.

Successful people also get enough sleep. Bill Gates, Tim Cook, and Arianna Huffington all report getting seven hours a night. Researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki, Finland, found that those who did not get enough shut-eye are more likely to take extra sick days. The optimal amount of sleep for energy and wellness is seven to eight hours each night, according to the study published in the medical journal Sleep.

It might be easier to get directions on your smartphone rather than to ask a stranger, but something valuable is lost.

Imagine you are visiting a new city and get lost on your way to that famous must-see museum. In times of yore—actually just about 10 years ago—you might have had to consult a friendly local to direct you. Today, with all the friendly locals still very much around you on the street, you might find yourself reaching for the powerful fountain of information in your pocket—your smartphone. Directions to the museum, recommendations for the best places to have lunch, and much more are literally at your fingertips, anytime and anywhere you go.

Such convenient access to information is no doubt useful. Our map apps might well be more reliable (and more likely to be in our native language) than the confusing directions of a stranger. And we run zero risk of getting into an unpleasant interpersonal interaction. But could there be costs to this technological convenience?

Contrary to people's expectations, casual social interactions even with strangers can be surprisingly enjoyable, and a powerful tool in building a sense of connection, community, and belonging. Economists sometimes refer to these impalpable links that hold society together as "social capital." But as intangible as they may be, these bonds between members of a society have very real consequences. When trust between people in a country goes up, for example, so does economic growth. At the individual level, people who trust others more also tend to have better health and higher well-being.

Could our increasing reliance on information from devices, rather than from other people, be costing us opportunities to build social capital? To examine this question, my collaborator Jason Proulx and I looked at the relationship between how frequently people used their phones to obtain information and how much they trusted strangers.

We looked at data from the World Values Survey—a large nationally representative U.S. poll. Respondents reported how frequently they obtained information from various sources, including TV, radio, the internet, other people, and their mobile phones. We found that the more often Americans used their phones to obtain information, the less they trusted strangers. They also reported feeling less trust in their neighbors, people from other religions, and people of other nationalities. Importantly, using phones for information had no bearing on how much people trusted their friends and family.

It's The Phone, Really

This pattern of results suggests that there is something about relying on phones for information that might be eroding trust specifically in "outsiders." It could be that by substituting screen time for interactions with strangers, we are forgoing opportunities to build a general sense of trust in others.

But another possibility is that there is nothing special about obtaining information through phones. Rather, the information we consume—regardless of the medium—might somehow lead us to trust others less. To be sure, mass media is replete with stories about the negative elements of human nature—from wars to terrorism and crime. Perhaps, then, it is the information itself that is eroding trust.

However, we found that getting information from other media—such as TV, radio, and newspapers—was associated with trusting others more, not less. It was even true for people who got their information online over the internet but through a laptop computer rather than a mobile device. This pattern points the finger right back at our phones.

So what's unique about phones? They provide access to on-demand information unrivaled by any other device or medium. If you tried to use your laptop to obtain directions, you will first need to find internet access, somewhere to sit or put the laptop as you search, and so forth. With your phone, all you need to do is take it out of your pocket, tap a few times, and be on your way. In the evolutionary tree of information technology, smartphones are an entirely new species, allowing access to on-demand information anywhere we go—even when a friendly stranger is passing us by right as we need directions or a local recommendation.

Double-Checking Ourselves

Frankly, these results surprised us. We were skeptical, and did everything we could think of to identify other, non-phone reasons that might be causing the results we got. We adjusted for a wide range of demographic variables, like age, sex, income, education, employment status, and race. We explored whether where people lived might be involved: Maybe people in rural regions used phones less due to poorer coverage, or trusted people more than people in urban regions—or both.

We would be remiss, of course, if we did not acknowledge the reverse causal possibility: People who trust others less might be more likely to use their mobile phones for information. If this is the case, we might expect that controlling for how much people rely on other people for information would attenuate the relationship between mobile information and trust.

Yet, contrary to this possibility, controlling for how much people relied on other people for information did not explain away the negative relationship between mobile information and trust. Still, the only way to establish a clear direction of causality is to experimentally induce people to either rely on their phones for information or not, and see whether this manipulation has consequences for trust. Of course, it would be challenging to run an experiment with a nationally representative sample while measuring people's natural behavior. These limitations of possible experimental designs underscore the advantages of the current correlational data.

But even when we accounted for all of these differences, people who used their phones to get information trusted strangers less.

Of course, no matter how we look at this correlational data, we can't clearly establish cause and effect—just a noteworthy commonality. It is certainly possible that people who trust outsiders less also become more likely to use their phones for information. But if this is true, we might be in the midst of a vicious cycle: As the wider public increasingly relies on smartphones for information, we might be missing opportunities to cultivate a sense of trust; then, because we trust others less, we might rely on our phones even more. This possibility would be worth exploring in the future.

So is it time to go back to our flip phones? Not so quickly, perhaps. The effects we observed were relatively small, accounting only for a few percent in how much people trust others.

But even a tiny statistical effect can have great practical significance. Consider the effect of aspirin on reducing heart attacks. Taking aspirin daily has a tiny effect on reducing risk of heart attack, explaining as little as 0.1% of the probability of having a heart attack. Yet when used by millions of people, it can save thousands of lives. Similarly, small factors that reduce trust might have large effects on our lives and our society.

As information technology continues to make our lives easier, our findings highlight the possible social costs of constant information access: By turning to convenient electronic devices, people may be forgoing opportunities to foster trust—a finding that seems particularly poignant in the present political climate.

Kostadin Kushlev is a research associate in psychology at the University of Virginia. A version of this essay first appeared atThe Conversation.

The design team behind the new site, Code and Theory, explained what makes its aesthetic so different.

Is The Outline the ugliest website on the web right now? Possibly, but that may not be a bad thing.

The news website, spearheaded by The Verge's co-founder Josh Topolsky and launched in December, aims to be a digital-first destination for content. The text-heavy site looks like a hybrid of a print magazine and a Geocities blog. It's an eyeful—a carefully-designed eyeful—with a gritty, net-inspired aesthetic meant to show readers that it's different from everything else out there. A flying saucer icon rests on the corner of every article. There's a squiggly, animated line below every headline. Highlighted content is surrounded by graphic clipart, drop-shadows galore. Each page assaults the eyes with dozens of colors and fonts. It's a purely digital visual language, derived from decades of internet culture.

The Outline is a new media experiment, and it looks like no other news site around. It's strategically designed to use this eye-popping web aesthetic to bolster attention and loyalty. Will it translate that into a thriving media business? I tried to find out.

Back in August, Topolsky told Poynter that the site is meant for a limited audience; he wanted to create content that will be interesting and engaging and not just crank out endless posts in the hope that it will attract eyeballs. "How do you be interesting?" he asked. "How do you make them curious, how do you engage them?"

