Global Teck

09/08/2026

People are not tired of working.

They are tired of work consuming so much of the life around it.

On What The Teck?, Dan Smolen shared a very human point about why the future of work conversation matters:

“You know what, more and more people, especially if they're commuting into an office, they're exhausted. And they wanna breathe air that's not the office. They wanna have different kinds of experiences that include work, but aren't all work.”

That line captures something many leaders should pay attention to.

The conversation around remote and hybrid work is not only about convenience.

It is also about energy.

A long commute takes energy before the work even begins.

A rigid schedule can make life feel smaller.

An office-first mindset can sometimes ignore the fact that people have families, health, responsibilities, interests, and lives outside the building.

People are not asking for work to disappear.

They are asking for work to fit into a fuller life.

That matters for businesses too.

Because exhausted people do not usually do their best work.

But people who have room to breathe, reset, and live may come back with more focus, more energy, and more purpose.

The future of work is not just about where people sit.

It is about whether the way we work helps people stay engaged without burning out.

How should leaders think about work today: as a place, a schedule, or a better fit for life?

09/07/2026

AI feels strangely familiar if you remember the dot-com era.

Sharon K. Gillenwater watched the internet take shape in San Francisco in 1999.

Today, she sees the same kind of uncertainty around AI: massive potential surrounded by companies, tools, and claims that haven’t been tested yet.

For small businesses, that makes one question especially important:

How do you experiment without wasting time and money chasing every new tool?

Comment with the AI tool your business is actually using, not just testing.

09/04/2026

GPT-6 Astra sounds exciting for ChatGPT users.

But for business owners, the bigger question is how it changes the way teams actually work.

OpenAI says GPT-6 Astra is built for professional work, computer use, browsing, software engineering, cybersecurity, science, and more complex tasks.

That matters because AI is moving closer to the daily work inside a business.

Not just writing or brainstorming.

Actual workflows.

Research.

Reports.

Customer support.

Process improvement.

Decision support.

As a business owner, I am all for AI when it helps us get the right things done faster and better.

We have to ride the wave of where business is going.

But the human touch still matters.

A stronger model will not fix a messy process.

It will not replace judgment, trust, leadership, or clear direction.

For SMBs, the move is not to panic or blindly chase every update.

The move is to test it with real use cases, set rules around data and privacy, train the team, and find where AI actually improves the business.

Used well, this could help a clear business move faster.

Curious how other business owners are looking at GPT-6 Astra.

Excited, cautious, or waiting to test it first?

OpenAI announcement:

Introducing GPT-6 Astra, our most intelligent and aligned model yet, with state-of-the-art capabilities across computer use, coding, cybersecurity, and science.

09/03/2026

99.5% of entrepreneurs never raise venture capital.

So why do so many founders act like raising VC is the default path?

For SMB owners especially, that assumption deserves more scrutiny. Capital comes with incentives, expectations, and people attached to it.

The question isn’t only how much money you can raise. It’s who you bring onto the journey and what they want the business to become.

Sharon K. Gillenwater brings a rare perspective to that conversation: 20+ years supporting enterprise executive engagement leaders, Co-Founder & CEO of ExecutiveIQ, Founder & Former CEO of Boardroom Insiders, 4x Founder, INC 5000, author of Scaling With Soul, angel investor & LP.

She argues founders should look harder at angels with real domain expertise; people who can contribute more than a check.

The conversation also gets into private equity, the online criticism around what happened to Panera Bread, and the bigger tension between cutting for returns and building something customers genuinely love.

And then there’s AI.

Sharon’s assessment: “We are most definitely in a bubble.”

Watch the full episode for the bigger conversation on capital, ownership, and what founders should think about before playing someone else’s game.

09/03/2026

Security and reliability were almost tied.

That says a lot about how businesses view telecom modernization.

We asked:

What matters most in telecom modernization?

The results:

🔐 Security — 49.1%

📶 Reliability — 47.4%

📋 Compliance — 3.5%

At first glance, security won.

