AI is getting smarter by the month, but a lot of workplaces still feel stuck and oddly exhausted. We keep hearing about productivity breakthroughs, yet many organizations cannot show enterprise-wide gains even when employees say they work faster with AI. That gap is where leadership, culture, and performance systems get exposed.

I sit down with Ernesto Gomez, founder of Aspen Mindset and author of Regrowth and The Soul Edge, to unpack why the real bottleneck is human. Ernesto argues that technology is a platform, not a lasting competitive advantage, and that optimizing individual tasks can still suboptimize the whole organization. We dig into the shift from extractive performance (control, pressure, and proprietary know-how) to regenerative performance that builds human capacity, trust, creativity, and judgment over time.

We also get practical about what “soul” can mean at work without drifting into mysticism. Ernesto shares his idea of a “soul signature,” the essential qualities that make you you, and why leaders in the AI era have to connect with the person beyond the role. From there, we talk team leadership as the true unit of performance, how to build human-centered skills that algorithms cannot replace, and why humility and self-awareness are now strategic leadership capabilities. We close with a hard question: if you rebuilt leadership from zero today, what would you keep and what would you drop?

If this sparks a rethink of AI leadership, organizational culture, employee engagement, and the future of work, subscribe to Excellence Foresight, share this conversation with a colleague, and leave a review.

Send us Fan Mail

Circular economy is dropping worldwide even as sustainability talk is louder than ever and that’s the wake-up call we can’t ignore. We’re consuming more than 100 billion tons of materials a year, yet only a small share loops back into the economy. So what does “circularity” actually mean when you’re running a business, managing risk, and trying to hit net zero targets without getting buried in competing frameworks and reporting demands?

We sit down with Sunil Sawani, CEO of Quality Indeed Consulting and founder of the Circular Economy Forum and Awards, to translate circular economy from concept into action. We unpack “keep materials in use” through real examples: designing products to last and be repaired, dismantling buildings for certified reuse, secondary materials exchanges, and the rise of pay-per-use models where service replaces ownership. Sunil also shares how ISO 59000 brings structure by clarifying whether you’re pursuing value creation, value retention, or value recovery and why that clarity matters in the boardroom.

We also get honest about what slows implementation: missing material flow mapping, limited lifecycle assessment data, uneven data quality, procurement habits that favor virgin inputs, and policy friction around moving used materials across borders. Along the way, we connect circular economy to organizational excellence and systems thinking, showing how circularity has to live inside strategy, KPIs, processes, and governance to last. If you care about sustainability strategy, supply chain resilience, digital product passports, and practical circular economy business models, this conversation gives you a grounded path forward.

Subscribe for more conversations on excellence and sustainable transformation, share this with a leader who needs a clearer circularity roadmap, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Send us Fan Mail

Answers are everywhere now, but strong leadership is getting harder. When information is abundant, the real advantage shifts to something upstream: the quality of the questions we ask, the connections we make across disciplines, and the humility to admit we do not know yet. I share a reflective, solo perspective on why curiosity may become more valuable than expertise in the years ahead, and how that changes the way we lead, learn, and build organizations that can adapt.

We dig into the hidden limitation of expertise: the more experienced we are, the easier it is to fall into shortcuts that once worked but now quietly mislead us. I connect curiosity to organizational excellence and quality management, including continuous improvement, scientific thinking, and the difference between mechanical compliance and living inquiry. We also talk about what curious professionals do differently, from listening longer to seeking diverse perspectives, and how one good question can shift a team from defending positions to exploring possibilities with more psychological safety.

Then we bring it into the age of AI. If AI can generate answers instantly, our edge becomes asking deeper questions, evaluating what is right or wrong, and crossing boundaries to learn from other fields. I also share the idea of a “curiosity portfolio” and a practical summer invitation: choose one curiosity question and let it travel with you without turning rest into a productivity project.

If this sparks something, subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review. What is the one question you want to live with this season?

Send us Fan Mail