Category Archives: Leadership

Important or Urgent?

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

People in the corporate world today are busy – overwhelmingly so. Calendars are packed. Emails never stop. Meetings bleed into each other. On paper, it all looks like progress. But under the surface, something more critical is being lost.

This constant busyness creates the illusion of high performance. Output is visible. Actions are taken. Projects get delivered. But the deeper elements that actually build high performance – leadership development, trust, team learning, shared direction – are quietly being squeezed out.

In my work with leadership teams, I’ve seen this again and again: the very things that drive long-term success get de-prioritized, not because people don’t care, but because there’s simply no time left for them.

We talk a lot about performance, but real high-performance leadership isn’t built on urgency. It’s built on clarity, consistency, learning, and the ability to step back and make deliberate choices. When people are in constant motion, there’s no time for that. No time to coach. No time to reflect. No time to ask, “Are we even moving in the right direction?”

I often say that strong, high-performance teams are not just built – they are strategically designed and developed. That takes effort, intent, and most of all, space. But in the middle of never-ending activity, space is exactly what we don’t have.

This isn’t just a feeling. Research backs it up. Cal Newport’s Deep Work explores how modern work habits – from multitasking to nonstop notifications – have eroded our ability to do focused, meaningful work. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, in The Progress Principle, found that what truly motivates people is making meaningful progress. But we interrupt that progress constantly with check-ins, firefighting, and shallow coordination. And studies like the Microsoft Work Trend Index show that most people feel they don’t get even a single hour of true focus time during their day.

It’s not that productivity is bad. But when busyness becomes the default mode, it turns into a trap – one that quietly undermines performance over time.

From a leadership and organizational development perspective, this is deeply concerning. I work with leaders who want to create better environments, who want to strengthen collaboration, sharpen execution, and grow their teams. But when every hour is accounted for, and every conversation is focused on delivery, there’s little room to ask the deeper questions that lead to change.

Worse still, in this kind of environment, team dynamics suffer. Feedback becomes reactive instead of developmental. Learning becomes fragmented. Strategy becomes surface-level. Psychological safety fades, because no one has the space to truly listen or adjust.

And that’s where Amy Edmondson’s research is so relevant. In her work on The Fearless Organization, she defines psychological safety as the shared belief that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks — to speak up, ask questions, make mistakes. It’s a cornerstone of high-performing teams. But here’s the catch: psychological safety doesn’t thrive in a culture of nonstop urgency. It requires time. Presence. Real conversations. If everyone is too busy, no one feels heard – and when people don’t feel heard, they stop contributing fully.

So it’s not just performance that suffers. It’s innovation. It’s trust. It’s the core of how teams work together.

What’s needed instead is a shift from reactive busyness to intentional performance. That means protecting time and mental space for what matters: coaching, alignment, leadership reflection, and team growth. It means giving teams the tools and structure to act with purpose, not just speed. It means creating a rhythm where delivery and development coexist.

High-performance isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters – consistently, deliberately, and together.

So if your team is always too busy to reflect, to connect, to lead – that’s the signal something deeper needs to shift. Because when everything is urgent, we lose sight of what’s truly important.

And without that, performance is just motion.

Image Credit: Stefan Lindegaard

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5 Simple Keys to Becoming a Powerful Communicator

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5 Simple Keys to Becoming a Powerful Communicator

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Sometimes the hardest thing is merely to make yourself understood. Things that change the world, or even a small part of it, always arrive out of context because, by definition, the world hasn’t changed yet. That’s why innovators need to be great communicators, because an idea that doesn’t gain traction is an idea that fails.

That’s easier said than done. As Fareed Zakaria has put it, “Thinking and writing are inextricably intertwined. When I begin to write, I realize that my ‘thoughts’ are usually a jumble of half-baked, incoherent impulses strung together with gaping logical holes between them.” Clearly, if he struggles, we all do.

Yet the good news is that most people can immensely improve their communication skills by following a few simple rules. While, like any skill, they take a lifetime of practice to hone and perfect, you can start seeing progress within a few hours. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur, a senior executive or just starting out, you need to communicate effectively.

1. Clarity Before Creativity, Always

Most people want their writing and speaking to be impressive. They have an idea in their heads of what a “professional” sounds like and they try to emulate those traits. They use big words, infuse acronyms and technical language or try to pluck a choice term or two out of the zeitgeist.

Yet trying to conform to some abstract notion of “professional” or “impressive” is a sure way to garble your message. Instead of trying to impress, just try to be clear. Different people have different conceptions of what they consider to be professional or impressive, but everyone knows what is clear.

The truth is that nobody cares how clever you are if they can’t understand what you’re trying to tell them and few will take the time and effort to figure it out. Most probably, they will assume you haven’t really thought things through and move on to other things.

So as you formulate your message, whether it’s an email, a pitch, a keynote or whatever, continually ask yourself, “how can I make it more clear?”

