WORRIED about AI? You’re not alone. About three-quarters of adults have concerns about where AI is taking us. And no wonder. Doomsayers predict that AI could destroy humanity. Evangelists promise that it will usher in a golden age. The truth is that nobody knows exactly what’s coming. But you can prepare yourself to succeed.

Consider a thought experiment. Two explorers are trekking through a hostile jungle. One is “jungle literate,” knowledgeable and experienced. The other is a novice. The experienced explorer studies the terrain, recognizes danger, and chooses a sensible route. The novice blunders ahead without understanding the risks. It’s easy to predict who is more likely to make it through safely.

We can expect a similar divide in the workplace. AI-literate professionals will be better positioned to navigate an uncertain future. Those with limited understanding risk falling behind. It’s a jungle out there, and strategic AI literacy can help you navigate it.

I’ve watched a similar transition before. When personal computers surged into business, much of the early attention went to learning word processors, spreadsheets, and other programs. Those skills mattered, but computer literacy became broader: understanding what computers could do, recognizing where they could add value, and knowing enough to work effectively with technical specialists.

AI literacy is developing in much the same way. Knowing how to prompt ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude is useful. But strategic AI literacy is broader.

I chose the word strategic deliberately because the goal is more than AI proficiency. It is to develop the understanding to recognize where it can create value, what risks to watch for, and how to adapt rapidly as AI and the workplace change.

I view strategic AI literacy as four dimensions: Know, Use, Grow, and Engage.

1. Know: Build a Useful Mental Model

Imagine you’re driving down the street and the light turns red. You put your foot on the brake because you know red means stop. That bit of conceptual knowledge keeps you safe.

AI literacy is also based on conceptual knowledge. You do not need to understand the technical details, but you do need a useful mental model of what AI is doing. You should understand, for example, that language models are trained on enormous amounts of data and generate responses by identifying patterns. They can produce remarkably useful answers but are not an omniscient source of truth. Once you see AI as a powerful pattern matcher, you ask better questions and judge the answers more critically.

2. Use: Apply AI to Real Work

You learn AI by using it.

Start with work you already do. Try AI for research, planning, writing, analysis, meeting preparation, or exploring a decision. See where it saves time, where it improves quality, and where it gets in the way.

The important part is to experiment. Don’t simply accept the first response. Try another approach. Ask for alternatives. Question the answer. Compare results. That is how you begin to develop a practical sense of what AI does well.

A textbook understanding of AI is not enough. You need hands-on experience.

3. Grow: Use AI to Strengthen Your Own Capabilities

Imagine learning to play tennis. As you get better at the game, you also develop strength, coordination, and fitness that transfer to other parts of your life.

Similar growth is possible with AI. You can use it to solve an immediate problem while also strengthening your thinking and communication skills.

Ask AI to challenge an argument, surface assumptions, explain something you don’t understand, role-play a skeptical customer, or rehearse an important presentation. Ask it what you may be overlooking.

Used to engage your brain, AI can help you become more capable. Used simply to replace your thinking, it can lead you in the opposite direction. The win is to come away from the interaction, knowing more or performing better than before.

4. Engage: Look Beyond Your Own Task

AI doesn’t affect only individual productivity. It changes workflows, roles, business processes, and relationships.

So look beyond “Can AI do this?” Ask what happens if your team uses it this way. Who is affected? What new risks appear? What happens to privacy, accountability, trust, or the way decisions get made?

You don’t need to become an expert in AI governance. You do need enough context to recognize that a useful tool can have ripple effects. That broader perspective is part of what makes AI literacy strategic.

AI Literacy in Action

Imagine two people who each decide to create a side hustle selling clever, topical T-shirts online.

The passive AI user asks for ten funny slogans, chooses a few, uses AI to create designs, puts them on a website, and promotes them on social media. Will they succeed? Maybe, if they’re lucky. Will their business thinking improve? Probably not much.

The AI-literate user uses AI to identify successful competitors, analyze customer reviews, explore market niches, challenge assumptions in the business plan, and role-plays a skeptical customer reacting to marketing drafts. This user has a better chance of success.

Both use AI. But only one uses it to improve strategy and develop skills that can transfer to the next project.

Where Do You Start?

There is no single curriculum for becoming AI literate. People have different jobs, different levels of experience, and different needs.

The good news is that you can start with the AI tool already in front of you.

That is largely how I began. When I first encountered ChatGPT, I was fascinated by what it could do. So I started asking AI questions. How does this work? What can it do? Where does it fail? One question led to another, and over time I developed a much richer understanding of both the technology and how I could use it.

You can do the same. Ask AI to explain how large language models work, what training means, why they sometimes make mistakes, or what an agent does. Ask follow-up questions. Request examples. If the explanation is too technical, ask for a simpler one. If you think you understand something, ask AI to quiz you or challenge your explanation.

Use judgment as you learn. When an answer seems surprising, internally inconsistent, very specific, or important to a consequential decision, look more closely. Sometimes that means checking the original source. Sometimes it means comparing the answer with another AI model. And sometimes it simply means stopping and asking, “Does this make sense?”

You don’t need to know exactly what to ask. Let AI lead the conversation.

Try This Prompt

“I want to become more AI literate in ways that are useful for my work. Ask me up to six brief, non-overlapping questions, one at a time. Adapt them to my answers and focus on one concrete work task, my current knowledge and use of AI, what I want to improve, any important constraints or risks, and how I would judge success.

Then identify my main strengths and gaps and recommend no more than three practical next steps. Make the advice specific to my work, clearly state the first action I should take, and keep the discussion appropriate to my experience.”

Strategic AI literacy isn’t something you finish. You develop it by learning, using, questioning, evaluating, and adapting. And you can start today. It’s easier than you think.

