Stay Interested: Margaret Atwood on the Secret to Sustained Excellence

Few writers have shaped the cultural conversation as profoundly as Margaret Atwood. A New York Times bestselling author and two-time Booker Prize winner, she is the acclaimed author of The Handmaid’s Tale and one of Canada’s most original and influential public intellectuals. Her work has consistently anticipated tensions around power, technology, identity, leadership, and human behaviour long before they entered mainstream debate. Few writers have combined literary imagination with such a perceptive reading of where society may be heading next.

What makes Ms. Atwood particularly interesting to business leaders is not simply her success as a novelist, but her ability to remain relentlessly curious and relevant across generations. In a world where many organizations struggle to innovate beyond quarterly cycles, her career offers a powerful lesson, which is long term excellence is rarely about intelligence alone. It is about maintaining the capacity to stay interested.

The Curiosity Engine: Following Questions Instead of Answers

On the sidelines of the Energy Disruptors Unite 2026 conference, I had the opportunity to meet Ms. Atwood and tackle a couple of questions about curiosity and sustained excellence. When I asked how she had trained herself to remain curious throughout her career, her answer was strikingly simple: “It just naturally happened.”

She quickly pointed to her upbringing as part of the explanation. She shares, "Growing up around biologists, I was always encouraged to ask what was happening and why. Once you learn to find a topic interesting, curiosity tends to sustain itself."

That mindset shows up throughout her work. Whether examining history, environmental challenges, political movements, or emerging technologies, Atwood approaches issues less as an advocate and more as an investigator. She detects patterns others overlook, asks questions others avoid, and resists the comfort of easy conclusions.

The business application is obvious. Many organizations spend enormous energy searching for answers while investing too little in developing better questions. Yet some of the most successful companies in the world, from Amazon to Nvidia, have built cultures around curiosity, experimentation, and the willingness to challenge assumptions before competitors do. Curiosity is not a soft skill. It is a strategic capability.

Excellence Is an Interest Problem

We often talk about excellence as discipline, resilience, or talent. Ms. Atwood sees something more fundamental beneath all three. She explains, "You cease to sustain excellence when you cease to be interested."

That observation cuts against much of conventional business thinking. We celebrate grit, perseverance, and hard work, yet Ms. Atwood argues that enduring performance starts with engagement.

Throughout our brief conversation, she demonstrated the remarkable intellectual agility to move effortlessly between history, storytelling, politics, technology, environmental issues, and human behavior. Her intellectual compass has never stood still. Like a seasoned naturalist continuously exploring new terrain, she keeps finding fresh questions worthy of attention.

Research increasingly supports this perspective. Studies from top institutions such as Stanford University and Harvard Business School have highlighted the connection between intrinsic motivation, learning agility, and sustained high performance. The people who remain engaged often outperform those relying solely on discipline because engagement replenishes energy rather than merely consuming it.

Ms. Atwood puts it even more directly to me, explaining, "Long-term performance depends on staying genuinely engaged in what you're doing." And when engagement begins to fade, she adds that the prescription is not necessarily to work harder: "It's about continuing to find new challenges that capture your attention." 

For leaders, that may mean taking on unfamiliar problems, exploring adjacent industries, mentoring emerging talent, or rethinking old assumptions through a new lens.

The Hidden Fuel Behind Reinvention

One reason Ms. Atwood has remained relevant for so many decades is that she has continuously shaped and entered new conversations without ever appearing to chase them. From environmental questions to artificial intelligence, she engages emerging issues through the same lens that has guided her entire career: curiosity first, certainty second.

Organizations often focus on reinvention as a structural problem involving strategy, technology, or capital allocation. Those things matter. But lasting reinvention frequently begins with something more personal. Leaders who stop learning eventually stop seeing. Leaders who stop seeing eventually stop adapting.

Ms. Atwood's career suggests that sustained excellence is less about protecting expertise and more about continuously expanding it. Perhaps that is part of her particular brilliance. She does not merely accumulate knowledge, but she continually finds new ways of seeing.

A Final Thought: Staying Interested in an Uncertain World

At a time when disruption feels constant and certainty increasingly rare, Margaret Atwood offers a surprisingly practical message. Curiosity creates momentum. Interest sustains performance. New challenges keep excellence alive.

Many leaders spend their careers searching for the secret to longevity. Atwood's answer may be simpler than we expect. Stay interested. Because when curiosity disappears, growth soon follows.

Dr. Lance Mortlock is the author of Outside In, Inside Out – Unleashing the Power of Business Strategy in Times of Market Uncertainty, EY Canada Managing Partner, Industrials & Energy, Strategist & Adjunct Associate Professor.

Note of Thanks: I'm deeply grateful to Michelle and Graeme Edge for creating opportunities to engage with remarkable people like Margaret Atwood.