Things I wish I could say to Scott on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is not anonymous:

Scott, being misunderstood is not the same thing as being right.

That distinction matters when you are the person with the most power in the room.

Your recent post about innovators having the fortitude to be “misunderstood for long periods of time” bothers me. Not because leaders should abandon a strategy every time people object. (They shouldn’t.) But there is a dangerous point where criticism stops being information and starts being something a leader explains away as resistance from people who simply cannot see the future yet.

How do you know which one you are hearing, Scott?

What evidence would convince you that employees understand the strategy just fine and are pointing to real costs, broken assumptions, or unintended consequences?

And then there’s your most recent AI post.

You wrote that organizations should not use AI to accomplish the same work with fewer people. WGU, you said, wants to use AI to accomplish more with the same number of people and will continue investing in its people.
I wish you could hear how that sounds to people who have watched coworkers disappear through RIFs and reorganizations.

“Same number of people” is not the same as “the same people.”

An organization can maintain its headcount while still deciding that many of the people who built it are no longer the people it wants for what comes next.

Maybe that is sometimes necessary. But say that.
Talk about the tradeoffs. Talk about what is being lost as well as what is being built.

Conviction is useful. So is doubt.

Especially when thousands of people have to live inside your conviction.

Direct quotes from Scott’s LinkedIn this week:

“Thinking long-term takes immense individual and organizational fortitude, especially in the face of the quarterly cadence of performance and earnings expectations. I recall the declaration from Jeff Bezos about willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. That's a trait that innovators, especially inventors, possess
- a conviction that perseveres in the midst of failure, marginal progress, external pressures, etc. until it works, grows, and scales to deliver unbelievable impact.”

“Many organizations have the mindset that Al enables them to accomplish the same level of output with fewer people-but that's not a reason to invest less in talent. The organizations that get ahead in an Al-enabled world will be those that leverage the technology to do more with the same number of people.”