The New Non-Routine Leader™ — Built for the World AI Can’t Navigate Alone.
Part 1: The Fading Lantern
For thousands of years, humans have known—intuitively if not scientifically—that there are two fundamental ways of making sense of the world. This isn't a matter of opinion; it's a biological and philosophical reality, a deep truth wired into the very structure of our brains. And here’s why this matters more than ever: the way you make sense of the world is the way you lead in it.
The first way is like a lantern. It casts a broad, open, and receptive glow, allowing us to take in the whole scene at once—the context, the relationships, the unspoken atmosphere in the room. The lantern doesn’t give you a map; it helps you sense the territory as it actually unfolds. It sees the living, breathing, interconnected reality of a situation.
The second way is like a flashlight. It’s narrow, bright, and precise, brilliant at focusing on one piece at a time—analyzing it, measuring it, and controlling it. The flashlight doesn't see the territory; it sees a problem to be solved, a target to be acquired. It sees a representation of reality—a map, a chart, a spreadsheet.
Both are essential. The lantern makes sense of the unknown, the complex, the non-routine. The flashlight manages the known and executes on the routine.
But starting in the 17th century, at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, the West made a fateful bargain. Intoxicated by the flashlight’s power to measure, predict, and solve, we traded the wisdom of the lantern for its power. As the philosopher Francis Bacon declared, the goal of science was 'dominion over nature.' And slowly, generation by generation, the light of the lantern began to fade. The world stopped being something we were in relationship with and became a machine to be dissected, reduced, and controlled. The poet Wordsworth saw this coming, writing succinctly, "we murder to dissect." Essentially, we moved from science, which seeks to make sense of reality, to mere reductionism, which insists the world is “nothing but” matter in motion we must control. In leadership, this reductionism is the native language of our Excel files, our so-called business intelligence dashboards, and our rigid process documentation.
And yet—here’s the paradox that should stop every leader in their tracks. Every great breakthrough that changed the world began not with the flashlight’s logic, but with the lantern’s openness. Galileo didn’t calculate his way to the laws of pendular swing; he noticed a lamp moving in a cathedral and was struck with wonder. Newton didn’t reduce gravity to a formula until after he had seen an apple fall and sensed a deeper, unifying pattern. Darwin didn’t begin with data; he began with a holistic pattern in the living world that no one else had attended to. And it was the poet Edgar Allan Poe who first sensed that our universe was expanding after looking at the stars in the sky—a hundred years before it was scientifically proven.
That is what leaders do at their best. They don’t just tackle the obvious problems everyone can see. They step into the uncertain, non-routine spaces others avoid, notice what others overlook, and reframe the situation in ways that open new possibilities.
But here’s the danger: for centuries, we’ve let the flashlight dominate, calling our attention to abstract details rather than to reality itself. We’ve built organizations obsessed with efficiency, measurement, and control—brilliant at solving yesterday’s problems, but increasingly blind to tomorrow’s.
Now, in an age where AI itself is becoming the master of the flashlight—analyzing, optimizing, and producing answers at lightning speed—the central challenge for leaders is laid bare.
The real question is: Can you keep the lantern lit?
That centuries-long shift has now brought us to a breaking point. And to understand the deadly stakes of this imbalance, we need to go to the highest and most unforgiving place on Earth.
Part 2: The Flashlight in the Death Zone
May 10, 1996. Mount Everest.
Two commercial expeditions, packed with experienced climbers and world-class guides, push toward the summit. Dozens of individuals, many having paid $65,000 for the chance, operate with one clear, routine objective: solve for the top. Their focus is locked like a flashlight—narrow, intense, unblinking.
But the mountain was telling a different story. A non-routine story. A bank of ominous storm clouds gathered on the horizon. Oxygen canisters, their lifeline in the thin air, were running lower than expected. The clock ticked past their agreed-upon 2 p.m. turnaround time—a critical safety rule established in the clear-headed safety of base camp to avoid descending in darkness. Lines of climbers bottlenecked near the Hillary Step, the last major obstacle, slowing progress to a dangerous crawl. Hypoxia-induced fatigue, a silent killer, etched itself into every climber’s face.
All these signals were there, in plain sight. They were not hidden, but they existed in the periphery, visible only to a lantern. No one paused to name them. No one asked the crucial question: has the real challenge shifted from "summiting" to "surviving?" No one had the courage to challenge the group's single-minded assumption that success meant only standing on the peak. The plan had become more real than the reality.
