This time I would like to explore a difference angle, we spend a lot of time talking about those who lost their jobs, but we rarely talk about the ones who had to deliver the news. And my experience is that you can’t generalize because this is not a uniform group.

In fact, I’ve seen four completely different leadership profiles. All saying the same words, but carrying something completely different home.

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The Believer

They agreed with the decision. Understood the business rationale. Believed the restructuring was necessary. Executed professionally and without hesitation.

And still went home and couldn’t sleep because understanding why something had to happen doesn’t make the moment of doing it any easier. Believing in the decision doesn’t protect you from the look on your colleagues’ faces when you deliver the news.

Nobody debriefs the Believer. Everyone assumed they were fine.

well, they’re not always fine.

The Soldier

They didn’t make the decision. Weren’t in the room when it was made. They were handed a list and a script and a date and told to execute.

Their job was to deliver a message they didn’t write, defend a rationale they weren’t part of, and answer questions they weren’t authorized to answer fully. Many times they don’t even know the answers themselves as they dont have access to the full picture.

They did it because that’s what the role required. Loyalty without agency. Professionalism without ownership.

The soldiers are constantly asking themselves if they were complicit in something they had no say over.

Most organizations don’t help them answer that.

The Reluctant

They didn’t agree with the decision, or maybe they agreed with it but not with how it was made — the lack of transparency, the timing, the people chosen, the way it was communicated.

But they executed anyway, sometimes because they genuinely tried to push back and lost, sometimes because they calculated the risk of dissent and decided their own job wasn't worth the fight, sometimes both.

And then, they spent weeks protecting a narrative they didn’t believe in, answering questions with language someone else wrote faking a confidence they didn’t feel.

That dissonance just doesn’t go away after the last conversation is done.

The Betrayed

They were told one version of the story, and they delivered that version with conviction. Only to find out later through a hallway conversation, a leaked email, a second wave of cuts and that the version they were given wasn’t the full picture.

They delivered a message in good faith that turned out to be incomplete, or misleading, or part of a sequence nobody told them about.

And then they start feeling used, having their credibility and their relationships spent on behalf of a decision they didn’t fully understand.

The betrayed leader doesn’t just lose trust in the organization. They lose trust in their own judgment.

Organizations invest heavily in the script, timing, severance packages, overall communication strategy around layoffs, but almost none of that investment reaches the managers who executed the process.

They’re expected to return to their teams the next day, act normally, and not show the weight of what they just carried. And most of them do exactly that because the culture makes anything else feel like weakness.

If you led a team through a restructuring, I want to ask you something:

Which one were you? And who asked you how you were doing afterward?

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Another lesson I learned the hard way.

I once had to lay off close to 100 people in a single go. The company rented a hotel conference room. Managers delivered the group message. Then a team of us met with each person, one by one, to walk each individual through next steps.

When it was over, we all went back to the office and leadership expected everyone to carry on.

What followed was textbook, and entirely avoidable. Survivor syndrome set in fast. Performance dropped. A handful of people burned themselves out trying to prove they deserved to stay. Teams that used to collaborate started competing. Innovation simply stopped. People became risk averse.

The company had reduced headcount but hadn’t reduced the workload — so the people who remained were quietly drowning, too afraid to say it out loud and become the next in line.

Nobody talked about it. That was the real problem.

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What leaders typically do after a restructuring?

They move on. Way too quickly, actually. The unsaid message becomes: we’re through the most difficult part, now we focus forward. Meetings resume. Targets stay the same. The org chart has new names in some boxes.

Meanwhile, the team watches all of this and learns something they’ll never unlearn: loyalty doesn’t protect you here.

That lesson kills effort. People stop going above and beyond. They do their job, nothing more, and they update their CVs quietly. The best ones — the ones you most need — leave 6 to 12 months later. Not because of the layoff, but because of what came after it.

The people who kept their jobs didn’t just feel relieved. Many — dare I say most — felt guilty. Why them and not me? That guilt either pushes people into unsustainable overperformance (the heroes burning out) or into quiet disengagement — a form of grief that looks like low motivation but runs much deeper.

You cannot manage your way through that with a strategy update and buying the team a nice dinner.

What actually needs to happen:

→ Acknowledge what happened. Not a general “this was difficult for everyone.” Name the loss. The team lost colleagues, stability, and trust in the institution. That deserves to be said out loud by a leader, not processed in silence.

→ Separate the “processing” conversation from the performance conversation. Don’t ask someone how they’re doing and pivot immediately to Q3 targets. Those are two different conversations. Give each one its own space.

→ Do the workload math. Headcount went down. The work didn’t. Sit with each person and understand what they’re now carrying. Redistribute where possible. Give people the tools — and sometimes the training — to be successful in the new structure. Pretending the load is manageable when it isn’t is how you burn out your best people.

→ Create deliberate listening structures — not just an open-door policy. Few people reach out after a restructuring. They don’t trust it’s safe. Schedule it. Make it a specific, protected conversation with no performance agenda. Ask: what do you need to do your job well right now? Then actually respond to what you hear.

→ Tell people what is not changing. Certainty — even if partial — is stabilizing. After a restructuring, people are scanning every signal for the next threat.

The hardest part of leading through a restructuring is that the people who stayed need more leadership than the ones who left and they’re almost always the ones who get the least.

That gap is where recovery happens. Or doesn’t.

Have you been on either side of this — as a leader or as a survivor? What was the one thing that made the difference?

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In my pursuit to expand my local network, I’ve been visiting different offices and workspaces lately. I even rented a desk at a co‑working space so I could be around like‑minded people, get myself out there, and work in an environment that (supposedly) inspires growth.

