These are stressful times. Use anger strategically to create the change you want.

With career pressure, relationships, and even the future of the country causing stress, there's likely a lot of people with frazzled nerves in your workplace. And when people are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, it's easier for anger to take hold.

Many people struggle with anger because it's an emotion "we're not supposed to feel," says Stacy Tye-Williams, an assistant professor of communication studies at Iowa State University. "We're supposed to tamp that down, but then it builds and builds until we blow our top," she says.

In most situations, the fallout from flying off the handle at work can range from a damaged reputation to a serious meeting with HR. But anger can also be empowering and provide a catalyst for change. It signals that you care about and have a commitment to your work. "People who constructively express anger have a stronger sense of control than fearful people," says Loretta Malandro, PhD, CEO of management consulting firm Malandro Consulting Group.

To make your anger work for you the next time someone makes you see red, try this anger action plan instead.

Reset Your Perspective

You may be passionate about your work, but remember that workplace dynamics often aren't personal, says career coach Carlotta Zimmerman. An interaction might feel like a slight, but it's often more about a decision-making or work process that may have nothing to do with you, she says. "Work is about the roles you play in furthering the mission of the company," she says.

So do your best to shed the feeling of being slighted personally. If someone blew off a meeting with you, it's likely because of a busy schedule, rather than not valuing your time. If your boss just dumped a new assignment on you, perhaps they don't realize you're already putting in long hours on another project. When you can look at an issue that way, it can be easier to solve, she says.

Identify The Underlying Emotion

Malandro says it's important to understand the difference between "soft" and "hard" emotions. Hard emotions like anger, resentment, and frustration are easier to express because they are more "socially acceptable" than "soft" emotions like sadness, disappointment, or guilt, which can show vulnerability. "As a result, hard emotions are often a decoy for the real issue: an underlying soft emotion that is not being expressed," she says.

Do a little digging. Are you really angry? Or is the anger a cover for being disappointed or having your feelings hurt? Understanding the real emotion will help you determine how you want the situation to change. For example, if you're truly angry about how someone spoke to you in a meeting, a simple apology should fix the situation. But if there is an ongoing pattern of abuse that makes you feel hurt and undervalued, that's a deeper issue that needs to be addressed.

Structure Your Response

Because expressing anger in the workplace can have fallout, especially for women, the way you frame your response can be important. David Maxfield, organizational change expert and best-selling author of books like Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior, recommends the following approach.

Start with your commitment. Position your response as a positive virtue. "This is an issue of honesty and integrity for me, so I'm going to be pretty strong in my language," for example. You're telling people in advance why you're angry, so they can put it in context.

State the facts. Be as specific and fact-based as possible when recounting the reason for your anger. Relay the details of the situation without getting into generalizations. "When I responded to your question about the new project during this morning's meeting, I felt you were dismissive of my response," instead of, "You never listen to what I say."

Share your conclusion. Then, state the conclusion you drew from the fact, which was the trigger for your response, he adds. "I'm beginning to wonder if my input matters here," or, "This has happened at the last three meetings, so I feel like it's a pattern," are clear conclusions stated from your viewpoint. Using "I" language is important, too because it's not accusatory—it reflects how you feel.

Keep it short. Make your case in 30 seconds or less. "If it goes beyond 30 seconds, you've lost it," Maxfield says.

Work Toward A Solution

A structured approach gets your point across in a clear manner, but what happens next is more contextual, Tye-Williams says. Understanding your emotion and its cause will help you decide what you need to ask for or do to prevent anger from boiling over in the future. The fix may be simple, such as talking about a misunderstanding. Or it may require more complex action, such as restructuring your work so that you feel less overwhelmed, finding ways to change the situation making you angry, or reframing the way you view the situation.

The same technology that Pindrop uses to flag phone scams could soon let you unlock your car or phone with the unique sound of your voice.

Someday soon, you may be able to unlock your car or even log in to your favorite streaming app on a hotel TV simply with the sound of your voice.

Pindrop, an Atlanta company that now primarily offers sound-based fraud detection tools for call centers, plans to release a service later this year that will let connected devices verify who they're talking to, turning the human voice into a combination of a username and password.

"Everybody has a unique voice, and everybody has a unique behavior in the way they say things," says Pindrop cofounder and CEO Vijay A. Balasubramaniyan.

Secure voice recognition login could make it safer to conduct complex transactions through digital assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa—and it could prevent scenarios in which loud TV advertisements or children playing with devices accidentally give commands (and buy products) via such devices. And if different devices adopted Pindrop or another common voiceprint provider, users wouldn't have to separately program each device to recognize their individual speech patterns and could log in to new devices simply by speaking, says Balasubramaniyan.

The technology should also be able to detect when people are distorting their voices or playing recordings of other people speaking—fraud techniques he says they already encounter in the call center market, where Pindrop reports it works with eight of the top ten U.S. banks and two of the top five insurers to detect phone scams. Call center customers pay based on call volume, and Pindrop will likely roll out similar cost structures for IoT device makers he says.

For phone fraud detection, Pindrop's systems don't just listen to the sound of callers' voices as they dial in to place orders or transfer funds—it also uses other audio data to determine where people are calling from and the type of phones and networks they're using. Different models of phones introduce their own acoustic signatures into conversations, Balasubramaniyan says. And phone networks in different parts of the world transmit different sound frequency ranges based on different requirements for balancing bandwidth consumption and voice quality. Even internet calling tools, like Skype and Google Voice, break conversations into different-sized audio packets, making it possible for Pindrop's algorithms to tell them apart.

"Every time you drop a packet, you're having a break of 30 milliseconds as opposed to 20 milliseconds or whatever else," Balasubramaniyan says.

That lets the company alert its clients when calls with strange characteristics come in, like if a number registered to a U.S. cellphone carrier is actually dialing through Skype or through a telephone network in Nigeria. In other cases, the company has detected calls ostensibly from different customers and numbers all being placed by the same fraud ring, he says.

"We'll see, for example, hundreds of calls trying to access hundreds of accounts, but they all come [with] the same 147 characteristics, and it's actually the same device," he says.

Pindrop generates numeric and color-coded alert levels for its clients, letting them serve trustworthy callers more quickly and handle potential imposters with more care. Some might ask additional verification questions of users dialing in from unusual connections or even ask to call them back at their numbers on file. And others use the Pindrop score information simply for offline processing, deciding whether to approve transactions like wire transfers based on the indicated risk level.

While fraudsters do try new techniques over time, Balasubramaniyan says Pindrop is often still able to pick up on new patterns of behavior—like routing calls through hacked telephone systems in less suspicious countries—based on the new acoustic signals they generate.

"It looks even more different than regular traffic," says Balasubramaniyan.

The company can also detect known criminals connecting through new techniques based on their historic behavior patterns and voice data.

"We have created the world's largest database of well-known voice fraudsters," he says.

The company even operates a digital call center of its own, buying from carriers the phone numbers that their customers have traded in due to excessive numbers of fraudulent calls. Pindrop's system receives about 90,000 fraudulent calls per day across those numbers, generally playing randomized recordings of phrases like "I can't hear you very clearly" just long enough to keep callers on the line and fingerprint their connections.

All of the human voice data the company has captured will likely help make its IoT product more robust in preventing fraud, Balasubramaniyan says.

"Right now, we already see people who distort their voices," he says. "Just knowing how voices sound over a massive dataset, that allows us to use that knowledge to also do this better."

When should you stop fixing your tech and just burn it all down? These five questions can help you know what's holding really you back.

Let's say—benefit of the doubt and all—that the tools and systems you put in place when you launched your startup were the best choices you could have made at the time. That day, though, was probably a while ago. For many founders, that means years or even a decade or two ago.

Startups don't stay startups forever. New organizations become not-so-new ones. But just because time passes doesn't mean these ventures scale. And the more time that does pass, the less the technology is likely to stay up to par. Just because something wasn't broken at one point doesn't mean it won't need to be fixed later. And the longer you wait to fix it, the harder time you'll have trying to grow and move forward.

Here's how to know whether your scaling troubles have to do with technologies that aren't keeping up.

How People Mismatch, Misuse, And Outgrow Their Tools

Technology changes. But we all know that. So much of your organization changes, too, and those changes have real impact on whether your systems are still working for you.

Take a look at your org chart. Notice anything different today, compared to whenever you adopted that CRM system or website or project management tool? Chances are the main difference is that there are now more people using those tools than there were originally.

Whatever system you're relying on can probably accommodate some extra users or licenses. The impact of adding more people to the company, though, isn't that you need more people using the same tools. It's that you now need people using the same tools for things that they just aren't built for.

As companies expand, the business areas and specialties covered by staff also expand. And as employees take on more and different work, the tools and systems they rely on to do that work have to change to meet those needs. But they very often don't. Regardless of what kind of technology you're using, there's nothing that's great at everything.

Add to this mismatch the fact that new staff also bring with them different skills and proficiencies. So you may try to hire folks who have experience with certain systems, but it's probably better for your company to hire people with the best overall job skills, regardless of whether they've worked with X invoicing system or Y database. Successful professionals always find a way, which can be a double-edged sword: If your company-wide tools don't work for them, they'll eventually use something else, creating data silos, process breakdowns, and worse.

How To Know If Your Tech Is Keeping Pace

Staff come and go, but the work stays the same, right? Not in 2017. As customers cycle in and out, market needs evolve, and organizations' roles in their sectors and communities change, their products and services have to either expand or adapt. That isn't a bad thing. But it means you need a smart tech-evaluation process to make sure your tools are keeping pace. These five questions can get you started:

1. What other systems do we use? It isn't likely that you'll adopt a tool for all of or even some of your staff that's intended to stand alone entirely. What other tools are you using simultaneously? Think about how it all works together—and where it currently doesn't. What are the integration options? What options will you have for integrating tools in the future?

2. What are employees' top technical needs? Beware of the shiny-object syndrome—don't get sidetracked by a great pitch from a seasoned sales rep highlighting bells and whistles. Stay focused on the technical tools your employees actually tell you they need. If a given system does more than what's needed at a given time, that can be a bonus; if it does other things that seem great without meeting your team's core needs, you'll end up buying something they'll have to find their own workarounds for.

3. What's the technical skill level of the people who'll use it?Adoption is key. If the system is too cumbersome or technical for everyone on your team to use—even if it can do all the things you're looking for—they won't. Always ask for a sandbox, and have your employees (not just the tech staff, but folks all across the company) test it and give feedback.

4. What level of support is available? Unless you plan to have every question and support request go to someone on staff (good luck to them!), you've got to ask about support from the get-go. This includes far more than the paid customer-service phone support, by the way; consider things like active contributors or a community of users.

5. What does my community think? Is there an aspect of this system that customers and people outside your organization will interact with? If so, you need to involve those users in the evaluation, too. Whether you already have a community user group established for ongoing engagement or not, invite them to play around and weigh in on any tech tool you're considering.

From small projects to a massive system overhaul, it's all about keeping your humans and the tools they use in close alignment. That isn't easy, but when the gap between them widens, your whole organization's growth slows down. Sometimes scaling troubles aren't about anything wrong with your business model—they come from smaller, peskier issues that you're writing off as livable annoyances. Because chances are they won't be for long.

HiBot USA's technology combining robots, big data, and AI could upend the way municipalities replace aging water pipes.

The future of your drinking water may depend on databotics.

That term, which should be retired by now, is nevertheless at the heart of new technology from HiBot USA, a combination of robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence that aims to help countless municipal water utilities around the United States do a more efficient job of upgrading their aging pipelines.

