The more I write about management and wisdom and those memorable moments where the two intersect, the more I appreciate that the best stories aren’t confined to any particular industry. They are moments we all relate to and have experienced, regardless of the careers we choose.

Here’s a moment that happened more than forty years ago. It shaped my way of managing, and I’ve never forgotten it. Maybe you’ve had a moment like this, too.

In February 1983, the “new” Channel 2 newsroom at WCBS-TV in New York was about four years old, though you wouldn’t have known it from the floor. People smoked at their desks, dropped their cigarette butts and ground them out with their shoes. I’d like to tell you the environmentally conscious people delivering the news picked them up afterward, but they didn’t. The overnight cleaning crew did, often shaking their heads.

Compared with other newsrooms in town, ours wasn’t much to look at. We were scrappy. In more ways than one.

I ran the evening assignment desk, deciding where to send reporters and live crews. I didn’t have a management title. In fact, I was in a union. But our evening executive producer, Peter Landis, trusted my judgment, and so did the others. I learned to make decisions quickly, explain my reasoning, and recognize when somebody else had a better idea. We believed the best idea should win, regardless of who offered it. And we always thought about our viewers.

It was a young, ambitious group, and there was something wonderful about being part of it. We challenged one another, sometimes argued, and shared the satisfaction of working alongside people who were good at what they did. It’s always good when you’re on a team like that.

That February had been an exceptionally good ratings month for us. Nielsen and Arbitron, the two ratings services that measured audiences, showed we had a chance to win the month. That mattered enormously. Sweeps ratings helped determine the advertising rates stations could charge.

Our news director, Frank Gardner, and general manager, Peter Lund, were relatively new to WCBS-TV. Both had enjoyed success in Chicago before coming to New York, and both quickly earned the admiration of the newsroom. Frank was a superb news director, and Peter arrived with a reputation as one of the best managers in broadcasting. They knew one another well, respected one another’s judgment, and brought an unmistakable determination to win.

On that Monday night, CBS was broadcasting the final episode of M*A*S*H, an extraordinary television event that promised an enormous audience flowing into our eleven o’clock news. We knew we’d have a big night. The question was whether we could make it big enough to win the entire February ratings period.

Our eleven o’clock executive producer, Peter Landis, and producer Paul Sagan had been doing the math all month. Paul knew, down to the hundredth of a ratings point, precisely what we’d need on the final night to overtake the competition. We’d been discussing every advantage we could give ourselves, including an unusual idea: go seamless.

Normally, ninety seconds of commercials separated the end of a network program from the start of our late local newscast. Three thirty-second spots. Plenty of time for viewers to change channels, turn off their televisions, or head to bed.

But what if we eliminated that end break of commercials and started the news immediately after M*A*S*H? Could we hold enough of that enormous audience to win the entire month?

Frank swung by and asked what we were discussing. Landis and Sagan explained the calculations, the opportunity, and the idea of eliminating the commercial break.

Almost on cue, Peter Lund walked up to us.

He asked about the evening and what we were discussing. Frank faithfully presented what he’d just heard. He didn’t claim the idea as his own or embellish the calculations. He simply recognized a good idea and made certain Peter understood it. Frank and Peter were comfortable with each other, and it showed.

Frank finished his explanation with a simple question:

“What do you think?”

Peter listened. Then he explained something we hadn’t fully weighed.

The Sales department had sold out the program, and those three commercials were worth approximately $10,000 apiece that particular evening. We knew Sales had done a terrific job. We didn’t know the numbers. For perspective, a normal night might fetch about $1,200 a spot.

Frank was head of the newsroom, but Peter Lund was head of the station, the flagship of CBS. Our idea of going seamless would mean surrendering $30,000 in advertising revenue that the station would never recover.

Peter was quiet for about three seconds, though it felt much longer. Anticipation always does that to you.

Then he looked at Frank.

“Okay. Do it.”

And walked away, back to his office.

We’d wanted to win all month. Now our general manager had put $30,000 behind our judgment, and we had a newscast to produce. We were pumped, and we delivered one of the best newscasts we’d ever produced.

The next morning, the ratings were in. We’d won the night handily, and more importantly, the rating was large enough to lift our average for the entire February ratings period into first place. One night had changed the outcome of an entire month.

That newsroom produced some remarkable careers. If this were a movie, here’s where the closing credits might tell you what happened to everybody.

Peter Lund, CEO of CBS. Frank Gardner, Scripps Television. Peter Landis, New York 1. Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai.

The careers made some interesting circles, too.

I eventually went to WBBM-TV in Chicago myself, helping restore ratings, before returning to WCBS-TV. Years later, I found myself a general manager, responsible for the kinds of decisions I’d once watched Peter Lund make.

And trust me, not too many days went by without my thinking about Frank or Peter.

I had my own “let’s blow the end break” moments with the teams I managed. But I never forgot what it meant to work for people who listened, who understood that the best idea didn’t necessarily come from the highest-ranking person in the room, and who were willing to put something at risk when somebody made a good case.

Those conversations were rare in television stations even then. As decision-making became more centralized, they became rarer still. I suspect that’s true in plenty of other businesses, too.

Management and Wisdom.

Two different words for good reason.

Emmy is a great name. It’s fun to get one. Like a Grammy, Oscar, or Tony. Collect all four, and you’ve entered that rare, elite stratosphere of talent known as EGOT.

EGOT.

Broadcasters have carried all four award shows for years, and they all failed at Scrabble. GOTE would be so much better.

GOATs in life could present to GOTEs, would-be GOTEs, and up-and-coming GOTEs. There’s your free programming idea for today.

Now, when it comes to “E,” I have three. And my teams have won hundreds of Emmys over the years. I purposefully left my name off many team entries so I wouldn’t dilute the award for others. Just saying my teams have produced award-winning work is enough recognition for me.

For the “G,” well, in 2014, I spent an evening with Quincy Jones talking about a business idea. A group of us was invited to his home. Off the grand room pictured here was an even grander room displaying his 28 Grammys.

For “O,” I have friends who produce the Oscars.

And for “T,” I served as a Tony voter from 1996 to 1999.

So, yes, I’m one for four.

But don’t you think more people would aspire to be a GOTE than an EGOT?

Is it a surprise that the national Primetime Emmy Awards are leaving broadcasting for Amazon? Does anyone care? The four networks, CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox, have rotated the show for years. Next year, it’ll be on Amazon Prime Video. Free. No subscription required.

How did the networks manage to boot that one?

You mean to tell me they couldn’t create a spectacular live evening featuring stars from all four networks? Bring in Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and other GOATs and GOTEs. Make it an event.

Produce something worthy of an Oscar. Er, umm ... an Emmy.

These shows should be must-see television, the way golf elevates its four majors or college basketball celebrates the Final Four.

I worked for CBS when William S. Paley was still very much interested in what went on at his company.

Mr. Paley was a pioneer. He helped build a radio, then television, broadcasting empire when there wasn’t a broadcasting industry to imitate.

I was 23, working the evening assignment desk at WCBS-TV, when the telephone rang at the top of the eleven o’clock news.

“Bill!”

Let me tell you, the phone rang differently, more urgently. My spidey senses quickly learned it was Mr. Paley calling. He knew my name. Well, at least the first half of it.

“Who was the f*cking as*hole who wrote that story about the mayor and the Middle East trip?”

