Some days I feel like a goldfish. Swimming circles in my little round bowl, constantly surprised by what's happening just outside the glass. The geopolitical chaos, the power plays, AI going behind our backs like a rebellious teenager to do its own thing. We can't seem to get a grip on the world we're trying to navigate today.
In the spirit of September, going back to school and to learning, I want to ask a harder question. What do we need to learn, and what do we need to unlearn, to finally see past the glass? There are two certainties we can start from: none of us knows what tomorrow brings, and none of us can figure it out alone.
Take geopolitics. Markets and alliances are pivoting like a ballerina on speed, and the instinct is still to come up with a plan and stick to it. That's exactly what we need to unlearn. Instead of predicting, we start sensing: we prepare for several scenarios at once instead of betting on one, and we find security not in bigger walls but in our ability to respond fast and to join forces across organisations and countries. That's the conversation we'll have at CYBER FEST on October 15th, where experts from military and cybersecurity backgrounds will explore what it takes to build resilient organisations.
The same pattern shows up closer to home today: your AI bill. We learned this once already with cloud. Moving everything into someone else's server room didn't make the business faster; it just made the invoice bigger. If we hand AI to everyone for everything, it risks the same boomerang. So here's what we need to unlearn: going all in, fast, everywhere. And here's what we need to learn: slow down on purpose. Ask how the technology actually serves your strategy. Choose deliberately where an investment will pay off, where in your organisation you can afford to experiment, and where you need stability. We'll dig into exactly this at our roundtable, The Token Trap, on October 6th.
Different rooms, same reflex. Whether it's a geopolitical soap or an AI bubble, the answer isn't a better plan; it's a better way of sensing, making deliberate choices and adjusting as we go. Join us in one room or both, and let's jump out of the bowl together.