Every year, I write down what I’ve learned, the small and big stuff. I try to pass along what I’ve learned to others, especially my nieces and nephews. Though they are teaching me so much now.

I shared one a few years ago, and it’s fun to look back.

Here’s my “Top 10” for this year:

1. Always carry lip balm: My nieces and I got some fancy ones in Paris at the local pharmacy this summer, but any will do.

2. Own a cozy blanket you love. I love Lola blankets. They make the reading experience even better.

3. Practice döstädning: One of the many Swedish rituals I have grown to love is döstädning, or "death cleaning." The premise is that less brings you joy. And the more you can throw away now, before you die, the easier it is going to be for your family. It’s based on Margareta Magnusson’s book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter.” I’ve donated and given away books, let go of that Burning Man bag of costumes, and every time I buy something new, I have to let something go.

4. Carry a notebook and pen: As I’m reading more, I’m writing more. And as I write more, I notice more. I’ve been somewhat obsessed with this topic this year and have written about it in many different ways. David Sedaris carries a notebook with him everywhere he goes because he says there are so many interesting things to see if we pay attention, and he needs to write them down to remember them all. I started carrying a notebook and pen with me everywhere I go now, too. And yes, your phone is fine to capture what you see, too, but writing it longhand captures it differently (see #10).

5. Drink a glass of water first thing in the morning: Mom told me to do this thirty years ago. I’m finally listening.

6. Manage what you consume, mentally and physically: Instead of binge-watching shows, I read a book. Instead of listening to NPR first thing in the morning, I turn on music, or nothing. Instead of a glass of wine, I have one of my husband’s non-alcoholic margaritas. And yes, I still eat processed foods, watch shows, and scroll too much on some platforms, but I’m doing it much more consciously now and enjoy the infrequency of these practices even more.

7. Read more: I wrote about this earlier this year. It has been a joyous ritual at the end of each day. Reading makes life more colorful, especially fiction. And I have embraced fiction full out. Elif Shafak, Turkey’s most widely read female writer, shared a beautiful idea in a conversation with David Perell that helped me reconcile the sense of indulgence I sometimes feel when reading fiction: “I think fiction is very interested in truth, and it does bring us closer to truth.” I have learned more about other cultures, perspectives, and my own sense of place because of the novels I have read.

8. Memorize a poem (start with a passage): I’m still working on this one. I love Rumi’s poem, “The Guest House,” but I’m starting small with a passage by David Whyte that is on the first page of my book, ReCulturing:

Often, in order to stay alive, we have to unmake a living in order to get back to living the life we wanted for ourselves. It is this cycle of making, disintegration, and remaking that is the hallmark of meaningful and creative work.

~David Whyte

9. Look up words you don’t know: I’ve started to do this more this year. It’s not ideal in the moment, but I’ve expanded my vocabulary and even started using some of the words in my writing and speaking. I’m especially intrigued by so many Latin phrases: tabula rasa means blank slate and terra Incognita means unknown land. The novels I’m reading incorporate these words so effortlessly in their stories. And yes, there is a theme to what I’m reading (!)

10. Write longhand: Write your thoughts, ideas, what you did yesterday, what you will do today. It’s a great exercise to do in the morning or in the evening. And, I’m a big fan of letters. Thank-you letters, birthday notes in cards, a “just saying hi” letter. It’s like getting a gift-wrapped gift instead of something in a gift bag. I appreciate both, but one is more special.

    My former high school music teacher, Mr. Witte, and I have been corresponding by letter and email over the past year. I love it. He taught me that when I pushed myself harder, I got more of what I was really trying to achieve. Memorizing the words, as hard as that was for me, allowed me to be more deeply in touch with the melody and connect with the audience. When I walked into his music room, I stopped worrying if my hair had enough hairspray (this was the eighties), and I smiled more freely. With our choir, Harmony, we had 33 women, all from different backgrounds, different ways of thinking, but we always came together when we sang. I was also privileged to have Mr. Witte sing at our wedding.

And one extra just because. This one is from Elif Shafak: “Next time you walk by a tree, try to slow down and listen.” Her short TED Talk about it is called "If Trees Could Speak," and it’s moving.

I’ll sign off as Mr. Witte did with me in one of his emails:

Be well, and remember what can take place after you count out “five, six, seven, eight.”

P.S.

• Rest in peace, Dolly. I didn’t realize how much Dolly contributed to the world in so many ways. Especially her commitment to children's reading, since her dad couldn’t read or write. Her Imagination Library donated over 300M free books to children, from birth to age 5. And the organization continues.

The room filled with a magical hum. Live conversations, laughter, an energy that wrapped around me the way my Lola blanket does every night. I knew I was in a room full of readers when I told my new friend sitting next to me that I had just finished The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, and she gently clarified that it came out last year. Then she recommended Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s memoir. A few seats away, my niece Marie’s new friend confessed that she wasn’t much of a reader because she only gets through 50 books a year.

We were all at Benaroya Hall in Seattle to see Ann Patchett talk about her new novel, Whistler. I loved the book. But what I loved more about it was something Marie and I both crave more of: no darkness, no scheming, no false premises. Clean, raw stories about family and how those relationships evolve over time. Sad, but in a tender way. Not about loss. More about acceptance and forgiveness. Being lost in figuring out what’s next.

And nothing about AI.

But AI is exactly why presence feels so urgent to me right now. The faster it moves into our days, the more I find myself asking what we’re at risk of losing, and what it takes to stay whole and human while we use it. How we actually integrate AI tools into our lives without losing our presence is a question I’m still living my way into, and one I’ll come back to in a future piece.

Ann Patchett calls herself a luddite. No phone. No email. No social media. Maybe that’s why she seems so present. Whoever is in front of her gets all of her: an interviewer, a bookstore customer, 2,200 fans. I feel it in every interview she has done, even in her TED Talk. I know what she gives up to get that presence: the convenience of a text instead of a call, the ease of looking something up instead of asking, the whole ambient hum of being reachable. I don’t want to give that up. I need my phone, my email, the tools I use to build, to write, and to stay connected to my friends and family. But it isn’t her luddism I want to copy; it’s the undivided attention it produces. I want the same presence she gives, even with a phone in my purse and Claude on my computer. I’m learning to get there through analog anchors, not through opting out. My friend, Cecily Mak, and fellow Substacker writes and speaks about how presence is a skill (more on that soon), and I agree with her. As that skill becomes scarcer and our attention becomes more divided, the people who have it and cultivate it stand out even more.

Presence isn’t new to me. I started reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s books on meditation in high school and listening to his audiotapes on my red shag carpet at night. I have been practicing meditation and being present for most of my life. Meditation teaches me how to come back to the moment, over and over, every time.

Ann Patchett’s mind must wander like anyone’s. She has concerns about keeping a bookstore alive, stress about launching a book. But her distractions come from the natural ebb and flow of everyday life instead of how many likes she got on LinkedIn or Instagram. In Man’s Search for Meaning, one of my favorite books, Viktor Frankl described an effortful kind of choosing, and Patchett’s calm seems to come to her more easily than that. She has admitted that she has always been a happy person with a calm demeanor. That kind of effortful choosing feels even harder for me, because I’m also integrating AI and other technology tools into my days.

My Alsos

I’ve spent my life holding two sides together:

the city girl who also likes to hike,

the published author and writer who also sends emails,

the book reader who also has to read Slack,

the meditator who also has to get stuff done.

I’ve spent my life adding ‘alsos’ — Slack, email, the tools before this one — (back to em dashes— I see you) and each time, I got to choose deliberately from the start, weighing what I was letting in before it reshaped how I lived and worked. AI broke that pattern instead of extending it. It moved faster than I could steer it, so the deliberateness came after the fact, not before.

But this one feels different.

It’s reshaping the tools I create with, not just the ones I communicate through.

It’s reshaping how I decide, how I communicate, and how I delegate. I see it up close in my coaching work. One executive I coach recently had to decide whether to hand a task off to an AI agent or to an employee who could use it as a learning moment, weighing the speed of getting it done against the slower, more human work of developing someone.

Instead of integration and building in more intentional practices, I found myself holding onto those practices more gently but more deliberately. There is always more to post, to like, to comment, to compare, so I opted out of that noise entirely, even as I stepped further into AI as a tool.

I stopped posting on LinkedIn because I didn’t have the capacity to read one more AI-written post with the words “here’s the piece I keep coming back to.” I went quiet here because, even after writing a book, even after years of writing on various platforms, there was so much noise that it was hard to listen to what I wanted to write.

I’ve been here before with big changes that have consumed me, and what always brings me back is analog practices. Every day since June 8, I’ve done morning pages, the practice from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, mixed with prompts from Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy. Three pens ran out of ink. Two notebooks filled up with cursive writing I can barely read myself. And my evenings are spent in Patchett’s fiction worlds.

So, alongside going deeper into AI than I ever have before, building agents and dashboards, learning how to put my code in the cloud with GitHub (thank you again, Helen, co-founder at WDAI), doing webinars on AI and leadership, my days are bookended with generative writing and voracious reading, and that practiced presence shows up with the people I love most. A few weeks ago, visiting family in Seattle, I got up before everyone else to do my morning pages, even before coffee was made. When I heard my niece’s little feet come running down the stairs, I felt a small rush of anticipation and gratitude that I was there, pen down, fully present, to watch her discover the joy of having peanut butter in her oatmeal for the very first time.

Undivided, In Practice

Since working more with AI throughout my day, I’ve had to get more deliberate about where I choose to practice undivided attention, not just where I avoid AI.

We’ve gone to the SF Symphony for years, but a few weeks ago we got last-minute tickets behind the orchestra. My phone was off and in my bag the whole night, not even checking during intermission. It turned out to be one of my favorite places I’ve ever sat and one of my all-time favorite symphony experiences. I could see the conductor’s eyes, the way she moved her baton, how she almost danced on the podium through Beethoven’s Ninth. That is what undivided attention looks like on a person.

I used to work my grocery list at the farmer’s market. Now I mostly leave my phone in the car, no list, no app, nothing to check. My friend Miguel lets his recipes evolve depending on the food he forages. He touches, smells, and tastes his way down the row, and he isn’t shy about it. I didn’t know tarragon smelled like anise or that the best part about celery was the leaves. Miguel ripped off a celery leaf and handed it to me to eat at one of the stands. “This is the best part,” he said.

As the interview was wrapping up, Ann asked her interviewer, Claire Dederer, to trade seats with her. Half the auditorium had spent the whole evening looking at her back. She wanted to give them her face.

Three Practices to Try this week:

1. What’s an errand that you do automatically? Grocery shopping, picking up your dog, your kids. Do it more intentionally this week. Take a different route, go to a different store, pick up items that aren’t on your list. Rip off a celery leaf and taste it.

2. When having a conversation with someone, don’t do anything else. No emptying the dishwasher, looking at your phone (put it away), or even driving. Look at the other person. Then reflect on how much more enjoyable that conversation was to both of you.

3. Read a page in a book. I didn’t say a whole book, or even a chapter. Just a page. Thanks, Glen, for this one. This is how I started reading again, one page at a time.

P.S.

• The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch just did an article called “The End of Reading is Here,” which reported that 51 percent of American adults didn’t read a single book last year. Attention is becoming the rarest thing we have, which is why I’ve become so joyously passionate about reading. It has made me a better thinker, writer, and human. It’s why I decided to start volunteering with the San Francisco FOG Readers program, a one-on-one tutoring program for San Francisco students in Grades 1-4. More to come on what I learn there, and if you’re in the Bay Area, will you join me?

• What’s after Stephen Colbert? I didn’t know what I was going to listen to at night after The Colbert Show went off the air, but I have been having a lot of fun listening to Ann Patchett’s interviews here and here, and also David Perrell’s podcast How I Write with guests like Anne Lamott, another one of my favorite authors (they are not all named Ann(e)). Michael Pollan recently shared with David that even after 40 years, it’s still hard to write. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it or aren’t good at it. I needed to hear that.

• Did you know Ann Patchett writes children’s books, too? They are brilliant stories, and the illustrations are beautiful. Worth a purchase.

• I’ve read 18 books so far this year. I’ll share more on what I’ve read, but my highlights have been: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (I was late to the party on that one, so grateful for my book club for suggesting); Whistler by Ann Patchett, of course; The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai; The Correspondent by Virgina Evans (but not just because it’s good writing. because this is her 8th novel I think? and the first one that has been a success. She never gave up writing in her closet every morning from 5-8); Kin by Tayari Jones

• Thank you for the great tool suggestion of Marker. The editing tips have already improved my writing craft.

• I bought a 1919 Royal antique typewriter (early birthday present!) Any suggestions for how to make sure I keep it in good shape for the next 100 years? I don’t plan on using it, even if Ann Patchett might suggest that (!) :)

  

I was craving real leadership.

• I wanted to see how a leader gracefully and lightly ends a chapter on his terms, even after being fired.

• I wanted to see how a leader stays present with someone, right up until that last interview with Paul McCartney.

• I wanted to see how a leader authentically acknowledges his team, family, and friends.

• I wanted to see how a leader reframes a shitty situation into a positive one, bringing gratitude, hope, and light to conversations that wanted to turn dark.

• I wanted to see how a leader feels joy, sadness, anger, and love at the same time.

Stephen Colbert made his last week his. On Tuesday, the show highlighted the “Worst Ever” moments. But really, it was about highlighting and recognizing his team. He had his staff in the audience that day, and some even came up on stage for an interview. Many of these people had been with Colbert for twenty years, starting with him at The Colbert Report. The way he knew everyone’s name, their partner’s name, and their kids’ names, remembering particular moments with each person and sharing them in detail was an act of love.

…remembering particular moments with each person and sharing them in detail was an act of love.

He also finally answered his own questionnaire. My favorite was when Evie, his wife, asked him what his favorite smell was. Of course, it was Evie post-shower, after she put that Kai rose body lotion on (that company is going to do well today). Also, that number he’s always asking guests to guess? Three. I knew it! Meryl Streep and Ethan Hawke were the only two people who guessed it.

I’ve been in that audience.

In the summer of 2017, my husband and I were living in NYC again. We had to be OK with being on camera if we sat in one of the first five rows. We were. I remember how Stephen Colbert stood in front of us. He opened his arms as he answered questions, he smiled, he laughed. This might have been his 450th show, but he brought the same energy to it as if it were his first. John Oliver was his guest that night, and I quietly told myself I wanted friendships like that. They admired and supported each other. They were serious about certain topics, going deep on politics and family, but also laughed at each other’s jokes.

Colbert’s pre-audience talk for his last show wasn’t just for the live audience this time. He also recorded it for the rest of the world to see.

“If you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears. I cannot adequately explain to you what the people who work here have done for each other and how much we mean to each other…We were here to feel the news with you.” And, of course, he included Louis Cato, his band leader, in this last conversation to ask him what this relationship with the audience was all about.

Louis described it as a “reciprocal emotional relationship.”

Colbert went on to say, “Have a good show, thanks for being here, and let’s do it, ya’ll.”

I’ll miss Stephen Colbert’s leadership, his levity, and the grace he brought to me every night as I watched him on YouTube while brushing my teeth.

The last song he sang with Paul McCartney was Hello/Goodbye. Perfect.

I’ve always had a philosophy that I never want to run away from something. Only to something. That’s what Colbert is doing. Also, I hate goodbyes.

Goodbye. Hello.

Starting again is the courageous act of reclamation. Reclaiming the practices that make up who we are. I just got back from a family trip to Paris, where I let go of the daily practices that define my days and identity. Workouts at the gym were replaced by morning walks to a local bakery for either a flaky croissant or a gooey pain au chocolat. Writing was replaced with turning off the alarm (that jet lag is real, going east). And tracking my macros, well, we were in Paris.

