Leadership in Chaos
-Leaders Digest

Leadership in Chaos: 28th edition. Sharpen your axe, lean in, pygmalion effect. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 28th edition 🙌. “I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every…

Leadership in Chaos: 27th edition. New frontiers, embarrassment, odyssey plan. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 27th edition 🙌. “Priorities are like arms; if you think you have more than a couple, you’re either lying or crazy.” Merlin Mann Change: new frontiers. Microsoft just published their 2025 Work Trend Index Report, and it’s pretty revealing stuff. AI…

Leadership in Chaos: 26th edition. severed, soldier or scout?, future trust. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 26th edition 🙌. “Taking off is optional. Landing is not.” Nassim Taleb Culture: severed. Season 2 of Severance is showing on Apple TV. It centres on a company (Lumon Industries) where job volunteers undertake a surgical procedure that splits…

Leadership in Chaos: 25th edition. comfort trap, change violence, the passionate few. Feb 27, 2025 Hi 👋, welcome back to our 25th edition 🙌. “Only those who will risk going too far, can possibly find out how far one can go”. T. S. Elliot Culture: comfort trap. There’s been great progress made in modern workplace culture.…

Leadership in Chaos: 24th edition. blind spots, trust, stories. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 24th edition 🙌. “We should not try to alter circumstances but to adapt ourselves to them as they really are, just as sailors do. They don’t try to change the winds or the sea but ensure that they are always…

Leadership in Chaos: 23rd edition. the last war, one note, acts not careers. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 23rd edition 🙌. “When we tell ourselves we’ll do something later, we run the risk of waking up one day and finally realising it’s just not going to happen, not because we failed, but rather because…

Leadership in Chaos: 22nd edition. mistakes and apologies, listening, critical ignoring. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 22nd edition 🙌. “It’s so simple, yet makes such a difference. Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’” Mary Kay Ash Leadership: mistakes and apologies.…

Leadership in Chaos: 21st edition. good hope, the network office, soviet lies. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 21st edition 🙌. “If we can recognise that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that *we do not know enough to be pessimistic*.”…

Leadership in Chaos: 20th edition. problem stories, founder mode, shadow and light. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 20th edition 🙌. “The innovator is more often than not met with some degree of condemnation; usually according to the degree of his departure from the prevailing modes of expression… Change is always so hard to accept.”…

Leadership in Chaos: 19th edition. autonomy, quests, urgent vs important. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 19th edition 🙌. “Character is fate.” Heraclitus Culture: autonomy. In his 2009 book Drive, Daniel Pink argued that human motivation is largely intrinsic, and can be divided into three things; autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is the feeling of self-direction, mastery the feeling…

Leadership in Chaos: 18th edition. the power of empathy, by design, escalation of commitment. Hi 👋, welcome back to our 18th edition 🙌. “If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run—and often in the short one—the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.” Arthur…

Leadership in Chaos: 17th edition. accelerator or brake, high reaching informality, gravity. “The universe is transformation. Life is opinion.” Marcus Aurelius Change: accelerator or brake. There’s always tension between wanting change and wanting to change. The new boss of Formula 1’s Williams Team found this out last year. He identified that the team had fallen behind the…

Leadership in Chaos: 16th edition. exploit vs explore, meetings, vampire problems. “Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.” George Bernard Shaw Team: exploit vs explore. Most jobs are new jobs. 60% of today’s jobs didn’t exist in 1940, and the World Economic Forum estimates that 65% of children entering…

Leadership in Chaos: 15th edition. octopuses, consensus trap, little things. “I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach 80…

Leadership in Chaos: 14th edition. fractional, micro-cultures, slow learners. “Love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Change: fractional. One of the dominant themes from this years Talent Summit, was flexibility. Most agreed it was good for business and talent, with some suspicion.…

Leadership in Chaos: 13th edition. speed of trust, workplace not worker, stop trying to impress. “The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say….What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because…

Leadership in Chaos: 12th edition. bad habits, storytelling, the / era. “Remembering that you’re going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Steve Jobs Leadership: bad habits. A new year brings new motivations.…

Leadership in Chaos: 11th edition. reframe reviews, the value of values, meaning-full days. “The leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of the future will know how to ask”. Peter Drucker Performance: reframe reviews. Maintaining a culture of high performance isn’t easy. And despite the challenges, reviews are obviously a critical part of…

Leadership in Chaos: 10th edition. the big ange effect, all boats, leadership levels. “Triangulate your view with believable people, who are willing to disagree”. Ray Dalio. Communication: the big ange effect. The English premier league club Tottenham Hotspur, are doing quite well this year. In contrast to the last few. They put it down to the…

Leadership in Chaos: 9th edition. the paradox of control, transformers, rugged flexibility. “Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower”. Alan Kay, Computer Scientist. Change: the paradox of control. Pandora’s Box is wide open.…