The gap we notice

We don’t begrudge a leader who prospers. We begrudge the gap between their prosperity and ours. Eat last, and the team barely notices the difference. Eat first, and they notice everything....

Tribes, not logos

Orange isn’t just a color at the World Cup. It’s a promise. So is dark green. So is red, white, and blue. So is the kilt. Nobody hands out that jersey and says “wear this.” People choose it. They choose it because it says something true about...

Talent isn’t the barrier

Cameroon reached the World Cup quarterfinals in 1990. Nobody saw it coming. Then Senegal in 2002. Ghana in 2010. Morocco in 2022, one match from the final. Something changed. It wasn’t money. The American youth soccer system runs on it. A single travel season...

The last optional thing

We used to think of sustainability the way we thought of corporate philanthropy. Nice to have. Good for optics. Something the marketing team could put on the website next to the community garden photo. We were wrong. The companies leading right now aren’t the...

Wired for immaterial

We spend forty-five minutes debating a $300 line item and twelve minutes deciding whether to enter a new market. This is not a time management problem. It is neuroscience taking control. The human brain evolved under conditions that rewarded the immediate and the...

The hub is the ceiling

We build organizations that look like us. At the center. Informed of everything. Signing off on the things that matter and plenty that don’t. It feels like leadership. It feels like being needed. Sam Goodner’s concept of decentralized decision-making...