The other week I sat across from a founder fresh out of Series A.
They had an MVP in market.
Early customers.
Clear positioning.
They were just starting to push seriously into go-to-market.
Then a competitor, better funded, louder, released a new AI feature.
On paper, it overlapped directly with their core value proposition.
Slack lit up.
Investors were asking “concerned” questions.
“Have we thought about repositioning?”
“Should we expand the roadmap?”
“Do we need to accelerate feature development?”
Within 48 hours, the tiny team had:
Rewritten parts of the pitch deck.
Reworked messaging on the website.
Started scoping new features.
Paused two experiments that were actually working.
They were moving fast.
But not forward.
There’s a pattern here.
When uncertainty rises, we burn our energy reacting to what we can’t control.
In early-stage companies, that looks like defensive repositioning.
In established teams and institutions, it looks different, but the psychology is identical.
When you carry responsibility, volatility feels personal.
Revenue targets.
Board expectations.
Reputation risk.
Team morale.
The ground shifts, and the instinct is immediate action.
Not necessarily better action.
Just more action.
The pressure isn’t really about technology.
It’s about exposure.
When you have something to protect, such as a role, team, reputation - instability triggers activity.
And activity feels like control.
This dynamic isn’t trivial.
In a widely cited study of entrepreneurs, 72% reported mental health differences directly or indirectly related to the pressures of building and sustaining a venture (Freeman et al., 2018).
Volatility has physiological consequences. Chronic uncertainty rewires attention towards threat.
Reactive overwork often looks like resilience from the outside.
That’s when defensive motion begins.
When Volatility Triggers Defensive Motion
The pressure today isn’t just workload. It’s perceived fragility.
It feels existential.
Adopt AI fast enough.
Don’t break the culture.
Don’t get replaced.
Don’t make the wrong call.
A recent global survey of 4,000 knowledge workers found that 35% admit to hoarding skills or knowledge out of fear AI will replace them (The Adaptavist Group, 2025).
That’s not a technology problem.
That’s a trust problem.
And leaders often respond by trying to control the uncontrollable:
Predicting exactly where AI will land.
Suppressing fear by force.
Launching visible “innovation” initiatives to signal relevance.
None of this restores calm.
The opposite. It compounds and amplifies the noise.
The more you try to micromanage the future, the less agency you will feel in the present.
Playing Not to Lose
There’s a phrase Brené Brown used in a conversation with Adam Grant that captures this dynamic precisely.
She spoke about the difference between playing to win and playing not to lose.
Most organisations default to the second.
When uncertainty rises, ego rises with it. We protect status. We avoid hard conversations. We optimise for safety.
As she put it, the real question becomes:
What’s more important, protecting your ego or actually winning?
Playing to win requires clarity and courage.
Playing not to lose looks like busyness.
It looks like:
Working longer hours.
Launching visible initiatives.
Responding to every headline.
Doing more, faster, louder.
When instability hits, most leaders don’t consciously choose reactivity.
They simply run out of cognitive space.
And “work harder” is the only lever left.
But in that state, work harder is rarely strategic.
It’s defensive.
It’s reactive.
It’s organisational panic dressed up as productivity.
And because it feels responsible, it often goes unchallenged.
The Stoic Intervention: Control, Influence, Acceptance
Two thousand years ago, the Stoics drew a simple line.
Some things are up to you.
Some things aren’t.
That’s it.
The release schedule of the next AI model? Not up to you.
Macroeconomic conditions? Not up to you.
Institutional politics? Rarely up to you.
Your judgement?
Your standards?
Your response?
All entirely yours.
That’s precision, not passivity.
When you stop trying to control the horizon, you recover the energy to shape what’s in front of you.
Marcus Aurelius framed it bluntly:
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Friction isn’t proof you’re losing.
It’s diagnostic data.
The Calm Agency Playbook
If this is going to be a playbook, it needs moves.
Here are five.
1. The 10-Minute Control Map
Epictetus opened his own handbook with a blunt observation:
“Some things are up to us, and some things aren’t.”
The entire philosophy hangs on that distinction.
Draw three columns:
Not Mine
Influence-able
Mine
List everything currently stressing you.
Most people discover that the vast majority of their stress sits in “Not Mine.”
That realisation alone changes behaviour.
Now redirect attention to the “Mine” column.
That’s where the opportunity to compound begins.
2. Replace Prediction with Experiments
Leaders exhaust themselves trying to forecast five years of AI disruption.
Instead:
Run short pilots. Couple of weeks short.
Small experiments reduce fear.
They create evidence.
They restore agency.
Prediction paralyses.
Iteration strengthens.
3. Kill Innovation Theatre
Before approving any new tech initiative, ask one question:
What measurable problem does this reduce in 30 days?
If the answer is vague, it’s theatre.
Relevance compounds through usefulness, not optics.
4. Create Anti-Hoarding Rituals
If 35% of workers are hoarding knowledge, fear is already present.
Counter it with:
Weekly show-and-tell sessions.
Shared AI prompt libraries.
Clear statements that AI is leverage, not replacement.
Psychological safety isn’t sentimental.
It’s strategic.
5. Build Your Internal Locus
Research consistently shows that individuals with a strong internal locus of control report higher job satisfaction and stronger job performance outcomes (Judge & Bono, 2001).
That doesn’t mean believing you control everything.
It means believing your effort and judgement matter.
Track inputs, not headlines:
Quality of decisions.
Clarity of communication.
Learning cadence.
Experiment frequency.
Careers built on emotion drift.
Careers built on judgement compound.
The Founder Revisited
That founder?
Didn’t overhaul the roadmap.
Didn’t launch a reactive feature.
Didn’t pretend the competitor hadn’t rattled the team.
We used the conversation to just pause.
We asked the question:
“What is actually ours to control right now?”
Not philosophically. Practically.
What decisions are ours this week?
Which metrics matter in the next 30 days?
Which experiments were working before the noise hit?
The room slowed.
They restarted the two experiments that had traction.
They chose not to rewrite the pitch or story again.
They decided to observe for 30 days instead of reacting in 48 hours.
Nothing dramatic happened.
The competitor didn’t disappear.
But their posture has shifted.
And posture or orientation compounds faster than panic.
The reactive operator plays not to lose.
The grounded leader plays to win, through mastering what is actually theirs to control.
Relevance in unstable environments will not belong to the fastest.
It will belong to the most composed.
The question isn’t how fast technologies like AI will move.
It’s whether you can move without losing your centre.
If this resonated, reply and tell me:
What’s the uncontrollable you’re wrestling right now, and what controllable are you neglecting?
And if you want more frameworks at the intersection of resilience, leadership, and technological change, subscribe below.
It is disturbing to see companies use these fears out of “convenience and efficiency.”
Good piece. AI advances have been exponential these last few years. Massive, sweeping changes are definitely reactionary and are not a good way to adapt to such rapid advancements. It’s true, figure out what you can control and influence; energy will be better spent focused on those things.