Performance to Perception

Most leaders are optimising the old world instead of orienting to the new one. Here’s what Me:chine leadership really means and why perception, not performance, will define what comes next.

Me:chine Leadership

Recently I was teaching a group of senior executives about futures thinking. When the feedback came in, it split neatly into thirds, just as I had told them it would on chart 3 of my 50 chart presentatation :

• Futures deniers: “the future is now.”

• Futures avoiders: “we know not of the future and cannot plan for it.”

• Futures enthusiasts: “the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

It was a perfect reflection of how most organisations think about change. A recent report described many UK firms as “stuck in neutral” on AI — not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack orientation. They are still optimising the old world when they should be sensing the new one.

The same pattern appeared in that classroom. Aside from the enthusiasts who understood the power of futures, many wanted comfort: familiar frameworks, predictable models, clear outcomes. These people were still measuring performance instead of perceiving transformation.

Yet leadership today is no longer about control.

The Me:chine philosophy helps explain why.

It recognises that identity, agency, and leadership all sit between two internal forces:

The machinable — the parts of us that can be structured, measured, and automated. The unmachinable — the parts that remain intuitive, symbolic, emotional, and alive.

To lead well now is to know both sides of yourself. To understand when to draw on the machinable ( logic, analysis, structure) and when to draw on the unmachinable (intuition, imagination, sensitivity, presence).

Leadership begins inside, not in the organisation chart.

That means:

• Listening beyond the metrics.

• Reclaiming attention from algorithmic noise.

• Trusting intuition as a form of intelligence.

• Protecting what cannot be coded: reflection, stillness, imagination.

Machines can manage efficiency, but only humans can hold emergence. The task is not to manage uncertainty, but to navigate novelty and to recognise and respond to what has never existed before.

That’s why we’re creating the Me:chine Leadership Environment — a living field of perceptual practices and orientation tools to help leaders cultivate that balance within themselves. Not a toolkit, but a kind of water: something to move through, breathe in, and learn to sense with.

Because the future doesn’t just need better systems.
It needs more perceptive selves.

Part of The Me:chine Codex — a philosophy and practice for living as both machinable and unmachinable.
© Tracey Follows 2025 — Published under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).