Roots or ruin

I walked through a small hill town in Umbria recently. Narrow stone streets, a church that has stood since the 12th century, a butcher whose family has occupied the same shop for four generations. Nobody needed to explain the culture. It was present in every detail....

Sit with it

We are always thinking. We are rarely with our thinking. There is a difference. When the calendar clears, and the urgent noise fades, something unusual happens. The mind does not go quiet. It goes curiously. Strange thoughts surface. An old memory lands next to a new...

Kindness that cripples

You think you’re helping. You step in, do the thinking, build the spreadsheet, and have the hard conversation they should be having themselves. You call it support. Leadership. Mentorship. It isn’t. What you’re actually doing is telling them, without...

Are we getting stupid?

I have a confession. I use AI every day. I find it genuinely remarkable. It helps me think faster, research deeper, and draft things I would have spent hours on. I am not anti-AI. Not even close. But I am starting to worry. A colleague of mine, Alex Meyer, lives and...

Values don’t obey

You can post them on the wall. You can print them on the coffee mugs, stitch them into the onboarding deck, and recite them at the all-hands meeting. And then watch them do nothing. Values don’t work like policies. You cannot install them. You cannot enforce...