Stubbornness: the pattern everyone is missing right now.
Stubbornness keeps getting mistaken for strength. It isn’t strength. It’s the absence of thought, wearing a strength costume.
Watching leaders dig in this week bothered me more than usual. Not the specifics. The pattern. Refusing to be moved by anything. Including the people standing in front of the decision. Real thinking means the facts can still reach you. Real leadership means you can still be moved by what’s true, not just what you already decided before you sat down. Every piece this week traces back to that same line. People who can still be reached, and people who can’t.
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THE DIGEST
Stubbornness is dominating the headlines this week, but almost everyone is looking at it through a single straw. Welcome to the Sunday Drop. If you are tired of the frantic pace of the algorithms and want to look at the wide gap between what sounds right and what actually works, you are in the right place.
Here is this week’s layout. Pick your focus, pour your coffee.
Most people will read this as a story about artificial intelligence getting smarter. It’s actually about something people stopped doing long before any machine showed up, and that part doesn’t have a fix you can install.
Read the full essay on the web.
Most people treat tolerance like it’s the finish line, the nice thing you do for someone else. The people on the receiving end can feel exactly where that finish line actually is.
Read the full essay on the web.
FROM THE VAULT
This piece drew the line between agency and stubbornness back in January, months before that line became the whole point of this week’s letter.
Pick an article to enjoy with your morning coffee and share it with a friend who you think would like it.
Mark Swanson. You know what to do.