Change – Grandpa Bob Encouraging Leadership

Why Curiosity Is the New Competitive Advantage

Imagine two managers sitting at their desks, both using the same AI tool.

The first asks it to write the same weekly report, just faster. Three hours saved. Nothing new learned. Box checked.

The second uses the AI differently. She asks it to analyze six months of data and search for hidden patterns. It reveals that half the metrics everyone tracks have no real connection to success. Two new questions emerge. She rebuilds the entire process from scratch.

Same tool. Different questions. One finds speed. The other finds wisdom.

This is the divide that will define the next decade of work.

For a long time, leadership revolved around structure and repetition. The best organizations built systems that ran like clockwork. Discipline became an art. Efficiency became a mantra.

Books like Good to Great showed how rigorous process could transform good companies into great ones through consistent execution. When competitive advantage came from doing the same thing better and faster than everyone else, process was power.

AI changes this equation entirely. It makes these processes faster, yes, but it also asks a more unsettling question. Why are you doing this at all?

Speed alone means little when the racetrack itself is disappearing.

Curiosity in the age of AI means something specific. It asks “why” when everyone else asks “how.” It uses AI to question assumptions rather than simply execute them. It treats every automated task as an opportunity to rethink the underlying goal. And it accepts the possibility that your job, as you currently do it, might need to change entirely.

That last part is uncomfortable. Many people fear AI will replace them. Paradoxically, the people most at risk are those who refuse to use AI to reimagine their own work. The curious ones are already replacing themselves with something better.

Many organizations speak of innovation, but their true values show in what they celebrate. Do they promote the person who completes fifty tasks efficiently, or the one who eliminates thirty through reinvention? Most choose the first. They reward throughput. They measure activity. They praise the person who worked late rather than the one who made late nights unnecessary.

This worked when efficiency was scarce. Now efficiency can be abundant. AI will handle efficiency. What remains scarce is the imagination to ask what we should be doing instead. Organizations that thrive will use AI to do entirely different things. Things that were impossible or invisible before.

Working with AI requires more than technical skills. The syntax is easy. The prompts are learnable. Connecting AI to our applications isn’t the challenge. The difficulty is our mindset. Having the patience to experiment when you could just execute. The humility to see that the way you’ve always done things may no longer be the best way. The courage to ask “what if” when your entire career has been built on knowing “how to.”

This is why curiosity has become a competitive advantage. The willingness to probe, to question, to let AI reveal what you’ve been missing. Because AI is a mirror. It reflects whatever you bring to it, amplified. Bring efficiency-seeking and get marginal gains. Bring genuine curiosity and discover new possibilities.

Here’s something to try this week. Take your most routine task. The report, the analysis, the update you’ve done a hundred times. Before asking AI to replicate it, ask a different question. What would make this unnecessary? What question should we be asking instead?

You might discover the task still matters. Or you might realize you’ve been generating reports nobody reads, tracking metrics nobody uses, or solving problems that stopped being relevant two years ago.

Efficiency fades. What feels efficient today becomes everyone’s baseline tomorrow. But invention endures. The capacity to see what others miss, to ask what others skip, to build what nobody else imagines yet.

The curious will see opportunity. The creative will see possibility. The courageous will see permission. Together they will build what comes next.

The tools are here. The door is open. Work we haven’t imagined yet waits on the other side. Solving problems not yet seen, creating value in ways that don’t exist today.

Only if you’re willing to ask better questions.

Photo by Subhasish Dutta on Unsplash – the path to reinvention

Providing Room to Fail

Organizational culture, not technology, is the hardest part of innovation

How many of your projects are truly innovative? If you have any, what’s your success rate? Would you consider your success rate to be all-star caliber?

This baseball analogy is almost a cliché, but it holds up. A professional hitter with a .300 average is considered excellent (all-star?). That means they fail seven times out of ten.

Now imagine applying this to innovation. What if only 30% of your projects succeed? At first glance, that sounds like a losing record. But if the successful projects provide 10x productivity increases, transform your customer’s experience, or massively boost profitability…30% success would yield incredible results for your organization.

This is the kind of opportunity in front of us today with AI. Tools are maturing quickly. The potential is staggering. Every company, large or small, is beginning to experiment.

Some will tiptoe. Others will dive headfirst. All will face a mix of breakthroughs and busts.

There will be tools that don’t deliver on promises, pilots that fizzle, and teams that struggle with adoption. But there will also be amazing homeruns. Projects that reshape the business and redefine what’s possible.

Many leaders today are focusing on which AI tools to purchase and how to train their teams. That’s the easy part.

The harder part is creating space for both the hits and the strikeouts. If people feel they must succeed every time, they probably won’t swing at all. They’ll play it safe and stick with what they know.

Innovation will grind to a halt.

Providing room to fail doesn’t mean celebrating mistakes. It means making sure your team knows that experiments, even the ones that fall short, are part of making progress. Leaders who demand perfection get compliance. Leaders who make room for failure get innovation.