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IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Dave Rossi on the growth journey:

“In athletics, we’re used to having coaches. We expect a trained eye to point out our mistakes, give us adjustments, and help us fine-tune our game. Most people don’t think of applying that same level of observation and correction to themselves. What if you were both the athlete and the coach? What if your inner growth demanded the same film review, the same humility to be corrected, and the same willingness to adjust?”

Source: Alphas Die Early: For the Man on a Mission — And the Women Who Love Him

Owen Fitzpatrick on reframing to change the view:

“Reframing is a skill that, as leaders, we absolutely must have. It involves changing the language used to describe a situation or event. It helps to get others to look at things from different perspectives, influences how important something is perceived to be, and dictates what matters most in a situation. Change perspective and ask, ‘Whose point of view are we looking at this from? What’s another way of looking at this? How big will this be a year from now? What’s most important here?’”

Source: Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

EXCELLENCE is a mindset. The right mindset is what differentiates top performers from others. A mindset is simply the way you approach the circumstances you are faced with. It is a chosen approach to life that either propels you forward or leaves you drifting. Your mindset is a choice. Choose wisely.

In Learned Excellence, Eric Potterat and Alan Eagle say that “learning excellence starts with developing a deeper understanding of ourselves: how we act, why we act that way, and what drives us.” In other words, our identity. Too often we worry too much about what people think of us, and it affects our performance. Our focus should be on our identity—what we value—and our reputation will take care of itself. Behave from our values, not our reputation.

Eric defines his personal identity with ten words: wonder, stay hungry, stay humble, stay connected, loyalty, listen, laugh. He adds, “I have used it to guide every important decision of my life, and I counsel my clients to do the same.”

Our identity defines our mindset. But how do you practice the mindset you’ve chosen?

My answer: the controllables. Among all the top performers I have worked with or interviewed, the ones at the top will talk about controlling what they can control and not worrying about the rest. This is a skill that is difficult to master, but in my experience, it is through the controllables that one can best evolve into and practice a mindset.

What can you control?

There is attitude: the way you think about a thing or person. There is effort: how hard you work. And there is behavior: the actions you take. That’s it, that’s all you can control: your attitude, your effort, and your behavior. The rest, ignore. To live your mindset, you need to activate it through all three controllables simultaneously; two or one out of three won’t cut it.

Get good at controlling the controllables and ignoring the rest. Easier said than done at times.

Eric’s advice is to stay in the circle—what you can control—attitude, effort, and behavior. Everything else—what you can’t control—is outside the circle.

Attitude:

It is easy to focus on the negative. “The best way to practice the first controllable—attitude—is to manage your self-talk. As you go through your day and encounter various challenges (the conversation that doesn’t go your way, the failed opportunity for that glib one-liner, the little mistakes of life), observe what you tell yourself about yourself. Filter out your chatter about others (That jerk just cut in line!) and notice your chatter about yourself (How could I let him do that? That’s just like me, being too nice.) When you talk to yourself, are you a critic or a coach?”

Flip that negative self-talk to positive and affirming statements about your circumstance. Observe like a friend would and speak in second person. For example, not “I am…” but “You are…”to distance yourself and create the space for an objective look.

Effort:

You have to put in the work to succeed.

Effort is perhaps both the easiest and hardest aspect of mindset to practice. Easy because you know what needs to be done: more practicing, more studying, more exercising, more time. Hard because: more work! For some people (and many high performers), hard work is innate. They keep at it naturally; they don’t have to make themselves do it. But most of us are what I like to call ‘human’: we have a limit. When we reach that fork in our day when we could spend an hour practicing that thing we care about or rot our brains watching viral videos or reality shows, too often we opt for the videos. We’ll practice tomorrow. We suffer from (or benefit from, depending on whether you are sitting comfortably on your couch or not) an intention-behavior gap. We intend to do something, but we don’t do it.

Recognize when the intention-behavior gap—the knowing-doing gap—surfaces and make the choice to bridge it.

Behavior:

Behavior is our mindset manifested in our actions. Behavior reflects what we really think about ourselves and the world around us.

Create habits that embody your chosen mindset. Think about the mindset, observe people who exhibit it, and practice the things they do that help them live it. How you express yourself, both internally and to others, is a powerful way to practice mindset. Notice and avoid using language that does not embody your chosen mindset.

Life will not go as planned, and when it doesn’t, how you react to it will define you. Excellence is about how you respond to life. No one is born excellent; it is something you learn. And constructive feedback from people who have our best interests in mind is critical to that learning process.

American historian, writer, and philosopher Will Durant wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Make it yours. Learning excellence starts now.

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Personal Tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal, Nicole Nguyen, wrote in Why I Told My Chatbot to Stop Kissing Up to Me, “AI is trained in part on what people like, and people prefer the brown-nosing, says Myra Cheng, a computer-science Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University and lead author of a March study on agreeable AI. Participants rated sycophantic AI responses significantly higher in quality and, after interacting with a more obsequious model, said they were more likely to return to the AI.”

This is foreboding. If you take AI to be an authority in your life, the pressure to take responsibility and self-correct is muted. If you are always right, the incentive to take your cues from AI will drive you to return again and again at your own peril.

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WE all face uncertainty. The question is: how can we keep performing when faced with the disorder of uncertainty? Life will not happen according to our expectations. Peak performance at all times is not realistic. Instead, success is about optimal performance.

Rich Diviney states in Masters of Uncertainty that “True success in life and business hinges instead on optimal performance, which means delivering your ‘best’ in the moment, whatever your best looks like in that moment. Sometimes your best is about persevering, moving forward step-by-step in the midst of challenges, embracing the messy, grueling, and unpolished reality.”

Diviney’s Mastering Uncertainty Method comprises three steps: Move Horizons, Keep Going, and Stay Cool.

