🐌AI forces orgs to improvise, harmonize expertise, rethink agile. Gov shutdown. Macro view. Snails!
Those talking the loudest about "taking responsibility" might be trying to avoid some responsibilities of their own...
🎧 Listen here or on Spotify
In this Issue
- 🌍 Change leadership is for everyone — No longer the domain of rare inventors, every person today must cultivate the skills to drive intentional, beneficial change in a fast-moving world.
- 🧭 21st-century skills — Leaders must adapt to fluid org structures, shifting human–AI workflows, and uncertainty, navigating complexity with confidence and clarity.
- 📊 Macro Panorama lens — S3T Panoramas connect big trends, big questions, and big events to give leaders frameworks for action across economy, geopolitics, and policy.
- 🏛️ Government shutdown insight — Triggered by attempts to repeal healthcare tax credits, it highlights how families struggle with affordability and how “personal responsibility” rhetoric often masks systemic failures.
- ⚖️ Responsibility reframed — The real accountability lies with those benefiting from tilted systems who deflect blame, not with working families already stretched to the limit.
- 🤝 Playbook of the week — Success today requires multi-disciplinary improvisation; classic PMO/Agile fall short in foggy, fast-changing environments where cross-domain expertise must harmonize.
- 🐌 Nature note — A reminder to slow down: a literary exploration of snails reveals lessons in slowness, strangeness, and renewal, offering balance to tech-heavy focus.
[change leadership skills]
AI is remaking our org: how do we adapt?
Companies today are faced with the challenge of redesigning their org structures and talent management models so their teams are ready to work with AI to deliver value. This requires a complete overhaul of talent management - with changes most orgs are not ready for: Workers will have to learn to work agnostic to org structures, job titles and hierarchy levels.
This was always true for a subset of workers - usually small fast moving innovation teams or "forward deployed engineers" ...soon it will be true for the entire staff of any company keeping its head above water.
In addition, as consulting companies flex from advisors to implementers of AI driven business processes, teams now can expect to be supporting mission critical processes that are not stable but constantly in flux, processes always in transition, midway between legacy and not yet mature next gen technologies, pendulum swinging between AI bots, then back to humans (when customers refuse to interact with the bots), then back to AI bots (when new buzzwords infect the C-suite).
Amid this - well - chaos, there will be increased urgency for cost effective, secure solutions that deliver value and manage complexity - abstracting it as much as possible away from the user experience.
All this creates an urgent call for change leaders. People who can work and think in tune with the realities of the 21st century. People ready to confidently step into ambiguous scenarios and help their customers and partners find the best path forward, navigating through the fog to a better day.
If you are still reading/ listening, you are most likely one of those change leaders. So how to you get ready to work and think like a change leader, and create wins?
Change Leadership then vs now
100 years ago being a change leader, an inventor or innovator was considered rare...something that occurred randomly here or there in any given country or population.
It wasn't for everyone. Change leadership was something done only by a few atypical innovators and status-quo challengers like Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein. Sure, they’ll bring big changes, but the rest of us will just keep our heads down and mind our own business.
That was the mindset for the 20th century and much of history. Today we are in a very different place.
We can no longer afford to assume that change leadership is optional, or that it is just something that a few rare people do while the rest of us go on business as usual. That is no longer the right mindset. There is no business as usual. Truth be told it probably never was an accurate mindset. Every person is born to have an impact and every person has the potential to have a great impact.
Finding that change leadership opportunity that resonates with YOU - that mission you have, that gift that you can bring to make things better for others, is such an exciting opportunity. And its more crucial today than ever.
Change leadership is not just for a few of us. It’s for all of us.
Given the challenges we face today, it’s all hands on deck. Every person needs to be a change leader: someone who is constantly learning and building their skills to drive good change - the kind of intentional change that we actually want and need.
Not negative change, not careless change, and certainly not staying stuck in the status quo.
We each have a choice to make
We can:
- Try to perpetuate the status quo OR
- Be part of unintentional or careless change that has unwanted side effects OR
- Learn how to thoughtfully and effectively drive positive beneficial change that lasts, as depicted here:
This is where all of us want to be focused. This is where good outcomes become possible.
The truth: Everyone can and should be a change leader. Only a few realize it - at least so far. You and I need to spread the word and mobilize the others to join us.
This is also why the S3T newsletter, podcast and platform exists. S3T (pronounced "set" but just spelled differently) refers to this set of skills that comprise change leadership.
S3T focuses on sharing 21st century leadership skills set in the context of emerging tech and the evolving economic landscape. This unusual combination of skills (not usually taught together) has become essential for the global and local challenges we face today.
Change Leadership: A Key Skill in the 21st Century
Why change leadership has become so important:
- The world is evolving rapidly, with new technologies and economic and financial ideas constantly emerging at an accelerated pace, as Thomas Friedman argues in "Thank You for Being Late."
- This acceleration coincides with economic distortions and inequities, as surfaced by Thomas Piketty in Capital in the 21st Century.
- Additionally, there are more people than ever and more needs to address than ever before - the UN Population Fund's latest report offers a starting point for a deeper understanding of the needs of 8 billion people living on the planet.
In other words, the stakes are higher than ever.
In such an environment, there is an opportunity - and urgency - for each of us to become a change leader. We must continuously develop our skills to drive positive change.
You have a unique role to play
You have the potential and the ability to create lasting and very beneficial changes in the world.
There are change opportunities that you notice and urgently wish you could change. No one you know of may be thinking about it in the exact same way that you are. That's because you've been given a vantage point or set of experiences that sensitized you to a specific issue. Maybe something happened in your life that gave you awareness of some needed changes - and these have become very important to you.
