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Coffee Break
Insights, stories, and thoughts that you can enjoy in under five minutes.
Crisis Communications in 2025: Expect the Unexpected
Leadership is the cornerstone of organizational success. Explore proven strategies to develop resilient leaders, foster team collaboration, and achieve sustainable growth through expert coaching and training.
Getting your team started with A.I.
AI is already transforming workplaces across industries. Learn how leaders can guide their teams through strategic, ethical, and effective adoption of artificial intelligence tools.
Employee Choice, Autonomy, and Distributed Ownership: Empowering Teams for Success
Discover how distributed ownership empowers employees, enhances engagement, and drives organizational success through shared decision-making.
Leading in 2025: When the political becomes personal
Regardless of how you voted, it would be naive to not understand and plan for the kind of stress this new political environment is bringing to your workforce. As the new administration begins implementing sweeping changes to federal policy and regulation, American workers—especially those from marginalized communities—are bracing for impact.
New Research: People Are Done Waiting for Things to Change
For 25 years, the Edelman Trust Barometer has given us an annual temperature check on how much faith people have in institutions. This year’s results are ice cold.
Davos 2025: Finding Resilience Through Collaboration
Every January, the world’s most powerful leaders and business elites gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos to talk about the future. This year’s theme was “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” meant to be a vision of global challenges—climate change, AI safety, economic inequality—solved through cooperation. These kinds of global issues are too big for any one nation or one company to solve alone. The future is complex, and it demands collective action.
Redefining Corporate Culture: Supporting Women through Infertility
When I cofounded my company, I never imagined that the most profound leadership lessons would emerge not from boardroom strategies or client victories, but from the raw moments of navigating fertility treatments while building a business from scratch. This parallel journey—one of professional creation and personal loss—has illuminated a critical truth for me about how workplace culture can serve as a support system for their people.
Pocket Change: Trump, “Common Sense,” and “The Intelligent Age”
While Americans on Monday were watching a parade of billionaires and debating about what constitutes a Nazi salute during the re-inauguration of President Donald Trump, the world’s elite were gathering in Davos under the banner of “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.”
Looking Ahead: 2025 Trend Predictions
Where we go from here on A.I., sustainability, employee engagement, and more. As we head into 2025, we asked subject matter experts within the 18 Coffees community for their perspectives.
Pocket Change: 2025 will be a year that asks questions
The impacts of a second Trump administration are far from certain, but we do have some directional indicators based on his campaign promises.
The Next Media Frontier: Navigating the Uncertain Trump 2.0 Landscape
In the aftermath of November’s election, many leaders have been interpreting what the future of journalism may look like over the next four years. 18 Coffees’ Managing Partner Caleb Gardner recently connected with Dr. Danielle Tomson to explore the rise of content creators and influencer power in shaping behavior and brand perception, how data can help or hinder our understanding of community behavior, and the impact the shifting media landscape might have on communications going forward.
Pocket Change: The world holds its breath over Trump 2.0
The impacts of a second Trump administration are far from certain, but we do have some directional indicators based on his campaign promises.
Preparing your workplace for election chaos—no matter the outcome
Tomorrow the United States finishes the most chaotic presidential election of our lifetimes. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day news cycle, but taking a step back, consider the unprecedented nature of this cycle…
Pocket Change: How uncertainty in the U.S. impacts the 🌎
We now have fewer than 40 days until we finish one of the most chaotic and unpredictable U.S. presidential elections in our lifetimes.
AI’s Impact on Impact
Regardless of industry, artificial intelligence is one of the hottest topics on everyone’s mind. How will it affect the workforce and economy? How can we use it to upskill our teams and increase our bandwidth? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we ensure we’re using new AI tools for good?
Using GenAI to Enhance Communications: A Recap of our Social Innovation Summit Workshop
The arrival of GenAI to the tech ecosystem offers endless potential for creative problem solving and innovation in the workplace. However, as explored in the Social Innovation Summit 2024 Breakout Workshop “Using GenAI to Enhance Communications,” hosted by 18 Coffees, its enigmatic nature invites ambiguity, and with it, feelings of overwhelm for potential users. “It’s hard to apply generative AI consistently because there is no shared definition of what AI is; there are too many applications and implications,” says 18 Coffee’s Managing Partner Caleb Gardner.
Our Top Highlights from Social Innovation Summit 2024
This June, we had the honor of partnering with Landmark Ventures for our third consecutive year to lead social media and content strategy for their flagship event, Social Innovation Summit 2024 (SIS24) in our hometown Chicago. The conference was a dynamic gathering of thought leaders, philanthropists, global corporate executives, celebrity activists and social entrepreneurs dedicated to driving social impact and scaling change. We were thrilled to meet up with past 18 Coffees clients and Community Partners — it’s an event we look forward to each and every year.
Maximizing Your Enneagram at Work
I’m a millennial woman — of course I know my Enneagram type. I’m a 2 for those wondering, but much like my Zodiac sign or my Myers-Briggs archetype, I didn’t do much digging beyond the basic Type 2 traits once I discovered my particular identifier. When the 18 Coffees team recently found ourselves discussing popular professional assessments as part of our Team Member on a Page exercise, the Enneagram initially didn’t even cross my mind.