Here's what we're talking about: Water in the United States is generally handled locally, by the 50,000 municipal utilities charged with bringing water in and moving it around through millions of miles of piping. There are 240,000 water main breaks a year across the country, and while those thousands of utilities work hard to replace pipes that can be up to 160 years old, it's a task that's done haphazardly, often getting rid of perfectly functional pipes while waiting too long on those that are primed to rupture.

Because sewage and gas lines are highly regulated, and therefore operate under very specific rules for inspection and replacement, there's already a robust market for robotics companies working in those fields. But water lines are much more loosely regulated, according to HiBot USA president and CEO Takashi Kato, and the market is wide open for early entrants.

And that's where HiBot USA comes into the picture. A San Jose, California-based spin-off of Japan's HiBot—whose founder, Shigeo Hirose, has built robots that have worked at the doomed Fukushima nuclear plant and other places not meant for humans (think minefields)—the American offshoot was created a year and a half ago to commercialize the parent company's technology, particularly its pipe-inspection robot.

While the massive transmission lines that come into cities from reservoirs and other sources are well-inspected, it's pretty much impossible to look at the much smaller distribution mains that dominate the municipal water ecosystem. And that's a problem in a place like San Francisco, which like most American cities installed most of its 1,200 miles of pipes—many of which are leaking or breaking—decades ago, said Lars Stenstedt, HiBot USA's vice president of business development.

Stenstedt explained that most cities replace their pipes strictly based on age, and do so at a clip of about half-a-percent a year, meaning that throughout the industry, it'll take about 200 years to replace the entire network. Part of that is cost—given that in a city like San Francisco, it can cost $3 million per mile of replacement pipe. But he argued that even if money was no object—it would take about a trillion dollars nationally—it's simply not possible to tear up all the streets at once in order to undertake a wholesale replacement project.

Yet even as municipalities undertake their pipe replacement projects, they ignore the fact that at least 40% of the existing network can probably be saved. And that means there's potentially $400 million or more of savings available, if replacement could be done more efficiently, and only as needed.

This is where HiBot USA could help. Its databotics system was designed to algorithmically figure out the areas in a town or city where pipes are more at risk of failure, thanks to the inspection of pipes that have already been replaced and an evaluation of soil dynamics, as well as other factors such as electromagnetic forces coming from power lines.

And it starts with sending the company's robot slithering into decades-old pipes to determine what kind of deterioration has been wrought by decades of use.

The robots themselves are small, with three sections that articulate much like some multi-section city buses. They are designed to expand to the size of the pipe so that wheels touch the insides, making it easier to insert them and (even more importantly) to extract them. The robot has a camera in the front, and tows an RFT magnetic sensor that allows the HiBot USA team to measure the amount of material loss in the pipe.

"The best way to know what's going on inside the pipe," said Kato, "is to go inside."

It's worth noting that HiBot USA can only inspect pipe that's already been taken out of commission, because it's risky to go inside a working pipe, which could easily corrupt its integrity. But in most cases, replaced pipe is simply left in the ground, allowing the company to easily access it, and assess it in the same soil and environmental conditions in which it's operated for so long. "We want to analyze the pipe," Kato said, "and understand [its] characteristics."

Water utilities tend to use a rating system, from A to F, for piping, based on leak and age history, and use those ratings to make replacement decisions.

HiBot USA's process is to look at pipe and determine whether the rating was correct. And this is where the company's big data layer comes into play.

By looking at a utility's entire collection of data and comparing the existing rating system to maps that include national data on soil characteristics—because soil can be a key indicator of corrosion—the company believes it can come up with better predictions of where pipe failures are likely to occur than to just rely on age and leak histories. Especially when artificial intelligence is added to the mix.

"We'll use AI and let the data tell us what the correlations are," Kato said, "and what the real drivers are of leaks for a utility."

While oil and gas utilities have to be perfect in their failure predictions, water utilities have no such requirement. Yet HiBot USA believes its databotics model can predict future failures at an accuracy rate of 80%-90%. "They have [existing] statistical models that give them likely [areas] of failure," he said. "We'll give them more accurate models for likelihood of failure. And at scale."

For now, HiBot USA is working with at least a couple of municipal utilities in the San Francisco area. But no utility partners would speak with Fast Company about the company's technology.

Still, one expert who is familiar with what HiBot USA is doing is impressed.

"I think this could be a real game changer for municipalities across the United States," said Richard Dasher, an adjunct professor in electrical engineering at Stanford. "This kind of improvement in the actual data that you have is essential to developing the models for how pipes need to be replaced, preferably before they fail."

Dasher believes that HiBot USA is going to have an impact immediately upon completing work for its first customers, and that the company chose a great target market to commercialize the Japanese parent company's robots.

"To me, this is a real example of problem-based innovation," Dasher, who has worked with Kato at Stanford, said. "They saw a big problem they could develop a new innovative solution for. It's more than just being a new application of robotics technology. This is really a match between what the company has, and has been developing, and a real need."

To be sure, there's no guarantee that HiBot USA will have any real impact on the municipal water ecosystem. For one thing, the company has to contend with utilities that are conservative when it comes to change. "I think that inertia is always a big negative factor," Dasher said. "The utilities have gotten used to a certain amount of inefficiency."

And HiBot USA also has to figure out how to make money. For now, it hasn't figured out its business model, but it does plan on providing its technology and analysis to utilities in what amounts to a consulting service.

And what has the company found so far? That there is not a direct link between the age of pipes and their failure rate, Stenstedt said.

In part that's because there's a lot of distinctions between the age of pipes and when they were installed. In some eras, the pipes were extra thick because they were cheap, while pipes installed during war years, for example, are usually thinner.

Further, "all leaks are not created equal," he said, pointing to problems that result from pipes being gouged by backhoes or other heavy equipment. In the past, this type of damage might have been lumped in with age-related problems when making replacement decisions.

There are other factors as well, like overhead bus lines, which could be a factor in corrosion. Stenstedt said it's not clear that they are, but it's possible, and something the company's analysis should be able to determine.

At the same time, soil resistivity, high-voltage subway lines, and steep hills that forced utilities to use lots of lead joints are also variables that will be fed into the data analysis, but which have likely been ignored in the past.

"We'll feed the data, and let the AI tell us" where the leaks are, he said. "We can't predict backhoe accidents or earthquakes, but chemical reactions we can predict."

Don't sweat it if you don't know the exact number of fire hydrants in L.A. The question is about more than counting.

Job interviews can feel a lot like going on blind dates with prospective employers. While there is plenty of advice for how to answer both the most common and the most annoying interview questions, when an interviewer throws a curveball question, even the quickest thinker can get unnerved.

Glassdoor regularly publishes tough questions submitted by users who've interviewed at a variety of companies. Now they've culled a short list of the most difficult ones based on how users rate them. The list ranges from the highly technical to the just plain unexpected, from questions attempting to draw on the candidate's knowledge of algebra and geometry, to those trying to discern how well they work with others.

In order to help prepare you if you're asked questions like these, we asked recruiters to share the best way to answer some of the most challenging ones.

The Culture Question

For the position of production technician at Procter & Gamble, the interviewer asked:

If a coworker had an annoying habit, and it hindered your quality of work, how would you resolve it?

How to answer it. "The best answers to questions about how you would behave include examples from your past," says career coach Phyllis Mufson. So she advises being prepared with anecdotes that illustrate your skills and judgment. Her reply would be: "I'd make a straightforward, business-like request. For example, in the past, I worked with a coworker who played music when we were working on a deadline. I took her aside and asked her to turn it off, saying that the music was making it hard for me to concentrate. She said that music helps her concentrate. Then I asked for her help. What could she do to make it easier for me to focus and work on deadline? Then she offered to wear headphones."

Jayne Mattson, senior vice president of Keystone Associates, an executive outplacement and career coaching firm, agrees that when you are asked a hypothetical question, it's best to answer it with a real example. "The more you share a story of how you handled a situation like this one, the more you will convince the interviewer you could handle this type of coworker now or in the future," she explains.

However, Mattson says, if you can't think of a specific situation, you would have to give a "this is what I would do versus what I've done" answer. "Before you answer, take a breath and pause to really think," she advises. Then she would say something like: "I take great pride in the quality of my work, so if one of my coworkers prevented me from doing my best, I would use an honest, direct approach with that person. I would ask my coworker to get a cup of coffee and sit down for a moment in a private place. I would listen to what they had to say, and then work out a solution to where both of us can do our work effectively. I would thank them for being so receptive to my feedback, and mention that if there is something that I do that hinders their work, to please let me know."

The Technical Question

For a data analyst position at Uber, an interviewer asked:

Write an equation to optimize the marketing spend between Facebook and Twitter campaigns.

How to answer it. Nicolette Cieslak, director of Demand Generation at HighGround, a maker of employee engagement software, took a stab at this question. Initially, Cieslak says that she wondered whether the employer wanted her to demonstrate what she remembers about ninth-grade algebra, or show what she knows about the factors that go into ad performance.

So she came up with an equation, pictured here.

"I'd say the full-on equation is a highly technical question and demonstrates an understanding of all the elements that go into crafting pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns," says Cieslak, so it definitely demonstrates the person has the expertise to get the job done.

"Another way to answer it may be as simple as x=test(1/0), which is translated to 'test times infinity,'" Cieslak explains. This response, she points out, "is a bit more provocative in nature as a creative response." Cieslak says that's because it not only delivers the equation, but it begs a follow-up question, so it's most conducive as a conversation starter.

"If someone is taking that response at face value, it may seem too simplistic," she warns. "But what the response lacks in complexity, it inherently gets to the essential nature of ad buys: That you must always be testing, have an appetite for failure, and motivation for improvement. So this response may tell you more about the person and how they would add value to the organization in the end."

The Total Curveball

For a data analyst position at Bloomberg, an interviewer posed this question:

How do you explain a vending machine to someone who hasn't seen or used one before?

How to answer it. Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at global staffing firm Robert Half, first points out that the hiring manager probably wants to know how you think and relate to people with different skill sets. "If you're interviewing for a tech role," McDonald says, "the hiring manager wants to gauge how well you communicate with non-technical staff." As more departments collaborate on projects than ever before, McDonald says your ability to present and interact with various teams is critical.

In your answer, he suggests using descriptive phrases that everyone can relate to. "Avoid being flip or condescending," he maintains, and tell a story if you can. "These devices are like mini-convenience stores, and allow you to buy snacks, drinks, and more any time of day. Think about the last time you were thirsty, but couldn't get to the store to buy a drink. If you're in an airport, office building, or subway station, you're probably in luck."

Always Appropriate

McDonald says it's important to remember that there's no single correct answer to off-the-wall interview questions, but hiring managers are asking them more frequently. "They want to understand what makes the candidates tick," he notes, "how they think, and how they respond to the unexpected."

Hiring managers use them to gauge non-verbal cues that make you look flustered, upset, or nervous, like refusing to answer or using upspeak (i.e., ending the sentence as if you're asking a question rather than responding). That's why McDonald advises expecting the unexpected in the interview. "Be flexible, positive, and proactive in your response," he says. And don't forget that "it's fine to ask for a moment to collect your thoughts."

Airbnb, Marriott, and others are changing the way we see the world in 2017.

The past year in travel has been marked by consolidation: Marriott created the world's largest hotel company with its acquisition of Starwood Hotels; Paris-based AccorHotels took over the luxury portfolio of Fairmont, Raffles, and Swissôtel; and China's ambitious Ctrip booking platform announced its global ambitions by taking over the U.K.-based travel search engine Skyscanner.