2. When In Doubt, Take It Out

Born in the late 13th century, William of Ockham was a giant of his age. As one of the few intellectual lights of medieval times, his commentaries on reason, logic and political theory are studied even today. His ideas about the separation of church and state were literally centuries ahead of their time and formed the basis for our own constitutional principle.

Yet he’s best known for Ockham’s Razor, sometimes known as the “principle of parsimony.” Often, the principle is interpreted as “Keep It Simple Stupid,” but that’s not quite right. A much more accurate translation would be, “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” In other words, if something doesn’t need to be there, it shouldn’t be.

A useful device I use for applying Ockham’s razor is to imagine my audience, whether that is a reader or a listener, as having an internal “cognitive budget” they are willing to devote to whatever I’m trying to tell them. Then I judge everything I include by the standard of, “is this worth using up my cognitive budget?”

So be cautious and respectful with your audience’s attention. If you have any doubts whether it needs to be there, it probably doesn’t. Take it out and see if anything meaningful is lost. If not, keep it out and don’t look back.

3. If It Sounds Like Writing, It’s Probably Not Good

When we’re taught to write in school, we’re usually urged to follow a certain form. This often involves an academic, detached tone of voice. For many of the same reasons, when we speak to an audience, our tone takes on a “speaker’s voice. In both cases, the result is that we come off as performative and inauthentic.

Your communication, whether you’re speaking or writing, should sound like you, not someone you’re trying to be at a particular moment. Your vocabulary shouldn’t be significantly different when you write than when you speak. Your grammar and turns of phrase shouldn’t vary too much either. There’s absolutely no reason for you to come off as someone else.

Style should be invisible. If your audience is focusing on how you’re writing or speaking, then that steals cognitive energy away from concentrating on the message you’re trying to communicate. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to sound a certain way, just focus your energy on being as clear as possible.

4. Default To One Point

If you’re going to rob a bank, as a general rule anything you say after “put the money in the bag or I’ll blow your head off,” will be somewhat superfluous. That one simple point is perfectly sufficient for the job at hand. In fact, the uncomfortable pause that follows will probably accentuate the impact of your message.

Now, clearly there are exceptions to the “default to one point” rule. For example, if you kidnapped the teller’s family, that kind of time and effort might warrant adding a second point. Even then though, you might want to let your first point sink in and keep your second point in reserve in case you need to overcome an objection.

Obviously, I’m being facetious and not suggesting anyone actually rob a bank, but the point stands. In most contexts, but especially if you’re on a panel or doing a Q&A session, you’re usually, although not always, better off sticking to one point and making it well than trying to jam in a too much information

And, of course, if they like your one point they’ll be likely to ask for more. That’s how you build a conversation.

5. Dare to be Crap

The hardest thing about starting a project of any sort is that we always compare initial efforts to finished products and, not surprisingly, those efforts always seem to come up short. As Pixar President Ed Catmull wrote in his book, Creativity, Inc., “early on, all of our movies suck.” If it’s true of Pixar movies, it’s probably true of our work.

That makes it really hard to begin writing or scripting, because whatever you first put down is bound to be a disappointment. Your wording will be clumsy, your points will be unclear and you’ll begin to realize that your great idea is actually, as Fareed Zakaria put it, “a jumble of half-baked, incoherent impulses strung together with gaping logical holes between them.”

Your first efforts are always crap. Yet that shouldn’t blind you to the fact that all great works start out that way. As Vladimir Nabokov put it, “writing is rewriting.” The greatness comes not from the initial spark of inspiration, but from the long hours spent honing it down to reveal its core. But before you do that, you need to dare to be crap and produce a first draft.

The truth is that communicating even fairly simple ideas can be very hard work. As in most things, talent is overrated. You produce good work not from having a knack for a clever turn of phrase, but by putting in the effort to express your ideas clearly.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Unsplash

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Allocating Resources to Solve Horizon 2

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Another Tough Challenge

Allocating Resources to Solve Horizon 2

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

We’ve known about this problem forever—how do you find a principled way to allocate budget across three different horizons of ROI.

Horizon 1 pays off in the current year and equates to the funding needed for you to make your operating plan and meet or beat investor guidance.
Horizon 3 pays off downstream, typically by making a speculative bet on an emerging category or market that would come to fruition in the out years. Since it is still early days, these bets are relatively small and can be measured by and managed to venture milestones.
Horizon 2 is the troublemaker. It calls for a material investment in gaining power in the near term in order to compete effectively in the mid-term. That investment will come out of Horizon 1, either from the Performance Zone trying to make the number or from the Productivity Zone trying to supply the needed support to do so, and most likely both.

In short, both internally and externally, Horizon 2 investments are not popular, even though everyone recognizes that they are critical to long-term success. So what is the process by which one can do right by them?

The key is to recognize that the ROI from Horizon 2 is measured in units of power, whereas that from Horizon 1 is measured in units of performance, and that the two must not be mixed. Now, to be clear, performance creates the funding for power, and power creates the foundation for performance, so they are deeply intertwined. But each has its own metrics of success, and the time lag between them says they cannot be blended.