It could be changes needed on an individual level, or changes within families, or communities. It might be a change that you recognize is needed in your team or your company or perhaps on a change needed on an industry level or macro, national or even a global level.
Whatever change you are motivated to desire and drive, you will increase your chances of successfully enabling that change by committing to learning and building change leadership skills.
Review & Reflect
Questions to think about
Take a few minutes to think about and answer these questions. They will help you reflect and reinforce what you learned and help you solidify your understanding of responsible change leadership.
- How does the concept of change leadership in the 21st century differ from the way it was understood 100 years ago? Why is it now considered a skill that everyone should develop?
- Think of a situation in your life, organization, or community where change is needed. What specific steps can you take to apply change leadership skills to drive intentional, positive change in that situation?
- What are the potential consequences of ignoring change leadership or engaging in unintentional/careless change? How can you avoid these pitfalls and focus on leading thoughtful, effective change?
- Am I discounting my ability to be an effective impactful change leader? If so, why?
[Premium Exclusive Content]
This week's S3T Panorama: Understanding the Macro landscape in the context of the government shutdown
S3T Panoramas are publications that help leaders connect dots between large trends, identify indicators and place them in a framework for action.
Panoramas depict:
- Big trends that will continue into the future
- Big questions that need to be answered/are being answered via innovation and experimentation
- Big events that impact trends before/after they occur
Click here to access the Macro Panorama which focuses on the evolving landscape for the Global Economy, Geopolitics, US Economic Policy, and the issue of Economic Distortion.
My take on the shutdown
The Government shutdown seems to have been triggered by attempts to repeal the tax credit for healthcare coverage. Something that seems to get lost in the noise is exactly why the tax credits are important.
Many families struggle to cover basics like food, housing, education, and loans, and without tax credits health insurance becomes unaffordable. When families are forced to go without coverage, untreated conditions worsen, work capacity declines, and the economy suffers.
Some like to frame this as "taking personal responsibility" and refusing to accept "government handouts." This is deflection.
Families who work hard, budget carefully, and still cannot afford healthcare are not irresponsible. They are caught in a system with structural flaws. The true question of responsibility is not whether working families are doing enough—but whether those who have the means are willing to take personal responsibility to notice and correct systematic flaws that make people unable to afford healthcare.
When you hear someone emphasizing “taking personal responsibility,” you may actually be hearing someone trying to avoid their own responsibility. Too often, the loudest voices calling for individuals to “take responsibility” are those who benefit most from a system tilted in their favor—and who would rather deflect attention than acknowledge the responsibility they hold to ensure fairness.
Recommended Action: Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121, ask to connect to your representatives, and tell them what you think.
Don't miss: The 500 latest real-time economic indicators
See the S3T Economic Dashboard for the Top 500+ US & International real-time economic indicators.
[S3T playbook of the week]
Harmonize Different Kinds of Expertise to Achieve Success
Today's opportunities and threats require multi-disciplinary improvisation
Today's emerging technologies offer huge promise (and peril), and the path to real world value and benefit is rarely clear or smooth.
Navigating this journey increasingly requires a multi-disciplinary improvisation that must go beyond simply delegating tasks to different groups. It requires a different level of thinking and working together. Rather than "fire-and-forget" tasks to "task owners" who work in their respective teams or verticals, teams today must get comfortable doing their tasks with their collaborators looking over their shoulders, or working alongside them. Notably this upends the conventional wisdom about "task ownership" "one throat to choke" that so much of agile project management is based on.
Why classic PMO & Agile methods need to be reconsidered
In short - they 're not good at improvising. They're good at defining and controlling for defined outcomes - outcomes often defined with limited understanding of the risks and factors in play. That's no match for today's foggy, rapidly shifting operating environment. Today's teams have to be strong at early recognition and rapid improvisation.
Traditionally, project managers and scrum masters advanced by proving they could manage larger and larger projects or epics. They leveraged status meetings, RAID logs and clear task assignment and ownership to drive accountability, and in many cases this was sufficient to help get the projects done.
Today it's different; advancement comes from successful execution of more complex cross-domain projects. Instead of "2 year middleware implementation" think "3 month pilot to production initiative that blends AI + data modernization + security + clinical expertise".
Today's project leaders must have domain-specific expertise - along with the ability to make sure cross-disciplinary teams are solving problems in the most effective manner.
This S3T Playbook shows you how to harmonize different kinds of expertise to achieve a desired outcome using AI, stablecoins, quantum computing and other emerging technologies. Click here to upgrade your ability to Harmonize Different Kinds of Expertise to Achieve Success.
S3T Playbooks are premium education offerings that provide step by step guidance for change leaders. See Full List of S3T Playbooks
[nature notes]
🐌"...everything is going to be alright. Slow down."
Here is a completely non-tech, non-business related read - and let's face it sometimes we need a break. Snails, it turns out, are more fascinating and relevant than I ever knew...and I'm one of those people who will stop and photograph one:
Lauren Bastide new book "Courir l'escargot" (yes, it's all in French) weaves a delightful meandering snail trail through long May weekends, Hedgehogs, perimenopause, Burgundy, pharmacology, the original sacred helix, and the unique history of how snails turned magic into science.
Thanks to The Dail, you and I can read excerpts here in English:
Lauren Bastide (Tr. Lauren Elkin)
Opinions expressed are those of the individuals and do not reflect the official positions of companies or organizations those individuals may be affiliated with. Not financial, investment or legal advice, and no offers for securities or investment opportunities are intended. Mentions should not be construed as endorsements. Authors or guests may hold assets discussed or may have interests in companies mentioned.
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