Topolsky hired the digital creative firm Code and Theory to create the site. They've worked together for years—Code and Theory designed The Verge and Engadget, and most recently redesigned Bloomberg Businessweek (all three of which Topolsky worked at). According to Code and Theory's co-founder, Dan Gardner, the two have obsessively riffed for years about what the future of media will look like. The core question Gardner and Topolsky were battling with? "How am I going to resonate and identify this as The Outline not just a random piece of content?"

The Outline's answer seems to lie in its design, which it's betting on to bring back loyal readers and differentiate it from its competitors. I asked Gardner what, design-wise, The Outline is doing that's different from other websites. "Media, companies—even digital media companies like Huffington Post or Vox Media... or BuzzFeed—[have] learned to do what they do very well," he says, which is "[grabbing] traffic through individual stories." What's been lost, he says, is "differentiation between that storytelling."

That begins with the content itself, but also how it's conveyed through the design. Gardner goes on, "You could almost do a test right now; pull up with any random website and the components of that story are the same. The format is almost exactly the same." Digital audiences expect the same thing from websites, whether they're the New York Times, BuzzFeed, or Breitbart. Instead, the duo wanted to tell stories in a multitude of ways on The Outline. "You may see a story in fifteen to twenty words," he says. "You may see a story in one word." What he wants is a way for the team to think about "the best way to articulate" a story. The Outline has text stories, shorter visual stories, and some audio projects too (one of the first things it produced was a podcast about the HBO show "Westworld"). Gardner says The Outline wants to employ endless forms of unique storytelling in the future, including video.

Some of the site's design elements strike me as random, perhaps functioning as tricks to catch readers' eyes. Why is there a squiggly line below headlines? What's the point of a huge red box of headlines? Does a barrage of fonts really enhance an experience? The idea, says Gardner, is to cultivate a sense for what the site is, and how it differs from others. "It's about how can we create a bit more fun on what has typically become quite mundane UI design," wrote Gardner in a follow-up email. "It also helps to create a consistent tone between the content."

There's an irreverent voice in the design, one that matches much of the content. "We tried to take the best of what's familiar from current social platforms and marry it with historical references that we found interesting, even including print magazines like The Face, and other artwork that came out of the '90s as computer graphics started to evolve and visual experimentation was high because there were less 'best standards' to rely on," he writes, citing art and architecture of the '50s and mid-century typography as well.

"The overall strategy for the strange elements' purpose is really to create excitement, intrigue by unexpectedness," Gardner writes. The interface contains countless nods to the internet of yore—Microsoft's Clippy, space aliens, weird text borders. It could easily double as an X-Files AngelFire fan site from 1997. "In a time where you could barely see the distinction from one site to another anymore," he continues, "it was important for us to give a distinct look and feel."

For now, the site's design rests on the thesis that if people enjoy looking at an interesting or even beautiful article, they may engage with it differently than they would with another news story or site.

It's a big bet—one that has yet to be proven out. Today, digital media is under a microscope. Everything and nothing is being labeled as "fake news," and regurgitated content seems to be oozing from the ears of every media company on Earth. So perhaps there's some credence to the idea that a digital-first news organization can make a splash by letting audiences know that it is most definitely not anything like the rest because it looks nothing like the rest—even as it evolves in the future. "The one constant will be change," Gardner says. Now we just have to wait and see what change The Outline will bring.

When one career chapter ends, how do you move forward? Expert advice from two pop stars (and a manager) who lived through it.

Since pop trio the Jonas Brothers disbanded in 2013, the siblings have been pursuing other projects: Joe leads a group called DNCE, Nick has a solo singing career and is also acting, and Kevin is a tech entrepreneur and co-CEO of influencer marketing company the Blu Market. Joe and Kevin joined their longtime manager, Phil McIntyre, at the Fast Company Innovation Festival to discuss their new careers.

Don't Fear The Unknown

"With each artist, you're essentially the CEO of their little enterprise," said McIntyre. "At [Philymack] we had success so quick with the Jonas Brothers and Demi [Lovato], and then we went through a rough patch where we failed to evolve and find new business opportunities. My job is to continue to diversify and to find new areas of revenue and inspiration. We made a commitment in this next phase to not make fear-based decisions, but to go where we felt truly inspired."

Video: How Joe And Kevin Jonas Decided To Follow Their New Passions

Humility Helps

"After the Jonas Brothers, I was like, What is next?" said Kevin. "I always had a passion for [tech]. They even called me KT&T for a while. I am not an expert, but I'm a fast learner: Surround yourself with people who will make you better, and learn to listen. It was humbling to see my brothers blowing up in music while I wasn't in the public eye, but it was also gratifying, because I'm doing what I love, and the self-esteem you get from that is so much better. When you can take away the ego, you learn a lot about yourself and the world around you."

Welcome Change

"I took a few years off to figure it out," said Joe. "I [opened a] restaurant, deejayed, tried a little acting. During [one] meeting, Phil was pretty real with me—a mini intervention. He said, 'You should be doing what you do best, and that's music.' Things are happening so fast now, especially with all the different social [media] outlets. It used to be you'd release one song and that's your whole year or two years, and now you can release a song a month if you want, or every week. As an artist, I'm like, Great!"

The runway star launched a summer coding camp to empower young girls to strike their own paths.

As one of the world's most in-demand fashion stars, Karlie Kloss has appeared in dozens of ad campaigns and walked countless runways. But in her free time, the supermodel is more likely to obsess over code than clothes. "I like knowing how apps and hardware work and why," says Kloss, who is pursuing a degree at NYU. That interest in technology inspired her to found Kode With Klossy, a summer computing camp and scholarship program with a mission to empower young women. Along the way, Kloss has learned three techniques that can further any passion project.

Follow Your Instincts

Kloss didn't set out to learn about coding, but as she got more interested in business and tech, she realized it would be an essential tool. "As a model, I was meeting all these entrepreneurs and was fascinated by the things they were building. But I couldn't understand how [these products] worked. What did they know that I didn't? What secret language was this code thing? I follow my nerdy passions, even if they are kind of unexpected. Being true to yourself, as cheesy as that sounds, is important. If you don't enjoy what you're doing—if you're pretending to be something you're not—then it's not sustainable."

See Obstacles As An Opportunity

Part of what Kloss loves about programming is the challenge of applying her brain to sticky problems: "Creative problem solving," as she calls it. "It takes a while to get something to work. It takes a while before you can build an app or even write your first line of code. But these skills—seeing a problem and finding the solution using code—are so important. [They] help you understand how to think about things. It's a valuable skill set even if you don't become an engineer."

