unthinkable blog

Most companies have core values that read like a corporate Mad Libs: integrity, innovation, excellence, teamwork.

Here’s the problem: Harvard Business Review studied 500 companies and found that 55% list “integrity” as a core value. When everyone claims the same values, they mean nothing.

Real core values do two things simultaneously: they attract the people you want and repel the people you don’t. That’s not a bug. It’s the feature.

Zappos discovered this when they made “Create Fun and A Little Weirdness” an official core value. Some candidates walked away. Perfect. The ones who stayed built a company culture so distinctive that Amazon paid $1.2 billion for it.

Jim Collins’s research in “Built to Last” revealed a counterintuitive finding: companies with authentic core values outperformed the market by 15 to 1. But here’s the key—these weren’t aspirational values. They were descriptive. They captured what the company already was at its best.

The test is simple: Would you fire someone who hits their numbers but violates a core value? If the answer is “probably not,” it’s not actually a core value. It’s wall art.

As Patrick Lencioni puts it: “Values should be so integrated into a company’s operations that they become indistinguishable from the way the organization conducts business.”

Your core values aren’t what you wish to be. They’re the heartbeat of what you already are—the truths that make you uncomfortable to compromise, the principles that cost you something to uphold.

The right values don’t make everyone comfortable. They make the right people committed.

I’ve been watching teams make adjustments lately. The same challenge, different responses.

One team gets feedback that execution is lagging. They immediately add another meeting to the calendar. A “sync” on Fridays to review progress. They’ve now created seven standing meetings each week.

Another team facing the same issue? They eliminate two meetings and create a shared dashboard instead.

Both teams are responding to the same problem. But their choices tell completely different stories about what they actually value.

The first team values the appearance of coordination over the reality of execution. They’re choosing comfort, the familiar ritual of gathering over the harder work of clarifying accountability. More meetings feel like doing something, even when they’re the very thing preventing anything from getting done.

The second team values time. They recognized that their people don’t need more talking about the work. They need more time to do it.

Here’s what I notice: When teams face pressure, they default to adding rather than subtracting. More checkpoints. More approvals. More oversight. It feels safer. But addition is often subtraction in disguise – subtracting autonomy, subtracting focus, subtracting trust.

The adjustments you make under stress reveal your operating system. Do you trust your people or your processes? Do you value speed or certainty? Do you believe in clarity or control?

Last month, a CEO told me his team was struggling with decision-making. So he created a new decision-making framework. Seven steps. A matrix. Required sign-offs at three levels.

I asked him: “What if the problem isn’t that your team doesn’t know how to decide? What if it’s that they’re afraid to?”

He paused. Then admitted he’d recently overruled two decisions publicly.

His adjustment,the framework, wasn’t solving the real problem. It was avoiding it. He was optimizing the wrong thing.

A better approach? Start by asking what the adjustment reveals about your current emphasis.

If you’re adding oversight, ask: Is our real issue capability or trust?

If you’re adding structure, ask: Is our real issue clarity or control?

If you’re adding resources, ask: Is our real issue capacity or priorities?

The most powerful adjustments aren’t additions. They’re subtractions paired with elevation.

Remove the bottleneck, elevate the decision-maker. Remove the report, elevate the conversation. Remove the approval layer, elevate the accountability.

Your adjustments are a mirror. They show you what you actually believe about how value gets created, how decisions get made, how people perform.

Most teams would improve more by making fewer adjustments and questioning the ones they’re about to make.

What are you about to tweak? And what does that choice say about what you really value?

I used to think productivity was about doing more. Longer lists. More meetings. More commitments. If my calendar was full, I must be important. If my to-do list had fifty items, I must be working hard.

But I wasn’t working smart.

Some lists are so long they’re overwhelming. Others are so unstructured that organizing them takes longer than doing the actual work. Either way, we end up demoralized, staring at a monument to our own inadequacy.

Here’s what changed for me: I stopped adding and started subtracting.

The to-don’t list. Not what I should do, but what I shouldn’t.

