There is a scene in the movie Invictus that I often use in our leadership workshops to illustrate a number of Adaptive Leadership practices and techniques. Nelson Mandela addresses South

You’re at a pivotal point. You can feel it. The leadership you were taught—the binaries of strong versus weak, decisive versus indecisive, having answers versus admitting doubt—no longer feels true.

A few years ago I woke up unable to speak. I held so much tension in my jaws that it physically hurt to open my mouth. As I learned to

I recently walked through the Sigmund-Thun Klamm gorge in Austria and felt the pure force of the Kapruner Ache river. Powerful streams that, over thousands of years, cut through resistant

The Seduction of Certainty This recent video by science communicator and Veritasium host, Derek Muller, got me thinking about the role of confidence in leadership. In Muller’s telling, a trader—smart

For me, activating agency has felt like jumping off a cliff at the edge of the sea with the knowledge of how to swim. But then, the jump itself teaches

What I always found curious about Aaron’s U-Turn is that he didn’t start with the intention to depict a free, flying bird that would tell an inspiring story. He began

In my last article I spoke of Aaron and the impact he had on my life. For Aaron, the bird had been motionless. For me, the bird was endlessly doing,

In 2008 I met Aaron. We shared an interaction that lasted about one hour and I have not seen him since. And yet, the ways we both chose to show

The adaptive challenge of our time We face what Eric Martin would call a profound adaptive challenge: how to create meaningful change in a world that has been fractured by

Ever since Peter Senge published The Fifth Discipline in 1990, how leaders think about strategy has never been the same. Few still believe a five-year strategic plan will hold in

Most of us have been in meetings where the energy dips, conflict flares or the conversation goes nowhere. Conventional facilitation techniques often aim to smooth things out, keep people comfortable

Leadership is often framed as knowing what to do, charting the path and mobilizing others to follow. But the deepest leadership moments rarely begin with certainty. They begin with saying

The traditional drivers of development and innovation are shifting. That is not necessarily a bad thing. For decades, a daunting adaptive challenge facing emerging market institutions and leaders was donor

You may think that your story doesn’t matter, that people aren’t interested, that you shouldn’t be talking about yourself. But when you do public work, you have a responsibility to

In times of uncertainty, leadership isn’t just about having answers — it’s about learning to live with the unknown. This essay explores an alternative approach to leadership rooted in curiosity, complexity, and the power of mystery. Drawing insights from a retreat with leading quantum physicists, it challenges the traditional model of fast solutions and absolute clarity. Instead, it invites leaders to embrace adaptive thinking, deepen their attention, and stay present long enough for new insights to emerge. When we lead with humility and imagination, mystery becomes not a threat — but a teacher.

Thank you to our friends at People Power Health for bringing me back to On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by historian Timothy Snyder — a book I drew on when

From Dialogue to Action One of the questions directed at me during a recent United Nations panel discussion was, “What have you learned from your leadership journey so far?”. If

Bridging Humanity and Leadership Leadership is not merely about strategy, authority or efficiency, it’s about humanity. In a world increasingly defined by division, polarization and transactional interactions, we need a

What struck me in that moment was that I did not see that man. I was walking in London’s Hyde Park with Vimal Kumar, an Acumen Fellow and close colleague.