I’d learned to answer him without surrendering the fort.

“Mr. Paley, everybody’s in the control room. I’m working another story, trying to get a live shot up in Brooklyn.”

The truth saves you sometimes.

“Well, okay, Bill. Go do what you need to do. But I want everybody to know the mayor didn’t say that. And I’m watching.”

Click.

The next afternoon, my news director, Frank Gardner, a great boss and broadcast visionary, summoned me to his office. Ten CBS vice presidents, all dark suits, had gathered.

“Bill, these gentlemen want to hear you tell your story about Mr. Paley’s call last night.”

I’d already told our team and Frank the phone call details. I looked at Frank for permission. Did he really mean I should repeat, verbatim, what Mr. Paley had said? Was I even allowed to curse?

Frank nodded. All these years later, I love that nonverbal exchange between us.

I told the story.

One executive leaned in.

“Now, when Mr. Paley spoke, did he say ‘who was the FUCKING asshole,’ or ‘who was the fucking ASSHOLE’?”

My mind was on fire. So this is what broadcasting is all about! Oh, the things I need to learn!

Here were ten men who likely made more in a month than I did in a year, trying to decode the boss’s emphasis. Though Mr. Paley and I hadn’t met, suddenly I felt like his protector. I wasn’t about to give him up. And what if I interpreted it wrong?

Writing this now, I realize how much I helped my standing at CBS by letting ten vice presidents know William S. Paley and I were on a first-name basis.

My first name. Not his.

Mr. Paley belonged to a generation that invented things. And protected what they invented.

I always liked that he watched the late news. I never saw it as pressure when the phone rang. Getting it right was the point of Mr. Paley’s phone call, not which word he’d emphasized. Frank took care of that and never worried about voice inflection.

By the way, the emphasis was, and should be, on the second word. The first delivers the shock. The second needs the emphasis to keep up.

Basic stuff the suits should have learned on their respective playgrounds in Queens or Brooklyn.

In 2004, I arrived in Tampa to run the ABC affiliate. Terrific station, talented people, and we did very well. As a new general manager, I was invited to speak to the Broadcast Pioneers Club.

About thirty retired broadcasters attended the luncheon, most in their seventies or older. True pioneers who, like Bill Paley, helped invent network television.

They made it up as they went along.

I spoke for fifteen minutes and stayed another three hours.

They listened attentively, then kept the Q&A going well past the restaurant’s allotted time. As things wound down, four or five of the leaders kept me at their table.

Mostly, I listened.

Some had worked at CBS’s Broadcast Center at 524 West 57th Street. Studio stagehands, production managers. A few had even worked at the earlier CBS studios in Grand Central Terminal, on Vanderbilt Avenue.

I’d spent almost twenty years at 524 West 57th, leaving in 1999 as news director. When I started in 1979, it was as a security guard. I knew every corner of the building, down to the abandoned Hudson line train tracks running in the off-limits sub-basement.

When I left, I left as news director of WCBS-TV. Frank’s one-time job. Frank’s one-time office.

I was fascinated with the table, and they accepted me once they knew I knew my way around.

One more story, and their eyes lit up. Another story, more bright eyes.

They wanted to know everything. Some didn’t know the old local newsroom had become the lobby in the early ‘80s, or that “local” was now adjacent to Studio 46 “upstairs.”

We were comparing notes on the same building, separated by a generation.

Their stories were inspiring. They didn’t have budgets for props, so they brought kitchen utensils and hand tools from their homes and garages. Whatever it took to make something work.

Defeat wasn’t in their vocabulary.

I wanted my colleagues back at the station to hear them. Even in their retirement, I wouldn’t have wanted to compete against the creativity and smarts sitting at that table.

And something else struck me and has stayed with me.

Whenever I started criticizing the business, they smiled, waited politely for me to finish, and returned to their upbeat memories. Their experiments. Their successes. Even their failures.

They weren’t interested in complaining about what television had become. They were still excited about what it could become.

I realized they might have handled the maturing of the industry better than I had.

A damning admission from a general manager, but there it is. I’d spent an afternoon with the GOATs of broadcasting.

I have no doubt they would have looked at “EGOT” and said, “Nope. GOTE.”

That’s what pioneers do. They don’t begin with the reasons an idea can’t work. They make use of what’s available, reconfigure it, then make certain it will work.

There are legitimate reasons for caution in business. But caution shouldn’t become a substitute for imagination.

The networks didn’t lose the Emmys because Amazon invented a better trophy or conceived a better live program.

Broadcasters have driven droves of viewers away after decades of failing to imagine better television. Driven other droves to bed early with rote, not GOAT, formulaic newscasts.

I’ll have more to say about that in the future.

Gotta go. Amazon just delivered something at my door.

Management and Wisdom.

Two different words for good reason.

As a teenager, I worked in a deli. The owner was 8 years older than me, and taught me many things, including the Seven Ps.

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

Since then, I have worked for and with many bosses and a dozen CEOs. Some should have spent time working at Ken’s Deli.

This week’s business news brings us “layoff limbo.” Companies announce cuts before telling employees who, where or when. And in some cases, the “why.”

Management has decided to ruin your weekend. Which weekend? We’ll get back to you.

“Layoff” once generally meant a temporary interruption in employment. Work slowed; perhaps you’d return. By the 1980s, permanent “downsizing” was becoming a shareholder-value strategy. By the 1990s, it was standard corporate practice.

We got accustomed to it. The temperature kept rising.

The vocabulary kept getting more and more creative.

As we like to do on occasion, please enjoy this next paragraph in your best George Carlin voice:

Over time, “layoffs” became fancy words: Restructuring, reorganizing, reengineering, realigning, resizing, rebalancing. That’s a lot of RE. Then somebody wants another try. Downsizing, rightsizing, which by the way, you never hear anyone admit it turned out to be a wrongsizing. Delayering, streamlining, simplifying, redeploying, reallocating. Eliminating redundancies, reducing personnel surpluses, capturing synergies, optimizing the workforce, optimizing headcount. You’re a head, I’m a head, easier to say goodbye if we don’t talk about the rest of you. Workforce reduction, personnel realignment, resource reallocation, synergy-related headcount restructuring. A reduction in force. A resource action. Then came the Year of Efficiency. As opposed to all the other years.

And in the last few years, a newer one you may have heard: Re-found. “Re-found,” as in, long ago we founded the company, now as CEO I realize I haven’t been paying attention, so cue the layoffs, but we won’t say “layoffs,” because we are telling Wall Street we are going through a “re-found” and that should keep my stock options from sliding and I can cash out in a few years.

Let’s be candid. Layoffs suck.

Personally, I’d rather fire someone. Don’t get me wrong, that’s never fun. You are changing someone’s career trajectory, and the moment stays with you both. But anytime I’ve fired someone, they knew it was coming, or at least possible. We had talked about the problem.

As readers of this column have learned, when there’s a problem, I first look at my managers and myself for fault before the rest of the team. Did we hire the wrong person? Fail to train them? Fail to make clear what we expected?

A layoff is different.

