The Executive Spiral:
When Curiosity Becomes a Cost Center
It starts with an AI question no one really needed to ask.
It ends with 30 hours of misallocated expertise.
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Last Updated: July 29, 2025 by Editorial TeamEstimated reading time: 2.7 mins.
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A senior exec “just wants to understand something” they saw in ChatGPT.
So they ask. And cc five people.
And those five loop in their teams.
And now entire workflows are bending around an offhand curiosity.
Research shows up to 37% of knowledge worker time is lost to directionless executive requests.
(Source: McKinsey, Harvard Business Review)
Studies on "performative alignment" confirm that middle managers often scramble to prove responsiveness, even if the task isn't strategic.
(Source: MIT Sloan)
Why? Because saying “this isn’t a priority” feels riskier than wasting everyone's time.
This isn’t leadership. It’s accidental sabotage.
This isn’t leadership. It’s accidental sabotage.
Experts aren’t Google with a badge.
They’re not there to validate executive hunches — they’re there to deliver on strategic outcomes.
Every time a team is pulled away from its core priorities to chase answers that don’t matter (yet), you're draining momentum, not building it.
Trust doesn’t mean silence — it means respecting the focus you hired people for.
So if you feel the need to “just ask a quick thing”…
Ask yourself first:
Am I leading, or am I interrupting someone who actually knows what they’re doing?
Have you seen this pattern inside your org?
Let’s trade notes — We are collecting the most expensive distractions of the year.
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WP | The Space Between:
Why Doing Nothing Daily Could Be the Most Strategic Decision You Make This Year
Why Doing Nothing Daily Could Be the Most Strategic Decision You Make This Year
WP | The Quick Guide to Use AI with PerformanceWhy Your Curiosity Could Be Killing Corporate Results (and How to Stop Distracting the People Who Actually Know What They're Doing)
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