Houston, we don’t have a roadmap.
The beauty of the human body, and mind, is that they haven’t changed much for centuries. Biology (and psychology) evolves slowly. That makes it predictable. Once you understand how people think, feel, and decide, you can build around that. You can rely on that. That's how coaching method gets better and better, and better - as we keep developing deeper understanding of us.
Technology, on the other hand, is the opposite. It shifts under your feet every few months.
Every week now, I find myself asking:
How can I reimagine what I do - how I work, deliver value to clients, build relationships - in light of what’s changed?
Paying attention has become the new competitive advantage. And less and less people are in control of what they pay attention to.
Noticing. Being present. Interpreting signals. Catching shifts early enough to turn them into opportunity.
That’s what great, enduring companies do.
They build on what doesn’t change, human needs, and adapt the how.
Take Amazon.
Jeff Bezos once said, “I can’t imagine a future where customers want higher prices or slower delivery.”
The what, that stays constant:
People will always want lower prices, more choice, ease of access.
The how keeps changing, from bookstores to e-commerce to one-hour drone delivery...
Amazon didn’t bet on a trend. It bet on human nature.
Or look at Netflix.
People have always wanted good stories and easy entertainment.
The DVDs, streaming, and AI recommendations were just different vehicles for the same timeless desire: “I want to watch something I’ll enjoy, without friction.”
Universities launching degrees in “Applied AI” make me laugh a little.
We’re still figuring it out. There’s no playbook yet.
How do you teach something that’s changing every month, something we don't understand the evolution of?
Maybe what we should be teaching is how to think, how to learn, how to see what endures beneath the noise.
Maybe it makes more sense to master timeless principles - psychology, behavior, decision-making, trust, storytelling - and then learn to use any emerging technology to serve them?
Because tools change.
The way humans work doesn’t.
So a good question to ask,
What are you building on - trends, or timeless truths?
