Hey Reader, “If I’m being honest, I think I’m afraid I’m not going to be good enough in this new AI age.” A CEO I work with nearly 1,000 employees and as sharp as they come, wrote this and sent it to me this past spring. I hear a quieter version from almost every leader. Will I be enough for this new era? The fear is real. I’m here to tell you that the verdict is wrong. That’s why I’m writing a book. It will be published next spring and it’s titled Ancient Intelligence, and this episode is...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Last weekend my wife and I checked off a bucket list trip. We went out to the Gorge in Washington and watched our favorite band, the Dave Matthews Band, play three nights in a row. It was the first time in a long time I'd taken three fully disconnected days. I know it's not good. I tell leaders to take deep time away, and for a couple of years I'd been telling myself it just wasn't the season for it. When you love what you do, you can spend almost every waking minute thinking...
5 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Most leaders feel behind on AI because they can’t keep up. Charlene Li says that’s the wrong problem to solve. Charlene spent three decades advising the world’s largest companies through three separate technology revolutions. Her position: technology without a problem is a more complicated problem; not a solution. She delivers a tremendous amount of wisdom in her conversation and I was taking copious notes. In this episode of Leadership Unlocked: Why “use AI” is a leadership...
10 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Most leaders hit their wall while everything still looks fine from the outside. That's what makes it dangerous. Marshall Goldsmith put a name on this back in 2007, and many of us still subscribe to his answer. What Got You Here Won't Get You There says success builds habits, those habits harden, and the fix is subtraction. Twenty behaviors to drop. He's right that the habits are real. For many of us, we need to go one layer deeper. You're not failing. The job changed. Your wall...
12 days ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, "Done is not when the time runs out. Done is what you named before you start." You likely already do the hard part. You build the block and defend it against everyone who wants a piece of you. Then you walk out and can't name what changed. In Episode 75 of Leadership Unlocked, I walk through why this isn’t a discipline problem. A time block reserves the hour. But it never decides what has to be true when the hour is over. So the work fills every minute, because nothing inside the...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Fifteen years ago I hired someone who was perfect on paper. Every credential the role asked for, every year of background, every skill on the list. Thirty days later I let them go. Not for performance. They were getting results, which is what made the call hard. But those results came out of how they treated people, and we did not treat people that way. The red flags were in the interview. I ran the after action review on me, not on them. The signals had been sitting in that...
19 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Most leaders think they're stuck because they don't know what to do. Rodney Binger learned he was stuck because he'd never written down how he leads. Rodney runs operations for MotorWorks: eight service locations, a call center, and a mobile group. He went from leading seven people to more than 80, with profits increased, his team hitting new heights, and he's just getting started. In this episode of Leadership Unlocked: The one-page "Rules of Engagement" he reads aloud to...
24 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Most leaders treat caring and high standards as a trade. Marcel Schwantes learned they're the same job. A toxic job pushed so much cortisol through his system that he collapsed and couldn't walk for a month. He rebuilt his career around what he now calls humane leadership, and he's researched it ever since. In this episode: Why flipping the pyramid doesn't mean your people walk over you The two questions that reveal whether someone belongs in a leadership seat Why AI raises the...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Something happened in a meeting a few months back that I keep chewing on. I was sitting with a colleague, working through a technical problem that required careful thought and thorough analysis. As I was doing this, I caught myself getting frustrated. Not with him. With the pace. I wanted the answer, not the work that produced it. I wanted to skip the part where you sit in it. I wanted to be done before I had started. So I stayed at the surface. I knew I was doing it as I did it,...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read