“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.” ~ Daniel J Boorstin
Photo Credit: Kevin Jordan, Sunrise at Mt. Vision/Inverness, CA. May 8, 2025
Greetings -
I hope you, your families and friends had a fun and relaxing holiday weekend!
We enjoyed the long weekend at our family home in Inverness following two wonderful weeks in Alameda in the East Bay. My wife and I were treated to glorious spring weather and excursions of all shapes and sizes with our long-time friends. The pinnacle of our stay was an impromptu visit by our daughter that she and I quietly engineered as a Mother's Day treat. Her Mom was truly surprised and thrilled (and our daughter has the video to prove it!).
With Spring giving way to Summer, the opportunity to see and experience new things with fresh eyes manifests daily, as nature transforms our physical environment. The rose bushes and foxgloves are in full bloom and provide wonderful color and fragrance. Wildlife, deer mostly and the occasional rabbit and fox, is emerging in search of the yard's burgeoning offerings of berries and an array of fruits from our trees (they will soon wipe out just about anything that hits the ground). Even our tiny goldfish are zipping about and thriving in our little pond.
As I write, a mama deer and her two little ones have sidled into the yard and are now sitting placidly not more than 30 feet from me enjoying the warmth of the lawn and the quiet of the day. The ability to slow down and sit in the beauty of this space and bear witness to Mother Nature's sublime offerings is truly a gift and one that provides profound peace and contentment.
We are navigating a liminal space of our own as we prepare to depart Inverness for the summer and journey down new and different paths of opportunity and learning. Starting in mid-June, we will embark on a 2+ month road trip across CA, UT, MT and ending with some family and friend time in OR. Dubbed our "nomad summer" by my wife, we are taking the opportunity to play (and work) in areas we have not previously visited. I am very much looking forward to this voyage of discovery and what will emerge or be recast when observing with my metaphorical viewfinder. I will share insights and experiences throughout the course of the summer months. Stay tuned!
With respect and deep admiration for you all, happy reading and listening!
Be well, take good care of yourselves, families and community.
-kj
PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)
Featured: The Leader's Viewfinder: What Are You NOT Seeing?
Many leaders are trapped in Plato's cave—and they don't even know it.
We pride ourselves on being observant, data-driven, and strategic. But here's the uncomfortable truth: we're often only seeing the shadows on the wall.
The white space gets all our attention. The visible metrics, the obvious problems, the vocal stakeholders. Meanwhile, the negative space —the unspoken tensions, the missing voices, the cultural undercurrents — remains invisible.
Yet it's precisely in that negative space where transformation begins.
When my colleagues Harvey Seifter and Fred Mandell, at Creating Futures That Work write about negative and positive space being interdependent, they're pointing to a fundamental leadership blindspot. The most consequential insights often live in what we're NOT seeing:
→ The high performer who's quietly burning out
→ The innovation that's being killed by process
→ The customer need that's hiding behind stated requirements
→ The team dynamic that's undermining every strategy session
The question isn't whether you're observing—it's what your viewfinder is trained on.
Are you scanning for confirmation of what you already believe? Or are you actively seeking the discomfort of seeing differently?
Plato knew that leaving the cave was painful. The light hurts. Reality looks nothing like the shadows you've been observing. But that moment of painful reorientation? That's where leadership growth happens.
You can watch Alex Gendler's TED-Ed take on Plato's Allegory of the Cave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA
Your turn: What assumptions are you ready to challenge this week?
Articles
Harvard Business Review: Who Are You as a Leader? "Social scientists have recently developed a new appreciation for how your conception of yourself can affect your professional and personal lives. The good news is that recent research has shown that you can curate your identity in the workplace in ways that will improve your performance as a leader, the trust you’re able to inspire in others, and even your overall well-being...At the center of this approach is the construction of what Ingram calls the identity map—a simple device that allows people to identify, visualize, and ultimately leverage the many interconnected elements that make up their sense of who they are."
Chief Executive: Alan Mulally On The Power Of Transparency. "At a recent CEO gathering, Mulally shared his insights on leadership, culture and decision-making. His message was clear: success comes from collaboration, transparency and a relentless focus on serving all stakeholders, not just shareholders."
Harvard Business Review: The Power of Mattering at Work. "...Many employees don’t feel that they matter to their employers, bosses, and colleagues. Mattering—a mainstay concept in psychology—is the experience of feeling significant to those around us because we feel valued and know that we add value...[What should leaders do?] First, leaders need to truly see and hear team members during daily interactions. They must also regularly affirm their people’s significance. And finally, senior leaders need to scale these skills up to the organizational level so that mattering becomes a cultural norm. These behaviors may seem like common sense, but they’ve ceased to be common practice in a world of brief digital communications and condescension toward soft skills, and they’re well worth relearning."
KelloggInsight: Why Firms Should Lean into Sustainability. "For corporate leaders, sustainability efforts can be a tough sell. But doing the bare minimum is a mistake, according to two Kellogg School researchers. Instead, recognizing the strategic and innovative potential of green initiatives can give companies a long-term competitive advantage. This includes looking beyond the next quarter’s earnings and developing constructive relationships with activists both inside and outside the company to understand and act on the sustainability issues that arise in transformational times."
