First Look: Leadership Books for January 2026

HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in Janaury 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.

Intentional: How to Finish What You Start by Chris Bailey

Setting goals is easy. Following through on them? A whole lot harder. It turns out, the secret to finishing what you start isn’t sheer willpower or the latest productivity hack. It’s becoming more intentional. With Intentional, bestselling author Chris Bailey distills a decade of deep research on productivity to deliver a profound, practical, and counterintuitive road map to getting things done. Forget extensive to-do lists and a never-ending workload. To reach your goals, you must structure your daily actions around what’s most important to you—and let go of the rest. This way, getting things done becomes second nature.

The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential by Zack Kass

An eye-opening discussion on the transformative impact of AI and how to prepare for a new future. In The Next Renaissance, acclaimed AI advisor Zack Kass presents an optimistic and compelling vision of how artificial intelligence will shape our lives. Drawing on historical context, cutting-edge advancements, and firsthand experience, Kass lays out how AI will become a collaborative partner in building a better, more creative, and more compassionate world. Just as the original Renaissance revolutionized art, science, and society, today’s AI-driven Renaissance will redefine how we create, innovate, and flourish. Kass leverages his deep industry expertise to explain how this transformative technology will solve previously unimaginable challenges, presenting entirely new possibilities.

Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez

Rewire your organization—and your leadership—for a world driven by projects. It's time to stop treating projects as side work. In the age of constant transformation, projects are the primary way organizations create value and accelerate innovation. In this new paradigm—the project economy—traditional agile approaches are no longer enough. The next evolution is the project-driven organization, where projects sit at the center of how companies are structured, led, and rewarded. Powered by Projects explores this bold new model. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, the worldwide expert on project-based work, reveals the leadership styles and organizational structures necessary to drive success today.

How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success by George Newman

Great ideas are all around us, waiting to be discovered. Here’s how to find them. We’re used to imagining creativity as a lightbulb moment—sudden, mysterious, reserved for the gifted few. But what if ideas aren’t conjured from thin air? What if they’re discovered—more like precious artifacts that we unearth and refine? In How Great Ideas Happen, cognitive scientist George Newman draws on cutting-edge research to show that creativity isn’t magic, it’s method. The most successful innovators don’t wait to be struck by brilliance; their creative process is more like archeology. As keen-eyed explorers, they scan the terrain, dig with intention, and, with a little luck, find gold.

The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World by Brad Stulberg

Whether you are practicing guitar, pushing your limits at the gym, leading a team, honing a craft, studying medicine, or giving yourself the time and space to finally write that book, the pursuit of excellence is a big part of what makes life worth living—and it is for all of us. Unlike "pseudo-excellence," which is about hustle culture and hacks, genuine excellence is about challenging yourself in worthwhile endeavors, focusing on what matters most, and expressing the unique qualities that make you who you are. Too often, we get caught up in convenience and distraction to the detriment of our true potential. The good news is that we can set ourselves on a better path, one that includes more aliveness and resonance, more connection to self and others. Here, Stulberg finds convergence between modern science, age-old philosophy, and daily practice to explain that we are wired to strive for excellence—it is what we are here to do, core to our humanity. Yet our environment often works against us.

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“I read books because, at their best, they make me better, more empathetic, more socially aware, more in tune to the stranger beside me. They help me imagine a better future, provide me with answers to my insatiable questions, take me to places I’ll never get to go. ”

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Leading Thoughts for January 1, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Psychologist Shane Lopez on hope:

“Hope keeps us in the game. With low hope, we stop interacting with the world. We pull back. Literally, we don’t show up. We just move through in a zombie-like state. We all go through periods of sustained low hope, and they don’t lead to anything good at all. But hope for the future—maybe even the distant future—is what keeps people focused and moving in a direction that makes sense for their welfare and the welfare of the organization.”

Source: Decade of Change: Managing in Times of Uncertainty

II.

Robert Quinn on externally and internally driven people:

“People in the reactive mode tend to make emotions the centerpiece of their lives. Emotions become the measurement system for assessing the immediate situation. People are then forever fleeing from or searching for the ‘right’ situation, the one that will make them happy. Internally driven people have a different perspective. They know that their emotional states keep changing. They pursue their intended result no matter what their temporary emotion might be.”

