Leaders Loop🎙️ How I AI: Claude Opus 5 Review + Browser use in Codex + How Cursor and a Raspberry Pi makes AI fun
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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.
From zero coding background to hardware hacker: How Cursor + a Raspberry Pi makes AI fun
Watch now | 🎙️ Maddie Reese built a thermal printer anyone can message, a working Twitter pager, and a personal API using Cursor, a Raspberry Pi, and the radical idea that fun beats practical
Optimizing yourself into a corner
Organizations thrive on incremental improvement. They find a stable foundation and then build a feedback loop of relentless improvement. This leads to great efficiency, higher productivity and more profits. It enables more throughput and builds market share. Except things change. Optimized offerings are brittle. When the foundation shifts, all of that incremental improvement breaks into […]
Anthropic’s first technical PM on token maxing, the jagged edge, and living in the future | Dianne Penn
Listen now | Dianne Penn, Anthropic’s first PM, on the bets that made Claude dominant: the coding pivot, the eval-driven development loop, and what comes after coding is solved
The Lego problem, revisited
For generations, the rules of Lego were simple: many pieces, all able to connect in many ways, led to many outcomes. That almost drove the company into bankruptcy, though. Lego kits saved the business. Each kit has just one way to do the work, follow the instructions carefully. Industrial indoctrination in a box. While it […]
🧠Community Wisdom: Staying on a client’s radar during pilot purgatory, pairing Linear with a discovery tool, the limits of what AI can automate, whether Techstars is worth it, and more
A collection of community-sourced advice on practical product and business challenges, including strategies for staying visible during lengthy client pilots, recommendations for combining Linear with discovery tools, realistic assessment of AI automation capabilities, and perspective on startup accelerators like Techstars.
More interesting
Built into the concept of “interesting” is the unexplored. The temptation of discovery and the new. And so, by definition, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it’s likely that there is something more interesting somewhere else. The people at the next table may be talking about something more fascinating than your date is… the only […]
Claude Opus 5 review: this model is brilliant (but annoying)
Watch now | 🎙️ I ran Opus 5 through my seven-model benchmark, compared it with six other leading models, and came away with a verdict I genuinely didn’t expect
The New Strategy Behind Revenue Growth
Professor Raghu Iyengar discusses the expanding role of the chief revenue officer. … Read More
Your Business Has a Pest Problem
I’VE SPENT 45 years in the pest control industry: 30 in corporate leadership and 15 building my own company, Pied Piper Pest & Lawn, from the ground up. In that time, I’ve seen just about every kind of infestation imaginable. But some of the worst ones never required a spray wand. Early in my management career, I started noticing something strange: the same thought processes I used to assess and c
First take/next take/last take
Nailing it in the first take is a sign of preparation and professionalism. No need for two tries if you are clear about what you’re doing and how. The next take is where hope lies. This one was pretty good, but next time, we’ll bring it. And the last take is good enough. That’s why […]
Leading Thoughts for July 23, 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. Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig on managing emotions: “Stress, anger, and anxiety can cause narrow-mindedness and the fight-flee-or-freeze syndrome. It’s not at all helpful when you need to engage in critical thinkIng, problem solving, innovative thinking
Robots Are Coming — but Not Everywhere
Getty Images “The ChatGPT moment for robotics is coming,” declared Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2025. It’s a widespread expectation: that humanoid robots will follow the same explosive adoption curve as generative AI. Our research suggests the opposite. Humanoid robotics will be adopted unevenly, across diverging use cases and […]
[Outliers] John D. Rockefeller: The Principles Behind The Greatest Fortune in History
John D. Rockefeller became the richest man the world had ever known by thinking differently about business, competition, and family. This episode isn’t just the story of Standard Oil. It’s about the principles that built one of history’s greatest business empires and what they can teach us today. Along the way, you’ll see the … The post [Outliers] John D. Rockefeller: The Principles Behind The Gre
Industrialism and the slippery slope
One of the best traditional bakeries in New York has a kitchen you can see from the counter. People wait in line for their handmade French baguettes, and the confirmation that they were made right here and right now is reassuring. I noticed that the baker was using a mechanical gadget called a loader. It […]
What the World Cup Teaches Brands About Cultural Marketing
Wharton professor Americus Reed discusses how brands create cultural relevance beyond traditional sponsorship. … Read More
How Constraints Shape Creativity and Athletic Development
Author David Epstein discusses creativity, performance, and the value of broad athletic development. … Read More
Computer and browser use in Codex (5 real examples)
Watch now | 🎙️ I show you exactly how I use browser use and computer use in Codex to QA my app, manage LinkedIn, and shop for Hawaii, including the under-prompting trick that makes frontier models work harder
A New Way to Address Troubled Team Dynamics
Gillian Blease/Ikon Images The Research The authors adapted the Big Five personality test into a tool for illustrating personality preferences among team members. They and their colleagues tested the tool with over 600 ad hoc teams that attended IMD leadership development programs. They confirmed the applicability of this method with 100 senior executive teams in […]
State champs
Compared to what? 98% of the time, the state champ loses at nationals. Every billionaire but one isn’t the richest person in the world. Only one of the 300 people who direct a feature film each year will win an Academy Award. And only one public company has the greatest share price growth. Competition is […]