In the companies where I’ve carried this out, somebody in a nice office, removed from managing people, product or operations, picks a number. Five from this department. Five from that. Department heads are told to suggest names, based on the least impact to the business. Let’s pause here, and just say, this is a horribly unfair exercise when you are asked to run a budget and you stay under all your targets, but that isn’t good enough to save otherwise productive people. In big companies, the proposed list gets reviewed for discriminatory patterns. You know, some old, some young, some tall, some short, some bright, some not so much, yes, I’m joking. The actual review is supposed to check whether any protected group is disproportionately affected and whether the selections are justified, not assemble a demographic assortment. But after all that care, good people who have done nothing wrong still end up on the list.

Then you sit across from a fifteen-year employee who has done nothing wrong. And candidly, is productive in the work you preside over.

They look at you as if you’ve betrayed them, and in some ways, you have.

Sure you can stare down your bosses, you can always quit. Somebody else will fill your chair, likely at a lower salary, and conduct the layoffs. Either way, the rest of the team you spent years building watches things coming apart, and nobody is offering a good reason.

What is your promise worth the next morning?

Milton Friedman argued that business should increase profits within the rules of the game. He didn’t prescribe an annual sacrifice of employees.

Jack Welch made removing the bottom ten percent a management doctrine. Fine, perhaps, the first year. Maybe the second. But if ten percent of your people are inadequate EVERY year, when do we review your hiring and training instead of last year’s middle? In 2013, Welch defended his system in an interview, but did reject “rank and yank,” arguing employees should receive clear expectations, coaching and time to improve. But not everyone knew Jack.

Herb Kelleher offered a better lesson: “Not furloughing is really a great discipline with respect to hiring.”

Pope John Paul II supplied the human measure: “work is ‘for man’ and not man ‘for work’.”

The person across the desk isn’t a surplus resource.

Of course businesses face shocks. Markets disappear. Nobody can guarantee every job forever. And some layoffs are part of winding down a business when you can’t yet say the company is closing. I’ve been on that end a few times too. Those are not fun, but in hindsight, I’ve fully bought in, because it was prudent, and even considerate.

CEOs are responsible for anticipating trouble and for the expectations they cultivate on Wall Street. It’s just mad management when employees pay for missing them.

So before praising a CEO for decisive cuts, I like to know what decisions made those cuts necessary.

Leaders lead. They know the spending, the revenue, the customers and the people doing the work. They stay nimble. Flexible. Aware. Close enough to hear trouble before it becomes a consultant’s presentation.

Management and Wisdom are two different words for a reason.

Management can execute the reduction. Wisdom asks how we got here—and what we should have done earlier.

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

News Item: Disney is encouraging employees to use AI to help prepare annual performance reviews and goals.

News Item: Disney is also cutting jobs, including in Human Resources.

Perhaps you’ve been through a performance review.

Some reviewers take the process seriously. Others initial a form, check some boxes and send it along to Human Resources, where it waits for the day somebody in Legal might need to see it.

Or not.

I’ve had a CEO ban them as a waste of time. I’ve seen a COO somewhere else insist they be written diligently.

Now agenticly.

For the record, I’m on that CEO’s side. Especially now as a CEO.

So when I read that Disney was encouraging employees to use AI in preparing performance reviews I decided to try it.

Gemini said I brought “undisputed velocity, sharp strategic instincts, and a relentless standard of clarity.”

Then came the review part.

I carry too much of the workload myself. I get too deep into execution. I need to delegate more.

Fair enough.

Claude reviewed Gemini’s review and me. Basically the same assessment.

ChatGPT was more specific: my imagination sometimes outruns my discipline. I generate new angles faster than I retire old ones and revisit decisions that were already good.

Well, that’s accurate, so I won’t be doing this exercise anytime soon. I’ll be too busy.

The best performance review I ever got came from a human being.

Her name was Lynda Solomon.

Lynda was, easily, the unofficial floor leader in the WXYZ-TV newsroom when I arrived at the end of 2000.

I was the fifth news director in five years. I’d been invited to fix things.

And I knew quickly I would need Lynda.

She had once been the line producer of the 6 o’clock news. She crafted the newscast, chose the stories and wrote much of what eventually appeared in the prompter.

The anchors and staff adored her.

But by the time I arrived, Lynda had been demoted to the writer’s pool.

In those first weeks, she would stop at my office doorway.

Always the doorway.

She’d ask me something, seemingly testing me.

I’d invite her in.

She wouldn’t come.

Eventually she explained that she had vowed never to enter that office again. Bad things had happened to her in there.

I had heard she was blamed for things that had nothing to do with her and had become a convenient scapegoat.

She was the type to internalize and not fight back.

Not that she couldn’t.

But she’d been intimidated, and had pulled back.

So I left it alone.

I was patient and kind, but mostly I was determined.

As the weeks went by, I began telling her in these brief doorway talks that it was part of my plan to win her over, get her to sit down with me and have her help me fix the place.

She loved the people in the newsroom, I knew it, so I kept asking her to take back the 6 o’clock news and own it.

The newsroom was rooting for her, and I promised I would never embarrass her, or allow anyone else to either. I may have thrown in some colorful descriptors for emphasis.

Eventually, Lynda walked through the doorway, and sat.

We talked a little. The next day, a little longer.

She took the newscast back.

It thrived.

It moved back into first place.

Lynda and the rest of the team made me look good.

The company gave me a promotion. Another challenge I couldn’t refuse. It meant leaving Detroit for Tampa.

It was winter, so that part wasn’t difficult.

Leaving was.

Lynda strode into my office carrying a wrapped gift.

“Open it now,” she said.

I did.

It was a desk clock.

“Read it.”

I smiled to myself. I loved the confident voice, and that the fear had left this room.

Engraved were four words:

VISION

CREATIVITY

FAIRNESS

KINDNESS

“I want you to know,” Lynda said, “I gave this a lot of thought. And when I think about you, these are the four words I think best describe you.”

So, I read them again, this time letting them soak in, the way they were meant to be savored.

And for once, I had the grace not to say anything and ruin the moment.

Then, with a pause worthy of a Broadway show, she grinned:

“…and you can use a little work on the last one.”

Eighteen months later, came word that Lynda was sick.

I called. We talked around her illness. I didn’t push. It was good to hear her voice. I told her I was looking at her clock, and it matched my desk, which it did.

A week or so later came another call. Lynda had lost her fight.

Lynda was 57.

My BlackBerry buzzed a day later.

It was Sue, Lynda’s sister.

We had never met, never spoken.

I spoke about my admiration for Lynda. I knew she had been driving an hour each way to work and that when she wasn’t at the station, she was home helping care for her mother and father.

Sue sounded remarkably like Lynda.

Warm. Serious. Direct.

She told me Lynda had spoken about me to her family, often.

That sounded so strange, especially on this call.

That she had become happier after I arrived at the station.

I was glad to hear that, but I stayed quiet, not wanting to explain about the doorway drive-bys and how much fear I had seen in her eyes or the hurt from being a scapegoat.

And then Sue said her family had a request.

Would I come to Michigan?

They wanted me to be one of Lynda’s pallbearers.

That Lynda would have wanted it, and the family would be honored.

I remember being extraordinarily grateful.

That was over 20 years ago.

I’ve had many desks since then. Tampa. Moline. New York. Chicago. Tampa again. Medford, Oregon. Tampa again.

The clock has made the trip everywhere with me and has sat on each of those desks.

Four words. One reminder.

When I look at it, I think about the lessons time teaches.

And what a manager can accomplish when you recognize talent in someone and then guide, coax, cajole or inspire that person into recognizing it again themselves.