But even as the dominant players grow stronger and bolder, new ideas are bubbling up all over that promise to change the way we experience the world. Airbnb is now applying its host-based brand of travel to tours and adventures, while new startup Lola brings chatbots into the once-stagnant booking process. Carnival Corporation is demonstrating how wearables and sensors can turn a mega-ship into a personal playground, and upstart carrier Norwegian Air is proving that low-cost transatlantic flights are viable. The 10 companies on this list—players both big and small—are transforming the travel industry and shaping its future.

Click on a company to learn more about why it made the list.

01. Airbnb

For putting a world of sophisticated experiences at our fingertips

02. Marriott

For prioritizing loyalty while becoming a mega company

03. Vail Resorts

For cultivating powder hounds from across the globe

04. Ctrip

For becoming the all-in-one travel platform for Chinese travelers

05. GoEuro

For pulling planes, trains, and automobiles into a booking platform

06. Norwegian Air

For ushering in a new era of affordable transatlantic travel

07. AccorHotels

For embracing bold hospitality brands

08. Beautiful Destinations

For evolving into a creative agency that optimizes for wanderlust

09. Carnival Corporation

For bringing high-tech wearables to the high seas

10. Lola

For giving travel agents a welcome AI boost

This article is part of our coverage of the World's Most Innovative Companies of 2017.

One of Tom Steyer's acts of dissent: Copying the entire EPA website and making it available to the public.

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.

Tom Steyer and Donald Trump were both born in Manhattan, and both went on to legendary success in the business world.

And that's about where the similarities end. Indeed, in the respective realms of American billionaires and U.S. politics, Steyer and Trump virtually define the opposite poles.

While Trump amassed a fortune in real estate, giving very little away (Trump's charitable foundation is still under investigation for fraud), then veered into right-wing electoral populism, Steyer—who made his money in hedge funds—has poured his wealth into progressive causes. He and his wife, Kat Taylor, signed the Giving Pledge in 2010 and have devoted their considerable resources to fighting climate change (Steyer heads the influential advocacy organization NextGen Climate, based in San Francisco) and economic inequality (Taylor runs Beneficial State Bank, which she and Steyer founded to invest in low-income communities).

In the wake of the election, Steyer—who had previously signaled his interest in California's gubernatorial race—has vowed to spend whatever it takes to fight Trump and advance an alternative progressive vision. Anticipating Trump's attack on climate change science, his first acts of dissent included copying the entire Environmental Protection Agency website and making it available to the public.

On February 1, NextGen Climate announced its intention to broaden its focus, releasing a video message from Steyer in which he says that Trump has "launched an all-out assault on the American way of life." Accompanying the video is a survey that implores viewers to choose among 12 issue areas, from climate change and workers' rights to racial justice, immigration, and foreign policy – what his team has dubbed "crowdsourcing the resistance."

Three weeks after Trump took office (and just before a handful of Republicans like Senator John McCain began to challenge the new president), Capital & Main sat down with Steyer at NextGen's office in San Francisco's Financial District for an animated conversation about the future of the Democratic Party, inequality and the existential peril of climate change in the Trump era.

Capital & Main: What has surprised you the most in the first three weeks of Trump's presidency?

Steyer: When you think about the attacks he's made on the rights of Americans, the extreme radicals that he's nominated, his willingness to flout the laws of the United States, it's been made very, very clear in the first three weeks that fact-based, thoughtful dialogue between trustworthy counter-parties is not in the cards. And we've seen zero pushback from within the Republican Party.

Capital & Main: California is seen as the place where the strongest resistance to Trump will happen, while the threat that's looming over the state is the potential cutoff of tens of billions of dollars in federal aid. If Trump and Congress go through with that threat, how does California respond?

Steyer: Let me push back on a couple of parts of that question. It's not federal aid. California pays out disproportionately into the federal treasury. This is not charity. This is not out of the goodness of their heart. We're in a system where we, Californian citizens, pay federal taxes and the federal government provides services to citizens of California. The idea that because they don't like what we think, they will cut us off and try and punish Californian citizens in the most basic ways—in terms of health care, in terms of education—as a way of trying to force us politically to do what they want, is completely unjust and will be litigated from here until kingdom come.

The second thing I'd say is this: It's not just that we're pushing back against attacks on the rights of Americans. We're not just saying no. We have a better way of doing it. We are pushing forward the vision of an inclusive democracy. Nobody wants to resist more seriously than the people in this room, but the fact of the matter is, we know that California is not Fortress California. We need to make sure that we're not isolated by the federal government. The majority of Americans don't agree with this guy. The majority of Americans agree with us, and we need to make sure we're reaching out to and connecting with those people.

Capital & Main: When it comes to the question of ideology, and the question of identity politics versus class focus, what do you think the Democratic Party needs to do?

Steyer: Obviously what the Trump campaign was trying to do was to divide Americans. The point of the Democratic Party is we absolutely have to take into account all Americans. There's no way to do that without including race and ethnicity because it's so much a part of our past and it's so much a part of where we are. We have a narrative that's coming out of the Republican Party about who the true Americans are. One of the biggest points that we want to fight about is the people standing up to Trump, defending the interests of Americans over corporations, are the true patriots, period. That is a patriotic act that is entirely consistent with patriotic acts that have gone on over the last two centuries, and it's really important that people understand who has built this country, who works hard.

Capital and Main: Bernie Sanders's Our Revolution is trying to move the Democratic Party toward an economic agenda that speaks more authentically to working families. Is that a direction that the party needs to move toward?

Steyer: There is an underlying fact about American life, which is that working people have gotten a decreased share of our profitability and our productivity for 40 years. That is the reason that we have the historic inequality that Bernie Sanders was talking about, and what in effect Donald Trump was talking about. They talked about it in terms of jobs, but actually I think if you look, we have relatively low unemployment. The truth of the matter is, we have incredibly low wages at a time when we have very high profitability for corporations.

When we talk about Bernie Sanders and fairness, there is really a question about the relationship of employers and employees. There is a false mythology coming from the Reagan era that somehow the market works, the market is efficient, the market is just. That's absolutely false. Markets have rules [imposed on them]. As we all know, if this were 120 years ago, we could hire an 8-year-old for a quarter and make him work 14 hours a day, and he wouldn't go to school. That's not possible anymore. That's just a rule. God didn't come down and say that. We passed a law.

Capital & Main: This was the thrust of Bob Reich's book Saving Capitalism. There are rules.

Steyer: There are rules, and you know what? These guys have changed the rules. The right of working people to organize. You [try to] negotiate your salary with Walmart. See how that goes. It's not going to happen. No working person is going to be able to out-negotiate all the lawyers of a multibillion-dollar multinational company. When you think about rules, you cannot ask individual working people to represent themselves and think they're going to get a fair deal.

Capital & Main: One of the great ironies of the 2016 election is that economic inequality was a front-burner issue in the presidential election and then we elected Donald Trump. How did that happen?

Steyer: People are under the gun. The rules are stacked against them. The [narrowest] special interests are absolutely the heart and soul of this administration and the Republican Party. There is no question that we have to explicitly fight back on behalf of Americans against special interests.

If you look at last year in California, we finally got overtime pay for farm workers. Have you seen a lot of people going out of business on these big farms since that horrible event happened? No. That's just a rule. Everybody else has had that rule, but farm workers couldn't get that for decades.

There's a huge union-bashing effort … I think it's so ironic. Why are manufacturing jobs well-paid? Because people organized them 80 years ago and fought over the contract every [time it was up for renewal.] The people who want to absolutely take apart the labor movement are talking about how important manufacturing jobs are.

Capital & Main: In the first weeks of the Trump administration there has been a concerted effort to create a wedge between labor and environmentalists by dangling the prospect of oil pipelines and other fossil fuel projects before the unions. How do you prevent that wedge from being driven between those two constituencies?

Steyer: Rebuilding and extending the fossil fuel economy is a horrible mistake on an environmental basis, but it's also a horrible mistake on an investment basis. Whenever people talk about the Keystone pipeline, they talk about whether we build the pipeline or whether we don't build the pipeline. That is a completely false frame. [The question really is], do we build good infrastructure or bad infrastructure? We're either going to rebuild and extend the fossil fuel infrastructure, which has about a 40-year life, or we will build an alternative, clean energy economy. We'll create two million net more jobs, higher wages, lower costs and better employment.

In 2016 in California, we supported low-income housing and public transportation measures that were worth over half a million jobs. If you look at the Keystone pipeline, they say it's worth 3,500 jobs for two years. To rebuild the United States, to rebuild the state of California, in a clean way will create many more jobs.

Capital & Main: Why are some trade unions meeting with Trump?

Steyer: There are a lot of pipelines they want to build in infrastructure that are unionized jobs. The trades know that. Those are high-paying jobs, and there are going to be a lot of them in the short run. If we built a different kind of infrastructure—if we rebuilt the electrical grid, if we rebuilt buildings to make them more energy-efficient and put in better HVAC and better windows, if we built huge solar arrays—there are a lot more jobs doing that.

This is about wages and making sure that the jobs are organized. If you look at the monthly labor reports for the U.S., they're always basically something like 50,000 service jobs created, 50,000 health care jobs created, 10,000 manufacturing jobs lost.

That's a net 90 plus. It's a pretty good month. Why do we care? Because the manufacturing jobs, you figure, are going to be paying 32 bucks plus benefits, and the health care jobs and the service jobs you figure are going to be paying somewhere between 15 and 25. It's really hard to live on between 15 and 25, so you don't want to lose well-paid jobs. I get that, and that's why I say this is really about what you get paid. Why is working in a plant inherently more valuable than working in a hospital?

Capital & Main: That is the question of this generation in terms of the workforce.

Steyer: How do we split up the profits? If you look at what Silicon Valley does, there are companies that make tens of billions of dollars that outsource janitorial and security services so they can pay minimum wage.

The question is, if we're all working together, what is my responsibility in relationship to you? If people are going to assume that human beings are widgets, there have to be laws to protect human beings. If you look at the most politically vulnerable people, which is farm workers, look and see how they did over time. That's all you really need to know about labor markets.

They didn't have a right to breaks. They didn't have a right to overtime. They didn't have a right to water. They didn't have a right to shit. Then rules [were set]. God did not come down and say it. Those are just laws that men and women passed.

Capital & Main: Within the solar industry, there are significant numbers of jobs that are not great jobs. How do you get to a place where the green economy that is emerging is actually rebuilding the middle class and not accelerating the decline of the middle class?

Steyer: What's going on in the solar industry is people are pushing really hard on a cost basis to beat fossil fuels. Renewable costs go down based on innovation, technology and scale. The rule for solar is it goes down 24% every time the installed base doubles. We are going to mop the floor with fossil fuels, because human beings are smarter than rocks.
As it crosses over—and it is crossing over in terms of what is the cheapest source of electricity—it is [essential] that the wages of working people in those industries go up, because we cannot have this happen without there being fair wages that people can raise a family on. We can't have that in this society.

Capital & Main: For many people Elon Musk is the poster child for a visionary approach to building a green economy, and yet little attention has been paid to job standards at Musk's businesses. How do you get people to think holistically about building a green economy?

Steyer: I totally agree. We obviously see his strategy as not including the interests of the people who work in his companies. We also see him feeling like it's sensible to be on one of the administration's task forces. Without having talked to him about either of those things, those are not things that we would do.

I wouldn't pick on Elon Musk about this. I just think in a broad-based sense, most employers are obsessively concerned with their bottom line. Workers need to have rights. Workers need to be protected by laws. Workers need the right to organize.

