Why I revised and updated Certainty
I wrote Certainty for leaders who are tired of vague advice about “soft skills.”
The hardest management problems are usually human problems—and human nature is more predictable than most leadership writing suggests.
Your hardest leadership problems aren’t “soft.” They’re human.
Over and over again I keep seeing capable leaders getting stuck on people problems.
Leaders are taught to use goals, metrics, incentives, reorganizations, and accountability systems.
Those tools matter—but they rarely explain why people resist change, withhold information, avoid responsibility, lose trust, or quietly disengage.
Those problems begin in human nature.
I spent decades studying that hidden side of performance—from the CIA and GE to classrooms, executive teams, and thousands of employee interviews.
The central lesson was simple:
Leadership becomes easier when you stop fighting human nature and start working with it.
This is the only leadership book I know that shows you exactly how to lead with human nature, and see results fast. At this point in my 50+ year career, I want to share this knowledge with every leader I can.
How the revised and updated second edition is different from the first
The first edition grew out of a question a senior CIA executive posed to me: “Mike, why is it that when I pull the levers, nothing happens?”
That question became the book’s organizing principle—and the answer, which develops across the book, is that the traditional levers aim at the wrong target. The focused, rational brain is not running the show. The auto-brain is.
The second edition expands on the first in two directions:
Following Ötzi through every chapter, this updated edition incorporates the remarkable recent findings from the 2023 full-genome analysis conducted by the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. Ötzi’s gut bacteria, cardiovascular disease, receding hairline, therapeutic tattoos, and the forensic reconstruction of his final hours all illuminate, with startling specificity, how little the human brain has changed since the Stone Age.
It has also been revised with new chapters that address the organizational soft issues executives consistently identify as their most persistent problems and includes the complete Human Nature Levers toolkit, now with 13 Human Nature Levers, for addressing them.
Capable leaders repeatedly encounter the same eight people problems: Accountability, Communication, Engagement, Motivation, Dependency, Silos and Collaboration, Resistance to Change, and Culture and Innovation.
Leaders are taught to rely on goals, metrics, incentives, reorganizations, and accountability systems. Those tools matter—but they rarely explain why people resist change, withhold information, avoid responsibility, lose trust, or quietly disengage.
These are human-nature problems.
Certainty shows you how to stop fighting human nature and start working with it
Fully updated, the second edition introduces the eight Soft Issues, 13 Human Nature Levers, and the latest remarkable research on Ötzi. Drawing on cognitive science, decades of leadership research, and more than 50 years of field experience, it provides a practical operating system for creating trust, engagement, accountability, and innovation.
INSIDE, YOU WILL LEARN HOW TO:
Create enough certainty for people to act while change is unfolding
Reduce the threat and resistance that make sensible changes fail
Use the Human Nature Levers to improve accountability, trust, communication, and execution
Replace vague leadership advice with practical, repeatable habits
Diagnose the people problems that dashboards, reorganizations, and incentives miss
Build a workplace where people speak candidly, take responsibility, collaborate, and innovate
Certainty is written for frontline managers, experienced executives, CEOs, coaches, consultants, and leadership-development professionals who want practical tools instead of platitudes.
Great leadership isn’t mysterious. It is human nature—and it can be reverse-engineered.
Ready to solve the leadership problem keeping you awake at night? Order your copy of Certainty (second edition) now.