Source: Change the World: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Results

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LeadershipNow 140: December 2025 Compilation

Here is a selection of Posts from December 2025 that you will want to check out:

• From Manager to Strategist: How to Use Strategy Tools to See Your Situation Clearly by @artpetty
• The myth of 'just let your work speak for itself' Influence by @artpetty (Fitness Series #1) There’s an X-factor that too many good people overlook: influence born of relationships in the right places.
• Why Clarity Emerges From Chaos by Matt Lambert
• Design Is Not Dying by Bryan Chou The core value is no longer: “I made this.” It becomes: “I helped us choose this, and avoid many wrong directions.”
• The Destructive Power of “Microsteps” in the Wrong Direction by @PhilCooke
• Why Advertising on the Super Bowl Makes More Sense Than Ever @MusebyClio It remains the only cultural phenomenon capable of captivating more than 100 million pairs of eyeballs at the exact same time.
• How Has Your Leadership Been Shaped By The People You Have Met Along The Way? by @TerriKlass
• An Encouragement from Jane Austen on her 250th Birthday by @PhilCooke
• Interview by @jamesstrock with David S. Brown, author of In the Arena: Theodore Roosevelt in War, Peace, and Revolution
• Courage Is The First Virtue by @jamesstrock Ahmed El Ahmed Inspires World With Kinetic Courage.
• Do What Others Won’t Do (And You’ll Have What Others Won’t Have) by @AlanSteinJr
• What Every Leader Should Know About Inspiring Others by @DanReiland
• Doom Earth: How advertising's timeline was ruptured via @shotscreative We were promised art. We got algorithm.
• Why the Human Brain Loves Novelty — and How Communicators Can Use It by @PhilCooke
• Emergent Creativity and the Idea of AI as Theft by Matt Lambert
• There’s Someone Who Needs You Today via @TheDaily_Coach
• The Leadership Playbook of Champions: Effort, Alignment, and the Grind by @BrianKDodd
• Sweat Now or Bleed Later by @KevinPaulScott
• The Rise of Slow Computing by Chris Dowd via @collabfund
• 5 Questions To Help You Audit Your Leadership Capabilities by @JosephLalonde

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Leading Thoughts for December 25, 2025

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Nicole Vignola on learning:

“The first major underpinning of a growth mindset is that people with this mindset understand that learning is a valuable opportunity in the face of adversity. When people believe that they can improve and grow from failure and setbacks, they are more likely to engage in challenging tasks and persist through difficulty. When people know and understand that the brain is malleable and are willing to adapt to circumstance, they are likely to persist in the face of obstacles. This perseverance can enhance pathways in the brain that are associated with learning, which strengthens the notion that learning is a dynamic process that’s forever evolving.”

Source: Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change

 

II.

David McCullough on learning from others:

“Be generous. Give of yourselves. Count kindness as all-important in life. Take interest in those around you. Try to keep in mind that everyone you encounter along the way, no matter their background or station in life, knows something you don’t. Get in the habit of asking people about themselves, their lives, their interests, and listen to them. It’s amazing what you can learn by listening.”

Source: History Matters

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The Best Leadership Books of 2025

THE titles listed below, published in 2025, improve our self-awareness regarding relationships and communication the sine qua non of leadership and provide us with a wider perspective on innovation and the changes taking place around us.

The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
by David Spiegelhalter

(W. W. Norton & Company, 2025)

How dangerous is our diet? How much of sports falls into the realm of luck? When authorities categorize a given event as “highly likely”—how likely is that, really? Whether we’re trying to decide if the benefits of a new medication are worth the chance of side effects or if artificial intelligence truly threatens humanity, our lives are riddled with uncertainties both everyday and existential—yet it can be difficult to know how to properly weigh all those unknowns. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts. He demonstrates how taking a mathematical approach to phenomena we might otherwise attribute to fate or luck can help us sort hidden patterns from mere coincidences, better evaluate cause and effect, and predict what’s likely to happen in the future.

The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More
by Jefferson Fisher

(TarcherPerigee, 2025)

No matter who you’re talking to, The Next Conversation gives you immediately actionable strategies and phrases that will forever change how you communicate. Jefferson Fisher, trial lawyer and one of the leading voices on real-world communication, offers a tried-and-true framework that will show you how to transform your life and your relationships by improving your next conversation. The Next Conversation will give you practical phrases that will lead to powerful results, from breaking down defensiveness in a hard talk with a family member to finding your own assertive voice at the boardroom conference table. Your every word matters, and by controlling how you communicate every day, you will create waves of positive impact that will resonate throughout your relationships to last a lifetime.

