Russia’s Rassvet satellite internet network is expected to begin commercial service in 2027 as Moscow builds a Starlink alternative.
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Walmart CEO John Furner says wealthy customers are shopping at the budget grocery chain as high prices stretch family finances to a breaking point.
Even without a college degree, Costco CEO Ron Vachris rose from the warehouse floor to the corner office—guided by his father’s advice.
A couple of years ago, I started noticing a quiet anxiety beneath the surface of nearly every leadership conversation I was having. It wasn’t about talent pipelines or quarterly earnings. It was something more existential: the fear that in racing to adopt every new AI tool, organizations were inadvertently engineering the most human parts of their culture out of existence. The spreadsheets were getting smarter. The people felt less seen.
This tension sits at the heart of my new chapter, “Algorithms and Awe,” in the second edition of The Creativity Leap. What I’ve come to believe through years of working with executives, researchers, and entrepreneurs is that we are not living through a technology revolution. We are actually living through a human revolution. And the leaders who understand the difference will be the ones who define the next decade.
We are now in the imagination era
We have moved beyond the Information Age and are now firmly rooted in what I call the Imagination Era, a time when ideas and thinking differently are our primary currency. In this landscape, technology is not replacing our humanity; it is demanding that we deepen it. AI means nothing without your imagination. It is a starting point, a lever for building new possibilities, not an endpoint.
At the 2025 Adobe Summit, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen declared that “creativity is the new productivity.” I believe he’s right and the implications are profound! Success is no longer measured solely by speed or output. It is measured by our ability to forge emotional connections through imagination. The leaders who thrive won’t be those who automate the most. They’ll be those who imagine the best.
The ethics of ease
Every leap forward in technological convenience brings an ethical echo. I call our current moment the “Ethics of Ease”: the temptation to mistake creative convenience for creative progress. While technology’s promise is efficiency, creativity’s purpose remains meaning. And these two things are not the same.
This creates what I describe as a creative double bind: a simultaneous desire to embrace AI’s potential and a fear of being replaced by it. When we pursue ease without ethics, we erode the very wonder we seek to amplify. The antidote is what I call WonderRigor™: the alchemy that happens when technological innovation meets moral imagination. Wonder without rigor is fantasy. Rigor without wonder is bureaucracy. The sweet spot is where the most durable creative work gets done.
Trading fours with AI
The most useful metaphor I’ve found for describing the human-AI relationship is jazz: specifically, the practice of “trading fours,” in which musicians take turns improvising, four bars at a time. AI riffs, and we respond. We lead, and AI follows. Like great jazz, this collaboration requires a mastery of the rules, and the courage to bend them.
As machines handle the mechanical tasks of drafting and structuring, we reclaim the cognitive space to do what only humans can: make meaning, sense emotion, and weigh ethics. This reframing matters enormously for how we invest in our people and design our organizations. Instead of asking “How can AI make people more productive?” we must ask “How can AI help people flourish?” Flourishing means having the time to think deeply, move naturally, and rest intentionally… the three pillars of my MTR (Move. Think. Rest.) framework for human performance.
Awe is the competitive advantage you’re not tracking
AI is the new medium for knowledge work. But awe, that spark of curiosity and connection that stops you mid-sentence and makes you lean in, remains wholly human. You cannot automate wonder. You can only cultivate it or crowd it out.
Navigating the Imagination Era requires what I call the 3 I’s of creativity: inquiry, improvisation, and intuition. Together, they form our compass for deciding when to let algorithms lead and when to let human instinct steer. Inquiry keeps us asking better questions. Improvisation keeps us agile when the script runs out. Intuition gives us the pattern recognition that no training data can fully replicate.
Success in the Imagination Era will belong to those who practice wonder as their mindset and commit to rigor as their practice. These are not soft skills. They are strategic infrastructure.
You don’t adapt to the future. You compose it.
The leaders I most admire right now are not the ones who have the most sophisticated AI stack. They are the ones who have the clearest sense of what makes their organization irreducibly human, and who protect that fiercely while still embracing what technology makes possible.
When we pair the alchemy of algorithms with the discipline of awe, something remarkable happens. We don’t just adapt to the future, we compose it. We become the jazz musicians, not the backing track. We reclaim the creative agency that the industrial productivity model trained us to surrender.
The Imagination Era is not a threat to be managed. It is an invitation to lead differently, with more curiosity, more courage, and more wonder than we thought a business context could hold. The question is not whether you will respond to that invitation. The question is whether you will do so intentionally, or by default.
Adapted from The Creativity Leap (2nd edition, June 30, 2026)
Anthropic engineers are reportedly helping the NSA use Claude Mythos for cyber operations despite the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk label.
The post Anthropic’s Mythos AI Reportedly Enters NSA Offensive Cyber Planning appeared first on TechRepublic.
Old roles are evolving—and new ones are emerging.