Move Horizons

Asking what I know now and what I can control keeps you in the here and now without overthinking and spiraling into negative thinking. Levels of uncertainty are determined by three key factors: Duration (How long will this situation last?), Pathway (What should I do next?), and Outcome (What is the goal?).

“Moving Horizons is a process where you remain anchored in the present while actively shaping your own Duration, Pathway, and Outcome. Life’s unpredictability often leaves us without clear timelines, defined steps, or guaranteed outcomes for our challenges.” It’s how we best deal with uncertainty one step at a time. Through this process, “you sequentially grow the sphere of what you know and control.”

Keep Going

As you progress, keep setting goals that are not too big but just outside your comfort zone. A rightly sized goal will keep you going. Staying focused on the current situation, you will find that sometimes a goal will involve a detour. That’s OK.

Stay in the present moment. “Refocus on what you know and what you can influence right now. The old saying ‘Keep your eyes on the prize’ is often touted to hone focus and stir passion. However, fixating on the end goal isn’t necessary to make progress or to maintain zeal.”

Stay Cool

Keep your mind on the big picture. Take a panoramic view. It will help you avoid becoming overstimulated. “When a threat looms and autonomic arousal begins to rise, focused vision activates, and vision tends to narrow. This natural response heightens the ability to concentrate on the critical circumstance demanding attention. In extreme cases, this can lead to ‘tunnel vision,’ where perception is limited to the threat itself, and all else falls away.”

Facing uncertainty is easier when you know yourself—what you are good at and what you are not. “Use your strengths to your advantage, and find ways to counterbalance your weaknesses.”

Your identity – how you see yourself and how you interact with the world around you – plays a large part in how you respond to uncertainty. Our identities give us guideposts as we navigate our world. Diviney recommends that we “seek, if possible, perspective or help from others who have different identities. Make space for yourself to consider alternative strategies or to take things slower. Often, simply committing to slowing down while you set horizons can help you see beyond the instincts you carry.” Another perspective can go a long way to bringing down our anxiety level.

* * *

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Creator of the iPod, iPhone, Tony Fadell on building a company:

“I needed to learn. And the best way to do that was to surround myself with people who knew exactly how hard it was to make something great—who had the scars to prove it. And if it turned out to be the wrong move, well, making a mistake is the best way to not make that mistake again. Do, fail, learn.

“The critical thing is to have a goal. To strive for something big and hard and important to you. Then every step you take toward that goal, even if it’s a stumble, moves you forward. And you can’t skip a step—you can’t just have the answers handed to you and detour around the hard stuff. Humans learn through productive struggle, by trying it themselves and screwing up and doing it differently next time.”

Source: Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

Maynard Webb on finding inspiration:

“Inspiration often starts with frustration. It begins with what seems like intractable problems—and then an unwillingness to accept that there are not any answers. I keep these intractable problems in my head and keep a lookout for answers or insights that can come from anywhere.

“Even if you do not have the answers you need right now, I promise you that your solutions are all out there. You just need to acknowledge that you have a sticky issue, commit to solving it, and go about your journey with an air of wonder and an understanding that magic can and will happen.”

Source: Dear Founder: Letters of Advice for Anyone Who Leads, Manages, or Wants to Start a Business

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

PROFESSOR of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management, Harry Kraemer, Jr., explains the 3Cs of self-reflection in Your Values-Based Legacy. He says we self-reflect to examine our pasts for clues about our future journeys. We are influenced by our connection, our community, and our choices. “When enhanced by self-reflection, these three Cs enable us to gain clarity about what we’re currently doing, what we’d like to do, and how all the aspects of our lives come together with a sense of purpose.”

There is no right or wrong way to engage in self-reflection. The key is to find time when you can be silent and contemplate what matters most. In these quiet moments, I look back on the day and ask myself:

• What did I say I was going to do today, and what did I actually do? If what I did was different than what I planned, what were the reasons?
• What went well, and what did not?
• How did I treat people?
• Am I proud of the way I lived this day?
• If I had the day to live over again, what would I do differently?
• What did I learn today that will have an impact on howI live the next day, the next week, and going forward?

Why do this?

• Only by being self-reflective can I truly know myself.
• If I don’t know myself, I cannot lead myself.
• If I can’t lead myself, I cannot lead other people.

These statements always point me deeper into self-reflection to clarify my values and priorities.

* * *

WE’RE used to living with small lies.

I was confronted by this fact when, recently, as I was preparing for a dinner party, I climbed onto a step-stool and reached into the liquor cabinet. One by one, I pulled down bottles that were nearly empty. Not surprisingly, at some point over the years, my young adult kids had helped themselves.

As they were growing up, we navigated our share of lies. We had conversations about drinking. We had rules. And still, like all children, they lie at times.

But I’m invested in them anyway. I love them, and I trust them. I understand that we won’t always tell each other the full truth. That isn’t dysfunction. It’s human.

Human lies are tangled up with relationships. People stretch the truth out of fear, protection, embarrassment, ego — even kindness. When I caught my kids lying, it revealed something deeper — discomfort about independence, boundaries, identity. The lie isn’t the whole story. It’s a signal.

And now we say AI “lies.” The claim in this context is misleading. Human lies involve intent — someone knows the truth and chooses to distort it. AI has no such awareness. What we call an AI “lie” is usually something subtler: an answer that sounds authoritative but turns out to be incomplete, outdated, or overly certain.

That difference matters.

AI does not lie in the moral sense, but it also has no loyalty to the truth. It generates confident responses without reliably signaling uncertainty and makes it easier for us to accept incomplete truths. Sometimes the information is simply wrong. More often, complex questions are presented as if the answers are settled.

And yet, we’re beginning to treat these answers the way we treat the small distortions of everyday life: we let them pass.

