Recalibrating

The Gratitude Reset

I was last off a flight this week and watched with fascination as the captain — a salt-and-pepper haired veteran — thanked the crew.

There was something beautiful about his gravitas paired with humility. And, I’ve noticed this combination amongst passengers too: the best (perhaps ‘entitled’) frequent flyers I've observed still say "please" and "thank you" routinely. I’ve even heard of long-haul business class flyers who take small gifts, like chocolates, to give to the crew.

One nonprofit CEO I admire has a ritual: every quarter, she spends a day hands-on in their organisation's frontline programs. You’ll never see photos of her doing this on LinkedIn — she does it to remember why she started in her field, and as a way to directly thank staff. Having sat in her office several times, I also noticed she keeps thank you notes from clients on her pinboard. Again, these aren’t for publication; they’re an intentional practice that keep success in perspective and prevent the gradual drift from service to self-service.

Question: What practices do you use to stay connected to your purpose when success starts feeling normal?

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A New Clock

The industrial revolution didn’t just mechanise work — it mechanised time. Seasons gave way to seconds. Church bells were replaced by factory bells. That transformation enabled our modern economy.

But its version of time has expired.

Today, Google ships new features overnight. An NBA team adjusts game plans every quarter. Michelin-starred kitchens reset between services. And while it’s tempting to think that ‘agility’ is doing the same things faster, it’s not. It's about temporal intelligence: knowing when to act, pause, pivot or persist.

The smarter organisations I work with still strategise over years, and plan over quarters, but they sense we’re in what futurist Amy Webb describes as “a liminal period between profound disruption and hyper growth."

Liminal means the threshold between two eras. It’s like adolescence: the rules of childhood are gone, but adult rules haven't fully kicked in. Webb says we’re in such a phase now — she calls the confluence of AI + sensors + biotech the ‘tech supercycle’ — and she’s persuasive on how our lives will never return to the linear industrial timescales we’ve been used to for 200 years.

So here’s my provocative idea: Strategic time is not about speed. It’s about time judgement. Leaders who thrive in this in-between time don't just shorten cycles — they build fluency in when to act (and how fast) and when to wait. They treat time not as a constraint, but as a lever.

Question: What if your organisation's greatest greatest strategic asset isn’t how fast you move but how precisely you time your moves?

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Skepticism as Strategic Advantage

Remember the good old days when scams were obvious?

I remember Nigerian princes offering me millions in badly spelled emails, addressing me as Mr Andrew. Those days, sadly, are gone.

The best CEOs I know also got those emails, and they have developed a finely tuned "productive paranoia" – the ability to trust while verifying. It's no longer enough to train staff on the obvious; today's fraudsters are studying your organisational culture, decision-making patterns, and authority structures with frightening precision. They’re psychologists as much as technologists.

The US software firm Retool learned this lesson expensively. Attackers used AI-generated voices and detailed knowledge of company processes to steal $15 million from their crypto clients. The breakthrough wasn't technical sophistication alone – it was their understanding of how authority works in modern organisations. They knew exactly which employee to target and what language would trigger compliance.

The nonprofits and agencies I work with that stay protected share three characteristics:

• they've institutionalised verification protocols (no financial transfers without dual authorisation),

• they've normalised questioning authority (even when it feels awkward)

• they treat near-misses as intelligence gold.

One executive recently shared with me how their near miss – where someone impersonated their treasurer – became the catalyst for updating their financial controls. The phrase that triggered their suspicion? "As your board treasurer, I am instructing you to . . . ".

Real board members, they realised, simply don't talk that way. But, we’re rapidly heading towards a world where we won’t be able to tell the difference so easily.

Question: How does your organisation balance operational speed with the verification protocols that modern threats now require?

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If any of these pieces sparked a thought or challenged an assumption, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.

And if you found this useful, hit that heart button – it helps me know what resonates and keeps this little Friday ritual going for the thousands of leaders who read along.

Andrew