Explorations on clarity, creativity, and purpose
Our Thinking
Find North & Next started in conversations — about career challenges, leadership lessons, and self-discovery. About the moments we realized we'd been running on autopilot, letting circumstance choose the path instead of choosing it ourselves.
That sparked on ongoing exploration — into leadership, growth, purpose, and what it takes for people and organizations to truly move forward based on what matters.
On this page and on our Substack blog, you'll find questions we’re asking, ideas we're exploring, and insights we're picking up along the way.
Writing helps us work through our own thinking about what matters to us, the same way we'd encourage anyone facing a big decision to do. Each article comes from our experience, from things we're personally wrestling with in our own lives and careers, The process of writing gives clarity, sparks new insights, and fosters dialogue that can’t happen if we keep these thoughts to ourselves.
Why We Write
We invite you to explore these ideas on the site here, and on our Substack blog. We hope you find inspiration and insight and that you apply what you find useful.
If something we share gets you asking productive questions about your own direction, it's done exactly what we hoped it would.
Recent Reflections
Stepping back to reflect isn’t the same as standing still.
It actually is quite challenging, requiring an ability to look at myself objectively (or as objectively as I can) and that can be uncomfortable.
It requires commitment – you can’t just read a book and have a plan. It’s a process, and new ideas and insights are revealed.
From “Managing Uncertainty: Finding value in stepping back,” by Sam Jemielity. Read more on Substack
“There is a particular kind of stress that shows up around college admissions: not just about getting in, but about wanting to do right by your child while navigating a system that often rewards certainty, comparison, and polish before most teenagers have had a fair chance to understand themselves.”
— From “Before They Choose a College: Helping students understand who they are, how they grow, and where they are ready to thrive,” by Kurt Ahlm. Read more on Substack
More from our Substack blogs
“My creativity, my imagination, my perspective (and yours) is so boundless, so deep, so personal, there’s absolutely no way AI could guess what words I would put on paper.”
From “Staying Authentic in the Age of AI: The importance of owning your story,” by Sam Jemielity. Photo typo courtesy AI. Read more on Substack.
“Not everything can be a priority. If the colors of those M&Ms represented different parts of your life—blue for work, red for family, yellow for health—you’d quickly see that trying to swallow them all at once leads to burnout. In the end, nothing gets the care or attention it deserves.
Progress doesn’t come from doing more, faster. It comes from deciding what matters enough to deserve your best attention.”
From “You Can’t Finish Everything: Why doing more faster rarely leads to clarity,” by Kurt Ahlm. Read more on Substack
“But the more interesting question is this: How do you build adaptability before the ground shifts—not just after?
Over time, I’ve realized adaptability isn’t a personality trait. It’s a practice. And it’s built from a few habits that show up daily, not just during career crises.”
From "Building Adaptability for a Changing World: Habits to help you evolve and adjust in a dynamic professional landscape," by Sam Jemielity. Read more on Substack
“Most people do not lack ambition or capability. More often, they lack a clear view of themselves underneath all the accumulated expectations, adaptations, and noise.
Organizations experience the same problem.
What appears to be a strategy issue is often a clarity issue first—a fragmented understanding of what actually matters, what tradeoffs are acceptable, and what kind of culture or direction the organization is truly reinforcing through its decisions.”
From “Before You Find Your Direction: What clarity actually feels like at the start,” by Kurt Ahlm. Read more on Substack
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