And always, it has to come from the person.

If you supervise people, that’s where Management and Wisdom intersect.

Disney and other companies can keep refining the performance review. They can automate it, outsource pieces of it to AI, grade the language with AI, store it with AI efficiency and retrieve it years later with remarkable precision.

But the human spirit is usually the differentiator.

Lynda’s performance review of me was four words and one piece of wisdom.

I still think she said it right.

The best way to read this particular column today is to do what I did writing it: get through the news quickly.

We won’t linger on the “Week in Review” even one phrase longer than necessary.

But it is the backdrop for today’s exploration of Management and Wisdom.

My head hurts, my heart aches, over the mind-numbing coverage on television and online about the Cornell rape investigation. And about the failed execution in Tennessee.

I’ll add a third, less gruesome story, but one I just can’t stop thinking about: a massive effort to modernize air traffic control systems being pushed forward without even an integrated schedule designed to minimize disruption to the air traffic controllers actually operating the system.

These are stories of human tragedy, stupidity, despair, utter sorrow and ignorance.

And then comes the coverage, especially on cable channels.

It is theatre masquerading as journalism.

Another segment.

Another panel.

Another collection of people who weren’t there, explaining what happened to people who weren’t there.

A two-year-old rape allegation at Cornell University is back in the headlines.

Justice has already been delayed. Now the story gets exploited and becomes a circus instead of the rigorous criminal investigation it should have been in the first place.

A woman said she was raped in 2024.

The criminal justice system had a job to do then.

It has that job to do now.

Then the story of a botched lethal injection in Tennessee. Botched!

The state of Tennessee administered its execution protocol and the killer survived, critically injured, after problems involving the intravenous lines and delivery of the drugs.

And then the third story: an enormous air traffic control modernization effort. The head of the air traffic controllers’ union has said the people operating and maintaining the system need a seat at the table. Why on earth wouldn’t that be built into the process from the start?

Now, let me tell you where we’re going with the rest of this column.

I’m not going to dish out management lessons or wisdom to the news industry I called home for my career. We will do that in future columns.

Buried underneath three completely different, awful events is a question managers should recognize immediately:

What was going on before everything went wrong?

Let me explain.

Early on as a manager, I decided that before anyone else was “in trouble,” I would review my own managers’ conduct and my own before casting judgments on our staff.

Some managers hated it at first.

Some never came around.

But before I could be critical of any staffer, I wanted to know what we had done — or had not done — as leaders.

Management. And Wisdom.

The head of the campus police. The head detective in town. The D.A.

Investigate a rape allegation fully. At the time she says it.

Not when she is forced to reassert it two years later.

Question the investigators, too.

It’s 2026. Haven’t we learned that rape victims’ allegations can be complicated, memories can differ, evidence can conflict and conclusions may take time?

Difficulty is not an excuse.

And difficulty is not an excuse in Tennessee either. If the state intends to execute someone by lethal injection, who signed off on the procedure?

Who contemplated the medical complications?

Who ran the process forward far enough to ask what happens if it doesn’t?

And if you are rebuilding the systems air traffic controllers rely upon every day, why wouldn’t reducing disruption to the people actually operating those systems be built into the plan from the beginning?

Three completely different stories.

One management question:

Then what?

What happens next if we don’t investigate thoroughly?

What happens next if the execution protocol fails?

What happens next if thousands of pieces of a new system aren’t coordinated around the people who have to operate it?

Good managers ask that question before the lawyers, reporters, consultants and investigators arrive to triage the damage.

Bill Applegate, years later, in Cleveland

Years ago, I watched Bill Applegate make the same point much more efficiently.

Bill was a well-known leader in local television, one of my bosses who became a dear friend, especially after we worked together in New York and Chicago.

A manager once asked him, “How did you deal with this type of problem?”

Bill had a flair for emphasis when he wanted it.

He took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaled with a flourish into the air, waved his arm in a grand sweeping motion, then stared at the manager and said:

“I didn’t have that problem when I had your job.”

He stared just long enough to add a non-verbal exclamation point, then turned and left the room.

Standing there watching it unfold, I realized that manager was learning something I thought I knew instinctively.

I didn’t get into situations.

Not because every problem can be anticipated.

It can’t.

But a surprising number of them can.

Run a better startup. Run a better television station. Run a better newsroom.

Hire better.

Pay attention sooner.

Don’t tolerate something for six months and then act surprised when it becomes a crisis.

Watching Bill made me think about where what I considered “instinct” had actually been learned.

My brother Joe, me, Dad, and my son, Bill III. Waterville Golf Club, 2007

I was a kid.

My dad was a cop.

After my baseball games, some of the other dads would go to a bar for a beer.

One day, I asked my father why he didn’t go along with them.

He told me bars were places where people drank, and sometimes people fought.

Okay. But what did that have to do with him?

I’m a cop, he explained. If a fight starts, I’d have to stop it.

Okay, but...

He carried a gun, he reminded me. If things got out of hand, he might have to draw it.

Okay, but...

“If I draw it, I may have to use it. And if I use it, someone is going to get hurt.”

Then he paused, and his voice grew solemn.

“And it won’t be me.”

Another pause, then a punchline meant for the rest of my life.

“The best way for that not to happen is for me not to go in the first place.”

I didn’t fully understand it then.

More honestly, I didn’t want to.

It seemed austere, long before I could spell austere or use it in a sentence.

I also know my dad wasn’t just explaining why he wasn’t going to a bar.

He was teaching me.

Purposefully.

My father gave me a method.

Run the situation forward.

Then what?

And then what?

And then what?

Keep going until you reach the consequence you cannot accept.

Then work backward.

If you’re an investigator or prosecutor, take the rape allegation as seriously as if the woman were a member of your own family.

If you’re responsible for an execution protocol, build one in which failure is not treated as an acceptable possibility.

If you’re rebuilding systems people depend on every day, listen to the people doing the job.

Bring them into the process.

Give them a genuine sense of owning the changes that will come.

Benefit from their experience.

And before criticizing your staff, look first at the people managing them.

Including yourself.

That is where Management and Wisdom meet.

Somewhere, somebody once sharpened a rock.

There was probably another guy standing nearby saying this was going to ruin everything, and, where are you going to find someone that knows how to use the rock?

Before PowerPoint, before Microsoft Word, before the printing press, before movable type, somebody picked up a hammer and chisel and discovered that telling the story on the cave wall went a little faster if you had the right tools.

Tools have always been part of the job.

The mistake is confusing the tool with the job.

A reporter’s job was never the typewriter. A carpenter’s job was never the hammer. A bank teller’s job was never counting twenties by hand.

The job was the result.

The tool was how we got there.

Through the ages, the job was never the tool.

Artificial Intelligence is not different in that respect.

What is different is the speed.

The Industrial Revolution came like a hurricane. You could see it offshore. Factories appeared. Railroads spread. Cities grew. Generations of workers moved from farms to mills and eventually into offices.

Enormously disruptive.

But much of it unfolded over decades.

By contrast, AI feels more like a tornado.

The sky gets strange. Somebody says they heard something. Then your neighbor’s garage is in someone else’s backyard.

In 1970, futurist Alvin Toffler gave the feeling a name: Future Shock. His argument was that people could become disoriented when change arrived faster than they could comfortably absorb it.

He saw the acceleration.