Everywhere I go, the offices have a similar design: ping‑pong tables, jigsaw puzzles, colorful “fun” interiors, video games and, no joke, escape rooms. At some point I started to reflect on who exactly are those spaces designed for - adults doing complex work, or teenagers at a camp?

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Look, I’m not against breaking the routine or doing something playful. A well‑designed offsite, a meaningful team ritual, even a silly game at the right time can genuinely build relationships and release pressure.

But when I look at what we know from leadership research, trend reports, and recent surveys, the picture is actually very clear. What employees say they value most is:

• A sense of safety at work.

• The freedom to test and try without fear of punishment.

• The ability to speak up and have their ideas considered.

• A real shot at growth, recognition, and meaningful work.

In other words: psychological safety, opportunities, and being treated like an adult whose contribution matters.

If companies are serious about engagement and performance, the focus has to move from “fun add‑ons” to the foundations that actually shape people’s daily experience.

People need:

• Strong, sensible processes that actually help them do their jobs.

• Transparency in how decisions and policies are made and enforced.

• Clear and honest communication channels.

• Fair recognition and reward systems.

• Training and feedback that respects their intelligence.

• A culture where they feel safe to tell the truth.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good perk as much as anyone. But when I think about what really changes someone’s work life, the difference between “nice sofa beanbags” and “a manager who gives you clear expectations and has your back” is not even a competition.

So, my vote goes to treating employees like adults.

Give people the tools, information, and trust they need to be successful at their jobs. Then, add timely, intentional moments of fun that actually serve a purpose – to connect, to decompress after a hard push, to celebrate real wins.

Otherwise, the sofas, escape rooms, and ping‑pong tables risk becoming just more noise and distraction. Or worse, they become a symbol of something employees already feel but don’t say out loud: You don’t need to entertain me. You need to take my work, and my time, seriously.

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Every time I tried, my knees hurt so badly I could barely walk the next day. The people who run for pleasure always seemed odd to me.. I genuinely didn’t understand what they were chasing or how they kept going.

This year, in the middle of a professional hurricane, I signed up for a half marathon. August. 21 kilometres across Stavanger (Stay tuned!)

Ok, let me explain how I got there.

This has been a pivotal year. I made a decision that most people talk about and few actually follow through on: to live up to what I’ve always preached. To be coherent. To be purposeful. To stop doing work that didn’t align with what I actually believe in and start building something that does.

In practice, that meant stepping into the Norwegian market with intention for the first time. Expanding my network deliberately. Sitting at tables I hadn’t sat at before, speaking at new places, attending new events. And I’ll tell you, the Norwegian crowd is a particular one - high referral, high trust, slow to open (I’ll write a separate piece about trying to break into it, because it deserves its own story).

What I didn’t expect was the anxiety.

Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The 5am kind where you wake up with a mental list of everything that isn’t done yet and scramble to prioritise it. The kind that disguises itself as productivity while quietly consuming every reserve you have. The kind that has you refreshing your inbox eleven times in an hour...

I was trying to sprint to a finish line that doesn’t work that way.

I noticed it first in my running. When I started training, I kept trying to run faster just to get it over with, at a pace I couldn’t possibly sustain over distance. I’d burn out in the first kilometre and wonder why I couldn’t keep going. The goal was long distance. The instinct was sprint.

Well, a half marathon, in the interest of full transparency.

As the training weeks went by, something shifted. The longer I ran, the more my brain quieted. My knees got stronger. The first kilometre is still where all the noise lives: the mental list, the inbox, the things I haven’t done yet. But somewhere around kilometre three, something settles. There’s just the road, the pace, and one very simple question: can I keep going?

I realised I was training physical endurance to build something else entirely.

What I’m learning (slowly, one run at a time) is that the process is not the obstacle to the result. The process is the result. The kilometres I least want to run are the ones building the capacity for the kilometres I eventually will.

Business works the same way. Every conversation that doesn’t convert, every application that takes weeks to come back, every piece of content that goes out into silence, it’s all infrastructure. It’s building something that hasn’t fully arrived yet but is being assembled, kilometre by kilometre.

I am not a patient person by nature. I’m Brazilian, I’m ambitious, and I’ve spent my entire career in environments where speed was the primary measure of everything. Learning to run slowly (literally and professionally) is the hardest thing I’ve done this year.

But here’s what I know from the work I do: organisations that scale too fast, without building the structural capacity to carry the load, break. The ones that last build deliberately, distribute properly, and don’t rely on one person to hold everything together through sheer force of will.

I’m trying to apply the same logic to myself.

August. 21 kilometres. Nice and steady.

The life marathon is much longer. I'm learning to enjoy the distance.

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Most people think over‑promotion means someone is “too junior” or “not ready” for a bigger title. That’s often not what I see.

What I see more and more is people “promoted” into roles where their scop…

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Every growth‑stage company has them: the Heroes.

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In February, at TechArena in Stockholm, I spent three days listening to founders, investors, and operators talk about versions of the same problem: Europe is excellent at forming talent, and not so great at retaining it.​

Companies say they cannot find the “right people” and at the same time, highly skilled professionals – often with exactly the profiles they say they need – are unemployed, underemployed, or stuck at the margins of the system.

I saw the same pattern repeating across Europe, and it feels particularly visible in the Nordics, where I’ve been experiencing it first‑hand: countries with strong education systems, mature welfare states, and sophisticated tech ecosystems. On paper, they should be ideal environments for scaling companies; but, in practice, there is a growing disconnect between the talent being developed and the opportunities available to them.

