January 5, 2026
Most strategic plans don’t die from a lack of vision. They die because leaders invest in the wrong people.
In the boardroom, it’s easy to fall for the Early Adopter Mirage:
We listen to the enthusiastic “yes-people.”
We mistake compliance for commitment.
The result? A false sense of momentum that evaporates the moment implementation gets difficult.
The Social Science Reality:
Lasting change doesn’t live with your fans; it lives with your Attentive Skeptics.
In the Leader Lab, we see that employee “Anxiety” isn’t resistance—it’s High-Activation Energy. If you ignore the skeptics, you lose the “Second Wave” of adopters required to reach critical mass.
Tomorrow at 8:30 AM EST, I’m releasing the Leader Lab Lite Executive Briefing Newsletter on LinkedIn. It will compliment the full Leader Lab on Substack.
Stop managing enthusiasm. Start measuring activation.
Stay tuned!
