The Librarian's Paradox
What Ancient Curators Teach Us About Leading in the Age of AI
Years ago, when I was a student at UT, I spent countless hours in the Perry-Castañeda Library (…the PCL to those in the know) wrestling with research projects that felt impossibly broad. I remember one particularly overwhelming assignment on organizational behavior that had me drowning in academic journals and case studies. That's when I met Margaret, a reference librarian who probably knew more about human psychology than half the professors on campus. In fifteen minutes, she'd surfaced exactly what I needed, plus three related sources I didn't know existed.
"How do you do that?" I asked.
She smiled. "Forty years of knowing what to ignore."
Margaret's answer stuck with me because it perfectly captures something I've been thinking about as I watch executives grapple with AI anxiety. We're living through what feels like the biggest technological shift since the internet, and everyone's asking the same questions: Which jobs will disappear? Which skills will become obsolete? How do we stay relevant?
But Margaret's insight points to a different question entirely: In a world drowning in information and possibilities, what if the most valuable skill isn't keeping up with everything…it's knowing what to ignore?
This is exactly what I wrote about in my book Momentum—the power of curation as one of the five essential principles for building strategic urgency (along with agility through analytics, customer focus, integration, and cross-pollination). While everyone else is trying to consume more information, the leaders who actually move forward are the ones who master the art of intelligent filtering.
The Executive's Dilemma
Five weeks ago, I was on a call with the CEO of a mid-sized manufacturing company. Let's call him David. He'd just come out of a board meeting where someone had presented a forty-slide deck on "AI transformation strategy." The presentation covered everything from chatbots to predictive maintenance to autonomous supply chains.
"I walked out more confused than when I walked in," David told me. "Every week there's a new AI tool, a new case study, a new expert telling me I'm behind. How am I supposed to make sense of any of this?"
David's frustration is everywhere right now. I see it in the conference rooms of Fortune 500 companies and in the coffee shops where startup founders congregate. The paradox of our moment is that we have more access to information, tools, and possibilities than any generation in history, and somehow that abundance has made decision-making harder, not easier.
This reminds me of something I learned from studying great chess players. When Garry Kasparov faced IBM's Deep Blue in 1997, the computer could calculate millions of moves per second. Kasparov could calculate perhaps three or four. But Kasparov's advantage wasn't computational power. It was pattern recognition. He could look at a board and instantly know which moves weren't worth considering.
The best leaders I know operate the same way. They've developed what I call "strategic filters”… the ability to quickly identify what deserves attention and what doesn't. This isn't about being closed-minded or risk-averse. It's about having the confidence to focus.