This does not look like a classic “talent shortage.” It looks more like systemic friction.

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When Talent Cannot Break the Bubble

I write this as someone who has chosen to build a life and a career abroad, more specifically in the Nordics, where my family and I decided to settle. I am deeply grateful for the stability, trust, and long‑term orientation the Nordic model offers – and precisely because of that, I am interested in the friction it creates.​

In my ongoing observation and research, I see labor markets that are tight for newcomers and strangely comfortable for insiders. The hiring logic is simple: people hire people they already know. Networking and referrals matter. Informal circles often matter even more. From the inside, this probably feels safe and rational; but from the outside, it can feel like an invisible wall, especially if we care about intellectual and experiential diversity.

The result is an over‑reliance on what is familiar and a chronic underuse of what is available. Highly qualified engineers, operators, and specialists who arrive from other countries – or from other sectors, or from non‑traditional paths – find themselves circulating on the edges of the market, sending out applications that disappear into systems optimised to recognise sameness, not potential.​

The downside is quite obvious: for skilled immigrants and professionals entering from outside established networks, it is extremely hard to get in, even when they have exactly the skills companies say they are missing.​

So we end up with a strange situation:

• Talent exists.​

• Roles exist.​

• But the system that should connect the two is cautious, closed, and biased toward familiarity.​

Which raises a question I keep coming back to: who benefits from the status quo, and at what cost?​

Beyond the Nordics

This is not just a Nordic story. Across the continent, governments and companies invest heavily in education, research, and early‑stage innovation. We talk about strategic autonomy, deep tech, and the need to compete with the US and Asia for top talent.​ And yet:

1. Many of Europe’s best people still leave for markets that feel more dynamic and merit‑driven.​

2. Those who stay struggle to find environments willing to take a bet on them.​

3. Scaling companies complain about talent scarcity, while qualified candidates remain on the sidelines.​

The problem is not simply how many engineers, scientists, or operators we can train. It is how ready our systems are to integrate them especially when they do not look, sound, or behave like the leaders already in power.​

What I Would Ask Leaders to Change

After going to several events, talking with people from different countries, and watching these patterns up close, if I could ask a few practical questions of leaders and policymakers, they would sound like this:

• Why do we keep saying “talent shortage” when talent is clearly present?

• How do protective employment cultures and closed networks shape who gets in and who never does?

• What would need to change in leadership behaviour, organisational design, and policy for Europe to fully use and retain the talent it already has?

From my perspective, three shifts would make meaningful difference:

1. Hire for capability, not comfort. And hold leaders accountable for who actually gets hired.​

2. Design bolder entry ramps. Create roles and projects that allow skilled newcomers and “outsiders” to prove themselves quickly, instead of expecting them to wait years for trust.​

3. Measure absorption, not just supply. We track how many people we train. We should also track how many of them get into roles that actually use their skills and how long it takes.​

Europe does not lack talent. It lacks systems that are brave enough to absorb and retain the talent it already has.​

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I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on how easily modern life pulls us in a thousand different directions: messages, notifications, news, work, social media, family, ideas we want to explore, opportunities we don’t want to miss…

It’s not that we lack ambition. It’s that our attention keeps getting fragmented.

I recently read Nir Eyal’s Indistractable, and it made me rethink how I structure my days. Eyal’s framework isn't just about productivity; it’s about sovereignty. In an economy where attention is the primary currency, being 'indistractable' is a competitive advantage. It also reminded me that focus is not only a time management problem, but also a trade-off problem.

Every commitment we say yes to demands something else in return and the more responsibility we carry, especially as leaders, the more those trade-offs start to matter. The same dynamics that fragment personal attention fragment organizations.

Teams lose focus for the same reason individuals do: unclear priorities and unmanaged trade-offs.

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Why I Don’t Believe in “Perfect Systems”

Before going any further, I’m going to be very honest upfront: I’m not interested, nor do I believe, in the “perfect routine” narrative.

You know the one:

“Wake up at 5am, meditate, journal, run 10km, drink celery juice and your life will magically transform.”

I’m very aware that context matters, personality matters, life stage matters.

What works for me may be completely unrealistic for someone else.

But I do believe in intentional design.

If there is an aspect of our lives we are unhappy with, the real question becomes:

What are we willing to change and what are we not willing to give up?

Because life, like leadership, is a constant negotiation of priorities.

The Trade-Off Principle

Over the past few years, I’ve been experimenting with a few areas that consistently influence my energy and focus:

• morning structure

• nutrition

• exercise

• community

• evening routines

Not perfectly. But intentionally.

And the interesting part is that these small personal systems mirror something I see in organizations all the time.

When leaders complain about lack of focus in their teams, it is often the result of unclear priorities and unmanaged trade-offs.

Exactly the same dynamic happens in personal life.

Nutrition: Energy Is a Leadership Variable

Nutrition has been one of the biggest learning curves for me.

For a long time, food was something I didn’t think about much. If it was available, I would eat it. Over time I realized that a lot of that behaviour was driven by scarcity mindset, not actual hunger.

Now I try to approach food differently. Not as restriction, but as fuel and choice.

I’ve reduced ultra-processed foods significantly. I’ve also reduced alcohol.

Not because I’m trying to be perfect, but because I’ve learned that alcohol affects my sleep, my energy, and my ability to show up well the next day.

That doesn’t mean I never drink. Sometimes the experience is worth the trade-off.

For example, a glass of wine with my husband is absolutely worth it. I enjoy his company that much.

But it’s now a conscious decision rather than an automatic habit.

