Any period of meaningful change—including this one right here—is defined by its liminal space. Liminal comes from the Latin limen meaning threshold, the space between what used to be and what will come to be. It’s the uneasy transitional period within a relationship dissolving, an organization merging, a technology emerging, a regime changing. Right now, many of us are living inside several liminal spaces at once. We no longer recognize the world as it was, and we can’t yet see what shape it...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
I spent the first half of my career firefighting. Something would break, I’d fix it. Something would break again—usually in exactly the same way—and I’d fix it again. I thought speed was sophistication. I thought certainty was competence. It took me a long time to understand that I wasn’t solving problems; I was managing the most visible symptoms of complex systems I’d never sought to understand. Now look around. The systems we all depend on—organizational, political, economic, ecological—are...
2 months ago • 7 min read
She's a rising leader at a company you know well, whose products you use every day. She's been there the better part of a decade, and now she's done. "I can feel myself caring less and less," she told me this week. She's uncomfortable saying it—she's not the quiet-quitting type—but the vision she signed up for has been swallowed by her leaders' ambition. It's not enough for her anymore. In many ways, it's too much. Ambition is a tricky thing. It can be a motivating force, driving our growth,...
3 months ago • 7 min read
These are not business-as-usual times. And this is not a business-as-usual newsletter. Here, we know business doesn’t exist in its own hermetically sealed world. It is interdependent with—affected by and profoundly affecting—policy, culture, society, environment. The organizations we lead are not separate from the chaos and promise of this moment. They are of it. And yet, we see so many leaders trying to compartmentalize, heads down, hoping to ride out the turbulence by maintaining the status...
4 months ago • 7 min read
We got four inches of snowfall last night. As I walked Axl through the fluffy white morning, with powder underfoot and the lightest, dreamiest flurries dancing around us, I found myself marveling at the fact that the thick blanket covering everything in sight was created by the gathering and settling of one tiny snowflake after another. It seemed impossible. Magical. But I had to remind myself, this is the only way it ever happens. Out of current conditions, a new pattern arises. As it...
5 months ago • 4 min read
Happy Solstice. It may be the darkest day of the year (up here in the north anyway), but the solstice reminds us that the light is ready to return. To mark the occasion, here’s a little gift: The 2026 Leadership Intention workbook is here! Ready to find your 2026 intention? Grab the 2026 Leadership Intention Workbook and find the noble quality that wants to guide you—in leadership and in life—next year. I’ll share more in the January newsletter about why intentional practice is a gamechanger,...
5 months ago • 1 min read
It’s the most wonderful time of the year—time to reckon with darkness. The days are getting shorter and the nights are growing longer. My neighbors and I in the northern hemisphere are now living mostly in the dark, and as the solstice approaches I know it’s going to get darker before it gets lighter. And it’s been a dark year. More than 1 million people (and counting) were laid off in 2025, as economic inequality is at a record high. AI appears to be on an increasingly dystopian trajectory,...
6 months ago • 6 min read
Throughout this year, we've explored what it takes to lead in this stunningly complex and volatile moment—defining clarity, reframing confidence, and rewarding intrinsic motivation. Now, as year-end approaches, we turn our attention to results. The business world organizes its assessment apparatus around what's easily quantifiable. Billable hours. Revenue reports. Performance reviews. Returns on investments. Days in the office. But the leaders who are transforming their organizations into...
7 months ago • 6 min read
The ostrich burying his head in the sand. The chameleon changing her colors to fit in. The zebra who can’t change his stripes. The deer in headlights. The bull in the china shop, bucking around and breaking stuff. The seagull, overseeing from a distance before diving down just in time to be disruptive. Isn't it funny how we use these animal metaphors to capture our very human struggles with change? Especially because we have so much to learn from the natural world about how to navigate the...
8 months ago • 6 min read