The sandbox rule

Every kid learns it early. Share the shovel, or leave the sandbox. No exceptions for the kid who builds the best castle. Somewhere between kindergarten and the corner office, we forgot this. The top performer who hoards information. The founder who can’t stand...

The priority that wasn’t

We call it the top priority. Then we hand it to someone who already has a full plate. That’s not a decision. That’s a hope dressed up as a strategy. The recipe for frustration is taking on something that requires a whole person, but only giving it half...

Genius is a coin flip

The manager who sits back and defends a lead is smart. The manager who attacks and doubles down is smart. Both, until the final whistle. Football doesn’t reward the better tactic. It rewards the tactic that survived contact with the decision the other team made....

No excuses

Florence Nightingale is credited with saying, ‘I attribute my success to one thing – I never gave or took an excuse.’ Attribution of the quote is repeated and may be thin. It doesn’t matter. The question still lands: this week, what excuse did...

The one skill AI can’t replace

I’ve been circling an uncomfortable question this month: what happens to our thinking when the tools built to help us think get better than we are at everything except the one thing that matters most? MIT researchers gave me part of the answer. In a study led by...