“Everything You Say or Do Is an Intervention that Determines the Future of the Relationship”

―Edgar H. Schein, Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help

Much of my career grew from applying Schein’s academic and field work to help create the profession of Process Consulting. Inevitably, I quote him from time to time.

The Maestro level of leadership is not another leadership theory. It is the most adaptive, far-reaching expression of a person’s executive formation—the sophisticated and artful application of process guidance.

At this level, leaders move beyond the need to be the expert. They recognize that they may not be present to see the full fruit of what they have helped guide.

From this place, leaders suss out those they are developing rather than seeking attention or accolades for themselves. They release task responsibilities so they can remain available to resource those who are coming into their own. They attend carefully to “everything they say or do,” knowing that each action is itself an intervention.

The Sufi community describes a person’s learning reaching a special stage:

“…when the Seeker realizes that they are acquiring knowledge in a range beyond seeking and finding, or being sought.”

Christianity offers a related vision. Titus 2 repeatedly calls women and men, young and old, to grow into reverent sensibility—and calls those who are older to encourage those who are younger in that growth. This is impossible if our need to remain the expert leaves no room for another person to grow.

In this stage of leadership, I have come to understand my vocation differently. I am no longer trading on what I know, how I do it, or my need to demonstrate either. My vocation is to walk alongside others as they find their own place and space within their development. I now have the privilege of approaching others with love from a posture of learning, rather than with expectations of them from a posture of knowing.

Along the way, I am learning to distinguish among those who are growing into executive leadership, those who are pretending to grow, and those who believe they have arrived but clearly have not.

The table below maps seven postures according to what a person does, when they do it, and what follows. As we move down the table, we move toward greater maturity—both in our own development and in what we seek among successors who will steward a world our grandchildren’s grandchildren will inhabit.

Who are you developing toward Level 7?

-mark l vincent

P.S. Andrew Stern and myself are gathering the next Maestro-level Leader Cohort and we intend to start soon. Join us? Get started here.

Launching an enterprise in order to do good—

LLC, partnership, C, S, or B Corp, employee-owned, non-profit…whatever—

by definition requires trust in others and ongoing stewardship.

Fail to meet trust with trust and a benevolent spirit, and you fail from the start.

Along the way, you meet many people.

➪ Some pretenders drop words like ‘mission’ and ‘values’ into complete sentences, sounding impressive. Simon the Magician-ish, they want the secrets, not the stewardship.

➪ Others nakedly oppose, seeing you as a sucker in their binary world of people who are sheep or wolves. They choose wolf. If they find a way to take your scraps, they do so. When they say “winner takes all,” they mean ALL.

➪ A few nod in agreement with trust and stewardship values. They join if they sense safety and security. But they must find freedom from their self-imposed and powerful chains of scarcity thinking. It’s so hard to live as a free and abundant person!

➪ On occasion, because you keep on frog kissing, you meet another steward leader. They might not perfectly map capabilities to needed skills. Hire them anyway. Find a place for them. Put them in your circle. Snap them up before someone else does. They will more than make up for any on-paper deficits. This is one place where scarcity applies. Steward leaders are not abundant!

When largesse links to largesse within a community of steward leaders, a lasting good, true, and beautiful becomes possible.

-mark l vincent

Going Deeper: A Tale of Two Brians

The Sage Group Collective includes Brian Van de Water and Brian Hinton, both of whom cultivate leadership grounded in relentless stewardship. They do not assume people come to their work ready-made. They model executive leadership: in the business of developing talent, not just hiring previously developed talent that all too quickly is outdated.

Brian 1 - Brian Van de Water—As he develops talent and improves processes with his Clients, Brian embodies and imparts the principles of:

• People are your the important asset.

• Conduct with integrity.

• Utilize a team approach.

• Focus on fixing the problem, not the blame.

Brian 2 - Brian Hinton—Chief Human Resources at IEWC, an employee-owned global corporation recently named as a best place to work for its 5th consecutive year. 2026 also brought recognition to IEWC when it was named a Future 50 Company. Brian and his team developed multi-level personal and leadership development initiatives, both hand-selected and opt-in. Brian speaks of intentional people development as a necessity, not a perk for highly profitable companies.

For your Backpack: From Our Two Brians

When IEWC was named a top USA workplace for its Third Consecutive Year, Brian Hinton said the following in an IEWC press release: “We know a great culture is hard-won and easily lost. We are keenly aware that culture is a result of the decisions we make and the actions we take daily.” Consider pulling more IEWC press releases. Their approach to communications and public messaging requires no spin. This search will give you a lot to work with.

Brian Van de Water speaks frequently at industry conferences, often on the Lean approach and Lean Culture. In this article, he defines Lean as: “…not just individual tools or processes applied to one area of the business. When Lean Methodologies are automatically called upon to solve problems in any process used to get things done in your business, you are establishing Lean Culture.” Take more of Brian’s articles with you, which can be found here.

About the Sage Group Collective

*The Sage Group Collective is a curated circle of experienced executive leaders and facilitators designed for leaders facing complex, high-stakes decisions that benefit from disciplined peer wisdom and outside perspective.*

For leaders in their Second and Third Turn — especially Maestro-level leaders carrying questions of continuity, succession, enterprise value, and stewardship — the Collective provides focused Case Conversations that help clarify the real issue, widen the field of insight, and support better executive judgment.

Learn more:

• Sage Group Collective website

• Sage Group Collective on LinkedIn

“I was amazed at the effect of these two notes….”

-Ferdinand Ries, student, friend, and protegé of Beethoven

Ries recalls Beethoven insisting via correspondence that Ries go to the publishing house where a 41-page sonata was already engraved and ready to be printed, to ensure that these two additional notes were inserted just so. Beethoven wanted it done before the music was published and made available to musicians eager to rehearse and play what he composed next. There were no recording devices at this time, and no radios.

From what I know of Beethoven’s life and approach to the art of composition, it was not working from the original draft of the music that drove this tiny insertion, but from how the melody was continuing to play in his head. Especially known in his day for his ability to endlessly and entertainingly improvise, new and better knew no end in the Beethoven brain. There was always NEXT, and WHAT ELSE MAKES IT BETTER.

I’ve spent some hours debating with others whether titans like Beethoven, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, or Betty Friedan qualify as Maestro-level leaders. Those who are sure they are not might view such a person as “not nice” (often using much stronger descriptive terms), or as someone whose beliefs or cultural values are something to oppose. They mistreated people! They were far below mediocre as family members! They didn’t take care of themselves! They were cruel to friends and employees! Therefore, they should not be considered maestros.

I disagree. I think these arguments miss the point.