Power always precedes performance. To underfund power is to jeopardize your future performance, the ultimate result being the liquidation of your franchise. To underfund performance, on the other hand, is to jeopardize the cash flow that you need to fund power, putting your market cap at risk, the ultimate result being to attract an activist investor who will oversee the liquidation of your franchise. There is no safe path to take, only a precarious middle way to traverse.

Now, again to be fair, in good times when your category is enjoying secular growth, you get to have your cake and eat it too. That is, you produce amazing cash flow, have a fabulous market cap, and have resources aplenty to invest as you choose. My colleagues still refer to the period leading up to the first tech bubble as “ the time of the great happiness.” Be that as it may, for most of us in 2024 (our friends in GenAI being a notable exception), this is not such a year. We have to make tough choices, and we have to make them now.

So, back to process — and CFOs, take note because you’re likely the one to be leading it.

Separate strategic planning from annual budgeting by at least one quarter.
Charge each business unit to pitch a strategic plan that would create returns substantially above and beyond their current operating model. Included in this plan is a ballpark estimate of the funding that would be required to implement it.
Facilitate an Executive Leadership Team review of the overall portfolio of opportunities, culminating in a rank-ordered list.
Consult with the CEO to determine how much of next year’s operating budget can be allocated to strategic investments, and in that context, which investments should be prioritized for funding. This funding will be allocated in advance of the operational budgeting and ring-fenced to ensure it is spent as intended.
Most strategic investments will be funded as nested incubations, meaning they will be managed within an existing business unit, and are funded as part of their operating budget. However, you must insist that these efforts be isolated, measured, and accounted for separately from the core business, as they are intended to deliver power outcomes, not performance outcomes, and need to be held accountable to different success metrics. (If you do not do this, their operating budget funds will drift away to supplement Horizon efforts to make the number, and the strategic initiative will falter for lack of sufficient investment.)
Truly disruptive incubations, on the other hand, need to be funded outboard of the current business unit structure, in a corporate Incubation Zone, governed by an Incubation Zone board managing a ring-fenced Incubation Zone fund, following the operating model of venture capital. This is covered in detail in Zone to Win.
At this point budgeting can turn its attention to Horizon 1 and how best to allocate funding to hit the current year’s financial targets.

This process solves for two perennial missteps in annual budgeting. The first we might call “the leftovers approach.” First, you allocate all the resources needed to make your Horizon 1 commitments, and then you look to what’s left to fund strategic initiatives. There will be some resources in the kitty, but not as much as there could be since Horizon 1 managers want to reserve some contingency funding. The result is a bias toward modest investing in incremental innovations that do not create future power but rather extend the current footprint.

The second misstep we can call “the variable approach.” Here you allocate half the resources at the beginning of the year and make the second half allocation contingent upon meeting the Horizon 1 plan for that period. The problem here is that strategic initiatives require sustained investment throughout their time in the J-curve. If you flinch and pull back at any point, you lose momentum, never to be regained. This is a big advantage venture-backed companies have over in-house efforts and one of the reasons why VCs love to invest in a downturn.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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How to Figure Out What’s Next

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How to Figure Out What's Next

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Every day starts and ends in the present. Sure, you can put yourself in the future and image what it could be or put yourself in the past and remember what was. But, neither domain is actionable. You can’t change the past, nor can you control the future. The only thing that’s actionable is the present.

Every morning your day starts with the body you have. You may have had a more pleasing body in the past, but that’s gone. You may have visions of changing your body into something else, but you don’t have that yet. What you do today is governed and enabled by your body as it is. If you try to lift three hundred pounds, your system as it is will either pick it up or it won’t.

Every morning your day starts with the mind you have. It may have been busy and distracted in the past and it may be calm and settled in the future, but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is your mind as it is. If you respond kindly, today’s mind is responsible, and if your response is unkind, today’s mind system is the culprit. Like it or not, your thoughts, feelings and actions are the result of your mind as it is.

Change always starts with where you are, and the first step is unclear until you assess and define your systems as they are. If you haven’t worked out in five years, your first step is to see your doctor to get clearance (professional assessment) for your upcoming physical improvement plan. If you’ve run ten marathons over the last ten months, your first step may be to take a month off to recover. The right next step starts with where you are.

And it’s the same with your mind. If your mind is all over the place your likely first step is to learn how to help it settle down. And once it’s a little more settled, your next step may be to use more advanced methods to settle it further. And if you assess your mind and you see it needs more help than you can give it, your next step is to seek professional help. Again, your next step is defined by where you are.

And it’s the same with business. Every morning starts with the products and services you have. You can’t sell the obsolete products you had, nor can you sell the future services you may develop. You can only sell what you have. But, in parallel, you can create the next product or system. And to do that, the first step is to take a deep, dispassionate look at the system as it is. What does it do well? What does it do poorly? What can be built on and what can be discarded? There are a number of tools for this, but more important than the tools is to recognize that the next one starts with an assessment of the one you have.

If the existing system is young and immature, the first step is likely to nurture it and support it so it can grow out of its adolescence. But the first step is NOT to lift three hundred pounds because the system-as it is-can only lift fifty. If you lift too much too early, you’ll break its back.

