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

Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter on inertia:

"Our default response in life is not to experience meaning or happiness. Our default response is to experience inertia. We think of inertia as the state of being inert or motionless—one of our purer displays of passivity and disengagement. It's not. Inertia is an active event in which we are persisting in the state we're already in rather than switching to something else."

Source: The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment

Sebastian Wernicke on data objectivity:

"It's easy to understand why one would intuitively view data as a kind of 'objective truth.' After all, we assume that data originates from objective measurements, making the resulting numbers clear and unequivocal. However, capturing our reality in numbers is rarely straightforward. Defining precisely how we arrive at a number isn't mere nitpicking, as these choices can carry significant consequences when we use that number to make a decision. Fundamentally, there is no single 'right' method to translate reality into data. Usually many valid methods exist, but each will turn the facts into a different number. Data compresses a subjective view of the world. Those who look at data see not an objective truth but rather a specific (hopefully at least consistent and documented) interpretation of the world, expressed as numbers."

Source: Data Inspired: Building an Organizational Culture of Inquiry for Lasting Transformation

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

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

Nick Bare on doing the work:

"Sometimes, we think that just doing more of something or working harder on anything will get us to our goal, but just because you're working harder doesn't mean you deserve the outcome. It doesn't mean you've earned it. The work we put in needs to be strategic, intentional, and very thoughtful to have the outcome we want and desire."

Source: Go One More: Find the Clarity to Make Intentional, Life-Changing Choices

Aaron Chapman on cutting corners:

"There's only so many places the opportunivore can go before you completely run out of options altogether. If you could just go back to the beginning, work in the service of others. Ensure their benefit. The time will come that the compound effect of all that energy and work returns to benefit you. Those who choose to take from others or cut corners from the beginnin' eventually find that there is nothin' left for them. Fits right into the overall concept: take a beatin' up front doin'the right thing, bein' accountable, bein'trustworthy, and you'll have an abundance poured upon you. Cuttin' corners, takin' advantage of people, and cheatin'the process might make for some easy returns up front, but over time avenues will dry up; others become wise to your BS, and now you're takin' an enormous beatin' 'cause you can't find a single soul to deal with you."

Source: Redneckonomics: Unconventional Success by Takin' the Beatin' Path

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

WE don’t need more freedom; we need more helpful boundaries. David Epstein, author of Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better, says we don’t need to work outside the box as much as we need to be working inside the right box.

We instinctively add to solve a problem when the best course of action is to subtract. Boundaries provide clarity. Ideas are plentiful. Figuring out what not to do is the key. You need constraints. Constraints are so important that engineer and designer Tony Fadell admonishes, “If you don’t have constraints, then make up constraints!” Constraints make room for learning. Constraints make you think. Epstein explains:

As the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham has written: “Contrary to popular belief, the brain is not designed for thinking. It’s designed to save you from having to think.” Because the brain is naturally inclined to avoid effortful thinking and to rely instead on familiar patterns, complete freedom tends to lead to unoriginal ideas, simply repeating what is known. Constraints push the brain beyond its default tendencies, forcing it to engage in deeper problem-solving. Total freedom, then, is the enemy of creativity, and constraint its companion.

“In other words,” says Epstein, “when anything is possible, it becomes nearly impossible to do anything new. Complete freedom, paradoxically, leads to conformity.”

In a chapter entitled The Remix of Everything, he explains that Martin Luther King, Jr. borrowed and remixed to create his messages. He “grew up in the folk-preaching tradition—beginning with watching his father—in which borrowing words was not only encouraged but expected, and language was not thought of as proprietary. Excessive originality, in fact, was seen as self-centered, if not downright suspicious. Listeners expected the reinforcement and recharging of lessons with authority and familiarity, not originality.” The lesson here is that “The more novel his ideas, the more familiar the context had to be.” It connects because the audience had heard a version of it before.

Even Edison and Shakespeare “constantly took the approach of looking for existing material that they could modify or perfect, rather than inventing from a blank slate.” The self-imposed constraint breaks down resistance. Lesson: “Familiarity acts as an anchor for radical ideas, providing a point of reference. The more disruptive the idea, the more essential that grounding becomes.”

Focusing on inherent constraints of a system enables better design and useful innovations. Working memory is a bottleneck of human cognition. Connecting new concepts to the old and familiar takes the strain off of the working memory and facilitates problem-solving and critical thinking. It helps to put new information in writing that the learner can refer to instead of trying to hold it in their working memory.