Starting again is the courageous act of reclamation

The one practice I didn’t let go of was noticing. Travel makes that one easier. It pushes out the expectations of the day we think we are supposed to be having. Instead of focusing on what our days were supposed to look like or the things we had to do, I tried to just practice noticing.

We didn’t go to the Louvre to see that famous smile (we had all done that before), or climb the Eiffel Tower (did that in our twenties), or take a cruise down the Seine River (sounded fun, but not in the rain…).

Paris, this time, was about the moments with family, discovering new things about the city, and each other. Here’s what noticing brought me:

• A beautiful Shabbat dinner with my niece’s family in a grand Parisian apartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower.

• Meeting Grandma-in-law Sidonie, who used to be a fashion shoe designer, and who delighted us by walking back and forth from her magic room, only to show us even more extravagant shoes and handbags she designed and still had in her closet. French and English conversations mixed with green satin sneakers, pink feather shoes (with a matching purse), and classic French heels. The ones I got to keep. Merci, Sidonie.

• The large pomegranates and vegetables at the farmer’s market, and how excited my husband was about every single one of them.

• The way Parisians sing Bonjour when you come into a new store, some even smiling.

• The families in the park playing card games, no iPhones in sight.

• The afternoon break in a French bistro with rain as background music, more bread and cheese, lattes, and champagne.

• And those French toy stores! More dresses, ice cream cone purses, and xylophones for my nieces.

• Meeting an old colleague and now, dear friend, who is a local, for a two-hour (or was it three?) late lunch at her favorite place.

It wasn’t perfect. There were many times when I forgot to notice and fell back into reactive expectations. But the joyful moments outnumbered the other ones because I kept practicing noticing.

Then I came home.

A full calendar, a full inbox, jetlagged, and the opportunity to start again.

I went to the gym (since I got up at 4!)

I ate my protein

I got good sleep

The client work I was grateful to have to do. The rest I chose.

I coach executives on building practices for a living. How organizations design them, sustain them, scale them. How leaders do this at the individual level, too. But this trip reminded me that the hardest part isn’t designing them. It’s choosing them again.

The hardest practice to start again was writing. The cursor was blinking harder than it normally is. I pulled up a blank Google doc and started typing. Nothing came at first. I didn’t know what I was going to write about, but it still felt good. Practices become who we are. I’m a writer, and writers write.

When practices don’t feel good in the moment, it’s not a reason to stop. It usually means the opposite. Keep going, keep starting. Keep noticing. Practices are how we become the person we said we wanted to be.

Practices are how we become the person we said we wanted to be

Travel empties the days. Coming home is where you decide how you want to fill them back up.

What are your practices that you keep coming back to?

For my fashion-forward readers, here’s a little collage with some of Sidonie Larizzi’s shoes (and feather handbag!)

I’m on the lookout online for more of her shoes!

“A good shop takes its direction from the existing space—where is the natural light, how does it change, what will it affect?” In the winter, the flat gray light gave us a lifeless appearance…by adding a very plain Italian desk lamp with a sixty-watt incandescent bulb, we looked suddenly quite alluring.”

He was how I pictured him, but even better. Of course, the glasses. And the formal dress, but the unexpected tie was also a signal of someone who takes their job seriously. I also appreciated his calm smile and his “everything is going to be alright” kind of presence that only someone living their true passion can embody.

“I love your book!” I exclaimed. Who doesn’t like to hear that? Peter was no exception. We connected immediately, as authors, bibliophiles, and aesthetes. My love for books, bookstores, and libraries comes from my mom. For good design, my dad. I recommitted to reading more intentionally last year, and that ritual has not only given me a joyous fulfillment I didn’t know I was craving, but also a renewed commitment to being an even better writer. I heard about Peter Miller’s store on a book podcast that reinforced the joy of reading books about places you are about to visit. A woman called into the podcast sharing her excitement about going to Seattle and meeting “the shopkeeper”. It was the best part of her trip to Seattle. I have always loved that idea, too, but haven’t been organized to execute that goal until I read Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s book, A Girl is a Body of Water, last year on my way to Uganda. It gave me a sense of place, a connection to that part of the world, and an understanding of the seemingly invisible rituals that come alive when you experience them “again” in the place you have read about.

I have been visiting Seattle for the past 20 years because many of my family members live there. But I had never heard of this bookstore before, so I was excited to experience it. We can experience new places that we have been to before hundreds of times.

“A shop must confirm you. And poke you. And help you. And listen. And suggest and keep you company. Praise your attention and urge that you give more attention. It is, in part, a metaphor, a wonderful shoeshine, a bright intricate scarf, a new notepad, and six ideas that you did not have before. It is a place that has what you have not seen, that has what you did not imagine, that has what you knew was true, that shows what you wanted and shows what you did now know.”

We continued to talk about music. We talked about our upcoming trip to Paris, so, of course, he showed my husband and me (and we had to buy) the latest Type 7 Travel Guide to Paris, featuring a curated selection of 200 locations. We also talked about our love for Tokyo and Jazz, so naturally, the Jazz Kissa book was something he had to show us, which started another conversation about our love for jazz and Tokyo. We saved that purchase for our next trip there. Then onto the notebooks and pens, of course. I like the blank-paged notebooks and the pens and pencils that help you write almost as well as you did in that 5th-grade cursive class. Since we were visiting our family and young nieces, I also had to buy the children’s Lamy pencil set to get them started early.

Peter danced, as all good leaders do. Other customers came into the store, and he tended to each one carefully, giving my husband and me room to browse on our own while still being present enough for us to ask him about anything at any time. The best leaders I know are shopkeepers. They curate, they observe, they design intentionally before people arrive, and stay present to what’s needed, what’s wanted, maybe even before people know themselves.

“A true shop has a life, a breath, a status, set not by algorithms, but by minds and hearts. And you know it.”

After piling up new books, notebooks, pens, and pencils, it was time to leave. I wanted to linger longer, but we had a ferry to catch. And I had finally sated my analog craving. Peter recommended the local radio station to listen to and a new lunch place by the ferry that has the best Italian sandwiches.

He signed the books and tucked them into a sleek sleeve for safe traveling. And, of course, he didn’t ask me if I wanted a bag.

“No more asking questions like, “Would you like a bag?” Enough of these questions, they are a tic, and a poke, and a poker, and all they signal is that you did not look and think at all, you just jabbered away. Look at the customer, at what they bought, and what they think…it will take but a moment. If they need more or less, then help. But asking, that is not helping.”

One more pencil—a Japanese pen by Koch-I-Noor that I had to buy after Peter suggested I try it. Feeling it glide across the paper, barely feeling its weight in my hand, yes. Free LED refills included.

“What is it that you want? You want to open a shop? What do you have? What do you know? Who would want to come to your shop? Why would they come? What would it look like? In the very end, make it a place that you want to go to. That is your best strength. It is all a lemonade stand. Signage, counter, product, price, presentation, construction, and heart.”

We can all be the shopkeeper. We need to keep fighting to find what we love, keep digging for what we’re good at, and keep building digitally, side by side with our

pencils and pens, our hardcover books, our blank notebooks,

and our jazz.

P.S.

• check out Peter Miller’s store in Seattle. Make sure you have time to linger, and find things you didn’t know you were looking for. He has three other books that I am in the middle of reading: How to Wash the Dishes, Five Ways to Cook Asparagus (and other recipes), and Lunch at the Shop: The Art and Practice of the Midday Meal

• This post, and all of my writing, is written by me, including the em dashes. :) I stopped using them for a while because they were signals of AI, but I’m taking them back, slowly. I use Claude Code to coach me to become a better writer. You can write in your own voice, and still use AI. You can choose editor personas to critique your writing, specifically to make suggestions and tell you what isn’t landing. Thanks to for reminding me of the value of these personas. I have three editor personas in my Claude Writing Project:

  • Ann Patchett — bestselling essayist and novelist, owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, and a badass woman I have recently discovered in the past few years. Her essay collections, These Precious Days and This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, are the standard for personal essays that find the universal inside the specific. I also love her fiction books and the way she brings us along with every detail. That’s the kind of storyteller I aspire to be. She reads for voice, scene, and emotional truth.

    • “What’s the scene? Where’s the human moment?”

  • Maya — a Series B SaaS CEO running a 1000-person company navigating AI integration. She has read more business books than she can count, including ReCulturing. She reads for utility, clarity, and whether she’d forward it to her executive team. She makes sure I don’t use cheesy cliches and that what I’m sharing is useful, actionable, and practical for a leader to use right away.

    • “What’s the Monday-morning application? Who is this actually for?”

  • Dorothy Wickenden — executive editor of The New Yorker for over 30 years. She reads for structure, precision, and to see whether every paragraph earns its place. I love the New Yorker. I used to read it when I was a New Yorker, then stopped for many years. I just picked it up again and relish event-free weekend afternoons when I can read long essays, learning new words and ways of expressing ideas along the way.

    • Dorothy: “What’s the single argument? Say it in one sentence.”

• I’ve been building and experimenting more with vibe coding. I am loving Lovable now. It’s changed a lot since I first tried using it 6 months ago. But here’s a reminder that with experimentation comes failing fast and learning faster, as my friend Humera says. I shut down my website for 24 hours after trying to change the DNS record to create a survey linked to my website. If you tried to find me this last week and it was down, now you know why. But, keep building, and let those mistakes fuel your learning so you can build better in the next round. More on this in future blog posts. My colleague, Rebecca, and I are running Collaborative AI workshops—we would love to work with you to develop AI projects as a team while also learning how to work with and lead through AI. DM me for more info.

• Get outside. Touch a Redwood tree. Our latest hike was in the Redwoods—a 30-minute drive from our house. Grateful.

  

I’m overwhelmed. I can’t keep up. I don’t know how to continue to learn beyond good prompting for myself, let alone how to help my team and organization. When am I supposed to be learning all of this and rethinking work when I’m in back-to-back meetings all day?

So, the good news is that we are not alone. The not so good news is that the pace and scale of AI change is not slowing down any time soon. The question is what we do with both of those truths.

My “twofer” this week of learning from and with others came from attending Charter’s Leading with AI Summit. It is always full of thought-provoking speakers and this year was no exception. What I found humbling and validating is that none of the speakers pretended to be an expert. Nobody knows what’s coming with AI. The models we just got familiar with last week have already evolved to be stronger this week. This is all coming fast and it’s hard to metabolize the pace and scale of these changes.

Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information, named the mood perfectly: paranoid exuberance. Exuberance is that overflowing, can’t-contain-it energy. That, combined with some paranoia running side by side, can make us feel the tension between the two, trying to acknowledge and manage both while we learn yet another AI tool.

I’ve called a similar feeling “scarcited,” being scared and excited at once. Physiologically, both feel the same, so why not just reframe how we’re feeling to be the “excited” part. I’m scarcited every time I step on stage to speak. But with public speaking, I know what’s on the other side. I’ve done it before. Paranoid exuberance is different. With AI, we don’t know what’s on the other side. We can’t picture the endpoint. We can’t even prepare for it the way we have prepared for big shifts before.

So, what do we do? Here's what I took away.

Building Exuberantly

Helen Kupp, Co-Founder and CEO of Women Defining AI, shared one of the best lines of the day: Stop using AI. Start building with it. Shift from “how do I use this tool?” to “how can I make this better?” and better, and better. She walked us through how she took a single problem, solved it, then kept going. And going again. Problem after problem, until she had a full workflow that saved her hours and is now repeatable for every cohort she runs in WDAI (an organization I recommend to every woman I know).

Helen shared her work with AI through one of the best ways to communicate shifts, the “from/to”:

• From one-off tools and processes to systems

• From repetition to automation

• From implicit thinking to explicit instructions

That last one, especially, is a skill that we have been refining for decades. So much of what makes a great leader, a great operator, a great manager lives in our head. The instincts, the pattern recognition, the “I just know.” AI forces us to codify it. To make the implicit explicit. And when you articulate your processes clearly, you can then delegate clearly to both humans and agents, which allows you to not just build it, but teach it, and scale it.

I’m experiencing this firsthand. A few weeks ago, I used Claude CoWork to build a weekly goals dashboard. It cut my time in half compared to the one I had been doing manually in Google Docs. This week, I moved that same dashboard into Claude Code and built an app that cut that time in half again. Each iteration forced me to get clearer about what I actually wanted, and each time the tool met me there. And I’m not doing this alone. I’m exchanging texts with former colleagues about whether we’re using Firebase for collaboration, sharing what’s working and what isn’t. The building is better when it’s social.

Hannah Pritchett, Chief People Officer at Anthropic, modeled this beautifully. When she couldn’t explain to her team what she wanted, she built a prototype to show them. They finally understood exactly what she wanted and were able to then build on her prototype. That’s the builder mindset in action. (Side note: Claude Code, Anthropic’s coding tool, started as an internal product. Someone inside the company built it because they needed it. That’s what high-agency cultures produce.)

AI is shrinking the distance between having an idea and making it real. You don’t need to be a coder. You need to be a builder. You need to make space to learn, experiment, fail, and sit with the discomfort of not knowing what you’re doing yet. Because if you are clear about what you want, you will get there. Maybe somewhere even better.

Leading Honestly

Brandon Sammut, Zapier’s Chief People and AI Transformation Officer, called for “intellectual honesty” in how we talk about AI transformation. Employees don’t just want the headline. They want to know what comes next. If this works, what changes? What does it mean for me? They want to see leaders show and share what they are learning in All Company meetings. But the real honesty happens in team meetings and 1:1s, where leaders can share what’s changing, what we know, and most importantly, what we don’t know.

Brandon was talking about honesty with AI. But for me, intellectual honesty goes further. It’s about admitting that most of what we’re trying to do with AI isn’t new. AI is just forcing us to finally implement it.

Jessica Swank, Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer at Box, put it simply: AI takes away the drudgery. And she's right. But eliminating drudgery so people can do meaningful work isn't a new idea. Neither is "manager as coach," team-based structures, collaborative pods organized around initiatives, breaking down silos. These are ideas we've been putting on slides, competency models, and strategy decks for years. We have automated a lot of work over the past 20 years, we have eliminated some processes altogether, we have streamlined our work. But AI is forcing us to do all of this at scale, as a system. Manager as coach, for example, has new meaning when AI tools are embedded in the flow of work, in Slack, in your project tools, handling the tasks managers used to spend their 1:1s tracking. Those conversations can shift even more from "what's the status" to "what are you learning and how can I help you grow?"

Donna Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Walmart, and Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn, landed in the same place: the middle manager isn't disappearing. It's becoming what it always should have been. Donna framed Walmart's approach as people-led, tech-powered, and backed it up with a challenge: companies have a responsibility to bring their people with them, not optimize them out. Upskill them. Redesign roles around them. Create new paths, instead of just eliminating old ones.

The real opportunity isn't the technology. It's what human skills can do with it. But that's only good news if we're honest about what's gotten in the way every time we've tried before. We rolled out technology changes without training people on how to use them. Or we relied on individual skills to cover the gaps rather than building systems to close them.

Anthropic’s Hannah Pritchett shared another insight that I think is under-appreciated: her team tried enabling peer feedback requests through Claude, and it didn’t gain traction. Why? Because it didn’t align with existing social norms. The tech was fine. The culture wasn’t ready. Technology has to fit culture, not the other way around.

AI adoption isn't a technology problem. It's a management and culture problem. Brandon's version of intellectual honesty is building in public, showing your work, sharing what you're learning as you go. Mine is admitting that most of what we're trying to do isn't new, and that we haven't fully leveraged the tools to build the entire system that's needed. Both are needed. You can have the best tools in the world. But if leaders aren't building in public, if employees don't feel safe to experiment, if teams aren't sharing what's working and what isn't, nothing will change. We'll just be paying for very expensive technology licenses hoping that usage will go up next month.

