Stop Letting the Algorithm Pick Your Next Idea

There is a smell that only exists in a bookstore. Fresh ink. New pages. Paper that hasn't been opened yet. It smells like possibility.

Same with a record store. Or the CD aisle, if you're old enough to remember standing in one for an hour with no plan. You'd walk in with nothing specific in mind. You'd walk out with something you didn't know you needed.

Not because an algorithm told you to. Because a friend leaned over and said, "Wait. You haven't heard this yet?"

That's how I found some of the best albums of my life. Some of the best books too. Not from a "recommended for you" screen. From a person. A conversation. A little bit of friction.

Here's what I've been sitting with

My phone knows what I'll probably like before I do.

It's fast. It's efficient. It's honestly kind of impressive.

But it's also quietly doing something I didn't ask it to do. It's narrowing me.

Every recommendation is built from what I already liked last time. Which means I keep getting handed slightly different versions of the same thing. Comfortable. Familiar. Safe.

The friend in the record store wasn't safe. He handed me something weird. Something outside my lane. And that's exactly why it mattered.

Now take that into the boardroom

This isn't just a music problem. It's a leadership problem.

Think about where your best ideas actually come from.

Is it still from people who challenge you? People outside your industry, your region, your usual five voices? The same group text. The same AI chat window, asked the same way, giving you a very confident, very average answer?

I love what these tools can do. I use them too. But a tool that's built to predict what you'll agree with is not the same thing as a tool, or a person. Someone built to stretch and challenge you.

If every idea in the room already sounds like something you'd say, that's not alignment. That's an echo.

The real question

Who is curating your next decision?

Your next hire. Your next strategy. Your next big swing for your organization or your board.

Is it coming from genuine, sometimes uncomfortable conversation? Or is it coming from whatever's easiest to click "yes" to?

Clarity doesn't come from more comfort. It comes from more truth, even when that truth arrives a little sideways, from someone who doesn't think exactly like you.

This month, go find your version of the record-store friend.

The person outside your industry. The board member who disagrees with you in a way that actually makes the plan better. The conversation you didn't algorithm your way into.

Courageous momentum starts there. Not with what you already like. With what you haven't discovered yet.