Video: Karlie Kloss On How Social Media Has Changed The Modeling Industry

Go Harder

In addition to everything else, Kloss is a committed baker who has created a popular line of dessert products with Milk Bar's Christina Tosi. Juggling all of those obligations can be exhausting, but it's a big part of what keeps her engaged. "I am the daughter of an emergency-room physician, and I've watched my dad work 12-hour night shifts for as long as I can remember. It's inspired me and is definitely a part of who I am and the way I live."

Singer John Legend is expanding his vision and expressing himself through film and TV, as well as launching the FreeAmerica campaign.

As a TV and film producer, you've made series such as Underground, about the Underground Railroad, and you're developing a film based on the mixed-race general who inspired The Count of Monte Cristo. How do you decide which projects to pursue?

I start with my own background: I was an English major and also concentrated in African-American literature, history, and culture. Even as a young person, I used to read a lot about Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. Everything we do has some connection to that interest of mine and the interests of my team. As an artist, what I want to do is bring light, inspiration, and beauty into the world. Music is the main way I do that, but our film company is trying to do that as well.

On the philanthropic front, you started Free America to end mass incarceration. What made you decide to tackle that issue?

I've always been someone who thinks a lot about social justice and how we can make the world better, how we can look at issues like poverty and education and criminal justice reform to make people's lives better, particularly in the black community. One issue I spend a lot of time thinking about is, how do we make our schools better? As I spent time with young people, I realized that for a lot of them, their fathers were disappearing from the communities and from their families. We are able to raise money and get a lot of interest in helping them with school, but once kids get in trouble—once they get caught up in the criminal justice system—then all of our sense of philanthropy disappears and we just let society give up on them. I told my team I want to add a new focus to our plate, this issue of mass incarceration.

You haven't hidden how angry you are about these issues.

The more I learn, the more upset I get—but also the more it makes me want to do something. As I've grown more radical, I've also gained more knowledge and more influence. I don't want to just be mad. I want to actually make things better.

Video: How John Legend Gets His Creative Juices Flowing

The London-based company raised $10 million last week to support its growth in Europe.

Serial entrepreneur Norris Koppel, an Estonian by birth, understands all too well the challenges faced by immigrants. When he moved to the United Kingdom 17 years ago, he was denied a bank account because he didn't have a British credit history or utility bills. Unable to get paid and unable to rent an apartment, it was "humiliating," says Koppel. In 2013, after selling a successful fintech startup, he resolved to make banking better for the U.K.'s 3.5 million migrants—and ultimately for the 247 million migrants worldwide.

It's a noble mission, but also one with real economic benefits. Better integrating migrants into society, according to a McKinsey & Company report, could generate an additional $1 trillion annually on top of the $3 trillion global GDP boost that they already provide by working in places of greater opportunity.

Now, with Brexit negotiations underway, it's unclear whether the U.K. will reap the benefits of migration going forward. But for Monese, the mobile banking app that Koppel launched in 2015, Brexit has been all upside so far.

"Personally, none of the people in our company or fintech companies like Brexit," he says. "Monese is all about breaking down the walls, making it easy to include people. But as it happens, [Brexit] has been immensely good for us as a business."

Since the referendum vote on June 23, Monese's customer acquisition costs have been "way down," according to Koppel, thanks to a leap in word-of-mouth marketing (customer acquisition, by the end of 2016, was 90% organic). Plus, U.K. newcomers are taking advantage of the European Union's open borders while they can. "There is a huge surge in migration at the moment." So far, 85% of Monese's 40,000 users are migrants and 15% are underbanked citizens. Before Brexit, the company had 20,000 users.

To open a Monese account, users snap a picture of their ID and take a selfie. In the background, Monese runs an identity check using data from the user's country of origin. Once up and running, Monese mirrors the functionality of a standard checking account, with cash and direct deposit; a Visa debit card; and ATM withdrawal functionality. The app also includes features designed for migrant populations, such as global payment processing.

Since launching, Monese's biggest change has been to its business model. In the early days, the company planned to charge by transaction—but customers revolted. "Designed to be fair, the perception about it was the opposite," Koppel explains.

Today, Monese charges a flat fee of £4.95 per month, plus a wholesale rate of 0.5% for currency exchange. "We're not going to be breaking even with every customer," Koppel acknowledges, "but it's super simple to understand." If the average Monese customer banked with Barclays, Koppel says, he would end up paying five times the amount for the same services.

"The pain is so huge, people are desperately Googling to find a solution to the problem. You need a bank account to exist, to buy food," Koppel says. With the $10 million in Series A funding that Monese announced last week, he plans to make a bigger push to acquire customers in Europe. "This has always been the goal, to become not just pan-European but a global bank, accessible wherever you go." Existing users will be able to open an account in a European country with just one tap.

Despite a growing emphasis on markets outside of the U.K., Koppel does not plan to relocate his London-based team, which conducts compliance and marketing (customer service and engineering are in Estonia). Larger banks are considering moves to financial centers on the continent, but startups, by and large, have shown little interest. "We haven't had anyone in our community talk about leaving," even if a hard Brexit scenario were implemented, says Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO of Innovate Finance, an advocacy group representing over 200 U.K. fintech companies. "More than likely, what you would do is relicense your operation in Dublin or Brussels or Frankfurt."

Wintermeyer's primary concerns for his member companies revolve around financing and talent. "The most important thing is, let's not do anything that detracts investors from coming to the U.K., let's be sure we remain attractive," he says. Plus, "we want to be sure we have access to talent."

As for companies like Monese: "Financial inclusion is a broad and important trend to pay attention to," Wintermeyer says. "It's where digital has a really big role to play, but you're going to need volume." Many fintech startups find themselves gravitating toward the wealthy in order to achieve scale because customer growth in financial services is so slow.

Despite the obstacles, an increasing number of fintech founders are setting their sights on serving less affluent populations. In Egypt, for example, there is Dopay, a cloud-based payroll product for unbanked employees. In the U.S., there are more established players like Oportun, a credit provider for underbanked Hispanic families, and young entrants like Bee, a mobile-only banking app that has grown by canvassing neighborhoods like New York's South Bronx.

The typical Bee customer has less than $1,000 in liquid assets or makes less than $50,000 per year, says founder and CEO Vinay Patel. "Most banking products are fundamentally not built for mobile-only use. They're built for mobile as a secondary channel," he says. Checking accounts are Bee's point of entry. "You need to get paid without it being slow, inconvenient, and expensive."

This week's top stories may help you earn a little extra cash, streamline your email inbox, and embrace more authenticity online.

This week we learned how the upfront effort to set up a passive income stream can pay off, one technique for streamlining an overflowing inbox, and how the upheavals of the past year led one career coach to throw "personal branding" concerns to the wind.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the week of January 8:

1. Four Ways To Earn Extra Money While Keeping (Or Preparing To Quit) Your Day Job

Earning small amounts of cash in dribs and drabs may not sound all that transformative, but for budding entrepreneurs and people looking to quit their day jobs, it's all the seed money they need. Here are a few straightforward ways to earn a "passive income" while you're busy making bigger plans.

