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How a Single Mother Brought an Entire Species Back from the Brink of Extinction – The Marginalian
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This essay is adapted from Traversal.
“In the great chain of cause and effect,” Alexander von Humboldt wrote as he was teaching science to read the poetry of nature, “no single fact can be considered in isolation.”
When the first European colonists made landfall on New Zealand’s shores in Humboldt’s lifetime, the cats and rats that descended from their ships began decimating the native population of black robins — sparrow-sized birds with yellow-soled feet that had evolved without mammalian predators, mate for life in monogamous pairs, and raise only two chicks per year in cuplike nests close to the ground.
Bird by bird, claw by claw, there were only seven survivors within a century.
Black robin among other native birds (John Gerrard Keulemans, 1907)
Desperate to encourage the survivors to breed, conservationists moved them to Mangere Island, where twenty thousand trees were planted just to provide a hospitable habitat for the robins. But they would not pair — mysterious are the ways of even a bird’s heart, for it is all a single mystery.
Two of the seven died.
Among the five survivors there was a sole female capable of laying fertile eggs — a robin so aged that she came to be known as Old Blue. At eight, she had outlived the average black robin twofold. With the survival of the species resting on Old Blue’s near flightless wings, scientists thought that if her offspring were raised by surrogate parents, she would be able to lay more eggs.
Warblers were the first designated foster parents, but they failed to feed the chicks enough.
Tomtits were tried next, but they were too successful as foster parents — the black robin chicks grew up perceiving themselves as tomtits and wanted to mate only with other tomtits.
Finally, the chicks were returned to Old Blue, in whose care they thrived as black robins.
A single mother brought a whole species back from the brink of extinction.
Old Blue lived to be fourteen and raised eleven chicks. All the black robins in the world today, numbering around 250, are fractal emissaries of her genes — a winged reminder that immensities of harm can be undone by a single act of tenacious tenderness.



