Embracing humility, making space, and creating a structure that aligns with strategy. Whether it be in the office or on the airplane headed to our next program, we’re always talking about the issues and trends that are shaping the way we learn as well as what interests each of us on the team. Read more below.
Real humility vs false confidence
Can we achieve better outcomes and long-term growth, not by acting with confidence, but by embracing uncertainty? Charles Marohn of Strong Towns, a community development group, argues the new film Pressure about General Eisenhower’s decisions in the lead up to D-Day elucidates this point with the disagreement between two meteorologists. One was “confident” while the other was humble and uncertain. Marohn believes true competence comes from recognizing the inherent uncertainty of complex systems and acting with humility, and though the author is writing for city planners, the message is appropriate for all. While slower and less dramatic, humility produces better long-term outcomes by focusing on learning, adaptation, and building capacity rather than chasing simple, often misleading, solutions. Start by admitting what you don’t know and build something great for the future.
Redesigning Work
Most conversations about AI in the workplace focus on speed, efficiency, and cost reduction, but Dr. Laura Weis, WPP’s head of human-AI strategy and transformation, thinks that’s exactly the wrong place to start. She believes AI gives businesses speed, but more importantly, it gives them space. Most leaders are squandering this space by automating what they already do instead of imagining what they couldn’t do before. The real opportunity isn’t compression of work, it’s expansion of it.
Weis offers six correctives for leaders who want to get this right.
- Integrate your people strategy with your AI strategy.
- Stop chasing efficiency as a differentiator.
- Set aside the time AI saves for genuine exploration.
- Redesign roles around what humans do that AI can’t: judgment, discernment, emotional intelligence.
- Fix your team culture before you scale AI, because the technology is an amplifier.
- Be ruthless about what you don’t automate, especially the tasks that give people a sense of craft and identity.
The companies that win with AI, Weis argues, won’t be the fastest adopters. They’ll be the deepest thinkers.
The Trillion-Dollar Grudge
In 1974, Jack Bogle, fired from the company he ran, did what any reasonable executive would do: built a new company designed to make zero profit, on purpose, forever. That tiny upstart was Vanguard, and a recent episode of the podcast Acquired tells the story of the indexing giant, which today manages over $10 trillion, owns roughly 10% of nearly every major U.S. corporation, and has saved investors more than half a trillion dollars in fees. The origin story is messier than the legend and worth listening to in full: part idealism, part revenge plot. Bogle realized that owning the average return, with near-zero fees, would outperform the vast majority of professionals charging 1–2% to try to beat it. But his genius wasn’t capitalizing on index investing, it was realizing that structure determines strategy. He didn’t build a company that promised to act in customers’ interests. He built one that was mathematically incapable of doing anything else.