Capital & Main: When we interviewed your friend Bill McKibben a couple of months ago, he was close to sounding apocalyptic in his feeling about climate change in the coming era. Do you share McKibben's fear and sense of dread in terms of what is coming, or do you feel like there is reason for hope?

Steyer: I think about it this way. With all of the evidence on the one side, and the risk being almost unimaginably high, no elected Republican has decided to tell the truth for almost a decade. They have pushed as hard as possible to prevent us from moving forward, in return for money from the fossil fuel companies to fund their party.

Do I believe in the power of the human spirit and American ingenuity and American creativity and business acumen? Probably more than Bill does, because I've spent 35 years in the private sector, and I know that under the right circumstances Americans can do things that will shock everyone, including themselves. I believe that in my bones, but I will say this: The willingness of an entire party to put the corporate special interests ahead of the interests of their constituents and every other American and every other person on this globe is really shocking. Until we see them start to go a different way, then Bill's pessimism is understandable.

Can Americans reach the Moon? I believe we've proven we can. Can Americans defeat the combined forces of fascism? I believe we have proven we can. Can we do this? Yes, but we are really under the gun. To see what's going on now, and to see who's been nominated, and to see their attitude toward truth, and to see that scientists are now going to have to demonstrate and march in the street to stand up for the idea of evidence-based decision-making, is very scary. There's a reason why Americans are rising up, because that's something that we really can't live with.

This week's top stories may help you tame Slack notifications, become a better negotiator, and sit up straighter in your next interview.

This week we learned what not to say during salary negotiations, the top reasons why people are quitting their jobs, and how to correct iffy body language during interviews.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the week of February 19:

1. Nine Words And Phrases To Avoid When You're Negotiating A Salary

According to one careers expert, a definitive "yes" can be just as perilous as a hard "no" when it come to salary negotiations, which are all about leveraging the gray area. This week we learned which expressions to avoid when you're trying to nail down a number you'll be happy with.

2. These Are The Top Three Reasons People Quit Their Jobs

Glassdoor crunched the data on the main reasons people changing jobs are giving for flying the coop. And at the moment, work-life balance doesn't seem to be the leading deal-breaker.

3. Five Body Language Mistakes You're Making In Interviews

You've been told over and over again to smile—and you should. But this week, we learned where the line between "friendly" and "ingratiating" might fall. Here are four other nonverbal cues that hiring managers say can sometimes rub them the wrong way.

4. Six Female Execs On The Early Career Advice They Wish They'd Gotten

"In today's heavily prescribed, overly programmed world," General Motors CEO Mary Barra tells Fast Company, "it's easy to believe—even at age 22—that you need to plan every detail of your future career." When she was starting out, no one told Barra that wasn't the case, so this week, she and five other execs shared what it took them years to learn on their own.

5. Five Slack Hacks That Can Keep You Productive No Matter What

"It's highly unlikely that you're being paid just to read Slack all day," Matthew Guay, of the app manager Zapier, rightly observes. So in order to curb distractions and cut back on endless notifications, Guay turns to a handful of useful hacks, tweaks, and shortcuts. Here are five of his favorites.

If you're looking to serve your country with science—but not don the uniform—Uncle Sam has a job for you.

Hey millennials: Uncle Sam wants you ...No uniform required.

Looking to tap cyber talent in the private sector, the U.S. Navy has been holding a series of hackathons. The challenge: Find a way to crack the security systems of military drones and warships.

Earlier this month, the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Cyber Warfare let hackers test their skills against a "boat in a box"—a testbed system built by contractor Booz Allen Hamilton to mirror fleet systems. The event was a follow-up to one last June, dubbed HackTheSky, where security experts tried their skills against aerial drone control software and interface designers came up with prototypes to make it easier for drone pilots to operate the devices.

The goal is to tap into a talent base of mostly young civilian cyber experts who are interested in ways to help keep the country safe without necessarily enlisting in the Navy or joining a traditional defense contractor, says Commander Zachary Staples, director of the Center for Cyber Warfare.

"They don't want to cut their hair and go to bootcamp—that was not what they were asking me," he says. "They were asking, how could we work with you on a project sort of basis."

The Navy hackathons are purposely held in tech hubs, not at Navy bases: The first was held at Galvanize's San Francisco startup center, and the most recent one at Austin's Capital Factory coworking space.

The "boat in a box" will also be the focus of a presentation next month by Booz Allen Hamilton at South by Southwest, the Austin festival that's typically more known for appearances by Silicon Valley startups than old-school defense contractors.

The hackathons aren't the first attempt by the defense establishment to crowdsource innovation: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has long held competitions to spur development in technology, from predicting the spread of infectious disease to building autonomous cars. And the Defense Department last year held a "Hack the Pentagon" challenge, paying out more than $150,000 in bug bounties to hackers who found vulnerabilities on public-facing defense websites.

But the Navy hackathons are among the first to bring hackers to test their skills against real-world sea and air digital systems that are increasingly important to national security, Staples says.

"At any given time, a larger and larger percentage of the world's tangible wealth is loaded on a ship or being unloaded at a port," Staples says. And if the systems onboard those ships prove vulnerable, sophisticated attackers could essentially launch a blockade with the touch of a few buttons.

"If a fleet of ships gets hacked, that's a problem for the U.S. Navy, because our nation has just been embargoed," says Staples.

The boat in a box will let hackers test their skills against actual nautical communication interfaces, from the automatic identification systems used for collision avoidance to weather satellite radio systems.

June's drone hackathon helped unearth some vulnerabilities in systems that allow one operator to control massive swarms of drones. In 2015, a Naval Postgraduate School team launched a swarm of 50 drones under the control of one pilot, using customized software to keep the devices in sync. The hackathon helped inform architectural decisions for the next generation of the software, Staples says. And one team from the event also contributed some new security improvements to the Robot Operating System, an open source robotics toolkit used by researchers and robot makers around the world.

"One team contributed that back to the ROS codebase so that the result of the Navy's swarm hackathon, at least one of those results, was available to the entire robotics community," says Staples. The code related to technology for digitally verifying that software running on a robot hasn't been tampered with, he says.

And in addition to security tweaks, the hackathon generated improvements to the digital interfaces used to control the swarming drones. Finding skilled user interface designers can be a challenge for the Navy, just as it is for many in the private sector developing apps and websites. Building more intuitive controls can mean happier sailors and less time and money spent on training, Staples says.

"If I'm going to have a swarm drone operator, it's going to be a 25-year-old kid," says Staples. "They have an expectation that the interface is going to be as good as the apps they have on their iPhone."

The design challenge was one of a series run by Booz Allen Hamilton in conjunction with TopCoder, the Connecticut-based company known for running programming and design competitions. It's part of a push by the contractor to engage with outside innovators, partly inspired by the example of the U.S. Digital Service and 18F, the two startup-inspired federal initiatives to recruit technical talent of a type not always found within the traditional civil service.

"We are realizing that the way we support our clients needs to be a little more inclusive and collaborative," says Brian MacCarthy, the head of Booz Allen Hamilton's Strategic Innovative Hub in San Francisco.

At the Austin hackathon, a design challenge will focus on alternatives to GPS for areas, such as in tunnels and buildings, where the technology gets limited reception, and a data science challenge will explore ways to use detailed data on maritime traffic to detect security risks and criminal activity such as human trafficking.

And for the Navy, the hackathon will be part of an ongoing innovation challenge of its own, to find ways to connect with hackers and small businesses willing to help keep its systems state-of-the-art.

"The focus of the hackathon this weekend is building a community for maritime security," says Staples.

Questions hijack the brain. The moment you hear one, you literally can't think of anything else. And that can be a powerful tool.

What color is your house?

After reading that question, what were you thinking about? The obvious answer is the color of your house. Though this exercise may seem ordinary, it has profound implications. The question momentarily hijacked your thought process and focused it entirely on your house or apartment. You didn't consciously tell your brain to think about that; it just did so automatically.

Questions are powerful. Not only does hearing a question affect what our brains do in that instant, it can also shape our future behavior. And that can be a powerful principle in the workplace.

Questions On The Mind

Questions trigger a mental reflex known as "instinctive elaboration." When a question is posed, it takes over the brain's thought process. And when your brain is thinking about the answer to a question, it can't contemplate anything else.

Research in neuroscience has found that the human brain can only think about one idea at a time. So when you ask somebody a question, you force their minds to consider only your question. As neuroscientist John Medina puts it in his book Brain Rules, "Research shows that we can't multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously." Likewise, Nobel Prize–winning economist Herbert Simon has written that human beings consciously "operate largely in serial fashion. The more demanding the task, the more we are single-minded."

Behavioral scientists have also found that just asking people about their future decisions significantly influences those decisions, a phenomenon known as the "mere measurement effect." Back in 1993, social scientists Vicki Morwitz, Eric Johnson, and David Schmittlein conducted a study with more than 40,000 participants that revealed that simply asking someone if people were going to purchase a new car within six months increased their purchase rates by 35%.

According to an earlier study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, asking citizens whether they're going to vote in an upcoming election increases the likelihood that they will by 25%. And in yet another study, this one from 2008, researchers found that asking about one's intention to give blood raised donation rates by a modest but noteworthy 8.6%. The same effect has been found in studies involving computer sales, exercise frequency, and disease prevention—in each case, all these behaviors can be increased just by asking about them.

Inquiring Your Way To Influence

So why do questions have such influence on the decision-making process? First and foremost, they prompt the brain to contemplate a behavior, which increases the probability that it will be acted upon.

In fact, decades of research has found that the more the brain contemplates a behavior, the more likely it is that we will engage in it. That's not all. Just thinking about doing something can shift your perception and even alter your body chemistry. For instance, imagine sipping some lemon juice. What does it taste like? As you briefly think about lemon juice, notice the sensations occurring in your mouth. You'll find that something totally beyond your control occurred—you began to salivate more and you could almost taste the tartness of the juice.

Want to use this principle in the workplace to advance your career? Try it the next time you have to give a presentation. think back to the last one you had to sit through. Too often, presenters fall into the trap of talking at people, instead of engaging them. One easy way to fix that habit is to add more questions into your talk.

If you're discussing a feature of the product your company offers, you could ask, "If you had this [feature], how would you use it?" You don't actually need to sit back and wait for answers, though. The question guides your listener in mentally digesting how she might use the thing you're talking about—which actually increases the likelihood that she will.

You can also use questions to gain an edge on a job interview. But don't stick to the typical inquiries. Research out of Harvard University suggests that you should ask the types of questions that get an interviewer to offer an opinion, not just supply information. When scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), they found that questions that asked participants to disclose their opinions increased neural activity in the areas of the brain associated with reward and pleasure.

As a result, a question like, "Based on what's happening in our industry, how do you see the company going after opportunities?" won't just demonstrate your expertise, it can subtly make an interviewer more receptive to you, just by virtue of eliciting their personal views.

Questions are so ingrained in human communication that it's easy to underestimate their impact on our brains. Yet science has proven that they're an effective tool for strengthening connections between people and gaining influence. Which is pretty useful.

Don't you think?

This article is adapted from The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal by David Hoffeld, published by TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2016 by David Hoffeld. It is reprinted with permission.

First jobs usually aren't so glamorous, but they provide hidden valuable lessons for budding business owners.

"You must be an idiot, my order's all wrong!" The man pounded the countertop as I stood on the other side, forcing a toothy smile.

"I'm so sorry, sir, that must be frustrating for you. We'll get that fixed for you right away," I replied. He stared at me for a moment, taken aback, and I watched the anger melt from his face.