The lantern—the wide, receptive, context-aware way of seeing—was desperately needed. But it was dim. The only thing burning with fierce intensity was the flashlight of solving. And the flashlight kept telling the same, simple, seductive story: keep climbing, reach the summit, finish the job.
So they did. Several climbers reached the top well after the safety deadline. They solved for the goal they had set for themselves weeks before, in a different reality.
And by nightfall, a ferocious blizzard engulfed the mountain. Eight climbers died, lost and disoriented in the storm they had failed to see forming right in front of them.
They achieved the task, but they catastrophically missed the reality. The flashlight of solving blinded them to the non-routine truth the lantern would have revealed.
Part 3: Killing the Solver Reflex
While the stakes may not be life and death, that same dynamic is alive and well in our organizations every single day. And it’s important to be honest about how deep this reflex runs in all of us, especially high-performers.
Consider how many leaders have the phrase 'problem solver' on a résumé or LinkedIn profile. Think about how often it's used in a job interview as a badge of honor. For many, our very identity as a leader rests on being the go-to problem solver.
In leadership audiences, it's a common phenomenon for over 80% to proudly describe themselves this way. And of course they would. It’s how most of us were raised, trained, and rewarded. Being the Solver isn’t just a skill—it’s an identity. It feels smart. It feels safe. It feels like control.
But here’s the hard truth: in a non-routine world, the Solver reflex is killing leadership.
On Everest, it was the reflex that kept climbers marching upward long after the mountain had told them to stop. In our businesses, it’s the reflex that keeps us fixing symptoms instead of seeing systems. It’s what has us launching a new product to solve a revenue problem when the real issue is a fundamental market shift. It drives us to double down on yesterday’s answers while tomorrow’s questions go completely unnoticed.
But we must face the reality that solving is addictive. The flashlight gives us quick hits of clarity and the powerful illusion of control. But what if the biggest trap is the very idea of a "problem" itself? The word implies something separate from us that can be fixed, put away, and gotten "off our plate." This is the flashlight's view. A sales dip is a "problem" to be solved with a new incentive. Low morale is a "problem" to be solved with a survey. The lantern reveals a different truth: we are not separate from the systems we lead. We are participants within them. That sales dip is part of an unfolding reality that includes our strategy, products, and team's capability. The low morale is part of a culture we are actively creating every day. The challenge isn't to "solve a problem," but to wisely navigate a complex, unfolding reality. By framing everything as a neat and tidy "problem," we've already narrowed our vision and limited our possible responses before we've even begun. Clarity about the wrong thing is not the same as truth. And in today’s world, that kind of misplaced clarity can be catastrophic.
If we don’t kill the reflex to solve first, we will never perform well as leaders in non-routine situations. We will keep climbing toward the wrong summit.
Part 4: The Great Collision: Why the Solver Must Be Replaced
Why does this matter so much right now? Because of three massive, irreversible shifts that have collided to permanently change the game of leadership.
The first shift is the rise of non-routine work. What was once a manageable current has become a tsunami. Today, it's the default condition. The World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, AI will reshape 86% of businesses, simultaneously creating and displacing hundreds of millions of roles. The clear line between "routine" and "non-routine" has been erased, pulling every leader into a world defined by strategic ambiguity.
The second shift is a neurological self-sabotage: the lantern—the part of our brain built for the non-routine—has been systemically dimmed.
Psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist has dismantled the old pop-psychology myth that our brains are divided into a purely “creative” right hemisphere and a purely “logical” left. Both sides engage in every task—but they pay attention to the world in profoundly different, and competing, ways.
The left hemisphere functions like the flashlight. It is narrow, focused, and intent on breaking things into parts, building abstract models, and exerting control. It thrives on the familiar and filters out the non-routine, preferring what it already knows and can label. McGilchrist calls it "the emissary," the loyal servant designed to execute tasks. The problem is, the emissary has begun to think it's the master. And like any usurper, it actively suppresses the rightful ruler. It builds a world of charts, maps, and models and insists this simulation is reality. Think of the executive team so focused on the quarterly report that they ignore the clear signs of customer dissatisfaction, or the project manager who follows the Gantt chart perfectly even as the project is heading for a real-world disaster because the team is burning out. The emissary doesn't just ignore the lantern's glow; it dismisses it as 'unscientific' or 'too subjective,' effectively trying to snuff it out. This is the boardroom culture where a leader's valid intuition about a market shift is shut down with the question, "Where's the data to back that up?" Or when a nuanced, contextual story is interrupted with a demand for 'just the bullet points.' The lantern's vital, holistic insights are dismissed as 'soft,' 'anecdotal,' or too lengthy in a world that only trusts the spreadsheet.
