Leaders LoopCan Hedging Make You a Better Communicator?
Hedging can make us less persuasive, but new research from Wharton’s Jonah Berger shows how communicators can use hedging to their advantage. … Read More
Reading List
The Leadership Reading List
We don't write everything worth reading. This is where we collect the best leadership and business writing from other publications and blogs, so you don't have to go looking for it.
How Fiscal Policy Moves Financial Markets
Wharton's Courtney Wiegand explains how financial markets respond to different stages of the congressional budget process. … Read More
Distancing: How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions
WE can be too close, too present in a situation, to look at it constructively. Good decision-making occurs when we can step back and look at the situation from a broader, more objective perspective. We respond differently when we see differently. Authors L. David Marquet and Michael Gillespie warn us in Distancing, “When excited, stressed, or threatened, we are pushed further into a state of self-
🎙️ How I AI: GPT-5.6 review, How a solo builder runs 24/7 local AI, and What an agent harness is and how to build one
Your weekly listens from How I AI, part of the Lenny’s Podcast Network
This solo builder runs 24/7 local AI on his own hardware | Alex Finn
Watch now | 🎙️ Alex Finn breaks down his five-computer local AI setup, the Claude Code build-and-review loop that ships features while he sleeps, and why unlimited local intelligence beats a $20 subscription
How GenAI Can and Can’t Help Manage Customer Insights
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images To understand their customers and markets, a growing number of customer-oriented companies are using generative AI tools, alongside the language and reasoning capabilities of popular large language models (LLMs), to access and analyze their own internal content. These hybrid knowledge approaches, which typically employ a technique called retrieval-augm
How tech workers actually feel about AI in 2026 | Annual AI sentiment survey (Noam Segal)
Listen now | The great tech bifurcation: half the workforce is thriving, half is struggling, and burnout just hit a record high
🧠 Community Wisdom: Negative network effects, managing overconfident colleagues, developers sidestepping design decisions, keeping stakeholder meetings on track, and more
An installment from Lenny's Newsletter collecting curated community insights on organizational and product challenges, including managing overconfident team members, preventing developers from circumventing design processes, navigating negative network effects, and maintaining effective stakeholder communications.
Why Big Companies Are Rethinking How They Work With Startups
Professor Serguei Netessine explains how corporate venturing is evolving beyond traditional venture capital. … Read More
The Way of Excellence
EXCELLENCE is not a destination. It is the way we move in the world. It’s the direction we grow towards. In The Way of Excellence, author Brad Stulberg defines excellence as “An ongoing process of growth and becoming that imbues life with meaning and vigor. It emerges from involved engagement in something worthwhile that supports your values and goals. Excellence combines mastery and mattering. It
Leading Thoughts for July 9, 2026
IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Mark Pincus on doing something great: “Being truly ambitious and committed to winning means: 1. Maintaining ruthless objectivity about your ideas. 2. Being willing to kill them often. 3. Losing any emotional attachment to specific implementations. 4. Testi
GPT-5.6 Sol vs. Claude Fable: Why OpenAI’s new model crushes my benchmark
Watch now | 🎙️GPT 5.6-Sol beats Fable on prototypes, PRDs, and browser use in my 5-category How I AI benchmark, and here's exactly where each model earns its spot.
The Best Summary of Atlas Shrugged
A brief, no-fluff, summary of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. If you want to learn how capitalist countries become socialist, this book will help you. Let’s dive in. Atlas Shrugged: The Simple Version The world depends on a relatively small number of people who build, invent, and produce. They are the entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, industrialists, … The post The Best Summary of Atlas Shrugged a
Adam Mosseri: AI is a tailwind for authenticity
Listen now | Instagram’s Adam Mosseri on the new product team structure in 2026, the rise of the “product staff” role, and the hiring traits that matter most today
The Hidden Cost of AI-Assisted Creativity
Chris Gash/theispot.com The Research The authors synthesized findings from four studies spanning short-story writing, circular-economy solutions, humor caption contests, and collaborative storytelling. Across all four studies, AI assistance improved individual output quality, but it reduced collective diversity, resulting in more similar, convergent ideas across groups. AI had the greatest positiv
Generous collusion
The professionals you have the most in common with may be your competition. They wrestle with similar problems and have similar goals. And you can offer value by sharing what you’ve learned and what you know–and that value will often be reciprocated. I met Tom Rielly when was running PlanetOut in the 1990s. About forty […]
What a harness is and how to build one with Claude Agent SDK
Listen now | 🎙️ I built a custom Claude Agent SDK harness to automate Sentry bug triage, saved the "dear agent, please fix this" prompt forever, and show you exactly how to build your own
GenAI Success Metrics: Look Beyond Reduced Workload
Matt Harrison Clough / Ikon Images The Research The authors performed a four-year, fixed-window observational analysis of administrative work inside a large U.S. public higher-education institution. Generative AI tools were introduced to executive leaders, operational leaders, and student-facing professionals throughout the organization in 2026. Staffing levels and work hours remained stable acros
Goal clarity and the Hawking index
What’s this idea (book, meme, song, TV show, marketing campaign) for? Perhaps you want to reach the largest number of people. Or make the most sales. Or generate the most word of mouth. Or be notorious. Or change part of the culture. Or get good reviews. Or have people actually finish your book. You might […]
Why ‘AI Ethics’ Is a Misnomer — and Why That Matters for Business
Wharton’s Cornelia C. Walther explains how the language around “AI ethics” can create confusion and misplace accountability. … Read More