Change leader, coach, and writer. Former Inc. 500/5000 founder. I help practitioners make change practical, human, and sustainable.
Most leaders still think of AI as a tool. In reality, it is becoming a form of scalable cognition embedded directly into the enterprise. The firms that reorganize around this shift will not just operate more efficiently. They will operate under fundamentally different competitive conditions.
When the world feels unstable, the weight people carry does not stay outside the workplace. Anxiety grows where influence feels lost. Deliberate action restores agency, protects our capacity to function, and helps practitioners stabilize the systems around them.
A short note on proportion, attention, and stepping back during a civic moment.
AI is moving from experimentation to everyday business reality. In 2026, the biggest gains will come not from better models, but from organizations that rethink workflows, roles, and how decisions actually happen.
In modern change management, "shared ownership" often results in orphaned outcomes. This article breaks down why collective responsibility is a structural trap and how to restore true accountability to your projects.
AI is not removing the work. It is removing the roles and offering a story that makes those decisions easier to explain. When the work remains but no one can name who now carries it, organizations do not transform. They shift the weight, quietly, and call it progress.
Being an observer in a workshop can feel like walking a tightrope. Speak too much and you disrupt the flow. Say nothing and your value disappears. This guide shows how to move from observer to contributor with intent, timing, and impact.
A small USPS rule change quietly made mailing tax returns riskier. Postmarks may no longer reflect when you mailed your return, shifting the burden of proof to you. Here’s what independent practitioners need to know before deadlines hit.
AI can speed up change work, but it can also quietly erode the thinking behind it. New research suggests overreliance on AI creates “cognitive debt,” weakening judgment, recall, and sensemaking if we’re not intentional about how we use it.
Best practices are breaking down. Not because they failed, but because the conditions they were built for no longer exist. What’s replacing them is situational judgment—the ability to decide, adapt, and act without a playbook.
Shared services are often the first place AI breaks—not because the tech fails, but because automation removes the human judgment holding complex systems together. When exceptions rise and authority stays centralized, shared services absorb the damage long before leaders see it.
Year-end metrics are designed to show completion, not readiness. The problem is that change does not resolve on a fiscal calendar. What matters most often shows up after the dashboards turn green, in confidence gaps, workarounds, and quiet strain. This piece explores what to measure instead.
This year-end Unwrapped looks past dashboards and milestones to name the work change practitioners actually carried. The stabilization, translation, and risk absorption that kept change moving rarely shows up in the recap, but it shaped everything.
Organizations are getting better at predicting customer behavior, but not better at responding to it. When insight outpaces authority and judgment, CX becomes reactive, automated, and transactional. Prediction alone does not create better experiences.
Revenue can look healthy while your business quietly drains your energy. Cash flow tells a more honest story: when money actually arrives, how long you float the work, and where stress becomes structural. Before you plan the year ahead, look at the patterns hiding behind your numbers.
If your business feels heavier than the work you do, operations are likely the problem. This article walks through simple, end-of-year fixes that reduce stress and make next year easier to live in.