The right hemisphere is the lantern. It is wide, open, and relational. It sees context, connection, and the living complexity of a situation. It’s highly sensitive to the non-routine, attuned to the subtle signals that don’t fit the established model—the very anomalies that reveal what’s really happening. It is our built-in “BS detector,” finely tuned to inconsistencies. It is the true master, the one in touch with reality.
For centuries, our educational systems and corporate structures have overwhelmingly rewarded the left hemisphere's flashlight, while neglecting and even distrusting the right hemisphere's lantern. We over-train the side that analyzes and under-train the side that understands. Then we wonder why we miss what matters. We have built a world that celebrates the map over the territory. The result? We’ve neglected the brain’s most intelligent mode—the right hemisphere—the very system built for making sense of the non-routine.
The third shift is the rise of AI. For the first time in history, machines are becoming better Solvers than we are in almost every routine circumstance. AI is the ultimate flashlight. It is the perfect left hemisphere, capable of routine analysis, optimization, and generating answers from known data at a superhuman scale. This means if your leadership identity is built on solving, your value is already being automated. In fact, you may not be leading at all.
The Brilliant Intern Who Can’t Lead
Think of AI as the most brilliant left-brained intern you’ve ever had.
He dazzles with logic, speed, and analysis. He can crunch the data, sort the parts, and build neat categories. If you want to know how many trees stand on a hillside, their average height, or their rate of growth—he’s unmatched.
But he cannot behold the hillside itself. He cannot take in the shifting canopy, the light through the branches, or the sense of shelter you feel standing beneath it. For him, the “forest” is just a label, a convenient abstraction—never the living presence of the woods.
The left hemisphere grabs the world by naming and dissecting it. The right hemisphere lets the world show itself—whole, relational, alive. AI is a prodigy of the first, but blind to the second.
And that is why the intern can never run the office. He can catalog, calculate, and reduce. But he cannot comprehend. He can dissect, but he cannot wonder.
Part 5: The Sensemaking Imperative
So what’s left for us? What can leaders do that the brilliant intern can’t?
We can make sense.
Sensemaking is the right-hemisphere discipline of sustained, relational attention—grasping intentions, context, and meaning before choosing action. Sensemaking, not solving, is the leader’s ability to notice what matters in the non-routine and frame a path forward when there is no map.
This isn’t just theory. This is what I’ve seen on the ground for my entire career, whether consulting for the Fortune 500 or working inside a mid-market business. My job has always been to help leaders navigate the non-routine. Through that experience, I learned one thing over and over: the bottleneck is never money or tech; it’s always, always, leadership. But no one could explain what makes a leader great in a non-routine world that we live in today.
That question is what led to the work on Non-Routine Leadership. And the answer is unequivocal: Sensemaking is now the #1 indicator of leadership effectiveness—more than vision, more than innovation, more than emotional intelligence. Why? Because it is the precursor skill. Before you can have a meaningful vision, you must first make sense of the current reality. Before you can truly innovate, you must make sense of the unmet need. Emotional intelligence is useless if you can't first make sense of the emotional context you and your team are in. After all, the capacities people call EQ—empathy, attunement, reading intention—are right-hemisphere strengths that presuppose this lantern-style attention.
This has been proven. Our research shows that when leaders build this sensemaking muscle, their decision-making improves by 472% in non-routine situations. Their ability to spot the right problems improves by 240%. Their impact as coaches doubles. Their emotional intelligence, as rated by their peers, rises 119%. These aren’t marginal gains. They’re breakthroughs.
And yet—nearly all leadership models today skip sensemaking entirely. They assume you already do it well enough. They hand you tools for vision, culture, or execution without ever training the very muscle required to use them effectively in a world that no longer makes sense on its own.