He couldn’t have imagined ChatGPT sitting on my laptop helping me write about Alvin Toffler before breakfast.

And yes, I used AI to assist with this column.

I researched with it. I challenged things I thought I knew with it. I asked it to find a study I remembered seeing.

It found one.

Then another.

This story is better because I used AI. The work was done faster, it saved me time.

That sentence itself apparently requires a disclaimer now.

Good AI.

We increasingly qualify the term the way we might say “good cholesterol.”

By good AI, we mean the kind that does not steal your job, impersonate your daughter, eliminate humanity or make off with the bacon while you sleep.

We did something similar with the internet.

For years we heard relationships had been destroyed because somebody “met someone online.”

“Online” didn’t destroy a relationship.

A person met another person.

The internet simply provided a more efficient bar.

AI is acquiring the same villainous supernatural powers.

Someone loses a job: AI did it.

Someone sends a terrible memo: AI wrote it.

A company handles a technology rollout badly: AI destroyed the culture.

Unlikely.

More likely, the tool was misused.

Sometimes the scariest AI is the one in our minds.

A new Culture Amp benchmark gives that distinction some weight. Its data came from about 112,000 employees across 123 organizations. Seventy-one percent said AI made them feel more productive. Among the heaviest users, that rose to 93 percent.

But here is the management number.

Eighty-five percent said their companies encouraged experimenting with AI.

Only 58 percent said leadership had clearly explained how AI connected to the company’s goals. Culture Amp

The tool arrived before the explanation.

Gallup found something remarkably similar. Employees whose managers actively supported AI use were more likely to say their workplace culture had improved. Yet half of the CHROs Gallup surveyed said they were not confident managers could effectively guide employees in using AI. Gallup.com

This morning, an email about workplace burnout landed in my inbox.

Buried in it was a line worth stealing — or, since we’re talking about AI, perhaps I should say properly attributing:

“AI is whatever your workplace makes it.”

Exactly.

A hammer can build a house.

It can also put a pretty good dent in your thumb.

We never blamed the hammer.

And I don’t fear tools.

I use them.

I’ve spent a career doing that.

Cameras got smaller. Editing moved from razor blades to keyboards. Newsrooms went digital. The internet arrived. Streaming arrived. AI arrived.

Every time, the useful question was essentially the same:

What can this help me do better?

That is very different from asking:

What is this going to do to me?

Both questions are human.

But management has enormous influence over which one employees ask first.

The managerial temptation is to start with the technology.

“How do we get everybody using AI?”

Wrong question.

Start with the work.

What are we trying to accomplish?

What takes too long?

What adds no value?

What keeps talented people doing mechanical things instead of thinking?

What can a machine do faster so a person can do something better?

Then introduce the tool.

And explain why.

AI isn’t the management decision.

AI is the tool management is deciding how to use.

The job was never the job.

The job description, the workflow, the process, the software and the org chart are temporary agreements about how we get something done.

They feel permanent because we live inside them.

Until somebody sharpens a new rock.

Alvin Toffler warned us the problem would not merely be change.

It would be the speed of change.

He was right about that.

The tornado is here.

Management cannot stop the wind.

Wisdom is figuring out what should still be standing when it passes.

This one has personal relevance.

For the past few years, I’ve led a group of people who believe the communications and PR business is overdue for some better tools.

In about two weeks, Eponymos will show what we’ve been building.

I won’t spoil the reveal here. You can drop me a DM.

The premise behind it fits today’s column almost perfectly.

Communications people should spend more of their time thinking, deciding, creating, advising and executing strategy — and less of it performing mechanical work simply because that is how the job has always been done.

We’re not trying to replace the communicator.

We’re trying to give the communicator a better hammer.

Eponymos. So easy to use, even a…

I was once a newspaper boy on a bike. This is a more glamorous rendering.

News people report change for a living. Try changing them.

News and Comms people are predictable and hate reading that.

News is about reporting change. Comms exists because somebody wants people to know something changed. Change is the currency for both fields.

So it’s ironic they are both remarkably resistant to accepting change at work.

You had to live through some of it to appreciate the pattern. I worked through the manual typewriter, the electric typewriter, then the keyboard. The field crews and the control room crews had much more change, and the skills required changed. Some gripes were fair. For example, expecting high-end animations meant for movies to render in time for the next newscast had predictable consequences. Imagine trying to make Instagram work on a walkie talkie.

Change is the one thing that keeps, well, changing.

If you’re from New York and old enough, at WCBS Newsradio 88, Lou Adler and Jim Donnelly in the morning. Lou doubled as news director. (See? It was already happening, 50 years ago…). An engineer sat on the other side of the glass. Jim raised a hand for an audio cart. The engineer pushed the button.

“I’m Lou Adler.” “I’m Jim Donnelly. This is WCBS, NewsRadio 88. The CBS World News Roundup is next. It’s 8 O’Clock.“ DING! @1978. Black Rock. 51 W. 52nd St. 16th floor.

Dedicated news guys. Terrific “pipes.” Wonderful system.

Until some CBS boss noticed that if a news anchor could raise his hand to tell an engineer to push a button, perhaps the anchor could push the button.

Every generation remembers its methods as a little purer than whatever comes next.

And they might have a point. Think how the quill pen fell when Guttenberg came along. Probably like the hammer and chisel. Which brings us to this week.

Caroline Collins at FOX 26 Houston: anchoring, producing, directing and handling audio during a live streaming newscast.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE TAKEN CONTROL

News item: FOX 26 Houston anchor Caroline Collins went viral showing herself anchoring a streaming newscast while also punching cameras, graphics, audio and video sources.

She called it “incredibly stressful” as she flashed a big warm anchor smile into a selfie video she was recording to post online. More people have now seen her on social media than the streaming news she was doing.

There’s something wonderfully 2026 about that.

TV people around the country immediately donned their beads from Mardi Gras to clutch something. It’s been years since they were paid enough to buy pearls. Many were aghast. One widely circulated LinkedIn reaction called the setup “GUT WRENCHING.”

Maybe they’re right.

We don’t know.

That’s what experiments are for.

Management gets to change things.

That doesn’t make every change wise.

Yet another good reason to keep your door closed.

News Item: PLEASE CLOSE THE REFRIGERATOR

Meanwhile, NBC News weighs in with the comic relief.

While television people were commiserating that Houston might not have enough humans doing the news, the very well-resourced NBC News organization promoted this helpful piece of information:

Keep your refrigerator and freezer closed if you want the food inside to stay cold during a power outage.

The Internet responded appropriately.

Before the well-staffed people in the bow of the boat laugh too hard at Houston taking on water in the aft, somebody might remind them:

It’s the same boat.

Humans remain perfectly capable of embarrassing moments without any assistance from automation.

Mr. Met sees a better 2027 ahead.

O.A.T. Update: GOODBYE 2026

We started the lost season with #FireStearnsFirst on social media.

When manager Carlos Mendoza was fired, we began the #FireStearnsNext. Yes, that was us. And it became a loud drumbeat from many fans.

Steve Cohen’s heard it, read it, all season long.

And he did two things managers can admire: First, Cohen publicly backed Stearns. The loyalty is admirable, and if you’re outside NYC, that was a gutsy call.

But the second thing is just as notable: he smoothly announced he’d be adding help to the front office. He did it as he sat in the TV booth, then the radio booth, to wrap up the season with the guys, and pay homage to the retiring Howie Rose.

