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...

Who declared victory?

Imagine a sport with no scoreboard. No defined winner. No agreement on what the game even is. We’d call that chaos. We’d never watch it. We’d certainly never play hard for it. Yet we build organizations exactly this way. We set vague goals and call...

Pack your bags

We plan vacations obsessively. Itineraries, reservations, who’s coming, when to leave. We treat projects like chores. Same energy. Same stakes. Often bigger consequences. The founder who maps a project like a trip, knowing the destination, the milestones,...

Expensive paperweights

I’ve seen the glossy-bound strategic plans. Some cost nearly a million dollars to produce. Beautiful documents. Thorough research. Careful analysis. Endless acknowledgments of those who labored over every page. Perfect paperweights. They sit on shelves. Unopened...

Betting on fog

We lose sleep over predictions. The market forecast. The competitor’s next move. Whether this hire will work out. If the strategy lands. We spin scenarios, build models, and stress test assumptions. We place bets on fog and wonder why we’re exhausted....