I stopped taking calls that felt like obligations. I stopped attending meetings without clear outcomes. I stopped saying yes to opportunities that sounded good but didn’t align with where I wanted to go. I stop trying to keep up with the proverbial Joneses.

Daniel Pink talks about eliminating elements that aren’t necessary to create focus and greater alignment. It’s counterintuitive. We think success comes from more – more effort, more hours, more hustle.

But the breakthrough comes from less.

Less distraction. Less busy work. Less pretending that activity equals progress.

When I work with founders and executives, I see the same pattern. They’re drowning in their own to-do lists. They know what matters, but they can’t get to it because they’re buried in what doesn’t.

The to-don’t list changes everything. It’s not about capacity – you likely already have enough of that. It’s about choice. About protecting what matters by saying no to what doesn’t.

What would happen if you spent today deciding what to stop doing?

What would you eliminate?

There’s always someone.

Ever notice? Even amid success, even when things are working, there’s that one person who needs to be critical. Who chooses negative.

Ever wonder what their life looks like?

My mother used to say, “If you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all.”

Simple wisdom. Perhaps the world needs more of it.

Perhaps we all do.

We hold on to strategies that stopped working two years ago.

To org charts designed for a company half our size. To that VP who was brilliant in 2019 but hasn’t grown with us. To the product line that built the business but now drains it.

We know. Deep down, we know.

But giving up the ghost feels like admitting failure.

Here’s what I see working with founders who scale successfully: They practice a different kind of courage. Not the courage to hold on, but the courage to let go.

The ghost isn’t the strategy itself. It’s our attachment to what once worked.

That planning process that felt innovative five years ago? It’s now theater. Everyone knows it. But we keep performing the ritual because stopping feels like sacrilege.

The CEO who built a $50M company told me last week: “I finally admitted our core offering is dying. The moment I said it out loud, my team exhaled. They’d been waiting for permission to stop pretending.”

Giving up the ghost isn’t about quitting. It’s about making room.

Room for the strategy that actually fits your current reality. For the structure your company needs now, not the one it needed then. For the truth your team already knows but won’t say.

The ghost you’re carrying isn’t keeping you safe. It’s keeping you stuck.

What would happen if you put it down?

If you could only accomplish one thing today, what would it be?

Not three things. Not the five most important items on your list. One.

Tim Ferriss asks this question differently: “If this is the only thing I do today, will I be satisfied that it was a good day?”

Most of us won’t answer honestly. We’ll pick something ambitious that sounds impressive. Or we’ll choose the urgent thing screaming loudest. But the real answer—the one that creates actual value—often hides beneath layers of should-do’s and could-do’s.

The founder confuses revenue with profit. The executive mistakes activity for progress. The consultant conflates billable hours with impact.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: knowing your one thing requires you to disappoint someone. A client. A colleague. Maybe even yourself.

Because the one thing isn’t always exciting. Sometimes it’s the difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding. The strategic decision that closes doors. The investment in capability that won’t pay off for months.

Your calendar doesn’t reveal your priorities. Your one thing does.

So ask again: If you do nothing else today, what single action would move everything forward? Not what would make you look busy. Not what would make you feel productive. What would actually matter six months from now?

The answer is probably simpler than you think. And harder than you’d like.

That’s how you know it’s the right one.

Warren Buffett once said, “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” But what happens when leaders refuse to look up from their dashboards entirely?

The ecosystem doesn’t care about your quarterly targets.

Your customers exist in a web of relationships, economic pressures, and cultural shifts that extend far beyond your product. Your competitors draw inspiration from industries you’ve never considered. Your employees bring concerns from their communities, their families, their side hustles.

Yet we manage as if our organizations operate in sterile isolation.

Research from MIT’s Sloan School reveals that companies practicing “systems thinking” outperform narrow-focused peers by 23% in profitability. The data is clear: peripheral vision pays.

The irony cuts deep. The moments when pressure mounts highest—market volatility, competitive threats, internal crises—are precisely when leaders tighten their focus. They zoom in when they should zoom out. They solve symptoms while root causes multiply in the shadows.

Strategic myopia isn’t a leadership flaw. It’s a survival instinct gone wrong.