2. The Only Five Email Folders Your Inbox Will Ever Need

Zach Hanlon's inbox was a hydra until a friend clued him in to a new way of organizing it. Rather than shuttling messages into a series of folders by subject matter, Hanlon overhauled his system on the basis of urgency. These five folders are the only ones he's needed ever since.

3. Screw "Personal Branding": My Top Three Social Media Resolutions For 2017

"I know I can't totally counteract the extreme hysteria of online hate groups, fake-news planters, and any forces that seek to divide us and foment chaos," one Fast Company contributor admits as he turns the page on 2016. Still, he writes, "I believe that standing as an example of transparency is a small but meaningful way to combat the hidden agendas that so many use social media to advance"—personal branding be damned.

4. These Are The Jobs With The Most Potential In 2017

The vast majority of U.S. employers say they're either seeking new hires or planning to maintain their head counts—good news for job seekers. Some companies and businesses have already set more ambitious hiring goals than others, though. Here's what the latest data says about where the most opportunities lie.

5. The Cities With The Best Opportunities For Job Seekers This Year

Location, location, location: Recent reports suggest that the top metro areas for job seekers include the Twin Cities, the Portland-Vancouver hub, and region of southern New England anchored by Providence, Rhode Island. This week we looked at the latest findings on where job openings are plentiful and competition for them is comparatively low.

Sometimes the smartest way to find a path forward is just to take a step. Any step.

When You Don't Know What To Do, Try Doing Something

When he bought a decommissioned Kraft factory in upstate New York with a loose plan to launch a yogurt company, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya didn't have a clue how to proceed. Rather than sitting around, he simply . . . started.

"I did not know business. Innovation, marketing, branding, financing, I had no idea of those," Ulukaya said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in November. "[Our first handful of employees] were looking at me, saying, 'Okay, what do we do now?' So I said, 'We'll go to the Ace hardware store and buy some white, blue, and red paint.' That was strategy number one: We're going to paint the wall outside. [One] guy, very quiet, says, 'Hamdi, tell me you have better ideas than this one. This wall hasn't been painted for the last 30 years. Why do you care?' I said, 'Mike, I don't have a second plan.' I just thought the wall needed the paint! I did not have any other ideas how I was going to make it to the next month. Painting that wall became our thing. [Now] we never sit around and wait and wonder, What are we going to do next?

"We always come up with the ideas while we are doing something. It turns out that's the way I am. I just don't like sitting around and waiting and thinking. I always repeat this: [13th-century Persian poet] Rumi said, 'When you start walking the way, the way appears.' It really does. The motion of painting the walls—you start coming up with the ideas. By the end of the summer, the building looked better than before. We were proud of ourselves with the thing that we'd done. And that led to the next thing."

Start by getting everyone on the same page.

Four top executives share their advice for a culture conducive to creativity.

Don't Dictate

"Present your ideas, then ask your team: 'What do you think? Is there a better way?' Don't tell everyone what to do—lead by questioning. It's much more productive [when] everyone's visions of the project are adapting at once." —Dror Benshetrit, founder, Studio Dror

Produce Pathways

"Share information. We make friends with people we admire, including those you might consider competitors, like Charity: Water, Kiva, and Global Giving. We get on a call with them and exchange experiences." —Charles Best, CEO, DonorsChoose.org

Avoid The Obvious

"We put people on projects where they bring their unique worldview. Years ago, the guy who ran Subaru for us hated cars, so he had to fall in love with them [to do the job]. That point of view cuts through. It sounds different." —Karl Lieberman, executive creative director, Wieden+Kennedy

Hit Reset

"Sometimes you just need to throw everything out the window and re­­build it right on the spot. Think big—no limits. Then work from there." —Vee Bravo, filmmaker, Tribeca Film Institute

As it is in real estate, landing your dream job is all about location, location, location.

Economists' optimism about the most recent jobs report fell a bit short in December, when the U.S. economy gained 156,000 new jobs, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a little under expectations.

Still, new reports from several job platforms indicate that those numbers may be about to improve. The majority of U.S. employers across a wide breadth of industries say they plan to maintain or increase their payrolls in 2017.

That's likely why ZipRecruiter is calling this "the year of the job seeker." But where exactly will all those open positions most likely proliferate?

The job board's researchers analyzed the company's internal data from 2016 to find out which cities and industries have the most career opportunities. To do this, they took data from the job postings in each city and compared it to the number of job seekers in each of those cities on ZipRecruiter. Then the researchers created two rankings. One is based on the ratio of openings to job seekers for each city. The other uses the same data to rank the top five industries that are hiring within those top 10 cities.

Top 10 Metro Areas For Jobs

1. Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN-WI
2. Providence–New Bedford–Fall River, RI-MA
3. Portland–Vancouver–Beaverton, OR-WA
4. Kansas City, MO-KS
5. Cincinnati–Middletown, OH-KY-IN
6. Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, WA
7. St. Louis, MO-IL
8. Pittsburgh, PA
9. Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN
10. Boston–Cambridge–Quincy, MA-NH

A quick scan of the list shows that major hubs such as Silicon Valley and New York City are conspicuously absent. In their place are mid-size metropolitan areas, primarily located in what's commonly referred to as "fly-over country."

That wasn't so much of a surprise to ZipRecruiter, as the Midwest dominated the platform's rankings last year, too. ZipRecruiter's content coordinator Kylie Anderson writes that the preponderance of Midwestern metro areas is the result of rapid growth in tech companies tapping into the lower costs of living and working in those locations. Last year's trend of low job competition and low unemployment across the Rust Belt, coupled with slight rebounds in historically depressed industries like automotive and general manufacturing, heralded a streak of economic stability, Anderson notes—one that many employers seem keen to take advantage of.

Among the top-ranked cities, the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro area rose seven spots since last year, likely due to the fact that the Twin Cities are helpfully situated between Seattle and Chicago. A diverse portfolio of industry sectors is spread across the region, and despite the large population, there still isn't heavy competition for talent.

Providence, Rhode Island came in next, thanks to a healthy job market in one of the hottest sectors: health care. Biomedical companies are springing up, too, as Providence works to diversify its economic base.

One of the few coastal outposts that ranked at the top of the list, Portland, in third place, likewise gets a boost from its geographical proximity to international air terminals and marine shipping. "Its emphasis on clean, renewable technologies as well as strong community support of a wide range of disciplines makes it a great place to work and live," Anderson writes. Ditto for Seattle, which at number six boasts a continuation of growth in the tech sector.

