Leadership Discussion: Career Choices and Deep Work Strategies

The jobs-going-to-bots narrative is loud right now. But here's what we're actually seeing at Jack Hammer: great leaders are still very much in demand. What IS changing, however, is that depth alone is no longer enough. Debbie Goodman breaks down the one career strategy that keeps surfacing among the smartest practitioners navigating this shift: the T-Shaped Career - combining deep expertise with adjacent, AI-augmented skills that make you harder to overlook and harder to replace. The gap between people talking about future-proofing and people actually doing the work is enormous. The good news is it's entirely within your control. If you're feeling the uncertainty, this blog is worth your time. 👇 https://lnkd.in/dEeSTpuu

Tomorrow's day starts at 3:30am. No, I don't have a plane to catch. I have a half day session to deliver online. It happens to be a client based in the Asia/Pacific region. My initial contact with this company was with their Chicago office, then I moved to working with EMEA in the Netherlands and Romania, and now I've landed on the other side of the world, in Singapore, China, South Korea, and Australia. The topic is Re-thinking. The book is "Think Again" by Adam Grant. I've probably done at least 12 book circles with the book over the years, but this time it's a book lab. No one will have read the book, or at least, not under my guidance. This gives me a mostly blank slate to work from. I will also be in scientist mode, experimenting with new activities. We'll dive into the mindsets of the book -- preacher, prosecutor, politician and obviously scientist, as well as some of the cognitive biases presented in the book. Most of our time, though, will be spent living into the scientist mindset. We'll be developing hypotheses and experimenting using different structures for rethinking. We'll experiment with individual rethinking using the 9 Whys of Liberating Structures, then move into interpersonal rethinking with a fellow participant and an improv-inspired activity, and then spar with our favorite GenAI agent. Finally, we'll work on collective re-thinking using some of the methodologies I've recently learned from my training in Deep Democracy. The 3 1/2 hours will fly by, and by the time most of you wake up, I will already be done, and ready for a nap. I had to think long and hard about whether delivering at 4:00am was worth it, but for the past year and a half, it's been a blast. Delivering in the early morning gives me more energy than working out. 👉 Do you do something energizing in the morning?

Had an absolute blast on the LAMP mainstage presenting alongside Kelvin Johnson Jr., CPA Sam Rodriguez and Jonathan Brill . 24 hours later, something from the conversations keeps bouncing around my mind. “95% of tech implementations by providers are considered a failure after 2 years.” 95%. How can that be?!? As I break it down, the thing that stands out isn’t even the failure rate, it’s the time associated with that failure. Failing isn’t the problem, failing slowly is. As we see AI systems change the way we work, the organizational model has to change as well. Top down tech decisions result in over bloated acceptance criteria, too many voices, and a far too long iteration cycle. The question then becomes: how can we encourage our teams to fail, but fail quickly. Does your team have KPIs on running experiments? Are they encouraged to reimagine the way things have always been done? Do they have the latitude to think creatively? If not, that sounds like the perfect place to start. Our job as leaders isn’t to have all the answers, it’s to set the priorities, provide clarity, and create an ecosystem where the ones doing the work have a say in the art of what’s possible.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to not be the subject matter expert in the room. And surprisingly, I’ve come to see that as one of my greatest strengths. I’ve stepped into work across very different spaces over time (homeless services, clinical quality reporting, biotech regulation to name a few). And instead of trying to prove expertise, I’ve been leaning into something else: Curiosity. Pattern recognition. And a willingness to ask better questions. Because the truth is, we don’t enter systems to own them, we enter them to clarify them. When you’re not deeply embedded in a single domain, you start to notice things others might not: 〰️ Where language obscures rather than aligns 〰️ Where strategy breaks down between intention and execution 〰️ Where different parts of a system are solving for adjacent but disconnected problems That perspective creates space to connect dots, not just add more of them. And when there is an opportunity to add something new, like an approach, a structure, a way of working, it lands differently. Not as an imposition, but as a value-add that fits (or changes) the system it’s entering. I’m learning that expertise is only one way to create impact. Sometimes, the real leverage comes from being close enough to understand but far enough to see clearly. #ElleGroupConsulting #SystemsThinking #Leadership #Strategy #OrganizationalDevelopment #Consulting #SocialImpact #HealthcareInnovation #NonprofitLeadership #EcosystemBuilding #LearningInPublic #ProfessionalGrowth

