What building the Leadership Activation Summit taught me about judgement, uncertainty, and the difference between knowing and doing.
Who Would You Trust to Show You the Way?
When Neja first mentioned the idea of organising the Leadership Activation Summit, I said yes almost immediately. My background made that easier: I started as a researcher, moved into R&D, then into innovation leadership for one of the largest corporate groups in Europe. In that world, you rarely have all the information you want, and you never have a guarantee an investment will work. You assess potential, weigh risks, and eventually someone has to take responsibility for the decision. Some projects worked, some didn’t. That was never proof innovation itself was a mistake, just part of working with uncertainty. I didn’t expect LAS to come with proof before we committed to it either.
The Difference Between Interest and Commitment
What surprised me was how hard it was to find people genuinely willing to commit. Many liked the idea in theory, but the tone shifted once cooperation meant approving a budget or signing an agreement, the moment consequences became real and accountability entered the picture. I’ve seen this in other partnerships too: people enjoy being associated with something exciting, but real commitment means accepting an uncertain outcome and standing behind the decision if things go wrong.
We also heard, repeatedly, that the Summit was too ambitious for Slovenia. The market too small, people not ready. Maybe they’re right. We’re now one month away, so we’ll find out. I actually like not being able to write this story from the comfort of already knowing the ending. We believed in the idea, invested time, money and energy, and now we wait to see how the market responds. That’s closer to how business actually works than most success stories admit.
What Changes When You Are Responsible for the Outcome
We live surrounded by advice: leadership training, coaching, books, podcasts, endless content. Much of it is useful, but I’ve become more interested in the person behind the advice, not just what they know, but what they’ve actually done and what responsibility they’ve carried. Understanding strategic leadership in theory is one thing; deciding with incomplete information and real consequences is another. Theory gives us frameworks and language, but lived experience gives those frameworks context. Eventually, analysis reaches its limit. Someone still has to decide, and no framework removes that responsibility.
Why Experience Changes the Way People Speak
People who’ve actually carried that responsibility tend to speak differently. They’re less absolute, because they know good decisions can still disappoint, and poor ones can look successful for a while. They know timing and context matter, and that many decisions only make sense in hindsight.
Building LAS with Neja has brought this back in a different setting. You start with an idea, sense potential, talk to people, assess risk, and at some point you stop discussing the possibility and start building it.
The Part of the Journey Nobody Sees
From the outside, an event like this looks simple: stage, programme, speakers, audience. What people don’t see are the conversations that went nowhere, the partnerships that never materialised, and how often there’s no perfect answer. You decide with the information you have, then adjust as reality gives you more.
This has made me far more interested in people who’ve actually built something, not because experience automatically makes someone right, but because it shows what the road feels like while the outcome is still uncertain. Experience alone isn’t enough, though; some people repeat the same patterns without learning. What I value is honesty: people who can tell you not just what worked, but what they misunderstood, and what they’d do differently now. That’s more useful to me than a polished success story.
Why the Right Conversation Can Matter More Than More Information
This also shapes how I think about coaching. Sometimes you don’t need an answer. You need someone who’s been close enough to a similar situation to see what you can’t yet see: that a strategy problem is really a people problem, or a decision that’s been postponed too long. Often the most valuable moment at an event isn’t on stage. It’s the person at the coffee break who’s already lived the problem you’re facing.
Information Is Easy to Access. Judgement Is Not.
AI can now explain frameworks and summarise strategies instantly. What remains hard to acquire is judgement, which develops through decisions, through being wrong, through recognising patterns earlier next time.
A month from now, Neja and I will know whether Slovenia was ready for LAS. Whatever happens, we’ll have learned something no amount of safe-distance discussion could teach us.
That’s why, when I ask who I’d trust to show me the way, I still value knowledge and expertise, but I look for one more thing: whether they’ve actually walked through uncertainty themselves. Knowing the road and walking it are not the same thing.