Top 5 Industries By Job Openings

1. Health Care
2. Finance and Insurance
3. Automotive
4. Government and Community
5. Business

Although the health care sector didn't post as strong a showing on CareerBuilder's latest ranking (it came in third, behind business/financial operations and IT), the industry is experiencing a talent shortage due to a variety of factors, so it's no wonder it topped the list for ZipRecruiter. For those eager to land a job in the sector, Seattle, Portland, and Kansas City were hotspots for the health care industry.

ZipRecruiter's analysis also notes that while manufacturing may be slowing down in St. Louis, the city is making a comeback thanks to health care. And the same goes for Pittsburgh, in fact. Anderson writes that the Rust Belt city "boasts the most top-10–list spots of any of our best job market cities, ranking high as a top city for tech and healthcare in 2016. With its diversified economy and consistent demand in health care as well as its service sector, the city shows no signs of slowing in 2017."

Holt says one thing that sets Uber apart is its willingness to disrupt itself.

When Rachel Holt joined Uber in 2011 to run the company's small Washington, D.C., arm, the concept was relatively modest: to match corporate-oriented "black car" limousine services with customers during downtimes (when drivers would otherwise be idle). But then the business started changing fast—a hallmark of Uber's rise.

"One of the things that really sets Uber apart is our willingness to disrupt ourselves," Holt said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in November. "Back when we launched [less-expensive ride-share service] Uber X, we were a black-car product, and tons of people were like, 'Are you crazy? You're lowering the price. You're cutting your margins. Why wouldn't you keep the high-margin product?' Everything I learned [in business school] also said to keep the high-margin product. But we realized that if we weren't going to do it, someone else was going to. We wanted to be the ones.

"So we've now done that in big ways quite a few times, whether it was Uber X coming in and disrupting Uber Black, or [carpooling service] Uber Pool disrupting Uber X, or some of the work that we're looking into with autonomous vehicles. For us, it's about lowering costs, making it more convenient, or making pickup times faster. The product and service have evolved a ton for both riders and drivers."

Peter Frase's new book imagines multiple scenarios and lays out some touch choices we're going to have to make.

Will our future of robots and autonomous cars turn out to be a dystopia or a utopia? That's the question that author Peter Frase grapples with in his new book, Four Futures: Life After Capitalism. A PhD candidate in sociology at CUNY Graduate Center and an editor at the socialist magazine Jacobin, Frase is inclined to believe the former scenario. He dismisses what he sees as the "phony utopianism of Silicon Valley plutocrats," whom he calls "new-school robber barons."

In his book, a series of thought experiments about the future, Frase expresses his concern about the real-world consequences of the new age of robotics, worsening climate change, and rising income inequality. Like Chuck Klosterman in his recent book, But What If We're Wrong?, Frase tries to peer so far ahead into time that it can feel like it doesn't have any relevance to your life or career but that doesn't mean his vision of the future is not worth contemplating.

Frase's book imagines four future scenarios. In all of them, one thing is constant: rising automation. Visions of a robotic future have gone mainstream in recent years, with widely readarticles about the devastating impact it will have on jobs and the economy. According to Frase, these essays have become "an entire subgenre" but required reading nonetheless—describing a likely scenario in which we're just backseat drivers in our autonomous cars, robots do all the heavy lifting, and IBM's Watson has graduated from game show oddity to active medical assistant in almost every hospital and doctor's office around the world, among other things.

Frase believes that the likelihood our future is a utopia or dystopia comes down to two factors: whether we solve or succumb to the climate crisis, and whether we evolve into a society that is more equal or more hierarchical. Laying out the permutations of these two variables yields Frase's four futures, each of which is granted its own chapter. All our futures will have robots, says Frase (who acknowledges his thought experiment framework is deliberately reductive). But will they have abundance or scarcity, and will they have equality or hierarchy?

Frase calls a world of equality and abundance "communism." And in imagining it, he takes detours through works of science fiction like Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano and the movie WALL-E. A major issue in such a world is the relationship between work and purpose and meaning, and Frase raises the question of whether a work-free world would be depressing to most people. He doesn't think so, finding a clue in a study that showed that unemployed workers of a certain age ceased to be depressed when they got to "retirement" age; it was the social norm of expected employment, rather than the ways that they spent their days, which affected their well-being.

Similar detours through science fiction, academic research, and Frase's own imaginings characterize the remaining three scenarios in the book. Intellectual property laws shape a world in which there is abundance and hierarchy: imagine having to pay a fee every time a robot cleaned your toilet, because of extensive copyright protections on the code that programmed the robot. A world combining scarcity and equality evokes, for Frase, the writings of science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson, with societies compelled to redefine their relationship to the natural world destroyed by their ancestors. The final and most dystopian future Frase imagines is one combining scarcity with hierarchy; he thinks is might look something like the Matt Damon movie Elysium, where a wealthy subset of humanity absconds to a gated community, whether in the heavens or here on earth. The impoverished masses at the gates might be policed or, more nightmarishly, exterminated.

Fast Company recently caught up with Frase to talk about how his worldview has evolved, the ways technology and politics intersect, and the increasing obligation to consider geoengineering in a world of worsening climate change.

FAST COMPANY: You're a socialist. How did you get there?

PETER FRASE: I grew up upper middle class in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My family background is progressive and liberal, but not socialist really. I started to think as a kid, to take the moral impulses of that liberalism to its logical conclusion. I also went to public school, where I was confronted every day with other people who didn't have the advantages I had. That led me, as a nerdy precocious kid, to the HX section of the library. That was the Library of Congress code for books on Marxism and Communism.

Some of your thinking on Silicon Valley might not endear you to a lot of readers of this publication.

I would say I'm also excited about a lot of technologies coming out of Silicon Valley. I'm not someone who says, "This is all terrible, all bad, we should reject all innovation, which is sometimes how the left is portrayed. What I would focus on is that I think people in the business class, Silicon Valley people, often have this sort of contradictory consciousness. On the one hand, they want to make money, be successful, profit, grow, which entails making choices that benefit the business rather than for any larger collective social purpose. At the same time, they want to believe they're making life good for everyone. My argument is that people can kind of fool themselves into thinking they're doing good for humanity, when really they're only doing good for investors and shareholders.

I think a lot of progressive people in the wake of Trump's election are having anxieties about their careers. If you're working for a company and are wondering about how much good it's doing for the world, what should you do? Quit your job?