A few short years later, I'd no longer be slinging fries at McDonald's, fighting the occasional urge to throw punches at irate customers. I'd be running my own company. But to my surprise, some of the lessons I picked up as a fast-food server came in handy as a first-time entrepreneur in my mid-20s. In fact, they still do.

Everyone Needs To Walk Away Feeling Good

In addition to my McDonald's job, I also bagged groceries and waited tables at the local Thai food joint. They weren't that glamorous, but each of those jobs taught me that every customer needs to leave feeling better than when they walked in.

Other entrepreneurs I've spoken to say the same. Before founding a marketing agency, Megan Driscoll was a greeter at GapKids. "My job was literally to say hello to everyone that walked in the store," she recalls. But it taught her "the importance of a smile and having every person walk away from my interaction feeling good." That's not just a lesson for service roles, Driscoll says. You can't build a successful business that doesn't operate by that same principle. "I apply that daily with my clients now."

You Can Find Real-World Experience Anywhere (And Early On)

Daymond John is an entrepreneur who's regularly featured on ABC's Shark Tank, but long before founding FUBU (or, more recently, the coworking space Blueprint + Co), he held almost a dozen part-time jobs, ranging from handing out fliers to working at Red Lobster.

"A part-time job can be essential and will help mold you for a career or entrepreneurship," says John. "These experiences will help prepare you for the real world." He wagers that "50% of kids today will retire with a title that doesn't exist right now. How do you train for something that you don't know is going to exist?" Jobs might evolve, he suggested, but the basic skills that drive every business forward don't. And there are loads of ways to develop those—including outside a traditional full-time job.

John started his first "business" in grade school, when he tried writing his classmates' names on pencils and selling them back as "personalized" products. He quickly learned that the boys in his class weren't the right demographic, but he could often get the girls to pay double the price. From this first "job," John says he learned that "women are the No. 1 consumer—they control the budget and control consumer acceptance of a product."

It's All About Relationships

Unfortunately, in many industries, the more senior you go, the less diverse your colleagues become. But in entry-level jobs, you're more likely to meet people from a broad range of backgrounds. Take advantage of it. "At Toys 'R' Us, I learned the importance of being able to get along with colleagues from all different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds," says Jordan Barnett, cofounder of a men's leggings company. "The key? Keep asking questions until you find something in common, then celebrate that."

Niki Cheng, owner of the design store BoConcept, says her entry-level job as a drafter at an architecture firm taught her how powerful those relationships can be. Entrepreneurs may seem like they excel when flying solo, but if you want to scale your business, you'll eventually have to hire or contract help. And before you know it, you're a manager.

So, looking back, Cheng says that her "first job taught me that I have to take care of people, especially people who work with me. Happy people are more creative and more dedicated to their jobs." I found the same working at McDonald's, where it wasn't just customers I had to be nice to, but my coworkers as well. Sometimes just lending a hand when things got really busy could go a long way. I'm glad that lesson was still pretty fresh when I began to work for myself.

Take The Time To Read People

If you wait until later in your career to start your own company, you might not remember as vividly how to navigate these front-line interactions with customers and colleagues. But if you enter entrepreneurship in your 20s, some of those early experiences are still fresh.

One day on the job at Albertsons supermarket, an elderly man came up to me, irritated that he couldn't find a certain brand of cereal. My first instinct was, "Geez, it's just cereal, no need to get upset." But after chatting for a moment, I learned that the next day was his 50th anniversary, and he wanted to make sure his wife's favorite breakfast was ready when she got up in the morning.

I'll never forget this impromptu education in the cereal aisle: Everyone has different needs that sometimes aren't apparent at first glance. A job in customer service is a crash course in empathy and conflict resolution. Whether you're serving burgers or selling a SaaS product, interacting thoughtfully with your customer can help you understand their point of view, see their frustrations, and find a solution that benefits both parties.

Ultimately, that's what entrepreneurship is all about—whether you launch your first business later on in your career, or right at the beginning of it.

What can you possibly talk about when you're only in an entry-level job—or looking for one? Wrong question.

Long before you enter the workforce, you're told over and over again that you need to network. And for many years afterward, you're given loads of advice on how to schmooze tactfully, talk yourself up, meet VIPs, make introductions, and even make your way to the door when the time comes. But there's surprisingly little advice for people who may have cause to worry that they don't have anything to talk about.

For new grads, people changing industries, and anyone who's either unemployed or rejoining the workforce after taking time away, networking events can be uniquely stressful. If you don't have much (or any) recent, relevant job experience, what can you possibly discuss while rubbing elbows with those who can (hopefully) give you the career boost you need? You worry that everybody you meet will quickly notice you're a waste of their time, smile politely, and move along.

That can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it doesn't have to be. In fact, there are a few simple, idiot-proof techniques that can help you sail through even the most nerve-racking networking experience, no matter what may or may not be on your resume.

Find Out About The Other Person

It's a bit like dating. For one thing, your past relationship history isn't going to decide how this interaction goes—only what you do in the moment will. For another, a lot of that depends on how much effort you make to get the know the other person, not on how much or how well you talk about yourself. Like a first date, the real purpose of networking is to find out if there's compatibility. If there isn't, you haven't wasted a lot of time and both of you can go forward for someone more suitable.

So rather than recapping your own resume, be prepared instead to ask other people about themselves. Draw up a quick list of qualities you want to find out about everyone you meet: What would make somebody your ideal connection, or at least a suitable one? Not everyone will be a good match, and you can't take it personally. Keep asking questions and putting yourself out there. The more you do it, the easier it will become and the better questions you'll ask.

Ask Open-Ended Questions And Really Listen

What makes a good question? Basically, one that leads to a thoughtful answer, not a "yes" or a "no" or "I've been at my company for three years." You want to elicit opinions and ideas, not data.

Keep in mind that everyone has a need to be heard and understood. The problem is that most people listen only to respond—we're all subconsciously looking for a chance to simply share what we want to say. So you need to consciously resist that urge in yourself and indulge it in others. Listen completely without even thinking of your own response. Repeat back what you heard the person say, in your own words, and ask questions that encourage them to go deeper into the subject.

Everyone you meet at a networking event will be expecting a pitch from you, in some form or another. When they realize that isn't going to happen and you're actually listening to them, they'll be more likely to open up and give you information that they otherwise wouldn't if they were constantly on guard for your pitch.

Think About What You Can Offer Them

It doesn't matter what your work experience is—you can always lend a hand in some small way. Just like in any reciprocal relationship, work-related or otherwise, it's always better to offer something before asking for something. When it comes to building professional contacts, it's definitely better to give than to receive, at least in the beginning. So before going to a networking event, think about what you have to offer—no matter what your resume says—and continue to focus on that when you're speaking to people.

Focus On Building The Relationship

Networking often feels like a patient buildup, an exercise in social niceties all leading up to a fateful exchange of contact info. It isn't. In the first encounter, don't stress yourself out by looking for openings to pitch yourself or your product, or wring a commitment from somebody to meet up for coffee later. Stay in the moment.

By working simply on making a strong connection right now—as an end in itself—your chances of succeeding later on will increase. What you're doing is laying the foundation for a relationship, not trying achieve some kind of immediate, concrete goal.

Make Room To Show Some Vulnerability

Feeling pressured to be perfect to impress the other person so they'll want to work with you? Of course you are—but the other party may feel the same way, and it can stifle your conversation. Own up to that anxiety, and things should get a lot easier. You don't have to let loose and share all of your insecurities and fears.

But by showing that you have some doubts and are thinking abut ways to improve professionally, you lower the pressure level for everyone. It makes it easier for the other person to get a bit more vulnerable themselves. It's on this level where authentic connections really occur.

That's the whole point of networking anyway, and it has nothing to do with how impressive your experience is—or isn't.

From sneaker bots to machine-human stylists, brands are exploring artificial intelligence. So far, results have been mixed.

Fashion has always taken to the latest in trendy tech developments, from sparkly wearables and interactive dressing rooms to robots walking the Chanel runway. Increasingly, the industry is embracing AI and exploring how it can impact e-commerce productivity, retailer experiences, promotional campaigns, and even the clothes themselves.

As online shopping continues to grow, it's imperative for companies to utilize tools that can help them attract (and keep) customers. AI can do that in a multitude of ways. It can serve as a communication method to update an audience on collection releases and product availability. It can provide interactive storytelling and unique digital experiences with the help of creative algorithms. It can strengthen e-commerce by tracking users' preferences and giving them a customized shopping experience. These are all things the fashion world desperately wants—and needs.

The problem is, the industry hasn't quite figured out how best to use AI. Eager to jump on the bandwagon, some companies have rolled out services that all too often led with the tech instead of the creative, resulting in stunted campaigns that were all flash, no substance. The chatbot—and AI foot soldier—has become the most common example of bland overuse.

The Basic Bot

Bots are a clever way to engage consumers and meet them on their platform of choice, be it Facebook, Slack, Skype, or a retailer website. Bots are everywhere because they are relatively simple conversational platforms that can replace some human-based customer service tasks. They've been successful when infused with creativity, humor, and actual resourcefulness. For instance, early reviews of Taco Bell's Slack TacoBot, which allows hungry office workers to order lunch without taking their eyes off their instant messages, seem to agree that the tool feels consistent with the fast food chain's cheeky personality.

Consistency is crucial when it comes to brand identity—and fashion is no exception. "You have to give this thing a personality that matches your brand and what you're offering," says Ryan Opina, VP of user experience at the agency Engine Digital. "It's really easy to cross the line into spam."

Avoiding that trap is especially important given that, according to Botanalytics, a firm that specializes in improving human-to-bot communication, 40% of people disengage after one interaction. "Right now, fashion brands are jumping to use [AI] and leverage it—to be the first to market with the technology, but not exactly using it as an expression of that specific brand," says Ruth Bernstein, cofounder of YARD, an image-making and content-creation agency. "It's easy to get carried away with, 'Oh, we're doing [bots] because we can.'"

So what does a successful fashion bot look like? Burberry got it right last fall, when the company launched a Facebook Messenger bot during London Fashion Week. The tool offered exclusive glimpses of the new collection prior to the runway debut and shared trivia related to the line's inspiration. It then offered live customer service so that users could buy the clothes, which had been made available the same day as the Fashion Week show.

Bernstein, whose company works with clients such as John Varvatos, Etienne Aigner, David's Bridal, and La Mer, says brands developing bots should consider basing them on what she calls a "brand muse," or a character who epitomizes the brand. (A 2014 John Varvatos campaign was built around a "muse" known as the "rock and roll gentleman.")

But even with those guideposts, nailing the right type of bot is easier said than done. It's not hard to imagine a bot that represents Chanel's creative director Karl Lagerfeld. It would reflect his taste, offer his recommendations, and maybe even speak in his snappy language. A LagerBot would be amusing, no doubt. But could it feel personal to the customer? Could it connect with the consumer? Could it make a transactional experience feel conversational without being cloying?

"It's really hard," Bernstein says. The YARD cofounder often finds herself asking two important questions when working on fashion campaigns: 1) What's the actual benefit for the consumer; and 2) how does it serve and reinforce the tenets of the brand? "Sure, it can be innovative," she says. "But is it right?"

Even if the bot displays an engaging personality, there's still the possibility that consumers will find its actual functionality stale and predictable. You ask a question, get an answer, and then choose among three actions you can take as a result of that answer, like "ask another question," "keep shopping," or "request live assistance."

"Everything about the experience now is about rails, it's about being on a very specific pathway," says Engine Digital's Opina.

