The Weekly Reframe #4

1/ NOTICE

If your LinkedIn disappeared tomorrow, would your followers care?

IMG (the global sports marketing agency) released their 2026 digital trends report. 
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Key finding: "The more time passes, the less interest fans have in hearing from institutions. Fans follow people."

So, if you want followers who care, you must build a position in your market. Stand out from others. Create relationships before you need them.

And every time you post as a company representative you lose that opportunity. Same with every credential-first introduction. And every "we help clients with..." 
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Do that and you're seen as the institution. You disappear behind the brand.

The idea of 'social selling' leads to the same thing. Unless you’re careful you're right back to pushing a solution instead of being someone worth knowing.

Sports personalities don't pitch their team. They share perspective on their game. They challenge conventional thinking about their sport. They make fans sit up and take notice. 

They also show off their personality and wider interests - they're T-shaped people. Deep talent and expertise, but breadth that makes them interesting to follow. 

The trust comes first, the ticket, merchandise, and sponsorship deals follow. 
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It’s the same for us relentless achievers in business, just a different context:

• Educating about issues people don't know they have.
• Positioning our relevance without asking for anything.
• Being someone worth knowing - for more than your expertise.

That’s not easy, but remember, platforms like LinkedIn prioritise individual creators over institutions. And your business connections will too.

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To go deeper: IMG Digital Trends 2026, Section 6: Main Character Energy - shared by Karl Fitzpatrick​​
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2/ TRY

How much have you limited your learning potential?​
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This reframe one blew my socks off.

It’s about the MIT challenge Scott Young completed. His goal was to pass all of the final exams for an undergraduate degree in twelve months. 

His self-inflicted restrictions: A budget of only $2000 and to teach himself the curriculum using only used textbooks and free materials he found online.

It’s an interesting experiment and he learnt a lot about learning new things effectively. 

I’ve tried some of his ideas out and they worked brilliantly for me. My takeaways:
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1/ Accelerate listening and watching lectures to 1.5 speed, there are no major comprehension losses. This worked for me if I was in ‘study’ mode, but less so when passive listening - say while walking. Bonus: If it’s an audiobook, I found having the text in front of me added to the retention.. 

2/ ‘Study’ mode for me meant taking notes. Then I’d immediately switch from input to output. 

• Stop the audio / close the book / file the notes. 
• Recall from memory 5–10 keypoints.
• Explain the chapter out loud.
• Ask myself: “What will I do differently now?”
• Reopen notes → fix gaps → condense to 3 bullets.
• Create 1 rule, 1 question, and 1 example from the input.

I found I learnt much faster by doing this active recall, using a tight feedback loop with immediate correction, practicing at the edge of my difficulty, and repeating in short, intense cycles.
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​Where do you want to accelerate your learning?

To go deeper: Scott Young’s book Ultralearning. 

3/ QUESTION

The chaos you're managing? You created it.​
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Relentless achievers like you are comfortable with ambiguity. You trust your instincts, sense direction, and pivot fast. You don't need everything spelled out to take action. 

That's exactly why your messaging is unclear. 

And your team is still decoding what you meant last time you changed things. There's a gap between your comfort with uncertainty and everyone else's need for clarity. And it's not going away.

So, when you pivot, pause. Not to slow down. To explain the logic behind your change.

• What has changed. 
• How you're thinking about it. 
• Why this matters to your team and what you expect from them now. 

Three sentences. Thirty seconds. That's the difference. 

Otherwise the team wastes their energy decoding your message instead of executing. 

They drift. Trust drops. They talk more about your chaos than your vision. 

Your tolerance for ambiguity will always be higher than theirs. The question is whether you're clear enough for them to follow you anyway. 
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​Are you cutting through the fog … or creating it? 

More: This article from Tobin Trevarthen challenged me to stop and think. It explores why narrative matters so much when everything is ambiguous.