You can quit your job and join a monastery, but it doesn't change the underlying thing that made you uncomfortable in the first place. Sure, there are points at which you might have to take a moral stand, if your job is making killer robots that Donald Trump sends illegally against his enemies. But all of us in a capitalist system participate in systems we don't necessarily like. The only way to change that is to become involved in some collective political project. So I encourage people to stay with what they're doing, if they like it, but also to get involved with some political organization. Push for solutions at a larger societal level. And just in general, be a person whose life is more than just your job. If you think that all your political and moral impulses are going to be satisfied just through the job you have, you're always going to be disappointed. If you're having moral or political qualms, to me the best way to address that is not necessarily to quit your job, but to start organizing with people trying to make this a better society.

The final future you imagine in your book—you call it "exterminism"—is extraordinarily bleak.

The framework I'm using necessitates you fill that box [i.e., that you explore a future with both scarce resources and a hierarchical society]. I try to get people to not overemphasize that box. The point of the larger project is, all of these are possible futures and aspects of the present, and it's up to us to fight for the ones we want and against the ones we don't want.

You wrote the book prior to Donald Trump's election. Does it change your views at all? Is there anything you'd like to revise?

Not really. If there were something I'd like to revise, it's much less to do with Donald Trump, and more to do with climate change. Each year that goes by, it becomes more pressing to think about ecological catastrophe. I would say, stay tuned to what I'm going to be doing at Jacobin magazine, thinking through the fact that we are very far down the road of climate catastrophe. We're so far down the path of climate change that we may need to think about even more large-scale interventions. Simply going carbon-neutral isn't enough anymore. We may need a deeper engagement with, manipulation, and management of nature. I'm on the fence about even more aggressive geo-engineering, things like cloud-seeding and spraying aerosols. That's what I'm working through right now. But it's something we need to take seriously.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

One expert explains why it's so important to stop seeing technology as just a functional skill when it's really a matter of culture.

IT departments these days are working hard to shore up their organization's cybersecurity defenses, among other pressing matters—all while dealing with the usual workaday tech issues. But a few of the most irritating and persistent bugs may elude even the best IT departments, no matter how determined they are to fix them.

The reasons why are often complex, but at least one of them isn't: Some of the more stubborn IT issues just don't have quick, software-based fixes. In fact, they aren't strictly IT issues at all. They're actually organizational problems around the ways technology is used, misused, or (in some cases) not used enough within companies and nonprofits. Here's how to finally get past them.

Your IT Department Doesn't Own Your Technology

First things, first: everyone in your organization—regardless of their title, business function, team, or even location—relies on technology to do their work and do it well. Major systems are managed and used by various teams, from email marketing tools to social media, inventory management to time tracking. It's often department directors who are charged with overseeing the budgeting, planning, and selection of the tech tools their teams and operations rely on. So why do they all turn directly to IT departments the moment one of those tools goes down?

It's time for organizations to realize that many of the difficulties they face in technology infrastructure have to do with the way they're chosen, implemented, and distributed—all decisions that IT managers don't tend to have much say in. The point here isn't to let IT teams off the hook. It's to point out that the solution is often the reverse of what companies tend to do. Putting all technology-related decision-making back into the IT department more likely than not will take your organization back 20 years.

Instead, you need embrace the distributed reality of technology management in 2017—both the fun parts and the not-so-fun parts (and it's the latter that often get shunted off to IT departments). How do you do that? For starters, position your IT team as subject-matter experts and internal consultants, not the owners of your organization's technology.

If the communications team is exploring new a email marketing system, for instance, don't let them keep their process and planning private for fear of being vetoed. Have them work with the IT team from the start to get recommendations and learn about best practices on system evaluation, requirements gathering, and testing.

Then open up the books. Make sure your budgets match the reality of whatever technology you're considering adopting, this way everyone is fully informed about the costs. Technology shouldn't all go into an IT budget, nor should it be rolled into a single line item for office supplies (your database isn't the same as your coffee machine). Each department's budget should include line items for software, hardware, and associated service fees.

Adoption Takes More Than An Installation Email

While there may be many tools that each department can manage for their direct use, there will always be systems that everyone in the organization needs to access and use. And many of those systems are only as good as their level of adoption. In my organization's research on how nonprofits use technology, for example, staff consistently say that they have the tools they need but don't know how to use them to be most effective.

In most cases, the adoption question is settled even before you've chosen the specific tool to adopt. Organizations need to be much more intentional about those decisions, opening up conversations about what's needed even while they're still shopping around. Just sending an announcement about a new software you've already purchased won't cut it.

Invite staff into the whole process. Regardless of their team affiliation or experience, a diverse group of employees from across your organization can often evaluate your current systems and choose new ones more effectively than a room full of IT managers. This way your decisions about technology actually reflect realities of the organization—and the needs of the people who'll use it. By the time the tool is rolled out, you'll already have a team of advocates ready to champion it and show others the ropes.

This year, make tech adoption part of every job description. As it is, everyone already uses a handful of tools in their day-to-day work, so why not call that out explicitly, just as you do with every job function? It should be clear—right from the point of applying for a job, all the way through to annual evaluations—that using core tools central to the organization's success isn't just suggested, it's required.

CEOs Have To Lead The Charge On Tech

When technology is a part of everyone's job, the buck ultimately stops with the CEO, not the IT lead or even the CTO. Maybe as the head of your organization, you use tech systems less than the rest of your staff. You might even spend most of your time communicating with people outside the organization, not within it. None of that exempts you from the same set of expectations as far as tech adoption and use goes.

Technology use isn't a functional skill in organizations today. It's a matter of organizational culture. That means the CEO sets the tone for everyone. Be visible in the same systems as other staff. Whether it's Slack, Asana, or a Google Sheet, make sure you're logging in and posting, responding, or adding notes where other staff are engaging. Nothing communicates accountability better than staff knowing that their leaders are paying attention.

Keep technology at the top of your goals. Just as you have key targets for other programs or services, with monthly and quarterly metrics you're tracking, elevate technology with the same rigor. Make it a key performance indicator that's important to you (and what's important to the CEO is important for the organization). To do that, you need to make sure every team is tracking and reporting on their technology usage. Otherwise you can't identify problems and needs early or make the case convincingly that your success depends on the technology you use to get work done.

Many a frustrated CEO knows how quickly big strategic goals can get hung up on IT bugs and tech meltdowns. At at some level, there are probably some lingering technological hangups through your organization already. And your IT department won't be able to solve them singlehandedly. The sooner you recognize that, the sooner you can set your whole organization up for success in the year ahead.

You don't need to be a graphic designer to add clear, comprehensible images to your talk.

When you're in a meeting and somebody flips on a PowerPoint presentation, chances are you're instantaneously bored or annoyed. Most people probably wouldn't mind if they never had to watch another PowerPoint every again.

But as a speaking coach for business executives, I know that PowerPoint presentations aren't going away anytime soon—like it or not. They're just too easy to make and too widely used to go extinct in the near future. So in the meantime, the best we can do is make them as compelling and relevant as possible.

