The Compass

Orientation in an Age of Change.

The Definition of Insanity has Changed

We all know the old definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

But in a changing world, is that definition still accurate? I don't think so. Most of us are working from a script we didn't write, with expectations we rarely question. That worked well enough when the currents of change were placid. They're not anymore.

My latest piece is about that gap: why the ground feels like it's shifting under us, and what kind of mindset actually meets the moment.

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What Am I to That?

Everything is changing, everywhere, all at once.

We won't find stability by trying to hold on to something in perpetual motion.

When change hits, the instinct is to interrogate it: What is this? We demand the chaos explain itself so we can sort it, rank it, make it hold still. It never does.

So, I recommend asking a different question. Not about the chaos—but about ourselves.

What am I to that?

To that circumstance. That change. That decision. The first question scatters our authority. The second puts us back in command.

It's the question at the heart of my book, Seeker's Mindset. And the key to stability amid constant movement.

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The End-User Awards the Prize

Thirty years implementing new technologies taught me one lesson the current AI discourse keeps missing:

Innovation, implementation, and user adoption are three entirely different things.

I've watched interactive whiteboards get rejected in favor of dry-erase markers. I've watched sophisticated audioconferencing systems get bypassed for a Polycom in the middle of the table. I've watched oilfield workers cover the camera with a baseball cap—the "hat-cam"—to guard against prying eyes.

Forecasts about AI's impact are measuring from the wrong end of the supply chain.

If we choose carefully, we become the authors of the story—not a character within it.

My latest essay: The End-User Awards the Prize — What the Hat-Cam Taught Me

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The World Is Unstable. We Don't Have to Be.

I felt like I was racing the wind.

Writing a book about change while change keeps happening is its own kind of vertigo. Examples I drafted on Monday were stale by Friday. Headlines I cited became footnotes.

Fortunately, the book isn't really about change. It's about us—how we respond when change and disruption swirl around us and the ground keeps shifting beneath our feet.

Seeker's Mindset is about reclaiming our authority and our awareness. About taking action instead of taking blame. About taking control of our lives and how we meet the day.

The antidote in the moment isn't outrunning the winds of change. It's awareness—and learning how to harness them.

Every generation inherits challenges it did not create. Ours is no different.

We may not be responsible for what happens. But we are responsible for how we respond.

How will you respond?

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Trust the lesson. Question the flinch.

Experience is not only what we learned—it's how we felt about the effort.

When I asked my wife to build the website for my new book, I watched the blood drain from her face.

She's built them before. That was the problem. Experience, oddly enough, had made her a bit of a luddite.

What happened next surprised us both—and changed how I think about experience itself.

Yesterday's experience is not today's experience.

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