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BUSINESS
AI Adoption Is a Challenge. Here’s a Solution.
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Goal
Help leaders reduce resistance to generative AI by addressing employees’ core psychological needs — competence, autonomy, and relatedness — through the AWARE framework.
Nano Tool
Organizations are investing heavily in generative AI, but adoption is lagging and resistance is rising. Recent cross-industry research shows that 31% of U.S. knowledge workers admit to actively working against their company’s AI initiatives, and 41% of Gen Z workers report the same. Meanwhile, while 85% of leaders and 78% of managers regularly use gen AI, only 51% of workers do. More than half of employees say they would use AI tools without formal approval, and nearly one-third keep their use hidden from employers.
This adoption gap erodes productivity gains, weakens trust, and delays return on investment. But it’s not simply a training deficit. It is a psychological one. Research on workplace motivation consistently shows that employees thrive when three core needs are satisfied: feeling capable and effective (competence), feeling in control of their work (autonomy), and feeling connected and respected (relatedness). Gen AI can strengthen these needs by expanding skills and reducing drudgery, but it can also threaten them by redefining expertise, mandating rigid workflows, or disrupting collaboration. When those needs are frustrated, resistance is predictable.
The AWARE framework offers leaders a disciplined way to address the human side of AI integration by acknowledging concerns, monitoring coping behaviors, aligning support, redesigning work for human-AI complementarity, and empowering employees through transparency and participation. Leaders who apply it treat AI implementation not as a technical rollout, but as an organizational transition — one that determines whether AI becomes a productivity accelerator or a source of division and disengagement.
Action Steps
1. Acknowledge psychological impact
Surface concerns instead of suppressing them. Openly recognize how AI may affect identity, skills, and job security. Name the competence threat (“This may feel like it’s redefining what expertise means”), address autonomy concerns (“We don’t want this to feel imposed”), and validate relatedness anxieties (“This changes how we collaborate”). Acknowledgment builds psychological safety and reduces quiet resistance.
2. Watch coping behaviors
Pay attention to how employees respond — both adaptively and maladaptively. Adaptive behaviors include skill building, workflow experimentation, and peer collaboration. Maladaptive behaviors include withdrawal, avoiding AI-related tasks, “shadow AI” use without disclosure, and passive resistance or open opposition. Monitoring usage patterns and listening carefully allows leaders to intervene early and empathetically.
3. Align support systems
Training alone is insufficient. Support must align with psychological needs. Build competence through hands-on experimentation and role-specific learning; preserve autonomy with flexible, personalized learning pathways; and strengthen relatedness through peer coaching and collaborative forums. Avoid one-size-fits-all training; instead, tailor development journeys to skill level and readiness.
4. Redesign roles for complementarity
Don’t simply “plug AI into” existing workflows. Redesign work to balance automation and augmentation by assigning repetitive, data-heavy tasks to AI; elevating human tasks requiring judgment, empathy, creativity, and ethics; and redefining roles to increase ownership and strategic contribution. End-to-end workflow redesign fosters engagement more effectively than tool deployment alone.
5. Empower through transparency and participation
Empowerment requires more than access — it requires voice. Communicate clearly about what AI will and will not change, involve employees in identifying high-value use cases, and provide inclusive access to tools and training. When workers help shape implementation, they become co-creators rather than reluctant adopters.
How Leaders and Organizations Use It
The following examples illustrate how acknowledgement of AI adoption as a leadership rather than a technical challenge redesigns work for the future while protecting competence, preserving autonomy, and strengthening connection:
PwC’s “My AI” initiative combines tools, hands-on experimentation (“prompting parties”), and peer “activators” embedded across the firm. The approach builds competence through practice, preserves autonomy through experimentation, and strengthens relatedness through social learning.
Moderna merged technology and HR into a unified People and Digital Technology function to redesign AI-enabled workflows collaboratively. Dell simplified sales processes before introducing AI tools, freeing teams for higher-value customer work. Both focused on human-AI complementarity rather than plug-and-play deployment.
BNY broadened access to AI tools across the workforce, enabling thousands of employees to build their own agents. Companies such as Colgate-Palmolive and Johnson & Johnson involve employees directly in identifying AI use cases. Participation fosters ownership and reduces resistance.
Knowledge in Action: Related Executive Education Programs

Contributors to this Nano Tool
Erik Hermann, interim professor of marketing, European University Viadrina, Germany, is a researcher focused on the psychological and behavioral effects of emerging technologies in organizations. Stefano Puntoni is the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School and co-director of Wharton Human-AI Research. His research examines how artificial intelligence reshapes decision making, consumer behavior, and the future of work. Carey K. Morewedge is a professor of marketing at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. His research explores judgment, decision making, and the psychological drivers of behavior in organizations and markets. This Nano Tool is adapted from their research and article in the Harvard Business Review.
Additional Resources
Access all Wharton Executive Education Nano Tools
Download this Nano Tool as a PDF



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BUSINESS
Two More Imploded Real-Estate Brokerage Stocks Tie the Knot: REMAX -85% from Peak, Real Brokerage -70%
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Been brutal for real-estate stocks plunging from overhyped or meme-stock valuations amid thick losses, lots of debt, and a frozen housing market: Compass, Redfin, Anywhere Real Estate, eXp, and Douglas Elliman.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The stocks of residential real-estate brokerages imploded in recent years, amid thick losses, lots of debt, and a still frozen housing market, and those imploded shares got then bought out by other real-estate brokerages whose shares had also imploded, or, in the case of Redfin, by the largest mortgage lender, Rocket. Today there’s another announcement of a real-estate broker with an imploded stock getting bought out by a real-estate broker with an imploded stock.
The two companies, REMAX and Real Brokerage – ticker symbols RMAX and REAX – announced the deal jointly this morning: REMAX, whose shares had imploded by 90% from the peak in October 2017 through Thursday, before trading on deal rumors started, is being acquired by Real, whose shares had imploded by 60% through Thursday. Friday on deal rumors, and today on the announcement, shares of REMAX spiked, and shares of Real plunged further.
On Friday and today combined, REMAX soared by 51% to $9.94, which leaves the stock down by 85% from their all-time high. It has been in our pantheon of Imploded Stocks since late 2023, for which the minimum requirement is a drop of 70% from the all-time high.