Harvard Business Review: What's the Future of Middle Management? "Predictions about the demise of middle management aren’t new. But with the rise of AI and a trend toward flatter organizations, could these predictions soon come true? Perspectives from three groups of experts suggest that businesses will still need middle managers, particularly when it comes to helping frontline employees shift their roles amid rapid technological and business strategy changes. But it is possible we may need fewer of them in this new environment."
Blog Posts & Opinions
Michael Watkins: The Power of Perspective Shifting in Strategic Leadership. "Given that complexity and uncertainty are constants, the ability to fluidly and intentionally shift perspectives is a crucial skill for strategic thinkers. Leaders who can master the five essential shifts – from internal to external, big picture to detail, now to future, short-term to long-term, and self to other—should be better equipped to make informed, balanced decisions...By cultivating these mental shifts and practicing perspective exercises, leaders can develop the flexibility to guide their organizations through present challenges and future opportunities."
The New York Times: David Brooks: You Are Only as Smart as Your Emotions. "We now understand that our emotions are often wise. The problem is that our culture and our institutions haven’t caught up with our knowledge."
The New York Times: Adam Grant: No, You Don’t Get an A for Effort. "The problem is that we’ve taken the practice of celebrating industriousness too far. We’ve gone from commending effort to treating it as an end in itself. We’ve taught a generation of kids that their worth is defined primarily by their work ethic...The true measure of learning is not the time and energy you put in. It’s the knowledge and skills you take out."
Podcasts
McKinsey & Company: Author Talks: Shankar Vedantam on the power and paradox of self-deception. "The host of Hidden Brain on NPR discusses the lies we all tell ourselves and the role they play in easing everyday life."
Freakonomics Radio: No Stupid Questions: How Clearly Do You See Yourself? "Do you see yourself the same way others see you? What’s the difference between self-perception and self-awareness?"
WorkLife with Adam Grant: Malcolm Gladwell on the importance of self-correction. "[Malcolm] and Adam riff on the value of acknowledging our past mistakes, strategies for coping with failure and ways to avoid the traps of homogeneous cultures."
Arts, Music, Culture & Literature Corner
The Art Newspaper: Developers threaten San Francisco’s loved and loathed concrete colossus. "Skateboarders and Brutalism enthusiasts are among those joining forces to save the Vaillancourt Fountain from urban-renewal obliteration."
The New Yorker: Nanci Griffith's Lone Star State of Mind. "The late singer-songwriter rarely felt at home either in her native Texas or in the music industry, but her nostalgic ditties of girlhood captured a potent sense of place."
The Atlantic: The Business-School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger. "The research scandal that has engulfed this field [business school psychology] goes far beyond the replication crisis that has plagued psychology and other disciplines in recent years. Long-standing flaws in how scientific work is done—including insufficient sample sizes and the sloppy application of statistics—have left large segments of the research literature in doubt. Many avenues of study once deemed promising turned out to be dead ends. But it’s one thing to understand that scientists have been cutting corners. It’s quite another to suspect that they’ve been creating their results from scratch."
The New Yorker Fiction: Techniques and Idiosyncrasies, by Yiyun Li. Lilian, the protagonist of this short story, turns a routine medical check-up into a contemplative reflection of her profound past lived experiences and how they can influence the otherwise ordinary activities of her daily life.
Reflections
“Unless we learn to know ourselves, we run the danger of destroying ourselves.” ― Ja A. Jahannes
When I Look at the World
U2
When you look at the world
What is it that you see
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees
I see an expression
So clear and so true
That it changes the atmosphere
When you walk into the room
So I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you it's no use
I can't see what you see
When I look at the world
When the night is someone else's
And you're trying to get some sleep
When your thoughts are too expensive
To ever want to keep
When there's all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don't even blink now do you
Or even look away
So I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you it's no use
I can't see what you see
When I look at the world
I can't wait any longer
I can't wait 'til I'm stronger
Can't wait any longer
To see what you seeWhen I look at the world
I'm in the waiting room
I can't see for the smoke
I think of you and your holy book
When the rest of us choke
Tell me, tell me
What do you see
Tell me, tell me
What's wrong with me
Make the Audiobook Before the Book Is Made
By Terrance Hayes
Each morning, stand before a steamy mirror
talking to your reflection. Your book of poems
is being printed there. Your breath refracts
into lines of poetry before it doubles back
splitting into multiple echoes & directions.
The most important & unimportant poetry
transpires when water & mirror separate you
into layers. Where some of it is steam
in the morning, some of it is clear as glass,
the future arriving. Thus, the poems
may also reflect the perspective of glass
you will pass throughout the day, as if
a twin haunted your peripheral vision.
You sit smoking when the beloved drifts
toward the shower. The window is open,
a path always there. Listening feels real
& surreal when you look at it like a color
no one has named. Outside, the machines
break down an old building to build
a newer building; sunlight climbs between
coupling & uncoupling bodies.
The mirrors reflecting the best poems
are slightly warped so that reading feels
like staring into rippling passages.
The convex & concave mirrors forming
the book jacket exaggerate expressions,
making others appear stretched, squished,
& altered, mirroring the elasticity
of the poems themselves. Tones & topics
shift like light across running water.
The rain falls in the shower, sliding off
a body it cannot cover in the rhythm
of a strange song. You can almost hear
inside it: a weeping. The door is closed.
It was never closed before.