Few consultants arrive at business consulting through public health. Nicholas Mukhtar did. After founding Healthy Detroit in 2013, growing it to a $15 million annual budget, and earning recognition from the American Public Health Association as the National Public Health Organization of the Year in 2017, he shifted focus — first to advising government offices and congressional leaders through Healthy Communities, LLC, then to building Tera Strategies, his Fort Lauderdale-based management consulting firm, where he now advises CEOs, family offices, medical directors, and wealth management practices nationwide.

That career arc, from community health organizer to senior business consultant, has given Nicholas Mukhtar a cross-sector lens that surfaces patterns other advisors tend to miss. He sat down to answer five questions on the state of business leadership, what governance structures actually require, and where most executives lose their way before they realize it.

Q1: You transitioned from leading a major nonprofit to advising private-sector executives. What does one world teach you about the other?

Mukhtar says the mechanics of both worlds are more similar than most people expect. Running Healthy Detroit showed him that whether the organization is a city park health initiative or a family-owned company, the core problems are almost always structural, and the transition from scrappy startup to functioning institution is a universal challenge. “I look at companies in two different buckets,” he said. “One are these large established companies that do function much like these big city governments or these bureaucratic machines that sometimes can’t get out of their own way. And then this other bucket, it’s the startup machine.”

He draws a direct line between what he observed building a public-private partnership model in Detroit — where government bureaucracy consistently blocked innovation — and what he encounters inside large corporations today. His consulting approach reflects that framework: different organizations require fundamentally different interventions, and treating them the same is one of the more expensive mistakes a leader can make. The observation carries weight against current data. A 2025 NACD survey of directors found that a majority of board members flagged improvements to planning oversight and risk management as top priorities, signaling that even at the governance level, organizations are grappling with the gap between stated direction and execution capability.

Q2: You work extensively with family offices on governance and succession. What is the single biggest mistake you see them make?

Mukhtar’s answer is consistent across nearly every family office engagement he takes on: not getting children involved early enough. The consequences, when they surface, tend to be severe. “You don’t know what life has in store,” he said. “You’ll see situations where someone will pass on or there’ll be an accident or something, and these kids truly have no idea what their parents have built, how they built it, how things are set up, what to do.”

The scale of the problem is considerable. According to a 2025 report from RBC Wealth Management and Campden Wealth, nearly half of all family offices expect a generational transition within the next decade, yet only 69% now have a formal succession plan in place, up from just 53% the previous year. Research published by Simple, a family office advisory firm, found that without a defined decision-making framework, families become dangerously dependent on one or two individuals, and when those individuals are suddenly unavailable, the organization has no structure to fall back on. The clients Mukhtar describes getting it right start their children with small investment accounts as early as age ten or eleven. “Just teaching them the value of having time in the market, saving money, creating buckets,” he said. “Put 30% here, put 30% here, put 30% here.” The families that struggle, in his experience, are the ones so consumed by building that they lose sight of who they are building for.

Q3: When a new client comes to you, what is the root problem you find most often — and what question do you wish they had asked themselves before picking up the phone?

Mukhtar says the answer is almost always the same, regardless of industry, company size, or ownership structure. “I kid you not,” he said, “that seems to be 90% of the problems across the board. It’s just people need to talk.” He does not frame this as a matter of individual personality or interpersonal skill. He ties communication failure to a structural condition — the chronic overstimulation of modern professional life, where executives are pulled across so many competing demands that the act of sitting down and asking a direct question has become genuinely difficult to prioritize.

The organizational cost of that failure is well-documented. Research from the 2025 Top Workplaces survey found that the most consequential gap organizations face is failing to keep employees informed during periods of change. When that gap persists, the trust holding performance cultures together begins to erode. Mukhtar sees it play out at the individual level too: people on the verge of leaving a job without ever articulating what they actually need from their employer. “Did you as the employee sit down with the business owner and explain to them why you want something different and what you’re actually looking for?” he said. “It can be really that simple.” His prescription is not elaborate. “People just get pulled in so many different directions,” he said, “and a lot of it is you just need to simplify things and have a conversation about why isn’t this working.”

Q4: Most executives say they believe in clear strategy. Why do so few actually execute it?

Mukhtar traces the gap between belief and execution to a single recurring failure: treating every organization as though the same solution applies. He pushes back on universal prescriptions, and his reasoning is grounded in observation rather than theory. “If I talk to 10 CEOs, they all have a very different style, a different way of looking at things,” he said. “There’s not one size fits all solution to any problem. And I think that you have to really approach it as such.”

That view carries weight against current data. A 2024-2025 McKinsey survey of more than 400 senior executives worldwide found that only 21% reported their organization’s strategy passed four or more of the firm’s rigorous Ten Tests of evaluation, a 40% drop from results captured a decade and a half earlier. A separate analysis found that 68% of middle managers in a McKinsey study admitted they actively edit out negative information before passing it up the chain, meaning executives are often finalizing plans based on a picture that no longer reflects conditions on the ground. For mature organizations functioning like large bureaucratic institutions, Mukhtar argues the answer often involves outside thinking: someone without institutional attachments who can ask the questions insiders have stopped asking. For younger companies still finding their structure, the work is different. “There’s a lot of growing pains in a lot of these companies that are startups trying to transition to full functioning companies,” he said. “Every entity, every person’s unique and you have to treat it as such.”

Q5: What do you want to be working on over the next several years, and where do you think the biggest opportunities in your field are?

Mukhtar is direct about his ambitions, and they run closer to outcomes than to growth metrics. He describes wanting work where results are visible and concrete, rather than projects measured on timelines too long to produce real accountability. “I like taking on projects where I can really see outcomes,” he said. “I’m an outcomes-driven person. I don’t like working on things that you’re not going to see the outcomes for a hundred years.”