If the existing system is in it’s prime and has been going to the gym regularly for the last five years, its ready for three hundred pounds. Go for it! But, in parallel, it’s time to start a new activity, one that will replace the weightlifting when the system can no longer lift like it used to. Maybe tennis? But start now because to get good at tennis requires new muscles and time.

And if the existing system is ready for retirement, retire it. Difficult to do, but once there’s public acknowledgement, the retirement will take care of itself.

If you want to know what’s next, define the system as it is. The next step will be clear.

And the best time to do it is now.

Image credit: Pixabay

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How Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos Learn About Customer Experience

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When the CEO Picks Up the Phone

How Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos Learn About Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Jeff Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon, shared a fascinating leadership story on the Lex Fridman Podcast about how he wanted to ensure his customers received the best customer experience (CX). In Amazon’s early days, Bezos noticed a discrepancy between the “wait times” the customer support department was reporting and the feedback customers shared. The support team reported wait times of less than 60 seconds, but customers told a different story. Instead of asking for more data, Bezos took matters into his own hands. He picked up the phone during a meeting with the leadership team and called Amazon’s customer service number himself.

The result was a ten-minute wait!

That one phone call did more than just expose a problem. It demonstrated the kind of leadership that sets the tone for others to follow. When the CEO is willing to experience what customers experience, it sends a clear message: customer service and CX are more than a department or a strategy. They are everyone’s responsibility.

Frontline Experience

When Leaders Get Out of Their Offices

This story illustrates the importance of leaders getting out of their offices and experiencing what’s happening in the field or on the front line. Reading reports and analyzing data are part of the job, but when it comes to customer experience, nothing beats getting firsthand information.

Bezos, in effect, mystery shopped his company, pretending to be a customer. What he was really doing was trying to get to the truth. Sometimes the truth can be experienced directly, or it can be observed.

For example, as I wrote about in my book I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers To Come Back Again and Again, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, visited the company’s product support center and talked to customers. He sat down at a desk in a cubicle, put on a headset, picked up the phone and said, “Hello, this is Microsoft Product Support, William speaking. How can I help you?”

The beauty of these simple strategies, which provide firsthand information about what customers are experiencing, what they’re asking or what they’re complaining about, is that, for the cost of a little time and effort, they’re incredibly revealing. You don’t need surveys. You need to be willing to see your company through your customers’ eyes.

One other thought about what Bezos and Gates did. They didn’t keep their efforts a secret. When your team sees you personally calling your company or taking customer support calls, they understand that customer service and CX are a priority that starts at the top.

So, take a page from the Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates playbooks. Pick up the phone. Visit a store. Experience your website. Spend time on the front line. Experience and learn about your business as your customer would. You might be surprised by what you discover, and your customers are sure to appreciate the changes that follow.

Image credits: Unsplash

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Do You Have What It Takes to be a Visionary?

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Exclusive Interview with Mark C. Winters

Visionaries are often celebrated for their ideas, their intensity, and their ability to see what others can’t. But what’s far less understood — and far more consequential — is how Visionaries actually win over time. Not just by dreaming bigger futures, but by building the clarity, structure, and self-awareness required to make those futures real without burning themselves or their organizations to the ground.

In this wide-ranging interview, we explore what it truly means to be a Visionary inside a growing organization. From the essential partnership between Visionary and Integrator, to the hidden blind spots that slow progress, to the role of health, self-knowledge, and what “winning” really looks like, this conversation goes well beyond mythology. It offers a grounded, experience-tested look at how Visionaries can amplify their impact, reduce chaos, and create the kind of freedom they were chasing in the first place.

Today we dive deep into the characteristics and interactions of the Visionary with our special guest.

From Vision to Reality: What It Really Takes to Lead What’s Next

Mark C. Winters is an entrepreneurial leader with 30-plus years building and advising companies, from startups sketched on a napkin to global enterprises like Proctor & Gamble and BP.

This range of experience helps him spot patterns fast and apply what works to almost any business scenario. Author of Visionary, co-author of Rocket Fuel, founder of Rocket Fuel University, and host of the Rocket Fuel podcast, Mark helps visionary entrepreneurs get unstuck and expand their unique freedom — exponentially.

He’s delivered 1,000+ full-day EOS® workshops with clients from around the world.

Below is the text of my interview with Mark and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Visionary: How Driven Entrepreneurs Get What They Want Without Doing It All Themselves presented in a Q&A format:

1. What is a Visionary and why does every successful organization have one?

A Visionary is the person who sees the future before it arrives. Endless ideas to help us get there. Big external relationships.

They live in the world of possibility. They connect dots others don’t yet see. They define where the organization is going and why that matters.

Every ambitious organization has one, whether they acknowledge it or not. Progress doesn’t come from squeezing more out of what we have… It comes from seeing a future that doesn’t yet exist. Absent a Visionary, organizations tend to stay pretty much where they are. Maybe they do more of the same. Or maybe they do the same stuff a little better. But they’re unlikely to actually change the game.

