There Is a You in the Universe, You Know

"There is a 'You' in the universe, you know."

Could you think of a more zen-like statement? And the fact that it happened in an Uber from San Francisco airport to my hotel could not have been more on-brand.

The funny thing was I found that Uber ride incredibly inspirational.

I would certainly be a person who checks the "quiet ride" option when booking. But on this particular trip, my driver was an engaging young guy trying to make sense of the world around him.

The experience got me thinking about the difference between motivation and inspiration.

For most of my corporate career, I was very motivated, usually by external factors. Fear, ego, money, titles. It was effective, but satisfaction was fleeting, always one more thing to stretch for.

When I started my own consulting business, not that much changed.

Fear was the dominant motivator, just a different kind of fear. I wasn't going to get fired; that would have been an awkward conversation with myself, but could we pay the mortgage?

We were fortunate to be able to pay the mortgage or, as we joke in our house, able to afford lipsticks AND pens.

I find myself in a new place now. Not needing motivation but searching for inspiration.

What's the difference?

My take:

Motivation compels you to take action toward a specific goal, often grounded in doing.

Inspiration is a creative mental or emotional spark that fuels curiosity, often grounded in being.

I am disciplined about motivation.

Inspiration is far more elusive. And from experience, the outputs of my most inspired moments have been the most satisfying part of building Edge Consulting.

Which leads to a very obvious question: how do you systematize inspiration?

I know. I can't believe I just wrote that sentence either.

But seriously, inspiration does not just happen. A pattern helps inspiration find me consistently. And the intellectual foundation for that pattern comes from two researchers on luck.

The Leadership Transition This Is Really About

Before I share the framework, I want to name something directly.

This newsletter is not just about feeling more inspired. It is about a fundamental shift in how senior leaders create value, and most leaders I work with are in the middle of it without quite being able to name it.

At a certain point in your career, the measure of your value changes completely.

In the early stages, you are measured by the speed and quality of your individual contribution. How fast you solve the problem. How much you personally produce. How much you are willing to take on. That model is genuinely admirable. It is how most exceptional leaders got where they are.

But if you are successful, the system you are responsible for eventually outgrows what one person can produce. That is the exact condition that causes overwhelm or burnout. And when that happens, continuing to optimize individual contribution actively prevents the system from growing beyond you.

The necessary shift is from focusing on the individual to focusing on the system. From asking "How do I solve this faster?" to asking "What in the system needs to change so this problem stops occurring?"

That second question requires a fundamentally different mental state. Open, curious, adaptive, willing to question conditions rather than react to symptoms. Which is exactly where inspiration lives.

At a certain point in your career, the most important thing you can produce is not an answer. It is a better question about the system you are responsible for.

But the question alone changes nothing. The leaders who create lasting impact are the ones who stay curious long enough to find the right question and then act on the answer with the same discipline they once brought to solving problems themselves.

Open mind. Decisive action. That is the combination.

What Luck Research Taught Me About Inspiration

Psychologist Richard Wiseman spent a decade studying why some people consistently experience good luck while others seem perpetually unlucky. His findings were immediately useful.

Lucky and unlucky people had equal access to the same opportunities. The difference was not what happened to them. It was what they noticed and what they did about it.

Wiseman found that lucky people maximize chance opportunities, listen to their hunches, expect good fortune, and turn bad luck into good. Crucially, they tend to be more relaxed than most, which makes them more likely to notice things others walk straight past.

Jim Collins built on this in Great by Choice, where he and Morten Hansen introduced the concept of Return on Luck. Their finding: great companies were not luckier than average ones. They just got a higher return on the luck they received. It is not luck itself, but how you respond to it, that determines the outcome.

Apply that to inspiration, and the implication is immediate. Inspiration does not visit the chosen few. It is available to everyone, but only to those who have created the conditions to notice it and the discipline to act on it when it arrives.

The Inspiration Return Matrix

The Inspiration Return Matrix borrows Collins' language deliberately, because inspiration, like luck, rewards those who are positioned to receive it and disciplined enough to convert it into something real.

The matrix has two axes.

Mental state, ranging from closed to open. A closed mental state is fixed in existing thinking, routine-bound, certainty-seeking. An open mental state is curious, adaptive, receptive to unexpected input.

Action orientation, ranging from passive to active. Passive is waiting for inspiration to arrive. Active is deliberately designing the conditions for it.

That gives us four quadrants.

The Stuck (Closed and Passive) is Wiseman's unlucky person. Closed to new input, not actively seeking anything different, and genuinely puzzled why nothing interesting ever happens. The leader who says "I just don't seem to get inspired the way I used to." They are not unlucky. They have stopped creating the conditions for inspiration to find them.

The Grinder (Closed and Active) is high action with low openness. Busy, productive, executing relentlessly, but inside a closed system. Running fast on a track chosen years ago and never questioned. Effort without insight.

This is Collins' company that got a low Return on Luck because it was too committed to the existing plan to recognize what the moment was offering. It is also where most high-performing leaders spend the majority of their careers. It is how they got here. It is also what eventually becomes the ceiling.

The Dreamer (Open and Passive) is curious, receptive, full of interesting ideas, but low on follow-through. They read widely, have fascinating conversations, notice things others miss. But inspiration arrives and quietly dissolves because nothing is done with it. Inspiration without action is just entertainment.