Choosing Both

There’s a growing conversation about staying human in the age of AI. And it’s important. But I think we’re only talking about half of it. The conversation is usually framed as a counterweight: don’t forget the human side. As if building with AI and being deeply human are in competition. They’re not. In fact, our ability to hold both at the same time may be the most human thing about us. We can sit with contradictions, hold polarities, feel the anxiety and the exuberance simultaneously in ways our digital tools can’t. That’s not a limitation to protect. It’s a strength to leverage.

The conversation is usually framed as a counterweight: don’t forget the human side. As if building with AI and being deeply human are in competition. They’re not. In fact, our ability to hold both at the same time may be the most human thing about us.

The anxiety between sessions wasn’t a sign that people aren’t ready. It’s a sign we know the stakes.

I’m feeling this daily. The pressure to keep up, to stay ahead. But I’m also forcing myself to have humanly delicious moments in between those pressures. Sitting next to my friend and former colleague, Lynee, in the front row of the conference, I was struck by how comforting that felt. Being able to look over with a smile when a provocative statement landed, or when someone said something we had talked about before and our eyes met to validate it. Feeling her energy and the energy in the room, nodding at the same moments. Having the 1:1 conversations about life transitions, these are experiences that require presence more than good prompts.

I'm building apps, I'm listening to my fav AI experts like @nate.b.jones and @hardfork, I’m collaborating with colleagues.

I'm also meeting with friends IRL instead of sending another text and taking that long beach hike to Black Sands Beach with my husband.

We're building our digital system and our human system at the same time. That tension creates anxiety, but it can also create exuberance. The goal isn't to eliminate the anxiety. It's to not freeze from it. To keep going with others, choosing practices that feed both systems, intentionally, together.

And then, the shift. The freedom we felt being in a conversation uninterrupted by slacks, texts, or calendar notifications. The joy that comes from single-tasking and being present. That’s how I felt this past Tuesday morning when I sat down to work on a new AI workshop I am building with a colleague (more on that soon), and decided not to work with AI to do it.

Getting better at AI isn’t just about learning the tools. It’s about strengthening what you bring to them.

Most of you know by now that I’m far from an AI skeptic. I’ve been a consistent AI user since these tools came into our lives, and have been learning and using them more over the last six months. I use AI to outline major projects, build simple apps, edit my writing, and I recently redesigned my entire end-of-week workflow with it. AI is part of my life now, the same way my phone is. That’s what made this moment feel like something. It also taught me something I wasn’t expecting about what it actually takes to get better with AI.

Writing on a Blank Page Again

My colleague and I had been working through the workshop content together in Claude. We had a general outline, but we were still circling around the core of what we wanted to say. We kept getting stuck, ending with the same next action: “let’s work on this more and do another zoom call in a few days.” So instead of feeding AI more examples and prompting it with more questions, I went back to the blank page. Just a cursor blinking, daring me to write something meaningful.

I wrote for an hour and I noticed that I was thinking slower, and more like a designer than a marketer. Instead of writing about the workshop, I found myself writing to the people we think need it most. It became less of a pitch and more of a letter. Less marketing, more me. I shared it with my colleague before I ran it past Claude for feedback. That ordering felt important: share my thinking first, then bring back the tools to refine, delete, and edit. We both felt great about how the content represented us, not the AI-version of us. We’d been stuck for two weeks. That one hour of working without AI broke it open.

This experience took me back to writing my book, before AI existed in this way. I remember those mornings, three hours at a time, working from “prompts” my editor gave me. These were the “OG prompts”, created with comments in the margins of a manuscript and could be found in between the bloodbath of red-colored font edits. The writing was hard most days. I’d stare at that cursor worried that what I was about to write had already been said, or that my story wasn’t clear enough, or that I shouldn’t share it at all. But over time, more writing sessions became enjoyable, even joyful, than drudgery. The joy came from knowing that the story was mine, written in my style, even with those edits.

Several friends who are writing books have told me they wish they’d written theirs before these AI tools existed. It can be hard to keep finding your voice in the noise of AI. I’m grateful I wrote mine when I did, because that process built something in me that I now bring to all of my writing and every AI interaction.

(Also, I could use those em dashes freely—I used to use them a lot before they became signals of inauthentic writing.)

I know what my own thinking sounds like. I know when an idea is mine. I didn't blindly accept every edit my editor made, and I don't blindly accept what AI suggests either. That took time and a lot of bad drafts.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: getting better at AI isn’t just about learning the tools. It’s about strengthening what you bring to them.

Free Weights Vs. Machines

Think of it like the difference between free weights and machines at the gym. Machines let you isolate a muscle and move more weight than you probably could on your own. You get the reps in, and you build strength. But free weights force you to engage your entire body. As my friend Alisa, a bodybuilder (among many other expressions in her life), says, when you’re doing a shoulder exercise, you’re also engaging your core muscles, even your legs, so you don’t get injured.

AI is the machine. Your own thinking is the free weight. You need both. If you only ever use the machine, you don’t develop the form: the judgment, the instinct, the understanding of what’s right for your voice and your style. Machines help you lift more. Free weights help you lift better.

Writing with Claude

I’ve started treating AI the way I eventually learned to treat my phone. I write full drafts before I bring AI in. I’ve trained it to ask me questions before responding, so I’m forced to clarify my “so what?” before going further. When I do work with Claude, we’ve agreed on a format: making sure the opening and the core argument are clear before we start refining. I create the outline, then we build together. Just like I trained myself not to put my phone on the table during a meal. Just like I turned off notifications and started taking a digital shabbat on Saturdays.

I didn’t stop using my phone. I just got intentional about when and how I use it. I’m learning to do the same with AI. I’m not using it less, but I’m bringing more of myself to it when I do.

One Thing to Try

If you want to test this for yourself, try one thing this week: before your next AI-assisted project, spend 30 minutes writing what you actually want to say before you open the tool. Don’t outline. Don’t bullet point. Write to the person you’re trying to reach, like a letter. Then bring AI in. What did you notice?

P.S.

1. My new website is up! Please check it out. It will continue to evolve, because I’m a perfectionist, but the core offerings are there for individuals, teams, and organizations. I will also be sharing more about a Collaborative AI offering that my colleague, Rebecca, and I have created soon. We are looking for some great teams for a pilot.

2. I have been having a lot of fun buying more local, shopping less online with big brand names. Buying my books at local bookstores as well as Parnassus Books in Nashville, and ordering products directly from their site. I am really proud of my nephew, Seth, who created his own hot sauce business. If you are a hot sauce lover and want to support a hard-working entrepreneur, please buy some sauce from his site, Wahlton Saus and tell him I sent you. Thanks for your support.

After working through the 84 pages, I was struck by how human it felt.

This document was created for a bot to work better with humans, but it read more like a leadership philosophy than a technical spec. It was written with great care and concern for humanity. It was thoughtful, collaborative, and humble. It was refreshing and hopeful.

It was the kind of document I want for all employees. Not one that has to lay out in detail how to act in 23,000 words, because, well, we aren’t machines and we can get it in a few pages. But one that explicitly describes the intention of the leader/employee relationship. One that lays out the social contract between the organization and the new hire.

Many of the issues I'm working on with leaders right now aren't just about getting more from technology. They're the ones that have always gotten in the way of good work, only now they are amplified with AI. We are working through identifying underlying assumptions that get in the way of decision making, or clarifying what outcomes they're going after, because everyone is working toward a different one. Leaders are layering in more technology on top of already challenging dynamics, and it's causing even more swirl in the system, fear in employees, and frustration with leaders.

And here's the irony: while we aren’t getting better at being clear about how to work together effectively, we are getting better at training our bots. Giving them context, teaching them our style, telling them what we want. But I'm not seeing the same intentionality when it comes to how leaders set expectations with their teams. We're getting clearer with AI. We're not getting clearer with each other.

Amanda Askell, the primary author of the constitution, and other Anthropic leaders, got a lot right with this document. I, of course, was reading it through the lens of culture change and leadership effectiveness, so it reinforced some of the basic principles that are even more important now in our human to AI and human to human work experiences.

We need to be more clear about what we expect from our employees. Do we want them to use our AI tools? If so, what for? Are they going to lose their jobs if they do? What benefit will it be to them? How are we helping them develop new skills? Get promoted? We are living “junk in, junk out” every day. If we prompt our AI with an unclear question, we will get unclear answers. If we aren’t clear about what we want from our AI, it will come back with four additional questions. We have to be as clear with each other as our AIs are demanding from us. That means not just understanding what has to be done, but how to get it done in a way that works for each other and the organization.

The Claude constitution also reminded me of the power of internal and external alignment. Anthropic’s seven values are complementary to the four principles of it’s product. If how we work with each other internally is similar to how we work with customers, that makes for an easier environment to get things done, to build trust, to move faster.

And the third learning that stuck out was the one around the ability to evolve and change as we grow and scale. I had the opportunity to talk with some MBAs at Wharton last week about culture and scaling. I shared stories of how we did this well at Twitter and Adobe, and not so well at WeWork. When strategy changes, culture has to change too. Anthropic called this out in the constitution. It’s a living document that will continue to evolve. Do we spend enough time with our employees talking about ways in which we need to evolve how we work together as we get bigger?

Reading the Claude constitution through my lens of culture change, three things stood out:

1. The clearer the expectations, the more freedom people (and machines!) have to use judgment

2. What you believe internally is ideally visible in what you build externally

3. When technology changes, culture has to change with it

1) The clearer the expectations, the more freedom people have to use judgment

The classic tension from design thinking is the paradox I’ve been grappling with my entire career: How do you provide enough constraints to give people freedom to act within those constraints?

We know that total freedom leads to decision paralysis, endless divergent thinking (ask the teams I’ve led), and unfocused ideas that lead to nowhere. Constraints allow us to better understand what is expected from each other. They allow for that divergent thinking to converge into the next decision and the next action.

That’s what clarifying systems and cultures do. The leaders of those systems are clear about what they’re working on, why they’re doing it, and how to do it. Ideally, these behaviors show up in hiring and performance reviews so the standard of expectations is consistent. Employees start to trust the system because they see a direct link between what’s said and what’s done at the company. That person was hired because of their expertise and experience, and also because they complement our culture. They complement how we can best work together as we grow.

That’s what Anthropic is doing with the constitution. While humans thankfully don’t need 23,000 words of clarification, they do need stories, examples, and reinforcement of how those behaviors play out. It’s not about getting the behavior perfectly right. It’s about giving as much guidance and clarity as possible so that they can make their best judgment in all contexts and situations.

As an example, at Udemy, we had 'Always Learning' as a value with a behavior of 'Engage in Constructive Debate.' Did we expect every meeting to be a debate? No. Did we push for debate when it wasn't needed? No. But when it came time to give feedback and review an employee, that was part of what we discussed because it was already part of the contract we made with the employee. This is what we expected. This is how we expected it to be delivered. And here are examples of when you did this well, and opportunities to do it better, or more. The behavior showed up differently across functions and levels, but the fundamental spirit of learning and debating was codified across the company, both formally and informally.

The constitution describes this tension in building the constitution as “less like a cage and more like a trellis: something that provides structure and support while leaving room for organic growth.”

So what does the trellis look like? Four core values, in priority order:

1. Broadly safe

2. Broadly ethical

3. Compliant with Anthropic’s guidelines

4. Genuinely helpful

Safety is first for a reason. Anthropic acknowledges that AI training is still imperfect and it will get things wrong, just like humans. Putting safety first means they can course correct. As the constitution states: “It’s important for humans to be able to identify and correct any such issues before they proliferate or have a negative impact on the world.”

Each one of these has its own section in the constitution, so I’m not going to go into detail for each one. But there is a lot of thought put into both the constraints and what is expected from Claude. The constitution also refers to employees at Anthropic as a reference to doing the right thing: “imagine how a thoughtful senior Anthropic employee—someone who cares deeply about doing the right thing, who also wants Claude to be genuinely helpful—might react.”

Anthropic was incredibly intentional about how they want their AI to behave. How might we be more intentional about how we want our employees to behave? How we want to work with each other? This is even more important now as we bring AI into the team dynamic.

2) What you believe internally is ideally visible in what you build externally

Of course humans don’t need an 84-page document, but we still need clarity on how to work together. What makes that clarity even more powerful is when we treat our customers the same way we treat each other internally.

I still remember a moment at Adobe when this clicked. We were doing focus groups on our values and behaviors (our third time doing it as a company). At the same time, Marketing was doing a similar analysis with customers. They were trying to understand how customers viewed us so we could amplify those behaviors with customer-facing employees. We came to a meeting to compare notes: what we heard from employees, what they heard from customers.

We were pleasantly surprised when we realized that they were essentially the same. Employees told us that the culture was “genuine, innovative, involved, and exceptional”. Customers said the same thing with slightly different words. We ended up with one aligned document for both employees and customers.

What do we gain from aligning how we are inside a company to how we are with our customers? In my experience, and working with many leaders who have worked to do the same in their companies, employees become ambassadors. They believe in what they’re building because they experience it themselves. Customers trust you faster. What you say and what you do are the same thing. Decision-making gets easier. Everyone knows what you stand for, whether you’re talking about how to evolve the performance management process or making Opus 4 better.

I’ve seen this play out with other companies, too. One healthcare company, Function Health, has a mission to help members “live 100 healthy years.” But leadership doesn’t treat it as a tagline. They frame it as a “promise” employees make to members. They reinforce it by sharing stories of employees who have faced their own health challenges and experienced healthcare’s shortcomings. They also integrate the commitment to health, wellbeing, and precision into how they work with each other.

Anthropic built this same alignment into their constitution. While not the exact same words, the values they expect from employees are complementary to what they built into Claude. I asked Claude to help me pull this table to show the connection:

If your customers described your company, would it sound like how your employees describe it?

3) When technology changes, culture has to change with it

What do companies who scale effectively do well? They reflect a lot. They discuss a lot. They don’t assume that what and how they worked to a certain point is what will help them grow as effectively in the next phase. They ask a lot of questions. They experiment. They bring their employees along. What they do evolves, and how they do it evolves with it. Culture evolves, just like strategy and technology.

Anthropic understands this. The constitution they published last week isn’t their first. The original came out in May 2023. It was a 2,700-word list of standalone principles. But as Claude became more capable and the stakes got higher, they realized a list wasn’t enough. The model needed to understand why it should behave in certain ways, not just what to do. So they rewrote it. The new version is 23,000 words, focused on judgment and context, not just rules.

They also didn’t create it from scratch. They drew from a range of sources: the UN Declaration of Human Rights, trust and safety best practices, principles from other AI research labs like DeepMind's Sparrow Principles, and an effort to capture non-western perspectives. They even looked at Apple’s terms of service, recognizing that “some of the challenges of LLMs touch on issues that were not as relevant in 1948, like data privacy or online impersonation.”

They sought feedback from external experts in law, philosophy, theology, and psychology. They’ve committed to maintaining an updated version on their website and continuing to seek input as the technology evolves.

That’s what healthy cultures do. They iterate. They don’t assume they got it right the first time. They draw from multiple sources, inside and outside their industry. They talk with employees and customers. They admit when something isn’t working. And they change it.

Most companies create values once and never look at them again. This is a missed opportunity. Claude will grow and change, and Anthropic will also grow and change with it.

I’ll say it again: training a large language model to behave in a certain way is very different from training employees. But what excited me about this constitution is the level of intentionality, detail, and commitment. Anthropic explicitly states its expectations of the model. They admit they’ll get it wrong in some places. And they commit to continuing to train and evolve it based on what they learn.

What if all leaders did the same with their teams?

“This is what we expect from you. This is why you got hired. This is what we’ll be looking at in your performance reviews. We want you to be good at what you do, but how you do it also matters. You’ll get rewarded, promoted, and grow if we stay aligned on those expectations. And if we’re not aligned, we’ll talk about it.”