The best leaders operate like jazz musicians. They listen to the entire ensemble while playing their part. They hear the rhythm section, the melody, the audience response. They adjust not just to their own notes, but to the music being created around them.

Before you dive deep into any problem, step back. Survey the landscape. Notice the connections, the patterns, the ripple effects you hadn’t considered.

The ecosystem rewards those who see it whole.

When someone struggles in their role, our first instinct is to point to them. We question their competence. Their effort. Their fit.

But we’re looking in the wrong direction.

Most performance issues aren’t about the person. They’re about the setup.

That newly promoted manager fumbling through their first team meeting? You gave them a title but no training. The sales rep has been missing targets for three months running? They inherited a broken territory with no transition plan. Is the project leader drowning in competing priorities? You never clarified what success looks like.

We promote people into roles they’ve never done and wonder why they struggle. We create dysfunctional team dynamics, then blame individuals when collaboration fails. We provide unclear expectations, then act surprised when results disappoint.

Before questioning someone’s ability, ask your own system. Rate it honestly on a scale of one to ten. How well have you set this person up to win?

If your answer isn’t a ten, you know where the real work begins.

This isn’t about lowering standards or making excuses. It’s about being honest about cause and effect. Great leaders don’t just expect performance—they architect it.

When you create the conditions for success, most people rise to meet them. When you don’t, even your best people will struggle.

The question isn’t whether they can do the job. The question is whether you’ve given them what they need to do it well.

“How’s that project coming along?” the leader asked.

“I’m waiting to hear back from the supplier,” came the reply.

Wrong answer.

If they’re waiting, they’re not owning. If they’re explaining why something isn’t happening, they’ve missed the point of leadership.

Proper delegation isn’t handing off tasks. It’s transferring ownership. When a leader gives someone responsibility, they’re saying: “I’m leaving this with you.”

Those five words represent complete trust. The leader shouldn’t need to follow up. They shouldn’t have to remind anyone. They shouldn’t be required to check the work. They’ve trusted someone with both execution and accountability.

Many leaders think they’re delegating when they’re merely assigning. They distribute tasks but retain the mental load – the planning, tracking, worrying, and ensuring completion.

That’s not delegation. It’s babysitting with extra steps.

If the leader has to solve problems others encounter, if they must push for progress, if they become the bottleneck waiting for updates – they might as well have kept the task themselves.

This simple principle transforms organizations. It liberates leaders from being the ceiling on their company’s growth. It empowers teams to think like owners rather than order-takers.

The handoff should be clean. The responsibility should be clear. The accountability should be unquestioned.

“I’m leaving this with you” means:

• They’ll handle roadblocks without escalating every challenge
• They’ll communicate proactively, not when asked
• They’ll bring solutions, not just problems
• They’ll treat this as if their name is on the door

IBM legend Thomas Watson Jr. put it plainly: “I never worry about action, but only about inaction.”

A leadership philosophy must include how responsibility is transferred. Without this clarity, growth is forever capped by the leader’s own capacity.

What are leaders holding onto that should be entirely owned by someone else?

Walk into any thriving organization and ask three random employees what metric determines their success. In the best companies, you’ll get the same answer every time. In most companies, you’ll get blank stares or three completely different responses.

Verne Harnish’s Rockefeller Habits teach us that everyone should understand the one or two metrics that determine their success. It sounds simple. It’s rarely practiced.

The disconnect is costing you more than you realize.

The measurement madness

Most leaders believe more metrics mean better management. They create dashboards with 15 KPIs, thinking comprehensive measurement equals comprehensive performance. Instead, they create paralysis through analysis.

When everything gets measured, nothing gets prioritized. Employees spend their days chasing multiple moving targets, unsure which ones actually matter. They’re working harder, not smarter, because they can’t distinguish between activity and achievement.

The irony? Leaders often can’t articulate their own critical metrics. If leadership lacks clarity about what drives success, how can they expect their teams to have it?

What your metrics say about your strategy?

Unclear metrics reveal unclear thinking. They signal that leadership hasn’t done the hard work of identifying what truly drives success versus what simply feels vital to measure.