More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead
by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter with Marissa Afton and Rob Stembridge

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)

Humans have always been good at inventing tools that change the way we live and work—though not always good at adapting to those changes. Will the power of AI create a new era of robotic, impersonal efficiency, or will it catalyze a renaissance, redefining leadership and the world of work? So far, that question has mostly prompted a wave of anxiety about the disappearance of jobs and the loss of humanness in our work lives. AI has the power to transform leadership for the better—the key is in how leaders use it. By delegating tasks to AI and using it to augment skills and behaviors, leaders have an opportunity to unlock a truly human experience of work while enhancing organizational performance. The AI-augmented leader moves beyond a focus on the technology itself to constantly probe how it can enhance and deepen the core qualities of human-centered leadership: awareness, wisdom, and compassion. In this way, AI can help leaders and organizations become more human.

Conquering Crisis: Ten Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them
by Admiral William H. McRaven

(Grand Central Publishing, 2025)

Throughout his 40-year career, Admiral McRaven has experienced every manner of calamity imaginable. From managing failed hostage rescues to responding to student unrest, McRaven has learned how to successfully navigate crises—those moments that push the limits of your experience and challenge your confidence, when leadership skills alone may not be enough. Conquering Crisis provides a new set of tools for facing these stressful moments with poise. It breaks crises down into five phases assess, report, contain, shape, and manage—and provides concrete steps to come out the other side stronger. With incredible personal stories, thought-provoking parables, and memorable lessons, Admiral McRaven sheds light on the ways we can rise to the occasion in times of crisis and act as leaders, no matter the situation.

The Psychology of Leadership: Timeless principles to perfect your leadership of individuals, teams… and yourself!
by Sébastien Page

(Harriman House, 2025)

The Psychology of Leadership offers a fresh take on leadership through the lens of groundbreaking research in positive, sports, and personality psychology. Leaders will develop what feels like mind-reading abilities for interpreting workplace personalities, hidden motivations, and group dynamics. They will learn how to inspire their organization to move mountains, improve their ability to listen, communicate and, when necessary, persuade. Along the way they will dramatically improve their own mindset and resilience.

The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today's Companies
by Robert E. Siegel

(Crown Currency, 2025)

A groundbreaking blueprint for mastering “cross-pressures” in a rapidly changing world, teaching leaders to execute and innovate, think locally and globally, and project ambition and statesmanship alike—from a Stanford Business School lecturer and consultant to some of the biggest and most innovative CEOs. Part of the problem is that these challenges, while acutely felt, are rarely articulated in a way that makes them graspable and actionable. Robert E. Siegel has witnessed the impact of these cross-pressures from different perspectives. As a lecturer in management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, an operator, a venture capitalist, and a consultant, he sees countless teams of managers, at all sorts of companies, struggling to lead their companies into the future.

Blindspotting: How To See What's Holding You Back as a Leader
by Martin Dubin

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)

A groundbreaking blueprint for mastering “cross-pressures” in a rapidly changing world, teaching leaders to execute and innovate, think locally and globally, and project ambition and statesmanship alike—from a Stanford Business School lecturer and consultant to some of the biggest and most innovative CEOs. Part of the problem is that these challenges, while acutely felt, are rarely articulated in a way that makes them graspable and actionable. Robert E. Siegel has witnessed the impact of these cross-pressures from different perspectives. As a lecturer in management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, an operator, a venture capitalist, and a consultant, he sees countless teams of managers, at all sorts of companies, struggling to lead their companies into the future.

Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding
by Margaret C. Andrews

(Wiley, 2025)

What is the “best” way to lead others? The answer may surprise you. The basis for powerful, effective leadership comes from within—from understanding the people, ideas, and events that have shaped your worldview and how these influences express themselves in your leadership style. In Manage Yourself to Lead Others, leadership expert Margaret Andrews helps you understand yourself and translate this understanding into effectively managing yourself, leading others, working with your boss, and making better decisions. Andrews has taught thousands of executives in her professional development course at Harvard, and she shares her insights, practical tips, and questions for reflection here. This book will allow you to identify the kind of leader you want to be, the behavioral patterns that help get you there or stand in your way, and what it takes to develop new leadership capabilities.