Ps. If I go out for a drink with you, you should feel special!

Exercise: The Non-Negotiable

Exercise is the one thing that became completely non-negotiable for me.

About two years ago, I started treating it like brushing my teeth.

Not optional. Just part of the routine and the impact has been enormous.

Exercise stabilizes my mood, increases my energy and sharpens my thinking.

Most importantly, it makes me a better version of myself for the people around me.

A better mother.
A better partner.
A better professional.

Physical energy translates directly into emotional and cognitive capacity.

And leadership, whether we like it or not, is an energy-intensive role.

Community Matters More Than We Admit

Another realization recently was how easily working remotely can narrow our world.

As I mentioned in my previous piece, after four years working from my home office, I decided to join a co-working space.

Partly to challenge myself. Partly because I noticed how comfortable my routine had become.

The environment there was intentionally designed for interaction and spontaneous conversation. And I quickly realized how energizing that can be.

Humans are social beings.

Even the most focused work benefits from moments of exchange, perspective, and unexpected conversation.

The Leadership Reflection

What fascinates me most is how closely personal discipline mirrors leadership discipline.

In organizations we often talk about focus, priorities, change management, execution.

But those things ultimately come down to trade-offs.

Every organization must decide:

What matters most?
What are we willing to sacrifice?
What are our non-negotiables?

If leaders struggle to define those trade-offs personally, it becomes very difficult to define them organizationally.

None of this is about perfection. It’s about awareness.

Modern life, and modern leadership, constantly pulls us in multiple directions. If we don’t design our routines intentionally, distraction will design them for us.

The same principle applies inside organizations.

Clarity is rarely accidental.

It’s built through conscious choices about what truly deserves our time, energy, and attention.

And those choices start much closer to home than most leadership books admit.

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Happy Friday everyone!

Back to my beloved routine after an intense week in Stockholm filled with conversations about tech, talent, and scalability in disruptive times.

I must confess, I do love a good routine.

So much so that I recently decided to disrupt my own. As I quickly realized how easy it is for the brain to get too comfortable. Well, not on my watch.

After four years working from my home office, I signed up for a co-working space, intentionally designed for interaction and spontaneous exchange.

My goal is simple: continue the journey uphill. Steady. Calmly. Consistently onward.

Showing up for myself has become the mantra.

Which brings me to AI.

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The AI Conversation We’re Not Having Enough

Inspired by last week’s TechArena discussions — and a recent HBR article by Professor Amy Edmondson and Jayshree Seth on fostering psychological safety when AI erodes trust — I’ve been reflecting on a topic that has impacted me firsthand:

Is there such a thing as overusing AI?

Well, as we all know, AI is no longer optional. The question is not if we use it, but how.

Teams I see thriving are not resisting AI. They’re using it strategically:

• to remove legwork

• to increase speed

• to test ideas

• to support learning

Not to replace thinking.

AI as leverage is powerful. AI as a substitute for judgment is very risky.

Trust Ambiguity

In the article, Edmondson talks about how AI can create “trust ambiguity.”

When AI produces confident but incorrect information, teams don’t just lose trust in the output. They begin to lose trust in their own judgment.

She also describes how research shows that sustained AI use can undermine professionals’ confidence in challenging AI recommendations even when they have the expertise to do so.

I dont see this as a technology problem. This is a leadership systems problem.

Because when people hesitate to question, ambiguity increases. And ambiguity erodes psychological safety, which ultimately slows growth and decision velocity.

When Clarity Fades, So Does Trust

In disruptive times, operating without clarity looks like this:

• strategy becomes blurred

• communication fragments

• information gets filtered on its way up

• decisions are made on partial or distorted data

Now add AI into that dynamic.

Wrong conclusions move faster.
Unchallenged assumptions scale.
Filtered information becomes amplified.

AI doesn’t suffer consequences for being wrong.

People do.

And when teams over-rely on AI outputs without understanding the quality of the data or the assumptions behind it, critical thinking quietly fades. And thats the real risk.

Not automation, detachment.

AI cannot:

• read informal cues

• sense tension in a room

• adjust tone based on team dynamics

• build trust through informal conversations

It cannot carry the relational glue that makes teams effective.

So we need to protect human interaction intentionally, not accidentally.

The Real Question

Maybe the conversation isn’t about AI overuse.

Maybe it’s about leadership maturity.

Are our leaders:

• investing in data quality?

• teaching teams how to challenge AI?

• reinforcing clarity of decision rights?

• protecting psychological safety?

Or are we reaching for tools faster than we are strengthening the systems that hold them?

Yes, AI increases reach, but without strong leadership architecture, increased reach just amplifies noise.

My Reflection

I’m not anti-AI. Quite the opposite, I use multiple AI tools daily, often cross-referencing and challenging outputs.

Used well, AI expands capability. But capability without clarity creates fragility.

The more powerful our tools become, the stronger our leadership systems must be.

Otherwise, we risk mistaking confident automation for sound judgment and calling that progress.

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It was my first large-scale tech event. My background is leadership and HR. I’m used to conversations about culture, governance, and organizational design. But TechArena was different.

This year’s theme was “New Era, Next Mindset”.

And one topic kept surfacing:

Europe is excellent at forming talent.
But we are struggling to retain and scale it.

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The European Paradox

Across roundtables, including one I was invited to join, and in countless informal exchanges, a clear pattern emerged.

Europe has undeniable strengths:

• strong public education systems

• respected research institutions

• deep technical expertise

• a quality of life that outperforms most global hubs

And yet, the constraints are equally visible:

• limited later-stage capital

• lower risk appetite

• heavier regulatory friction

• structural difficulty scaling beyond Series B

Several founders expressed the same frustration:

It’s not hard to start in Europe.
It’s hard to scale.