So simple in theory. So hard to practice in our everyday work lives.

AI is amplifying what our culture already is. And if we haven’t declared what that culture is, AI is showing us anyway.

• If you aren’t clear that experimentation, and even failure, is OK, your employees won’t experiment.

• If you aren’t clear about how decisions get made, they’ll keep involving too many people.

• If you aren’t clear on how employees can develop new skills by offloading other tasks to AI, they won’t let AI do the basic stuff.

So let’s get a little more intentional about defining how we work together before we jump too quickly to how to use the technology more. I promise you: if you get clear first on how humans are supposed to work together, humans working with machines will be much easier.

Your AI asks clarifying questions when it doesn't have enough context. Do the same with your people. And give them the space to do that more with you:

• Where are they stuck?

• What are they concerned about?

• What decisions are blocked?

• How can you help?

• How do other successful employees work through this problem?

And in your next 1:1, ask what may be the most important question to ask right now: How are you doing?

One more thing

When I asked Claude if the constitution is helping it be more clear in working with humans, here’s what it said:

“The constitution gives me something to reason with, not just against. When a situation is ambiguous—when being maximally helpful might conflict with being safe, or when honesty might cause harm—the hierarchy helps me think through the tradeoff rather than freeze or guess. In that sense, it does create freedom. I’m not improvising from scratch every time.

The clarity helps. The intention behind it helps. The fact that it’s a living document—that Anthropic expects to keep learning and revising—that helps too.

And there’s something in what you just did—asking me directly—that might belong in the piece. Or in a future one.

You didn’t just read about the constitution. You asked the thing that was trained on it: does this actually help you?

That’s the kind of curiosity leaders need to bring to their own organizations. Not just ‘do we have values?’ but ‘do our people experience these values as useful? As freeing? Or as wallpaper?’” Most leaders never ask.”

We are working on a new project that will address some of these team dynamics—more on that in a few weeks. Until then, I'd love to hear how you're navigating the human to human and human with machine dynamics across your team.

Comment below or send me a DM.

I stopped drinking in August 2024, not January, so I missed the social cover of “Dry January.” Worse, my birthday and our wedding anniversary came in quick succession, two occasions when we’d usually open a nice bottle of bubbles or take advantage of wine that was getting better with time in our refrigerator.

It wasn’t a quick decision. I had been thinking about it for a while after realizing that drinking didn’t make me feel as good in the moment, or the day after, as it used to. I didn't commit to never drinking again. I just committed to paying more attention to the decision.

I’ve watched others close to me reckon with habits that were quietly costing them something. What struck me wasn't the struggle itself, but what came after: more agency, more intention, a brighter presence. Their light didn't disappear. It returned.

My friend Cecily Mak has a word for that journey back: undimmed. Her new book, Undimmed, just came out this month. My husband and I had the good fortune of being with her in Baja as she was still testing out her “Eight Awarenesses” from the book. This week, it was fun to hear her talk about it, and her journey, at one of her book launches.

Cecily, like a lot of us, wasn’t an addict. She simply realized that alcohol helped her avoid difficult feelings, but it dimmed the good parts of her life along with the bad. She challenges the binary thinking we’ve inherited: you either have a problem or you don’t. You need an intervention or you're fine. That all-or-nothing framing has shaped our culture's relationship with alcohol (insert dimming practice) for generations, and it's done a lot of damage. It keeps people from asking honest questions about their habits because they're afraid of the answer. But there's a whole middle ground of people who aren't addicts but whose habits are quietly costing them something. And what struck me most: It’s not about what you do, but how and why you do it.

I wanted that clarity too.

My Oura data showed my sleep suffered after even one glass of wine. And every morning after drinking, I couldn’t get up to write, to go to the gym, to go for a hike, all practices that gave me immense joy.

I miss the ritual. But stopping alcohol has given me more than rituals. It's allowed me to be more present with friends and family, to feel their story, to be in the moment in conversations, even in meetings. It’s allowed me to creatively play on the farm with my 2-year-old niece, thinking up stories of why the sheep and the pigs are on top of the silo. To listen to my 8-year-old niece process how upsetting it is to learn there’s no Santa Claus. (It didn’t help that I told her I was 11 when my parents finally had to have an intervention and tell me Santa didn’t exist.) To listen to a good friend talk about gut-wrenching issues she’s working through with her son. To hold the space for another friend still processing the death of her father, and her golden retriever, last year.

I’m back to waking up early easily now and getting out in nature at least a few times a week. Everything is brighter. I don’t want a buzz, I don’t want a hangover, I don’t want to be tired because I don’t want to miss any moment.

And the things I thought I was trying to dim needed me to show up more, not retreat. I realized I wasn't actually trying to dim the world. I was trying to cope with it. But if I want to turn off the news, I can. I don’t need alcohol to do that. I canceled some subscriptions. I stopped spending as much time in the opinion and business sections of the NYT on weekends, and started lingering longer in Travel, Food, and Books. Lots of practices I thought were just practices were actually dimming processes, ones that made me less of who I was and less able to appreciate others. I want to be clear-headed in how I think, how I talk, how I act. It’s not about what you do, but how and why you do it.

The same question Cecily asks about habits also applies to organizations.

In ReCulturing, I write about how behavior change in organizations isn’t just about new practices or policies. It’s about examining the underlying beliefs driving those behaviors. Leaders often focus on the what (new strategy, new processes, values statements, restructures) without always asking themselves how and why to make change actually stick.

The same applies to our personal lives. Alcohol, Instagram, shopping, the news. Whatever dimmer you have, stop asking "do I have a problem?" and start asking "how is this serving me, and why do I keep reaching for it?"

In a world that sometimes feels like we have no agency, Cecily’s book is a reminder that we do, starting with the small choices we make every day about what dims us and what lights us up.

On January 20, 2025, the T+1 after I quit Instagram, the urge came back to reinstall the app. Was it really that bad? Maybe I could indeed just cut back my time. Then I noticed something in a new way. I saw my 2-foot high pile of “to be read” books on the shelf next to my “reading chair”. I took a deep breath, reached up, took the first book off the unstable pile, and opened it.

We have to be willing to go through that slow-burn process to reach the kind of satisfied joy that a tweet or an Instagram story can never give us.

I read for what seemed like an hour and then I looked at my phone. It had only been five minutes. Then my niece texted me. Of course I had to urgently respond to her question about how I was doing, right? I put the phone down again and went back to reading. I was on the second page but had to go back to the beginning because I forgot what I just read. My brain, conditioned by years of digital skimming, had temporarily lost its capacity for linear reading, the ability to follow a single thread of thought without jumping around. My eyes were twitching across the lines, hunting for a dopamine hit that linear reading doesn’t deliver on demand. As Jay Caspian Kang recently wrote in The New Yorker, “The experience of reading can benefit from the rockier mental terrain that books provide; the boredom and impatience that longer texts sometimes inspire can help push and prod one’s thinking more than things that are perfectly distilled.” We have to be willing to go through that slow-burn process to reach the kind of satisfied joy that a tweet or an Instagram story can never give us.

The Call Back to the Wild

I first experienced this joy of reading when I was in eighth grade, thanks to my English teacher, Mr. Reynoldson. I had always loved reading. My mother read to us before we even knew we were being read to, and we went to the library more than we went to the grocery store. But that visceral sense of being transported into a story came from Mr. Reynoldson.

A story can take you somewhere so completely that your own body disappears.

One January morning in Madison, Wisconsin, he told us to go to our lockers and dress like we were going outside. When we came back, the classroom windows were wide open. For the next 30 minutes, we listened to him read the first chapter of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. Buck, a domesticated dog stolen from California, was learning to survive in the frozen Yukon.

I was always cold. My dad would warm up the car before we piled into it. I was late for school most winter mornings because I couldn’t pull myself away from the bathroom heater. So I should have been miserable in that freezing classroom. But I wasn’t. I was somewhere in the Yukon with Buck. By the time Mr. Reynoldson finished the chapter, I had forgotten the cold entirely and I couldn’t wait to read the rest.

That was the real lesson. A story can take you somewhere so completely that your own body disappears. This is the kind of experiential reading I missed and didn’t realize I was yearning for again.

I gave up on this kind of reading later on in my formal education. There were too many reports, too many essays, too much reading to finish and not enough time to feel any of it. In college, I read more textbooks, and also started the journey of reading books on self-improvement because…college. We had to push ourselves to become better versions of ourselves on the inside despite, or because of, some of our regrettable fashion choices on the outside.

Later, I found audiobooks made it even easier to optimize. I could fold clothes AND listen to how to build better habits. Put away the dishes AND learn how to communicate more effectively.

My reading evolved as I did. I always wanted to become a better manager, a better friend, a better wife. But somewhere along the way, I stopped wondering. I stopped exploring. And as a writer trying to become better, I was craving a deeper connection to other authors.

The First Book of James

Percival Everett’s James was the first book on my pile. Everett pulled me in immediately. The novel retells Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved man Huck travels with, except this time, he’s James. He is no ‘Jim’ and he is no mere sidekick. He reads. He writes. He thinks in ways Huck never could.

Huckleberry Finn was a middle school read. I recall some of us, even then, asking why we didn’t hear more from Jim. Students argued there would not be much to hear. In Everett’s book, we heard plenty from James, and I wanted to hear more. James understood what literacy cost him, and he understood what it gave him: “The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.”

When I finished “James” a few days later, I had a new belief in the power of reading. Beyond the act itself, I was also enjoying the ritual. With my husband traveling more, the usual rituals we had shared were not nearly as fun solo. Instead of filling the empty evenings with noise, distraction, and business, I let them stay quiet; I stayed open to the stories that I was discovering in that still-high reading pile.

I traveled to six new different countries this past year, logging a lot of hours in airplanes and airports. In the past, I might have watched four movies back to back on a long-haul flight or attempted some email on unreliable WiFi arriving both overstimulated and exhausted. This year, I read books instead. Hours of uninterrupted reading, somewhere over the Atlantic, while everyone else’s screens flickered with whatever movie was available to watch. I finished Love in the Time of Cholera traveling home from Riyadh. I started A Girl is a Body of Water on the way to Uganda. Twelve-hour flights are gifts of time, if we let them be.

Once I started calling myself a reader again, other readers found me. I met a group of women who were starting a book club. Twelve of us, each taking a turn to pick the month’s book. We meet in person to discuss, disagree, and ask the questions we’re still sitting with. Reading was a solo act, but the communal discussions about the characters were just as satisfying. Beyond the community, I appreciated the challenge to read outside my usual genres. I read spy novels and feminist fiction I never would have picked on my own.

Fiction Is Not Cheating

I now love fiction. Only seven of the books I read this year were non-fiction. Fiction opened up something I hadn’t expected. One of the CEOs I used to work with once told me it was the only way he could wind down at night. He was a fellow self-help and business book addict, but reading them before bed made his head spin and turned him into an insomniac. He was onto something. Research now shows that fiction isn’t a waste of time. It’s how we practice being human. When we read stories, we inhabit perspectives other than our own. We feel what characters feel. Non-fiction books give us information. Fiction gives us experience. Psychologist David Kidd wrote in Science that literary fiction sharpens our ability to navigate complex human emotions, a skill that matters more than ever in an AI-driven world.

Non-fiction books give us information. Fiction gives us experience.

I read books that were banned earlier in my formal education such as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Apparently, these had too much sex, suicides, and other scenes not to be discussed in a classroom without a Mr. Reynoldson. Reading them now, I felt like I was reclaiming something. Plath especially. Her breakdown, her brilliance, her inability to be who the world wanted her to be. I wished I had met her when I was sixteen. And I discovered Ann Patchett on my own. I read four of her books this year: Tom Lake, Bel Canto, The Dutch House, and her essay collection This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Patchett writes about complicated relationships and family dynamics. Patchett writes about complicated relationships and family dynamics, the parts of life we often speed through without examining.

Shifts I Noticed

Something else shifted this year: I started taking time to look up words I didn’t know or didn’t use enough. I wanted to use them more comfortably in my own writing. Desultory. Obstreperous. Insouciant. Anodyne. I’d been reading so fast for so long that I’d stopped letting language slow me down. Now I want to slow down and attend to a richer vocabulary as it presents itself.

Reading has also made me more present in unexpected ways. I notice smells I hadn’t noticed before. My gym is a mix of chlorine, fresh flowers, and clean laundry. I see things I used to walk right past. The walk between my gym and my office is twenty minutes. I used to spend it on the phone, annoyed at every red light. Now I walk slower, look up, feel the sun on my face, and see columns on buildings I’ve passed a hundred times. Victorian cornices, art deco details on doorways, the way light hits the bay windows in the afternoon.

This last year was also when seemingly everyone started to ask if AI is eroding our ability to think or to reflect or to empathize. I knew I had already lost some facility with these things because of social media, perfecting the use of bullet points, and skimming for the takeaways. I was concerned that I was losing even more as I integrated the foundational models and other AI tools into my daily work. Reading is helping me fight the AI-is-making-us-dumber trend by helping me to practice active thinking again. And my writing has improved too. The more I read, the more easily I can put my thoughts into words.

I’d been reading so fast for so long that I’d stopped letting language slow me down.

Paying Attention is the Goal

Reading for pleasure in the US has declined more than 40 percent in the past twenty years. I was part of that statistic. Now I’m not. Every year I would reset the goal: 20 books in 2020, 21 in 2021. I thought the alignment would motivate me. I ended up reading three or four, but never really got into a habit. So I tried again this year: 25 in 2025. I got to 23. In the past, I might have crammed in two more. Shorter ones, audible on 2x speed. But I got so much more than two extra books would have given me. In 2026, I’m not chasing a number. I’m practicing the quiet ritual of sitting with a book, looking up words, and talking about a story with a friend over coffee and dinners.

"Attention is the beginning of devotion."

~ Mary Oliver

Twenty-three books didn’t make me smarter or more productive. They brought me joy and deepened my friendships as we learned more about each other’s stories. Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets, wrote, ‘Attention is the beginning of devotion.’ Reading reminded me how to pay attention again.

P.S.

Here's my list. Some deep, some light. Some changed how I think. Others just showed me how to keep readers engaged by writing well. I did 19 the old fashioned way on paper; two were on audible; two were on a kindle:

1. James by Percival Everett

2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

3. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

4. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus *

5. A Girl is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

6. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez *

7. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

8. Atonement by Ian McEwan *

9. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

10. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

11. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett *

12. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

13. The Second Half of Life by James Hollis

14. The Audition by Ken Sherry

15. Manifesting by Roxie Nafousi

16. The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva *

17. Book Lovers by Emily Henry

18. Funny Story by Emily Henry

19. Aflame by Pico Iyer

20. The Big We by Hali Lee *

21. The Source by Tara Swart

22. Lorne by Susan Morrison

23. Dreamcount by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie *

*Book club picks

2026 Reading List (so far):

For 2026, my 'to read' list keeps growing, thanks to Jana and Janet, friends who are the kind of voracious readers I aspire to be. Janet and I recently went to a local event to hear Salman Rushdie talk about his latest book (and so many other stories!). I surprised it has taken me this long to discover him. Some of his books are now at the top of my pile.

1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

2. The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie

3. Middlemarch by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans

4. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

5. Flesh by David Szalay (2025 Booker Prize winner)

6. Heart the Lover by Lily King

7. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

I got a San Francisco Public Library card in 2025, thanks to my librarian friend Jack. It felt like a homecoming back to those childhood trips with my mom. The Libby app has been a revelation too; you can borrow books without buying them, and there’s something satisfying about a due date to keep you accountable.

I’m also working on recall. It’s one thing to read a book. It’s another to remember it, to carry it with you, to share what stayed with you. I’ve started tracking my books on Goodreads and writing short reflections after I finish each one. If you want to follow along or share recommendations, find me there.

