Guest commentary: How to make the season work for you and avoid holiday stress
By Faith Freed It’s that time of year again. Just when you’ve done your best to meet expectations on Thanksgiving, here come Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s. The rush of festivities, shopping, and social obligations can feel more like an endurance test than a celebration. The question is how to shift from resisting the onslaught Read More →
Guest commentary: The impossibility of afforable housing
Update: A previous version of this story incorrectly wrote this as an editorial from our newsroom; it is a guest commentary. By Don Katich If I wanted to destroy affordable housing in Santa Barbara, I wouldn’t swing a wrecking ball. No, I’d smile politely and pass laws. I’d say I was protecting people, preserving neighborhoods, Read More →
Guest commentary: Why every leader needs a personal board of directors
By Dennis M. Baker In business, we accept that every company needs a board of directors. A CEO who operates without one would be seen as reckless. Yet in our personal and professional lives, most of us do exactly that — we try to navigate career, relationships, money, and purpose without the steadying counsel of Read More →
Guest commentary: The quiet cost of low expectations – and the courage it will take to rebuild
By Martha Salas After reading The Atlantic’s “America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy,” I couldn’t help thinking — some of us saw this coming years ago. We said that lowering standards was not compassion but surrender. The collapse didn’t begin with COVID or smartphones; it began when adults decided that feelings mattered more than fundamentals. For Read More →
Guest commentary: How the Central Coast can ride the AI holiday wave
By Starr Hall The holidays used to run on intuition. Store owners would stock up based on gut feeling, handwrite notes to loyal customers, and pray that the weather, the locals, and the tourists cooperated. In Santa Barbara, that intuition was practically an art form. You could walk down State Street or through the Funk Read More →
Guest commentary: What to watch for this holiday season
By Kris Batch The holidays are usually called the most wonderful time of the year, but they are also typically the most expensive time of the year. In a recent survey from Bankrate, 54% of respondents said they’d made an unplanned or impulse purchase during the last holiday season. Beyond purchasing gifts, many different expenses that Read More →
Guest commentary: The geometry of organizations in the age of AI
By Gerhard Apfelthaler For decades, business leaders have sketched their organizations as pyramids. At the top: executives. At the bottom: workers. In the middle: layers of managers. Some variations reflected distinct values of national or organizational cultures — steep and hierarchical in some environments, or flat and collaborative in others — but the basic shape Read More →