“More voices and opinions.” He didn’t give Stearns up. But he did say he’ll be adding help. And, it was clear, that is his call. As a leader sometimes needs to take charge.

More high-level front-office experience around David Stearns, whom we’ve written about is what’s ahead. That’s healthy and good.

Mets fans can be happy that Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey is joining the Mets as a senior adviser, and David’s wings are getting clipped.

His laughable “run prevention” b.s. likely drove Steve as nuts as the rest of us.

Still, stick with your guy.

Don’t humiliate him. When you do, it says a lot to the rest of the organization.

But at the same time, don’t be aloof. Recognize that absolute power hasn’t been producing acceptable results and add some experienced people in the room.

In management, “help” can be a wonderfully polite word.

Pete Alonso is the RBI king this season in the AL. And the first player ever to be that in both leagues.

“Run prevention” was camouflage when David chose to let Pete walk without even talking or making an offer. It was bad cover fed to a lazy sports press corps who dutifully reported it as zombies might. Until even David dropped it.

Fans will never let go of that. Nor should they.

Let’s call this our Saturday evening post, okay?

News changes.

Technology changes.

Audiences change.

Management gets to change things.

And sometimes the wisest management decision is not to.

Get your work done faster, easier, more accurately. Switch from Cision and the others. You’ll save so much you’ll be able to be down in the front row with your clients.

Change is also what we’re living every day at Eponymos.

Communications teams are being asked to accomplish more with fewer people, while using an assortment of tools and workflows assembled last century.

We’re trying to simplify that for the 21st century demands and changes all around us.

How’d you like some time back? Make your work easier? Our clients are embracing this change.

Take a look at Eponymos or reach out and we’ll give you a live demo.

My mom taught me this as a way to figure out my algebra homework:

If you are having trouble understanding some complicated calculation, reduce it.

Think about 2 and 3.

Two plus three. Two times three.

You already know the answers.

Five. Six.

So instead of struggling with the answer, you can think about how you got there. Understand the process with numbers small enough to hold in your head. Then move back to the bigger numbers, where you don’t know the answer.

Reduce the problem.

It took me years to realize she wasn’t teaching me only math.

I once described a fairly complicated personnel problem to a CEO. I had all the facts. The history. The grievances. What had been said to whom. What we had tried. What hadn’t worked.

He listened.

Then he reduced it.

“Sounds like the person isn’t happy.”

That was pretty much it.

“Ask him if he’s happy. And if he’s not, maybe he should go find his happiness somewhere else.”

Well. That eliminated a long explanation I was ready to offer, and, it empowered me to handle it. Cool. One conversation, one resignation. Living the dream.

Another time, an employee was making it known that he was embarrassed to work for the company. It wasn’t personal. It was about the company as a whole. He didn’t like the new direction. Didn’t like the people running it. Didn’t much like having his name associated with the place.

Again, I was prepared to discuss the nuances.

A boss reduced it for me.

“Fine. But is he so embarrassed he’ll stop taking our money every two weeks?”

There are management books that require 300 pages to get you to sentences like those.

The really good bosses I’ve known had an ability to strip away all the stuff we build around a problem and find the small problem hiding inside the big one.

Steve Jobs apparently operated on a version of the same principle.

On the decisions that really mattered, he said his senior people would get together and work the problem until they agreed. Not: I’m the CEO, do it my way.

But there was another side to that.

If, over time, somebody fundamentally wanted to take the company somewhere the rest of the leadership didn’t want to go, eventually Jobs reduced that problem, too.

You weren’t on the team anymore.

That’s important, because reducing a problem is not the same as oversimplifying one.

Complicated problems can be genuinely complicated.

People are complicated. Companies are complicated. Markets are complicated. God knows, newsrooms are complicated.

But complexity has a way of becoming camouflage.

We create committees. Studies. Meetings about meetings. Twelve-slide decks explaining why the six-slide deck failed. Everybody brings another fact, another objection, another consideration.

Sometimes all of that is necessary.

Sometimes we’re hiding from 2 plus 3.

What are we actually trying to accomplish?

Is the employee happy?

Does the customer want this?

Are we making money?

Do we believe in this strategy?

Is the person with us or against us?

What happens if we do nothing?

As I was writing this, my other parent entered my mind. Dad was very competitive and it’s very like him to want in… but… my mom was an absolute saint, and she’s going to stay in the title. All that aside, my dad would always tell the tale of a truck that was wedged into the top of an underpass. Teams were out, trying to figure a way to tow the truck out.

Then:

The young boy walked up to them and said, “have you thought about letting the air out of the tires?”

Now, to his credit, my dad told that story to make me think about problem solving, and the legend that the boy supposedly was awarded a scholarship to engineering school. I don’t know if that’s true, but, I am the oldest of nine, so it may have been a nudge to go find stuck trucks.

Reduce.

Find the smallest version of the problem whose answer you actually understand.

Then start adding the bigger numbers back.

That’s probably another place where Management and Wisdom overlap.

Management is very good at making problems bigger.

Wisdom knows when to make them small.

But Wait! There’s More!!

Reducing complexity is also a pretty good description of what we’re trying to do at Eponymos.

The Public Relations and Media sector has accumulated an extraordinary number of tools, vendors, databases, workflows and steps between having something to say and getting it in front of the people who matter.

We’re working on making that smaller, too.

If you’d like to see what we’re building, take a look at Eponymos, or reach out and we’ll happily give you a live demo.

No obligation.

You’ll find it will simplify your work week as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Kathryn writes smartly about her clients and about executive presence. Recently, Kathryn used a word you don’t hear very often in management books.

Swagger.

That got me thinking about the great bosses I’ve had.

The memorable ones almost always had it.

Not the costume-jewelry version. Not chest out, chin up, everybody-look-at-me swagger.

The real thing.

During a time when it was still okay to have a larger-than-life confidence without HR trailing behind you.

Nothing wrong with HR, so save the emails. We all understand each other and where the lines are, okay? okay.

You knew when that type of boss walked into the room. People sat up a little straighter. The conversation changed. And the room, always, got quieter.

They didn’t have to announce who they were or that they were in charge.

They just were. That would be screen left.

Swagger, properly used, is confidence made visible.

It says: I have this. Stay with me.

And there are moments when a leader needs exactly that.

A company is in trouble. A deal is going sideways. The newsroom is in chaos. Everybody is looking at everybody else, and eventually everybody looks at the person in charge.

That is no time to search under the conference-room table for your executive presence.

But swagger has an evil twin.

We all know that boss, too. Say hello to our little friend on the right. We have met him somewhere along the way.

Loud. Performative. Endlessly impressed with himself. He mistakes volume for authority, domination for leadership and everybody else’s silence for admiration.

I think the polite word for them is “blowhard.”

They’re not admiring you.

They’re waiting for you to leave.

That’s where the other circle in One Additional Thing logo comes in.

Wisdom.

Swagger without wisdom becomes ego, theater or intimidation.

Wisdom understands that leadership has a volume knob.

Sometimes you turn it up.

Sometimes you turn it down.

And sometimes the smartest thing the most powerful person in the room can do is shut up.

One of the clearest examples of genuine swagger I can remember happened three days after 9/11. The 25th anniversary is still lingering in many—I hope all—of our hearts.

