2026: The State of It

The inaugural Wednesday Wisdom for 2026 contains my thoughts on the bloody state of it this year:

• Three trends for 2026
• Three skills to combat them
• How I'm focusing my work and writing.

Make a quick cuppa and settle in.

Three trends for 2026

This year, I predict the intensification of three things.

Trend 1: Total bullshit

2026 will unleash a torrent of unmitigated deception at a scale and speed modern democracies aren’t built to handle. Misinformation and disinformation are at epidemic proportions, and we're ill equipped to deal with them.

People, companies and states have always lied. But reality was... real? Now our lives, work and relationships are often digitally mediated, personalised, and optimised for engagement. When everyone is served a different version of the world, 'do your research' won't cut it.

We've just had a century of unprecedented access to information, culminating in the lost promise of the internet. We've become used to knowing things. But it's time to shift gears. The rabbit holes aren't confined to Facebook boomers and YouTube flat-earthers anymore. Disinformation oozes from every virtual pore and into the real world, messing up elections and driving violence, and we suck at spotting it.

Trend 2: Power concentrating in tech

If the government feels embarrassing and semi-irrelevant to you, that's not just cynicism or political apathy talking. The state’s grip on key infrastructure is weakening: education, communication, trade, the lot. Tech companies have gobbled it up. They give us our news and entertainment, in 15-second videos and 15-hour streaming binges. They intercept and process our payments, sending the profits to tax havens offshore. It's a technopoly, and we're all living in it.

Content is diffusing, but power is concentrating. There are fewer people in charge than 20 years ago - and many of them aren't in government. The 'Magnificent Seven' (Apple, Meta, et al) comprise an historic chunk of the total market, which means they're too big to let fail, regardless of the hell they unleash.

It's hard to regulate what we don't understand. Public sector systems are scrambling and fumbling. A university lecturer friend tells me students no longer attend lectures - and don't even watch them back at 2x speed like they used to. Instead, students submit ChatGPT essays without so much as removing the em-dash, and lecturers allow it, because the institutions don't know what to do.

Trend 3: An accountability void

Human accountability is on the decline. Like lying, this isn't new: people and companies have always tried to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. It's why Big 4 consulting firms exist - executives would rather follow recommendations on a fancy letterhead than apply judgement and accept the consequences.

But the gap between people and outcomes will increase at a phenomenal rate this year. Companies are mediating and automating communication, decisions, and customer service. Government agencies are building systems for non-human assessments and dismantling protective regulations on everything from environmental protection to building safety. Liability is disappearing.

Companies don't publish their email addresses anymore, and they hide their phone numbers. We communicate with AI chatbots and faceless, interchangeable service reps. Anonymity is the new normal.

If you didn't write the report, because AI did, how can you be held responsible for it? If the decision was made by an automated system; if the car was self-driving; if the drone was autonomous; if the weapon system was automatic; if the infrastructure was sensor-operated... who is responsible? People and companies will grab the opportunity to escape accountability with both hands this year.

The skills that matter in 2026

Three skills that will make a huge difference this year in response to the trends above.

Skill 1: Power literacy

Critical thinking might have been good enough in a world with stable facts, shared reality, and strong institutions, but it won't cut it anymore.

Very few things are objective, fixed, or inevitable. Systems and stories, rules and conventions, values and expectations - these are all subjective and dynamic. They shape the choices we make and influence our relationships. They make life better for some, and worse for others.

The better you are at spotting these forces and interrogating them, the more power- literate you become. Power literacy stops us taking the world at face value. It helps us see beyond problems and into systems - to hold complexity and paradox in our palms carefully, without lashing out.

Power literacy has us cocking our head to one side, lifting our voice half an octave, and saying "Mmmm.... is that true, though? Where did this come from? Who benefits from me thinking that? What are the alternatives?"

Power literacy is not about conspiracy, but curiosity. It's about developing a bullshit radar and a sniff-sense for who sets the rules, and how they do it, and what stories enforce or challenge those.

This is core IP for me in 2026. I'm writing a book about it.

Skill 2: Cognitive sovereignty

It is entirely possible for you to give up thinking in 2026. You can outsource the whole lot, and live your life like the people in those hilarious-but-terrifying short videos doing the rounds.