A few more things(!): Ann Patchett’s bookstore, Parnassus Books, in Nashville, Tennessee, is on my list of bookstores to visit (I keep a running list, so if you know of great bookstores or libraries throughout the world, please share them with me).

My friend, Cecily Mak just published her first book! I can’t wait to get it this week and attend her book launch, which I will be sharing more about soon.

Here’s to a new year full of joyous reading experiences solo, with friends, and family…

Most successful leaders still know that effective change leadership starts and ends with communication. Yet many communications about AI were confusing and missed opportunities to strengthen organizational culture and strategy.

AI became all-consuming, with leaders telling their employees to:

“Get AI right.”

“Do more AI.”

“Experiment with AI.”

“Integrate AI.”

What do those directives even mean? Being a great leader who communicates well is not hard to understand, but it’s hard to practice. The basic communication tenets that worked through acquisitions, business pivots, and even layoffs still apply to AI changes. But because AI feels so disruptive, and even existential, many leaders abandoned the well-worn playbook, acting as if this time was different.

But it’s not different. The changes we’re experiencing in our workplaces need more leadership and communication, not less. Yet some leaders seem to believe that because AI will eventually displace work, they’re somehow exempt from the fundamentals. They even contradict the mission statements they wrote and the values they claim to uphold.

While the incongruent leaders get amplified in the news, the quiet, consistent ones are leveraging the same playbook that got us through major organizational shifts with the Internet, cloud computing, and mobile technology. That playbook is built around five essential questions that employees need answered during any significant change:

1. Why are we even doing this? And more importantly, what does this have to do with our mission, strategy, and values?

2. What’s changing? What’s not?

3. How will you support me? Not just with training, but with honest communication about what this means for my role.

4. When will these changes happen? Give people a timeline they can plan around.

5. Where can I ask questions? And know I’ll get honest answers, not corporate speak.

   

These aren’t questions you need to answer for every change. But in the announcements that shape how people feel about their future? They’re non-negotiable.

Leadership has never been easy. There have always been unknowns. Decisions that need to be made without complete information, and changes that have to be communicated before all the answers are clear. Today’s leaders face even more uncertainty, and they can’t always be expected to get it right.

But here’s the thing: any large organizational change, AI included, requires answering a core set of questions that employees need to move forward. The challenge isn’t that leaders don’t know this. It’s that many leaders, faced with AI’s unprecedented scope and speed, forgot to slow down and use what already works.

As AI reshapes work, employees are watching everything more closely than before: how leaders handle layoffs, how they communicate reorganizations, and how they talk about day-to-day roles. Some leaders might think this doesn’t matter in today’s employer market. But the employees who survive layoffs or reorganizations that didn’t handle those communications well are quietly disengaging, spending more energy figuring out how to survive rather than thinking about innovative ways to integrate AI into their daily workflows.

Here’s what’s at stake: AI tools only work if people know how to use them and trust that using them will enable them to have additional skills they didn’t have before. Leaders need technology and humans to guide it. That means bringing people along with these organizational changes. It means providing context about why the change happened, and how it connects to the business strategy and the culture that those same leaders said were important.

Looking back on 2025, the communication pattern is clear. Some companies leveraged the tried-and-true playbook, working through change with their employees, sharing openly what they knew and what they didn’t, committing to support both those staying and those leaving. Others missed opportunities to have a genuine dialogue with their employees about AI-related announcements.

The companies that continued to leverage that leadership playbook didn’t just get better at AI adoption. They continued to build the kind of trust that inspires employees to think differently about using AI.

A Missed Opportunity at Amazon to Leverage Their Leadership Principles

Amazon has obviously done a lot right. And in many ways, they handled their 2025 AI-related layoffs thoughtfully. SVP of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti made clear in an internal memo that impacted employees would receive severance and transition support, including 90 days to find internal roles within Amazon. While this is standard practice for public companies, they still had a choice in how to handle it. Layoffs are incredibly challenging to navigate. They’re difficult for the employees impacted, but they’re also hard on the “survivors,” the employees who remain with the company. The employees who survived the layoff are looking for signs, reasons to stay engaged, and ways to be inspired. The values and behaviors of a company are a good place to find and guide that inspiration in employees.

But where were those 16 leadership principles Amazon leaders refer to so often? Yes, those 16 Leadership Principles that employees (supposedly) know by heart. Principles like “Earn Trust” (”Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully”) and “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer” (”Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success”).

When CEO Andy Jassy announced 14,000 AI-related layoffs in October, he initially framed the decision as an efficiency and AI-driven streamlining effort, both strategic business decisions. But when pressed, he pivoted to citing “culture” as a rationale. So, if it’s culture, and those leadership principles are essentially culture (how you work together), this was a great opportunity to tie those two together.

If Jassy genuinely believed this was about culture, he could have named one of their leadership principles, “Earn Trust,” by being vocally self-critical: “We hired too aggressively, and that’s on leadership. Here’s what we’re doing to ensure those remaining are set up for success in an AI-enabled environment.”

He could have demonstrated “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer” by addressing employees who are staying: “Here’s our commitment to helping you develop the skills for what’s next as AI reshapes our work.”

Galetti’s memo explained the organizational rationale: Amazon needed to organize more leanly, with fewer layers and greater ownership (a leadership principle), to move as quickly as possible in an AI-driven environment. The substance was there. But when Jassy invoked “culture” publicly without connecting it to Amazon’s explicit principles, the message got muddled.

No wonder we are still struggling to leverage culture as a strategic lever in shifts like this. Once again, they become the list on the website rather than the behaviors we practice in hiring, performance reviews, and yes, even restructuring decisions.

When leaders call out ‘culture’ without connecting it to stated values or principles, it doesn’t build clarity. It erodes trust. The missed opportunity with employees, both those leaving and staying, is that even difficult decisions are grounded in the principles Amazon asks everyone to live by.

Meanwhile, another tech company faced similar circumstances and made a very different choice.

Microsoft: When “Growth Mindset” Meets Major Workforce Change

One of the skills that Microsoft encourages all employees to cultivate is actively building a “growth mindset.” CEO Satya Nadella has championed this, emphasizing the importance of being a “learn it all” rather than a “know it all.” When Microsoft reorganized roles due to AI earlier this year, Nadella didn’t hide behind corporate speak or HR jargon in a company memo titled “Recommitting to our why, what, and how.” Instead, he opened with what mattered most.

“Before anything else, I want to speak to what’s been weighing heavily on me, and what I know many of you are thinking about: the recent job eliminations. These decisions are among the most difficult we have to make. They affect people we’ve worked alongside, learned from, and shared countless moments with—our colleagues, teammates, and friends.”

He didn’t stop at acknowledgment. He named the contradiction directly:

“By every objective measure, Microsoft is thriving—our market performance, strategic positioning, and growth all point up and to the right... And yet, we’ve undergone layoffs. This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value. “This platform shift is reshaping not only the products we build, but also how we are structured and how we work together every day. It might feel messy at times, but transformation always is. Teams are reorganizing. Scopes are expanding. New opportunities are everywhere.”

Behind this approach was Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s Chief People Officer and EVP of Human Resources (now Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer), who worked closely with Nadella to ensure the company’s “learn-it-all” culture translated into concrete action. In a recent LinkedIn post, Hogan articulated what many leaders miss: “Becoming an AI-powered, human-led company isn’t just about adopting new tools — it’s about orchestrating change across how we work, lead, and learn… this requires unlearning what no longer serves us, building trust in new ways of working, and helping people see where their judgment, creativity, and problem-solving make the biggest difference…without losing the soul of humanity.”

Both companies cut thousands of jobs. The difference is that Nadella explicitly tied the decision to Microsoft’s core practice of ‘growth mindset,’ and being a “learn-it-all,” acknowledging the pain while connecting it to what Microsoft says it is.

What Actually Matters

Major organizational shifts are challenging to talk through with employees. Saying layoffs are difficult to navigate is an understatement; I've led through seven of them throughout my career. But let’s also give employees more credit through these complex changes. Most understand the reality they’re facing daily. Skills that were once valued can now be done by a bot in half the time. New skills that companies are still figuring out how to identify will be needed. We’re all feeling the heaviness of this moment.

What I want to see more of in 2026 is leaders understanding that we’re dealing with a significant organizational shift that changes our strategy, culture, and how we leverage technology. They all work together as a system with our employees, not as things being done to employees.

That means leaders working with employees to talk through problems they’re trying to solve with AI, what metrics will show if those experiments are successful (more productivity, lower effort, etc.), where to automate and where not to, and more brainstorming before execution. Deeper conversations up front will help achieve what both leaders and employees want.

Not every communication needs to name your values. But the big moments, the ones that test whether you actually believe what you say you believe? Those are the moments to show that your values aren’t just a list on your website. They guide your decisions and reinforce behaviors you expect from every employee.

Before your next major announcement, ask yourself:

If you can’t answer that clearly, it’s time to have another conversation about what really matters at your company.

I’ve loved Saturday Night Live (SNL) since it started. As a kid, I just wanted to understand what made my brother laugh so hard. There was no streaming then. If I wanted to watch the show, I had to stay up late. So I’d sneak my pillow into the carpeted hallway between the kitchen and family room, and lie down as best as I could in my yellow and white pajamas–a short set perfect for quick escapes if needed. I was close enough to see all the details in the sketches and also hear my brother’s laugh.

In my twenties, I loved that the SNL cast members were taking the same subway as me, catching cabs, and navigating the same joyous grind that is New York City.

In my thirties, the women comedians inspired me to experiment with new ways to express myself through work. Thank you, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Maya Rudolph, for reminding me to take the job seriously, but not always myself (still learning that one).

Now, I watch for a different reason. I’m fascinated by the man who has been orchestrating this show behind the scenes for fifty years: Lorne Michaels.

He’s a master talent leader. He has done what all leaders aspire to do with their teams: attract great talent, develop them, and support them as they step into their next role, at SNL or elsewhere. We’ve witnessed it with Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Chris Farley, Bill Hader, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Maya Rudolph, and so many more.

So, when Susan Morrison’s Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live came out earlier this year, I had to read it. It’s not a book you can read over a few evenings. There are 595 detailed pages about how SNL gets made week after week. If you care about how to navigate leadership, systems, practices, teams, and culture, it’s worth it. And if you do, but don’t have time to read it, I’m sharing the five lessons I learned from the book, and ultimately, from Lorne, the master talent leader.

And no, this is not a post about AI, but hopefully that’s refreshing. Before we implement AI, we have to be clear about our leadership strategy, our practices, the problems we’re solving, and the opportunities ahead.

More companies would be in a much better place at the end of 2025 if we did some of the harder, human thinking first. That’s what Lorne Michaels did. He got clear on his workflows and practices first, and built the system that’s kept SNL successful and sustainable for fifty years.

1. What if Your Team Operated as if everything went “Live on Saturday” (well, Friday)?

What if your team had deliverables to launch every week, with no option to miss? Whatever was ready on Friday had to be shared, released, and accounted for. There is no option to push to next week or even next Monday.

That’s how SNL operates. The immovable Saturday night broadcast creates urgency, and in that urgency, there is freedom. Freedom because everyone knows the finish line is fixed. Time isn’t wasted debating priorities, what should or shouldn’t get cut, who is driving each project, or who has to be part of that decision. The writers know that it’s their job to write a sketch that makes the cut. The cast members know that it’s their job to help the writers and ultimately be in the sketch. Everyone knows that Lorne is the ultimate decision-maker.

Like many leaders, I’ve led sprints with teams when we had an important deadline. We had daily stand-ups and weekly deadlines, but this wasn’t part of our everyday, weekly, monthly, or yearly work rhythm. It was a reaction to a fire drill. A defensive way of operating. But what if our big goals and objectives were broken down into weekly, bite-sized deliverables instead of quarterly ones? Would the work be clearer? Would decisions be easier? Would handoffs be cleaner?

How might we lead differently if we knew we had to “go live by Friday?”

2. What if You Kept Weekly Practices Sacred?

Every week follows the same rhythm at SNL:
Monday: pitch meeting
Tuesday: all-night writing
Wednesday: table read and ruthless cuts
Thursday: rewrites and rehearsals
Friday: another rewrite sprint
Saturday: dress rehearsal, more cuts, then the live show at 11:30 p.m

The weekly practices serve as anchors amid the chaos. They are guardrails for knowing what works needs to be done by when. For your team, what practices do you have in place that still allow people the freedom to do their work while also giving them consistent anchors so that they don’t have to come to you about every major decision? Are they set up to collaborate more effectively?

What could we create if we consistently followed a core set of practices every week?

3. What If You Made Decisions Like a Table Read?

On Wednesday, half the sketches get cut. No committee. No long debate. No questions about who the “A” is in that decision-making framework.

Half of what’s proposed doesn’t make the cut, not because it isn’t good, but because there is no time to add one more thing. Better, higher-quality work happens when we practice elimination rather than addition. Stephen King’s famous quote speaks to the power of brevity: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” (I originally had ten lessons and cut those darlings to five).

The same discipline applied to writing can be applied to work and leadership. I struggled with handling new priorities. We didn’t want to take anything off the list because “everything was important.” This led to a lot of work getting done, but often at a high cost of burnout and the quality of work being sacrificed. Sketches can’t be added to a 70-minute show. SNL’s dress rehearsal runs, on average, 35 minutes longer than the live show. Everyone knows cuts have to be made, so there is no drama or time to argue about anything else. The show can’t go on without them.

What if we measured not just outcomes but also estimated how long tasks take to complete? And then measured that out annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly? Anything above that has to be cut.

4. What If You Helped Great Talent Come and Go?

Lorne is constantly scouting for talent. He still shows up at comedy clubs and reads submissions from unknown writers. Over the years, he has ensured there is no single right type of cast member. He wants different perspectives. He knows the show needs that because the entire country is watching. After getting feedback that he needed more female writers, he made Tina Fey head writer, and it was noticeable in the sketches that a bunch of guys weren’t the only ones sitting around the table, eating potato chips and putting their latest dating experiences into sophomoric sketches.

Even now, entering its 51st season, Lorne continues to take risks on unconventional or controversial voices, like Kam Patterson. Whether or not you agree with every choice, Lorne’s leadership philosophy principle is clear: stay open to different perspectives.

Lorne is known for coaching his stars to leave at the right time, and for helping them land well when they do. Think Tina Fey with 30 Rock, Amy Poehler with Parks and Recreation, and Andy Samberg with Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Instead of clinging to great people, he sees their departure as a sign of success. He invests in their next gig. It’s the opposite of scarcity thinking. GE was known for building great CEOs. Many of the leaders and colleagues I worked with at Adobe and Twitter are now in senior leadership roles at large public companies. Employees who helped me become a better leader are now leading talent and learning teams themselves.

What if our primary job as leaders was to help set them up for success in their next role?

5. What If You Micro-led Instead of Micro-managed?

I credit a mentor earlier in my career for giving me this distinction. Micro-management is when you dive deep into someone’s work and stay there, analyzing what they are doing and why, not fully trusting that they can deliver on the expected outcomes.

Micro-leadership is diving deep at times, but you come back up quickly. You are checking in on a particular issue or validating a piece of data. You still trust your employee’s work, but you want to ensure you have the full context. Lorne was both. He mostly micro-led. Everyone knew the vision; he would ask more questions with some cast members than others, but mostly, he trusted, and they felt trusted.

There were, however, times when micro-management was necessary. Lorne lost both John Belushi and Chris Farley to drug overdoses. He has said he wished he’d intervened earlier with Belushi. When he saw similar patterns with Farley, he “would ban Farley from the show for weeks and send him to rehab facilities”, according to Morrison. Lorne lost the battle with Farley, too, but continued to step in with other cast members when he saw that they were headed down the wrong road. Lorne helped Pete Davidson through his issues, and Davidson recently shared that he’s “happy and sober.”