Growth demands speed, capital, and operational flexibility, and many turn to the US a ecosystem designed for velocity and expansion.

The issue is not intelligence. Its movement.

It’s the ability to deploy capital at scale, streamline policy, reduce structural friction, and take bold decisions without being paralyzed by conservatism or fragmented governance.

Risk, Regulation and Something Deeper

There were strong opinions shared:

• Europe remains comparatively conservative.

• Failure is still stigmatized.

• Workforce adjustments become slow and costly (hiring, terminating, etc.)

• Legal and Tax are suffocating.

Yes, a big chunk of this is macroeconomic reality. But not all of it.

Some of the problems live inside the organizations.

Even if policy evolves, companies that have not built leadership systems capable of absorbing new capability will continue to struggle.

Because today, talent expects more than remote work and wellness perks.

They want:

• autonomy to innovate

• clarity in priorities

• transparent decision-making

• real psychological safety

• communication that actually flows

They want to spend their energy building, not navigating invisible internal friction.

The Absorption Question

One conversation that stayed with me was about rising unemployment among skilled professionals in Sweden, while companies simultaneously report talent shortages.

That really resonated and it speaks directly to companies operational mode.

Sometimes the bottleneck isn’t availability. It’s absorption capacity.

Long-tenured leadership teams (often unintentionally) protect the status quo. New talent introduces friction. Friction introduces uncertainty. And uncertainty feels risky.

So the system resists.

Not loudly. Quietly.

And that is enough to push talent elsewhere.

This Is Not Just a Policy Issue

Visa reform matters.
Later-stage capital matters.
Tax policy matters.

But inside companies, something else matters just as much: Leadership architecture.

If companies want to compete globally for deep tech talent, they must:

• Clarify decision rights

• Reduce bureaucracy friction

• Separate authority from personality

• Design systems that allow new capability to integrate without threatening identity

If every new hire feels disruptive rather than additive, the system is fragile.

And fragile systems do not scale!

Europe’s Advantage (If We Choose to Use It)

Europe offers something the US cannot:

• Stability

• Employment protection

• Work-life balance

• Social infrastructure

That should be a competitive advantage. Stability doesn’t necessarily need to mean stagnation. Quality of life does not have to come at the expense of innovation.

TechArena left me reflecting:

Europe does not lack intelligence.
It does not lack ambition.

What it must strengthen is its ability — at both policy and leadership level — to let that intelligence move.

Because talent doesn’t just follow capital.

It follows environments where it can breathe, build, and scale.

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In my last piece, I wrote about Talent Acquisition as an operating system. Today, I want to zoom in on one of the most common ways that system fails: by hiring for comfort instead of capability.

Most leaders don’t do this intentionally. In fact, the decisions often look quite rational. CVs are strong. Interviews go well. References check out. “I could work with this person” comes up a lot.

And yet, a few months later, the bottleneck hasn’t moved.

I’ve seen people resign after weeks, and once, I even had a team member ghost five days after starting. When that happens, it’s rarely because the hire was “bad.” It’s usually because the leader hired to reduce their own anxiety, rather than to remove a real constraint.

What “Comfort Hiring” actually is

Comfort hiring is a stress response. Under pressure, our biology naturally leans toward psychological safety. We look for people who feel familiar, predictable, and easy to integrate.

Comfort hires usually:

• Speak the same language as leadership.

• Mirror existing strengths (and existing blind spots).

• Reduce anxiety in the moment.

• Fit neatly into the current, already-strained rhythms

None of this is irrational. It’s human. But a system that only hires for comfort ends up very stable (and very stuck).

Capability hiring feels uncomfortable by design

Capability hiring starts from a different question: What does this system actually need in order to move?

Instead of focusing on titles or experience, it looks at what someone can do. It assesses whether their strengths can transfer into a complex, less-defined environment.

True capability hires:

• Remove a specific constraint.

• Surface gaps leaders have been ignoring or avoiding.

• Ask inconvenient questions in interviews.

They don’t immediately feel safe because they disrupt rhythms and force fuzzy ownership to be clarified. That discomfort is usually the signal that something important is about to change.

Why role-based hiring breaks under complexity

Role-based hiring works when the system is stable and work is repeatable. But under growth or restructuring, roles lag reality.

Hiring “a Head of X” doesn’t fix the problem if the real issue is administrative debt—the invisible pile of decisions, vague priorities, and bottlenecks upstream. If you hire a “safe pair of hands” to handle a messy process, you haven’t solved the mess; you’ve just hired someone to watch it with you.

Hiring as a response to constraints, not headcount

Most organizations ask: Who do we need next? Capability-driven hiring asks:

• Where does work pile up?

• What decisions are endlessly escalated?

• What are we compensating for manually?

Then you hire for that capability. Not for titles. Not for symmetry.

A simple reframe before you approve a hire

Now, I invite you to reflect before signing off on your next opening. Pause and ask:

1. What constraint does this person actually remove?

2. What decision will move faster because they’re here?

3. If nothing changes systemically, why are we hiring at all?

If the answer is “they’ll help”—pause. If the answer is “they’ll change this”—you’re closer.

Hiring for comfort keeps the system feeling stable. Hiring for capability is what actually makes it resilient. And under pressure, resilience matters far more than familiarity

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Partly because it’s one of the most misunderstood parts of an organization.
And partly because I’ve just had a recent departure on my own team that forced me to zoom out and look at the function again, not emotionally, but systemically.