Your cognitive sovereignty is at stake. Your thoughts risk becoming a faceless amalgam of all the thoughts that have been thought before, expressed without ambiguity, nuance, or personality. The content you'll be flooded with in 2026 - the emails in your inbox, the news you read - will marinate you in slop. You'll read so much of it, it will start to feel normal.

If you do not actively resist the atrophy, you will lose the ability to think for yourself. Remember: the stuff coming out of AI is not based in genuine analysis or thought. It's a stochastic parrot. Neither is it benign or ideology free. If you don't dedicate time and energy to reading, writing, asking questions, talking to others and working through difficulty with your own brain, you'll become a parrot for powerful interests with no personality to speak of.

Cognitive sovereignty isn't about rejecting technology or the internet. But it is about showing up with armed for a mental battlefield, making intentional choices about when and how you engage with news, social media and other content, and refusing to let anyone else decide what you believe.

Skill 3: Action inside ambiguity

There is no way to know the right thing to do. The right thing does not exist. The government will change, the law will change, the technology will change, everything will change, and the answer will still not reveal itself. But things still need doing and the time spent prevaricating on Zoom and over email is sapping energy and creating make-work that leads to nothing.

Your capacity to act inside ambiguity, without any guarantee of how it will work out - and to take radical accountability for the consequences of those actions - will distinguish you from the hordes of hand-wringing do-nothings.

Your capacity to act inside ambiguity, without any guarantee of how it will work out - and to take radical accountability for the consequences of those actions - will distinguish you from the hordes of hand-wringing do-nothings.

Important note: If you're currently lumbered with guilt about doing anything while the world is munted, remember that the world is always munted, and it always has been. Maybe you haven't seen it quite so close up or felt so personally affected before.

The current polycrisis (technology change, injustice, corruption, war, racism, sexism, environmental degradation, political instability) isn't new. It's all been there the whole time. Your guilt changes nothing and serves no-one, so unless you're donating, fundraising, or getting involved, crack on.

What I'm doing this year

I'm doing very little client work in 2026. I'll be writing, running two public training programmes, and doing speaking gigs where interactive and meaningful chats are on the table. (Think fewer keynotes, but more Q&As and salons, like this LinkedIn Local Auckland event in March.)

Writing

Words risk becoming meaningless in this slopscape. Human-generated, meaning-infused text is more important than ever, and I'm doubling down on it.

My writing projects for 2026 are threefold:

1. Online publishing - I'm back to my regular publishing schedule for the year: weekly Wednesday Wisdom, fortnightly Friday Flurry, and regular essays on power, systems, culture, and other current fads. I'm publishing on my own steam, not via Substack, for a number of reasons. It's hard to grow a commercially viable audience outside of a social media platform right now, but my gut says independence is worth it. I hope to make this a well-oiled machine and profitable enterprise this year.
2. Power literacy book - I’m bringing 15 years of insider knowledge from government and corporate work, two degrees in political science and the media, and eight years of research and publishing to an exciting new book: a field guide to seeing and shaping the invisible architecture of systems and stories.
3. Debut novel - Long-form fiction is one of the most honest and accessible ways for us to work through tricky ideas, learn things, and appreciate other realities. I read over 100 novels a year and now I'm writing one, which is warping my brain in useful ways. It's slow, hard, and frustrating work.

Training

I'm a practical woman, so hands-on training is still on the cards this year.

We need real tools to ask better questions, see the systems that shape decisions and outcomes, and drive meaningful progress - so I'll be helping with that via two key channels.

• Not An MBA is for senior leaders in all industries who know they’re operating below their potential for impact. I am so excited to return to this work after a two year hiatus. We are running a single cohort in July.
• Strategic Public Leaders is for public sector teams and leaders to become more politically savvy and systems-aware in their planning and execution. Training is scheduled for Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney.
  P.S. We're a maybe for Hobart in November, and Wellington earlier in the year. If you would attend in either of those cities, let me know.

I'd love to see you come along.

A question for you

I'll be back with the first Friday Flurry of the year soon, tackling productivity and morality. But until then, I'd love to know:

“What story do you refuse to accept this year?

Emails, DMs, and comments all welcome.

Til next week,

AM