Shares of Real Brokerage [REAX] plunged by 23% on Friday and today combined, to $2.02; the stock has now imploded by 70% from its all-time high in August 2024, and thereby made it into our pantheon of Imploded Stocks.
Real, a “technology-powered real estate brokerage” platform, had gone public in 2020 in Canada via merger with a blank-check company – a Capital Pool Company called up there, similar to a SPAC in the US. At first, the shares traded on the TSXV in Canada and over the counter in the US. In June 2021, the stock started trading on the Nasdaq.

Re/MAX Holdings franchises real-estate brokerages in 120 countries under the REMAX brand and mortgage brokerages in the US under the Motto Mortgage brand. REMAX was founded in 1973, and Motto Mortgage was launched in 2016.
Shareholders of Re/MAX Holdings can choose to get paid for each of their shares either $13.80 in cash, or 5.15 shares of the combined company, “Real REMAX Group.”
But, but, but… At today’s price of $9.94, RMAX traded at a big discount to the announced valuation of $13.80 because there’s a limitation to the cash price due there not being enough cash available. According to the deal announcement, the cash payment is “… subject to proration such that the aggregate cash proceeds to RE/MAX Holdings shareholders in the transaction will be no less than $60 million and no greater than $80 million.”
This $80 million cap – limited by available cash – means, if I understand this limitation correctly, that if all shareholders want cash, each one of them is only going to get about a quarter of their shares paid in cash, and the rest in shares of the combined company Real REMAX Group.
Imploded stocks of other real-estate brokerages:
Compass Inc. [COMP] acquired Anywhere Real Estate Inc. The acquisition closed in early 2026. Anywhere Real included the brands of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, CENTURY 21, Coldwell Banker, Coldwell Banker Commercial, Corcoran, ERA, and Sotheby’s International Realty. It made Compass the largest brokerage in the US.
Compass went public in April 2021. On the first day of trading, shares closed at $20.15 and then plunged by 90% over the next 18 months to $2 a share.
Today, at $8.09, it is still down 60% from its all-time high:

eXp World Holdings [EXPI], which includes the brands of eXp Realty, a cloud-based residential real-estate brokerage; eXp Commercial, a cloud-based commercial real-estate brokerage; Zoocasa, a real estate brokerage and search platform; and some other brands, including brands unrelated to the brokerage business.

The stock had its own meme-stock moment in 2020 and 2021. Since that meme-stock peak in February 2021, shares have imploded by 92%:

Douglas Elliman Inc. [DOUG] was spun off by cigarette maker Vector Group in late 2021 and the shares then traded at around $10. Since then, they have plunged by 81%

Imploded stocks of real-estate brokerages that got bought out.
Redfin was acquired in 2025 by Rocket Companies the largest mortgage lender in the US. Redfin shares had peaked in 2021 at $98.44 a share. By 2022, it traded in below $4, having collapsed by about 95%. Rocket bought the company in a deal valued at $12.50 a share, paid in Rocket shares. By the time the deal closed, Redfin shares traded at around $11.
Anywhere Real Estate was acquired by Compass in early 2026, as noted above. It had rebranded in 2022, from its previous name Realogy, trying to stop the plunge. Its shares had peaked at $55 a share in April 2013, and then zigzagged lower. In February 2020, the stock hit $2.09. In 2025, before deal rumors began swirling, it was trading at around and sometimes below $3 a share, down by 95% from the peak. The deal with Compass was valued at about $13.00 a share.
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