How the Hemispheres Attend (for Leaders)
| Right Hemisphere (Lantern) | Left Hemisphere (Flashlight) |
|---|---|
| Sees context, relationships, and the whole before the parts | Sees details in isolation, parts before the whole |
| Mediates empathy and emotional attunement; underpins EQ | Reduces emotion to data; struggles with empathy |
| Detects novelty, anomalies, and non-routine signals | Prefers the familiar, filters out the non-routine |
| Integrates multiple signals into meaning and living patterns | Builds models, maps, and abstractions—but treats them as reality |
| Governs inhibitory control (regulating emotion under stress) | Tends toward impulsivity or rigid control loops |
| Sensemaking: frames the situation, updates meaning | Solving: applies pre-set patterns, routines, and fixes |
Part 6: The Non-Routine Leadership Model
But if sensemaking is the critical precursor to all effective leadership, the obvious question is: how do you train it?
That’s why we built the Non-Routine Leadership™ model—the only leadership approach designed to strengthen your sensemaking skills. It helps you relight the lantern of that right hemisphere so you can lead with clarity in the midst of the non-routine.
At its core, Non-Routine Leadership™ is about four interconnected sensemaking moves: Being, Seeing, Thinking, and Acting. These moves don’t happen in isolation; they work dynamically. How we see ourselves, what we pay attention to, how we reason, and the actions we choose all play a role in our sensemaking process. The only question is, ‘how can we improve that process?’
Each move in the model requires a shift in approach, supported by proven solutions and practical tools. Together, they form a rhythm of leadership that adapts as complexity increases. And the best part? Every move is uniquely human—the kind of deep thinking, connecting, and creating that no AI can replicate.
The framework itself is simple yet powerful: one identity and three habits. When practiced together, they sharpen the single most important driver of leadership performance—sensemaking.
Identity: Be the Sensemaker™ (Being)
Habit 1: See with Wonder (Seeing)
Habit 2: Think in FastFrames™ (Thinking)
Habit 3: Shape the Future (Acting)
Let’s explore each, starting with the most foundational—identity, because who you are determines how you lead.
Identity: Be the Sensemaker™
SHIFT
The first and most crucial sensemaking move is shifting From Solver to Sensemaker. For most of us, “problem solver” has become more than a skill—it’s our very identity. We’ve been praised, promoted, and paid for it. But when the world is dominated by the non-routine and the flashlight of solving is increasingly automated, clinging to that identity limits us. If you see yourself only as the Solver, you’ll keep driving toward answers that no longer matter.
SOLUTION
The alternative is to be the Sensemaker. This shift is more profound than simply changing your job title. It's a change in your very way of being as a leader. The Solver stands apart from the organization, viewing it as a machine with levers to pull and parts to fix. You see this when a leader tries to solve a morale issue by simply reshuffling an org chart, or obsesses over KPI dashboards without ever talking to the people whose work those numbers represent. It's the illusion of detached control.
The Sensemaker, in contrast, is an active participant within the organization, treating it not as a machine to be controlled, but as a living ecosystem to be cultivated. This is the leader who sits in on customer service calls to understand client frustrations firsthand, or who walks the factory floor to see where the real process bottlenecks are, long before they show up on a report. You move from detached analysis to the reality of engaged participation.
This isn’t about adding one more technique—it’s about redefining who you are when you lead. Identity is the deepest lever for change. When you choose to be a Sensemaker, you stop measuring yourself by the number of problems you fix. Instead, you measure yourself by the clarity, connection, and meaning you help create. Be the Sensemaker is the most crucial shift because it defines who you are as a leader and unlocks every other habit. Without it, the lantern stays dark.
PRACTICAL TAKEAWAY
Before you act, pause and ask yourself: “Right now, am I being the problem solver, the distant delegator, or the sensemaker?” That single question can reset your stance in the moment. Make it a daily practice. Over time, you’ll train yourself to show up differently—not as the one who always has the answer, but as the one who helps everyone see what matters and chart the path forward together.
With our identity as Sensemakers firmly in place, the first habit teaches us how to begin: by fundamentally changing the way we pay attention.
Habit 1: See with Wonder.
SHIFT
This is where you make the shift From How to Wow. The purpose is to sharpen your attention so you notice the non-routine details everyone else misses. Most leaders instinctively ask “how”—a flashlight response that dissects and reduces too quickly. In doing so, they miss the wonder of a new or complex experience. Too often leaders jump to assumptions, delegate before they understand, or miss the non-routine moment altogether—until it’s too late. To quote Einstein, “he who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
SOLUTION
See with Wonder is the conscious act of turning on your lantern. As Iain McGilchrist argues, the kind of attention we bring literally changes the world we experience. This isn't passive observation; it's about adopting a different relationship with reality. It’s the disciplined choice to sustain your attention, allowing a holistic understanding to emerge before the flashlight mind rushes to capture and define it.