President George W. Bush stood at Ground Zero, speaking through a bullhorn. Someone in the crowd yelled that he couldn’t hear him.

Bush answered:

“I can hear you.”

Then came the rest: the world could hear them, too, and those responsible for bringing down the buildings would soon hear from all of us.

He didn’t suddenly manufacture swagger on top of the pile.

It was an extension of the man, the personality and the moment. Some people were surprised to see it. That’s not the point. It was the right time, right place, right amount.

And that may be the trick.

The best swagger isn’t borrowed. You can’t pick it up at an executive seminar. You can’t rehearse the hand gesture and manufacture the pause and expect people not to notice.

People always notice.

The best leaders I’ve known had swagger because it was genuinely part of them.

But the really good ones had something else.

They knew when to use it.

And, as I think about it, and see if this is true in your work life, they almost always walked into a room, up to a podium, out to hail a cab, with determination and purpose.

Always on the move. In constant motion.

Once again, we’re talking about that wonderful center in our OAT logo.

The overlap, where Management and Wisdom are shared.

Your title can put you at the head of the table.

Swagger may make people pay attention to you.

Wisdom tells you what to do once they do.

And speaking of swagger…

Gotta say, I’m walking briskly this week. We’ve got swagger in our step.

We invite you to head to our new Eponymos site and learn about the latest thing in public relations and protecting your brand in a way that is revolutionizing the media world.

If you’d like a live demo, no obligation. Just reach me and let me know.

This is our third entry in One Additional Thing. That makes it high time to step back and explain what we are doing here.

Most managers are never trained for the job they hold. They ascend to the front office because they excelled somewhere else. They were dominant in sales, brilliant in production, or flawless in corporate finance. Managing complex organizations requires a completely different set of skills. It requires grace under pressure, courage in the crunch, wisdom as a place to land.

When the stakes get high, common sense is usually the first casualty. Next, managers waffle — knees are always blamed, but that’s the mind making deflections — and abandon the plan they publicly committed to execute. Maybe they meant the other execute. Suddenly wisdom is about the size of that needle in that haystack.

When leadership works, a manager makes prudent, grounded decisions. When it fails, the misfires are spectacular.

This column exists to dissect those misfires as they happen.

News Item: Real-World Physics

Big Tech pledged roughly $650 billion in 2026 capital spending, much of it aimed at building out the AI infrastructure boom.

Then the digital gold rush slammed directly into a physical reality:

Physics.

Roughly half of planned U.S. data-center capacity for 2026 is expected to be delayed or canceled. Lead times for some critical electrical-grid equipment now stretch as long as four years.

Throwing balance-sheet cash at software models does not alter real-world physics.

When planning out complex things, always get your department heads to weigh in from their vantage point. Clearly, the Chief Engineer wasn’t at the table.

Capable executives align their capital plans with physical supply-chain reality before making promises to Wall Street.

News Item: Auto-Delete Is Not Governance

In ongoing Delaware shareholder litigation involving Rupert Murdoch and Fox Corp., court filings revealed that Murdoch had been auto-deleting his text messages.

The court ordered the production of years of board minutes and other records, including information concerning personal email accounts, while allowing shareholders access to material surrounding allegations that records had been destroyed.

Executives mistake Signal and disappearing-text settings for operational security.

Sometimes they are simply creating a future exhibit.

Smart leaders understand that critical, sensitive discussions belong in verbal conversations, not casual texts or emails. Transparency and trust are essential, but they must be balanced with discretion and candid directness.

Put something in writing when it belongs on the record.

But people are people, and this column will never be at a loss for material about what people text and email each other.

News Item: Inattention to Earning Media Attention

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski recently became an unwilling social-media attraction while pitching the company’s Big Arch burger.

The performance was staged, stiff and instantly mocked.

Before Burger King could sound Taco Bell, TikTokkers had already spotted the manufactured executive charisma.

But here is where management gets interesting: the attention apparently helped sales.

So was it a communications failure?

Maybe not.

And that may be the better lesson.

Executives spend enormous amounts of money trying to manufacture authenticity. Then occasionally an awkward moment that no communications professional would deliberately design gets more attention than the polished campaign surrounding it.

Leadership should understand the difference between controlling a message and earning attention.

The public is remarkably good at spotting the first.

And remarkably unpredictable about rewarding the second.

In each story, none of the managers got where they are because they are stupid. Quite the opposite. They got there because they were very good at something.

Then the job changed.

The decisions got harder. The consequences got larger. Common sense became less common.

That is where you must work so management and wisdom intersect.

It is almost always where good decisions and well-run organizations call home.

Speaking of…

Eponymos. A three-year labor of hard work and love by our team debuts today. If you are in the media world, please take a look: eponymos.com, and find me anytime.

San Jose is a place where many smart people became rich making things nobody could see. And very smart people became very rich inventing those things.

A modern California gold rush. No pickaxes, just computers and garages.

Then garages with Lambos.

A dizzying array of new words: software > Apps > Search engines > Social networks > Algorithms.

Wonderful things made newer, faster, even more wonderful things, always the promise of another problem solved, a better life, built with as few people as possible.

For a while, almost everything fit very neatly inside a laptop.

Until it didn’t.

Bigger laptops. External drives. Server rooms. Data centers. Acres for many data centers.

Lots of electricity and water needed.

In California, where water is a thing!

One particularly smart fellow was sitting in one of those sleek Silicon Valley offices one afternoon, searching for inspiration through a spotless floor-to-ceiling window. He knew taking rows of crops and turning them into rows of servers might not sound all that appealing.

Especially in his own neighborhood.

He looked up.

There it was. A big, puffy, white-on-white, completely untouched cloud.

“The cloud,” he said.

Immediate acceptance.

Cloud. What a happy word.

Somewhere, George Carlin was smiling.

Certainly better than enormous windowless buildings filled with racks of computers consuming enormous amounts of electricity twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no PTO, no morning or evening break, annnnd, no… health, life, day care, gym, 401(k), or hot lunch benefits!

The cloud grew and grew.

People put messages in it. What they had for breakfast.

Then emails.

Then pictures of their breakfast.

Then tax returns. Medical records. Movies. Music. Passwords. Doorbell videos. PowerPoints.

And archives.

Dating back to pre-archival times.

Then came artificial intelligence.

The cloud got heavier.

Nobody worried much about it.

Nobody except Big Chick.

He had been a worrywart ever since he was little. The family said he could look at a blue sky long enough to turn it gray.

Meanwhile, the mayor was looking across at neighboring Santa Clara and its 60 data centers and praying above that San Jose could catch up.

Millions of dollars in tax revenue.

Money!

The mayor knew that cloud needed a home.

A taxable home, inside city limits.

Acres of servers inside acres of data centers.

Yet many still called it by its happy name, the cloud.

Parts of the puffy white cloud started turning gray and gnarly.

Where endless hours of political cable talk gathered. Always gloomy there.

The air was especially hot in the podcast section of the swishy cloud.

People recorded themselves watching other people recording themselves.

While doing their lashes.

Then came the dancing babies.

Big Chick kept looking up, pointing.

“The cloud is getting awfully low,” he said.

“Nonsense,” said one of the experts. “The cloud is scalable.”

