Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:
Not everything valuable begins with knowing where it is going. Sometimes the work is to notice what keeps presenting itself, follow it without forcing an outcome, and know when you have taken it as far as you can.
Rick Rubin is one of the most influential music producers of the past four decades. He co-founded Def Jam Recordings and has worked with artists across genres that rarely occupy the same sentence: Johnny Cash, Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jay-Z, Adele, Metallica and many others.
What makes Rubin approach distinctive though, is how he describes what he does.
He has called himself a reducer rather than simply a producer.
His instinct is often not to add more to the work, but to listen closely enough to recognize what doesn’t belong. Strip something away. Remove the unnecessary. Keep working until whatever is essential becomes easier to hear.
There is a word Rubin uses when talking about what can eventually happen through that process: undeniable.
He has described being in the studio when something is being worked on and everyone can sense that it isn’t quite there yet. They may not know exactly what is wrong. They may not be able to articulate what needs to change. So they keep listening, adjusting, removing, adding, experimenting.
And then something happens. No one may be able to identify precisely what changed, but suddenly everyone in the room can feel it. The thing has become undeniable.
Rubin tells another story that gives the idea of “undeniable” an interesting twist. A meme of him sitting at a computer, headphones on and eyes closed, became associated with the emerging idea of “vibe coding”, even though he had nothing to do with creating it and initially knew nothing about it. But the meme kept coming back to him, sent by different people and appearing in different places. Rather than dismissing the coincidence, Rubin became curious. Something he had not created or pursued had become difficult to ignore. In a different way, it had become undeniable.
There is another part of Rubin’s story that changes how I understand “undeniable.”
In early 2025, the term “vibe coding” began circulating online. On the same day the term was coined, someone used an image of Rubin sitting at a computer, headphones on, eyes closed and hand on a mouse, and associated it with vibe coding. Rubin had nothing to do with it. He didn’t even know what vibe coding was.
Then people kept sending him the meme.
His first instinct could easily have been to laugh and move on. In fact, Rubin says that an earlier version of himself probably would have done exactly that. Instead, he paid attention to the fact that this completely unexpected thing kept arriving.
He became curious.
Not, How can I monetize this? Not, How can I turn this attention into an opportunity? Simply: What is this? And is there something here for me to follow?
He responded first with a playful tweet.
That response led somewhere else. He kept following. Eventually, the trail led to The Way of Code, a work inspired by the Tao Te Ching that explores creativity, technology and the emerging practice of vibe coding.
None of that was the plan, and maybe that is the point.
We are taught to think about our work in almost exactly the opposite way. Define the objective. Identify the audience. Determine the outcome. Develop the strategy. Execute against the plan. Measure the response.
There is value in all of that, yet Rubin’s story introduces another possibility: pay attention to what is happening outside of your plan.
Pay attention to everything
A conversation you keep returning to. An idea that refuses to leave. Something several unrelated people mention to you. A piece of work that feels disproportionately alive. An unexpected response to something you almost didn’t share.
We can dismiss these things because they don’t fit the plan – or we can become curious about them.
That doesn’t mean every coincidence is a calling or every unexpected response deserves pursuit. Discernment still matters. Perhaps even more so. There is a difference between chasing everything that gets attention and noticing something that keeps presenting itself to you.
The difficult part is that following it offers no guarantee.
- You may follow an idea and discover that it leads nowhere commercially.
- You may make something you believe deeply in and find that very few people respond to it.
- You may create work that feels complete to you and watch it disappear into the world without applause.
That is risky because most of us have been taught to use the response as evidence and confirmation that the work is worthwhile.
Rubin separates the two
There is the work, and there is what happens to the work once it encounters the world. We have influence over the first, but no control over the second.
Perhaps this give us an alternative understanding and what it means for something to become undeniable.
It may not mean that everyone else finds it undeniable, just that you do.
You have followed it far enough. Listened closely enough. Removed what didn’t belong. Stayed with what you couldn’t completely explain. And eventually you reach a point where something inside you recognizes that the work is what it needs to be.
There may be no spreadsheet capable of proving that. Sometimes there may not even be a particularly convincing intellectual explanation.
You simply know.
Not necessarily from conscious knowing, but from somewhere beneath all of it – and when this happens…
- You stop trying to control the response.
- You stop bending the thing into whatever you imagine will make it easier to sell, approve, understand or applaud.
- You put it into the world…and you pay attention
Perhaps something unexpected comes back…another door opens…the work takes you somewhere you could not have planned from the beginning…or maybe nothing else happens. No outcome diminishes the value of having followed the clues and done the work.
This may be the hardest part of Rubin’s philosophy to accept
In business, we are conditioned to attach purpose to measurable outcomes, but not everything valuable begins with knowing in advance, where it is going.
We simply need to keep working on our thing until persuasion becomes less necessary. Eventually, we may no longer need the world to convince us that it was worth doing.
Strategic Reflection Prompt
What keeps presenting itself to you that you may have dismissed because you cannot yet see where it leads?
About Giselle
Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.
I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.
Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.
What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?
