A few days ago, Erica Dhawan shared a thought-provoking perspective: your brain was built to struggle. She was reflecting on how many leaders are beginning to use AI not just for efficiency, but for strategy, interpretation, and decision-making.
It’s an understandable shift. AI can synthesize information quickly, generate options, and accelerate processes that once took days or weeks.
But her observation raises a more important question:
What happens when we begin to outsource the very processes that expand our thinking?
The Value of Cognitive Strain
As a neuroscientist who studied neurobehavioral plasticity, I’ve spent part of my career understanding how the brain adapts and grows.
One of the core principles is this: The brain develops through challenge.
When we wrestle with an idea…
When we sit with uncertainty…
When we attempt to connect concepts that don’t yet fully align…
We are not just solving a problem. We are building new neural pathways.
This kind of cognitive strain is not a barrier to thinking. It is the mechanism through which deeper thinking occurs.
The Temptation to Accelerate
AI introduces a powerful—and often invisible—temptation:
To move more quickly to answers.
Instead of sitting with ambiguity, we can prompt.
Instead of exploring possibilities, we can generate them instantly.
Instead of synthesizing perspectives, we can ask for a summary.
Each of these is useful. But collectively, they can shift where—and how—thinking happens. And over time, that shift matters.
What We Risk Losing
In leadership, some of the most important work happens before a decision is made. It happens in the exploration. In the questions that are not yet fully formed. In the tension between competing ideas. In the slow emergence of patterns that are not immediately obvious.
These are not inefficiencies. They are where insight begins.
When we bypass that process entirely, we may arrive at answers more quickly—but with less depth, less originality, and less ownership of the thinking behind them. We also miss the neurobehavioral benefits that come from human interaction, discussion and listening.
A Familiar Practice
I see this in small ways in my own work. Even now, I take notes by hand in meetings. I write. I sketch. I sometimes fill the margins with what look like disconnected ideas.
But something else is happening in that process.
I’m listening.
I’m connecting.
I’m allowing patterns to form.
Occasionally, those rough notes lead to unexpected insight. Not because the method is efficient—but because it keeps me engaged in the work of thinking.
Strategic Not-Knowing™
This is where a different leadership discipline becomes important. What I call Strategic Not-Knowing™.
It is the deliberate choice to remain open—to resist the pull toward premature certainty long enough to allow discovery to occur.
AI can accelerate answers.
But Strategic Not-Knowing creates the space in which better questions—and ultimately better answers—emerge.
The distinction is subtle, but critical.
A More Useful Question
The question for leaders is not whether to use AI. We should.
The question is more specific: Where should we be careful not to?
Where does thinking require time, tension, and exploration?
Where does the process itself shape the quality of the outcome?
Where might efficiency come at the cost of insight?
Using AI Without Losing Thinking
AI is most powerful when it complements human thinking—not replaces it.
It can:
• streamline routine work
• surface information quickly
• expand the range of options
But it cannot and should not.replicate the internal process through which leaders:
• make meaning
• connect ideas
• develop judgment
That work still belongs to us.
Closing Reflection
Not all friction is a problem to solve. Some forms of friction are where growth begins. In a moment when we can accelerate nearly everything, the discipline of leadership may lie in recognizing what should not be accelerated.
And having the willingness to stay there—just a little longer.
