I’ve been thinking about this while recording podcasts for the chaos issue, and it won’t leave me alone.
For a long time, leadership has operated like a search engine. You type in a query. Find this restaurant. Find this product. Find this grocery store. Simple, linear, one input leading to one clean answer. And I think most of us still lead as if that’s the model we’re working with. Ask the right question, follow the right process, get the predictable result.
But that’s not the world most leaders are actually operating in anymore.
Now we have AI, and it doesn’t work that way at all. It’s a complex, matrixed system. You can throw a whole pile of questions at it, let it churn through all of that mess, and somehow it comes out the other side with something coherent. Sometimes something beautiful.
That’s closer to what leadership actually looks like right now. Not a search engine. A matrix. A jumble of inputs, pressures, and half-formed questions that don’t resolve in a straight line. And here’s the part worth sitting with: that jumble can still produce something good. Something clear. It just doesn’t get there the way we were trained to expect.
I think part of the discomfort leaders feel right now comes from measuring a matrixed reality against a search engine standard. We keep waiting for the clean, linear answer, and getting frustrated when the process feels chaotic instead. Maybe the chaos isn’t a sign something’s broken. Maybe it’s just what the process looks like now.
That’s where my head’s at with the chaos issue. If you want more on this, subscribe to choice magazine and grab that issue. And find Beyond the Page by choice magazine wherever you listen to podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and give a few episodes a listen.
Let me know what you think. Feedback is always welcome.
Take care, everyone. Go for success, do your best.