It’s easier — and often more convenient — to accept the answer and move on than to question it. In fact, in a controlled 2025 study on human reliance on AI-generated advice, participants followed incorrect AI suggestions more than half the time (52.1%), even when they were told the system was frequently wrong. Simply warning users about AI’s limitations didn’t meaningfully reduce this reliance. Confident, incomplete answers are surprisingly easy to accept as truth.

We might think of this as a kind of convenience bias — a tendency to accept answers that are fast, clear, and complete enough, rather than pause to test whether they’re fully true.

That raises a simple but urgent question: When does the truth matter more to us than our own convenience?

The difference becomes clear when the stakes are high.

My friend had been caring for a loved one with pancreatic cancer. Wanting to stay informed, their family began using an AI tool to understand the latest treatment options and research developments. They asked what therapies are most effective and whether newer experimental approaches are worth considering. The AI’s response was clear and reassuring: standard chemotherapy protocols remain the most reliable treatment. Experimental therapies, it explained, are still early-stage and uncertain. The path forward sounded straightforward — follow established care.

But cancer researchers and oncologists know that the reality is more complicated. There are promising clinical trials exploring targeted therapies and immunotherapy combinations. The field is evolving quickly, and specialists often weigh the evidence differently depending on the patient’s condition and goals.

The AI’s answer wasn’t fabricated. It referenced real, established treatments. But its false certainty presented a complex, evolving field as if the answer were settled.

This is one of the most common ways AI “lies” — not through malicious intent or obvious error, but by sounding certain when the truth is much muddier. AI’s answers can be outdated, off-target, or too narrow — shaped by incomplete data, algorithmic limitations, and even the way our own queries are interpreted. In a culture that increasingly rewards speed, those answers can feel especially easy to accept.

And unlike a human expert, AI doesn’t express humility. It rarely says, “this is evolving,” “experts disagree,” or “the evidence is limited.” Instead, it delivers smooth, confident responses that make even contested information sound resolved. When uncertainty is hidden, we’re less likely to question what we’re being told.

It also can’t distinguish, in a meaningful way, between strong evidence and opinion. It can present both with the same tone of authority. And perhaps most importantly, AI can’t judge when the truth matters more than convenience. It answers a casual curiosity and a life-altering question with the same polished confidence.

That’s the risk.

The liquor cabinet wasn’t empty because my kids lied. It was empty because I assumed everything was as I expected. I didn’t check. I ran out to the store minutes before guests arrived because I’d relied on an assumption rather than verification.

We’re doing something similar with AI. In everyday life, small distortions can be absorbed. But in financial decisions, medical guidance, legal advice, or academic work, the cost of unexamined confidence is higher.

So what does it mean to use AI well?

The solution isn’t to use AI less. It’s to use it more carefully — and more actively.

Most of us already know how to do this when we want better answers. Many parents learn that asking a child, “What did you do today?” produces the unhelpful reply: “Nothing.” But a more thoughtful question — “What was the best part of your day?” or “Teach me something you learned” — draws out richer, more accurate responses.

Research supports this instinct. The way a question is framed shapes the quality of the answer. More specific prompts lead to more thoughtful and accurate responses. Better questions don’t just produce better answers — they guide the thinking that makes better answers possible.

The same principle applies to AI. The quality of AI’s output is directly tied to the quality of our input.

Here are ways to produce better AI answers by asking better questions:

1. Ask detailed questions. Broad prompts produce generalized answers. More precise questions about trade-offs, limitations, and disagreements push the system toward more useful responses since real-world decisions rarely come without disagreement, uncertainty, or competing perspectives. Simplicity can be a signal that something important is missing.

2. Ask for sources. When we have the sources, we can review them directly and assess their credibility. Are they recent? Are they based on rigorous research or opinion? Do multiple sources support the same conclusion?

3. Resist treating our AI usage as a single transaction. High-stakes questions require iteration: ask broadly, challenge the answer, verify the evidence, and ask again from another angle. In the case of my friend researching pancreatic cancer treatments, that might mean asking for summaries of the latest clinical trials, identifying which experimental therapies show early promise, and probing what uncertainties remain.

4. Recognize AI’s limits. No artificial intelligence tool can replace the judgment, experience, and nuance of an oncologist or cancer researcher. AI can help you locate experts. It can’t replace them.

There’s no prompt that guarantees truth. There’s no magic question that forces AI into honesty. And in all our concern about AI hallucinations, we may be missing the sharper point: AI doesn’t threaten the truth. It threatens our habit of checking. It exposes how easily we trade truth for convenience.

Our human edge won’t come from rejecting these tools. It will come from knowing when a confident answer deserves a second look — and how to search for the fuller truth.

The problem isn’t that the bottles are empty. It’s that we stopped checking.

* * *

TO make the best decisions, we need to expand our view and think through a wider range of experiences and opinions. See panoramically.

Increasing change and complexity require that we get more complete and diverse information and look outside of our usual suspects. We need panoramic intelligence.

In The Panoramic Leader, Cornelia Choe and Marshall Goldsmith say that “panoramic intelligence is about training yourself to see through more than just your own lens. The real power is when you move beyond simply noticing others and start to see the world through their eyes, understanding the experiences and beliefs that shape their maps.”

The lenses we choose to see the world determine the reality we see. The authors have identified three lenses—inner, outer, and relational—that allow us to see more fully.

The inner lens helps us to gather self-awareness through self-reflection. It impacts how we see the world through our outer lens. The outer lens expands our view through our interaction with others, “taking in the systems, perspectives, and shifting conditions that define the world around us.” The relational lens creates insights between our inner and outer perspectives and transforms each with the insights gained from that enhanced perspective. We grow from the intersection of each lens.

