Author Archives: Charlene Norman

When Did You Last Audit Your Relationships?

Provocative question, I know. But I recently did this exercise and was genuinely blown away. I want to walk you through it. First, full credit where it’s due. This isn’t my work. It belongs to a brilliant fellow named Ant Blair. You can find him at antblair.com. He’s currently updating his website and programs, so […]

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Bring In the Artists

If what got us into a predicament cannot be what gets us out of it, then we need different thinking, different perspectives, and different priorities. That is the cleanest way I know to make the case for diversity without getting tangled in the vocabulary that tends to derail the conversation before it begins. Here is […]

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The Cheapest, Most Powerful Thing You Can Do. Right Now!

Do you remember being six years old?Someone told you that you’d done something amazing, and the feeling was electric. Pure. Instantaneous. You stood a little taller. Smiled a little wider. Felt, for one shining moment, like you could do anything. Here’s what nobody tells you: that feeling never goes away. More than twenty, forty, sixty […]

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The Thing Jensen Huang Can’t Sell Us

Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia and arguably the most powerful man in the current AI revolution, said something quietly devastating to students at Cambridge University recently. “Intelligence is about to be a commodity.” He wasn’t being pessimistic. He was being precise. The thing we’ve spent decades credentialing, testing, and competing over, y’know, our raw […]

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Steve Jobs & the Silo Problem

Last week I told you about failing the GMAT and feeling like a misfit. About learning that intelligence comes in forms our education system doesn’t measure or value. This week, I want to talk about Steve Jobs. But not the Steve Jobs you think you know. In 1995, Jobs sat down for a raw, unfiltered […]

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The Intelligence Trap

(Why We Need Misfits to Save Us) For the longest time, my biggest regret was failing the GMAT. Not because I desperately wanted an MBA. Because that exam was my ticket to an executive MBA program, as a mature student, fully paid for by my employer. That failure proved something I’d suspected my entire life: […]

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What AI Can’t Do (and why that matters for your relationships)

There’s a lot of noise about AI taking over pretty much everything. Productivity tools. Creative work. Strategic analysis. Even emotional support chatbots.Fine. Let me know how that works out for you when you’re sitting in a hospital waiting room at 2 a.m. Because here’s what AI can’t do • Show up when it’s inconvenient.• Remember […]

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Those Who Survive Chaos Don’t React Faster; They Sit Still Longer

I spent decades in boardrooms where the pressure was to DO something. Make the call, launch the initiative, give the board answers we didn’t have yet. The people who cracked under that pressure weren’t less intelligent. They just couldn’t tolerate the feeling of not knowing. So they’d react, pivot, and or overcorrect.  They’d do anything […]

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Something Useful When Everything Feels Chaotic

We’re barely two weeks into 2026, and I’m guessing your “fresh start January” looks more like “higher level of insanity.” Every conversation I’ve had lately – regardless of continent – lands in the same place: shell-shocked by world events, frustrated by rising costs, dealing with some crisis at home. Makes concentrating on what actually matters […]

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