High-speed winds and sideways rain swept through the courtyard of Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro. Participants received instructions to stay put.
This was both bad and good. It was bad because we were all stuck. At the same time, it was good, because at least we were stuck an hour before my keynote address.
We were at a climate conference in Brazil for the week, where I was due to present a speech on design thinking and leadership. This was something I took more as a suggestion than a mandate. My first slide featured a Mary Oliver quote on it that said, “There is only one question: how to love this world.”
The wind howled. One of the producers panicked. I had a well-designed deck to go along with my speech. But other than that, I felt good about going analog. The lights flickered on and off, and she turned to me to ask what we should do. Without hesitation, I said, “Let’s light candles.”
The pressure to produce more
Business beats to the drum of bigger, faster, forever more. We celebrate acceleration and treat slowness as failure. Leaders feel pressure to grow constantly, while professionals feel like they need to keep producing more to be seen as productive. Organizations are always trying to innovate to stay ahead.
The cost is showing up everywhere. Whether that’s burnout, loneliness, or a sense that we’ve optimized ourselves away from something essential.
In a world obsessed with more, the most radical act of leadership might be helping people remember.
The moment in Brazil played directly into this. We stripped away and got back to basics. Participants were sitting on the floor as the room glowed under candlelight, asking each other questions and writing poetry.
After the talk, I heard the following statements from multiple people: “Your talk helped me remember.”
What it means to help people remember
I’ve heard those words in the past after visioning sessions with CEOs, as a response to a brand video or campaign I’ve created, or setting a new corporate strategy. They didn’t say “You helped us evolve or level up.” They said, “You helped us remember.”
That’s the role of the artist, whether it be a painter, poet, or musician. They help people remember something. It might be their humanity, their shared experience, or that they’re not alone and there’s something we can aspire towards.
That logic also applies to businesses. Great businesses lead with humanity and help their teams align around core values. Leaders often have to tell stories that inspire an organization into the unknown, as well as slow down to listen to intuition rather than impulse.
So how do you help people remember? For me, the following practices have been particularly helpful.
1. Think like a poet
I pull concepts from poetry to teach leadership regularly. Keats’ negative capability refers to the ability to exist in uncertainty without having to reach for fact or reason. In business, it’s one of the most crucial skills today. Capturing certainty is like trying to hold wind in your hand. Leaders who thrive are those who can sit with discomfort and ambiguity without immediately reaching for a fix. They stay present, navigate anxiety with grace, and make grounded decisions.
William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” shows the power of dialectical leadership and holding opposing ideas at once. “Without contraries, there is no progression.” A good leader lives in the tension and helps find the synthesis.
2. Ask questions that invite thoughtful answers
Nothing slows us down better than asking a question that invites thoughtful answers. These are questions that hold the balance between aspirational and achievable. What do we need now? What assumptions are we carrying? Where do we see possibilities? A good question invites pause, participation, and honesty. And the best ones have a way of becoming a north star.
3. Find ways to create together
Those activities include sketching, writing, or building. Whatever gets people out of their heads and into their hands and hearts. The act of making is a form of remembering. It’s a right of being human.
4. Name what’s in the room
I’m talking about the unspoken thing. What do we still need to grieve? What’s getting in the way of us doing our best work? When you name the thing, it often dissolves. That’s the job of the artist, too.
5. Remember your why
Why are we doing this? What’s our joyful pursuit? What gets us out of bed in the morning? What would make us feel proud? We get so caught in the details of urgency that we forget the point of it all. When you remember your why, you don’t need motivation or inspiration to take action.
The storm eventually settled, and the electricity came back on. We used the projector but kept the candles lit.
That’s the balance I want for business. Not less ambition. Not slower growth for its own sake. But organizations that know how to return to themselves. Leaders who understand that before the next transformation, you have to help people remember why it matters in the first place.
Technology will keep accelerating, sometimes at a rate that humans aren’t able to keep up with.
Which means the human practices matter more. I’m not proposing nostalgia or an anti-progress agenda. I’m saying that as we advance, we need to anchor in our humanity. We need to lead in a way that helps others remember.