That said, here are two important notes:

Every organization doesn’t require the same amount of Visionary. There’s actually a range that we call the “visionary spectrum.” It needs to be a match.
Visionaries don’t win by themselves. Vision alone, without execution, is merely hallucination. And that’s quite often the biggest challenge.

2. How does the Visionary differ from the Integrator and why do you need both?

The Visionary sees the future. They “make it up.”
The Integrator “makes it real.”

Visionaries think in leaps. Integrators think in projects, processes, and systems. Visionaries are energized by what could be. Integrators are energized by what must get done.

You need both because they solve different problems. Visionaries break through ceilings. Integrators remove friction and create traction. When they’re aligned, you get clarity, momentum, and leverage. When they’re not, you get chaos, burnout, and frustration.

This is an intentional pairing of two very different capability sets. When surrounded by the right structure (which we call the 5 Rules), the friction of these polar differences gets blended into a powerful positive force. Thus the name of our first book, ROCKET FUEL (with Gino Wickman).

3. What are the key elements of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) that make it so powerful?

EOS works because it does three things exceptionally well:

It creates clarity and focus: vision, priorities, roles, and expectations are no longer fuzzy.
It instills discipline: weekly pulses, data, and accountability replace good intentions.
It strengthens the leadership team. They get healthy. Important issues get surfaced and solved – instead of avoided.

For Visionaries, a “business operating system” such as EOS is powerful because it aligns the energy of all the people in the organization. It’s very powerful when all those arrows are pointed in the same direction.

4. Why is it so important for a Visionary to understand themselves — and what are they trying to understand?

Because “Knowing Thyself” is the big multiplier.

It all starts with figuring out who you are now, and where you want to go.

From there, you must understand how this business is going to help you make that happen.

And then become aware of how your behavior is either helping or hurting that process.

Visionaries don’t need to become different people. They need to become clearer versions of who they already are.

They’re trying to understand:

What truly energizes them
What drains them
Where they create the most value
Where they unintentionally cause damage

Without that clarity, Visionaries tend to overstep, under-delegate, or send mixed signals. With it, they make better decisions, build better teams, and experience more freedom.

5. Why is the crashing together of the wellness and biohacking trends so important for entrepreneurs?

Because Visionaries are high-output humans running long races. This demands that you maintain “Warrior Shape.”

You can’t separate performance from health anymore. Energy, focus, emotional regulation, and recovery all directly impact leadership effectiveness.

The danger is chasing hacks instead of fundamentals. Biohacking without the proper foundation can become another form of self-sabotage.

Elite performance starts with basics: sleep/recovery, fitness/movement, nutrition, and boundaries. Get those right first. Then optimize from there.

6. What are some of the most common blind spots for visionaries?

A few show up again and again:

Thinking out loud without context
Changing direction too quickly (or too often)
Holding onto too much for too long (becoming the bottleneck)
Confusing passion with priority
Underestimating the impact of their words

These blind spots don’t come from ego or bad intent. They come from the very natural instincts and habits of people who are wired as Visionaries. However, left unchecked, they slow everything down. In turn, slowing the Visionary themselves from getting what they want.

7. Tell us more about Intrinsic Genius and why it matters.

Intrinsic Genius lives at the intersection of three things:

Competence – what you’re naturally good at
Joy – what energizes you most
Drive – the purpose and cause that propel you forward

When Visionaries operate inside that zone, their impact compounds. When they drift outside it, everything feels heavier than it should.

Understanding Intrinsic Genius isn’t about self-indulgence. It’s about tapping fully into the unique contribution you were built to make. And your maximum impact.

Intrinsic Genius

8. Are all Visionaries the same?

Not even close.

I talked earlier about the Visionary Spectrum. And that’s one way to think about it – as a defined function of the business that requires a certain set of capabilities.

While the Visionary patterns are similar, they certainly show up in different ways. Some are bold and extroverted. Others are quiet and introverted. Some thrive on disruption. Others on pulling things together. What they share isn’t style, it’s their orientation toward the possible future.

9. Besides partnering with an Integrator, what other roles should surround a Visionary?

Visionaries need what I call a “shield wall” to surround them. Protecting them from dangerous external threats, and preparing them to engage the world from their most powerful base.

A great shield wall is made up of 7 unique “posts” that support the Visionary by providing 7 special “forces.”

That includes:

Truth-tellers who challenge their thinking
Operators who translate ideas into action
Coaches who help them see patterns
Peers who can relate to the journey

Isolation is a common feeling for a Visionary. Having the right people around them can stabilize and amplify their signal.

10. People lionize Visionaries like Steve Jobs. How do Visionaries go off-track?

Usually in three ways:

They start believing their own mythology
They confuse intensity with effectiveness
They stop listening

Visionaries go off-track when their strengths run unchecked. Greatness isn’t about being right more often. (In fact, intellectual humility is a healthy attribute.) Instead, it’s about building structure that creates clarity, alignment, and focus in everyone else, while you pursue what’s possible.

