Clear Thinking with KayAnn Podcast

Americans are making a distinction that CEOs and their advisers shouldn’t overlook.

76% support CEOs speaking out on issues that directly affect their companies or employees. Support drops to 55% when CEOs advocate for causes they personally care about.

That 21-percentage-point gap changes the question advisers should ask before recommending a public statement.

Not just what should the CEO say, but why is this the company’s issue, and what is it prepared to do about it?

Read my full analysis in this week’s Clear Thinking: CEO Activism Is Losing Support.

One thing I kept coming back to this week.

Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, introduced himself on X with one word: “hello.”

Nearly 75 million views later, it’s a good reminder that executive communication doesn’t have to be complicated to be consequential.

The interesting part isn’t the word. It’s the judgment behind it. The channel. The timing. What it signals about how he wants to show up.

Also still no update from Neutrogena on an update about the substantial donation they claimed they’d make to support women battling ppd.

A quick Clear Thinking take on what I think leaders should notice.

This morning on Clear Thinking LIVE, we talked about lessons and warning signs from three recent headlines: Callaway and Good Good Golf’s controversial ad, the backlash involving Neutrogena and Hayden Panettiere, and Chipotle’s food-safety response system.

If you want to go deeper, here are the pieces behind the conversation:

Callaway + Good Good piece, “How did this ad get this far?”

Neutrogena + Hayden Panettiere piece, “The Decision You Need to Make Before You Draft the Statement”

Chipotle’s evolution on food safety, “What Chipotle Got Right Before It Said a Word”

Clear Thinking with KayAnn is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free subscriber.

A little behind the thinking of my essay this week.

I read more than 155,000 words across a dozen AI manifestos from eight very different leaders.

I wasn’t looking for who was right. I wanted to know what each of them thinks could go wrong. Because once you know what someone fears, their solution starts to make a lot more sense.

If you’re most worried about losing control of AI, you want more safeguards.

If you’re most worried about a handful of companies or governments controlling AI, you want more access.

Then I started looking at the words they used.

One finding stopped me: Pope Leo XIV used some form of “dignity” 115 times. Across the others I examined, it appeared twice.

That’s not just a word count. It tells you what each person believes is worth protecting.

I came away thinking the AI debate isn’t really optimists versus doomers.

It’s a fight over what we’re trying to protect, which risks we’re willing to take and who gets to decide.

This six-minute video is a look behind the thinking of this week’s Clear Thinking: what I read, what surprised me and where I landed.

More information can be found in this week’s essay appendix.

My business partner, Jennifer Curley, forwarded me Jim VandeHei’s Axios piece yesterday with a note:

“KayAnn, really interesting piece on strategy and ability to plan or not plan more than 6 weeks out. This speaks to what you have been telling me.”

She’s right. It does.

For the past two years, I’ve been seeing the same pressure in boardrooms and C-suite conversations. Leaders have less visibility into what comes next and more pressure to move now.

VandeHei has a good name for it: post-processable velocity.

But there’s another consequence of that velocity that I keep seeing: The less certainty leaders have about the future, the more important it becomes to make sure the decision underneath the work is actually settled.

I think of that as decision integrity.

By that I mean something basic: Does the organization actually know what it has decided? Have leaders accepted the trade-offs? Do they agree on what they’re trying to accomplish? Is the work following the decision, or substituting for it?

Too often, it’s the latter.

The pressure to do something

When the future gets harder to read, activity can feel like the answer.

Start the transformation. Build the communications plan. Stand up the workstream. Launch the initiative.

Do something.

Those things create movement people can see. But a decision is harder. Someone has to make the call, accept what comes with it, and own the outcome.

So execution gets ahead of judgment.

I saw this with an international technology company preparing to enter the U.S. market. A 50-state procurement audit was conducted to prioritize market entry targets. There was one problem. The company hadn’t yet fully committed to entering the U.S. market. The procurement work wasn’t a bad idea. The sequence was wrong.

I’ve seen versions of the same problem elsewhere. A transformation launches before leaders have decided what the organization is becoming, or what they’re willing to leave behind. A communications plan gets requested before anyone has agreed on the decision it’s supposed to explain.

Different work. Same problem. The organization started moving before leadership made a decision.

Why communications finds the problem

Communications often discovers the gap because it has to explain the decision.

The assignment arrives as messaging, stakeholder engagement, or reputation management. The team starts asking the questions it needs answered to do the work.

What are we announcing? Why are we doing it? What changes? Who wins? Who loses? What are we willing to defend?

And suddenly the problem becomes visible.

It’s an unresolved leadership question wearing the clothes of a communications problem.

No communications strategy can solve that. It can explain a decision, build support for it, and help an organization navigate the consequences.

But leadership still has to decide.

What we’ve changed

Post-processable velocity doesn’t mean a good decision expires in six weeks. It means leaders need to check the route more often.

Our operating principle: Less than a month risks reacting to noise. Four to six weeks is recalibration. Much longer risks navigating from stale assumptions.

So we keep the direction, make the next quarter concrete, and every four to six weeks ask: What changed? What did we learn? Which assumptions still hold? Do we need to change?

Usually, the answer isn’t to remake the decision. It’s to adjust how you get there.

That’s also why we pressure-test the choice before execution begins. What are we actually trying to accomplish? What assumptions are we making? Who has power over the outcome? What could go wrong? What are we willing to defend?

A strong decision gives you something stable to navigate from.

The bottom line

Speed doesn’t make strategy less important. It makes decision integrity more important.

When leaders can’t see as far ahead, they need to be clearer about what they’re deciding now, what they’re betting on and what would make them change course.

Strategy, execution and communications all matter. None can compensate for a decision leadership hasn’t actually made.

Before asking how fast the organization can move, make sure leadership has made the decision underneath the work.

Otherwise, speed doesn’t create progress.

It accelerates the mistake.

📈 If you’re a CEO, board member, or senior leader facing a consequential decision, Curley Company’s High-Stakes Decision Advisory helps leadership teams pressure-test the choice before they lock in the strategy, execution plan, or communications approach.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into our live discussion about Truth API and Starbucks Korea. Full episode and links to our essays are included.

Clarity Alert: Wall Street Can Buy Faster Access to Presidential Communications

For Starbucks, history repeats itself