Machiavelli isn’t a devil, he’s a realist. While we praise conquerors who left ruin behind, we condemn the man who dared to describe how power truly works. His insights challenge our belief in human goodness, but offer a path to resilience. If we stop expecting virtue to be rewarded and focus on outcomes, we might better navigate the modern world. Appearances change, human nature doesn’t.

During a performance review, a colleague told me I seemed “too obsessed with time.” At first, I brushed it off. But the comment stayed with me — leading me to explore how punctuality, once a local custom, became a global expectation. This essay reflects on how we’ve standardised time, why we did it, and how we might reclaim a more human relationship with it.

During a project meeting, a young team member proudly declared he was “actively waiting.” We laughed, then later realised how profound it was. In a world obsessed with urgency, actively waiting is a quiet form of resilience: staying ready, sharp, and engaged even in stillness. From Mongol warriors to modern teams, it’s a mindset worth exploring.

Two years into writing about resilience, I’ve moved from confidence to humility. The Dunning-Kruger effect reminds us that true learning starts when we realise what we don’t know. Climbing from Mount Stupid through the Valley of Despair to the Slope of Enlightenment takes time: about ten thousand hours. I’m still climbing. Join me on this journey toward deeper understanding of organisational resilience.

How we build shapes the resilience of our societies — and the future of our planet. In Grey Hour: Time for a New Architecture, Filip Springer explores how architecture must evolve beyond profit-driven design toward sustainable, community-centered spaces. From 15-minute cities to adaptive reuse, we must build less, rethink comfort, and align interests for a more resilient, livable future.

After 30 years in finance, I began to ask: what comes next? In a world where life expectancy and change are both accelerating, the idea of a 40-year career feels outdated. “The Next Thirty Years” is my personal journey of reinvention—from finance to academia, from expertise to curiosity. This post explores how shifting paths, building resilience, and staying connected can reignite purpose at any stage of life.

Ben Underwood lost his sight at age three—but learned to "see" through echolocation. His story, along with that of bird-sound expert Izabela Dłużyk, shows how much we can achieve when we focus on what we have, not what we lack. This post explores resilience, resourcefulness, and the balance between personal agency and external influence.

Africans' biological resilience to disease, once a strength, became a tool of exploitation during the transatlantic slave trade. Immunity marked them as “suitable” for forced labor. This dark irony reveals a deeper truth: individual strength is powerless against systemic power. History shows it’s not personal grit but collective action that endures. Perhaps we should stop striving to be superhuman and start striving to be super connected.

The modern narrative is very optimistic and full of pride: we are progressing, becoming more empathetic, more just. Empathy has become a moral buzzword, a marker of our supposed advancement. But what if this progress is more illusion than reality? What if we’ve simply mastered the art of hiding the truth?

This post will be different than usual. The Resilience Center run by Dr. Gail Wagnild - an expert on individual resilience, offers the resilience assessments tools. I want to invite to take two fun tests available on their website and see how much we learnt together about resilience and what new insights we can get from the Resilience Center.

Does a resilient organization need resilient employees? This assumption is rarely questioned. In a recent post, I shared findings on building a resilient salesforce through psychological safety. But the same question extends beyond the workplace: Does a resilient society require resilient organizations?

economic divides. Karol Nawrocki won with less than 51% of the vote—drawing support mainly from rural communities, lower-income voters, and those without university degrees.

We look for easy solutions for complex problems. There is too much complexity out there and finding ways to make it simpler is a natural need. It can lead us however astray.

What if the problem isn’t that you're doing things wrong—or even doing the wrong things—but that you’re asking the wrong questions entirely?

"Every man carries Two Bags about with him, one in front and one behind, and both are packed full of faults. The Bag in front contains his neighbours’ faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others.

As the planet struggles to keep pace with our appetites, the true cost of our food choices is becoming impossible to ignore! Agriculture...

In resilient systems, redundancy isn't waste—it's an opportunity for wisdom. It’s the buffer that absorbs shocks, the backup that keeps things moving, and the diversity that helps ideas evolve. Generative AI is a powerful tool for building this kind of creative safety net.

Time flies fast. I recently read a comment that we’re already one-third into 2025—and it hit me. This post idea has been sitting in my...

In paragliding, your eyes and brain must be locked on your landing field. If your attention drifts to a tree, a fence, or a road… that’s where you’ll likely end up. That applies to other areas of life as well - when we have a purpose—when we focus on where we want to go—things start to align. Not perfectly. But directionally. And that’s what resilience is all about.

A friend wrote to me after reading a post about Marcus Aurelius : If only it was so easy to follow these principles. I find too often...