According to one recent survey, the top two reasons why people loathe PowerPoint presentations so march are that "the speaker reads the slides" and uses "full sentences for text." By now everyone should know not to read whole blocks of text to audiences verbatim. But it's not enough to just convert them to bullet points, then present slide after slide of those, either.

If you really want to engage your audience and enhance your message, you need to use PowerPoint to tell a story—and you need to tell it as visually as possible. The good news is that you don't need to be a professional graphic designer (or even necessarily hire one) in order to do that. What might not look particularly sleek or aesthetically compelling can still be effective. Here's how to use imagery to get your point across and maximize your narrative impact, even if you aren't the most visually minded person.

1. Distill Your Key Message Into A Simple Image

Don't just illustrate. One of the best ways to make an impact is by connecting an image to the core of whatever you're trying to say. The image should be something simple that's easy to remember but has great explanatory power. For example, here's an image we use in a speaking bootcamp my firm runs.

To be fair, this image looks like a PowerPoint image. Design critics may have some suggestions to make, but that isn't the point—it's still effective. This image translates the concept of interconnectivity at scale; we go from dozens of discrete boxes to a completely connected whole. Businesses tend to operate with so many different units that don't always communicate with each other. So if you're pushing for a more holistic approach to your organization's communication, this type of concrete, straightforward image may be more effective than something more abstract and evocative, like a spider web or a group of cheerleaders getting in formation.

2. Use Conceptual Images, Not Literal Ones

Which brings us to Tip #2. Using conceptual images is smarter than resorting to literal ones, but you don't want to float into abstraction, either. It's important to strike a balance. You want to avoid literal imagery for two reasons:

1. It may not illustrate the nuances of what you're talking about.
2. It can cause your audience to immediately think about personal connections they may have to the image, which may not be relevant to your story.

In the above examples, maybe your listeners hate spiders or used to cheerlead in high school—and now, instead of thinking about interconnectivity, they're thinking about that. That's why, in order to discuss "flexibility," we show a PowerPoint slide with this image:

This conceptual image visualizes the idea that you can make choices while maintaining your momentum. A more abstract depiction of flexibility—something bending, like a corn stalk in the wind—wouldn't have expressed that. And a more literal one—like a photo of an actual highway roundabout—would've prodded participants to start thinking about the last time they were in traffic.

3. Use Images To Reinforce Your Message Consistently

Once you tie your message to an image, make sure you introduce it image early in order to set the tone for the rest of your presentation. Then reinforce your message by putting the image on multiple slides throughout your presentation. You can even use the it as a highlight on each slide, like your presentation's own personal trademark.

Don't be afraid of seeming repetitive. It's true that many people find PowerPoints dull already, so you may hesitate to introduce any redundancy. But not only is repetition acceptable in order to maintain your audience's attention, it's actually required. As Winston Churchill said, "If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack." By repeating your big idea frequently—and visually—you'll ensure that your audience is never left asking, "What was the point?"

No, these aren't high-tech, aesthetically cutting-edge strategies, and they were just as effective last year and the year before that as they will be right now, in 2017. That's the point, though. Some of the most powerful communication strategies don't require bells and whistles and are largely immune to changes in technology—they're just about how our brains absorb and process information.

That can be easy to lose sight of. When you design a PowerPoint deck, you think about copy, backgrounds, font size, and maybe even transitions—and that's the limit of your aesthetic considerations. But don't get so caught up in the details that you forget what's most important: Do your slides help you tell your story, or are they just wallpaper? If it's the latter, get ready to put your audience to sleep. It doesn't take a design degree to wake them up.

How is the beloved Japanese brand expanding in the U.S.? The head of its American division explains.

Muji translates to "without brand," which makes sense: The 37-year-old Japanese lifestyle retailer has built its business on products that don't call attention to themselves. Asako Shimazaki is leading its push into the American market, with 12 stores now open and more due this year.

Put Function First

For Muji, it's about quality, utility, and consistency. "Some people think that the Muji products are well designed, and so many design people like the brand. That's good," Shimazaki said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in November. "But we want to concentrate on function. As a result, the product itself becomes good design."

Quality Is Universal

It's tempting to court customers by trying to predict their wants, but Shimazaki has a different strategy. "I often hear the question, 'How do you modify Muji for this market?' Our store is the same all over the world. Muji in Japan has a long history, and we have huge fans there. We try to introduce the same experience for the customer of any country."

Be Supporter-In-Chief

Shimazaki tries to foster a familial culture. "I will protect my staff no matter what. They have responsibilities, but also the right to be friends with each other outside work, and to [care] about things outside the company. It is important to encourage their creativity."

Wise words on rejecting popularity, seeking advice, inspiring people, and more.

We invited attendees of Fast Company's recent Innovation Festival to share the most essential lessons they've learned so far in their careers.

"Leadership comes in many forms. Figure out how your quietness strengthens your leadership style." —Elaine Mau, senior product designer, Allstate

"Stay focused, and don't try to win a popularity contest." —Ruma Samdani, director of strategic initiatives and innovation, AARP

"My first boss told me to look for ways that all parties can win, and try never to leave an exchange where someone feels taken advantage of or devalued." —Amy Fox, chief brand officer, Box Boulevard

"Learn to follow first." —Sapar Karyagdyyev, managing director, Gamingtec

"Sometimes you just need to let people discover the next steps by themselves. The only thing you can do is nudge." —Juliana Proserpio, cofounder and principal, Echos Innovation Lab

"My southern dad always said to 'get my lessons.' That was his way of saying to obtain information so you're equipped to succeed." —Tameka Mullins, director of social media and marketing, Lyric Fire Social Media Services

"Seek advice at all ages. My 9-year-old is brutally honest, and over-60-year-olds have a wealth of knowledge and wisdom." —Kate Burgess, president and CEO, Elevate97

"Keep good people. The rest will fall into place." —Liz Carlton, director of marketing and events, NoMa BID

"My father said that leaders do not look for action. Action will always find the leader." —César Domínguez Márquez, fellow, Global Health Corps

"You have to have big shoulders. You have to take responsibility for your decisions and the actions of your team." —Michael Voss, marketing and business development strategist

"Do not expect people to be the best they are. Expect them to be the best they can become." —Janet Nelson, business school professor, University of Southern Maine

"Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir of Dubai, says that the word impossible is not in a leader's dictionary. No matter how big the challenges, strong faith, determination, and resolve will overcome them." —Ruba Al Hassan, senior adviser, United Arab Emirates Embassy, Washington, D.C.

"Working in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, I learned from rape survivors to be kind to yourself. When you are well and take care of yourself, you are better able to help [others]." —Judithe Registre, founder and principal, Inclusivus

Comedy writer Matt Klinman has found several ways to get creative people to do their best work.