The relational lens gathers the insights we develop internally and shines that light back outward to our stakeholders through our outer lens, expressed in dialogue and leadership. This continuous refraction of insight—taking in light and returning it transformed—is what distinguishes panoramic leaders. They do not merely absorb understanding from all sides; they refract it back outward toward their stakeholders, shaping conversations and aligning teams.

This model highlights the need for feedback. Feedback helps to remove blind spots from our inner lens. If you are not getting input from outside yourself, you will not see clearly what is going on around you. It has always been the case, but especially today in a rapidly changing world, if you are not adjusting and experimenting, you will become irrelevant.

Many of us continue to cling to outdated mental maps because they’re familiar and comfortable, even if they lead us to constant disappointment because they don’t take us to where we want to go.

They suggest we ignite our courageous curiosity, question ourselves, and to know our map and keep adapting it.

I love this question: Who’s not at your table? Who should we have join us? Inviting people in that we normally don’t associate with opens us up to new perspectives and ideas. Developing panoramic leadership requires that we “go beyond understanding stakeholders to building meaningful relationships with them and staying attuned to their evolving circumstances and views.”

As we work with others, we find where their perspective or map aligns with ours and how they might fit together. Where other people’s maps are different or contradictory to our own can reveal areas where we need to pay closer attention and find previously unseen opportunities.

For panoramic leaders, differing perspectives are the raw material of better judgment. They help us sort through the information we collect, clarify priorities, and anticipate risks. They test assumptions and reveal how various stakeholders’ perspectives can be integrated into a coherent picture. By engaging with conflicting views productively, leaders uncover blind spots, refine their priorities, and navigate growing complexity with sounder judgment.

Combining maps requires that we interpret their perspective and microtranslate our perspective for them. In this way, we learn from one context so that we can apply those lessons to our own. We begin to see where our maps may be incomplete and fill in our blind spots.

Another component to consider, as we evaluate what insights we should add to our own and which ones to leave out, we should identify not only what loyalties our stakeholders have but what loyalties we have that might be swaying our judgment. They suggest that we ask ourselves: “To whom do I feel most responsible? Who would react most vigorously if I did something out of the routine? Whom am I trying hardest to please or impress? Who would I most disappoint? Whose support do I most need?”

We can never allow complacency to creep into our worldview. The world continues to change around us, and, like explorers sailing to uncharted lands, we must constantly adjust our maps accordingly.

* * *

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans on detachment:

“A state of mind that is fully engaged but calmly detached is the best place from which to do design. When you are fully engaged in any task—really buckling down and getting the work done—you have the best chance of unlocking a great solution. However, most of us can’t shake off the fear of a bad outcome, and this tends to stifle our creativity and burden our actions. But when you can cultivate a mindset that is detached from outcomes, which are ultimately out of your control, you are the freest and most creative. When something goes as hoped for, you’re pleased. When something unexpected or negative happens, you’re bemused and happy to learn from the experience (which is why you come to think that just about everything is a prototype).”

Source: How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day

Gary Hamel on decision-making:

“Paradoxically, as decisions get bigger, the ranks of those able to challenge the decision maker get smaller. Hubris, myopia, and naivete can corrupt decisions at any level, but that risk goes up when the decision maker’s power is, for practical purposes, incontestable. Give someone monarch-like authority, and sooner or later there will be a royal screw-up.”

Source: What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

LOOK at how most people plan. They open the calendar, see the squares, and start filling them. A meeting here, a block there, a few tasks wedged into the gaps. By the end, the week looks full and feels productive.

It is also completely backward. Starting with the calendar means you are organizing your time before you have decided what any of it is for. That is how founders end up busy for months and somehow no closer to anything that matters. The fix is to flip the whole thing. Build your day from the top down, not the calendar up.

Borrow the Inverted Pyramid

I spent years writing before I built businesses, and the most useful structure I ever learned came from journalism: the inverted pyramid. You lead with the single most important point, and everything below it exists to support that point. The further down you go, the smaller the detail.

That structure became the spine of the Time Management Inverted framework, a productivity system that I've built over the past decade. At the very top sits the most important thing you have, the one I call your Grand Vision. Everything beneath it, all monthly goals, weekly tactics, and daily tasks, exists only to support that vision. Nothing earns a place on your calendar unless it props up the thing at the top.

Most planning advice has you building from the bottom. You stack up tasks and hope they add up to something. The inverted pyramid does the opposite. You name the destination first, then work down to the daily moves that get you there.

“Why”

A Grand Vision is your long-term target, usually set on a longer-term horizon to keep it concrete. For simplicity, let’s choose a year. Those Grand Visions could be to triple your client base, hit a million in revenue, finish the book, build the team that lets you step back. It is big enough to pull you forward and clear enough to measure.

Think of it as your "why." It is the reason the rest of the work exists.

Everything below the Grand Vision is the "what" and the "how." Monthly goals are the major accomplishments that support the vision. Weekly tactics are what you execute to hit those goals. Daily tasks are the specific, intentional moves you make each day to carry out the tactics. Each layer ladders up to the one above it, and the whole structure points at the top.

When that chain is intact, every task you touch is connected to something larger. You feel it. The work has weight because it is going somewhere.

Busy Is Not the Same as Forward

Here is what happens when the chain breaks. Your daily tasks stop pointing at any vision at all. You answer emails, sit in meetings, put out fires, and clear the small stuff because clearing it feels good. The day ends, you are exhausted, and you cannot name one thing you actually moved.

That is the trap. Busyness is motion. Progress is direction. They are not the same, and a packed calendar will happily fake the second one while delivering only the first.

When I was running several ventures at once and felt buried, the problem was never a shortage of effort. I was working constantly. The problem was that almost none of it laddered up to a vision. I was filling squares. The moment I tied my days back to a clear top, the noise fell away, and the real work surfaced.

How to Build from the Top Down

A few deliberate steps put the pyramid back in the right order.