At the foundation of a Maestro-level Leader approach is the ability to focus, to tune out that which would otherwise distract, doing so in ways that change the world long after that person has passed off the scene. That level of focus helps a person see around corners in ways the rest of us cannot. It helps them bring something valuable to the larger world that receives benefit. They see two more beautiful, difference-making notes as the rest of us remain mediocre and satisfied, bringing little to nothing.

This profound ability brings a shadow with it, perhaps one where self-awareness or moral choices are not readily considered, and where relationships are too easily dismissed. It is an irony, isn’t it, that someone who can see so much and so far downstream cannot perceive what is nearby and also beautiful and useful?

I offer no excuse for cruelty or immorality. A talented person’s flaws should not be overlooked or excused; they can be overcome with the same level of striving focus that grips the genius to compose, design, or foster a movement. And with that focus, new virtues can be grown that further enhance that person’s contribution to the world.

Two examples:

• Steve Jobs is widely reported to have become kinder as his life neared its end. Perhaps we like his story even more as a result.

• Beethoven’s quick temper began to be matched with his readiness to admit he was wrong. We still listen to his music.

We tell their stories and recall their profound genius. And we are changed.

-mark l vincent

“Artifacts are not artificial. They are visible evidence of love for the mission.”

-Scott Curtis and Mark L. Vincent, in conversation

This week’s conversation with Scott Curtis, one of our cohort members, felt as if this letter was already being written as we talked. I scrapped my plans and tried to capture the essence.

We were talking about artifacts—not trinkets, not paper for paper’s sake, not another form to fill out so a consultant can say a process has been documented. We were talking about those tangible things that carry memory, focus, agreement, intention, and future value when the people involved cannot possibly hold it all in their minds at once.

And let’s be clear, we aren’t talking about everyone’s tech wearables or varied software that captures notes for them individually.

Artifacts are the agreed-upon record of processes and proceedings along the way. This thing we should consult to see where we came from, where we are, what we are learning, and where we are going next. That which we established as our collective reference point and guide. It needs its own seat in our meetings. If we do not have one, we go to our individual memories, and increasingly our individual notetakers, to try to get a replay because we didn’t form an agreed-upon artifact in the first place. And even if we did, we didn’t bring the artifact to the next meeting or review it to help us maintain focus at each succeeding step.

Artifacts are not artificial.

• They are how any love we have for what we are doing takes a shape others can see.

• Artifacts are the means by which wisdom becomes available after the meeting ends.

• They are how future value stops being a noble phrase and starts becoming something the enterprise can practice.

It’s not a new thing to point out that none of us is omniscient. We do not hold all of our knowledge in conscious awareness at all times. We need referents and guides to keep the main thing the main thing, or we can’t be as focused as we aspire to be.

This is not a small thing for Maestro-level Leaders. By the Third Turn, the leader has often carried an enterprise through years of intuition, sacrifice, judgment, improvisation, and care. Much of what matters most is known, and yet is not as visible as it needs to be. What matters most lives in the leader’s pattern recognition, in a seasoned pause before saying yes, in a question asked at just the right moment, in the way a board packet is read, a successor is encouraged, a risk is held, a Client relationship is protected, or a decision is delayed because the timing is not yet right. That kind of wisdom is real. It is also fragile if it never becomes an artifact.

A Maestro-level Leader’s work is not merely to remember what matters. It is to leave behind enough faithful evidence that others can keep learning from it, improving it, and carrying it forward. Most of all, they use it.

This is why we keep returning to four key elements:

1. The Maestro-level Leader Job Description

Not the job description someone handed you years ago. The one you must now write because your work has changed. The one that names what only you can do now, what you must stop doing, and what the enterprise needs from you in this season.

2. A Future Value Balance Sheet

Not merely a financial statement. A disciplined way to ask: What value are we creating now that will matter later? What is appreciating? What is depreciating? What is hidden, underdeveloped, or at risk? What capital will be needed now and in the future?

3. The Maestro-level Leader Map

Not a strategic plan. A pragmatic record of the path: what has been done, what is underway, what still needs attention, and what must be true if the next generation of leadership is going to inherit more than urgency.

4. A clear and focused Leadership Philosophy

Not a slogan. A usable articulation of how you lead, why you lead this way, what you believe about people and enterprise, and what others can expect when they take up responsibility alongside you.

All four of these Key Elements are artifacts.

• They provide a common frame of reference.

• Each holds a view to the future.

• Each invites a better conversation.

And this may be the deepest point Scott and I were circling: an artifact is not the end of a conversation. It is the beginning and continuation of a better one.

A useful artifact herds partial perspectives into a shared field of attention. It lets the founder, successor, board member, advisor, executive team, and stakeholder look at something together instead of merely looking at one another with private assumptions. It makes the invisible discussable and repeatedly so until it becomes part of our known knowns. It makes the implicit testable. It makes the future less abstract.

This is why artifacts matter so much in succession.

• Without them, due diligence becomes archeology.

• Without them, successors inherit folklore.

• Without them, boards mistake personality for continuity.

• Without them, the enterprise depends too heavily on the memory, charisma, stamina, or improvisational capacity of one person.

With them, the work becomes more generous.

Artifacts let us say to each other, over and over:

Here is what we have seen.

Here is what we have learned.

Here is what we have been carrying.

Here is what still needs wisdom.

Here is where we hope those who follow us will improve on what we began.

It is artifact, not artifice! It is stewardship. It is love for the enterprise and for the people who will carry it next.

So, what artifacts are you and your teams making?

What records are with you constantly, influencing your work, keeping you accountable to your agreed-upon process, helping others continue making better decisions when you or other leaders are not in the room?

You can’t always be in the room!

What conversation keeps recurring because there is no shared artifact to hold it?

And what one artifact, if drafted in the next thirty days, would increase trust, reduce confusion, and serve future value?

I’m being serious here.

Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.

-mark l vincent

This morning’s letter somehow disappeared from the drafts folder. Our apologies for the lateness of release.

“Artifacts are not artificial. They are visible evidence of love for the mission.”

-Scott Curtis and Mark L. Vincent, in conversation

This week’s conversation with Scott Curtis, one of our cohort members, felt as if this letter was already being written as we talked. I scrapped my plans and tried to capture the essence as quickly as I could.

We were talking about artifacts—not trinkets, not paper for paper’s sake, not another form to fill out so a consultant can say a process has been documented. We were talking about those tangible things that carry memory, focus, agreement, intention, and future value when the people involved cannot possibly hold it all in their minds at once.

And let’s be clear, we aren’t talking about everyone’s tech wearables or varied software that captures notes for them individually.

