James Kimmel, Jr., lawyer, Yale psychiatry lecturer, and author of The Science of Revenge, joins us in the Strategy Skills podcast to explore the neuroscience and behavioral dynamics of revenge. Drawing on law, psychiatry, and over two decades of research, Kimmel offers a sobering view: revenge is not a form of justice, it’s a “pleasure-seeking behavior” that operates like an addiction, fueled by unresolved pain.

He opens the conversation with a deeply personal story: as a teenager, after years of bullying, he chased down his aggressors with a loaded revolver. In a pivotal moment, he recalls, “The cost of getting the revenge I wanted was far more than I was willing to pay.” That flash of insight redirected his life and seeded a lifelong investigation into how grievance, retribution, and healing operate in the human mind.

Key insights from the discussion include:

• Revenge Mimics Addiction in the Brain
  Kimmel explains that “your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs.” The cycle begins when a grievance activates the brain’s pain network, followed by a surge of dopamine in the reward system. Over time, the craving for retaliation can become compulsive, forming habits akin to substance abuse.
• Grievance Retention Impairs Judgment
  Unchecked rumination can degrade executive function. “If that prefrontal cortex does not stop you,” Kimmel warns, “and you really crave it… it doesn’t matter how many laws there are.” This impaired self-control is what allows otherwise rational individuals to commit extreme acts of violence.
• Social Exclusion Can Be a Form of Revenge
  “If you’re ending a relationship not for present harm, but to punish someone for a past wrong, that’s retaliation,” he explains. Even subtle acts like ghosting or ostracism can activate the same pain circuitry in the brain as physical harm.
• Forgiveness Interrupts the Revenge Cycle
  Neuroscience shows that imagining forgiveness “shuts down the brain’s pain network, silences addiction circuits, and reactivates executive control.” Kimmel calls forgiveness a “human superpower… It doesn’t just cover up the pain like revenge does, it takes the pain away altogether.”
• Revenge Can Be Prevented, Like a Heart Attack
  Kimmel proposes a new public health framework: treat revenge attacks like cardiac events. “There are warning signs,” he says, grievance fixation, revenge fantasies, acquiring weapons, and they demand the same level of emergency attention.
• Legal Systems Often Deliver Revenge, Not Justice
  Kimmel reflects on his time as a litigator: “Lawyers get paid to sell revenge under the brand name ‘justice.’” He urges professionals to be aware of how sanctioned systems can enable and normalize compulsive retribution.

For leaders in high-stakes environments, the message is clear: understanding the mechanics of grievance and retaliation isn’t just psychological, it’s strategic. Kimmel’s work offers actionable frameworks to recognize revenge-seeking before it becomes destructive, and calls for a deeper integration of neuroscience into how we define justice, manage risk, and lead with compassion.

Get The Science of Revenge here: https://www.jameskimmeljr.com/

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In this episode, global brand experts Katherine Melchior Ray and Nataly Kelly discuss how international brands must evolve to stay relevant in an era marked by cultural shifts, technological acceleration, and rising consumer expectations. Drawing on their leadership experience at companies like Nike, Louis Vuitton, HubSpot, and Zappi, they highlight the urgency of embedding trust, cultural fluency, and adaptability into brand strategy.

Key insights include:

Localization Requires Strategic Adaptability

Nataly Kelly reflects, “I used to believe that branding required absolute consistency... but when I began to work in global marketing, I realized there is adaptability that's required to really succeed.” True global branding, both argue, means creating a consistent brand core with local expressions, not rigid replication.

Cultural Blind Spots Undermine Strategy

Ray recalls early leadership at Nike, where “the common refrain was, for women’s shoes… ‘shrink it and pink it.’” She urges leaders to “listen with your eyes,” emphasizing the importance of nonverbal cues and lived experience, especially when HQ-based assumptions fail abroad.

Responsiveness Is Not the Same as Reactivity

As AI reshapes marketing operations, Kelly warns, “You can’t outsource your strategy… Judgment and strategy are the two things that I think humans will start to realize [must stay human].” Rapid action without clear values can erode trust.

Brand Trust Is Repetition, Not Rhetoric

Ray notes, “At the end of the day, a brand is all about a promise… people support brands that they trust.” In an age of AI-generated messaging, staying aligned with core values, through actions, not just language, is critical to maintaining consumer confidence.

Structure Signals Strategy

Kelly shares a story from Dashlane, a startup that eliminated the term “headquarters” to create structural parity across regions. “It was a strong statement about how to build a globally equitable organization… Employees are brand ambassadors, and status differences send signals.”

The episode closes with a powerful reminder: As technology advances, human competencies like cultural literacy, curiosity, and creativity will only become more essential. “The more we rely on technology, the more we must double down on our humanity,” Ray says.

Get Brand Global, Adapt Local here: https://shorturl.at/f4EnF

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Leslie Grandy, a seasoned executive with leadership roles at Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, and T-Mobile, discusses the underestimated nature of creative capability and how leaders can systematically cultivate it. Drawing from her early career in the film industry and later product leadership across Fortune 50 companies, she presents a grounded, practical perspective on how creativity functions in high-performance environments.

She outlines three foundational skills transferable across domains: enduring ambiguity with resilience, sustaining momentum in the absence of external validation, and solving unfamiliar problems with resourcefulness rather than prescribed playbooks. These competencies, shaped by years in unpredictable contexts, later enabled her to thrive in zero-to-one product environments at scale.

Grandy also offers insight into organizational enablers and constraints for creative velocity. She identifies cultures that treat creativity as the remit of all functions, not just design or strategy, as more adaptive and resilient. Conversely, she cautions against consensus-driven thinking and status quo bias, which she sees as systemic inhibitors. The most effective environments, she argues, reward structured risk-taking and integrate post-mortem learning with equal weight to successes.

Reflecting on her time reporting to Steve Jobs, Grandy explains the discipline of brand stewardship and decisiveness under uncertainty. Jobs' intolerance for diluted brand signals, whether in product UX or retail merchandising, was less a quirk and more an intentional design principle. She recounts how even small misalignments, such as offering engraving suggestions on iPods, were swiftly reversed to preserve narrative clarity.

The discussion also explores her recent book, Creative Velocity, and its guiding premise: creativity is not a fixed trait but a repeatable discipline. Through structured techniques like the generic parts technique and SCAMPER, she argues that anyone, including those outside “creative” job titles, can develop idea fluency and confidence. She emphasizes the role of generative AI as a tool for exploratory dialogue rather than one-shot answers, calling for greater patience and iterative engagement to unlock its full potential.

For senior leaders, this episode surfaces a precise question: Are you designing your organization to perform or to invent? And are you personally equipped to model the latter?

Get Leslie’s book here: https://rb.gy/d5zr69

Creative Velocity: Propelling Breakthrough Ideas in the Age of Generative AI

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