• Define one Grand Vision before you schedule anything beneath it. Not five. One. Write it down with a one-year timeline so it is specific enough to act on. Until the top exists, nothing below it has anything to support.
• Translate it down the layers. Break the Grand Vision into monthly goals, then break those into weekly tactics, then break those into daily tasks. Each layer should obviously serve the one above it. If you cannot draw that line, the task does not belong.
• Audit your calendar for orphans. Go through your week and find every task that supports no vision at all. The standing meeting nobody needs. The report no one reads. The reflexive busywork. Then cut it. Reclaimed time is the easiest time you will ever find.
• Limit yourself to three to five real priorities. Focus splits the more you divide it. Cap your week and your day at three to five things that genuinely matter, your “Big 3 to 5,” and protect them. More than that is not ambition. It is dilution.

The point of all this is not to schedule harder. It is to make sure the hours you already have point somewhere worth going.

Your calendar should be the last thing you fill, not the first. Decide what your life and your business are building toward, then let that decision shape every square beneath it.

Start at the top. Everything else follows.

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SPORTS analyst Ric Bucher wondered, after rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest athletes, which traits separate the best from the rest? The common denominator was: I was coachable. In Coachable, Bucher explores ten truths of coachability through the stories of all-time great athletes. The truths are applicable to all walks of life.

What is coachability? “Synthesizing your vision of who and what you want to be with someone else’s vision of who and what you can be by collaborating to realize that shared vision.”

TRUTH 1: Giving In Is Not Giving Up

Change is a constant in the short and long term. Sometimes what you set out to do is not what you should be doing. Giving in to a pivot may be just the best thing. It’s not giving up on your dream; it’s growing. “Being coachable is fundamentally about self-improvement. I want to get better, and I’m willing to go backward to go forward.”

TRUTH 2: A Fixed Flaw Is a Fountain of Faith

Humility to take correction and do something with it. Every problem is there to teach us something—to move us forward. The frustration of having to reconstruct something as fundamental as his shot led Stephen Curry to learn to have faith in the process. He told Bucher, “There’s faith that comes with going through that, working toward that intended outcome of who I want to be. But that whole process, for me, requires having trust in myself to be able to solve whatever challenges are in front of me. But you also have to have the resources around you and the openness to say, ‘Okay, I don’t know everything, I don’t have all the answers, but I’m curious.’”

TRUTH 3: No One Knows Your Priorities Better Than You

What you do is different from who you are. By prioritizing your personal development along with your ambitions, you create a deeper and lasting identity. The path matters as much as the goal. The relationship between a coach and the protégé is a two-way street.

TRUTH 4: Who You Are, Not Where You Are, Will Decide What You Are

Moving forward is about making thousands of right decisions that eventually add up to something. It’s all about what is inside and knowing you have room for improvement. Basketball athlete Fred VanVleet said, “Being coachable starts with accountability. If you don’t have an issue with accountability, then you’re not going to have an issue with coaching. If I know I’m wrong before the coach gets to me, then I’m going to receive his message versus being surprised that somebody’s yelling at me. You’re not paying attention to how that message is delivered, you’re thinking more about ‘How do I get it right?’And once you’re on that track, you start to understand what coaching is.”

The challenge is not to find the ideal or most attractive building blocks but to fully utilize those readily available. And, as Fred demonstrates, when we exhaust our resources, there is inevitably someone offering new ones out of respect for anyone with a track record of making the most of their opportunities.

TRUTH 5: Humble or Humbled, It’s Your Choice

To be talented and humble means you have to be held to a higher standard. When you think you’ve arrived, you haven’t. Great talent easily turns to entitlement. SO you need an environment that keeps you humble. Sports psychologist Michel Lardon said, “Most super-elite athletes have been able to maintain a core group that keeps them grounded. Because if you have sycophants everywhere, you go from swagger to arrogance. You develop an ‘I don’t need to learn anything; I don’t need anybody’ attitude. And then you get in trouble.”

Bucher adds. “There are two essential parts to a performer realizing their absolute best: they need someone willing to pull it out of them, and they need to have the hunger and courage to have it pulled.” And that takes humility.

TRUTH 6: Tunnel Vision Is a Black Hole

Great performance requires a larger perspective. See yourself as part of a bigger picture. Experiment and determine what is effective for your growth. Coach Holger believed that “Learning atypical physical acts enhanced an athlete’s brain to execute more traditional ones.” The same is true for any of us. Get outside your head.

TRUTH 7: Anyone Can Be the Answer to a Need

Being teachable allows you to maximize your circumstances or position. Learning to do the things that coaches and leaders will notice will set you apart. “You need to understand what important people value and how you can help fulfill that value.”

John Staton III realized that there are some things more important than the score and often reminded his son, John IV, of that. “There was a skill set to learn—resilience, situational awareness, sportsmanship—that you could take into life to face real-world challenges with that same competitive nature. If you could come out with that competitive edge a little smoother, your chances of success and having an impact on society were probably greater because you would have a more enhanced skill set than someone else.”

“Success can’t, and shouldn’t, be measured by how high we climb but whether or not we climbed as high as we were capable of climbing.”

TRUTH 8: The Greatest Goals Are the Ones You Can’t Reach by Yourself

It can be years before you see the payoff from the behaviors your coaches tell you to do. By doing it, it prepares you to go the distance. It’s a leap of faith. “There are legions of athletes—and doctors, musicians, and executives—who were materially successful but couldn’t build on it because of the way they achieved it.”

TRUTH 9: Why Is More Important Than How

When the protégé knows why the coach is asking them to do something, even when they don’t get it right, they will follow them anywhere.

