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...

The CEO’s #1 job

We confuse busyness with strategy. We fill the calendar with reviews, standups, pipeline calls, and board prep, and we tell ourselves we are leading. We are not. We are managing. The two are not the same, and the gap between them is where companies stall. The...

Loving your captor

Stockholm syndrome isn’t just a hostage story. It’s a boardroom story. A leadership story. A culture story. The leader who built the company keeps the team loyal to an idea that stopped working three years ago. Not through force. Through familiarity....