June 19, 2026
Volume 04 - Issue 24
This week I’m loving
This week’s love goes out to Mateo Grassi for some thought-provoking discourse on supply, demand, and investment in AI (artificial intelligence). If you’ve had any shred of doubt around AI, or you’re overseeing projects, or companies overinvested in this space, this is a must read. In case you doubt me, here is a quick teaser:
A market where the buyer, the seller, and the lender are the same three people having dinner isn't a market. It's a group of friends passing one twenty-dollar bill around the table and writing "GDP" on the receipt. The bill is real. The dinner is real. The friends are having a genuinely lovely time. None of that makes it twenty dollars of new money. It makes it one twenty, photographed from three flattering angles.
From the Practice
This week’s From the Practice segment is highlighting strong advice from Project Management Global on the value of attention in today’s project management.
The ability to direct attention deliberately is quickly becoming a career-defining skill.
I especially appreciated the callout that time and attention are not the same things. I hear often from project managers that they are strapped for time but consider:
You may spend eight hours working, but only a fraction of that time is spent focusing on the activities that genuinely move the project forward. The rest is often consumed by context-switching, reactive communication and low-value tasks.
The most effective project managers understand this distinction. They focus on protecting attention, not just managing hours.
Another important callout is the danger of urgency. Importantly, the most valuable work is rarely the most urgent.
So what can you do?
Protect uninterrupted time for work that requires attention.
List potential activities in order of impact
Focus attention toward decisions that require strategic thinking
Don’t lose track of things that are important in favor of those that are immediate
Categorize information into signals and noise
Consider which meetings really require your presence
In modern project management, attention is becoming more valuable than time. The PMs who thrive in 2026 will not necessarily be the busiest or the most connected. They will be the ones who can focus on the right problems, at the right moments, with the right level of concentration.
An interesting read
This time of year is the moment when most project managers start to get frustrated. You can feel your projects falling behind. You can feel the inertia of your organization holding your team’s potential back. You can already see the problem you are going to have in Q3 and maybe Q4.
So this week’s interesting read is a refreshingly honest reminder that it’s not your fault.
What does not exist, in most organizations, is the environment that allows talented people to actually do the work.
So how do you create this environment?
Build your coaching muscle.
Give your team autonomy.
Celebrate growth & learning as much as meeting a deadline.
Let go of certainty in favor of good questions.
…build a culture that treats figuring it out together as the actual work.
A tip
This week I’m highlighting a great little write-up from Elizabeth Harrin (also known as the author of the Rebel’s Guide to Project Management) reminding you of different ways you can demonstrate business acumen in your daily work as a project manager.
Admittedly, this is the area of the talent triangle least well understood and potentially least trained for, but of increasing importance. Elizabeth gives you some solid tips that will help you level up in this area.
A lesson
My dear friend Kevin, who is an incredibly inspiring leader, wrote a lovely piece this week about the importance of curiosity and the lesson of the ancient Greek concept Amathia.
…often translated simply as ignorance, but that misses the true warning behind it.
The Greeks understood that there is something far more dangerous than not knowing.
It is believing you already know.
Amathia is the disease of certainty.
It is the moment curiosity dies.
I talk often with leaders I mentor and coach about the power of great questions.
The beginning of wisdom is not having all the answers. It is maintaining the humility to keep asking better questions.
In opinion asking a great question is a skill to actively cultivate through life. It’s a built-in ability we have as children that we lose slowly as we mature; as society teaches us to unlearn the intellectual endurance of questioning.
So maybe the greatest intelligence is not accumulating more answers.
Maybe it is maintaining the humility to keep asking better questions.
Great wisdom and reminders all around, thank you!