Artifacts are the agreed-upon record of processes and proceedings along the way. This thing we should consult to see where we came from, where we are, what we are learning, and where we are going next. That which we established as our collective reference point and guide. It needs its own seat in our meetings. If we do not have one, we go to our individual memories, and increasingly our individual notetakers, to try to get a replay because we didn’t form an agreed-upon artifact in the first place. And even if we did, we didn’t bring the artifact to the next meeting or review it to help us maintain focus at each succeeding step.

Artifacts are not artificial.

• They are how any love we have for what we are doing takes a shape others can see.

• Artifacts are the means by which wisdom becomes available after the meeting ends.

• They are how future value stops being a noble phrase and starts becoming something the enterprise can practice.

It’s not a new thing to point out that none of us is omniscient. We do not hold all of our knowledge in conscious awareness at all times. We need referents and guides to keep the main thing the main thing, or we can’t be as focused as we aspire to be.

This is not a small thing for Maestro-level Leaders. By the Third Turn, the leader has often carried an enterprise through years of intuition, sacrifice, judgment, improvisation, and care. Much of what matters most is known, and yet is not as visible as it needs to be. What matters most lives in the leader’s pattern recognition, in a seasoned pause before saying yes, in a question asked at just the right moment, in the way a board packet is read, a successor is encouraged, a risk is held, a Client relationship is protected, or a decision is delayed because the timing is not yet right. That kind of wisdom is real. It is also fragile if it never becomes an artifact.

A Maestro-level Leader’s work is not merely to remember what matters. It is to leave behind enough faithful evidence that others can keep learning from it, improving it, and carrying it forward. Most of all, they use it.

This is why we keep returning to four key elements:

1. The Maestro-level Leader Job Description

Not the job description someone handed you years ago. The one you must now write because your work has changed. The one that names what only you can do now, what you must stop doing, and what the enterprise needs from you in this season.

2. A Future Value Balance Sheet

Not merely a financial statement. A disciplined way to ask: What value are we creating now that will matter later? What is appreciating? What is depreciating? What is hidden, underdeveloped, or at risk? What capital will be needed now and in the future?

3. The Maestro-level Leader Map

Not a strategic plan. A pragmatic record of the path: what has been done, what is underway, what still needs attention, and what must be true if the next generation of leadership is going to inherit more than urgency.

4. A clear and focused Leadership Philosophy

Not a slogan. A usable articulation of how you lead, why you lead this way, what you believe about people and enterprise, and what others can expect when they take up responsibility alongside you.

All four of these Key Elements are artifacts.

• They provide a common frame of reference.

• Each holds a view to the future.

• Each invites a better conversation.

And this may be the deepest point Scott and I were circling: an artifact is not the end of a conversation. It is the beginning and continuation of a better one.

A useful artifact herds partial perspectives into a shared field of attention. It lets the founder, successor, board member, advisor, executive team, and stakeholder look at something together instead of merely looking at one another with private assumptions. It makes the invisible discussable and repeatedly so until it becomes part of our known knowns. It makes the implicit testable. It makes the future less abstract.

This is why artifacts matter so much in succession.

• Without them, due diligence becomes archeology.

• Without them, successors inherit folklore.

• Without them, boards mistake personality for continuity.

• Without them, the enterprise depends too heavily on the memory, charisma, stamina, or improvisational capacity of one person.

With them, the work becomes more generous.

Artifacts let us say to each other, over and over:

Here is what we have seen.

Here is what we have learned.

Here is what we have been carrying.

Here is what still needs wisdom.

Here is where we hope those who follow us will improve on what we began.

It is artifact, not artifice!

It is stewardship.

It is love for the enterprise and for the people who will carry it next.

So, what artifacts are you and your teams making?

What records are with you constantly, influencing your work, keeping you accountable to your agreed-upon process, helping others continue making better decisions when you or other leaders are not in the room? You can’t always be in the room!

What conversation keeps recurring because there is no shared artifact to hold it?

And what one artifact, if drafted in the next thirty days, would increase trust, reduce confusion, and serve future value?

I’m being serious here.

Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.

-mark l vincent

We are analog creatures in an increasingly digital world

The earth-wide tech overlay is getting denser.

Like a global chrysalis, we are apparently expected to enter from our carbon-based Anthropocene and emerge out of it into a silicon-based society.

Hybrid beings, if not entirely digitized.

Supposedly, digitized beings live forever.

Little room is being made for disagreement. It sounds assumed.

I disagree.

To “transform” ourselves, especially our consciousness, out of analog and organic existence to something made of digits and bytes, is an attempt to freeze ourselves in current space. It is an exercise of postponement, and it prevents emergence into deeper wisdom. Time that could have been given to reflection and preparation for what comes next becomes an expensive, intensive effort to delay suffering, one that prevents learning.

Consider the fireflies of Bali. They live an existence of six months to two years as larval beings before emerging into a mere three weeks as sacred light-bearing flying insects who shine, mate, and then return to earth as ashes and dust.

I write those words as a dust-being myself, one who wears tech, starting with my glasses. I use tech, including the keyboard on which I’m typing these thoughts. I also depend on tech, as without it Executive Thinking could not be distributed so widely.

But isn’t that the difference? Using tech, not changing into tech, not losing the beautiful anguish that is our human development process and missing out on the capabilities that come from it. Why limit ourselves by freezing the current moment and failing to emerge into the beautiful beyond?

It doesn’t work in enterprise: “We are set. Let’s keep it this way.”

Why pretend that it works with human existence?

-mark l vincent

Executive thoughts:

What are you seeking: freezing or emergence? Why?

Where are you seeing the temptation to remain as you are organizationally? Personally?

Go Deeper with the Collective:

Thinking deeply about AI and how it touches humans and human systems is something Dr. John Reynolds, a Founding Member of the Sage Group Collective, has been doing from the time Large Language Models were announced. Thankfully, he is writing for all our benefit.

His work on AI and board governance sets the stage for advisory study and conversation.

For your Backpack: Closing the Trust Gap

The Trust Circle: just released by Wiley, TedX Speaker, Founding Member and Case Conversation Facilitator, Daniel Hallak, connects the importance and power of lifelong development of trust to one’s network of relationships.

We know that leaders should not and do not lead alone. His clear outline and approachable material make leadership possible.

This volume is part of the larger set of books Wiley is developing on the subject of Trust, including Rob McKenna’s earlier release: Whole Leaders Wild Trust.

