Seeing AND Using the Energy System of Polarities I first learned about rip currents when my family moved from Wheaton, Illinois to Sarasota, Florida during high school. Rip currents form where waves break onto the shore from opposite directions and the returning water finds a narrow channel back out to sea. From the beach, the surface [...]
Why the Future Depends on Our Capacity to Leverage Polarities There is a dangerous misunderstanding spreading across the United States right now. Watch what happens when a city council debates a zoning change. Or when a school board discusses curriculum. Or when Congress attempts to pass legislation. Increasingly, citizens do not show up to engage with [...]
Strengthening uniquely human capacities in accelerating systems I’ve spent much of my professional life working across what initially appeared to be very different domains: executive coaching, team coaching, organization development, polarity thinking, leadership development, democracy work, systems thinking, and more recently the implications of artificial intelligence. For years I treated many of these as adjacent disciplines. [...]
Strengthening uniquely human capacities in accelerating systems Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the great accelerants in human history. Speed accelerates. Information accelerates. Production accelerates. Analysis accelerates. Even imitation accelerates. A question appears and within seconds a polished response arrives carrying the tone of certainty, coherence, and authority. The experience can feel almost magical until [...]
Family businesses are a defining force in the economy—not just because of their scale, but because of what they hold. They span everything from corner stores to multi-billion-dollar enterprises. They're woven into the fabric of communities, regions, and industries. And they carry something most organizations don't: memory that extends backward through generations and forward into futures [...]
I asked three different AI systems to help me think through a complex organizational challenge last month. Every response gave me some version of a decision tree, prioritization matrix, implementation sequence, or action plan. Not one asked how the people involved were experiencing the change. Not one suggested slowing down long enough to listen before deciding. [...]
There are moments in life when whatever you thought was holding things together simply stops. Not gradually, not politely—just stops. For me, it was a mountain biking accident that fractured my neck at C2 and left me with a traumatic brain injury. The kind of moment where you don’t need a specialist to tell you something [...]
There’s a tendency—especially in leadership circles—to treat trust as a cultural layer that sits downstream from the “real work” of organizations. Strategy first. Execution first. Results first. Trust becomes something discussed afterward, usually once strain, disengagement, fragmentation, or burnout begin surfacing. That framing has never held up particularly well once you start paying attention to how [...]
Some days it’s hard to be hopeful. The scope and scale of polarization and doom-loop thinking about the U.S. and the future can feel like an hourly, daily, monthly assault on the senses. Then a book like Strong Floor, No Ceiling comes out. My intuition sirens flare and my energy returns. A few differently firing synapses, [...]
Winston Churchill once observed that democracy may be the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried. It is the kind of line that gets laughs because it lands close enough to the truth to sting a little. Democracy is messy. It is slow. It often looks like argument layered on top [...]