Over the past several weeks, I’ve had a number of conversations with highly successful mid- to late-career professionals. They all started as casual check-ins and, almost without exception, ended in very similar places.
These are driven, capable people who are good at their jobs and care deeply about their work. And yet many of them are pausing, looking around at what they’ve built, and quietly asking themselves, “Is this it?”
There is an enormous amount of transition happening at once. Technology is moving faster than most teams can reasonably keep up with. Leaders are being asked to do more with less while learning new tools, running businesses, and still hitting aggressive growth targets. “Flying the plane while building it” feels less like a metaphor and more like reality.
In the middle of all of this, leadership is increasingly measured by output, activity, and numbers that fit neatly into dashboards. And when everything becomes about metrics, what gets left behind is the humanity of how we lead, why people show up to work, how cultures are built, and whether there is a clear vision pulling people forward.
Without that, more people are stopping long enough to ask: what are we actually doing this for?
When work requires constant travel, sustained pressure, and relentless performance against numbers that aren’t clearly tied to meaning or direction, it becomes difficult not to pause and question.
I even recently heard about a company replacing sales managers with AI.
Humans are not metrics, and metrics are not why people show up to work. Dashboards and activity alone are not the answer.
Leadership is showing up with clarity and building a vision people want to move toward together. It’s understanding the people on your team and what’s happening in their lives, not just their pipelines. It’s creating space for collaboration, and architecting environments where people feel seen, valued, and part of something meaningful.
AI can do a lot. But it cannot replace the humanity behind why people show up to work, the energy that comes from pursuing a shared goal, or the camaraderie of building something great together.
And if we lose that, it’s worth asking what we’re doing at all.
This is the gap Arcadia is intentionally designed to hold.
What’s Happening inside Arcadia:
Inside the Constellation we’re working through this balance in real-time:
Kat Hill-Contag joined us for a practical session on AI and why operators make such strong builders, focused on how to start experimenting thoughtfully while keeping people, not tools, at the center of the work.
We’ll continue the AI conversation throughout the month as members test ideas, share learnings, and sort through what is useful versus what is noise, and it’s not too late to join
Next month, we’ll shift our focus to living and leading a value-led life, spending time clarifying personal values and understanding how they show up in decisions, boundaries, and leadership. Performace Coach Chris Douglas will kick off the new year with us.
Our recent podcast with Rob Moyer explores many of these same themes around leadership, humanity, and building with intention. You can listen and subscribe here.
Arcadia is being built as a network of leaders who want to build great things without losing the human thread that makes the work worth doing. Staying sharp as technology evolves matters, but so does clarity, judgment, values, and the ability to bring people together around shared purpose. Those qualities are not separate from performance. They are becoming foundational to it.
If this feels like the kind of work and community you want to be part of, you can learn more about the Arcadia Constellation here.
And if the questions in this note have been sitting with you, you’re always welcome to reply and share what this season of leadership feels like for you. Those conversations are the reason this community exists.
Be great. Be Arcadia. And Stay Human,
Sam
PS. Did someone send this to you? Join us every week and subscribe here.