About the Sage Group Collective

*The Sage Group Collective is a curated circle of experienced executive leaders and facilitators designed for leaders facing complex, high-stakes decisions that benefit from disciplined peer wisdom and outside perspective.*

For leaders in their Second and Third Turn — especially Maestro-level leaders carrying questions of continuity, succession, enterprise value, and stewardship — the Collective provides focused Case Conversations that help clarify the real issue, widen the field of insight, and support better executive judgment.

Learn more:

• Sage Group Collective website

• Sage Group Collective on LinkedIn

“Let’s carry on together as best we can, us loners.”

-Yosca Maeda, whose pixel artistry can be viewed here.

I’ve not found many places that join me in comparing long-time, company-building executives to creatives—those who play a long game of focused attention and artistic result: sculptors, painters, makers, writers, architects, and of course, maestros. The comparison works, though.

• Even when surrounded by people, the maestro-level leader sits in an unshared seat, holding a vision others do not yet see, but which at some point must be appreciated. To develop and then to socialize vision requires enough space to be a loner among the marketplace that is served and the people gathered to serve it.

• Our Maestro-level Leaders cohorts bring together such loners to do their most important work visibly, beside others. If this is you, we provide the needed space for this work, alongside others who care about you and your path but are not personally invested in your outcomes.

Our collective experience across an increasing number of cohorts has strengthened the question we’ve learned to ask anyone who considers Maestro-level Leaders, then opts not to join:

What is it you will do?

Doing nothing, delaying, or hoping enterprise continuity and succession will take care of itself is a conscious choice. So is sculpting a vision.

-mark l vincent

“Ice cream cake.”

-Deanna Singh

I’ve been enjoying The Bridging Leader, written by the husband-and-wife team of Deanna Singh and Justin Ponder.

Just about the time I could assume I’ve read pretty much everything about facilitating complex decision making and have seen about every variation of human interaction in groups, someone comes out with additional insight, and I’m reminded that we are never done growing our skills.

A professional facilitator or systems convener, or an executive who gathers their teams to work through to operational excellence and pursuit of future value, is never done growing their skill. Justin and Deanna provide a resource worthy of frequent use.

A key insight grabbing my attention: the trap of binary thinking (p.89), commonly identified as “either-or.” Binary thinking is certain to undermine collaboration. Using the word “or” between two choices puts an artificial limit on the possibilities, especially early in the process of addressing an opportunity or challenge. The illustration they use is that of “ice cream or cake.” Which one will it be?

Saying “both” is resignation rather than entering into possibility thinking. Why not “ice cream cake?” Or why not cake with ice cream icing? Or what about blending this confection in front of those who now are eager to eat it, creating a culinary experience? The possibilities bloom when we say “and” rather than “or,” “what about?” rather than “we should.”

I can hear eyes rolling, and the voices that say “We have to take action. We can’t just sit around and dream all day!”

Friends, it is not either dream or take action. Rather, it is thinking of multiple possibilities and then choosing a prudent course.

Peace to all of you in the week ahead.

-mlv

P.S. I’m grateful that Deanna and Justin are part of The Sage Group Collective, our extensive group of experienced leaders available to gather around and wisely consider a transformational moment facing an enterprise. We call them “Case Conversations.”

P.P.S. We’ve begun gathering the next Maestro-level Leaders Cohort. I’ll be co-leading with my colleague, Andrew Stern. If this is for you or someone you know, let’s have a conversation.

Executive Thinking is the bi-weekly publication of The Sage Group Collective, a service of Maestro Suite Advisors. Each issue offers a brief executive reflection, followed by practical ways to go deeper.

7 Performative Statements | Getting Underneath Them

Have you had your fill of performativeness yet? I have an abundance of empathy for anyone who is putting on a smile and kindness over their fear and anxiety to make it through the day. But the empathy tank runs low for those who fake it to make it or dress for success, with nothing authentic or sincere under the gelled hair and feigned attentiveness.

It can be difficult to discern the difference and discover whether a person is able to lean into their learning and personal growth. It is important to do so when determining who is ready for executive leadership. And it is critical if that executive role puts them at the top of an enterprise.

Here are seven performative statements that keep showing up in my conversations with aspirants over the years, along with notes and questions I use to dig more deeply.

1. “I read the book.”

• Note: Did they say something specific about what they recall and how they applied it?

• Ask: I enjoyed the book also (if I actually read it myself). How are you putting to work what you learned from it?

2. “I’ve got this.”

• Note: Did they mention a clear and well-defined action step?

• Ask: I’m glad to hear your confidence. What will you do first?

3. “I won’t do what I don’t understand.”

• Note: This is usually false flag humility, a reactive diversion.

• Ask: It can be tough to embrace something unfamiliar. What would help you get curious about this?

4. “I’ve led large teams, spoken to global audiences, served thousands of clients, etc.”

• Note: They hope to make an impression from their past ahead of their current moment. No-one accomplishes any of this by themselves.

• Ask: That is a notable accomplishment. What sort of team supports you and what do they do?

5. “I don’t do business development.”

• Note: A diversion underneath a push-away, seemingly self-aware comment.

• Ask: We all are called upon to do things we don’t enjoy from time to time. Can you tell me a story of how you’ve overcome something you previously had an aversion to? Not that you learned to love it necessarily, but that you became a competent supporter of other people’s work.

6. “I want your job someday.”

• Note: Ambition yes. Sensitivity and awareness of the context, maybe not, especially if it is stepping on top of others.

• Ask: I’m glad you have aspirations for yourself and it seems you might have this mapped out in your mind. How does quality teamwork fit in with your plans?

7. “I went to (insert name of a prestigious school),” or, “I built (insert big accomplishment).”

• Note: This is another instance that relies on the past, not a current state that looks forward to future value.

• Ask: You do have a notable resume. What is it you most desire to learn in this season of your life and vocation?

Executive thoughts:

What other performative statements would you add? What response would you offer that goes beneath the façade to the person beneath the costume?

And... oohhh, this might be hard… how would we answer these questions ourselves?

-mark l vincent

Go Deeper with the Collective:

Assessments, well-chosen, are a way to get underneath the outer raiment.

Consider completing the short Third Turn Assessment. This is a significant tool of the Executive Advisors from Maestro Suite Advisors, many of whom are Founding Members and Members of the Sage Group Collective.

Don’t complete it just for yourself. Your team can complete it individually and together. Have the discussion about how you see yourselves as individuals and as a team. If useful, those Maestro Suite Executive Advisors are available to help guide that discussion.

For your Backpack: Closing the Trust Gap

Cory Scheer, a Member of the Sage Group Collective, offers a range of resources for new leaders seeking to develop and strengthen trust across the organization. Also useful for leaders who need to reset and rebuild trust after it breaks—perhaps after performativity was uncovered!