Then there are the nitty-gritty communication issues, such as natural language proficiency, comprehension, and processing. If you say you want to look "super hot," it might just send you a picture of a wool sweatsuit. Bots can be frustratingly literal. "There's been a huge interest because there's so much talk about it," says Opina. "But the practical benefit to it . . . you start to question whether it's easier for [the consumer] to just go to the website and figure it out on [his or her] own."

Practicality is what propelled David Fischer, founder and CEO of HighSnobiety, a website covering streetwear trends, to launch his Sneakers Bot on Facebook Messenger. His bot is a conveyer of information, promising consumers "lightning-fast sneaker updates from all your favorite brands."

Fischer sees specialized chatbots as a direct way of staying in touch with a brand's customer base. "It's why a simple newsletter or email contact is still so important today." A bot is even more effective, he argues, because it hits people where they likely already are: on Facebook. It's customer service offered to millions of users at the same time.

Fischer began with sneakers because it's a niche market with a passionate consumer base—die-hard "sneakerheads" with one too many pairs of Stan Smiths.

"We felt like the technology was perfect for that space because we could build a new loyal relationship with those fans who already visit our site every single day," Fischer says. "We can deliver important news faster than ever before, and we can give them an entirely new experience around the sneaker in terms of sneaker news, purchases, and lifestyle."

Fischer's Sneaker Bot will inform you when cult favorites like ACNE or Kanye West release new lines, but it is a one-sided conversation. For example, if you tell it, "I want to buy pink sneakers," it may well respond with a GIF of a confused Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. So yes, there are limits.

There's also a fine line between helpful and downright annoying. "If you overuse this tool, you can alienate the user," says Fischer. "But if you get these things right, it might actually be the most powerful communication tool of all."

Custom Content And Crowdsourced Couture?

AI is more than just chatbots. The fashion scene has explored various ways to infuse machine learning with e-commerce initiatives. Engine Digital, for example, works with high-profile clients such as Lululemon and Kit and Ace, and they try to pinpoint one area where the brands can use AI effectively.

With Kit and Ace, the agency focused on blending e-commerce with tailored content. If a customer repeatedly gravitated toward blue items while browsing the website, that color would be prioritized for their next visit. The customer might also be presented with content specific to their location and closest city. If you log on in Vancouver, you will find a city guide and profiles of the city's up-and-coming artists. "[Kit and Ace] really wanted to focus on the fact that it's a global company, but at the same time focus on the local creative community," Engine Digital's Opina says.

As lines between art and technology continue to blur, there's also potential for AI to weave itself into the actual work of producing clothing. Winston Binch, chief digital officer of Deutsch, the agency behind Slack's TacoBot, sees opportunities for the industry to partner with tech giants such as IBM and Microsoft, which have invested in innovative ways to use their AI. If IBM Research can help 20th Century Fox create the first ever "cognitive movie trailer" (i.e., one cut together by AI), surely fashion houses could use AI to execute ambitious projects. It could help create crowdsourced collections or collections based on consumer trends. AI could help produce interactive streaming runway shows. It could even predict incoming fads.

"There's a lot of expertise out there, and a lot of these scientists, they don't really know what to do with it, from a branding and creative standpoint," says Binch. "AI can do so much, but it still needs charisma, wit, and personality. And that's where creativity comes in."

A Melding Of The Minds

One of the biggest challenges for high-end fashion companies grappling with AI has been re-creating the sense of pampering that is synonymous with shopping in the luxury sector. "In the digital world, that's very hard to replicate," YARD's Bernstein says.

But as AI progresses, there's no reason the exclusive feeling of a Fifth Avenue boutique can't be replicated on a brand's website. Tech can stand in for the obsequious sales clerk and help you find the perfect gala gown by keeping track of your shopping history or Instagram likes. It's about removing the effort and making it seamless, according to Bernstein.

There's also the option of mixing AI with human intelligence. One startup infusing the two forces is Thread, a style service that depends on the fashion instincts of living, breathing stylists and an algorithm to help men shop.

Thread customers complete a short questionnaire and upload a few images of themselves. They're then paired with a stylist who reviews the information and gets a feel for each client's style. The stylist assembles the skeleton of an outfit using categories of garments (i.e., "chino pants," "Oxford shirt"), then he or she uses Thread's proprietary algorithm to sort through thousands of products and put together an outfit for purchase. The technology takes into account more than 50 elements of each user's personal attributes—everything from general fashion preferences to specific body shape—to make personalized recommendations. There are 3.7 trillion different potential outfit combinations in Thread's database, which means no two people will ever see the same ensemble. Users can improve the algorithm's accuracy by rating items or providing feedback as specific as, "I don't like pleated pants."

"We've found that AI works best when it's tempered by actual intelligence—from humans," says Thread CEO Kieran O'Neill via email. "Our vision for Thread is to blend the best bits of a human stylist with the best bits of a computer to create something that's better than either would be by itself."

He might be right. Thread went from 50,000 clients to 500,000 in the last two years. O'Neill reports that by making the company's algorithm 20 times more powerful in terms of its customization efforts, product sales from its e-commerce partners increased tenfold.

"We've seen a hugely increased propensity of first-time users to buy something, and growing site visits as well, all due to the continual fine-tuning of the personalization element," he says.

While many brands focus on replicating the in-store experience online, Thread sees an opportunity to redefine digital shopping altogether. Why not just create your online dream store, where everything is customized just for you?

"Signing in to your account is effectively walking into a store where everything is in your size, in your budget, by your favorite brands, and approved by a stylist." he says. "This is structurally impossible to do offline."

The blend of human and AI might be the perfect fit until the technology matures and the industry sorts best practices. Until then, brands will continue to experiment, in search of the right tone and use for their customers' needs. "In the early days of these new technologies and platforms, you have to take a chance," says HighSnobiety's Fischer.

Which sounds about right. Fashion is all about risk-taking, no?

These five tips can help you get your point across, no matter how crappy the audio or how distracted your listeners.

When I recently asked the CFO of a major retailer if he'd had time to do some "homework" I'd assigned him, he told me, "No, but it's okay, I can do it on my conference call!"

If the CFO of a Fortune 100 company is busy working on something else during conference calls, then you probably are, too. In one recent study, over 60% of people confessed to doing other work and sending emails while on conference calls. It's understandable. Even more so than meetings, conference calls are basically open invitations for people to check out and label it "multitasking." It doesn't help that you can't see the people on the other lines, or that many teleconferencing systems are garbage—with crackly sound, voices fading in and out, weird volume problems, the list goes on.

But believe it or not, these are largely surmountable hurdles. You may not be able to upgrade your company's telecom hardware on your own, but you can speak in a way that sounds clearer and commands more attention. If you want to keep people tuned in to what you're saying, you need a plan. Here's where to start.

Shorten Your Sentences

When you speak in long, complex sentences, people are more likely to get confused, bored, or both. So cut them down. When you speak in short sentences, you instantly give your delivery more emphasis and rhythm—and you still sound natural. By keeping your sentences brief, you'll create the momentum you need to keep listeners (whether in the room or on the other line) as engaged as possible under the circumstances.

Be (A Little) Redundant

When you have a message you want to get across on a conference call, you actually need to be redundant. It sounds counterintuitive, I know: Why repeat yourself when you're trying to grab, not lose, people's attention? But since the sound and connection may fade in and out, and with all the inevitable distractions you're competing with, it's actually helpful to reiterate your point more than once.

You need to assume that some of what you're saying just isn't going to get through. So go over your key points quickly yet frequently. Think of them as road signs that remind your audience where you're heading: If you don't check in every so often, they might get lost. You don't have to repeat the message in the same exact way every time, but reinforcing your ideas is a must when so many other factors (both technological and human) are conspiring against you.

Add Dialogue

Conference calls often sound like one person droning on for a while, then that person makes way for somebody else to do the same. One way to fix that is by adding dialogue to your speaking. It's a simple way to take what you're saying from black and white to color. For example, instead of just saying, "The customer said that we provided terrific service," you could say, "The customer said, 'Wow, you guys have terrific service!'" By "getting into character" as the customer, you add some contrast to what you're saying and come across as much more interesting than if you simply reported customer feedback.

Use Hand Gestures

Of course an audio-only teleconferencing system won't pick up your hand gestures, but just because no one will see them doesn't mean they aren't useful. In fact, gestures are universal to human communication—even people born blind use them. Gesturing while you speak can add rhythm and emphasis to your voice, which can help you be understood and engaging no matter how bad the audio might be.

It can also add enough color to your voice so that people feel you're speaking with them instead of at them—and yes, that feeling comes through, even over the phone.

Control Your Volume

You knew this one was coming, didn't you? But it's not quite the same as just saying, "Speak up." Some teleconferencing systems will make you sound faint and thin, while others will have you bellowing into someone's headset thousands of miles away. So while you may be at the mercy of the volume controls on whatever technology you've got to deal with, you can control your own voice.

How? Download a phone app that measures the decibel level of your speaking voice. There are various free options out there: Decibel 10th (for iOS) is one, and Sound Analyzer (for Android) is another. Human voices sound best at between 60 and 70 decibels, so do some testing and see where you fall on that scale, then adjust accordingly. After all, the other strategies I mention are irrelevant if your audience is tuning you out because you're either too quiet or too loud.

While 75% of senior managers believe video conferencing will eventually replace traditional audio conference calls, the audio calls may die a slower death than many would hope. Technological and cost barriers often keep shoddy systems in use inside businesses for a long time. So in the meantime, stick with these five tips, and you'll lower the chances of listeners doodling, daydreaming, or texting their friends while you're trying to make a point.

For all those times you really can't "just touch base real quick."

A coworker sends you an email asking if you're available for a 2:30 p.m. meeting, and your first thought is: How am I going to get out of this?

You haven't blocked out that time on your calendar, because technically you aren't already committed to something else. However, you have a list of things planned for the afternoon, and no, a surprise meeting isn't on it.

Before you automatically (though begrudgingly) agree because you don't think you have a choice, keep this in mind: While it's true people will judge someone who declines every meeting or backs out after agreeing, that's not what's happening here. If your teammate is asking you to join at the very last minute—and you explain why you can't in a thoughtful manner—odds are he or she will understand.

In other words, it's possible to say no to a last-minute meeting and still look like a team player. Here's how.

1. When You're Too Busy

Yes, there are times when meetings are worthwhile and will help the team meet its goals. However, there are also situations where other projects take priority, and because we've all been there, most people get it.

Case in point: I learned that I could stall giving an in-depth reply to an email by sharing that I was under deadline—which was the truth! The people involved could relate and gave me a pass. (They even wished me good luck on my other project!)

The same approach applies when you'd like to decline a meeting on a day you're swamped. Don't make up any old excuse. Be honest and say, "Unfortunately, I'm devoting every moment I have to [some task] due in two days. Please keep me posted if there's any way I can be of help later this week."

2. When You Don't Think You Need To Be There

Like a courtesy CC, sometimes coworkers think that including you even when it's not totally necessary is the nice thing to do—and they have no idea that it's creating extra work on your end.

The best approach here is to both acknowledge their gesture and affirm you won't be offended if the meeting goes on without you. It sounds like this: "Thanks so much for including me. From the agenda, it appears the meeting will be focused on product, so I don't think I'll be able to add anything to the discussion."

Another benefit of this response is that, if you're wrong and the organizer wants you to contribute, he'll be able to correct you—and you'll know in advance so you won't be caught off guard.

3. When You're Trying To Attend Fewer Meetings Overall

Successful people avoid extra meetings. Knowing this, you may have decided to try to limit the number you attend each week.

But like any other change you're trying to make, you have to clue in the people around you. For example, you have to tell your friends you'd rather meet for a walk than all-you-can-eat nachos and drinks because your new goal is to be healthier.

