#wildcard-planning

#wildcard-planning

The conduct of War is, therefore, the formation and conduct of the fighting. If this fighting was a single act, there would be no necessity for any further subdivision, but the fight is composed of a greater or less number of single acts, complete in themselves, which we call combats, as we have shown in the first chapter of the first book, and which form new units.

Every major leap in my career, and every transformation I've led, began with a decision that involved risk, uncertainty and discomfort. If you're a leader, you've likely faced similar inflection points. Years ago, at Washington State University, we launched one of the first fully online undergraduate Management Information Systems (MIS) programs. At the time, it was uncharted territory. Few business schools had ventured into online learning, and many questioned whether students or employers would take the format seriously.

While over-diversification is not a term you hear often, the financial industry has spent decades telling investors that more is better. More funds, more sectors, more geographic exposure, and more asset classes, galore. The thing is, when a retiree holds 15 or 20 ETFs across overlapping strategies, the result isn't going to be safety, more like dilution.

Why does everyone feel overwhelmed by information? Why does it feel impossible to trust what passes through our streams? We tend to blame individual publications, specific platforms, or bad actors. The real answer has less to do with any single media entity and more with structural changes in the information ecosystem. I started my "information" life typing copy on an ill-tempered Remington.

Kemi Badenoch's recent ridiculing of the prime minister over a supposed U-turn on digital ID plans (Keir Starmer denies change to digital ID plan is yet another U-turn, 14 January) is the latest example of a frustratingly narrow view of leadership. To the Conservative leader, adapting a policy is a sign of no sense of direction; to those of us who work in product management, it looks like necessary iteration of the process.

Let's trace Agile's trajectory: From 2001 to roughly 2010, Agile was a practitioner movement. Seventeen people wrote a one-page manifesto with four values and twelve principles. The ideas spread through communities of practice, conference hallways, and teams that tried things and shared what worked. The word meant something specific: adaptive, collaborative problem-solving over rigid planning and process compliance. Then came corporate capture.

Flexible working is a hot topic that's rapidly making its way into the SME (small-medium-sized enterprise) market, especially after covid and all its repercussions on businesses Due to covid-19, many small to medium businesses have had to disband their in-house team, and those that were left working found themselves at home. This was especially prevalent in industries like social media advertising agencies, customer services relations, online-focused eCommerce brands and B2B businesses.

As AI takes on more analytical and operational decision-making, the leaders who will stand out are those who can do what machines can't: read emotional cues, build trust, and inspire teams to act. In this new landscape, emotional intelligence is more than a soft skill. It's becoming the core differentiator of effective leadership. I once advised a CEO whose metrics looked flawless. Revenue was rising, costs were under control, and the company was steadily gaining market share.

Too many founders get stuck in reactive mode, buried in meetings and fire drills. But if you're always reacting, you're not really leading. You must move from reactive operator to strategic leader, which requires a mindset shift. Understand that you're not the firefighter - you're the architect. Ask yourself: If you disappeared for two weeks, what would break? That's where your real work begins.

Your AI pilot showed 94% accuracy improvements. The LLM is yielding solid results. You're getting defunded anyway. The reason? You solved a problem AI can solve. Your budget-holder needed you to solve theirs. Companies launch AI pilots that produce results, then stall at scale. The team's diagnosis: "They don't get it." What's really going on: These projects never earned budget-holder buy-in.

The single biggest problem with static withdrawal rules assumes that the future is going to look like the past, which is not the right assumption to be making moving deeper into 2026. In fairness, the 4% rule was stress-tested against historical data, including the Great Depression and stagflation in the 1970s, and it survived. The thing is, it wasn't designed or tested for the kind of environments we've been swinging between over the last 6 years,

Zach Stauber's day begins before the first customer support ticket even lands in the queue.

Well, our guest today argues that the best way is by moving to a more project-driven model of work, up and down the organization from the corporate level to individual teams. He wants us to both ruthlessly prioritize as well as stay fluid so that we're identifying strategic goals, assembling teams to go after them, evaluating as we go, and then either continuing, shifting, or disbanding based on our outcomes.