That orientation points him toward healthcare reform as a priority, specifically Medicaid, where he spent several years earlier in his career and believes substantial, measurable change remains possible. “There’s a lot of opportunity to use Medicaid to really help people and get them to a place where they’re healthy and contributing members of society,” he said. “I don’t think that’s how our Medicaid system’s being used today.” More broadly, Nicholas Mukhtar says he wants to grow Tera Strategies to the point where he can be genuinely selective about his engagements, choosing clients and projects based on fit and impact rather than volume. He is not descriing scale for its own sake. He is describing the ability to pursue the kind of work that produces the outcomes he watched unfold in Detroit — a park where children were playing basketball on a court that had been an abandoned lot, a block that looked different because someone chose to intervene. “To see those outcomes and to see kids actually using something that you had a role in building,” he said, “that’s my passion. That’s what I love doing. That’s what drives me.”

Learn More: Nicholas Mukhtar shares new analysis on decision-making in complex organizations

The Pentagon listed Alibaba, BYD, Baidu, and TP-Link Technologies Co. as companies providing support to the Chinese military. This designation highlights concerns over these firms’ alleged involvement or assistance in military activities, emphasizing increasing scrutiny of Chinese technology companies amid geopolitical tensions.

Recent reports have highlighted the involvement of several Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba and Baidu, in activities that may support China’s military ambitions. These firms are said to provide cloud computing services, data analytics, and artificial intelligence technologies that could be utilized for military purposes. U.S. officials have expressed concerns that such collaborations could enhance China’s military capabilities and undermine international security.

The scrutiny arises amid rising tensions between the United States and China, with the U.S. government actively monitoring Chinese companies that operate in sensitive sectors. Alibaba and Baidu, two of China’s leading technology firms, are accused of offering services that might facilitate military logistics, intelligence, and surveillance systems. These allegations come despite the firms’ public commitments to adhere to regulations and international standards.

In response, U.S. policymakers are considering restrictions aimed at limiting the technological support provided to Chinese military endeavors. Experts emphasize the importance of transparency and regulation in preventing dual-use technologies from aiding military development. The situation underscores ongoing concerns about the intersection of technology, security, and international diplomacy, as both nations navigate a complex landscape of competition and cooperation.

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The first plane carrying Australians who have been stranded in the Middle East is on its way to Australia.

The news comes as thousands of Australians remain stranded in the region amid the ongoing conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran.

First Plane Carrying Stranded Australians on Its Way to Australia

According to Sky News, Flight EK414 departed shortly after 9 a.m. AEDT. It is the first commercial flight that has been able to bring Aussies back to Australia since the conflict began.

It is expected to arrive in Sydney later tonight.

The report notes that there are 24,000 Australians who have been stranded in the United Arab Emirates.115,000 have been stranded in the Middle East region.

The Australian government has received heavy criticism regarding its handling of stranded Australians as the conflict in the region rages on.

“Unfortunately, I continue to get reports from them about the government just being flat-footed,” Shadow foreign minister Ted O’Brien said to Sky News.

He added, “They are struggling to get the right responses from the government, which is indicative of the government’s overly quiet and slow response in the lead-up to the conflict.”

Australians Narrate Their Experience Escaping the Middle East

Some Australians who have managed to escape to safer ground have shared their experiences with ABC News.

An expat living in Dubai named Richard recounted how he had to book a limousine to guarantee a safe passage to Oman. However, it was denied entry at the border.

He and his partner had to board an overcrowded bus full of scared passengers just to get to Oman. When they got there, taxi rides were being quoted for as high as $8,000.

Another family shared their experience of having to pay thousands in dollars for alternative flights that were ultimately cancelled.

“The airlines were hiking prices, knowing they could double their profit from people desperate and in need,” Simon Cass told ABC News.

Thousands of Facebook users experienced unexpected service downtime on the afternoon of March 3, causing frustration and confusion across the platform.

Downdetector data showed reports of issues surged rapidly, peaking at over 10,000 complaints as users struggled to access their accounts.

Users Encounter Error Messages

During the outage, many users saw the message: “Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.”

While the alert indicated a temporary technical problem rather than account-specific issues, it offered little reassurance to those locked out, according to USA Today.

What Facebook Users Said About the Recent Outage

On Reddit, some users said that Facebook was undergoing extreme slowness when they loaded the page. Others thought that they were banned on the platform.

“I’m getting that same error, but my wife isn’t. It seems to only be impacting certain users. The site is very slow for her, but it does still work,” one user wrote.

“Can confirm, I am also facing this issue. Seems to be a PC only problem for me though, as I can use Facebook app on phone and using my phone’s browser just fine. Doesn’t seem to be an account problem on my end,” another concerned user said.

Downdetector Shows Rapid Spike and Recovery

Real-time tracking from Downdetector highlighted the disruption’s scale, with complaints climbing sharply before gradually declining later in the evening. By 8:30 p.m. ET, reports had dropped to roughly 150, signaling that most issues were resolved.

The quick drop in complaints suggests a backend fix implemented by Facebook’s technical team, although the company has not publicly explained the cause.

Outages of this magnitude are often caused by server misconfigurations, software deployment errors, or infrastructure-related issues.

Service Restored, But Reliance Remains

While Facebook’s services have largely returned to normal, the temporary blackout shows the platform’s importance for communication, business operations, and community engagement. Even brief outages can disrupt advertising campaigns, social interactions, and online workflows.

Meanwhile, TikTok faced an unexpected outage due to another Oracle outage. According to Tech Times, some content creators said that there were lags when they tried to post videos on their accounts.

Originally published on Tech Times