RAC

Spent today in London at Deloitte’s Next Generation PE CFO Programme — a great opportunity to connect with and hear from some interesting finance leaders 🟢

The Austin area and Central Texas have lost a truly exceptional professional with the passing of Mike Wilson. A leader in planning, construction management, engineering, and land development, Mike possessed a rare ability to identify opportunities for improvement while anticipating and preparing for the complexities these projects bring. His mastery of code interpretation and his steadfast advocacy for his clients set him apart, earning both respect and trust throughout the industry. Mike approached every day with a commitment to building genuine relationships—not for personal gain, but because he sincerely cared about people. He created tremendous value for his clients, often generating significant financial success, yet expected nothing more than fair compensation in return. A simple thank you was appreciated, though never sought. He did his work quietly and effectively, without any desire for recognition. Mike invested deeply in others, sharing his knowledge through mentoring, training, and encouragement. His impact extended far beyond his projects, leaving a lasting mark on the professionals he guided and supported. Mike Wilson will be greatly missed by all who knew him. We extend our heartfelt prayers to his family as they navigate this loss. May they find comfort and strength in the legacy he leaves behind. https://lnkd.in/gEQTWjd9

The team smashed it - great energy, real-life People scenarios, brilliant discussion and a lot of laughs. Such a good way to show the impact and complexity of People Partnering. Big thanks to everyone who got stuck in. #PeoplePartnership #PeopleLeadership #HRLeadership #PeopleStrategy #LearningTogether #CultureInAction #ProudMoment #MissionAccomplished

I refuse to give up the em dash (—). It’s doing far more work than most punctuation. Used properly—it’s a game changer. My only concession to AI is swapping it for a hyphen (-) and quietly accepting I now look machine-generated.

This Inc. Magazine piece really does read like parody until you clock that it’s a sincere “hack”. The core idea - feed an LLM a couple of Harvard Business Review articles, tell it to be “brutally honest,” and then trust its 1–10 rating of your startup ideas - is exactly the kind of behaviour the “trendslop” research is warning about: treating a pattern‑matching system as an oracle for context‑heavy strategic decisions. https://lnkd.in/ezrXdG2z

Self-awareness matters when working with AI. We often talk about AI in terms of speed, productivity, and ROI. But those gains are not automatic, and they are not evenly distributed. The real question is not just whether AI works, but under what conditions, for whom, and against what success criteria. A key part of that answer is metacognition: your ability to monitor, question, and adjust your own thinking. It is not a productivity hack or a few reflection prompts. It is a capability that develops over time through experience, feedback, and repeated self-correction. High performers with strong metacognition built a habit of noticing when they were overconfident, underestimating uncertainty, or relying too heavily on first instinct. That matters because AI does not remove the need for judgment. In many cases, it increases it. The value of AI depends not only on the model itself, but on the use case, workflow, architecture, prompt design, and KPI structure around it. The research is starting to suggest that metacognition is an important factor. People with stronger metacognitive habits seem better able to benefit from AI support. Some studies show that high performers gain more when their metacognitive efficiency is stronger. Others find that AI explanations improve calibration, reduce overconfidence, and support better delegation. But the evidence should be read carefully. It does not yet show that a few workshops or isolated tactics reliably create lasting gains in AI performance or ROI. The more defensible reading is that metacognition is a learned capability, not a switch. It is built over time, and the people who benefit most from AI may already be those who have developed the habit of thinking about how they think. I have seen consultants beginning to sell metacognition workshops, and I worry we may be heading toward a fast-food version of it, much like what happened with meditation and mindfulness. Confidence checks, reflection prompts, and review routines can help, but they are not the whole story. Real metacognition is a way of being: a broader discipline that shapes how you judge evidence, manage uncertainty, and decide when to trust your own reasoning versus seek outside input. For organisations implementing AI, the message is clear: don’t assume the tool will create value by itself. Ask what you are optimising for, how that aligns with your business objective, and whether the people using it are calibrated well enough to interpret the output responsibly. The biggest gains may come not from adding more AI, but from improving the human judgment around it. That is why metacognition matters so much. It helps you evaluate your confidence, spot blind spots, and decide when to rely on AI and when to challenge it. But it is not a quick fix. It is a long-term capability developed through reflection, practice, and the willingness to revise your own thinking. How do you check your own calibration when AI gives you a recommendation?