11. What is Visionary Chaos and how is it avoided?

Visionary chaos is what happens when ideas outpace clarity, alignment, and execution. They flood the system. They tamper.

It shows up as initiative overload, organizational whiplash, confused priorities, exhausted teams, uncertainty, and slow execution.

It’s avoided through structure, cadence, and restraint. Not by silencing the Visionary, but by sequencing their best ideas. Go slow to go fast.

12. Why is it dangerous for leaders to think out loud?

Because Visionaries don’t always realize how loud their voice is to the people around them .

What feels like a passing thought to a Visionary often feels like a directive to those who hear it. Thinking out loud creates false urgency, unnecessary work, and more whiplash.

This can be avoided by creating safe places to think out loud – where everyone present knows that’s what’s happening… and label the brainstorming. “No Action Needed.”

13. Is there a question you wish I had asked?

Yes.

How does a Visionary know if they’re actually winning?

In my experience, this question is not just about financial numbers, but about your Unique Freedom. Your definition of that is different than mine, is different than theirs, and is different than every other Visionary’s. It’s truly unique to you. So you must first solve for that. This is why I created the Exponential Freedom Model, and the 9 Domains of Freedom.

Clarify the future you want. Draw a line back to the present. Then focus on the near-term activities (and habits) that will increase the probability of making that future real.

“Clarity. Focus. Freedom.”
It’s that simple – just not easy.

To experience more of the Unique Freedom you seek, without being trapped by the business you built. That’s the real promise of becoming a great Visionary.

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Mark!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the man behind the insightful new title Visionary: How Driven Entrepreneurs Get What They Want Without Doing It All Themselves!

Image credits: Mark C. Winters, ChatGPT

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Building Trust as a New Leader

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Building Trust as a New Leader

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Most new leaders know they need to build trust with their team. But here’s where it gets tricky: what if it’s not your team — at least, not yet?

Imagine stepping into a leadership role where you didn’t get to pick the team. Maybe you were hired from outside the organization. Maybe you were promoted from another department. Either way, you’re the new leader, and the team you’re inheriting doesn’t know you yet. You don’t know if they’ve been burned before by a previous boss. You don’t know what scars or successes they carry. What you do know is that you need to build trust — and fast.

This is where most new leaders stumble. They try to shortcut the process. They launch a flurry of team-building exercises. They host lunches. They schedule marathon one-on-one meetings. These efforts come from a good place, but they often miss the mark. Because trust isn’t actually built. Trust isn’t even earned. Trust is reciprocated.

And if you’re serious about developing trust with a new team, you need to understand how that trust loop really works — and how to keep it moving forward.

Why Traditional Trust-Building Strategies Fall Short

When stepping into a new leadership role, it’s tempting to think that trust builds linearly — more lunches, more meetings, more smiles equals more trust. But that’s not how trust actually grows.

Trust moves in a loop, not a line. It starts with a small trust connection — maybe a conversation over coffee — and invites a tiny leap of faith from your team. Someone shares a new idea or dares to give you honest feedback. If you respond with respect — if you listen, appreciate, and show genuine curiosity — you complete the loop. You signal: It’s safe to trust me.

That small leap leads to slightly bigger risks. More candid conversations. More creative ideas. More vulnerability across the board. If you keep meeting those risks with respect, the trust loop keeps spinning faster and stronger. But if you miss those moments — or worse, get defensive — you stop the loop cold.

For a new leader, mastering this trust loop is everything.

Trust Loop

How a New Leader Can Truly Build Trust

Building trust with a team you didn’t pick requires deliberate, daily actions. Here are four research-backed strategies to get the trust loop turning — and keep it spinning.

1. Signal Vulnerability Early

Everyone already knows you’re new. They know you don’t have all the answers yet. Pretending otherwise just makes you seem insecure or out of touch. Instead, lean into your newness.

Say things like, “I’m still learning how this team works.” Then prove it by listening. Create a space where people feel safe to teach you. This early show of vulnerability sparks empathy — and empathy is the gateway to trust.

When a new leader admits they don’t have it all figured out, it invites others to open up, too. It shows that you’re not just here to impose your will — you’re here to learn and lead together.

2. Share Information Transparently

Eventually, as the new leader, you will need to drive change. That’s probably part of why you were brought in. But when you do, don’t operate behind closed doors.

Instead, treat your team like insiders. Pull back the curtain. Share early information about strategy shifts or organizational changes. Say things like, “This isn’t finalized yet, but here’s what I’m hearing and thinking — and I’d love your perspective.

Transparency builds belonging. It signals, I trust you with this information. And when people feel trusted, they’re much more likely to trust you in return.

3. Respond to Vulnerability with Respect

When your team members finally take a risk — whether it’s sharing a frustration, giving you feedback, or floating a bold idea — recognize it for what it is: a test.

They’re not trying to undermine you. They’re trying to see if you’re the real deal.

Your job isn’t to defend your decisions or your leadership history. It’s to listen. Ask clarifying questions. Thank them for being honest. Engage with their ideas sincerely — even if you don’t ultimately agree.