Multiple competing metrics create competing behaviors. Sales teams optimize for volume when you need quality. Operations teams optimize for efficiency when innovation is needed. Marketing teams optimize for impressions when they need conversions.

Everyone is winning their game while the organization loses the bigger one.

The inevitable consequence

This metric confusion creates a cascade of organizational dysfunction:

Scattered Effort becomes the norm. Teams work hard on activities that don’t correlate with business outcomes. Energy gets dispersed across too many directions instead of being concentrated on breakthrough activities.

Talent Frustration follows quickly. High performers leave because they can’t see how their work connects to meaningful results. They want to make an impact, not just complete tasks.

Growth Stagnation becomes inevitable. Without a clear focus, organizations plateau. They mistake motion for progress, busyness for business results.

The simple test

Here’s your diagnostic: Ask three random employees to identify the metric that determines their success. If you get three different answers, you’ve identified your problem.

The solution isn’t complicated, but it requires discipline. Choose the one or two metrics that truly drive your success. Communicate with them relentlessly. Align every decision, every meeting, and every initiative around them.

Clarity of metrics creates clarity of purpose. When everyone knows the score, everyone can play to win. The question isn’t whether you can afford to get this right—it’s whether you can afford to keep getting it wrong.

Meet two CEOs.

CEO One holds quarterly planning sessions. Sets ambitious targets. Tracks KPIs. Conducts annual reviews. Revenue is growing, but profits lag.

CEO Two does all that but adds one thing: a relentless meeting rhythm. There are daily huddles, weekly alignment sessions, and monthly reviews, each with a specific purpose, a tight agenda, and clear outcomes.

One company feels busy. The other feels focused.

Your execution framework determines whether strategy becomes reality or remains a PowerPoint presentation. Execution isn’t about doing more things—it’s about doing the right things consistently.

The research is clear. Companies with structured meeting rhythms outperform those without them by 3.5x on average profit.

Execution is where most companies falter. Their increasing revenues don’t generate increasing profits. Despite capitalizing on advantages, they watch margins shrink due to poor execution.

The Rockefeller Habits checklist emphasizes three disciplines:

• Setting clear priorities (fewer, better)
• Gathering meaningful data (leading indicators, not just results)
• Establishing compelling meeting rhythms (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly)

These aren’t just good ideas. They’re the difference between consistent growth and constant firefighting.

Consider the daily huddle – a focused 15-minute standing meeting. No discussions. Just what’s done, what’s next, and where help is needed.

When properly implemented, these huddles eliminate 80% of ad-hoc interruptions. They surface issues before they become problems. They create accountability without micromanagement.

But most leaders resist the discipline. It feels too structured. Too basic. Too… obvious.

Yet the companies scaling successfully are those with predictable rhythms. They make complex operations simple through consistent routines.

Sustainable growth doesn’t come from dramatic transformations. It comes from daily habits compounded over time.

The meeting rhythm you establish today will determine your execution excellence tomorrow.

Leaders who pull levers without seeing connections create unintended consequences far beyond their vision.

The Ripple Effect

“Every decision you make sends ripples into the future that you cannot possibly see.” —Ray Dalio

Short-term decisions create long chains of consequences. What seems efficient today might become tomorrow’s crisis.

The collapse of Enron wasn’t sudden. It began with small accounting “innovations” that snowballed until the entire company imploded, destroying thousands of jobs and billions in retirement savings.

Similarly, BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted from cost-cutting decisions prioritizing short-term profits over safety protocols. These choices culminated in 11 deaths and the largest marine oil spill in history.

Blindspots By Design

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” —Peter Drucker

We construct elegant decision frameworks that often reinforce our existing views.

NASA’s Challenger disaster exemplifies this pattern. Engineers warned about O-ring failures in cold temperatures, but management, pressured by scheduling concerns, overruled safety objections. The result: seven astronauts lost, a national tragedy, and a program setback that lasted years.

Kodak, despite inventing the digital camera, refused to pivot from its profitable film business. Their blindspot wasn’t technological but psychological—an inability to cannibalize their core business led to their eventual bankruptcy.