About the Sage Group Collective

*The Sage Group Collective is a curated circle of experienced executive leaders and facilitators designed for leaders facing complex, high-stakes decisions that benefit from disciplined peer wisdom and outside perspective.

For leaders in their Second and Third Turn — especially Maestro-level leaders carrying questions of continuity, succession, enterprise value, and stewardship — the Collective provides focused Case Conversations that help clarify the real issue, widen the field of insight, and support better executive judgment.

Learn more:

• Sage Group Collective website

• Sage Group Collective on LinkedIn

  

“We do the research and then draw…we spent more time researching than we did drawing.”

—Daisuke Tsutsumi, Academy Award-nominated animator.

You’ve set up dominoes to fall down and create an anticipated pattern. Or, maybe it was Legos, complex quilting, or ornate jigsaw puzzles that could capture your patient focus. Or, like me, your big physical projects tend toward Ikea furniture assembly.

Maybe it has been more monumental projects for you: a kit car, a self-designed and assembled sauna, maybe even a whole custom-built home.

The ones that have captured my imagination the most have been the occasional landscaping project, especially if it involves stacking stones for a wall or creating a well-organized wood pile.

You do not need my reminder that projects like these take more time to prep, organize, and build, even to maintain, than it does to enjoy the moment(s) once built. But perhaps you do need the reminder—I know I frequently do—that you have to love the time of researching, prepping, organizing, building, and maintaining just as much as the enjoyment of the finished product. You have to enjoy the process every bit as much, if not more, than the product.

The mission is not just to build. Neither is it just to enjoy what is built. The mission is to experience life in its fullest, especially that part—our specific vocation—to which we give ourselves for the good of the world.

Why and how else would we persist in our enterprise during the downs (not just the ups), the seeming failures and unheralded successes (not just accolades), the people who disappoint us or break trust (not just those who offer us praise and try to emulate us), or when we fail to hit projections (not just when we have excess)?

Leading at the Maestro level comes far more naturally when it is a passion project. Not a blind one, but one we live with wide-open eyes to help others spot theirs and join in to play their part.

- mark l. vincent

P.S. The website for Maestro Suite Advisors is growing into an ecosystem designed for frequent visiting. May I invite you to spend a few minutes poking around? Let me know what you think will make it better. www.maestrosuiteadvisors.com

With almost every letter, we open with a quote intended to stir our thinking as Maestro-level Leaders. Most often, it is a piece of ancient wisdom made applicable to this Third Turn of executive leadership.

Once in a while, however, it’s good to share quotes from the moment, insights from our Maestro-level Leaders Cohort participants. Here are three I’ve heard repeatedly, and again this past week, during meetings of our cohorts.

• We carry really special burdens.

  • Question: What would you name as your burdens?

• I’ve never started something big that I was not there to finish.

  • Question: Are you moving to a place where you can release? And if you are in the middle of a release, how is it going for you, and what do you most need?

• There is more mist to walk through in the Third Turn than in the first two, and the mist is more dense.

  • Question: Can you name the next stepping stone for you and what it takes for you to move there?

All of these grow from an underlying concept that describes the Third Turn of executive leadership: this is the most difficult work we will ever do.*

It takes all the skills we’ve accumulated—soft or hard—to see a successful succession through to the end. This is why it is so good for us not to go it alone, but to be in companionship with others who are on their own journey.

-mark l vincent

*We touch on these themes more deeply in this recent podcast I did with Dr. Mira Brancu.

With this issue, Executive Thinking becomes a bi-weekly voice for The Sage Group Collective, a service of Maestro Suite Advisors. Each issue will continue to offer a brief executive reflection, followed by practical ways to go deeper. By connecting it to The Sage Group Collective, we make this resource richer still.

Become the Room

Early in a long-serving executive’s life comes the knowing it is not important to have the answer first. Rather, it is to create the kind of room in which the right answer (for now) can appear.

It requires so much force to listen at this level, the level in which the architecture for what we will do…appears.

Sages know that presence is not a soft skill. Presence is an operating system.

It shapes what people risk saying. It helps truth arrive earlier than it might have.

It governs whether a successor grows more confident in their vulnerable curiosity or only learns to perform under a costume of certainty.

Executive presence also shapes whether a board becomes ceremonial or courageous.

An older form of executive strength was often built around decisiveness.

This newer, deeper form of presence does not abandon decisions, but is not trapped by them.

It can pause without losing authority. It can ask without surrendering judgment.

It can hold ambiguity without making everyone else carry the anxiety. Talk about the highest art form of leadership!

This is why leaders need more than advice. They need practiced companions who can help them see the system, name the real question, and enter the decision with a steadier mind.

Not because the leader is weak.

Because the moment matters.

And because leadership, at its highest level, is rarely a solo act.

This is why we built the Sage Group Collective.

-mark l vincent

Executive thoughts:

Before the next consequential meeting, ask:

1. What am I tempted to decide too quickly?

2. Whose voice is missing from the room?

3. What question, if asked well, would change the quality of the conversation?

Go deeper with the Collective:

This issue points toward the work of Sage Group Collective members who help leaders think beneath the presenting problem.

Featured Collective member: Kay Edwards

Core question: What does Kay help leaders see, decide, or practice?

Kay helps mission-driven leaders see their organizations, their constituents, and their markets more clearly, so they can lead with confidence.

For your Backpack:

Why this resource matters: Hunt With Your Pack explores why we build relationships, the role of relationship-building in an enterprise, and how to reap the benefits of relationship investments, just like we reap the benefits of our financial investments.

About the Sage Group Collective

*The Sage Group Collective is a curated circle of experienced executive leaders and facilitators designed for leaders facing complex, high-stakes decisions that benefit from disciplined peer wisdom and outside perspective.*

For leaders in their Second and Third Turn — especially Maestro-level leaders carrying questions of continuity, succession, enterprise value, and stewardship — the Collective provides focused Case Conversations that help clarify the real issue, widen the field of insight, and support better executive judgment.

Learn more:

• Sage Group Collective website

• Sage Group Collective on LinkedIn

“Your heart attaches again and again to objects. You have to know how to keep the connection with your origins.”

-Ilahi-Nama, a 12th-century Persian poem

Quiet discipline keeps leaders clear

We aren’t short on information. We’re short on space—space to hear what matters, name what’s true, and choose wisely, especially when we don’t have certainty. Interior clarity helps us face an exterior uncertainty that never disappears.

Silence and reflection are not mere “self-care.” For a steward leader, they are a strategic discipline—because judgment is not only a function of IQ, experience, or dashboards. Raw data rarely reveals what we should choose. Judgment depends on interior clarity. And we can’t get there unless we are silent enough to become a friend to our interior self, perhaps the richest data source of all.