Classes often rightfully emphasize a need to teach critical thinking, but if we want a learner to practice it-whether they encounter the new material in school or at work-we need to make sure they have some background familiarity with the terms and subJect matter. Otherwise they won’t stand a chance; their working memory will be flooded just trying to keep track of new information. This familiarity effect is one reason why rereading a book or rewatching a movie unlocks new layers of depth.

Too few constraints remove the clarity. Vagueness works against you. Projects balloon and nothing gets done. You lose track of the end-goal. If you can work out the boundaries ahead of time, you can move quickly when the time comes. “As the renowned venture capitalist Bill Gurley (Uber, Zillow) told me: ‘We have a saying in venture: ‘More startups die of indigestion than starvation.’”

* * *

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

Jenna Nicholas on hope:

“Hope is more than a lofty ideal; it's a lifesaving force. Ultimately, hope encourages us to think expansively while integrating our vision into our daily actions, both big and small. It also challenges us to remain realistic and grounded. We may never achieve a human utopia on earth, but hope doesn't require us to remake the world in some sparkly image of perfection. Instead, we can stay focused on making the next positive changes, both personally and professionally, that support those around us and our vision of integrated, healthy progress.”

Source: Enlightened Bottom Line: Exploring the Intersection of Spirituality, Business, and Investing

Lloyd Blankfein on a partnership culture:

“It takes more time to treat your partners as owners. It takes time to inform people, entertain objections, and, sometimes, accede to contrary views. It means more iterations and slower decision-making. But the decisions are likely to be better, and the outcomes better accepted, because people were consulted and listened to, even if they didn't get their way in the end.”

Source: Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs

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

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

The Executive Condition: The Hidden Health Crisis of High-Performing Leaders by Denis Cronson

High performers aren't burning out—they're breaking down. The Executive Condition exposes how modern leadership accelerates biological decline and then shows executives how to turn health into their next strategic advantage. Leadership performance is built on biology—and that foundation is failing. Sleep debt becomes personality. Stress hardens into culture. Decision quality narrows even as résumés grow longer. Boards notice it late. Teams feel it early. And the body—quietly, relentlessly—keeps the score. For too long, modern leadership has rewarded the very habits that erode it: relentless pace, chronic sleep loss, performance martyrdom, and identity fused to output. The result is a hidden crisis at the top of organizations: leaders who still look successful while their cognition, metabolism, emotional range, and judgment quietly decline. This is not a character flaw. It is an operating-system failu

Leadership Intelligence: Science-Backed Strategies for Mastering 21 Everyday Management Challenges by Caroline Webb

In times of great change, great leadership is crucial—and our current times are no exception. Today, along with the demands that leaders have always faced—balancing short-term progress with long-term planning; delivering strong results without burning people out—we're also in an era of major technological disruption. As that change accelerates, the instinct to lean hard into AI can feel more urgent than anything else. But the best leaders know better. As AI capabilities become more universal, the leaders who stand out won't be those who only use technology well—it will be those who can also draw out and develop the best of the human intelligence on their teams, by maximizing distinctly human strengths like critical thinking and interpersonal insight. In Leadership Intelligence, economist and former McKinsey partner Caroline Webb shows readers how to rise to this challenge.

The Adaptability Quotient: Rewiring Your Mind for Success in the Next Human Era by Alec Litowitz

Groundbreaking investor and global enterprise builder Alec Litowitz shows how to move from "making the right decision" to "making decisions right" in The Adaptability Quotient, a guide to thinking and acting under uncertainty. Over decades of success across volatile markets, creating cultures and businesses that innovate at scale and endure, Litowitz arrived at a crucial insight. What separates progress from paralysis is not foresight, but adaptability. In an era of uncertainty, decision-making and problem-solving require developing a high adaptability quotient or AQ―the ability to think clearly, act decisively, and pivot when the path ahead isn't clear. And unlike intellect or emotional intelligence, AQ is not fixed. It can be learned.