Decisive Yet Reflective

Indecision isn’t thoughtfulness—it’s abdication. The best leaders balance reflection with action. They gather diverse perspective, consider second-order effects, and then move with conviction.

Winston Churchill’s wartime leadership demonstrated this balance: thoughtful strategy combined with decisive execution. In contrast, Napoleon’s Russian campaign showed how even brilliant leaders fail when they dismiss contrary evidence and feedback.

Your stakeholders don’t want perfect decisions. They want a leader who makes clear choices with eyes wide open to consequences.

The mark of leadership maturity isn’t how quickly you decide, but how thoroughly you understand what you’re deciding about.

Make the call. But first, think twice.

The False Choice

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker famously declared. Yet many leaders still believe they must choose between nurturing their people and driving results. They’re solving the wrong equation.

The data tells a different story. Companies ranking in Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” consistently outperform the S&P 500. McKinsey’s research shows that companies with top-quartile employee engagement deliver 21% higher profitability.

The Real Performance Engine

“The difference between a good and a great business is not about the numbers, it’s about the people” – Simon Sinek.

High-performing cultures aren’t built on ping pong tables and casual Fridays. They’re forged through clear expectations, meaningful work, and genuine investment in people’s growth. When people understand their impact and see a path forward, they naturally drive results.

The Leadership Paradox

Mayo Clinic’s century-old motto puts patients first, staff second, and money third. Counter-intuitive? Perhaps. Yet they’ve built one of healthcare’s most profitable and respected institutions.

Great leaders recognize that excellence and wellbeing aren’t opposing forces – they’re symbiotic. Teams pushing for results without care burn out. Teams prioritizing comfort without standards grow complacent.

The Next Level Challenge

Focus on building capability, not just contentment. Set clear standards. Invest in development. Create accountability structures that empower rather than punish. Most importantly, stop viewing people and profits as competing interests.

High performance isn’t achieved by pushing people harder. It’s unleashed by building an environment where people can do their best work. The rest follows naturally.

Your culture isn’t a feel-good initiative. It’s your most powerful performance lever. Use it wisely.

In 1957, when HP was growing rapidly, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard faced constant pressure to fill positions quickly. Yet they famously left key roles vacant for months rather than compromise on talent. But here’s what most miss about their story – they never blamed the talent pool.

Instead of complaining about candidate quality, they examined their recruitment approach. They realized their job descriptions focused on technical skills while overlooking cultural fit. Their interview process tested knowledge but not creativity or initiative.

So they revamped everything. They started hosting university open houses, created summer internship programs, and trained managers to spot potential over polish. Within two years, they had more qualified candidates than openings.

The insight wasn’t about persistence. It was about ownership. While other companies blamed a “talent shortage,” HP’s founders recognized that consistent hiring failures pointed to flaws in their system – their leadership.

Today’s leaders face similar challenges. When teams underperform or positions stay vacant, it’s tempting to fault the market, the candidates, or the team. But exceptional leaders ask more challenging questions: What am I missing? How have I contributed to this pattern? What systems have I built that perpetuate these outcomes?

The team you build reflects the leader you are. If you’re consistently getting the wrong people, stop looking at them and start looking in the mirror.

Trust isn’t given. It’s earned through consistent, deliberate actions. Recent data from Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows 63% of employees trust their direct manager, but only 52% trust their CEO.

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication.” – Stephen R. Covey

The Currency of Authenticity

Actions eclipse words. Harvard Business Review research reveals companies with high trust levels are 2.5x more likely to be high-performing revenue organizations.

Breaking the Status Quo

When leaders admit mistakes, psychological safety increases by 76%, according to Google’s Project Aristotle study.

Your culture becomes what you consistently do, not what you occasionally say. Deloitte’s research shows organizations focused on trust-building behaviors experience 50% higher employee retention.

“In the end, we are our choices.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

The path to trust is unambiguous – it’s paved with consistent actions, fulfilled promises, and unwavering integrity. Each decision is either deposited or withheld from your trust account. The choice is yours.