So if you simply call meetings a time-suck and say no, your colleague may very well be put off. (Clearly, she thinks it's important—that's why she called it in the first place.)

Keep the focus on your experiment by saying something like, "I'm trying to set a limit of [either a time-frame spent or a specific number] of meetings per day to boost my productivity."

If it's a one-on-one meeting, follow up by asking if you could reschedule for a time that works better for you. And say that in the meantime, you're happy to start the conversation over email (you'd be amazed how many issues can be resolved this way!). If a large group is invited, ask if it'd be alright for you to send in thoughts in advance, or comment on notes afterward, whichever would be more helpful.

If you always agree to meeting requests, declining may feel a little nerve-wracking at first. So think about what you're achieving. Not only could it save you from a time-waster today, but in the future, it could encourage people to contact you with relevant invites only.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.

Why this founder asks candidates for work samples, a live demo, and a paid trial period before making an offer.

It's getting more common to hear of startups composed of team members who've never actually met—in fact, I'm founding one right now. If the future of work is remote, getting there will mean figuring out how to hire people you may never be in the same room with, from countries you've never been to.

For me, that challenge is already proving worth the tackling. I don't pay for an office for anyone—I work out of my home, or from coffee shops or the hotels I'm staying at when I travel, which I can do whenever I like. I don't need to incentivize employees with in-office perks like games, snacks, or happy hours. By default, I'm able to offer my employees extreme amounts of flex time; since we're already in different time zones, setting hours wouldn't make much sense in the first place.

In the "challenges" column, though, I'd add a bunch of communications issues. I'm constantly trying to be proactive about preventing them. There are times when we do schedule calls, but because of the time differences, one team member or another often misses it out of confusion. If someone's internet connection goes down, they're usually forced to take a day off if they can't relocate.

But these are all day-to-day headaches that come up after someone has joined the company. By far the hardest part is finding great people to work for me to begin with. Here's how I've learned to hire remote employees efficiently and effectively.

Ask For Several Samples—And A Demo

I always ask for work samples pretty much right away. I think of this process as a forced "blind" interview. While I might be tempted to judge a candidate from their first impression in person, and the gut feeling they elicit when we talk, when I'm looking for remote candidates all I have to evaluate them with is the quality of their work.

But because I can't go over their work with them in the same room and gauge their reaction, I also take the precaution of asking for a real-time, remote demo. This helps me prove that they're submitting their own work, not someone else's. While it's rare to find someone who applies for a job with work they obviously can't replicate, my personal experience has shown that, while rare, it's a somewhat bigger threat for remote offices.

Be (Very) Specific In Job Descriptions

Yes, it's still important that you write fair, unbiased job descriptions, just as with any company. Every hiring process benefits from a clear, honest characterization of the role that gives every qualified applicant a fair shot.

But I've found there are some extra bits of information that it's wise to include for a fully remote job posting, including the hours you expect them to be available online, and a thorough description of your company culture (or the culture you're in the process of building).

Including the hours they're meant to be available helps deter those who are considering committing themselves to more than one job, which is generally only a danger when the applicant is new to remote work and giddy with the newfound sense of freedom. Explaining your culture is just as key (but easy to forget about), since it helps you specify what kind of personality you're looking for.

If there are any other specifics you're looking for, make sure to be very clear about them in your posting. I've found that the remote hiring process is tougher on me than I'd first expected—there are a lot of judgment calls to make and fewer tools with which to make them—so I've tried to give myself a leg up by making sure applicant knows exactly what I'm looking for.

Insist On A Trial Period

There are so many factors that are seemingly impossible to interview for, especially remotely: Can the candidate motivate themselves as a remote worker? Are they really going to be as easy to contact as I want them to be? Are they going to burn out?

Because of this, I like to book my candidates for a paid trial period—usually a week, but if I'm hiring someone a little higher up, I'll ask for up to a month. This isn't always feasible if they have a day job, of course. But they're often happy to do it, at least part-time. This isn't a perfect system, but it gives me a much more in-depth chance to see how they function as an employee over the long-term. And just as important, it also gives the candidate a chance to see exactly what their days will look like, which means there are fewer surprises for both parties once they're hired full-time.

Hiring a full-time remote employee or contractor can be daunting. You're committing to paying a person you've never met to deliver a product day in and day out, and to many, that may feel a bit too much like gambling. But in my experience, once you've gotten the hang of it, running a virtual office is worthwhile. You and your teammates will have much more freedom to sleep when you prefer, work in whatever place inspires you, and travel when you want to. Who could really ask for more?

AJ Agrawal is an entrepreneur, growth marketer, and management consultant. A frequent traveler, he writes about the leadership and marketing lessons he's picked up while traveling the world. Follow AJ on Twitter at @ajagrawal24.

What we can learn from the challenges and the triumphs that have defined the last 10 years of innovation in business.

This month marks my tenth anniversary as editor of Fast Company; we are also releasing the tenth installment of our World's Most Innovative Companies coverage. During that time, the U.S. economy has experienced its share of adversity, but what stays with me even more are the amazing achievements that have emerged from it. What follows are 10 lessons gleaned from our Most Innovative Companies coverage. I hope it inspires you to reflect on what can go right in the midst of all that is wrong—and why.

First, though, a look back at my editor's letter from that first Most Innovative Companies issue, in early 2008, just as the Great Recession was beginning to unfold. It was a very different time, and yet echoes of that past still resonate:

I sometimes look up at an airplane flying overhead and envision what its occupants would look like if the fuselage were see-through: Hundreds of people, sitting in straight rows of cushioned seats, watching movies, typing on computers, eating and drinking, all while suspended 30,000 feet in the air and traveling at 500 miles per hour . . . It is surreal, really, and for most of human history, it would have been absurd and fantastical.

Yet this is what business can produce: the unexpected, the mind-boggling, the world-changing . . . Fast Company is dedicated to celebrating innovative businesses, and this issue celebrates the best of the best . . . We're mindful that the U.S. economy is showing signs of weakness, that celebration is not the predominant mood in the business community today. But we're also convinced that the only way out of whatever troubles we face is through new ideas and fresh initiatives.

Here are the top 10 innovation lessons of the last 10 years.

1. The Race Goes To The Swift.

Why Apple And Google Are Titans

2. Everybody Stumbles.

Why Facebook Beat Twitter

3. You Can't—And Shouldn't—Go It Alone.

Why Netflix, HBO, And Amazon Owe Their Success To Hulu

4. Competition Is A Joy.

How The Sports Industry Pioneered Advances In The Innovation Economy

5. Every Company Is A Media Company.

What Taco Bell Learned From Red Bull

6. Yes, You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks.

Why The Music Industry Is A Model For Every Business

7. Culture Eats Strategy.

What Under Armour And HBO Have In Common

8. We're All Open Source.

Why Nike Really Lets You Design Your Own Sneakers

9. Small Doesn't Mean Low Impact.

What Accelerators, Incubators, And Hackathons Tell Us About The Future Of Business

10. Agility Will Remain The Ultimate Imperative.

In An Uncertain World, These Are The Business Trends We Can Count On

This article is part of our coverage of the World's Most Innovative Companies of 2017.

This cover letter I sent in 2013 didn't get me the interview. So I asked the pros to whip it into something that might have been successful.

When I was a couple years into my career and trying to leave my first job out of college (starting salary: $28,000), I sent around many truly horrendous cover letters. Recently, I discovered one languishing at the bottom of my "sent" folder, where it very much belongs. When I clicked the attachment, I was greeted with a hefty 482-word missive that now makes me shudder, and the hiring manager who never called me in for an interview probably had the same response.

To be fair to my 24-year-old self, the cover letters that most recent grads write are often doomed to terribleness. If mine is any proof, spinning your paltry work experience into a halfway compelling narrative about your competence is actually pretty hard. So I asked a few career experts to give my sad cover letter a retroactive makeover, to see if there were any lessons to be learned in the process.

A Short Inventory Of Errors

I thought I could spot my cover letter's main failings—it's overly long, way too formal, and pretentious as all hell (don't worry, you'll see it in full in a moment)—but Dana Leavy-Detrick, chief creative scribe at Brooklyn Resume Studio, and Katy Martin, career developer at Dev Bootcamp Chicago, uncovered quite a few more issues.

"The document ultimately struck me as verbose and methodical," says Martin. Leavy-Detrick agreed. After all those words, she said, she still had "a difficult time picturing who this candidate is, and seeing a unique profile that really grabs my attention." In other words, I had no personality.

"Cover letters are intended to show you off and really captivate the reader," Martin adds. "I know one candidate who got a job offer because the cover letter was a playwright-style script of the candidate and an interviewer talking." I worry something like that might've come off as hokey had I tried it, but point taken. (Incidentally, I once rewrote my brother's resume for him in Chaucerian verse, but that's another story.) "Be quirky and professional at the same time," she advises.

Leavy-Detrick suggests that every job applicant embrace an element of storytelling. "The best ones create a unique and compelling narrative around the candidate, and their personal brand shines through." You can do that no matter what level of experience you have, she says. "Companies don't just hire on requirements and qualifications—they also make hiring decisions based on culture fit and potential, and neither of those comes through in this letter."

Both experts also said my cover letter lacks confidence and impact; it starts flat and ends weak. Martin suggests leaving out salary expectations, which I mention toward the bottom, since it risks selling yourself short—you want them to finish thinking about your value, not what you'll cost. I suspect I only included it because I was asked to, but I could have ignored that instruction.

Leavy-Detrick thinks the bigger problem is where I basically invite them to negotiate me down (I recall worrying I'd price myself out—by asking for a whopping $37,000) before even meeting me. And my call to action is simply for the hiring manager to "feel free to contact me," as opposed to a more self-assured request for an actual interview.

Video: How To Get Hired With An Amazing Cover Letter

How To Fix It Up

So how would I have corrected these faults? I asked Leavy-Detrick and Martin to take a merciless red pen to my cover letter, and they graciously obliged. I've combined their most insightful edits into a copy here:

For starters, both experts suggest a more powerful intro. "The opening line does not capture my attention," says Leavy-Detrick, "and it's also vague." Martin concurs: "Try to stay away from stating the obvious, such as 'I am writing to express my interest in a position as a production editor . . .'"

Instead, says Leavy-Detrick, it's better to open "with an immediate, high-level overview of your expertise and what you bring to the table. If you don't pique their interest and qualify yourself right away, you may lose your reader." She points out that there's the glimmer of a narrative at the start of the second paragraph, which could be spun into a concrete story about why I'm interested in this position at this moment and the perfect person to fill it.

Then there's the fact that my cover letter summarizes my resume—a common fault. "As you describe your valuable work experience," Martin suggests, "highlight a specific thing that happened" instead of "just describing your responsibilities or accomplishments. If I know you've been in the trenches of this particular problem or worked through this particular incident, it's much more believable that you're experienced."

That would also take fewer words. "The letter is very heavy on text, which makes it difficult to scan," says Leavy-Detrick. "One solution would be to call out some of your key points as bullets—highlighting the qualities, accomplishments, or skill sets most relevant to the role." Here are three she distilled from my original letter:

• Several years of editorial experience that includes work on both academic and professional titles.
• Ability to produce results and meet deadlines within a fast-paced production department.
• Proven ability to manage a high volume of project priorities and coordinate deliverables among authors, vendors, and internal editorial and marketing teams.

Clear, simple, easy to eyeball.

