Good morning, Reader—it’s Sunday, August 23.
I keep thinking about how quickly a technology conversation becomes a people conversation. We talk about tools, speed, and productivity—but what we’re really deciding is how we want to work, what we’re willing to trust, and which parts of being human become more valuable when machines can do more.
This week’s moments all point toward the same idea: progress doesn’t come from adopting the newest thing. It comes from creating the conditions in which people can use it well.
ISSUE 02 | AUGUST 23, 2026
IN THIS MOMENT
This week: Why managers determine whether AI improves culture, what remote-work research says about connection, and the five priorities one CEO uses to protect his time.
Also worth carrying with you: why play may be serious preparation for the future, who gets to feel talented, the expectations adults place on children, and some wonderfully strange watches.
About a five-minute read.
THE BIG MOMENT
AI doesn’t change culture. Managers do.
Nearly every organization I meet is asking some version of the same question:
How do we get our people to use AI?
Gallup’s newest workplace research suggests that may be the wrong starting point.
AI adoption alone was associated with workplace culture getting better and worse in roughly equal measure. The difference appeared in the support surrounding it: employees who strongly agreed that their manager actively supported their team’s AI use were more likely to say their culture had improved.
Yet half of the CHROs Gallup surveyed said they were not confident in their managers’ ability to guide employees through AI at work.
That gap matters. Technology never arrives as just technology. It arrives as a signal about whose skills matter, how work will be judged, and what the organization believes about its people.
Read Gallup’s workplace report →
MY TAKE
Most transformation efforts fail emotionally before they fail operationally.
We introduce a new platform, structure, or expectation. Then we train people on the mechanics and assume the human part will take care of itself.
It won’t.
A manager does not need to be the best AI user in the room. They need to make curiosity safer than pretending.
People need permission to experiment, ask basic questions, and say “I don’t know yet” without losing status. The future of work won’t be won by the organization with the most tools. It will be won by the one whose people feel most capable of learning.
WORTH A MOMENT
WORK
Remote work may not weaken connection after all.
A study of 7,704 employees found that fully remote workers reported the highest well-being, while onsite employees reported the lowest. Researchers also found little evidence that remote employees felt less connected to colleagues or workplace culture.
Why it matters: The deeper lesson isn’t that everyone should work remotely. It’s that choice can be a performance condition. Stop debating location as ideology and start designing work around outcomes, trust, and people’s actual needs.
Explore the research summary →
LEARNING
Play may be preparation for an AI-shaped world.
After three years of research across elementary classrooms in four states, a Temple-led team reported encouraging early results from Active Playful Learning—an approach built around connection, curiosity, and student voice.
Why it matters: Play is where people practice making connections, testing possibilities, and recovering from failed attempts. Those capacities become more valuable—not less—when routine answers are easy to generate.
Read the study overview →
FOCUS
Five priorities can protect an entire quarter.
Dropbox co-CEO Ashraf Alkarmi chooses five goals each quarter and uses them as a filter for his calendar. If a meeting doesn’t connect to one of those priorities, he often doesn’t attend.
Why it matters: Many people have priorities that influence what they say yes to. Far fewer have priorities strong enough to help them say no. If everything can still enter your calendar, your priorities are preferences.
See the five-priority meeting rule →
BELIEF
Feeling talented is not distributed equally.
A new reflection in Nature Reviews Psychology revisits research showing that confidence in intellectual talent is shaped by more than ability. Female first-generation students reported the lowest belief in their own intellectual talent—and pursued fewer intellectually challenging opportunities as a result.
Why it matters: Potential doesn’t only disappear because others fail to see it. Sometimes the environment never helps someone imagine that the opportunity belongs to them. Leaders make possibility visible before people have the confidence to claim it.
Read the Nature preview →
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Our expectations can arrive before a child’s abilities do.
New research highlighted by the Association for Psychological Science examines the beliefs adults across cultures hold about how children’s minds develop. Those assumptions influence what parents and teachers expect children to understand—and when.
Why it matters: Expecting an ability too soon can turn a developmental limitation into a character judgment. Expecting it too late can cause us to overlook an emerging strength. Good leadership begins by seeing people as they are, not as our timetable says they should be.
Explore the psychology research →
THE UNEXPECTED MOMENT
Watches that were allowed to get strange.
Seiko’s Power Design Project gave its in-house designers permission to play with the conventions of watchmaking. The resulting exhibition—“Passionately and Obsessively Crafted Watches”—features ideas shaped less by mass-market certainty and more by curiosity.
Not: Make something everyone will buy.
But: Follow the idea far enough to discover what it wants to become.
Useful work solves the known problem. Creative work sometimes reveals a possibility nobody knew to request.
See Seiko’s experimental designs →
Know someone who would enjoy one of these moments? Forward this issue and bring them into the conversation.
TRY THIS
Run a three-question change check.
Before introducing a new tool, process, or expectation this week, answer:
1. What problem are we actually trying to solve?
If the problem is vague, the change will feel performative.
2. What should remain unmistakably human?
Name the judgment, care, creativity, or connection you refuse to automate away.
3. Where can people safely practice?
Create one low-risk place to experiment, ask questions, and learn in public.
Clarity doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. It gives people somewhere solid to stand inside it.
THE MOMENT I’M INTO
Mothers of Invention by Moiya McTier.
This new book explores the history of human creativity through the voices of the Greek Muses. McTier—an astrophysicist, folklorist, and science communicator—challenges the myth of the lone genius and makes a case for creativity as something collaborative, cultural, and deeply human.
I’m intrigued by any book willing to place Galileo, Ella Fitzgerald, mythology, science, and the rise of AI inside the same conversation.
Explore the book →
JUST ONE QUESTION
What is one change you would approach differently if your first responsibility were building belief—not enforcing adoption?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every response, and your answer may help shape a future issue of Just a Moment.
Until next time,
Brant
Own your moment.
P.S. If someone you know is leading people through change right now, forward this to them. They may need the reminder that adoption follows belief more often than belief follows adoption.
Unsubscribe