But wonder isn't just about what you see with your eyes; it's what you sense with your whole being. It's the practiced skill of 'reading the room'—noticing the subtle shift in a key client’s body language during a pitch that tells you the deal is in jeopardy, despite their polite words. It's hearing the meaning in the heavy silence after you announce a re-org, a silence that says more than any verbal feedback ever could. It's trusting that nagging 'gut feeling' that the official sales forecast, despite its optimistic numbers, isn't telling the whole story about market headwinds. The lantern illuminates not just the explicit data on the spreadsheet, but the implicit, unspoken reality where the real non-routine challenges live.
Wonder is the antidote to the flashlight's arrogant certainty. It's the profound, practical understanding that the map is not the territory, that the spreadsheet is not the business, and that our neat models will never capture the full, complex truth of a situation. With the narrow flashlight of a Solver, you see only a problem to eliminate. With the lantern, you See with Wonder—bringing humility, appreciation, curiosity, and courage to whatever non-routine opportunity or challenge you face. See with Wonder is the most important habit, because whatever you attend to as a leader becomes the world you lead.
PRACTICAL TAKEAWAY
Practice a daily Wonder Walk. Step outside for a few minutes, slow down, and intentionally notice three things you would normally overlook. It’s a workout for your lantern. Want a bonus? Use the Wonder HACC—apply Humility, Appreciation, Curiosity, and Courage to each of those things you noticed as you walk. Practiced regularly, wonder becomes second nature, even in the mundane spaces of office hallways. In essence, wonder is the oil in your lantern.
Habit 2: Think in FastFrames.™
But this new, richer awareness presents a new challenge. Once the lantern of Wonder illuminates the full complexity of a situation, how do you make sense of it without getting overwhelmed? That's the purpose of our second habit: Think in FastFrames™.
SHIFT
Here, you shift From Fixing to Framing. Under pressure, the flashlight side of your mind lunges for the first familiar answer—applying yesterday’s solution to today’s challenge. But in the non-routine, that reflex often locks you into the wrong path—just as the climbers on Everest kept marching upward because that was the plan.
SOLUTION
The way forward is to create new frames before you choose new actions. This is the art of the mental re-start. To do this, we must understand the neurological trap of the "Fixing" reflex. Your left hemisphere—the flashlight—is a brilliant but lazy pattern-matcher. When faced with a non-routine challenge, its immediate impulse is to find the closest familiar pattern and apply the solution that worked last time. A dip in sales? It retrieves the "run a promotion" file. A project is delayed? It retrieves the "add more status meetings" file. It operates from a library of the known, forcing today's unique challenge into yesterday's box.
The surprising and iconoclastic truth is that the primary purpose of a framework in a non-routine world isn't to find an answer; it's to disrupt your own certainty. A FastFrame™ is a deliberate intervention that breaks the left hemisphere's hypnotic trance. It forces the arrogant "emissary" to stop, step back, and acknowledge the right hemisphere's quiet but persistent signal that this time is different.
Think of a product launch that’s failing to gain traction. The flashlight mind of the Solver immediately jumps to fixing the most obvious thing: "We need more marketing spend!" or "We need to cut the price!" These are familiar levers. The Sensemaker, using a FastFrame, resists this. They might apply a simple "Four P's" frame (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). By forcing the team to deliberately consider each element, they create space for the lantern's insight. They might discover the issue isn't the promotion at all. The Product is too complicated, the Price miscommunicates its value, or it's being sold in the wrong Place (channel). The frame didn't provide the answer; it broke the fixation on the wrong problem and revealed a better set of questions.
FastFrames™ are the essential bridge between the lantern and the flashlight. They take the holistic, often fuzzy, awareness from the right hemisphere and give it a structure the left hemisphere can work with. They don’t replace intuition; they discipline it. Think in FastFrames is the most scalable habit, because frames can be applied across multiple, non-routine situations and shared across teams to multiply clarity.