When we lose that clarity, we don’t simply become tired; we become reactive. We default to the urgent. We confuse motion with progress. We make decisions that may look efficient in the press of details and tasks, but cost continuity over the long arc.

Why silence is strategic (not sentimental)

Silence does at least three things for an executive leader:

1. It restores proportion and perspective.

   When the noise drops, you can re-orient to what matters and according to your highest priorities.

   I’ve benefited so much in recent years by consistently asking myself: What do I want? What do I feel? What do I think? And are my answers aligned? Pick your highest stressor at the moment and give this exercise a go. You can feel your scattered perspective regathering and orienting you.

2. It exposes the real decision.

   Often the “decision” is not A vs. B—it’s what you’re avoiding to name: a value trade-off, a succession reality, a cultural fracture, a trust issue. Silence and perspective-gathering help you name the deeper issue beneath the presenting one.

3. It returns you to stewardship.

   Reflection re-centers you on what you are responsible for (and what you are not), and to what missional end.

Reflection is where better questions are born

The best leaders are not the ones with the fastest answers; they are the ones who keep asking better questions longer than everyone else.

Reflection strengthens that capacity. It helps you move from:

• “What should we do?” to “What matters most?”

• “What’s the plan?” to **“What is our process?”

• “What is my role?” to “Who will carry this forward after me?”

That last question matters more than most leaders admit. Continuity and succession are not add-ons; they are the true test of stewardship.

A simple practice (that doesn’t require a retreat)

If quiet thinking space has fled your life, here is a practice I often recommend because it’s realistic:

• Two periods per week, one hour each (calendar-protected, non-negotiable)

• No inputs or electronics (no email, news, podcasts, memos)

• One page of notes (by hand if possible)

• Close with one written sentence: “The next best step is…”

Do this for four weeks, and you will notice something: the work does not merely get “done.” It gets named.

The leadership question for this week

If silence is a strategic discipline, then the question is not whether you can “find time” for it. The question is:

What are you currently doing—every week—that is less important than your clarity?

Clarity is not a personal luxury for an executive leader. It is a fiduciary responsibility.

If you’d like, reply with one sentence about what’s currently noisier than it should be.

-mlv

“London’s Chelsea Physic Garden…had become one of the most celebrated and best-known medicinal plant spaces in the world.”

-Breathe Magazine, 12 December 2025

The organization that founded and supports London’s Chelsea Physic Garden is the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. What seem like stuffy titles stem from how long ago this pharmacology professional society was founded. When the Society established the garden in 1673, it was already more than 500 years old. Let that sink in.

Design Group International, the company I founded 26 years ago and stepped down from 8 years ago, ceased operations this week after the transition from the 2nd to the 3rd CEO proved unsuccessful. Even so, more than 80% of all U.S. companies close before the 26-year run we enjoyed. Let that sink in also!

We think it amazing for something to move to a second, third, or, very rarely, a fourth generation. Those of us living in the USA celebrated our country’s 250th birthday yesterday. But a thousand years of existence? How does that happen?

It is quite a feat for any of us to build something that outlives us. Perhaps we should ask why a person would even want to.

The answer is rooted in stewardship. Whatever we have is handed to us, and we will hand it off—either in better or worse shape—to the hands of others who will take their turn—building or destroying. Even entrepreneurs like myself who launch out and start something that did not exist before are drawing on the life experiences and education poured into us that we are now pouring into others. Waking up to this, we are able to conceive of what has outlived and will outlive us, and of our responsibility for its care.

This fall, I will speak at the 175th anniversary of an Illinois congregation. Several of the businesses represented among our CEO cohorts are at least 100 years old. It is common for our Maestro-level Leader participants to be second-generation leaders preparing to hand off stewardship to a third generation. Not all of these succession journeys are among family members either.

Working with so many organizations and their leaders across the years, I find anything that:

• lasts beyond a decade,

• is successfully handed off to a next leader,

• strengthens, renews, and extends its mission,

is the anomaly, the unicorn, that rare work of beauty expressed in vocation. It isn’t just that the leadership and mission are handed off from one person to another. It is that its culture spreads and becomes a valuable heritage that cannot easily be squelched.

• Spreading out rather than swelling up

• Cellular, and inter-related organizations and communities of practice rather than one big machine

• Organic more than mechanistic

• Permitted to leak out rather than controlled

This is what has powered the small, interrelated British professional society referenced above for a thousand years, drawing in many individuals and organizations, yet with a clearly defined purpose, guiding values, and service offerings.

It is a privilege to join with Sarah Harstad, Linda Milanowski-Westdorp, and Andrew Stern as we convene leaders of lasting missions into Maestro-level Leader Cohorts, all of whom are gathering in Minneapolis this week for our quarterly retreats. If there are going to be more such unicorns, more meaningful organizations that span the generations, their leaders need to gather and serve as a resource for each other.

-mlv

The more we uncover, the deeper the hole we dig.

The deeper the hole, the more we expose the roots.

Base of the tree alongside our baseness.

The more we cover up, the higher we pile the mound.

The higher that mound, the more rubble we’ve stuffed in.

Our refuse-filled monument, even though it glimmers.

We embed in holes and mounds, victims of them and contributors.

Our atoms come from and return to the roots and rubble of these systems.

We become new sources for our descendant’s lives, part of their glory and grime.

It requires discipline to deal with our leave-behinds,

turning holes into deposits of riches, turning mounds into life-giving mulch.

To turn all of this compost into something more useful, it must be tended and turned.

We invite younger and newer folks to join and consider alongside us,

as painful as it can be to hear their critique.

They easily see the crap we leave behind, the crap we consider trophies.

It is our willingness to consider alongside that opens the door.

Then those who are younger and newer can see their own hypocrisy far earlier,

more of us turning…turning the compost for the benefit of others.

It is in the long, disciplined conversations, over time,

that make for good soil,

and a civilization is built.

☑️

Going Deeper: The power of intergenerational conversation

In my backpack: Muskism: A guide for the perplexed

Slobodian and Tarnoff provide a journalist’s view of what formed and motivates Elon Musk, who has become someone influencing everyone on this planet. It is more of a long essay of explanation that became a short book.

What most troubled me was not the racism, the talk of techno-humans or colonizing Mars. It is the symbiosis with governments and the vast amounts of money that Musk (and other big corp leaders) taps to bolster a grand vision, something not available to the entrepreneur who wants to open a barber shop that serves their neighborhood. This is government welfare at an unprecedented level, and a reason why CEOs of the biggest companies pony up for front-row seats for inaugurations and MMA matches on the White House Lawn.