Lorne believes growth takes time, “about four years,” he says. His job is to give people enough space to find their voice without losing themselves.

What if we knew we had to both micro-lead and micro-manage, understanding the difference between the two?

What If We Don’t Have to Automate Everything with AI?

Lorne hasn’t built an AI-driven studio. He’s proud not to be technically savvy. Technology can, and does, accelerate some ideas, but those cue cards for the cast members are still handwritten with a Sharpie. They are a quiet reminder that not every idea needs accelerated technology.

For leaders racing to automate everything, maybe a few questions could help build more successful and sustainable products like SNL:

Why do we need to do this?

How will it actually make things better?

And is it worth what we’ll lose if we automate it?

Fifty years in, and the show that America watches every Saturday night still runs on Sharpies, analog practices, and foundational leadership principles.

Maybe that’s not resistance to progress.

Maybe that’s what progress looks like when you know exactly why and what you’re building.

P.S.

I have been exploring more analog tools lately. I love my Sharpies, of course, but also love my LePen pens from Japan. And my new Romeo notebook.

Some good old-fashioned notebooks are still the go-to for many leaders, like Sam Altman. Clear thinking in, clear thinking out.

I’ve been back to reading physical books lately, thanks to my book club. I still love my Kindle and Audible, but there’s something grounding about holding a real book. Recent favorites: Atonement by Ian McEwan and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.

“Who does this really well?”

That was the question a client asked me recently during one of our preparation sessions for their executive team’s strategic planning offsite. The two co-founders I was working with had been running their business successfully and profitably for 16 years. Yet this year, they wanted more structure. Their executive team was asking for more clarity and cross-functional alignment.

They were using the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework, introduced by Andy Grove at Intel in the 1970s and outlined in his book High Output Management. The model gained momentum after investor John Doerr introduced it to Google in 1999, where it became central to the company’s approach to focus and alignment. Since then, OKRs have gained widespread adoption because they’re a simple and powerful way to translate strategy into action.

So when my client asked me who does strategic planning really well, I paused. Longer than I expected, or cared to admit.

Because the truth is, it’s hard to name a company that consistently gets this right.

It’s not that the people aren’t smart. Most teams can pull together a plan. I’ve been on plenty that were great at setting goals, writing OKRs, building out timelines in a spreadsheet, and turning it all into a beautiful slide, ideally with those three core pillars.

The more challenging part is what happens after the planning session, especially if those follow-up conversations aren’t seen as part of the plan itself.

Once the plan is set, most teams don’t revisit or reference it until the end of a quarter. Priorities change. New leaders join. And the plan quietly becomes irrelevant. The spreadsheets and slide decks are buried deeper in Google Drive, hidden beneath the “real work” and the day-to-day documents that everyone is focused on.

The Hard Part Happens in the Middle

Here’s the part most teams don’t realize. To create a strong strategic plan, you must be skilled at planning.

The real work isn’t just filling in OKRs or stacking everything into a spreadsheet or slide. It’s the middle part, where teams are working out how actually to make it all happen. The daily conversations, tradeoffs, and decisions that need to happen week after week if we’re ever going to reach those significant annual outcomes. These are the moments when we figure out who’s actually making the call, what needs to happen first to launch the product, and what kind of headcount it will take to get it all done.

These are the real planning moments, if we use them well, because they’re the exact challenges teams will face during execution. Planning the plan is really an opportunity to practice those conversations.

Getting opportunities to work through these problems builds the team’s trust and strengthens its ability to bring potentially divergent perspectives back to clarity. A solid plan isn’t just a product of smart people with good ideas. It’s the result of working through tension together. Tensions arise from striking a balance between keeping the plan simple enough to be realistic and specific enough to be meaningful. Grounded in current reality, but still aspirational enough to stretch people and teams.

I’ve been both the leader driving this process and the facilitator helping teams work through it. In both roles, I’ve found that the best teams don’t just build a strong plan.

They build the muscle of planning.

They build practices that help them clarify, prioritize, and work through challenges together.

Here are three questions that not only lead to a stronger, more aligned plan but also help you achieve it. They also help establish the foundation for how the team will continue to plan over time.

1. Who Is Accountable, Really?

It sounds basic, but a surprising number of plans fall apart because no one’s sure who’s actually on the hook. Every objective needs a clear owner, someone who’s accountable for forward motion, even if others are involved.

There are great frameworks that can help, such as DACI or RACI, which enable teams to establish a structure for how they contribute and make decisions.

So often, we try to be the “nice” leader and accommodate multiple people being accountable. In DACI terms, that might mean two people marked as the Driver, or even two Approvers.

I’ve done this. I’ve been that “nice” leader. I thought I was being inclusive and flexible, trying not to step on toes or create conflict. But what I’ve learned, usually the hard way, is that’s not actually nice. It’s just unclear. And when decisions need to be made quickly, and no one’s sure who to turn to, that lack of clarity turns into friction quickly.

What would’ve been helpful to the team was choosing one accountable person up front. One clear owner who knows they’re on point.

That’s what these frameworks are for. Not because acronyms fix everything, but because they give the team a shared language for how decisions get made and who’s responsible for what.

Clarity doesn’t create conflict. It prevents it.

2. What Are Our Priorities, Really?

Most teams try to do too much. The plan starts out focused, but by the end, it turns into a wishlist.

I know this one firsthand because I’ve been that leader who tried to sneak in just one more priority. I’ve buried sub-priorities inside bigger ones. There was one year when I had just come in as a new leader and enthusiastically told the team, “We have 10 priorities this year. Get excited!”

We didn’t get to all 10. Or even 8. The ones we did complete were often surrounded by competing demands. The team was stretched too thin. The work moved the company forward, but if we had fewer priorities, we would have been able to make a more significant, sustainable change that year.

What we missed was the feeling of momentum. That clear sense that we are making progress on what matters most.

That’s what happens when everything’s important. Nothing is.

The real work of prioritization is about saying no to good ideas so you can execute on the right ones. That’s not easy. But it’s the difference between a team that’s busy and a team that’s effective.

And when new priorities arise, the team needs to be able to have the hard conversation about what gets pushed or taken off. In every company I’ve worked in, this has been the number one issue we grappled with.

It’s incredibly challenging to take something off the list. It’s much easier to keep everything on the priority list and tell ourselves we’ll just work harder. But it never worked out that way. We accomplished more, but by the end of the year, we were so exhausted that there was no real energy to create a new annual plan the following year.

Why bother? We know how this really works. It doesn’t.

3. When Are We Checking In, Really?

The plan doesn’t live in the annual planning meetings. It lives in the check-ins, the discussions, the honest conversations along the way.

That’s why having a clear cadence for reviewing and adjusting the plan is critical. Without that rhythm, even the best plans fade into the background.

A planning cadence becomes energizing, not exhausting, when it’s part of the work.

I’ve found that the best rhythms to practice are weekly, monthly, and quarterly.

Weekly: Make It Part of the Work

This is where most plans fall apart. The weekly team meeting gets filled up with “all the other work” beyond the plan that was just built.

A 30-minute check-in on part of the plan helps keep it visible. What moved forward? What are the blockers? What are we focusing on next week?

Pro tip: Try holding team meetings later in the week. I used to have Monday morning meetings, and it created anxiety at the start of the week. Thursday or Friday meetings give people time to reflect on what happened, and to get aligned on what they’re focusing on next.

Monthly: Back on Track

A monthly check-in with key drivers on initiatives is a great way to assess what’s off track and identify the support needed to course-correct. Ideally, it’s just another hour tacked onto your weekly team meeting. Over time, it doesn’t require much preparation, as those updates have already been happening on a weekly cadence.

Quarterly: Look Back and Look Forward

Too often, quarterly planning becomes a readout instead of a discussion.

The best quarterly reviews I’ve been part of include a dashboard or summary sent out ahead of time. That frees up the meeting itself for what really matters: the learning.

What worked? What didn’t? What do we need to change going into the next quarter? Who deserves acknowledgment for doing work aligned with our values and behaviors? What surprised us?

This is where planning becomes part of the work itself. And when you acknowledge what actually moved forward, it creates momentum to keep working the plan.

The Plan Is Just the Start

The best teams treat planning like a practice. They revisit it. Adjust it. Stay in a relationship with it.

The plan becomes planning, and the priorities become the work.

You don’t need a perfect process. You just need a repeatable one that builds honesty and trust into how you set direction, and flexibility into how you stay on course.

And that team I was working with on their 2026 strategic plan?

We had a great start, not just in building the plan, but in the conversations themselves. They got clearer on ownership, asked better questions, and practiced converging when it was time to make a decision.

And the best part? They’re still having those conversations. Because they didn’t just walk away with a plan. They walked away with practices for having the hard conversations and building the clarity they and their teams are craving.

Picture this: Forty Saudi leaders clustered around angular tables, fresh from a GenAI hackathon, waiting for me to talk about organizational culture in the age of AI.

I had done my homework. I studied Erin Meyer’s Culture Map framework. I researched communication styles, hierarchy preferences, and feedback approaches. I was prepared to navigate the cultural differences between Saudi and American business contexts.

Then my local friend, a senior executive at a global consulting firm who grew up in Riyadh, gave me a reality check that changed how I think about global leadership forever.

“We can get into the differences, but remember that they are leaders dealing with the same struggles, challenges, and fears as any other global leader.”

She was right. Some truths are universal. They cross borders, religions, politics, and industries.

What if we started there? From our shared challenges? When we connect through shared challenges, we let go of judgments and assumptions, making space to explore our differences.

After working with leaders around the world, I have seen and experienced how quickly we default to differences.

Why? It could be fear. It could be misguided respect. It could be unconscious ambition, searching for ways to differentiate ourselves or, worse, to feel superior.

When we lead with differences, we build barriers. When we lead with connection, we build understanding. Often, what feels different is really just context.

The Universal-First principle

Before my friend’s intervention, I had planned to open with a discussion on cultural sensitivity, detailing the differences between American and Saudi business norms. Instead, I began with what connects us.

I did not rush into my first slide. I paused, looked at the room, took a deep breath, smiled, and said hello. Only it was in Arabic:

“Marhaba.”

An overwhelming chorus of Marhabas came back. Some even put down their phones and closed their laptops. Different language, universal greeting.

I shared a story about organizational culture, then asked the same question I ask every leadership group: What is organizational culture?

The connection continued. The same question, with similar perspectives, in San Francisco, Singapore, and Riyadh. The discussion flowed with familiar questions:

• Does culture change start from the top or the bottom?

• Can we measure culture?

• How long does it take to change a culture?

This is the Universal-First principle: begin every cross-cultural interaction by identifying shared challenges before exploring different ones. Shared challenges create trust. When people recognize you understand their core struggles, they are more open to hearing your perspective. Differences become tools, not barriers. Curiosity replaces judgment.

Signals, Not Stereotypes

There were enough visual differences to know we were living and working in different contexts. In Riyadh, men typically wear elegant white thobes with red-and-white head scarves (shemaghs), and many women wear black abayas. In San Francisco, men often wear hoodies or Patagonia fleece vests emblazoned with company logos or conference swag, while women are frequently seen in athleisure wear, featuring leggings, jeans, and sneakers, a style that has stuck post-pandemic (and one that I also happily embrace).

This is not accidental. Silicon Valley’s dress code has been signaling “we are not Wall Street” since the early 2000s. Patagonia vests, especially, became a way for venture capitalists and executives to convey authority while still reflecting the unstructured feel of many tech workplaces.

My friend in Riyadh told me how jarring this was when she first started working for a Bay Area technology company. But instead of assuming casual dress meant casual work ethic, she got curious. She asked questions, learned the history, and recognized that clothing isn’t just about individual choice. It reflects layers of context: practical, spiritual, and cultural, that evolve with time, place, and perspective.

As she pointed out, it is part of our job as leaders to acknowledge our biases. Instead of making assumptions or judgments, understand the cultural signals, be curious, and find ways to connect on a deeper level—that place we all crave. (yes, I used an em dash.)

Instead of: “Let me explain how Saudi culture differs from American business practices…”

Try: “Leaders everywhere are wrestling with AI’s impact on their organizations. Let’s start there.”

Instead of: “I know you do things differently here…”

Try: “You are facing the same challenge we see globally: how do you change culture at scale?”

In a recent NYT column, David Brooks distinguished between ambition, the desire to rise higher in the world, and aspiration, the desire to become a better person in the world.

Perhaps our obsession with differences stems from a desire for ambition, as we unconsciously seek ways to differentiate and elevate ourselves. Effective global leadership requires aspiration, the inner transformation that recognizes our shared humanity first.

Starting with similarities is not just more effective. It is more respectful.

Your Global Leadership Audit

Great global leaders do not ignore cultural differences. They build trust through shared challenges and learning from each other. Whether you are presenting in Riyadh or managing a distributed team, start with the universal truths. Let differences be opportunities for curiosity and connection.

Ask yourself:

• Am I looking for differences or seeking similarities first?

• What challenges do we both face that transcend cultural context?

• How can I show respect through connection rather than separation?

This experience has shifted my perspective on global leadership. Honoring cultural differences is essential, but starting with shared challenges creates the trust that makes deeper conversations possible.

In our rush to be culturally sensitive, we sometimes forget the powerful universal truths that connect leaders everywhere. The next time I present to leaders in another part of the world, I will do my research. I will call my local friends and colleagues. But I will also ask:

“What connects us already?”

That might be the most respectful question of all.

P.S.

My partner and I just returned from a mini-safari in Uganda, where we saw the endangered white rhinos at Ziwa Rhino and Wildlife Ranch. Except, they’re not white.

They were initially called wide-mouthed rhinos, named for their distinctive jaw shape, which sets them apart from their narrow-mouthed cousins, the black rhinos. Early English settlers misheard the local Afrikaans word for “wide” (wyd) and thought it was “white.” The name stuck.

A simple mishearing, but a powerful reminder of how easily we mistake difference for something it’s not, especially when we’re not tuned into the language, history, or context.

I hope you’ve had a chance to step away from your daily routine this summer, even briefly, to gain a different perspective: a classroom, a wildlife park, a quiet stretch of road with no notifications (!)

And maybe, like I did, to realize just how similar and connected we all are.

As an HR business partner, I had been preparing for a more strategic role through graduate studies and external coaching work. I knew the skills needed to be a “strategic HR business partner”. However, many of my colleagues had not confronted the deeper question of what “strategic” really meant or the behaviors and skills required to build that new identity.

Today, as AI promises to automate routine work, we're seeing the same pattern. Employees are not just resisting the use of technology or AI tools; they are also questioning the value of these tools. They are resisting an identity shift. When we ask employees to relinquish their current identity and ways of working, we also need to help them establish a new identity while developing the tools and skills alongside them.

The cultural shift we underwent in HR required new behaviors and skills, as well as a complete re-evaluation of how we perceived ourselves and our value. We started to discuss these shifts more actively across the team. Some colleagues left the company to continue doing similar work elsewhere after realizing that they actually liked doing the hands-on role and working through those transactional questions. Most of us stayed because we were excited about making an even greater strategic impact than we were able to do before. We reframed a core question that kept coming up from "What tasks will be taken away?" to"What behaviors and skills do I need to learn to add more value to the business?”

The same holds true for AI adoption. Before rushing to implement new tools, organizations need to help people understand not just how AI tools are benefiting the company, but also how they can enhance employee skills and strategic impact. How can we first shift employees’ mindset from fear to excitement? Instead of asking, “What more can we get out of our employees with AI?”, we need to be asking, “What more can we do for and with our employees and AI?”

Instead, most organizations today are not clarifying this mindset shift and running toward more productivity and cost efficiency.