Anything that pushes us out of our comfort zone has value. But there shouldn’t be any confusion about what a coach is asking a performer to do or how it contributes to the collective goal; if there is, that’s leaving that performer without a North Star for motivation and improvement. No one ever gets to play their desired role in every situation. But the purpose of every role has to be clear to the person filling it; if it’s not, the question “Is there a purpose?” will surface. Followed by the person in that role questioning if they have a purpose. When a relationship with a coach or an organization doesn’t work or isn’t fruitful, it’s inevitably because of one primary reason: the athlete and coach didn’t have a common goal.

TRUTH 10: Tough Love Is Still Love

Take the message and ignore the delivery. Often, to get where you want to go costs you a lot, but you pay a higher price by not listening.

The idea of not listening to an accomplished coach may sound absurd, but elite athletes often consider and sometimes indulge in it. Their physical superiority has allowed them to advance and possibly even excel without following protocol or directions, and some come to believe doing so is actually an essential part of their success. Many have never completely committed themselves to someone else’s vision and, having gotten away with it, are convinced it’s not necessary-until they reach a level where their innate talent isn’t enough. And by then it’s usually too late.

Listening sometimes means letting go of what you think you know. Know that you don’t know. “The hidden value of being challenged to let go of what we do best—or we think we do best—is that it creates space to get good at something else. We don’t lose the first talent; we complement it.”

In detail, Coachable provides the nuts and bolts for anyone in any field or position looking to realize the best version of themselves. Bucher says begin the coaching conversation with “What is it I’m not doing that would help if I did?”

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IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Jeremy Pollack on certainty:

“Certainty is the nemesis of peace. Our drive toward certainty, which underlies our subconscious and conscious desires to be right, is antithetical to our capacities for flexibility, open-mindedness, and collaboration with those we perceive as sources of conflict. And the unfortunate news is that our brains are certainty-seeking machines.”

Source: Wired for Peace: Using 7 Neuroscience-Based Principles to Resolve Conflicts

Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner on organizational slogans:

“Your organization’s clarity isn’t found in your mission statement; your employees and stakeholders find it in what they experience. They find clarity in the last difficult decision a leader made and how it made sense given their understanding of the business. They find clarity in the project that got funded (and those that didn’t) and how it matches the mission as everyone understands it. They find clarity in the last person who got promoted because they operate in a way that reflects desired values. These actions are the signals that communicate ‘what matters here.’ If your stated clarity contradicts these lived realities, the slogans are worthless.”

Source: The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

AS an executive coach, I’ve noticed something interesting. People almost never hire me because they’re questioning their definition of success.

Business owners call because they want to grow their business or prepare for an exit. Executives call because they want to become a better leader, figure out why their team isn’t performing, or be more influential.

But coaching never stays in one place, and business is always personal. A good coach will never help anyone build a strategy without digging into the reason for the intended growth.

I’ve had leaders sit across from me with thriving companies, respected reputations, and everything they once thought would make them happy, only to finally find the courage to ask me, “Why doesn’t this feel like success?” And admit “I’m not sure I even want this.”

It’s rarely because something has gone terribly wrong. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. Their business is growing. Their career is thriving. People admire them. They’re well compensated for their efforts. They’ve achieved goals they once only dreamed about.

The problem isn’t that they aren’t successful. The problem is they never stopped to ask whether they were chasing their definition of success—or someone else’s.

From an early age, many of us absorb a remarkably consistent message about what success should look like: a bigger title, more responsibility, a larger paycheck, constant growth, a reputation for always being available, and always achieving.

What many people don’t realize is that the way leaders define success shapes every decision they make, the culture they create, and the lives of everyone around them. So, when we work together, we get very clear on whether or not your definition of success still fits.

Here are five signs it may be time to redefine what success means for you.

1. Your decisions are driven more by expectations than by values.

Many leaders don’t realize how often they measure themselves against invisible standards. We, as humans, love to compare ourselves to others.

You compare yourself to competitors, to colleagues, to neighbors, or even to previous versions of yourself without even realizing it.

And because of that comparison game, you find yourself feeling like you need a bigger company, more revenue, a bigger team, or more recognition. Then somewhere along the way, you lost sight of why you wanted to lead this team to begin with, and you’re not sure you even recognize yourself.

Try this: Before making your next major decision, ask yourself, “If nobody else ever knew about this choice, would I still make it?” Your answer may reveal whose expectations you’re actually serving.

2. Achievement no longer creates energy—it only creates the next expectation.

Many high achievers discover that reaching the next milestone doesn’t bring the satisfaction they expected. You got the promotion. You have the title. You have the car. Your company is respected. You have everything you thought you wanted, and maybe you could rest.

Instead, every accomplishment immediately gives way to the next goal. This promotion leads to wondering how and when you’ll get the next promotion. This revenue target leads to a larger revenue target. The business doubles, and suddenly the expectation is to double it again. It’s a never-ending cycle.

Try this: Instead of immediately asking, “What’s next?” spend time celebrating the work you’ve done, then reflecting on where the energy was highest. Decide

3. Your identity has become fused with your title.

I have found that many leaders struggle to separate who they are from what they do. Whether it’s CEO, Partner, Founder, Business Owner, CFO, COO, etc. – the role slowly becomes their identity.

When that happens, every company decision, every piece of feedback, every promotion (or missed promotion) feels personal – when really, it’s business. Healthy leadership requires enough distance to recognize that your title describes your work—not your worth.

Try this: Complete this sentence without mentioning your profession: “I am someone who...” If that’s difficult, it may be time to reconnect with who you are outside your role.

4. You “should” yourself out of wanting something different.

This is one of the most common internal conflicts I hear: “I’m not sure I’m happy, but I shouldn’t complain. I have so much. Others would love to be in my position.”

Gratitude is important. But gratitude doesn’t require you to ignore the voice telling you something no longer fits. Too many leaders convince themselves they must continue living a life that no longer aligns simply because they’ve worked hard to build it. Being grateful for your opportunities and wanting something different are not mutually exclusive.