A CEO for All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership
by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra and Kurt Strovink

(Scribner, 2025)

In the high-stakes world of corporate leadership, becoming a Fortune 500 CEO is an Everest-like ascent—with only the savviest managing to avoid falling off the mountain. In A CEO for All Seasons, you’ll find an essential climbing route that will take you through every stage. Unique in applying a number of sophisticated metrics to isolate the world’s top 200 CEOs, reduce them to a representative sample, and then reap their wisdom, the McKinsey team, in A CEO for All Seasons, spotlights the specific stage-based hurdles that CEOs face. From preparing for the role to starting strong to sustaining momentum to ensuring a lasting legacy, the book leaves no segment of the journey unmapped. Along the way, it offers proven strategies for maintaining forward progress and, crucially, alerts readers to common blind spots that can sabotage success, as revealed by a detailed survey of thousands of executives.

Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead)
by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)

“Just be yourself” might be the worst advice you’ve ever received. For years, we’ve been told that authenticity is the key to success—that we should be true to ourselves, tune out others’ opinions, and lead with unwavering genuineness. This feel-good message has spawned countless self-help books, leadership seminars, and viral social media posts. There’s just one problem: science says it’s wrong. Drawing on decades of research, renowned psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic reveals an uncomfortable truth: our obsession with authenticity is backfiring. From Silicon Valley’s authenticity worship to failed diversity programs, he exposes how our fixation on our “true selves” undermines both individual and organizational success. (Blog Post)

Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success
by Phil Gilbert

(Wiley, 2025)

Irresistible Change details one of the largest and most formidable transformations in corporate history: to shift the foundations of work for IBM’s nearly 400,000 employees and thousands of interdisciplinary teams across 180 countries and help them become more entrepreneurial, agile, and customer focused. Written by Phil Gilbert, IBM’s former General Manager of Design and architect of this ambitious change effort, this book is part narrative and part field guide. Irresistible Change describes how the choices made at IBM affected the Change Program Office’s development at each stage of its growth and provides readers with key insights they need to conduct transformational change within their own organizations.

Biographies:

Elliott Parker writes, “Biographies and history books are more likely to teach first principles and to generate more ideas about what to do differently than a typical business case study.” He adds, “And often, the further you look outside your immediate context, the more likely your mind is to be stretched to find creative solutions.” Here are some of the best from 2025.

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future
by Kevin Evers

(W. W. Norton & Company, 2025)

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company’s board. The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman’s power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman’s bitter opponent.

There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift
by Wilbur Ross

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)

Singer-songwriter. Trailblazer. Mastermind. The Beatles of her generation. From her genre-busting rise in country music as a teenager to the economic juggernaut that is the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has blazed a path that is uniquely hers. But how exactly has she managed to scale her success—multiple times—while dominating an industry that cycles through artists and stars like fashion trends? How has she managed to make and remake herself time and again while remaining true to her artistic vision? And how has she managed to master the constant disruption in the music business that has made it so hard for others to adapt and endure? In There's Nothing Like This, Kevin Evers, answers these questions in riveting detail. With the same thoughtful analysis usually devoted to iconic founders, game-changing innovators, and pioneering brands, Evers chronicles the business and creative decisions that have defined each phase of Swift's career. Mixing business and art, analysis and narrative, and pulling from research in innovation, creativity, psychology, and strategy, There's Nothing Like This presents Swift as the modern and multidimensional superstar that she is—a songwriting savant and a strategic genius.

Delivering the Wow: Culture as Catalyst for Lasting Success
by Richard Fain

(Fast Company Press, 2025)

In Delivering the WOW, Fain shows how a culture united people around a mission, delighted guests, and unlocked extraordinary performance. Drawing on vivid stories from 33 years at the helm, Fain explains how a remarkable culture was forged and strengthened through: • Alignment: ensuring every employee understands the same clear mission, beyond hierarchy or titles • Intentionality: never losing sight of the ultimate goal and ensuring that every action, big or small, supports that objective • Continuous improvement: never being satisfied; always believing that there are ways to improve • Crisis response: deeply rooted culture as a stabilizing force during black swan events, including the global pandemic. Invaluable principles like these are woven into unforgettable stories which help explain how the company's profitability, guest capacity, and employee base all grew more than thirtyfold.