Martin just recommends a zippier, more narrative approach overall. Here's how she'd suggest rewriting it from top to bottom:

New American Library | Richard Bellis, Production Editor Candidate
[email address] • [phone number]

Dear Claire Zion [VP, editor-in-chief of Berkley/NAL],

New American Library has been top of mind for me from the moment I picked up a copy of [title of a book published by the imprint that you're familiar with]. My appreciation of production editors has grown upon learning about New American Library's commitment to producing high quality, uniform books while preserving each book's unique features and challenges. It is a precarious balance to manage, as I learned in my prior production associate role.

The publishing industry is rapidly changing, with the evolution of e-books and other online learning content. You are likely seeking a production editor who can manage multiple projects at once, adapt quickly, and work within a variety of programs and data systems. While working at Palgrave, there were two-week periods in which I was managing 20 authors, multiple deadlines, and many schedules in order to produce 10 books.

My love for the editorial business and a lot of coffee kept my momentum strong through these periods of time. I am eager to bring my insight and my eye for detail to New American Library as a production editor. I have vivid memories of working on a project where I wrote about the history of bathtub creation during my time at Vassar College. I was forced to thoroughly research disciplines far outside of my comfort zone and problem-solve in order to deliver high-quality writing.

[Name of referral] at The Penguin Press has shared more insight with me about how NAL deeply cares about its team. I'm really excited about the potential of joining the New American Library production-editorial team. Please let me know how I can further illustrate my candidacy for the production editor role. You are welcome to contact me by phone at [_________].

All the best to your success,
Richard Bellis

Not bad, right? I might even have interviewed me.

Uber's problems are a result of a company that refused to fix its dysfunctional culture.

It's been a tough week for Uber's company-culture image. A blistering blog post written by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler chronicled claims of rampant sexual harassment, and an ambivalent response from HR.

A few days after Fowler's post, the New York Times reported even more revelations about sexual harassment and sometimes illegal behavior. Uber was described by the Times's Mike Isaac as a "Hobbesian environment" where "workers are pitted against one another and where a blind eye is turned to infractions from top performers."

What exactly Uber is like inside is of course still unclear. But one thing is certain: There is no one problem that leads a company to this point. A broken company culture is the result of a lot of problems. Let's look at what might have gone wrong.

What Exactly Happened

Company culture crises are often the product of many small failures. Human resources is important in order to keep things in check. Fowler describes how Uber's HR ultimately failed her. "When I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment," she writes, "they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to."

Read More:The Future Of HR And Why Startups Shouldn't Reject It

Ineffective human resources is one of the most persistent problems that plague all companies, no matter what their size. For Fowler, HR was the only recourse she had to report managers' wrongdoings. The system that was meant to document and thoroughly investigate the claim chose to (according to Fowler) turn a blind eye in favor of a manager who allegedly produces good results. HR's failure to provide a safe environment in which employees can report misconduct left Fowler feeling unsupported. In the end, she felt she was left with no recourse but to ignore the harassment or leave. Change is only being brought about now because Fowler went public with her story.

Video: Why Everyone You Know Wants You To #DeleteUber

Vague And Meaningless Company Values

Most tech companies tout their "company values" as a defining element of what makes their company culture unique. Uber has 14 of them, which include such vague statements as "always be hustlin'" and that employees should "be themselves." These maxims mean nothing at best, and at worst leave what is considered appropriate conduct open to potentially poor personal judgment.

These phrases fail to communicate what top brass believes their company to be. They are empty gestures that widen the gap between executives and employees, as they show a disconnect with what people do every day to keep a company afloat, and how leadership describes their work. This is a common symptom of internal company strife. "It can be really difficult to know, especially at the top, what your culture is," says Ursula Mead, founder and CEO of HR insights platform InHerSight. It's even harder to know how it shifts if a leadership team isn't aware of what's happening on the front line.

"Culture bubbles from the bottom," says Mead. In other words, if the company focuses only on profit and scale, it leaves culture to be created on its own and sends the message that results by any means necessary trump everything else. Descriptions of Uber's culture in both Fowler's post and the New York Times report have painted the picture of a Darwinian environment in which individuals viewed their colleagues as competition rather than teammates.

The lesson here, which should be obvious, is that it's important for leadership to set the tone and expectations for company culture, and to lead by example. "It's easy for leadership to think that some of their top-down management can apply to culture," says Mead. Leaders need to make sure they have a direct line to what's actually happening and understand how to make sure everyone is heard.

Owning Up To Its Problems

Perhaps one of the biggest factors that is exacerbating Uber's toxic work culture is its lack of transparency. Investors Mitch Kapor and Freada Klein have come forward to voice their disapproval. "We feel we have hit a dead end in trying to influence the company quietly from the inside," they write. They go on to critique the task force Kalanick formed to look into the sexual harassment allegations, which consists of two Uber employees and an Uber investor. "We are disappointed to see that Uber has selected a team of insiders to investigate its destructive culture and make recommendations for change," they write. "To us, this decision is yet another example of Uber's continued unwillingness to be open, transparent, and direct."

Related:Why It Matters For Tech Companies To Release Diversity Data On Time

Ultimately, it's those last three words that will help the company transform to be not only better respected but equitable to everyone who works there. Uber has never released a diversity report, although Kalanick announced a few days ago that following this ordeal, the company now plans to.

Diversity reports don't in themselves create a more inclusive culture (especially if the numbers never move), but they do provide a signal to people, both on the outside and inside, that the company is aware of its problems and hopefully working toward changing them. As Mead put it, it's "demonstrating that you're willing to have that transparency and that openness." It took the company's feet being held to the fire to even consider taking this one step.

Uber appears to have so far refused to investigate where the toxicity is coming from. Instead, it's painted over its issues and focused on scaling. What Uber is facing now is the culmination of its inability to listen and own up to its problems. To many, issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion seem like soft issues. But it's becoming clear how important it is for Uber to incorporate these issues into their culture, which ultimately factor into making a company successful.

"One out of every five of my employees won't be in their roles next year," says Hootsuite's Ryan Holmes. "And I couldn't be happier."

Concerns over rising rates of speedier job-hopping are now at a fever pitch. By one recent estimate, nearly half of employees could leave their jobs by the end of 2017. And according to another, millennials now expect to change their job every two and a half years—double the rate of their Gen X predecessors.

In response, LinkedIn rolled out a feature late last year to help recruiters find less-than-satisfied employees who may be "passively" looking for options. And on the other side of the equation, companies are scrambling to find way to hang onto the talent they've already hired for as long as they possibly can.

But me? I'm not—and here's why.

It's Good When People Move

What if this steadily accelerating, workforce-wide game of musical chairs were actually a strategic advantage?

Traditionally, employee retention—the ability to keep staff—is considered a telltale sign of a company's health. But if you ask me, focusing blindly on retention actually misses the bigger picture. The metric we should be tracking is something I call "people movement," and it's the oxygen pulsing through a business.

I'm not talking about churn—losing employees altogether is rarely a good thing. But if all you worry about are retention issues, then you'll be pouring tons of resources into reducing churn and missing other areas that, for one thing, you have much more control over and, for another, might end up making a bigger difference in the end. If you think holistically about all the ways people move through (including out of) your organization, you'll start seeing more clearly—and freaking out less. Part of this will be promotions. But an even more critical piece is the lateral and diagonal movements of employees leaving one team for another.

Contrary to accepted wisdom, this kind of people movement isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's vital to organizational health. Indeed, moving people out of their current roles can be just as important as keeping people in them.

My company, Hootsuite, is a social media management platform with around 1,000 employees. We made it a company-wide goal—right alongside revenue targets—to ensure that 20% of our employees, or around 200 people in total, aren't in the same seat by the end of 2017. It's an open declaration to managers and staff alike that shifting roles is part of our culture and something to be encouraged, not avoided.

For so many companies, exactly the opposite is true: You're expected to "do your time" before moving over or moving up. And I get it. Managers make an investment in training and expect to see a return on that. But the world is moving too fast for this model, and it's time we evolved.

Video: Searching For A New Job From Work? Here's How To Keep It Low-Key And Professional When You'd Rather Your Colleagues Not Know

Why Are We All Crammed Into One Lane On A Two-Way Street?

For the right employees, an open people-movement policy is a boon: the chance to learn new skills quickly, expanding your professional toolkit and building a stronger resume—on a timetable you're happy with. For better or worse, employees want to grow and improve more rapidly and many of them feel they can. 65% of millennials say that personal development is the most important factor of their jobs, according to a 2013 UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School study.

In my company, we've seen salespeople transition to product management roles and marketing specialists shift into corporate development. Talented people who enter the company with one skill set are able to level up and acquire expertise in a whole new area. The result is happier, more fulfilled employees who stay with the company—but don't necessarily stay put.

For the business, the benefits are multiple and cascading. Lateral movement is a powerful way to break down corporate silos and diffuse institutional know-how. Plus, the reality that employees are continually on the move obliges a company to hire smarter and to train faster, maximizing return in a shorter time span.

Deeper still, people movement is a powerful way to sustain startup energy and spirit as a company scales. Talented recruits are drawn to early-stage startups by the excitement and promise of wearing multiple hats. But this kind of role fluidity diminishes as a company grows and jobs become more specialized. The enthusiasm and creativity that make the scrappy startup environment so appealing gets watered down. But scrapping employee retention efforts for a broader people-movement focus reignites that flame.

Ultimately, that leads to better recruitment and (yes) better retention anyway—the exact goals that keep all HR teams up at night. Smart prospects want to work at a company where they know they can learn and grow. And A-players want to keep working there as long as they're continually challenged.

Turnover = Success, Not Failure

So how do you actually pull off this switch in approach? It's not always easy. Actively encouraging your best and brightest employees to move on goes against everything managers are usually taught. You invest energy to bring people up to speed, only to see them swooped up by another department, leaving you with a new vacancy to fill.

That's why, internally, we've found that people movement doesn't work without a clear shift in perspective. This involves reimagining the "manager" as mentor, champion, and educator. Turnover, in this formulation, is an indicator of success, not failure. It's not a sign that employees don't want to work with you; it's a sign that you've done an exceptional job. They're graduating, not leaving.

This holds especially true for departments that attract high volumes of junior talent—at Hootsuite, that's sales and customer success. These teams have their own mandates to fulfill, but they've embraced the idea that they're also invaluable talent funnels for the rest of the organization. Rather than trying to lock their best people into a single career track, managers have learned to actively steer them toward other roles throughout the company.

But it's worth pointing out that the goal is not to fast-track promotions, which only bloats management and inflate budgets. Instead, it relies on employees actively stretching to brand-new roles, often in different departments. We've found, though, that interdepartmental walls can sometimes be intimidatingly high. How's an employee supposed to know what goes on in other departments, let alone what roles need to be filled?

Both informal and formal initiatives are key. On the informal end, employees across the company get together Friday afternoons, when we open our taps for a round of drinks. It's not rocket science, but it's one way to get people outside their departmental bubbles. Better still, we've got a robust #randomcoffee program: employees sign up to be paired with a random peer, blind-date style, and then get to know one another over a coffee.

Our most effective tool is a lateral-movement initiative we call the "stretch program," which gives team members a formal way to try on roles in another department. Stretch employees spend one day a week on their adopted teams and the remaining time in their official roles. At the end of the trial, the fit is evaluated: If everyone's on board, the staffer can make the jump full-time.

It can be a challenge at first to wrap your head around the idea that helping people leave their roles—rather than encouraging them to stay put—is actually good for business. Yet the simple truth is that if you don't give employees the chance to learn something new and change positions, they're going to take it upon themselves to do so anyway—with a different employer. Faced with that prospect, a little people movement makes a lot of sense.