☑️

*Executive Thinking is written by a fallible human and published on LinkedIn and Substack by Maestro Suite Advisors.*

Visonary and Convener for Maestro Suite Advisors, Mark L. Vincent walks alongside international Executives in their complex opportunities and challenges. His book, The Maestro Effect: Future Value, Succession, and Legacy in Business, outlines the Maestro-level Leaders approach to succession.

Based in Boise and St. Louis and traveling frequently, he’s committed to building a better future for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. He’s often found in conversation with an enterprise leader at a coffee shop near you.

“Can’t do it. Don’t want to do it. Should not do it.”

—Don’t recall.

EOS is becoming so well known that many of us have learned GWC.

Get it.

Want it.

Capable of doing it.

The headlining quote above—where I first heard it, I don’t recall—is its opposite. I do know I heard my favorite EOS Implementer, David Bowman, say something similar.

Set side by side, I ask what is worse? To pretend you can, want, and are capable of doing something when you cannot? Or, refusing to believe in yourself and living without ambition? Both are inaccurate understandings of self. One person thinks of themselves more highly than they ought. The other is not thinking of themself as highly as they should.

The purpose of GWC is two-fold as I’ve come to understand it.

1️⃣ To make sure you have the right people in the right seats.

HINT: More often than not, the problem is with the seats, not the people. Leadership tends not to accept that the responsibility for getting the seats right rests with them. When that is the case, we make the problem worse by blaming the people in the ill-fitting seats.

2️⃣ To make sure there are NOT wrong people in the WRONG seats in the first place.

NOTE: Identifying this two-fold purpose is not just looking at the same door from two different sides.

ALSO NOTE: 2️⃣ is not dependent on 1️⃣.

As a Maestro-level Leader, you must come to terms with this important item:

People change. So do seats.

Because organizations are dynamic, we are always 1-2 decisions away from a seat becoming ill-fitting, or a person finding themselves in a role they did not sign up for. The right-fitting person at the moment and the right seat they sit in can change at any time and under many circumstances.

Some folks are very good at performing. So good, in fact, that they would pass their own lie-detector test, and they will find ways around your foolproof interview process.

• They so strongly believe they can do the job, or that they deserve the job, that they will come off as Getting it

• They are ever so earnest about Wanting it, at least as far as they understand it.

• They project their Capability.

Consider this Venn Diagram as a way of painting the issue:

Unless those who fill the seats are up to speed on what their roles are projected to become, their seats will be filled with a current operational mindset rather than what will be needed for strategic growth. You and they will think of the seat based on previously demonstrated competence rather than the competency that has to be developed. As soon as there is a shift, you will have both the wrong seat and the wrong person.

As one who helps to develop executive-level leaders—leaders who we hope will guide the organization- I am getting better at the discerning questions to ask:

-mlv

“I’m sad that we must guarantee a positive outcome before we take a risk to co-create for the future.”

-Rev. Deacon Diana Wheeler, Christ Cathedral, St. Louis

My wife and I were present for a sermon Rev. Wheeler brought to our St. Louis congregation. Her subject was primarily parenting, so you might want to expand your perspective on her words by rereading the above sentence yet again, and reflect on it in terms of child bearing and rearing, whether those children are yours or those of another family member or neighbor.

She ended the sermon with an even more direct challenge: “Act in such a way as to be a blessing to your children to strengthen them as they co-create with God and heal the world.” Not a small challenge to hear!

Reflecting on my own parenting of now-adults who are deep in their professional lives and families, I’m aware that parenting at this stage is about intentionally offering blessings if I’m going to be anything close to useful. They might not receive those blessings as I intend them. And they just might. The importance is that I offer them.

Shift your perspective now to the enterprise you’ve embraced and loved, and are now ever more intentionally elevating others into leadership. Or perhaps you’ve already done so and are moving into a life to go to.

Might it be that the offering of blessing is important here also?

Might successors not hear those blessings as we intend them? Might they overlook them altogether? We cannot control this. If we don’t offer them, no one receives them. And in offering them, we engage in the possibility yet again, that those who succeed us will bring more hope for the world of our grandchildren’s grandchildren.

-mlv

Note: Recent events have us gathering resources into what we are now calling Maestro Suite Advisors (www.maestrosuiteadvisors.com — the website is available but still being populated). I’d love for you to know about what we are doing. Please feel free to reach out and set a time for some virtual coffee.

My new email address is: mark@maestrosuiteadvisors.com - mlv

The work of Executive Advising puts me in touch with three groups of people:

1. those who own and govern the enterprise,

2. those who’ve served long in the C-Suite, and

3. those newly appointed to an executive role.

From many conversations with those getting started as executives, I can point to adjustments new executives must make to succeed.

RELATIONSHIPS—Potentially greater influence, yet fewer friends in the workplace. Information does not flow as freely and informally as it did before. The executive must attune to work relationships differently than before.

• Note: for more on attunement as an executive skill, see the work of my Sage Group Collective colleague, Thomas Jepson-Lay.

COMPENSATION—Compensation is now based on team execution and overall organizational performance, rather than personal contribution. The leader got to where they are after learning to trust themselves and their ability to learn and master their professional discipline. Now they must develop the team's ability to trust them and the organization.

• Note: for more on growing the wholeness of trust, see the work of some other Sage Group Collective colleagues, Corey Scheer and Daniel Hallak. See also the Wild Trust Platform.

COMPLEXITY—Previously, others managed the complexity and overlap between departments. Now it falls to the new leader to remove the obstacles. No one is coming to their rescue.

• Note: this primer on complexity at the executive level provides a discussion starter for an executive team.

OBSOLESCENCE—A particularly hard one to grasp and manage. Obsolescence names a process of being clear about what only you can do, and then figuring out how to replace yourself. The process started yesterday! One must come to terms with this fact. A successful career is not about getting the next promotion or holding on to the role one feels they have achieved. Rather, it is about lifelong learning, about believing that what is next will emerge in time. If a leader clings to what they have achieved, they choke the life out of past success and become obsolete even faster, to the quiet cheers of those waiting in the wings.

• Note: Andrew Stern’s most recent newsletter paints a portrait of how this gets done. Andrew is another of our Maestro Suite Advisors, co-facilitating the most recently launched Maestro-level Leaders cohort.

METRICS—An organization’s operational performance metrics come long after the metrics the executive needs to be tracking toward future value and the capital they will need to operate. They’ve spent their career reporting on the former, and gained little experience with the latter.

• Note: for more on this approach to metrics, consider this top-ranked video podcast , a conversation between Sage Group Collective Founding Member Dr. Mira Brancu and me.