Bag Man: The Story Behind the Improbable Rise of Coach
by Lew Frankfort

(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)

Lew Frankfort knew nothing about fashion when he became assistant to the founder of Coach. By the time he left, Frankfort had spent 29 years as CEO, growing Coach from a scrappy maker of leather bags with a small cult following to a beloved lifestyle brand. Along the way, Coach created a new market segment—accessible luxury—that redefined an industry. In Bag Man, Frankfort explains how the son of a Bronx policeman, after working in city government, built a business that challenged conventions, grew it 1000%, and became recognized as one of the world's best CEOs.

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Leading Thoughts for December 18, 2025

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

L David Marquet and Michael Gillespie on focusing on our future self:

“By changing our time-based point of reference, we inoculate ourselves from the present moment-biased effect of temporal discounting that we are otherwise subject to. The temporal distance reduces the importance and even the visibility of practical constraints. We do not feel them. When those practical constraints fade away, what we are left with is our ideal self. It is almost always a better human and allows us to focus on what we care most about, distinct from the urgent hassles, compromises, concessions, and justifications of today.”

Source: Distancing: How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions

II.

Margaret Andrews on managing yourself:

“Self-understanding gives us insight, but self-management helps us get there. Altering the way we behave changes the way people perceive and respond to us, and can change the way we think and feel about ourselves. With time and practice, the new behavior becomes a more natural component of our leadership style and way of being. This, in turn, has transformative effect on our own leadership abilities as well as the product of the work we do with and through others.”

Source: Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:26 PM
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Lessons from the Octopus About Leading AI Transformation

SIXTY-SIX million years ago, an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs and 75% of Earth’s species. Among the survivors was a creature that would teach us critical lessons about thriving amid disruption: the octopus.

While other animals’ external armor was useless against this new threat, the octopus survived by being radically adaptable. It has a rare ability; it can edit its RNA to adjust to new conditions within hours.

Today’s leaders face their own asteroid strike: artificial intelligence. And like that ancient catastrophe, AI is reshaping the business landscape with breathtaking speed. The question isn’t whether your organization will be transformed, but whether you’ll lead that transformation or be overwhelmed by it.

Having worked with dozens of organizations navigating AI adoption, we’ve seen that the most successful leaders don’t treat AI as just another technology implementation. Instead, they recognize it as a catalyst for fundamental organizational redesign.

Here are four critical lessons for leading this transformation.

1. Distribute Intelligence to the Front Lines

The octopus has two-thirds of its neural tissue in its arms, not its brain. As a result, each arm can solve problems independently while remaining coordinated with the whole. This is the ideal model for organizations: push decision-making power to where the action happens.

Most companies still operate with a “hub and spoke” command structure, where information flows up for decisions and then back down for execution. This creates costly delays.

AI changes the game by making sophisticated analysis available at every level. A sales rep can now access predictive customer insights. A supply chain manager can run complex optimization scenarios. A customer service agent can resolve issues that once required escalation.

Take the case of Mass General Brigham, one of the world’s leading healthcare systems. AI tools help frontline clinicians identify patterns and make treatment decisions faster, while leadership focuses on ensuring these tools integrate seamlessly into workflows and align with core values.

Action Step: Identify three decisions currently made at the management level that could be delegated to frontline teams with the right AI support. Then invest in making that support first-rate.

2. Create Knowledge Flow, Not Silos

The octopus has a “neural necklace,” a ring of nerve bundles that connects all its arms, enabling instant information sharing without involving the central brain.

Your organization needs the digital equivalent.

Too many companies treat AI as a series of disconnected point solutions: a chatbot here, a forecasting tool there, an image recognition system somewhere else. But AI’s real power emerges when insights flow freely across organizational boundaries. When your customer service AI informs your product development AI, which feeds your supply chain AI, you create compounding intelligence.

This requires rethinking your data architecture. Follow Amazon’s example: for over two decades, teams have been required to make every dataset accessible through well-documented interfaces.

Action Step: Map the information flows your AI systems require to be most effective, then eliminate the structural barriers preventing those connections. This often means confronting uncomfortable truths about departmental turf and legacy systems.

3. Embrace Three-Hearted Leadership

The octopus has three hearts: one for its body and one for each gill. These hearts serve different purposes, and one can even be stopped temporarily to redirect energy to the others. Modern AI transformation requires a similar multiplicity of leadership approaches and an ability to shift focus.