For founders and entrepreneurs right now, hiring is often treated like a grocery run: we realize we’re hungry, we grab what looks good on the shelf, and we hope it tastes good when we get home.

We’re entering a moment where labour supply constraints, skills volatility, and AI-driven operating model shifts are all colliding. And the result is simple: people strategy is now directly limiting speed, execution, and resilience.

Most organizations feel this, they just don’t always name it. TA is the operating system that governs speed. Get it wrong and you don’t just lose money, you lose Signal Integrity. You introduce noise into a system that was finally starting to hum.

Hiring isn’t the problem. The system is.

When people talk about TA, they usually mean hiring.
Posting roles. Screening CVs. Interviewing. Closing.

But that’s like calling a nervous system a reflex.

In practice, Talent Acquisition functions as an operating system that coordinates:

• what roles exist and why

• how work is prioritized

• how capabilities enter (or exit) the organization

• how fast teams can move without breaking

For founders, this system quietly governs everything else: product delivery, customer acquisition, compliance, even cash efficiency.

When TA works, growth flows.
When it doesn’t, founders become the bottlenecks (or the firefighters).

Culture fit, founder intuition, and the myth of “hire fast, fire faster”

I recently watched an interview with Steven Bartlett where he talked about how deeply involved he is in headhunting and assessing culture fit. He’s very open about spending significant personal time on hiring.

On the surface, that seems to contradict the idea that founders shouldn’t be in the weeds.

That reinforces something many founders already intuitively know: culture fit matters. A lot.
So does personality. So does learning agility.

But without clear role architecture, decision rights, and success definitions, “culture fit” quickly becomes hard to scale and to delegate safely.

AI won’t fix a broken hiring system

At the same time, the recruiting world is rushing toward AI.

Every ATS now (and trust me, I’ve worked with quite a few of them) seems to come with AI embedded. Screening, matching, ranking, shortlisting. Faster pipelines. Cleaner dashboards.

has written extensively about this shift, especially the move to skill-based and capability-centered hiring models. I agree with the direction. He also points out that AI is only as good as the system, and the data, it sits inside.

If roles are poorly designed, if success criteria are vague, if historical hiring decisions were biased or inconsistent, AI doesn’t remove those issues. It accelerates them.

This is why claims of bias-free recruiting are a bit complicated.
AI doesn’t replace judgment. It amplifies whatever judgment already exists.

Which brings us back to the question: what should be automated, and what must stay human-led?

Before you hire anyone, zoom out

In my experience, most hiring problems don’t start in the interview.
They start much earlier.

Before the process even begins, founders need to step back and ask:

• Are our jobs actually well designed?

• Does everyone understand what success looks like in this role?

• Are we hiring for a static role, or for a capability the system currently lacks?

• Is this a skills-based team, or a project/capability-based one?

• Is the individual aligned with the team’s goals, and is the team aligned with the company’s direction?

These questions sound obvious. In reality, especially in scale-ups, they’re often skipped in the rush to “just get someone in.”

That’s when friction creeps in..

Talent Acquisition as a closed-loop system

When you strip it back, founder-friendly TA looks less like a pipeline and more like a loop:

Inputs → Decisions → Outcomes → Feedback → Iteration

• Inputs are things like strategy, runway, risk tolerance, customer roadmap.

• Decisions include role design, assessment methods, compensation, onboarding.

• Outcomes show up as time-to-fill, quality of hire, early attrition, productivity ramp.

• Feedback comes from candidate drop-off, manager calibration, performance data.

Most organizations measure the outcomes. Very few learn from the feedback.

When growth slows or restructuring hits

In my view, restructuring is also a TA problem (just in disguise).

The real question becomes:

How do we secure the capabilities needed for the next plan, quickly and credibly, while reducing capabilities we can no longer afford?

That’s not about hiring more efficiently.
It’s about thinking in capabilities, not roles.

Sometimes the right move is to hire.
Sometimes it’s to redeploy.
Sometimes it’s to automate.
Sometimes it’s to stop doing the work altogether.

But those decisions only make sense when the system is clear.

So what actually helps

Again (and I feel like I keep saying this), there is no magic solution that applies in every case. But patterns emerge.

Strong TA systems tend to:

• design roles as responses to constraints, not as generic job descriptions

• hire for outcomes, not just experience

• standardize selection where it improves decision quality

• use AI to reduce noise, not replace judgment

• and treat onboarding and early tenure as part of hiring, not an afterthought

Most importantly, they’re honest about what the system can and cannot carry.

Talent Acquisition isn’t about finding better people.
It’s about building a system that lets the right people do good work without becoming the bottleneck themselves.

For founders, it’s one of the most strategic design decisions they will ever make.

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I’m not here to be polarizing. Burnout is a serious, nuanced issue, and it deserves a more thoughtful conversation than it usually gets.

More often than not, burnout is framed as a personal failure: a lack of resilience, stamina, or mindset. When a leader or an employee hits the wall, we (and I speak here from my HR background) prescribe vacations, meditation apps, or a long weekend away. We treat it as if a few days offline can fix a system that is fundamentally misaligned.

Well, breaking news: It can’t.

When burnout is real, it is biological. Research shows measurable effects on stress regulation, cognitive capacity, and energy systems. Biology doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care how ambitious you are, how senior you are, or how much you love your job.

And when burnout is properly diagnosed, it deserves to be taken seriously.

At the same time, not every situation labeled as burnout is the same, and treating them all as such can actually prevent us from solving the real problem.

What burnout often gets confused with

Throughout my career, I’ve seen very different experiences placed under the same label.