LIMELIGHT—They need to answer: Who can make the reports that you are making at this time? Who do I need to raise up? When the light shines on the executive, they need to be seen asking questions rather than delivering information.

• Note: A quick summary on the importance of executive question asking from Forbes.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT—There is no “I have arrived.” Personal growth must continue, but the cost of doing so at the expense of others is higher than before. The temptation is so strong to either attract minions the leader wishes to control or to retreat behind a Teflon wall.

• Note: Former Borders bookstores CEO and current Executive Director of CLA, Tami Heim, joined me for a podcast a few years ago. We titled her interview Career Long Executive Leadership Development.

Identifying this list, the mind grasps for more information. What exactly does any one of these issues look like? What practical steps can a person take to solve for them? Each person lives them differently and in different contexts. For the moment, I’m pointing to the repeating statements I’m hearing and the ongoing need to work through them.

These issues aren’t going away. Hearing about them before becoming an executive offers a little preparation at the awareness level, but they must still be experienced, lived, and managed ever more effectively as one executes a vision toward future value (Remember: “execute” is the verb form of “executive”). These issues come with the new territory. The executive must learn their way through them.

As an Executive Advisor, I’m privileged to walk alongside executive leaders, no matter how long they’ve served in their roles, helping them reflect on and grow their skills while managing the unsolvable push-and-pull dynamics of moving forward into a future and inviting others to join them. ☑️

Going Deeper:

From Buddy to Boss: How to Navigate Workplace Friendships After a Promotion

From My Backpack: Green Arrow and Black Canary

I offer no defense in my choice to read this.

My inner adolescent remains in place, apparently.

Executive Thinking is written by a fallible human and published on LinkedIn and Substack by Maestro Suite Advisors.

Mark L. Vincent, an Executive Adviser and facilitation/organizational-systems practitioner, is a Founding Member of the Sage Group Collective. His international practice walks alongside Clients in their complex challenges—especially continuity and succession planning. His book, The Maestro Effect: Future Value, Succession, and Legacy in Business, outlines the Maestro-level Leaders approach to succession.

Based in Boise and St. Louis and traveling frequently, he’s committed to building a better future for our grandchildren’s grandchildren.

Please be sure to read to the end. We have news about the future of Maestro-level Leaders.

Read more

“The naked eye enables you to glean the most information—distance, depth, shape and so on.”

-Kibori-no-konno, woodcarving artist, noted for his realistic works

You might wish for a full cup of coffee and a journal nearby for this one…capturing your own reflections on this subject.

-1-

AI is pervasive, seeping in everywhere. Ir touches all four dimensions of existence and all four dimensions of business. Let’s review those dimensions:

Existence: the physical dimensions in which we live

• Width: The side-to-side dimension.

• Length / Depth: The front-to-back dimension.

• Height: The up-to-down dimension.

• Time: The concepts of space and time intertwine the first three into a single four-dimensional continuum.

Enterprise: the process dimensions by which we deliver value

• Organizations and people

• Information and technology

• Partners and suppliers

• Value streams and processes, again an intertwining of the first three into a continuum.

-2-

This intelligence that is artificial affects and will affect all of these dimensions. AI sends tentacles to all of dimensions, but resides in just one, the information and technology dimension of the enterprise.

Yes, it might drive machines that move around and drop off your food in the restaurant. It may monitor what you take off the shelves or put in your cart while you're in the store. And it already guides farm equipment as the farmer plants or waters crops. It will also collect information from all of the other dimensions as it receives and stores input from its programming. Its rapid analytics will lead to conclusions that might approximate human intuition, and it will do so from silicon 0s and 1s.

AI looks at one of Kibori-no-konno’s lifelike wooden sculptures and ANALYZES how he did it.

Humans run the other direction. We move simultaneously in all of these dimensions within the housing of a physical body, but we can essentially focus on just one task at a time. Me, for instance. I can’t type out this letter and sip coffee simultaneously. I can’t fully savor the taste of that coffee while remembering the next words in this sentence. Yet, I can fully give myself completely to something as a whole, then work back from it to comprehend. Then I can put those insights to new and even better uses.

A human perceives one of Kibori-no-konno’s sculptures and APPRECIATES how he did it.

Humans have the opportunity to marvel, to marinate, to revel, to offer gratitude, to have sudden inspiration ourselves, to be able to make something beautiful out of the whole of our body, all the way to the act of birthing something into being.

-3-

The difference between natural and artificially created intelligence is also marked because human life has four dimensions that AI does not possess.

Experience: the essence of humanness

• aspirations,

• emotions,

• thoughts about our emotions, which can result in new aspirations or emotions,

• sensations/behavior, yet another intertwining of the first three into a continuum of action-reflection.

Here, in these human, existential, and experiential dimensions, we find an “evolving interplay” between natural and artificial intelligences, the power to participate, and the possibility of new, multidimensional ways for humans to work together for mutual benefit. We can also just as easily and rapidly destroy civilization.

-4-

In one form or another, this is nothing new:

Technology that manufactures steel increases both food supply (via steel rather than wooden plows) and weaponry (via steel swords rather than wooden lances). A larger food supply grows alongside a greater capacity for pillaging.

Technology that helps us understand aerodynamics reduces transportation time (jet travel) just as much as it improves intercontinental missile distance and accuracy. We compressed distance, so global trade and widespread warfare became everyone’s neighbor.

And technology that helps us produce and recall knowledge to speed solutions for complex and seemingly impossible problems also brings irreplaceable harm to the environment, speeding the warming of the planet. We keep increasing the speed and scale of possibility and devastation.

-5-

Our grandchildren’s grandchildren will live their entire lives in a world of hybrid intelligence, some combination of natural and artificial. Perhaps this interplay will make the two forms far less distinguishable than they are now. And perhaps the artificial form will evolve into something no human can continue to supervise.

As a result, four dimensions for living with hybrid intelligence are beginning to be discussed.

• Awareness - Growing your deliberateness in your interaction with generative AI. Intention for how, when, and why you use it.

• Appreciation - Acknowledge the unique contributions that all forms of intelligence have in your life. Valuing their complementarity.

• Acceptance - Being conscious of the limitations. Grateful for the vastness of not knowing and not always needing to know.

• Accountability - Recognize that you remain responsible for the outcomes of whatever you feed your natural intelligence, your use of artificial intelligence, and the interplay between them.

It is good to talk about this with your families and in your work teams. As you do, you might take note that these interplaying dimensions are things humans can choose to do (or not).

We can preside over ourselves and our response to the world across all of these dimensions. And we should.