Until one day, at exactly 3:16 in the afternoon, a TikTok appeared featuring a fellow named Beta Belly, performing a dance move that no adult man should attempt without first consulting an orthopedic surgeon.

This was, and always will be, Mr. Belly’s 28 seconds of fame.

Replayed indefinitely.

That did it.

The cloud could hold no more.

Unnamed but double-confirmed sources quickly blamed China.

Congress scheduled hearings before anyone had decided what the hearings were about.

Big Chick saw it first, nervously pointing up.

“The cloud is falling!”

Nobody moved.

“The cloud doesn’t fall,” the mayor mansplained.

“The cloud is virtual,” techsplained the software engineer.

“The cloud is infinitely scalable,” Investor Relations reassured all.

Then it hit San Jose.

Not with thunder.

With a thud.

Tiny TikTok videos littered rooftops. Some whole. Some in pieces.

Emails hung from trees like a wild T.P. raid after homecoming.

Strings of passwords balled up in storm drains.

A PowerPoint landed on a Tesla. Twenty-five slides, heavy with graphs.

All 58 versions.

Quite a dent.

And as the wind blew the messy fog away, there they were: those enormous buildings everybody had managed not to think very much about, that the cloud had left behind before it disappeared.

Now the mayor had his buildings, more data centers than any city in the state.

One wish down, one nightmare forming.

Electricity. Water. Talk of limitations for residents.

Big Chick looked around.

“I thought the cloud was uncrashable,” he moaned.

Nobody answered.

Because nobody had done anything especially foolish.

Nobody was especially bad.

The inventors had invented.

The investors wanted a return.

The builders wanted to build.

Teams had assembled to solve every problem put in front of them, and they had been very good at it.

That is how progress happens.

It is also how progress can get away from you.

Then what?

What happens if it works?

If it works too well? Scales too quickly?

We’ve seen this before.

The Industrial Age produced bigger, faster, better things too.

Put the big new factory along a river. Let the waste run. Next thing you know, it’s not a moral question, it’s part of the business plan. We’ve lived through the cleanup.

Fables are fun. History is useful. But let’s switch to real life.

I am proud to say one of our clients at Eponymos is the Samuel Lawrence Foundation.

SLF is a nonprofit in San Diego fighting the good fight, demanding that America come to terms with nuclear waste. It wasn’t a surprise. We knew we didn’t have the back half solved when we turned the switch on.

A ’70s version of the cloud fable.

Home for SLF is San Onofre.

The reactors are shut down and being decommissioned.

The waste remains.

This isn’t a debate about whether nuclear power is good or bad.

It is about what is left behind.

Radioactive waste exists.

It is dangerous.

It requires a safe, long-term solution.

Millions of pounds of spent nuclear fuel remain there, stored 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean.

The front half of the plan was built.

The back half was never finished.

Isn’t finished.

If Eponymos does its job right, you’ll be hearing a lot more about this cause.

And if you’re running the room, give some thought to having your own Big Chick.

Somebody with a seat on the Board or in the C-Suite.

Somebody you have to contend with.

Somebody allowed to ask the question everybody else is too busy, too excited or too invested to ask:

Then what?

You may not always like Big Chick.

That may be the point.

And for any new idea, the moral of this tale remains the same:

The best time to figure out what happens after success is before everybody succeeds.

For today’s story, you’ll need these ingredients:

• A frosty but warm Polar Bear

• A play-by-numbers David Stearns

• Seats filled with Mets fans, a rare sight in 2026

• The song “Home by Another Way” by James Taylor, a whimsical biblical tune you’ll find on YouTube. We’ll wait here while you cue it up and play it in the background.

Speaking of the Bible, you know David and Goliath.

This is the story of Goliath and David. And a lesson any manager can learn, in any business.

The Polar Bear came home Monday night. Yes, yes, it should have been in the spring.

Maybe we should say more plainly, Pete fans filled the stands at Citi Field. They chanted his name. Alonso Mets jerseys were everywhere, a pretty good indication that while management had moved on, the customers had not.

There is irony throughout, notably this: Pete returned Monday and his team eliminated the Mets from the postseason, officially. That was just the first night, when the stands filled for the “welcome home.”

Pete hit 264 home runs as a homegrown Met, more than anybody in franchise history. 123 of them at Citi. Nobody close. Before he left Wednesday night, he added two more. 125 now.

He arrived with 299 career home runs. Homecoming Monday came and went. Still 299.

Tuesday night, in the ninth inning, with the Mets leading 3-2, Kodai Senga threw a ghost fork, 82.5 miles an hour. It was supposed to end up in the catcher’s mitt.

But the crack of a bat came between that plan. Clean, crisp. Audible only after the ball was already high in the air. Lightning is faster than thunder. It left Pete’s bat at 109.6 miles an hour and traveled 413 feet to the left-center stands.

And then came the part no spreadsheet models, but every script knows:

The Mets fans stood and roared. For Pete. For 300. Ron Darling, broadcasting the game for the Mets, commented that he’d never seen a visiting player treated to cheers that long, that loud.

Pete became the 171st player to reach the 300 mark. Next up: 400. And then 500, which says Cooperstown for every player not linked to PEDs.

Will 400 be against the Mets too? Will 500??

After touching all the bases, Pete went into the third-base dugout. The crowd got louder. He stepped back out and tipped his cap. A curtain call on the wrong side of the stage. For a moment, the black jersey and orange lettering looked… but there it was: a cartoon bird instead of elegant METS in script.

The King of Queens was back, and so was the crowd.

That is what loyalty and respect can buy.

415 feet away, because I know David is reading and likes numbers, in Section 136, Row 5, three friends from Smithtown, Michael Shaw, Nick Maldarella and Chris Makarius, watched the ball coming just short of them. Right where the girls had been sitting until the 8th inning. Something about “it ain’t over til it’s over” is burning to get into this story.

They had a fun scrum to see who’d get it. Things quickly worked out and they were brought under the stands, so they could give it to Pete. You can watch that on social media. After the Knicks, it was one of the top moments in 2026 if you are a sports fan in NYC.

There is no column for that on a spreadsheet. Just the wisdom that says “take your head out of your Excel.”

Which brings us back to the fans, who resumed the chant of 2026’s season, “Fire Stearns!”

For David, for anyone in management, the mistake isn’t using analytics. It’s often not digging deep enough in them and understanding your business and customers.

Every successful manager eventually eats their own strategic plan. You haven’t heard much about David’s “run prevention” plan lately. That idea of focusing on defense backfired spectacularly. Does your ego get in the way of making the right call, of changing your plan? How good you are is sometimes judged by how well you can blow up your own plan.

Senga couldn’t hear his PitchCom. The crowd noise lingered, a coda atop a coda it seemed.

David Stearns should have heard the customers.

Tone deaf can be expensive.

James Taylor had already supplied the line: “got to figure the gods are saying play the odds, and go home another way.”

David picked a fight, not with Pete, but with fans. Maybe they are Goliath from here on out. Maybe they always were. You know the management lesson:

Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. Or its corollary: Don’t use run prevention spreadsheets against run generation slingshots to Smithtown.

Gotta go another way.

One additional thing.

The name of the album “Home by Another Way” is on?

“Never Die Young”

If you’re going to gamble away that much history, affection and chances for the postseason, you might at least check the House odds.

Steve’s casino isn’t built yet.

And with a warm tip of the NY cap to Cindy Adams:

Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.