Try this: Swap “What will they think if I /change?” for “What will I think of myself if I don’t change?”

5. You tell yourself, “I’ll be happy when___.”

Many leaders unknowingly postpone living until some future version of success finally arrives. The problem is that every milestone simply creates another one, and “when” never comes.

If fulfillment always lives on the other side of the next achievement, you’ll spend your entire career chasing a horizon that keeps moving. The goal is to find happiness now. Why wait?

Try this: If you find yourself saying, “I’ll be happy when ____” ask yourself, “What’s keeping me from being happy now?” Your answer may reveal that many of the things you value most are available long before your next accomplishment.

Your Team Is Watching

The definition of success you choose shapes your leadership. Leaders who constantly pursue “more” often create organizations where everyone feels pressure to do the same. Teams begin believing that achievement is valued more than purpose, output more than sustainability, and growth more than meaning.

Whether you intend it or not, people learn what success looks like by watching you. If you define success only by external accomplishment, your culture will eventually reflect that definition. But when leaders model thoughtful boundaries, purposeful ambition, healthy relationships, and values-driven decisions, they give others permission to do the same.

Now What?

The first thing you can do for yourself is define your own definition of success. The company will certainly have goals, and part of your success may be defined by those goals. But those aren’t your only measures.

Take some dedicated time to write down what you think success looks like for you, and to deep-dive into how these align with your core values. Your definition may include going to soccer games or taking time off to be with your family. That’s okay! That’s the point of the exercise! Find what matters to you so you can design the life you want – not the one handed to you by others.

You are not alone if you’re wondering if the definition you’ve been living by still fits -- if the ambition inadvertently altered the trajectory of the business and your future. The goal is to ensure that the ambition that drives you is aimed at somewhere you actually want to go.

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HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in August 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.

Practice Makes Culture: How Welcoming Elephants, Creating Ownership, and Facilitating Daily Practice Transform Organizations by Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth

After decades of organizational transformation efforts, the failure rate remains stubbornly high: over 70%. What’s missing? The human element. In Practice Makes Culture, you'll discover why most transformations still fail and how to ensure yours succeeds by addressing what other approaches miss: the emotional dynamics, hidden narratives, and everyday behaviors that truly shape your organization. This practical guide introduces a powerful framework centered on three critical focus areas: Elephants: Address the emotional aspects of change, recognize diverse perspectives, and tackle difficult conversations that most leaders avoid. Ownership: Create transformation that people actually want by ensuring those affected by change are the ones steering it. Practice: Transform meetings into powerful practice fields for cultural change through consistent, daily reinforcement of desired behaviors.

Inviting Genius: How Good Leaders Use Conflict to Become Great by Matthew Abrams

Most teams don't fail because of conflict. They fail because they avoid it. In Inviting Genius: How Good Leaders Use Conflict to Become Great, Matthew Abrams offers a roadmap for leaders who want to build high-performing teams without sacrificing humanity. After 15 years working with visionary leaders, Abrams shows that tension isn't the problem. It's the path. As you apply the concepts within Inviting Genius, you will Stop avoiding the conversations that matter most — Build a healthy leadership team that decides faster and executes better. — Unlock the full intelligence, innovation, and passion that already lives within your team. — Build a culture where people stay, grow, and do their best work. This isn't a book about managing conflict. It's about using it.

Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times by Owen Fitzpatrick

Right now, your brain is selling you a story about who you are, what's true, and what you should believe. And you're buying it, even when it sabotages your success. In Inner Propaganda, psychologist Owen Fitzpatrick reveals the internal persuasion system shaping your thoughts, your decisions, and your reality. After decades studying external propaganda, from witnessing first-hand modern influence operations in North Korea, Afghanistan, and Washington D.C., to analyzing the incredible double agent who helped change the outcome of World War II, Fitzpatrick reached a startling conclusion: The same tactics that sway nations also operate inside each of us. But understanding your own propaganda is the key to understanding everyone else's. Once you see how your brain manipulates you, you finally understand why others believe what they believe. As the current media landscape fragments our relationships, this can help you bridge divides rather than deepen them. To do this, he offers a deceptively simple framework: Feels Right, Fits In, Makes Sense—three forces that explain why ideas take hold, why we cling to them even when they harm us, and how to reshape beliefs that actually support better mental health, clearer decision-making, and stronger leadership.

Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment by Paul Osterman

A revealing look at the decline in formal employment in favor of hiring contractors, freelancers, temps, and marginal workers, who are excluded from traditional benefits and career ladders. Companies cannot exist without workers, but they are increasingly reluctant to have employees. Instead of providing the benefits and protections that have traditionally come with employee status, businesses are turning to tactics that let them treat people as interchangeable parts, to be used and discarded as needed. Drawing on an original survey of over 6,000 workers, Disposable Workers reveals the striking extent of this transformation across the occupational hierarchy, affecting everyone from janitors to nurses. Paul Osterman identifies three distinct categories of disposable workers: contractors, freelancers, and marginal employees. The marginal category, unique to Osterman’s analysis, describes workers who are employees from a narrow legal standpoint but are held at arm’s length by their firm―left without job security, skill training, or opportunities for promotion.

The Radical Promise: Mastering The Art of Doing What You Say You Will Do by James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner and Steve Farber

The Radical Promise delivers a story-driven framework for leaders to increase their trust and credibility or rebuild it when their actions don’t match their words. The storyline and concepts are equally applicable to every person, regardless of title or position, who is challenged to keep promises and commitments to make sure that what they "say" (promise) is what they do. The Radical Promise is an entertaining and thought-provoking book for today's leaders, as well as those aspiring to be or become even better leaders, seeking key lessons they can apply to their own organizations and professional lives.