The way you respond to those early leaps of faith will define whether the trust loop accelerates — or seizes up.

4. Amplify Unheard Voices

One of the easiest ways to build trust with a new team is to ensure every voice is heard, especially the quieter ones. When historically quiet team members finally speak up, make it clear their input matters. Amplify their ideas in meetings. Circle back to them in discussions. Let the entire team see that contributions aren’t just tolerated — they’re valued. Without open communication, hierarchy and politics creep in fast. By contrast, when people feel heard and respected, they lean in with greater commitment and creativity.

Trust First, Change Second

Inheriting a team is tough. You’re stepping into a culture you didn’t create, with dynamics you don’t fully understand yet. And because you’re the new leader, it’s tempting to rush into action — prove yourself, make changes, shake things up. Resist that temptation.

The real work of a new leader is not about being liked. It’s about being vulnerable. Encouraging interpersonal risks. Meeting those risks with deep respect. That’s how you build trust. That’s how you turn a group of individuals into a committed team.

Because at the end of the day, you don’t want a compliant team that simply does what they’re told. You want a committed team that’s ready to go above and beyond — and commitment always starts with trust.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Tackle Your Toughest Challenge This Year

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Tackle Your Toughest Challenge This Year

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

This is the first in what I hope to be an extended series of blogs focused on a single topic: What is the toughest challenge your company faces today, and what would it take to overcome it? I’ve reached out to my network, so I have a few good ones to start with, but needless to say, I would be very interested to learn what you are up against in your enterprise. In the meantime, here is my first shot on goal:

“I think we had stopped innovating for a long time. Customers were disappointed. But over the past few years, we have made massive improvements to our products. In fact, many who use the products feel like they are best in class. Our big challenge is getting the market to recognize that we are not the company we were a decade ago. This tends to be very easy to accomplish in small pockets but is a huge challenge at scale.”

There is a whole cohort of global enterprises that are facing this conundrum, including the iconic enterprise tech companies that rode the client-server/Internet wave to become the great growth stocks of the 1990s, who then became overshadowed by the massive mobile/cloud wave that has driven consumer tech successes in this century, and who are now institutional, single-digit-growth anchor holdings in today’s value investors’ portfolios. What would it take to free their future from the pull of the past?

The answer comes in two parts. First, they have to participate in a wave of disruptive innovation that is inside the tornado, with AI and ML being likely current candidates. They don’t have to be the first mover or even the category leader, but they do have to gain a substantial share of some piece of the pie, enough for the world to see they are a real player and that their growth prospects have therefore materially changed. This is something that can — indeed must — be powered by internal forces, management committing to the risk, engineering committing to the task, go-to-market committing to the sales, and everyone competing like crazy to get enough share to be taken seriously.

This is a big deal in itself, but not as the quote above makes clear, the toughest challenge. Instead, it creates the toughest challenge, which is how to get the world to acknowledge and buy into the good work that has been done and that is continuing to be done. Specifically, the challenge is how to change the narrative.

Narratives are how we make sense of the world. They are the stories we tell about ourselves, our friends, our enemies, the products we use, the causes we participate in — you name it, if we have any stake in it, we tell stories about it. These stories circulate, and after a while, they become institutionalized as received wisdom or established reputation or brand image. As with “your father’s Oldsmobile,” everybody knows that so-and-so is such-and-such, without anyone giving it much thought. These narratives become signposts along the road of life. We expect them to stay the same. And that, of course, is what makes them so hard to change.

To change the narrative you need a forcing function. This has to be external to your enterprise, something that causes the world to reorient itself, and in so doing, to realize that its old signposts may no longer serve. In tech, we have been blessed with a plethora of forcing functions, something Joseph Schumpeter taught us to call “waves of creative destruction.” Such waves radically alter the allocation of budgets, and in so doing, they run roughshod over the old highways along with any of their signposts. To change your narrative, you have to position your enterprise in their path.

Satya Nadella’s “Cloud first, Mobile first” is a good example. Cloud threatened to creatively destroy Microsoft’s back office franchise, and mobile threatened to do the same to its PC operating system monopoly. Both were forcing functions. Now, it turns out that mobile did not work out for them, but cloud surely did. The point is, Satya’s tagline redefined Microsoft’s position, putting it in line for a whole new generation of investment. AMD is doing the same thing with AI chips, following Nvidia’s lead, just as Microsoft was following Amazon Web Services. Iconic companies do not have to lead the next wave. Nobody expects that, although Apple astoundingly did so not once, not twice, but three times within a space of little more than a decade. But because iconic enterprises have global footprints, because they are well positioned to capitalize on the new wave of change, they get the benefit of the doubt once they have demonstrated they can deliver products or services that make the grade.

That phrase “Satya’s tagline” leads me to my last point. You would think that changing the corporate narrative should be the function of corporate marketing, but it never is. First of all, it is unpopular, and marketing teams, aligned as they are with sales teams, are reluctant to do anything that would offend. Second, marketing does not have the clout. It wasn’t the tagline that anchored Microsoft’s change. It was the CEO himself, with the backing of the board.