As you lead your organization into AI and beyond, remember that your job isn’t to guarantee every swing is a hit.

Your job is building a culture where people are willing to keep taking swings.

Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash

Climbing in Times of Change

René Daumal titled his unfinished novel, Mount Analogue. It describes a peak, “whose summit is inaccessible by ordinary means.” The mountain can only be reached through inner transformation, making it both a place and an analogy for our journey of struggle toward resilience and clarity in the fog.

Leadership in upheaval can feel similar. Our map runs out. The ground shifts. We carry only our memories. Some sharp with regret, others shining with joy. Yet even scars can become footholds for our climb.

Daumal wrote, “You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.”

The summit gives leaders perspective. From above, we see connections hidden from the valley floor. The shape of the landscape, how the streams converge, where the shadows fall and light breaks through. We descend changed by what we’ve seen, and those who walk beside us are steadied by our vision.

History shows us that change always reshapes our climb. The printing press, the steam engine, electricity, space travel, and global connectivity to name a few. Artificial intelligence is the latest steep slope, bringing fear, excitement, and possibility all at once.

Leaders can steady others by naming the change clearly, framing the opportunities, modeling ways to adapt, and keeping purpose at the center of the change.

Daumal died before finishing his book. It breaks off mid-sentence. A fitting metaphor for leadership. Unfinished, unresolved, always in motion.

Leadership is the willingness to prepare others for the climb, walking faithfully with them, and offering perspective so they can see what’s possible…and dare to tackle the climb themselves.

h/t – James Clear for showing a quote from this book that sent me down the path to learn more about Mount Analogue.

Photo by Caleb Lumingkit on Unsplash

Beyond the No Wake Zone

True adventure happens out past the buoys…

I get seasick easily, especially on sailboats (and fighter jets). I’ve been on a few sailing trips. They all had one thing in common. Once we’re outside the no wake zone, my nausea starts. Things go downhill from there until my head is buried under a towel and I try to sleep until we get to dry land. Needless to say, I avoid sailing trips.

I don’t have a problem on cruise ships, except in rough seas. Cruise ships are engineered to deliver a smooth ride for their passengers. Most swells go unnoticed. Passengers wake up in a new port almost every day, and the food and entertainment are usually spectacular.

Harbor cruises work for me. I can handle cruising around inside the no wake zone, looking at all of the boats in their slips, the nice homes on the shoreline, and passing other boats as they make their way out to sea. Christmas time, with all the lights and decorations is the best. It’s relaxing and safe. There are no swells to cause nausea and seasickness.

Every sailor knows the opportunity for new discovery lies beyond the no wake zone. True adventure happens out past the buoys, past the breakwater, and out in the wind and waves. Riding around in the harbor, or lazily enjoying a multi-course dinner on a cruise ship are fun and sometimes exotic. But, neither compare to the adventure of plying the seas in a forty-foot sailboat, with your hand on the tiller.

What about the risks? Staying on shore has risks. Cruise ships certainly carry risk (and sometimes, viruses). We may take comfort that others are managing our risks for us, but nothing is risk free. Storms and rough seas will hit, no matter who drives the boat. Understanding the risks, planning and preparing for them, and facing our challenges head-on is the only consistent winning strategy…at sea, and in life.

What about seasickness? I remember talking with a sailor in Tahiti. We had flown in for a vacation, and met my mother-, and father-in-law, who were sailing their boat across the South Pacific. The sailor was a friend of theirs. I mentioned my problem with seasickness, and how it would prevent me from making such a voyage.

He laughed and said, “The seasickness usually passes after three days at sea. After that, it’s an adventure of a lifetime.”

He was right.

The First Question People Ask About Any Change

There’s one question above all others that people ask when a change comes into their life.

There’s one question above all others that people ask when a change comes into their life. It doesn’t matter if the change comes in their personal or professional life. The change can be mundane or momentous. Gas prices went up. Your company is acquired by another company. You get a new boss. Road construction blocks your favorite way to the office. Your wife is pregnant. Your daughter just introduced you to her new boyfriend. Your dad was just diagnosed with cancer.

It doesn’t matter whether the change is good or bad (whatever the definitions of “good” or “bad” are to you). It doesn’t matter if the change impacts someone else more than you. Whether people admit it or not, the first question that comes into their head when confronted with a change is:

How will this change affect me?

Does this mean we are instinctively selfish or self-centered? Maybe. More on that later.

People making a change that impacts others have the luxury of getting to answer this question, long before their change is sprung on anyone else. This fact is often forgotten by people driving changes in an organization. People need time to understand the answer to this question, before they can move beyond and start to answer all of the other questions that your change may bring.

About the selfishness question…Your dad was just diagnosed with cancer and your first question (to yourself) is, “How will this affect me?” Does this make you selfish? That all depends on your second question (the one you say out loud).