See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 54 (Unpublished): There’s no uprooting a rooted center. What’s held truly endures. Allow It to enter— benefit. All held [...]
Family businesses are a defining force in the economy. They span everything from corner stores to multi-billion-dollar enterprises, woven into the fabric of communities, regions, and industries. Scale alone doesn’t capture what makes them matter, though. They carry something most organizations don’t: memory that extends backward through generations and forward into futures that haven’t been named [...]
See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE From my interpretation of Chapter 71 of the Tao Te Ching (Unpublished): Seeing that you don’t know is brilliance. Not seeing that you don’t know is blindness. To [...]
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 [...]
See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE From my interpretation of Chapter 76 of the Tao Te Ching (Unpublished): Life comes— soft, supple. Death comes— hard, inflexible. Soft and supple— living. Hard and inflexible— dying. [...]
See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE From my interpretation of Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching (Unpublished): When people see beautiful things, Ugly things arise. When people see good things, Bad things are [...]
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 [...]