Some people are genuinely depleted after prolonged, excessive stress. Others (and here is the HR in me speaking again) are not experiencing burnout in the clinical sense, but are using the label to explain challenges in their lives that aren’t directly about the work itself.

But there is a third group. These people are exhausted by something else entirely: Friction.

They are operating with:

• unclear authority,

• constant decision ambiguity,

• misaligned expectations or purpose,

• or systems that make good work unnecessarily hard.

In those cases, the issue isn’t a lack of willingness to work.

And friction is incredibly expensive, biologically speaking. It’s the biological cost of navigating a broken blueprint.

The High-Performer’s Tax

High performers tend to burn out first because they are the ones carrying the cognitive and emotional load when the architecture starts to fail.

Again: Biology doesn’t care about ambition. In my experience, when people disengage, it’s usually because they’re already drained... By the time performance drops and the person seems “checked out,” the system has already been failing them for months. Once a high performer becomes deeply disengaged, it is incredibly hard to bring them back.

Why most burnout interventions fail

Most burnout interventions focus on stress relief rather than structural causes. In other words, they treat symptoms, not origins.

The symptoms are familiar:

• exhaustion,

• cynicism,

• emotional withdrawal.

But the causes usually sit somewhere else entirely:

• demand–resource imbalance,

• unclear authority,

• ambiguous direction,

• decision friction,

• lack of recovery built into the system.

Addressing symptoms without addressing structure is like giving painkillers for a fracture without ever setting the bone. It will bring relief but the injury is still there.

This is why even well-intentioned, high-performance work systems can backfire. When environments are build for speed, ownership, and intensity without a deep understanding of how people actually function physiologically, they eventually overwhelm the people they most rely on.

Burnout as a systems signal

If you zoom out, burnout isn’t about individuals breaking, it’s about systems pushing people past capacity.

And capacity isn’t just about the amount of hours worked. It’s about whether people have what they need to function well over time. They include:

• clarity,

• authority,

• psychological safety,

• access to information,

• and the ability to recover.

When these are missing, the cost shows up in the body, and eventually in organizational performance and operations.

Burnout, in this sense, isn’t a personal collapse.

It’s a systems signal.

So, what actually helps

I’ll be 100% honest: there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Burnout isn’t something you can fix with just one magical initiative or program.

It almost always starts with reassessing the fundamentals: recruiting, onboarding, feedback loops, decision structures, communication channels, workflows and so on.

It also requires genuinely understanding the people in the system: their strengths, how and when they do their best work, and where friction drains energy. We’re seeing a shift from role-based teams to skill- and project-based models for a reason. But that shift only works if organizations are truly willing to know their people, and not just label them.

And it starts by asking better questions:

• Is the exhaustion coming from the workload or the friction around it?

• Are people accountable without real authority?

• Are decisions made where the information actually lives?

• Is psychological safety real, or just something we say out loud?

Leadership carries the greatest responsibility here. But influence doesn’t stop at the top.

Even without a leadership title, people shape systems every day:

• by making work clearer,

• by reducing unnecessary noise,

• by noticing signs of fatigue,

• by offering support instead of silence.

Burnout isn’t always a personal crisis.

Often, it’s a system asking for redesign.

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Last week, we looked at the structural collapse of the HR Titanic. This week, we’re heading into the engine room.

I’ve been down several rabbit holes lately, and they all lead to the conclusion that we talk about high-performance systems all day, but we ignore the most fundamental architecture of all: our own biology. If you don’t respect your physiological needs, you aren’t building a leadership system, you’re building a house of cards.

The Hamster Wheel vs. The Engine

As I mentioned in Notes, that Microsoft WorkLab report really made me reflect. It confirmed that we are structuring our days to benefit “the flow” (aka the endless pings), not our focus. We’ve traded our biology for a hamster wheel.

To be clear, this isn’t about “wellness.” (Those who know me know how much I cringe at that word). This is about Performance Biology. Its the difference between maximizing your strategic output and simply redlining your engine until it stalls.

The Moral Slope of the $10 Gift Card

While navigating my transition away from Workday, I had a run-in with a software rep who was... let’s call it aggressively daunting. She was pushy, took 40 minutes to say what could have been a Teams message, and kept trying to “keep us engaged” with cheesy lines and gift card giveaways.

It was a classic case of exploiting Decision Fatigue. Experts highlighted how morning people are less ethical at night and how the moral slope gets slipperier in the afternoon. The core issue is “psychological depletion.” As the day wears on, we become cognitively weaker.

“Gradually increasing fatigue from unremarkable activities can lead to systemic moral failure.”

Can you imagine signing off on a million-dollar software implementation that is totally wrong for your company just because it’s 4 PM, your brain is fried, and someone offered you a free coffee? What a nightmare!!!

Your Internal COO: The Circadian Rhythm

Think of your Circadian Rhythm as your body’s internal Chief Operating Officer. It’s a 24-hour master scheduler running in your brain that dictates when your system is open for high-stakes processing and when it must go into maintenance mode.

Whether you’re a ‘Lark’ or an ‘Owl’ is largely driven by genetics - it’s a biological hard-coding, not a personality trait. When we force a Lark leader to make board-level decisions at 10 PM, or drag an Owl into a 7 AM stand-up, we create what they call ‘Social Jet Lag.’ You end up feeling like you’ve flown across the Atlantic just by sitting at your desk.

In my world, that’s a massive architectural glitch. You’re trying to run a high-performance organization on a 2% battery. You might get the task done, but the administrative debt — the errors, the irritability, and the cognitive drain —w ill cost you double tomorrow.

