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What do hallucinating chatbots, failed strategies, bizarre Insta Reels trends and a Treasury adviser have in common? They all feature in this month’s dispatch – a collection of fresh takes and long reads on the weird state of modern work. From identity collapse in the AI era to the secret power of good taste, we’re tracing the edges of a world where judgment, clarity and actual human discernment matter more than ever.

Enjoy!

Cognitive diversity: why inclusion is more than good intentions

A male partner shares a cab with a female associate and asks about her kids. It seems friendly – even inclusive. But when he rides with a male associate, he asks about deal exposure and meeting invites. Over time, those small conversations can snowball into unequal access to opportunity. That’s just one example from a new report by The Diversity Project, which explores the often-overlooked role of cognitive diversity. While most DEI efforts focus on what people look like, this paper zooms in on how they think – and what it takes to make those differences heard. It argues that genuine inclusion isn’t just about avoiding offensive behaviour. It’s about closing the gap between who gets asked the right questions – and who gets left out of the conversation.

Are we headed for a ‘zero trust internet’?

Fast Company’s take on “AI slop summer” argues that the glut of mediocre, algorithmically generated content is only the beginning. What’s coming next, it warns, is worse: the industrialisation of this slop into ad networks, SEO farms and media platforms optimised for engagement over quality. As spammy, synthetic content floods the internet, your brand’s ability to curate signal from noise may be the most important strategic edge of all. Read the piece here.

Why good taste is now a business advantage

In the wake of that AI overproduction, taste is emerging as a differentiator not just in creative industries, but across business leadership. As The Atlantic puts it, when every idea, image or headline can be instantly replicated and remixed, the rare skill is no longer generation but discernment. Leaders are now flooded with options — multiple pitch decks, product mock-ups, ad variations — and AI won’t tell you which one to back. Taste, defined here as “judgement with style,” becomes a strategic tool: the ability to know what fits the moment, what signals quality, what moves people. In a world of infinite content, the leaders who know what not to choose may hold the sharpest edge.

AI prompt of the week: defend against hallucinations

ChatGPT will confidently cite papers or reports that don’t exist. It’s not lying – it’s guessing. That’s why AI hallucinations aren’t just annoying, they’re risky – especially when the output looks polished enough to trust. This week’s prompt adds friction to that flow: asking your AI to show its workings, flag its confidence level and challenge its own assumptions.

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For every response, implement a chain-of-thought reasoning process.
Break the issue into its logical components or dimensions (e.g., strategic, economic, ethical, technical), and reason through each part step-by-step.
Indicate the confidence level for any claims or conclusions (e.g., high, medium, low), and justify that level of confidence.
Always challenge assumptions — your own, the user’s and those found in source material. Present counterarguments, potential contradictions or edge cases to test the strength of any conclusions.
Avoid consumer-pleasing or default positivity. Prioritise intellectual honesty, precision and scepticism. Summarise only after all reasoning is made explicit.
Use tables or bullet points where needed to clarify trade-offs or conflicting interpretations.
Avoid vague generalities; ground reasoning in observable dynamics or logical inference.

Who are you without your job?

In a powerful essay, Carmen Van Kerckhove explores what happens when white-collar careers lose both stability and status. Her warning isn’t just about AI-driven job loss – it’s about identity collapse. As generative tech eats into knowledge work, the jobs at risk aren’t manual or low-skilled, but the ones we once saw as “safe”: software engineers, marketers, analysts, even strategists. Van Kerckhove argues that if your sense of self is wrapped too tightly around your job title, the coming shifts may hit harder than expected. Her call to action is to build a more durable identity now – one that can outlast a CV. Read it in full here.

Why strategy fails after the off-site

A new vision. An inspiring slide deck. A rousing off-site. And then… silence. Strategy often falters not in design but in delivery – and Jeroen Kraaijenbrink offers a smart take on why. In this post, he outlines seven ‘sins’ of execution, from over-planning and loss of focus to deeper cultural failures like behavioural compliance and broken leadership trust. Particularly striking is the idea of ‘reinterpretation’ – where teams use the new strategic language but keep doing what they’ve always done. If your last strategy felt more like a slogan than a shift, this list may explain why.

The C‑suite is getting larger — and more complex

From chief AI officers to heads of customer experience and ethics, companies are creating new executive roles at speed – but are they solving problems or just multiplying them? A recent Business Insider article explores the rise in specialist C-suite positions, highlighting the tension between expertise and executive overload. Critics warn of decision bottlenecks, blurred responsibilities and declining productivity. Others argue that today’s complexity – from AI to ESG – demands a broader bench. The challenge is clear: how do you ensure clarity of leadership when so many voices share the table?

AI avatars and aesthetic hacks: the social summer is looking weird

TikTok just launched AI Alive, a suite of animated avatars that can lip-sync, talk and generate content in your voice and likeness. Meanwhile, over on Instagram, trends like “Body Freak” and “Puppet Master” are using forced perspective and split screens to toy with reality. The common thread? Visual trickery, self-cloning and a blurred line between the authentic and the algorithmically enhanced. It all points to a summer of self-distortion – where standing out means blending art, tech and just enough strangeness to stop the scroll.

Policy meets product-market fit?

The UK Treasury’s new Entrepreneurship Adviser, Alex Depledge MBE, is a founder who’s scaled real businesses – not just spoken at conferences about them. That’s progress. But while her appointment signals a welcome shift towards founder-led policy thinking, the real question is whether it can dent the inertia of UK bureaucracy. EIS, SEIS, VCTs, R&D credits – the alphabet soup of funding support exists, but it’s still a maze. If Depledge can cut through that, she won’t just be an adviser. She’ll be a startup hero. Find out more here.

Swap self-doubt for self-belief

Here’s a great reminder of how powerful language can be when learning something new, helping us to reframe familiar phrases of frustration into lines of resilience: For those of you with kids, it’s well worth sharing with them too.

Drop me a line

That’s all for this edition – but if anything here sparked a thought, a question or a good rant, I’d love to hear it. Hit reply if you’ve seen something worth sharing or just want to bounce ideas. Until next time, keep iterating, keep questioning, keep going.

Cheers!
Adam

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