When Story Is Not Enough: On Crossing the Line Between Fiction and Truth

The books that have actually transformed me were not always the ones with the best arguments. Sometimes they were novels that let me inhabit a consciousness so different from my own that I could never quite return to my previous assumptions. And sometimes they were people who stopped telling stories and simply said: This is what I experienced. This is what I now believe. This is what I am asking you to consider. Continue reading When Story Is Not Enough: On Crossing the Line Between Fiction and Truth

Leadership Malpractice and the Duty to Travel

Leadership requires the capacity to understand people. Not to manage them. Not to optimize them. To understand them. And you cannot understand people you have never been curious about. You cannot lead humans if you have not done the work of recognizing that other humans are, in fact, as real and complex and worthy as you are.

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Happy Workers Do Better Work

If you want to lead in a way that actually changes things, you will eventually have to do inner work that no case study can prepare you for. You will have to understand, from the inside, what it means to be a human being trying to be seen and heard and valued. And that requires a different kind of reading.
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The Handlekraft Principle: Authority That Gives Power Away

Dugnad was always my least favorite word in Norwegian. It means voluntary collective work, and it has organized Norwegian communities for over eight hundred years, and it’s not really “voluntary” as my wife would explain. In practice it means your Saturday now belongs to everyone. My neighbors would show up with rakes and rollers and thermoses of coffee, cheerful in a way I found deeply suspicious. Continue reading The Handlekraft Principle: Authority That Gives Power Away

Why I’m Finally Ready to Talk About Authority (And What Retiring Has to Do With It)

As I got closer to what you might call success, I found myself paralyzed by a strange fear. Not fear of failure. I’d already survived plenty of that. It was the fear of being seen. Specifically, the fear of being perceived as a braggart. Someone showing off. Continue reading Why I’m Finally Ready to Talk About Authority (And What Retiring Has to Do With It)

Test users needed

I wrote a social media post recently about Universal Accessibility — the idea that building with AI is now available to anyone — and I tagged all my nieces and nephews. This was peak doting uncle energy. I fully expected to be muted, scrolled past, and lovingly ignored the way you ignore your uncle’s LinkedIn posts about blockchain in 2021 Continue reading Test users needed

The Door Is Wide Open: AI App Development Is Accessible to Everyone Right Now

Second, perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of accessible. You might benefit from a coach when you’re starting out — someone who can help you think through your descriptions more carefully, or who knows enough to spot when the AI has made a questionable architectural choice. Certainly, get back up before you deploy anything with personal data or try to sell something. But you don’t need a class to jump in. You definitely don’t need a four-year degree. You don’t even need a two-week intensive. You need curiosity and a willingness to describe what you want clearly. You’re not going to break anything. Continue reading The Door Is Wide Open: AI App Development Is Accessible to Everyone Right Now

The Future Belongs to People Who Know Things (Not People Who Code Things)

Domain-informed design opens that door. It says: your experience matters. Your understanding of real human problems matters. Your ability to sit across from a business owner and truly get what their days are like, what frustrates them, what they wish worked better? That’s not a “soft” skill. That’s the skill. That’s what makes technology feel human instead of cold. Continue reading The Future Belongs to People Who Know Things (Not People Who Code Things)

The People Who Feed Us

That the richness of America has always come from the layering of cultures, not the flattening of them. That you don’t have to understand every word of a song to feel its heart. That celebrating someone else’s heritage doesn’t take anything away from your own. Continue reading The People Who Feed Us

The Bridge

That’s the thing about the bridge. On the edges, at least, you have company. You have your tribe, your certainties, your enemies clearly marked. On the bridge you have the view, which shows you too much, and the quiet, which never lifts. Continue reading The Bridge