And buried therein lies the third challenge — changing the narrative is deeply unpopular with value investors, particularly when it entails internal investments that impact earnings per share. It is not easy for a board of directors, who are continually reminded they are there to represent the interests of the shareholders, and the CEO, who is highly compensated to manage for shareholder value, to take a step back and do what they believe is the right thing for the long term.

Beneath a change in any corporate narrative, therefore, there is an underlying meta-narrative about the role of enterprise in relation to all its stakeholders. This includes its customers, partners, employees, and communities, as well as its investors. In that context, customers are family — they have skin in your game and are likely to stick with you through thick and thin. Investors, by contrast, do not. Your company is a financial instrument in their portfolio, and should it cease to perform the financial role they have in mind for it, they have no reason to hold onto it. You still need to take their interests seriously — they are your financial foundation — but they are not your reason for being. Customers are. So should you undertake to change your narrative, focus on why your customers need you to do so. They are your North Star.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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What to Do When Your Plans Are Already Obsolete

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HINT: It has something to do with strategy execution

What to Do When Your Plans Are Already Obsolete

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

We are three full weeks into the new year and I am curious, how is the strategy and operating plan you spent all Q3 and Q4 working on progressing? You nailed it, right? Everything is just as you expected and things are moving forward just as you planned.

I didn’t think so.

So, like many others, you feel tempted to double down on what worked before or chase every opportunity with the hope that it will “future-proof” your business.

Stop.

Remember the Cheshire Cat, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

You DO know where you’re going because your goals didn’t change. You still need to grow revenue and cut costs with fewer resources than last year.

The map changed. So you need to find a new road.

You’re not going to find it by looking at old playbooks or by following every path available.

You will find it by following these three steps (and don’t require months or millions to complete).

Return to First Principles

When old maps fail and new roads are uncertain, the most successful leaders return to first principles, the fundamental, irreducible truths of a subject:

Organizations are systems
Systems seek equilibrium and resist change when elements are misaligned
People in the system do what the system allows, models, and rewards

Returning to these principles is the root of success because it forces you to pause and ask the right questions before (re)acting.

Ask Questions to Find the Root Cause

Based on the first principles, think of your organization as a lock. All the tumblers need to align to unlock the organization’s potential to get to where you need to go. When the tumblers don’t align, you stay stuck in the dying status quo.

Every organization has three tumblers – Architecture (how you’re organized), Behavior (what leaders actually do), and Culture (what gets rewarded) – that must align to develop and execute a strategy in an environment of uncertainty and constant change.

But ensuring that you’ve aligned all three tumblers, and not just one or two, requires asking questions to get to the root cause of the challenges.

Is your leadership team struggling to align on a decision because they don’t have enough data or can’t agree on what it means? The Behavior and Culture tumblers are misaligned with the structure and incentives of Architecture

Are people resisting the new AI tools you rolled out? Architectural incentives and metrics, and leadership communications and behaviors are preventing buy-in.

Struggling to squeeze growth out of a stagnant business? Structures and systems combined with organization culture are reinforcing safety and a fixed mindset rather than encouraging curiosity and learning.

Align the Tumblers

When you diagnose the root causes you find the misaligned tumbler. And, in the process of bringing it into alignment, it will likely pull the others in, too.

By role modeling leadership behaviors that encourage transparent communication (no hiding behind buzzwords), quantifying confidence, and smart risk taking, you’ll also influence culture and may reveal a needed change in Architecture.

Modifying the metrics and rewards in Architecture and making sure that your communications and behavior encourage buy-in to new AI tools, will start to establish an AI-friendly culture.

Overhauling Architecture to encourage and reward actions that expand that stagnant business into new markets or brings new solutions to your existing customers, will build new leadership Behaviors will drive culture change.

Get to your Goals

It’s a VUCA/BANI world AND It’s only going to accelerate. That means that the strategy you developed last quarter and the operational plans you set last month will be obsolete by the end of the week.

But the strategy and the plan were never the goal. They were the road you planned based on the map you had. When the map changes, the road does, too. But you can still get to the goal if you’re willing to fiddle with a lock.

Image credit: Pixabay

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You Cannot Be Too Busy to Prioritize

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You Cannot Be Too Busy to Prioritize

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

Most teams I meet are swamped. Everyone is busy. Prioritization becomes a task on its own – or a quick fix to sort the chaos.

But here is the trap:

Prioritization often defaults to short-term execution.

We solve what is urgent.

We push what is noisy.

We clear the decks – but rarely step back.

What gets left behind?

Long-term initiatives
Capability-building
Strategic reflection
Learning, networking, and future growth

All of it gets labelled “nice to have.”

And that is where performance erodes over time.

High-performance leadership means protecting what matters – even when it is not urgent.

It is not just about doing things right. It is about making space for the things that keep you moving in the right direction.

So next time someone says, “We are too busy to focus on this right now” …

Ask: What will it cost us later if we do not?

Image Credit: Stefan Lindegaard

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