Why Best Practices Are Dead
Plus: Deloitte’s AI fiasco, Costco’s power move, and the return of the glassholes
Dear Friend –
My latest podcast just dropped! And this one you don’t want to miss:
What if the leadership frameworks we’ve relied on for decades are fundamentally broken for today’s world? In this thought-provoking conversation, I sit down with Jeffrey Rogers – my collaborator of nearly a decade – to explore how leaders can navigate sustained uncertainty and systematic disruption.
Jeffrey, an expert in organizational learning and futures thinking, challenges the “Good to Great” era of one-size-fits-all leadership models. Instead, he advocates for meta-learning: the ability to learn how to learn, adapt frameworks contextually, and build organizations that can transform repeatedly. We dive deep into the tension between efficiency and experimentation, why the “middle horizon” (5-10 years) is so hard to envision, and how generative AI fits into organizational learning—spoiler: it’s not the efficiency tool you think it is.
Key Topics Covered:
Why best practices are dead and what replaces them in high-uncertainty environments
The efficiency vs. learning paradox: how to balance execution with experimentation
Generative AI’s real value: rapid prototyping, not scaling (and why that matters)
The futures cone and how to think about multiple possible futures
Practical advice for middle managers when leadership won’t listen
Building learning systems that connect across your organization
And now, this…
Headlines from the Future
GLP-1s have truly jumped the shark. Weight-loss drugs in the GLP-1 family, such as the pharma megahit Ozempic, have reached America’s darling low-cost, membership-based retailer Costco at halfthe normal price. Talk about a power move by Costco – and Ozempic becoming mainstream. Also, Ozempic is about $1,000 per month, every month, for essentially the rest of your life. At least Costco brings this down to a mere $500/month.
↗ Costco to sell weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy at half-price
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Deloitte just got caught faking government reports with AI. Talk about having your cake and eating it: First, Accenture proudly declared that they will fire anyone working for them who isn’t ready for the AI revolution. And now Deloitte has been fined by the Australian government for delivering AI slop. Oopsie!
Shortly after the report was published, though, Sydney University Deputy Director of Health Law Chris Rudge noticed citations to multiple papers and publications that did not exist. That included multiple references to nonexistent reports by Lisa Burton Crawford, a real professor at the University of Sydney law school.
↗ Deloitte will refund Australian government for AI hallucination-filled report
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The glassholes are back. Remember our first big foray into smartglasses? Google Glass was hyped like crazy (including a bizarre Diane von Fürstenberg fashion show with models wearing Google Glass), essentially useless – and created a hefty adverse reaction in many who came in contact with them. The “glasshole” was born. Now we have Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which are still large and useless, but don’t look quite as dorky, and conceal the fact that you wear a camera on your face rather well. And with that, the glassholes are back:
Exhibit A: a new warning from San Francisco University. As reported by SFGate, the Bay Area college recently issued a campus-wide alert of a man wearing Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses and filming students (women, specifically) while asking them “inappropriate dating questions.” Those videos have already found their way to TikTok, Instagram, and the like.
↗ Buckle Up, the Smart Glasses Backlash Is Coming
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Time-traveling through the lens of IKEA. The eponymous IKEA catalog, printed in significantly higher numbers than even the Bible (200 million copies of the IKEA catalog were printed in 2016, compared to “only” 150 million Bibles in the same year), offers a fascinating glimpse into the zeitgeist. Reviewing 75 years of IKEA catalogs reveals humanity’s evolving aesthetics. It’s time travel at its best.
What We Are Reading
🌾 Will Farming Under Solar Panels Take Off? Indian farmers are harvesting sunshine and crops on the same land, hinting at a future where fields feed both people and the grid. @Jane
🥕 Gatorade and Cheetos Are Among the Pepsi Products Getting a Natural Dye MakeoverMountain Dew could soon be colored with carrots and purple sweet potatoes instead of artificial dyes; however, executives say they are not going to launch a product that the consumer will not enjoy and need to make sure they get it right. @Mafe
🎪 AI Is the Market, and the Market Is the Government The speculative AI boom is creating useful cover for the US government’s economic policy, which in turn creates a powerful incentive for the government to protect the speculative boom. What could go wrong?! @Jeffrey
🧭 Use Design Thinking to Navigate Ambiguity In times of chaos and uncertainty, design thinking isn’t just a tool; it’s your compass. Lean into curiosity, prototype boldly, and test ideas fast. @Kacee
🤔 Against the Tech Inevitability Tech is inevitable. Or so goes the Silicon Valley lore. But is it really? And what does it mean when we utter these words? @Pascal
Down the Rabbit Hole
🏅 11 Oddball Technology Records You Probably Didn’t Know
💾 A casestudy in why you need backups: NIRS fire destroys government’s cloud storage system, no backups available
🔭 Ever wondered where the world’s longest line of sight is? Packing The World For Longest Lines Of Sight
🐹 Tamagotchi on steroids (and with AI), and only 20x more expensive: Casio Moflin is here.
🐴🌊 The great LLM Seahorse Emoji meltdown… (and this is why you can’t trust an LLM)
🍻 The kids stopped drinking: Drinking through the generations
🪑 Time traveling through the lens of IKEA catalogs.
Pascal is captivated by Stephen King’s short story, along with the movie adaptation, “The Life of Chunk.”