Latest thinking
Ideas on AI, leadership, the future of work, and the human dimensions of technological change.
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Tell people you used AI and they trust you less. That instinct is quietly turning human-made into the signal.
A 2025 study found that disclosing you used AI makes people trust you less, even when a human reviewed the work. Trust runs on human commitment, so as synthetic content floods everything, 'a human stands behind this' is quietly becoming the signal people reach for.
Two-thirds of your team already use AI you never approved. Banning it makes it worse.
A 2026 survey found 66% of office workers use AI tools they believe aren't approved, and 71% feed in sensitive data. A ban doesn't remove it; it hides it. Why the fix is to make sanctioned AI better than the shadow option, and govern the data, not the curiosity.
An AI briefed on you can win the argument. How do you keep your own judgement?
A controlled trial found that when an AI knows a little about you, it can out-persuade a person by a wide margin. Not by writing better, but by tuning the case to you. Why discernment is the capability that now protects your judgement, and how to build it.
AI helps your least experienced people the most. That changes how you build a team.
In a study of 5,179 support agents, an AI assistant lifted output 14% on average but 34% for the least experienced, and little for the experts. It spread the veterans' habits to the beginners. What a compressed experience curve means for how you hire, train and value experience.
AI scores 90% on the benchmarks and finishes 2.5% of the real work. Measure the gap that matters.
AI tops coding and reasoning benchmarks, then stalls on real projects. The Remote Labor Index found the best agent completed just 2.5% of 240 real paid jobs end-to-end, versus 80-90% on benchmarks. Benchmark power isn't delivered value. Measure AI on your own work, not the leaderboard.
Your team's AI anxiety is rising. Handled well, it becomes their creativity.
Fear of losing a job to AI has climbed to 40% of employees, and most feel leaders underestimate it. But the same anxious energy, met with support and visible commitment, turns into creative work rather than freezing. The lever is the leader.
The more your team trusts the AI, the less they question it. Why that is the real risk.
A study of 319 knowledge workers found the more people trusted the AI, the less they thought critically about it. The danger is not lost skills; it is unquestioned answers, right when the tool is confidently wrong. How to use AI in a way that provokes scrutiny rather than replacing it.
AI is rewriting how global business runs. Which parts earn their keep?
AI is moving into the core of international business, from supply-chain risk to market selection. A 2024 University of the Sunshine Coast review shows where it genuinely pays off, and where a leader should point it first.
Cutting entry-level roles is the easiest AI saving. It quietly starves your leadership pipeline.
AI makes cutting entry-level hiring look like a clean saving. But entry-level work is how you build judgment and future leaders. A 2026 WEF report finds 37% of young workers are in high AI-exposure roles. Redesign the bottom rung around judgment and oversight, don't delete it.
Your AI will only ever be as good as the data beneath it. Most companies' data isn't ready.
AI's least glamorous part, the data underneath, decides whether the rest works. Gartner found 63% of organisations aren't sure their data is AI-ready. Point capable AI at poor data and it produces confident, fluent, wrong output. Fix the foundation first.
Real-time fashion is here. It will eat your lunch if you are not watching.
Fashion went from made-to-order, to fast fashion, to real-time, where a brand makes 100 pieces, watches what sells, and reorders only the winners. The lesson runs far beyond clothes: the fastest feedback loop wins. Here is how to point that same speed at something better.
He gave a three-billion-dollar company to the planet. What are the rest of us building?
In 2022 Patagonia's founder gave the company away, and paid to hand it over so its mission could never be undone. It is the clearest proof that building for people and planet, not shareholders alone, is not soft. Over a long enough horizon, it wins.