The best advice I heard this week was also the simplest : “Opportunity knocks very quietly. Always listen carefully.” In fast‑paced environments where major shifts often seem tied to bold moves or big announcements, it’s easy to overlook the subtle openings that shape long‑term outcomes. Some of the most meaningful breakthroughs don’t come with noise; they arrive as quiet signals, brief conversations, or small indicators of change. A valuable reminder to stay attentive, not just ambitious. Appreciate the perspective, Rahul Bedi

What’s shaping Early Careers in 2026? Our latest research takes a closer look. From the growing role of AI to evolving expectations around retention, stakeholder alignment and ROI, the landscape is shifting quickly and the implications are significant. In this report, we break down the trends we’re seeing across Early Careers functions, alongside practical insight into how organisations are responding. If you’re reviewing your strategy this year, it’s a useful benchmark for what’s working and what’s coming next. Take a look here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gHXPy6FU

It has been awesome bringing this report to life for our Early Careers partners in recent weeks, my favourite section (if you're asking) is on Skills. 56% of Early Careers stakeholders now see ‘Embracing Change’ as the top human skill, up from 41% since 2024*. For more key trends, stats and actionable insight - check out the report below and get in touch if we can help you with any of the action areas identified.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how breakthroughs really happen and it turns out they’re a lot less structured than we like to imagine. As @Michele Root-Bernstein and @Robert Root-Bernstein wrote in their @PBS NewsHour analysis, many #NobelPrize winners share a few common habits: they're curious across disciplines, they persist when things get messy, and they embrace creative hobbies. 🔍✨ To be honest, most workplaces that move at lightning speed are all busy trying to hit targets, meet deadlines, and keep our dashboards looking spotless. But if we truly want #breakthroughthinking, maybe it’s time to rethink how we support learning, experimentation, and the kind of curiosity-driven work that doesn’t always produce instant results. Because the biggest ideas often come from the space between disciplines — and from people who feel empowered to explore them. 🚀 See the comments for the full report if you want to dig in

You're competent at everything. And exhausted in ways you can't explain. Not burned out from failure. Depleted from carrying it all so well. The revenue is there. The respect is there. The results keep coming. But somewhere between the decisions and the deliverables, you stopped being present to your own life. You're managing everything. Inhabiting almost nothing. Here's what no one talks about: External success runs its own operating system. It rewards performance, output, reliability. It optimizes the operator while slowly depleting the man behind him. You can accumulate responsibility faster than you build the internal capacity to hold it. When that gap widens long enough, you start to feel it as fragmentation. Competent on the surface. Unfed underneath. This isn't a character flaw. It's a structural misalignment. The frameworks that built your external results were never designed to maintain your internal coherence. They measure what you produce. Not whether you're still in there producing it. Internal authority isn't about doing less. It's about being regulated enough to lead from your center, not just from your calendar. The men I work with who carry this quietly aren't deficient. They're running sophisticated lives on infrastructure that was never updated. The capacity exists. The recalibration hasn't happened yet. If this landed before you finished reading it, that recognition is the beginning. I'll be sharing the structural framework behind what recalibration actually looks like this week. Follow along if you want to see it. What does "internally underfed" look like for you in practice? Drop it below. #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutivePerformance #InternalAuthority #SovereignLeadership #TheSovereignManExperience https://lnkd.in/egXF8fDb

Since I started consulting, having been a client myself, my work mostly fell into two pillars: • strategy development (includes problem framing - more on that later 😁) • project-based insights and solutions Clients asked: “Tell me what to do.” “Help me solve this problem and / or seize this opportunity” But I had a third pillar - one my boss at the time didn’t understand - • enablement and adoption People thought I was a little bonkers 😄 saying things like “What’s that?” “How does that work?” “Whyyyy” Welp - now it’s the differentiator. Thanks to input from Gartner and Harvard Business Review the message is consistent: 🌟AI doesn’t fail on ideas 🌟It fails on execution Strategy - insights - solutions still matter, but they’re not enough, and certainly not the differentiator… The shift extends the workflow: strategy → insights → enablement → adoption → impact Turns out my “third pillar” seems to have grown into the cool kid / the W ha Heard all this and more at last night’s WONDERFUL Executive Council meeting where we shared, talked future collaborations, and more among one of the most collegial groups I’ve ever assembled from #TheBeverlyOrbit - thanks to all participants from Institute for Insight - J. Mack Robinson College of Business #CallTheBevForAnalytics+🌟 #TheStateWay