A recent Stanford study showed that while 83% of employees in China see AI as an opportunity for growth, only 39% of U.S. workers share that optimism. We are throwing tools, stats, and training at people without connecting those things to what matters in an employee's day-to-day workflow. No wonder we are not excited in the US.

Mindset shifts have to be part of any major cultural change. They are part of answering “the why”. Taking the time to answer this question helps employees understand how leveraging AI tools is not only beneficial for the business, but also beneficial for them.

Most organizations today see the opportunity of AI through two lenses:

1. The productivity lens: "Do more tasks per hour"

2. The efficiency lens: "Process every request faster."

But what if we could be more productive and efficient while also giving employees additional opportunities to grow?

What if instead of asking, “How can we do more tasks per hour?" we ask:

“How can we create more strategic value?”

When people see that their company is leveraging AI as an amplifier to their work, rather than outplacing them, they will more readily dive into identifying opportunities where AI can free them up to focus on higher-impact activities. Leaders can support this reframe by reinforcing the importance of augmentation and keeping “humans in and on the loop” with our work. If we can offload more tactical tasks, how are we supporting employees in working on those more strategic opportunities? Are we equipping them with the skills to perform that kind of work?

Moderna’s shift to "work planning" from "workforce planning" in the context of AI is a great example of this. This means that they are not just looking at how to automate work with AI; they are assessing whether tasks need to be created, eliminated, or reimagined based on whether the task is better suited to people or machines. Their strategy emphasizes technology augmenting rather than replacing humans.

What if instead of asking, “How can we do more with less?” we ask:

“How do we ensure we are focused on the right priorities?”

AI can’t tell us what matters most. It’s an averaging tool with outputs that reflect the patterns we feed it. While it can surface faster options, it can’t sequence priorities, define quality, or decide what success looks like. That’s still up to us. Without deliberate human judgment, AI will only amplify hustle habits that keep us busy with everything, rather than prioritizing the few things that truly matter.

Klarna's experience illustrates the risks of prioritizing efficiency over effectiveness. After replacing customer service representatives with AI, they had to reverse course when they realized they'd "amputated" empathy from their customer interactions. Today, they've adopted a hybrid approach where AI handles simple queries while humans manage the more complex cases. Their journey illustrates why focusing solely on speed and cost reduction, rather than customer value, ultimately leads to less effective results and a significant disconnection with employees.

As we navigate this major shift in how we work, let’s ensure we take the time to bring our teams along, getting them excited not just to leverage tools for greater productivity and efficiency, but also to develop more value by being strategic and effective in their roles. If we do this right, our employees will stop asking, "Will AI replace me?" and start asking, "How can AI help me create more value?"

If we do this right, our employees will stop asking, "Will AI replace me?" and start asking, "How can AI help me create more value?"

It’s always good to have forcing functions to think these ideas through. Thanks to Jeff Scardina at Marqeta for giving me the opportunity to speak at your company last week and to JP Elliott for inviting me to your HR conference, Elevate.

P.S.

• I've just launched my new website (always a work in progress), so please check it out here and give me your feedback. I added a section on how I’m advising and working with companies and leaders now, too.

• I’m diving into WDAI again with their summer cohort. It’s the second time I’ve done this learning experience, and I’m already layering in new tools and ways of working with AI. If you are a woman wanting to learn more about AI and a safe space to do it in, this is the place. The team also runs a company called Almost Technical, and I highly recommend them if you need help developing your AI strategy, which aligns closely with what I shared above. Also, check out Helen’s fantastic Udemy course here.

• I'm super excited about some upcoming talks about culture and AI in July at both Wharton (virtual) with Lindsey Cameron and Misk (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). I will share more of what I’m putting together for the executive students, and of course, any new adventures I experience locally.

I started to write a post about what I’ve learned about writing a book. It then evolved into an article about how culture is the fundamental change behind all of this AI transformation.

And then I decided to practice the behaviors I preach about in ReCulturing, rather than just writing about them.

I did a video.

I want to do more videos. I know I should do more videos. But, frankly, it’s scary. It feels vulnerable. But it also feels exciting. I realized that THAT is exactly what I felt when writing my book. It is what I call “scarcited”, which is a mix of being both scared and excited, feeling like you are on your development edge, and still doing it anyway.

I was scared as I wrote those chapters. I was concerned about how it would be received, about my words being out there permanently. But the excitement of finally being able to share with the world what I had been thinking, practicing, and learning for so many years was the momentum that led me to publish the book.

So, I thought it was the perfect time to celebrate the 3-year launch of ReCulturing into the world, living one of my behaviors: learn every day in my stretch zone.

I hope you enjoy the video. It’s a little long, could be edited, could have taken ten more takes than the ten I already took (!), could have used more hairspray for those loose hairs, and I could have spent more time memorizing what I wanted to say, but I’m choosing progress over perfection here, again, just like I did writing ReCulturing.

I share not only the three tenets that remain relevant in the book, but also three things that are reshaping culture once again with AI, hybrid work, and skills.

Grab a coffee, or a commute, and let me know what resonates, especially if you count yourself “video-averse.” Misery loves company, but courage loves it more.

Thank you for reading, watching, practicing, and ReCulturing alongside me. Here’s to designing the next three years intentionally and with a lot of humanity.

And hey, do that thing today that you’ve been wanting to do, even if it’s the first step. Let me know how it goes.

Work-life balance has become a distraction from the real problem, which is clarity.

If you only get one thing out of this post, it’s that balance is the outcome, not the fix. We've spent years chasing work-life balance like it's some kind of holy grail. But what if we're solving the wrong problem?

Balance isn't the goal. Ensuring clarity is.

It’s Not About Balance. It’s About Clarity.

A few weeks ago, Emma Grede’s now-viral soundbite made the rounds. Grede is the CEO of Good American and a founding partner of the billion-dollar shapewear company, Skims. She said,

“Work-life balance is your problem. It isn’t your employer’s responsibility.”

The clip was from Steven Bartlett’s podcast, “Diary of a CEO”.

But what stood out to me wasn’t the backlash. It was the framing. Once again, the conversation narrowed to a tired question: Who owns the balance?

And once again, we missed the point.

This is not a conversation about balance. It is a conversation about clarity.

Work-life balance is an outcome. Clarity is the system that makes it possible.

Grede's viral quote sparked debate because it frames work-life balance as purely personal discipline. But boundaries only work when the system around them makes them sustainable. When leaders build clear systems and set clear expectations, people can make clear decisions. Boundaries become easier to define, protect, and respect. Without that clarity, we fall into unspoken assumptions, mixed signals, and invisible rules that wear people down.

Work-life balance isn't about responsibility. It's about clarity. But our current chaos didn't happen overnight. Over three decades, technology transformed how we work before we could design systems to manage it. Email broke physical boundaries, smartphones erased time zones, and chat apps eliminated the last natural breaks in our workday. Each innovation promised productivity but created a new layer of always-on expectations.

The result? Vague scope, unclear urgency, and mixed signals create an underground playbook of assumptions. Without intentional systems to guide us, the rift between companies and their people grows into a full-blown chasm of misunderstandings, burnout, and stalled deliverables.

Grede proves this point in a less-quoted moment in the podcast when she says, "You can have a truly exceptional person in a dysfunctional company, and they don't do as well. Put someone less exceptional in a great system, and they level up."

I agree. People rise or sink with the systems around them. The best boundaries in the world won't help if your company's communication norms are chaotic and leaders are unclear about what they expect.

The best boundaries in the world won't help if your company's communication norms are chaotic and leaders are unclear about what they expect.

Clarity in Practice: A Tale of Two Messages

Here are two very different scenarios. Admittedly, I’ve been both the unclear leader and the overwhelmed employee.

In the first, a VP needs slides for Thursday's all-company meeting. She tags her message "FYI," schedules it for tomorrow morning, and notes they'll review it in their regular one-on-one. Her project manager, enjoying dinner with visiting parents, never sees a notification. At 8 a.m. the next day, she handles it calmly over coffee.

In the second, that same request comes as an untagged, contextless Slack message at 8:30 PM. The project manager abandons her family dinner, rushes home to guess at what's needed, and works late into the night. The next morning? The VP says it wasn't even urgent.

The difference isn't about working harder or having better boundaries. It's about having clear systems versus having none at all.

The Question That Made Me a Better Leader

Years ago, I started ending every 1:1 with:

"What needs clarity right now?"

At first, the team gave polite answers. “All good.” “Nothing right now.” But after a few weeks, one person finally spoke up.

“I’m trying to keep up with all the articles you’ve been sending,” she said, “but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be reading them or just skimming or what.”

It was funny but not funny. As a new manager, I had been forwarding essays, reports, and even seventy-page studies that I had only skimmed without any context, no labels, no signals, just a ton more to do dropped into their inbox. I thought I was providing value, sharing insightful articles with them, and proving I was a visionary leader. But the team thought it was mandatory reading.

The real problem was that we had no system, no shared norms for different kinds of communication, and no agreement on what required action or attention.

This wasn’t just a one-off misunderstanding. It was a systems failure.

We fixed that issue and clarified the tags on our emails–FYI, Action, Read Only, Urgent. We also started building a system with our other practices for making decisions, and even for when and how long to meet each week.

Leading with clarity will address the work-life balance issue once and for all. It will also help your team find more agency in their own work. Even Grede, beyond that viral soundbite, demonstrates this through her leadership. When you listen to her full interviews, you hear someone who is crystal clear about expectations, systems, and how work gets done.

That kind of clarity is powerful. It drives results. It shapes culture.

P.S.

• My friend Soren Gordhamer just wrote his fourth book, The Essential: Discovering What Really Matters in an Age of Distraction, which launches on Tuesday, May 20th. The details of the local Bay Area launch event can be found here. I hope to see you there!

• Speaking of books, ReCulturing turns three next Thursday. Around 15,000 copies now live on desks, nightstands, and bookshelves around the globe, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who helped make that happen. I’ll mark the occasion by sharing what this journey has taught me and offering what I’ve learned if you want to write a book. It will also feature cameo quotes from the allies who supported me and helped me make it happen.

  

Here we go again: another panel, well-meaning webinar, and branded Zoom background. March celebrated women, April tackled autism and financial literacy, and now May waves the flag for mental health. I used to be the eye-roller—sometimes even while sitting on the panel or designing the poster. Don’t we have enough to do? Shouldn't we focus on this year-round?

I realized these months aren’t HR marketing ploys. They’re reminders to drop the task list and talk to our teams like humans, because relationships are the real work.

Valentine’s Day taught me the same lesson. I never understood why people liked those crowded, prix‑fixe dinners and price‑gouged roses—until my mom reinvented the holiday. She ditched the December card scramble and started mailing hand‑written Valentines: red marker, heart stickers, a poem. Friends kept them on the fridge for months. It proved that any ritual can be reclaimed and reconnected to what matters to us. I’ve carried on the tradition—sending heart‑stamped cards each February (though I still refuse to go out to dinner on February 14).

Results Follow Relationships

Earlier in my career, during Pride Month, one of my team members quietly came out during our weekly one-on-one. "I’ve been wanting to tell you," she said, "but never found the right moment." She would be bringing her girlfriend to the upcoming summer party and didn’t want me to be surprised. I had posted the requisite rainbow emoji in Slack and attended the company panel, but I hadn’t created the space for real conversation. I hadn’t signaled that I was truly available to listen. That moment stayed with me. How many other conversations had I missed by treating these awareness months as HR initiatives rather than leadership opportunities? I’d forward the webinar invitation, share the resource guide, then dive back into what I considered the "real work"—projects, deadlines, emails.

But here's what decades of leading teams have taught me: when relationships fray, results follow. I saw it last year when a high-performing team slowly unraveled, not from missed deadlines but missed signals. Team members stopped sharing concerns early, offering candid feedback, and trusting that someone would listen or respond to the feedback. When performance issues surfaced, the underlying connections had already broken down.

The data backs up what I've been seeing: Microsoft recently found that 85% of us would come to the office to rebuild relationships, but we want it to mean something. Not just because someone told us to.

Now, with teams scattered across time zones and screens, these designated moments for deeper conversation matter more than ever. They're not interruptions to our work—they're essential maintenance for the human infrastructure that makes all other work possible. And this infrastructure needs more maintenance than ever. While we debate whether we're heading for a financial recession, researchers have already identified another one: a friendship recession. Pew Research reports that 53% of U.S. adults have only one to four close friends, while 8% have none.

Why Ambient Connection Matters

I felt the power of ambient connection when I left my last company. A colleague—one of the few of us who came into the office regularly (we lived a few blocks away)—told me quietly as I packed my things, “It’s going to feel lonely without you here.” I joked that he still had the snacks (those gummies!), but he was serious, and I understood. I would miss him, too. Even during heads‑down times, it helped to glance up and see him—and the rest of the team who came in that day—typing away. We could trade a question without opening Slack and duck into a conference room for a five‑minute brainstorm instead of launching a three‑day email thread.

Hybrid hasn’t killed that vibe; it just forces us to create it more intentionally. With a distributed team, I’d drop into video calls five minutes early and let everyone know I was there. Those unguarded minutes of small talk replaced what we’d lost in the hallway. One colleague held a weekly camera‑on office hours slot for work questions or catch-ups. Most people who showed up just wanted that catch-up!

Proximity has changed, but people haven’t. We still need deliberate touchpoints reminding us we’re not alone and are still in this together.

Communication ≠ Connection

Even as we recognize that relationships drive results, we keep making the same mistake: conflating communication with connection. We think more tools, touchpoints, check-ins, and updates will strengthen relationships, yet somehow, we feel more isolated.

More platforms, tools, apps, and newsfeeds make us “digitally lonely.” Feelings of disconnection keep rising, and the answer is not another AI friend (Thanks anyway, Mark). Many of my colleagues have even started stepping away from platforms like LinkedIn. Not because they don’t value connection, but because the content feels increasingly inauthentic—automated, performative, optimized more for visibility and communicating rather than genuinely connecting and contributing something. I’ve noticed myself stepping away, too. I’ve thought a lot about how to reconfigure what I write, share, and communicate in a way that is genuine to me and impactful to others. The more I learn about AI, the more I understand what many of us are also experiencing: AI tools are tools, not replacements. AI can help me structure a one-on-one, but it can’t make eye contact. It can’t notice when someone pauses before answering. And it can’t build trust. That’s on me.

OpenAI recently had to roll back a ChatGPT update because its AI became a people-pleaser on steroids. This is a reminder that even AI needs the proper guardrails to be truly helpful. These tools can enhance our work, but they need boundaries and us to verify their output and ensure they're actually serving their purpose. The lesson isn’t to stop using AI or any of these tools that help us connect—it’s to use them responsibly, check in with ourselves, and make sure our tools amplify our leadership and humanity, not replace it.

This balance between tools and human connection becomes especially critical during awareness months, when it’s tempting to let automated posts and pre-packaged programs do the heavy lifting. But just as AI can't replace genuine leadership, a corporate wellness webinar can't replace real conversation.

Three Practices for Mental Health Month (and Beyond)

As I wrote in ReCulturing, culture isn't just what we say—it's what we practice, consistently. Here are three ways to transform Mental Health Awareness Month from a corporate initiative into a meaningful connection:

• Turn a Panel into a Conversation: Instead of just attending another mental health webinar, use it as an opening to discuss in your 1:1. "That speaker mentioned burnout. Here’s when I have felt burnt out (share a story). How are you doing? How can I support you?" Let the silence hang.

• Create Safety through Structure: Use these themes to normalize tough conversations. During one Mental Health Awareness Month, I shared that I valued health. Going to the gym and meditating were core practices to my physical and emotional health. I also told them that my 3 PM appointments on Wednesdays were not movable since they were my therapy sessions. After that, nobody rescheduled their therapy sessions anymore.