After almost 30 years, The Onion remains an essential source of satire, but these days the laughs are as likely to come from a video as a clever headline. To keep the site vital, Matt Klinman has had to think carefully about managing his staff.

Go With The Group

Klinman encourages everyone to toss out ideas freely; the team decides what works. "We pitch so much stuff, and we encourage everyone to pitch from every aspect of their psyches," he said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in November. "You trust people around you to pick the best [material]. If you have that, you feel comfortable reaching deep."

Be A True Unit

To reinforce that sense of teamwork, Klinman de-emphasizes individual contributions. "We're all doing one thing together. Every idea, every script, every draft we do [is worked on by] everybody. And when it goes out to [the world], we don't have bylines. We're all standing as one voice."

Build A Safe Space

Unhappiness is a major creativity killer, and Klinman needs his staff to concentrate. "Good work comes from people who are not panicking. [I want to make] sure stress and craziness don't filter down to the writers, so they can focus on writing from their heart."

You already know that multitasking is counterproductive, but are you sure you know how to stop?

Anytime you're hunkering down at work to wrap up projects on a tight deadline, chances are you're in full-on multitasking mode. You may think it transforms you into a to-do-list-tackling machine, but it might be doing more harm than good.

"Multitasking is actually a myth," says Devora Zack, author of Singletasking: Get More Done—One Thing at a Time. "The brain is hardwired to only do one thing at a time."

So when you think you're multitasking, you're actually practicing something called "task switching," which means your brain is bouncing back and forth between activities. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance found that task switching eats up time and increases the likelihood that mistakes will be made.

What's more, multitasking leads to stress, says Dave Crenshaw, keynote speaker and author of The Myth of Multitasking: How "Doing It All" Gets Nothing Done. This is exactly what you don't need this time of year.

Luckily, there's an alternative: the reverse of multitasking, called "monotasking" or "single-tasking." Here are five situations in which to try it out, and why it might be the answer to helping you survive a jam-packed schedule—without sacrificing time, energy, or quality.

1. When Facing A Hard Deadline

When you're busting through a to-do list to meet a cutoff time, trying to do multiple things at once—such as immediately answering emails while working on the project you owe your client in an hour—might make you less efficient and more error-prone, Zack says. That's because as we're jumping from one thing to the next, we can't reach the state of immersion that fosters creative problem solving for the bigger task at hand.

The monotasking fix. Set up a distraction-free work zone and turn off annoying pop-ups and pings before they have a chance to interfere, Zack says. That goes for work screens of all kinds and any personal devices you have stashed at your desk.

Also consider blocking out your calendar to work on specific projects, Crenshaw suggests, so you're motivated to stick to a schedule as much as possible until deadline. And rather than feeling like a slave to your inbox, set an alert to check email for 15 minutes at a time every few hours. He also suggests letting clients and coworkers know that you'll respond to email at certain times of day (such as by noting it in your email signature), so they have an idea of when to expect a reply.

Related:Distraction Overload! 7 Ways To Get Back On Track At Work

2. When Socializing With Friends

You may think of multitasking as something you only do in work situations, but chances are you also exhibit it in your personal life, where it can be equally detrimental. Simply put: Multitasking at work hurts your efficiency; multitasking on a human being can damage a relationship, Crenshaw says.

"There's a temptation that you have to be available to all people at all times, and when you have that attitude, you're never fully available to any one person ever," Zack says.

You may do it without realizing or intending to. Consider this all-too-common scenario: You're out for drinks with a group of friends but texting another friend under the table. It seems harmless, but you're sending the signal that the friends you're with are not that important to you.

The monotasking fix. Put your phone away when you're socializing or sitting down to dinner. If you must be available—say, in case your kids have an emergency—create a special ringtone that'll help you ID when important calls are coming in.

If the temptation of checking your phone is an issue for everyone in the group, try Zack's trick: Ask your friends to pile their phones on the table. The first one to touch his or her phone picks up the whole bill. It sounds harsh, but by paying attention to one another and truly spending time together, you'll build higher-quality relationships, she says.

3. When Running A Meeting

We've all been in those meetings when things need to be repeated because someone was replying to an email or doing some secret online shopping instead of paying attention. Not only does this draw out the meeting and waste everyone's time, but those found guilty of multitasking may walk away confused about what was discussed, which could lead to future mistakes.

The monotasking fix. At the start of a meeting, announce that it'll be device-free. (Or if you must share a digital doc or presentation, project it from one screen so that everyone views it together.) Ask everyone to put their laptops and phones on a table off to the side and set each person up with a note pad, pen, and agenda, if you haven't emailed one ahead of time.

As a reward for trying the experiment, announce at the onset of the meeting that it will be cut short, from an hour to 30 minutes, for example. "You will be amazed that you can get as much done—if not more—in half the time," Zack says. "People are actually present in the conversation and not texting or checking out something online, and it builds relationships, too."

Related:Surprising Ways You're Sabotaging Your Career, According To Science

4. When You're Exercising

Maybe you can't fathom the idea of going running without listening to your high-intensity interval training playlist on blast. That's okay—that's not really multitasking anyway, since the two tasks don't require your full attention, Zack says. "But if you're exercising and also trying to read a book or talk to a friend, typically that slows people down," she adds. "If someone is texting on the StairMaster, first of all, they're not getting an effective workout, and second, it's dangerous."

The monotasking fix. Be more mindful during your gym sessions and focus on exercising—and only exercising—not what the Real Housewives are up to on TV. You'll be able to amp up your intensity so you can get an effective workout in less time, leaving you with plenty of time to veg out with a guilty-pleasure show or celeb magazine post-sweat.

5. While Taking A Break

If you feel guilty for taking a real lunch break, you first have to adjust your thinking and start feeling guilty if you don't take one, Zack says. Working straight through lunch does you a disservice: A study published in the Academy of Management Journal found that not taking a lunch break at work made study participants more fatigued and less productive during the remainder of the day. By taking the time to truly relax or at least break away from your computer screen, you'll come back feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the afternoon's projects.

The monotasking fix. Schedule a nonnegotiable lunch break. And to really tap the benefits, consider eating your meal solo, the study's researchers suggest. Socializing with coworkers may not give you the chance to truly unwind because spending an hour talking about work with others might put you even more on edge than had you eaten alone at your desk.

But if eating alone will rub your colleagues the wrong way, try spending half your lunch break with them and the other half on time for yourself, or head out of the office later in the afternoon for a quick walk around the block. Simply giving yourself 15 minutes to unplug or zone out can help you regain mental strength and boost your spirits and productivity for the rest of the day. "You get the benefit from relaxing, and then you get more done," Zack says.

Related:Learn How To Avoid These 5 Rookie Manager Mistakes

A version of this article originally appeared on LearnVest. It is adapted and reprinted with permission.