It’s harder to get a Goldman Sachs internship than to get accepted into Harvard, MIT or Stanford.
Competence is one of the most rewarded qualities in the workplace—it earns trust, opens doors, and creates opportunities. When something important needs to get done, organizations naturally gravitate toward the people who have demonstrated that they can handle it.
For many high achievers, competence becomes a source of identity as much as a skill. They are the person who can step into a difficult conversation, untangle a messy problem, manage a crisis, or hold a complicated project together when everyone else is overwhelmed. Over time, others come to rely on them, and they come to rely on that role, too.
At first glance, this seems entirely positive. After all, most leadership advice focuses on how to become more capable, more effective, and more reliable.
Yet one of the patterns I encounter most frequently in my coaching practice is that some of the most successful professionals I work with have become trapped by the very qualities that helped them succeed.
Exhausted and resentful
Recently, I was speaking with a senior leader who felt exhausted and increasingly resentful. Her days were packed with meetings. She was routinely stepping into issues that belonged to her direct reports, taking responsibility for projects that should have been delegated, and fielding questions from colleagues who had learned that she would almost always provide an answer.
When I asked her why she continued to take on so much, she didn’t cite organizational expectations or unrealistic deadlines. Instead, she paused for a moment and said, “Honestly, I’m not sure I know how not to.”
That response has stayed with me because I hear versions of it all the time.
Boundary problem
The conversation is often framed as a boundary problem, and sometimes it is. But I think something deeper is happening as well. For many high achievers, competence stops being merely something they do and starts becoming who they are. The ability to solve problems, anticipate needs, and hold everything together becomes so central to their sense of self that stepping back can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.
Organizations reinforce this dynamic at every turn. The employee who always says yes is viewed as committed. The manager who absorbs additional responsibilities is praised for being a team player. The leader who remains calm under pressure becomes indispensable.
The rewards are real, which is why these patterns can be so difficult to recognize.
What often goes unnoticed is the cost. Teams become dependent on a single person, delegation suffers, opportunities for others to grow are limited, and the leader who once felt energized by being helpful begins to feel burdened by the weight of everyone else’s expectations.
The irony is that many people who struggle with over-functioning don’t actually want more responsibility. They simply have difficulty tolerating the discomfort that comes with relinquishing it.
A sense of certainty
Part of the challenge is that competence can serve purposes beyond performance. It can provide a sense of certainty in situations that feel ambiguous. It can offer reassurance when we feel insecure. It can create the comforting illusion that if we stay productive enough, useful enough, and needed enough, we can avoid some of the harder questions lurking beneath the surface.
Questions such as: Do I still want this role? Am I spending my time on work that matters to me? What would happen if I stopped being the person everyone relies on?
These are not easy questions, particularly for people who have spent years building successful careers. And because they are uncomfortable, it is often far easier to answer one more email, take on one more project, or solve one more problem than it is to sit with the uncertainty they create.
I’ve noticed this dynamic most often during periods of transition. A promotion, a career plateau, a leadership change, or even a milestone birthday can provoke a level of reflection that feels unfamiliar. Rather than engaging with that uncertainty directly, many people instinctively return to the strategy that has always worked: doing more.
An identity question
The difficulty, of course, is that productivity can solve a workload problem, but it cannot resolve an identity question.
This is especially relevant for leaders. Early career success is often driven by individual contribution. You become known for your expertise, your work ethic, and your ability to produce results. As responsibilities expand, however, leadership increasingly requires a different set of muscles. Success becomes less about what you can personally accomplish and more about your ability to create conditions in which other people can thrive.
That shift sounds straightforward in theory. In practice, it requires letting go of some of the very behaviors that were previously rewarded.
Delegating means accepting that someone else may approach a task differently than you would. Developing talent requires allowing people to struggle, make mistakes, and learn from them. Building a strong team means resisting the temptation to rescue others the moment things become difficult. None of that is particularly easy for people who have built their confidence around being the person with the answers.
The most effective leaders I know have not abandoned competence. They have simply developed a healthier relationship with it. They know they are capable, but they no longer feel compelled to demonstrate that capability at every opportunity. They understand that their value extends beyond their usefulness and that not every problem requires their intervention. That distinction may seem subtle, but it changes everything.
Because at a certain point in a career, the challenge is no longer becoming competent. The challenge is learning to recognize when competence has become a reflex rather than a choice.
A question I often pose to clients is this: If you stopped proving your usefulness for a week, what would feel most uncomfortable about that? The answer is rarely about work itself. More often, it reveals something about control, trust, identity, or self-worth.
And that is usually where the real work begins.
A room full of COOs was asked if they wanted the CEO job. Their hesitation said a lot.
We’ve built a workplace culture that rewards performance while ignoring the internal architecture needed to sustain it. That’s a problem—especially for your best people.
I spent nearly two decades as a sports agent, and here’s something…