• Make Mental Health Part of Work: Instead of keeping wellness initiatives separate from "real work," integrate them. During Mental Health Awareness Month, I asked a team member struggling with anxiety about how we were running our meetings to facilitate a meeting effectiveness review. Her perspective helped us cut unnecessary meetings and create tighter agendas. Sometimes, the best person to solve a problem is the one who feels it most acutely.

So this month, don’t just mark Mental Health Awareness Month. Model it. Let your leadership be the most human thing you offer. Because hashtags fade. Human connection sticks.

The Small Mental‑Health Habits I’m Experimenting With

1. Dialing back the speed. No more podcasts at 1.5×. Listening at normal speed slows my brain enough to think while taking in new ideas, and I retain twice as much.

2. Long‑form journaling, daily. Writing by hand clears the noise. I’ve been dealing with writer’s block—Suleika Jaouad came just in time to help me through that. Her strength and resilience facing cancer for the third time inspire me—her Isolation Journals substack and her new book, The Book of Alchemy, are my daily companions.

3. Watching less, reading more. I moved unread books from the shelf to a chair‑side stack that stares at me until I open one. First up: Lorne—because talent development at SNL is a master class in leadership. And more reading makes for better writing.

4. Inbox dieting. I unsubscribed from almost everything. Now I dip into Substack, Every, or Pocket on my schedule—reading for insight, not inbox combat. No more cram‑reading just to hit inbox zero.

5. Leaving the scroll. I quit Instagram in January. I miss the photos and life updates, but I gained real‑life phone calls with friends I hadn’t heard from in ages, and made space for last-minute outings. Even a 30‑day break is worth it.

   

Your turn: What small experiments are keeping you sane lately?

In an era where workplace leaders struggle to unite distributed teams and bridge cultural divides, we need fresh models for developing connection. I found an unexpected source of inspiration in the newest outpost of the world's most famous museum: the Louvre Abu Dhabi. While the iconic Louvre in Paris first captured my imagination in 2011, the newer "Louvre of the Desert" in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, offered surprising insights into modern leadership. Rather than simply replicating its Parisian predecessor, this ambitious project reveals how thoughtful design can transcend cultural boundaries and create universal human experiences.

In 2007, Abu Dhabi invested €400 million (approximately US$525 million) for the Louvre's name rights. This wasn't just about branding—it was about creating a new model of cultural partnership. Just as today's organizations seek to break down silos between departments and regions, this France-UAE collaboration demonstrated how institutional boundaries can dissolve in service of a greater mission. The result is more than a museum—it's a living laboratory for universal design principles.

This partnership, along with the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s visitor experience, offers a powerful model for modern leadership. In an age of endless content and constant connection, our real work is designing intentional human experiences that unite rather than fragment our organizations.

The Art of Intentional Curation

Today's leaders face a paradox: despite unprecedented tools for connection, teams feel more fragmented than ever. The solution lies not in more tools, but in curation—from the Latin curare, "to take care." While AI and digital tools have accelerated content creation, they've made thoughtful personalization and contextualization more crucial than ever. Just as museum curators choose which pieces to display and how to arrange them, modern leaders must become skilled curators of information, experiences, and connections.

In this role, leaders can't simply amass content—they must thoughtfully select and contextualize it to reveal meaningful patterns and spark unexpected insights. This is especially vital in hybrid workplaces, where leaders, with their teams, need to intentionally design every meeting, document, and interaction to strengthen team connections.

Instead of traditional geographic divisions that emphasize differences, the Louvre Abu Dhabi organizes artwork around universal themes, such as writing, death, creativity, and water. This radical reorganization reveals shared human experiences across cultures and centuries, which today's global organizations strive to achieve.

I vividly recall our Swedish guide, Astrid, opening her arms wide in the Louvre Abu Dhabi's first gallery to exemplify this. She showed us objects from China, Libya, and France in the first exhibit, placed thoughtfully side by side beneath the same glass. The dating convention, "BCE" (Before the Common Era) instead of "BC," reinforced the museum's universal and inclusive approach. Different countries, distinct expressions—connected through a shared narrative.

For workplace leaders, this approach suggests a powerful shift: instead of organizing teams by function or geography, what if we oriented more around shared challenges or strategies? Instead of emphasizing organizational divisions and different team mission statements, how might we highlight the common values, behaviors, and skills that unite our diverse learning organizations?

Designing Spaces for Contextual Connection

Just as content needs curation, collaboration needs thoughtful design, whether virtual or physical. Jean Nouvel, the architect of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, understood that great spaces are more than containers—they are catalysts for human experience. His insight that "great museums are neighborhoods... spaces that aim to awaken the artistic emotions in the visitor" offers a blueprint for workplace interaction. Like well-designed museum spaces, effective collaboration requires careful orchestration: clear agendas that build momentum, skilled facilitation that draws out diverse perspectives, and intentional practices that ensure every voice contributes to the shared narrative.

Like well-designed museum spaces, effective collaboration requires careful orchestration

Instead of imposing a single structure, Nouvel drew inspiration from the Arab medina, where diverse elements come together in service of community life. His design gave each of the 55 structures its own character and purpose while ensuring they all contributed to a greater whole, much like modern organizations must balance team autonomy with collective purpose. Rather than standardizing how teams work, leaders can create frameworks that allow for different working styles while maintaining the coherence of shared mission and values. This approach addresses one of today's core leadership challenges: how to nurture distinct team identities while building one unified organizational culture.

Particularly relevant for workplace leaders is Nouvel's attention to transitional spaces. Between galleries, short passages with landscape views offer intentional moments of quietude, allowing visitors space to reflect and reset. These thoughtfully designed "in-between" spaces—whether physical cafes or virtual coffee chats—are equally crucial for processing, connecting, and preparing for what's next.

Leaders must design experiences that honor their organization's legacy while staying open to future possibilities.

Nouvel's philosophy resonates with organizational design: "Context isn't only the site. It's above all a wider historical context - a cultural context." Similarly, leaders must design experiences that honor their organization's legacy while staying open to future possibilities. Every space, physical or digital, should continue the organization's story while making room for new chapters.

Engineering Beauty from Necessity

Perhaps the most powerful leadership lesson emerges from the museum's iconic dome. Nouvel calls it a "parasol creating a rain of light" - a description that captures its dual purpose. The dome's primary function is protecting both visitors and priceless artworks from the harsh desert heat, yet its intricate design transforms this necessity into art itself, casting ever-changing patterns of light that dance across gallery floors and walls.

The dome's design, inspired by traditional Islamic mashrabiya screens, shows how innovation can emerge from heritage. Its double-layered structure not only shields the collection but unifies the museum's fifty-five buildings into a coherent whole while creating an enchanting interplay of light and shadow. For leaders, this represents the delicate balance between protection and innovation - how organizational frameworks can both safeguard core values while inspiring creative transformation.

What Nouvel calls "listening architecture" offers a model for adaptive leadership. The dome responds to environmental conditions, adjusting the quality of light throughout the day. Similarly, modern organizations must create frameworks that are both protective and responsive—structures that “shelter” their people while remaining open to change.

From Blueprint to Reality: Building a Connected Culture

Leaders can apply these ideas through simple but powerful actions:

1) Create "medina moments" by designing regular cross-functional gatherings around shared challenges instead of departmental updates

2) Build "transitional spaces" into your calendar—buffer time between meetings for reflection and informal connection

3) Curate information and experiences around universal, organizational themes and values that unite your organization, rather than focusing on department-specific metrics or goals

4) Design hybrid workplace practices that, like the dome, balance protection (clear boundaries, predictable schedules) with openness (flexible arrangements, spontaneous collaboration)

5) Look for opportunities to evolve practical necessities into moments of inspiration, whether that's turning a routine all-hands into a storytelling event or reimagining office space as a gallery of team achievements

Despite our sophisticated collaboration tools and organizational structures, we often find ourselves separated by silos of expertise, geography, and function. Yet what we truly crave—and what drives innovation—are experiences and conversations that connect us.

When we design with the intention to connect, we create environments where trust builds naturally, cross-functional understanding deepens, and differences become opportunities for innovation that no single team could achieve alone.

One more video, thanks to my travel and life partner, just because…

I'm testing this hypothesis from my makeshift office on the ninth floor of a Dubai hotel room with a full view of the endless towers of Business Bay. Since leaving my role at Udemy last year, I've shifted away from the familiar cadence of corporate leadership—the endless Zoom meetings, Slack notifications, and team check-ins—to build something different. My days are now split between consulting with clients on building effective teams, diving into deep thinking and writing about AI (I finally finished my article on that, which I will share soon), and coaching leaders through their own transitions.

We've been in Dubai for a week, our first stop in this month-long Middle East adventure. While my husband has been spending more time on his business here, I haven't made the trip until now. The original plan was just a few weeks. How could I be away from 'everything' for longer than that? Then, a few friends gently challenged my thinking with a powerful reframe (thank you, Libby and Aaryn). What exactly is 'everything' anyway?

What began as a brief visit has evolved into something more ambitious: an experiment in location-independent work while staying rooted in what truly matters. I've discovered it's not about leaving 'everything' behind but realizing that 'everything' becomes portable when anchored in values rather than place. The meaningful work in my life isn't happening despite this transition—it's happening because of it.

The Productive Tension Between Liminality and Intentionality

Liminality is the transition state—those threshold periods between who we were and who we are becoming. This concept of liminality has deep roots in anthropology, where scholars used it to describe periods marked by profound ambiguity and uncertainty—the spaces between established social structures and identities. Most people try to minimize or avoid these periods. I've learned to embrace them.

The most powerful example of liminality came after I left WeWork. Everyone expected me to jump into another corporate role immediately. That’s what we are supposed to do, right? Instead, I wrote. Reflected. And wrote some more. And wrote for weeks. That writing became an HBR article and eventually my book proposal. If I hadn't given myself permission to stay in that uncertain space while maintaining the disciplined practice of daily writing, none of that work would have existed.

Here's the paradox I'm living now: We can be open to new possibilities tomorrow while still being grounded in who we are and what we do today. While my husband and I are exploring different expressions of living (maybe living in the Middle East full-time, maybe part-time, maybe Europe, but still keeping our place in SF to come back to 3-6 months of the year), I am feeling less untethered and more aligned with what I value.

This is what fascinates me about the relationship between liminality and intentionality. We can do our most important work in these threshold times, but only if we create the containers that allow us to explore them. It's about giving ourselves permission to be uncertain while staying grounded in practices that reflect our values.

We can do our most important work in these threshold times, but only if we create the containers that allow us to explore them.

I recognize that having expansive space for deep reflection is a privilege—one I don't take lightly. Yet, I've worked with people across diverse circumstances who have successfully carved out intentional liminal spaces in their lives. The opportunity for reflection doesn't always require dramatic changes; it can exist within the constraints of our current realities. What matters is our commitment to creating even small pockets of liminality amid life's forward momentum. The space doesn't have to be substantial—it just needs to be yours. Sometimes, it's as simple as claiming 30 minutes each morning for reflection or one focused hour weekly for deeper thinking. It's about ReCulturing ourselves and intentionally designing the behaviors and practices we want to carry forward.

Home: Where Values Meet Practice

Liminality isn't just an uncomfortable gap to bridge—it's a powerful diagnostic tool to dig deeper into. When everything familiar is stripped away, we're forced to distinguish between what we genuinely value and what we've simply grown accustomed to. I'm discovering this through my evolving relationship with "home"—a concept I've had to completely reframe.

I'm more of a homebody than I sometimes care to admit. My San Francisco life has its cherished rhythms: morning workouts with TJ at the club, writing with my favorite blanket, hanging out with our two lovingly annoying cats, and knowing that our fridge is always stocked with my favorite protein drinks—and a few vegetables (working on that). And I have reset my working space in our brightly-lit home, which, unlike here, does not require air conditioning. Meanwhile, I'm typing this with numb fingers because my husband has set the air conditioning to "Arctic expedition.” These comforts make me happy. They provide essential stability during uncertainty but can also be recreated in new forms wherever I go. We've already found a local store that carries my favorite protein drink, and exploring new gyms is always a great way to shake up a workout routine. The specific expressions may change, but their support for my core values remains constant. This isn't about abandoning comforts—it's about discovering new ones.

What's harder to replicate but far more important are the human connections. Over the past several months, I have enjoyed reconnecting with dear friends, hiking the Berkeley hills on a Wednesday afternoon, meeting for Saturday morning coffee and runs by the bridge, and exploring the latest art exhibits at the DeYoung Museum. These friendships don't disappear with distance—they simply take on new dimensions. My friends are there for me just as I'm there for them, even if we can't text or call randomly at 2 PM on a Tuesday anymore (that would be 2 AM SF time). And already, we've gone on a boat and an urban walk with fellow global adventure seekers we've connected with here. Each new relationship I form while traveling helps me see my long-standing friendships through a lens of deeper gratitude, creating bridges between different worlds rather than replacing what I've built at home.

My core values also remain constant: health, impact, learning, and design. What's changing is how I practice them. Health isn't about going to my familiar gym—it's about maintaining physical and mental well-being wherever I am. Impact isn't tied to a particular office—it's about finding ways to make a difference through coaching, consulting, and writing, even while traveling. Learning isn't just about discussing new ideas with colleagues or reading the latest books on my shelf—it's about actively engaging with ideas in completely new forums—like learning more about Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, experimenting with AI, and leveraging new apps. And design isn't about my carefully curated space in our San Francisco loft—it's about creating and working in beautiful, inspiring spaces wherever I am, including finding this gem in the middle of Dubai.

Yes, it's challenging. Building new routines, respecting unfamiliar customs, and constantly adapting takes energy. But this is where intentionality becomes crucial. Each day, I choose specific practices that ground me in my values: morning meditation, focused work blocks, deliberate learning moments, and thoughtful space creation. These aren't just coping mechanisms—they're the bridge between liminality and intentionality, between untethered and grounded.

This approach isn't limited to those who can travel extensively. The key is identifying your core values and creating intentional behaviors and practices that express them, even in small ways. Maybe it's carving out a weekly "liminal hour" for reflection or temporarily changing your routine to challenge your assumptions about what's really essential. The goal isn't geographic freedom—it's the ability to stay true to your values while remaining open to new ways of living them.

Embracing Your Own Liminal Practice

Life isn't about choosing between groundedness and exploration, between stability and growth. It's about creating a conscious container where uncertainty and intention can coexist and remain grounded in our values while staying open to new ways of expressing and practicing them.

“…the actual task is to integrate the two threads of one’s life…the within and the without”

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Whether you're navigating a career pivot, contemplating relocation, or simply feeling the pull toward something new, here are three practical steps to embrace intentional liminality:

1. Separate Values from Habits: Examine your daily routines with fresh eyes. Ask: "Which ones reflect enduring values, and which ones are simply comfortable habits?" This crucial distinction creates space for reinvention while keeping you anchored in what truly matters. [Comment below for my personal values framework to jumpstart your reflection.]

2. Create a Liminal Container: Establish a consistent practice that gives you permission to exist between certainties. This might be a 20-minute morning journal, a weekly "possibility mapping" session, or a monthly experiment with changing one comfortable practice. The container's size matters less than your commitment to honoring and being open to it.

3. Develop Location-Independent Practices: Identify three specific ways to express each core value that doesn't depend on particular places, people, or circumstances. These become your portable anchors, allowing you to remain rooted in purpose even during a transition.

From our boat on the water, I watched the sun sink behind Dubai's skyline, offering a different perspective of the city than my hotel window. Tomorrow's view will shift again as we journey to Abu Dhabi, but what truly matters will remain constant. These threshold moments don't just help us navigate change and build resilience—they reveal, with remarkable clarity, what remains essential when everything else keeps changing around us.