First, you need operational leadership that maintains excellence in your core business while AI tools enhance productivity. Second, you need experimental leadership that explores how AI might create entirely new business models or revenue streams. Third, you need cultural leadership that addresses the very human concerns about what AI means for people’s roles and dignity.

The computer accessories company Logitech has balanced all three hearts effectively. It has used AI to streamline operations, explored AI-powered new product categories, and conducted town halls where employees could voice concerns and shape how AI would be deployed. This has resulted in both productivity gains and sustained employee engagement.

Action Step: Assess which of these three leadership dimensions you’re neglecting. Then tell managers which styles to focus on and when.

4. Accelerate Through Accurate Sensing

The octopus has exceptional sensory capabilities. It has thousands of chemoreceptors on its arms that constantly feed information about its environment. In an AI transformation, your sensing mechanisms are how you detect both opportunities and emerging problems.

Most organizations implement AI tools but fail to instrument them adequately. They can tell you if the tool is being used, but not how it’s changing workflows, where it’s introducing errors, or what new capabilities users wish it had. This is flying blind.

Build comprehensive sensing into every AI initiative from day one. This means usage analytics, certainly, but also regular qualitative feedback sessions, error tracking with root-cause analysis, and competitive intelligence on how others in your industry are applying similar capabilities. When you spot patterns—positive or negative—you can respond at AI speed rather than committee speed.

Action Step: Before deploying your next AI tool, design the feedback mechanisms that will tell you what’s really happening. Make reviewing this feedback a weekly ritual, not a quarterly afterthought.

The Transformation Imperative

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs created the conditions for mammals to flourish. AI’s disruption is similarly clearing space for new organizational forms, ones that are more adaptive, more intelligent, and more resilient.

The uncomfortable truth is that cautious, incremental approaches won’t cut it. The companies that thrive will be those willing to redesign their organizations around AI’s capabilities—distributing intelligence, connecting insights, embracing complexity, and moving at the speed of algorithms.

The question facing every leader today isn’t whether to transform. It’s whether you’ll transform deliberately, learning from nature’s most adaptable creature, or be transformed by forces you didn’t see coming.

The asteroid has already struck. The age of the Octopus Organization has begun.

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Stephen Wunker is Managing Director of New Markets Advisors, a global consulting firm helping ambitious innovators—including 32 of the Fortune 500—find their next wave of growth. One of the world’s leading authorities on innovation, he’s led a decade’s worth of AI initiatives, advised hundreds of organizations, and authored five bestselling books including AI and the Octopus Organization: Building the Superintelligent Firm. Jonathan Brill is the Futurist-in-Residence at Amazon and Executive Director of the Center for Radical Change. Ranked the #1 futurist in the world by Forbes and described as “the world’s leading transformation architect” by Harvard Business Review, Brill converts the chaos of AI, geopolitical shifts, and economic disruption into bold advantage. He’s unlocked tens of billions for multinational corporations, frontier tech firms, and national governments.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:31 AM
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Leading Thoughts for December 11, 2025

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Paul J. H. Schoemaker on the value of scenario planning:

“The purpose of developing scenarios is not to pinpoint the future, but rather to experience it. Scenario planning is not really about planning but about changing people’s mindsets to allow faster learning and smarter actions. The process of developing scenarios is one of gaining experience in a simulated future. When You feel the future deep in your bones, you gain a set of instincts that allow you to respond quickly and effectively to new challenges they unfold. The process enlarges the repertoire of responses available to managers based on superior pattern recognition. In an uncertain and changing environment, faster learning is the only lasting source competitive advantage, and scenario planning is a powerful way to accomplish this elusive goal.”

Source: Profiting from Uncertainty: Strategies for Succeeding No Matter What the Future Brings

II.

Max Bazerman and Michael Watkins on challenging the status quo:

“Decision-makers, organizations, and nations often fail to prepare for predictable surprises because of the natural human tendency to maintain the status quo. Above and beyond concerns about the cost and time requirements of change, when a system still functions and there is no crisis to catalyze action, we will keep doing things the way we have always done them. Acting to avoid a predictable surprise requires a decision to act against this bias and to change the status quo. By contrast, most organizations change incrementally, preferring short-term fixes to long-term solutions. To avoid predictable surprises, leaders must make the case for change and eliminate the status quo as an option.”

Source: Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming, and How to Prevent Them

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 12:50 PM
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