The Catalyst CEO: Why CEOs Can't Lead Transformation Alone—And What the Best Do Instead by Constantine G. Alexandrakis

In The Catalyst CEO, veteran leadership advisor Constantine G. Alexandrakis delivers an insider's guide to leading systemic change across complex organizations. Drawing on decades of experience advising world-leading companies, he challenges the cult of the hero CEO and offers a powerful new paradigm on what it truly takes to make business transformation happen―and stick. Through real-world stories of CEOs globally who have successfully transformed their organizations, Alexandrakis reveals why even brilliant visions and strategies fail if they're not owned, led, and executed by the right teams. You'll learn how to turn your board, executive team, and leaders into force multipliers―creating the conditions required for transformation to scale and endure.

What Could Possibly Go Right?: The Essential Journey to Scale an Enduring Culture by Danny Meyer

Restaurateur, entrepreneur, and New York Times bestselling author Danny Meyer reveals the secrets of his widely admired leadership philosophy and the tools he uses to build an energized, cohesive, and motivated culture. In 2006, Danny Meyer owned eleven restaurants, was nurturing a single parkside burger kiosk called Shake Shack, and had just written a bestselling book, Setting the Table, about his company's unique culture of Enlightened Hospitality. On the first page of that book, Danny proudly declared that in twenty-five years he had never closed a restaurant. But just a few years later, he shuttered his beloved Tabla, a decision that filled him with shame—but sparked a reckoning within him about what it means to be a leader. Danny realized that his fear of failure wasn't just misguided: it was also an impediment to his innate entrepreneurial spirit. In What Could Possibly Go Right?, he takes the reader along on his journey to learn how he's delivered a winning culture of excellence at scale. Businesses and organizations have long understood how to scale systems of production. But it's a much trickier challenge to scale uplifting human relationships, particularly in a fluid, growing organization—one that has now spawned 700 businesses spread across twenty-four countries.

Friction: How Tension, Emotion, and Change Reveal Better Leaders by Ross Blankenship and Maggie Sass

Emotions are messy. Life is full of friction. Here's what to do about it. You've felt it — the meeting that goes sideways after one wrong word, the feedback that lands wrong no matter how carefully you planned it, the relationship that keeps getting stuck in the same loop. You've felt it inside yourself too: the moment you react before you mean to, the pressure that makes everything harder than it should be, the Sunday evening dread that has nothing to do with the actual work. That tension has a name. It's friction — and most of us have never been taught what to do with it. In Friction, Sass and Blankenship make the case that friction isn't random, it isn't weakness, and it isn't just "bad communication." It's a predictable force that shows up in three distinct places — inside you, between people, and in the systems and structures around you — and it's quietly shaping everything from your own performance to your team's culture.

Here is a selection of Posts from August 2026 that you will want to check out:

• What Launches an Organization or Initiative Isn’t What Sustains It from @AdmiredLeaders
• No Excuses: Lesson #1 from a Lifetime of Leadership by @TomBrady When you’re explaining, you’re losing
• Write Down Your Purpose Statement and Read It Each Day by @JonGordon11
• Your Culture Is Built by What You Celebrate by @daveferguson
• Why Every Leader Needs a Point of View by @PhilCooke
• The 6 Leadership Lessons You Need When Everything Is on the Line by @BrianKDodd
• 4 Secret Habits of the World’s Best Performers by @BrianKDodd
• Deep Work: How to Actually Focus When Your Brain Has Been Trained to Scroll by Michela Allocca @breakyourbudget
• Ordinary Abundance Our lives today are a gallery of past generations’ heroic efforts to do the same.
• 6 Ways Great Leaders Find Value Where Everyone Else Sees None by @BrianKDodd
• Who Gets to Decide? Why the Future of Leadership Is Becoming More Decentralized by @DanielBurrus
• The Decisions You Delay Will Eventually Make Themselves by @PhilCooke
• The Danger of Outsourcing Your Thinking to AI by John Spence @AwesomelySimple
• Nothing Past 1967 by @donhornsby When a founder is gone, there’s a real temptation to become a tribute act.
• How Does a Leader Become a Leader? by @SusanMazza
• The 4 Stages of Leadership Drift by @BrianKDodd on Leadership
• 10 Ways to Strengthen Your Self-Confidence by @FSonnenberg
• Betrayal by @jamesstorck
• Say Less: When More Words Mean Less Impact by @Julie_WG
• You Spent a Fortune on Talent and Strategy - Culture Neglect Is Wasting It by Sean Glaze
@leadyourteam
• The Difference Between a New Idea and a Useful One by Ai Yat Goh

See more on Twitter.

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.

Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.

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.

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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:

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.

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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.

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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.

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