PRACTICAL TAKEAWAY
The next time you’re in a foggy situation, resist the urge to jump straight to fixing. Instead, ask yourself “what’s the framework for that?” Not sure where to start? Run the 5D framework. It works in any non-routine situation and is completely flexible—use it alone or with a team, in seconds or over weeks. Describe the audience, Define the goals, Detect the problems, Diagnose the causes, and Develop the options. Notice there’s no sixth “D”—Deliver comes later. This can be done in your head or with a team; in seconds or in weeks. The point is to first widen the frame, then respond. Once you've used a frame to achieve clarity for yourself, the final habit is about sharing that clarity and empowering others to act. This is where sensemaking becomes leadership.
Habit 3: Shape the Future.
SHIFT
Unlike identity or the first two habits, Shape the Future is the only outward-facing habit—where leadership moves from attention and framing into shared movement. This habit is most important for driving a sensemaking culture (sometimes called sense-giving or sense-sharing). Here the move is From Shoving to Shaping—from pushing answers down to creating the conditions where influence leads to clarity. Too often, leaders under pressure fall back on the old model: issuing directives, driving compliance, forcing execution. That’s the flashlight at work again—narrow, forceful, and blinding. It gets people moving, but not always in the right direction. And in the non-routine, pushing harder down the wrong path only accelerates failure.
SOLUTION
Shaping the Future means influencing by creating the conditions where others can practice their own sensemaking moves. But this isn't just about being more effective; it's about being more responsible. The 'shove' is an instrumental act; it treats people as resources to be directed toward a goal. You see this when a sales target is handed down from corporate with no context, or when a new software is rolled out with mandatory, one-size-fits-all training that ignores how people actually work.
'Shaping,' in contrast, is a developmental act. It recognizes that you are not moving pieces on a chessboard but cultivating the potential within living human beings. It’s the difference between using your team to build the business and building your team as the primary way of building the business. A shaping leader discusses the sales target with the team, using it as a chance to build their business acumen. They frame the new software rollout as an opportunity to develop valuable career skills, not just learn a new tool.
Instead of commanding, you invite. You communicate through stories that connect people to meaning. You create small prototypes that allow teams to test ideas. You commit to guiding frameworks rather than rigid solutions. And you cultivate others to do the same, building a community of leaders who can become sensemakers themselves. Shape the Future is the only action-oriented habit—the moment when sense becomes movement and meaning turns into lasting impact.
PRACTICAL TAKEAWAY
In your next team meeting, use the 4C Actions: Commit, Communicate, Cultivate, Create. Don’t try to do them all at once—pick one. Model it. Then invite your team to practice it with you. This is how you stop shoving and start shaping—and how you begin building a team of leaders who can thrive in the non-routine.
To put it all together, here is the fundamental shift in leadership—where we must go first, and AI must follow:
Be the Sensemaker – AI can solve, but we must first make sense.
See with Wonder – AI can answer “how,” but we must first offer the wow.
Think in FastFrames™ – AI can fix, but we must first frame.
Shape the Future – AI can shove the known, but we must first shape the new.
Making sense—that’s on us. That’s leadership.
Bonus: And here’s what’s most important. This isn’t just about performing better. It’s about changing how you experience leadership. The constant pressure to have the right answer, to be the ultimate Solver—that’s a direct path to burnout. The lantern doesn’t burn you out; it lights the way. Sensemaking replaces the anxiety of the unknown with the curiosity of discovery. It’s how you move from being the bottleneck to becoming the catalyst. It’s how you build not just a better business, but a more resilient, engaged, and frankly, more human team.
This is not theory. This is a tested and proven operating system for leadership in the age of non-routine. It’s how you get back to doing the one thing AI can’t: making sense of reality as it unfolds.
Part 7: Closing — Back to Everest
In closing, the climbers had every advantage: the gear, the guides, the money, the motivation. They solved their way to the summit. But they missed the non-routine—the unraveling story right in front of them. They overlooked the signs, failed to step back, failed to reframe. And the cost was their lives.
Leadership was never about standing on the top. Leadership is about recognizing when the summit is no longer the goal.
The future we’re walking into is non-routine. AI will handle the solving. The real question is whether you will step into the role only humans can play: the one who keeps the lantern lit, the one who sees what others miss, the one who makes sense when others can’t.
So my question to you isn’t if you’ll face a storm.
It’s this: when it arrives, what kind of leader will you choose to be?