The Inspired (Open and Active) is Wiseman's lucky person and Collins' 10X company in one quadrant. Curious by design, intentional about who they meet and what questions they ask, adaptive enough to follow an unexpected thread, and disciplined enough to act when inspiration arrives. Not waiting and not grinding. Actively creating the conditions and then converting what arrives into something real.

The goal of the framework below is to spend more time in this quadrant. Not permanently. Not every moment. But enough of the time that inspiration finds you more often and you do more with it when it does.

A Word on the Grinder Before We Go Further

Leadership is a full-contact sport. The goal is not to stop grinding. Execution, discipline, and individual output are the foundation every leader builds their career on.

But the inspired leader adds a layer the pure Grinder does not have.

The best analogy I have found is this: it is like acting in and directing a sitcom at the same time.

The acting is the grind. You are fully present, fully committed to the scene in front of you.

The directing is the inspired mindset running underneath. You are simultaneously watching how all the parts come together, noticing whether the lighting, the camera angle, each character, and the set are combining to tell the story you are trying to tell.

You never stop acting. But you never lose the director's eye either.

The inspired leader does not choose between grinding and thinking at a system level. They develop the capacity to do both at once. Even in the most execution-heavy week, the inspired leader is still noticing and still asking, quietly and without stopping the work, whether they are solving the right problem, changing the right condition, building toward the right outcome.

That is the capability this framework is designed to build. Not a different way of working. A deeper way of seeing while you work.

There is no room for the passive in leadership.

How to Move Toward the Inspired Quadrant

Four elements, each building on the last.

Stay Curious

Wiseman found that lucky people deliberately break their routines: different routes, different people, different inputs. Introducing novelty into a predictable pattern creates the conditions for unexpected connection.

The best ideas I have had for Edge Consulting have rarely come from focusing on leaders in strategy or coaching. They have come from observing great leaders operate in contexts completely unrelated to mine and trying to find the link between what they do and what I believe.

That Uber driver in San Francisco reminded me that inspiration is available in every conversation; you need to be open enough to have it.

Curiosity is not a personality trait. It is a practice. Design it into your week or leave it to chance.

Meet People Intentionally

Wiseman's lucky people have wide, diverse networks not because they are naturally more social, but because they approach every interaction with genuine openness. They are not networking. They are connecting.

Inspiration is fundamentally social. Ideas emerge at the intersection of different perspectives, different experiences, different ways of seeing the same problem. Design for collision. Put yourself in rooms where the people are different from you, and the conversations are unpredictable.

One of the most inspirational moments this year happened during an executive retreat with a great group of guys, some margaritas and Jason Mamoa; but that is a whole different newsletter.

Ask Better Questions

The act of asking a genuine question, one you do not already know the answer to, is what opens the space for insight.

Most conversations are an exchange of positions.

Inspired conversations are different. Someone asks something that catches you off guard. You say something you have never said before. And in the saying of it, you discover something you did not know you knew.

Ask questions you do not know the answer to. Then listen for understanding, not for a break in the conversation to reposition.

Or sometimes it is not even a question. In my coaching work, I often find myself assuming something someone has said. Every time I catch myself doing it, I stop and say, “That is interesting, tell me more about that.” Interestingly, the conclusion I drew through my assumption is rarely accurate.

Stay Adaptive

Collins found that the companies that converted luck into exceptional performance were the ones who recognized the moment and responded with conviction. The ones who did not were too committed to their existing plan to see what was being offered.

Inspiration almost always arrives as an idea that does not quite fit the existing framework. Slightly uncomfortable. Not quite what you were looking for. The adaptive thinker follows that thread anyway. The rigid thinker files it under "interesting but not relevant" and moves on.

Through my strategy work, I have come to think of every strategic plan as a hypothesis rather than a conclusion. The teams who execute it are not just doing the work; they are generating the information that tells you whether your hypothesis was right. The adaptive leader treats that information as an invitation to improve, not a threat to defend against.

The idea that does not fit at the beginning might be the one that matters most.

Leadership Takeaways

• Inspiration is not random; it is conditional: Like luck, inspiration is available to everyone. The question is whether you have created the conditions to notice it and the discipline to act on it when it arrives.

• The Grinder is not the destination: The model that got you here- fast answers, high individual output, relentless execution- will eventually become the ceiling of what your system can produce. The shift is not away from grinding. It is adding the director's eye while the acting continues.

• Curiosity is a practice, not a personality trait: Design novelty into your week deliberately. The unexpected connection rarely comes from inside your own echo chamber.

• The question is the catalyst: Ask things you genuinely do not know the answer to, then listen like the answer matters. Inspired ideas almost always emerge from conversations that go somewhere unexpected.

• Hold your thinking loosely: The idea that does not fit your current framework might be the most important one. Staying adaptive is not weakness. It is the discipline that lets new information land.

  
  
  
  

The Practical Step: Design for Inspiration This Week

Pick one thing from each of the four elements and commit to it before the week is out.

Curiosity: read one article, watch one talk, or visit one place completely outside your usual domain. Notice what it makes you think about your own work.

People: reach out to one person you have been meaning to connect with and have not. Not for a reason. Just for the conversation.

Questions: in your next significant conversation, ask one question you genuinely do not know the answer to. Then stop talking.

Adaptive: find one belief you hold about your work or your people that you have never seriously questioned. Ask yourself this question: "What is the exact opposite way of looking at this that is at least as true as the opinion I currently hold?"

Inspiration does not just happen.

But it does tend to find the people who are ready for it.