Baseline the Engine

You don’t need a lab or a wearable to figure this out. You just need to pay attention to the signs your body is already sending you. If you want to move from hamster wheel to high-performance, you have to start by testing your energy.

Here are two low-stakes ways to do that this week:

• The 3-Day Focus Log: For the next three days, set a timer on your phone for every two hours. Don’t look at your to-do list; look at your brain. On a scale of 1–10, how is your focus? Are you in “flow,” or are you just staring at the same email for twenty minutes? Most leaders are shocked to find that their most “productive” hours are actually spent in a cognitive fog because they’ve scheduled the wrong tasks at the wrong time.

• The Weekend Reveal: This is my favorite! On a weekend when you don’t have an alarm clock (or a 5-year-old jumping on your head), when does your body naturally start to shut down? That’s your “Blue Hour.” If you find yourself naturally sleepy at 9:30 PM - Like I do - but you’ve been forcing yourself to answer emails until midnight, you are not being diligent, you’re just redlining an engine that’s trying to go into maintenance mode.

Why this matters for our systems: Once you know your peaks, you can stop fighting the tide. You can start protecting your “Flow State” for the big, scary, high-stakes decisions and leave the mindless admin for when your battery is naturally dipping.

(P.S. I’ll soon release a comprehensive Leadership Vitality Audit for subscribers, a tool to help you map your entire team’s energy. Stay tuned for that!)

Designing for Cognitive Integrity

We’ve been conditioned to think of scheduling as an exercise in time management. It isn’t. It’s an exercise in Cognitive Integrity.

Research suggests that tasks with a moral component or high-level strategy should be shifted to your peak energy windows. Why? Because when you are 'depleted,' your ability to hold the line on your own standards drops significantly.

In my case, I’m a morning person (by nature, reinforced by my 5-year-old son), so the big stuff needs to happen before noon. I avoid late meetings like the plague. However, because I live in the real world and work across multiple time zones, sometimes I have to be up at 11 PM for meeting with the US.

My rule? I avoid making decisions on the spot during those late windows. I use the term “let me sleep on it” quite literally. I refuse to let a '2% battery brain' sign off on anything that the '100% battery brain' has to live with tomorrow.

The challenge: Look at your calendar for the next 48 hours. How many high-stakes decisions have you scheduled during your maintenance window? If you can't move the meeting, can you move the decision?

I’d love to hear your Lark vs. Owl status. More importantly: what’s the one decision you’re going to ‘sleep on’ (literally) this week to protect your integrity?

Drop a comment!

Stay calm,

Luciana

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Confession time: I made a mistake.

I bought the “Everest” of HR software when we were just trying to hike a local trail. I chose Workday.

Don’t get me wrong, Workday is incredible. It is probably the most comprehensive enterprise tool available today. But if you put a Ferrari engine in a golf cart, you don’t get a faster golf cart; you get a broken golf cart and a very expensive repair bill.

In our high-growth, high-volatility environment, our HRIS didn’t become our engine; it became our bottleneck. It was to

The “Titanic” Problem

When a system is too big for the context, it becomes an HR Titanic. It’s majestic to look at, but it can’t turn fast enough to avoid the icebergs of a shifting market.

As I sat through (way too many) demos, navigating a sea of sales decks and all the pitch-promises, I realized that success in HR has fundamentally changed. It’s no longer about who has the biggest database. It’s about Systemic Agility.

Every hour my team spent ‘babysitting’ a legacy system is an hour stolen from Talent Strategy, Succession Planning, Engagement, etc. We weren’t just changing software; we were reclaiming our time to do the work that actually moves the needle.

To find our new home, I stopped looking at features and started looking at interference. I asked my team to grade our options on four categories:

• The “No-Manual” Test (Intuitive): If an employee needs a 10-page PDF to request a day off, we’ve already lost.

• The “Time-Back” Factor: Does this kill my spreadsheets, or just give me a new place to type them?

• The “Admin-Light” Metric: I want my team doing Strategy, not babysitting a database.

• The “Wow” Factor: Is it actually... cool to use? (Yes, HR software can be cool in 2026. I promise.)

In a high-volatility environment, an HRIS shouldn’t be a destination where data goes to die; it should be a transit hub where information moves at the speed of the business.

Moving from Assistants to Agents

This search for simplicity wasn't just about making our days easier. It was about preparing for the massive shift in how work actually gets done.

In his recent piece, “2026: The Year of Enterprise AI,” points out that we are moving past AI “assistants” (think: glorified Google searches that tell you where a policy is) and into AI “solutions” and agents (tools that actually execute the onboarding, run the payroll audit, or flag a flight risk before it happens).

But here’s the thing: most legacy systems aren’t built for agents. They were built for manual entry, forcing us to click twelve times to get a result.

To leverage this revolution, you need an “Open System,” not a closed fortress. My “Admin-Light” and “Intuitive” criteria weren’t just about user experience; they were about APIs and connectivity. An AI agent can only help you if it can “talk” to your system without a translator in the middle.

The Leadership Audit: Is Your System Slowing You Down?

This isn’t just about HR software. This is a Leadership Operation System Audit. Whether you are scaling up or restructuring in a volatile market, you have to ask:

“Are our systems working for us, or are we working for our systems?”

The Verdict: There is no “magic pill” software. Success is systemic. It’s about integrating your processes so they feel invisible. We are moving toward a leaner and smarter tech stack. My bet for 2026 is that simplicity is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Have you ever inherited a 'Gold Standard' tool that actually felt like a lead weight? I’d love to hear your horror stories in the comments.

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