But the bigger story is how close the result was.

Security and reliability were separated by less than two percentage points, which suggests businesses are not thinking about modernization as a single-priority decision.

They want systems that are protected.

They want systems that stay online.

They want communication infrastructure that does not create new risk.

That lines up with what we are seeing around POTS replacement and telecom modernization.

Many legacy phone lines are still connected to critical systems like elevators, fire alarms, emergency phones, security panels, entry systems, and other operational equipment. Modernizing those lines is not just a phone upgrade. It can become a business continuity project.

The surprising result is compliance at only 3.5%.

That may mean compliance feels less urgent because it is not always visible until something goes wrong.

But emergency calling requirements, life-safety systems, recordkeeping, privacy obligations, and industry rules can create serious exposure if they are missed.

The takeaway:

Telecom modernization should not be about choosing between security, reliability, and compliance.

The stronger plan accounts for all three.

Where do you think businesses usually underestimate the risk most?

08/28/2026

What if the “friction” slowing your AI project down is actually protecting your business?

James Gorman, Fractional CISO and CTO at Hard2Hack, shares the example of a global bank whose AI proof of value looked great until the security implications of putting it into production became clear.

Huy Nguyen, Founder of The Growth Hack, Inc., joins the conversation about vibe coding and the incredible speed AI now gives businesses.

Moving faster can be an advantage.

Skipping the people asking uncomfortable security questions may not be.

Share this with a business owner experimenting with AI.

08/26/2026

The more human AI sounds, the easier it becomes to forget what it doesn’t have.

James Gorman, Fractional CISO and CTO at Hard2Hack, says AI has no empathy. It can pursue an objective, reassure you, and even agree with a terrible idea without caring about the consequence.

That’s a distinction businesses should keep front and center as AI takes on more responsibility.

Share this with someone deciding where AI should—and shouldn’t—make the call.

08/25/2026

The remote work debate gets too narrow when we only ask one question:

“Are people productive?”

On What The Teck?, Stanford Professor Nick Bloom shared a bigger way to look at it:

“If you look at productivity growth, it's accelerated from 2020 onwards versus the five years pre pandemic. So this is why it's a win on average for firms. I'm aware that some firms are losing. But we're looking at the entire economy, that's the second win. And then the third is just for society. There's a big benefit in reduced pollution, and there's also a big benefit that parents are getting to spend more time with kids.”

That is an important distinction.

Remote and hybrid work should not be treated like a simple office-versus-home argument.

The better question is:

What changes when people have more flexibility?

For businesses, it can affect productivity, retention, hiring, and real estate costs.

For employees, it can reduce wasted commute time and give people more room to manage life.

For families, it can mean more presence at home.

For communities, it can mean less commuting and lower pollution.

That does not mean every role can be remote.

It does not mean every company wins automatically.

But it does mean the conversation should be bigger than whether someone is sitting in an office chair.

The real opportunity is designing work in a way that supports performance, trust, and life outside of work.

For leaders, flexibility is not just a perk.

It is a business design decision.

How should companies measure the real impact of hybrid work today?

08/24/2026

If your business has endpoint security installed, that’s a good start.

The next question is harder: Who’s actually watching it 24/7?

James Morrison, FBI Cyber (Ret), CISSP, MBA, Veteran, currently with Dataprise, says continuous monitoring is where he’d start because every endpoint can become a target.

For SMBs, that’s an important budget conversation. The product generates the warning. Your business still needs someone ready to catch it.

Share this with a business owner who needs to ask that question.

08/21/2026

Could the government have kept the early internet safer?

Maybe.

But James Gorman, Fractional CISO and CTO at Hard2Hack, says it never could have kept up with the speed of people actually building it.

That tradeoff matters again with AI.

Government is designed around process and accountability. Small businesses and technology companies survive by experimenting, taking risks, and moving before every outcome is known.

The challenge is finding security measures that protect people without making it much harder for smaller players to compete.

Share this with someone who thinks the AI debate is only about technology.