Strategic clarity at the top. Confusion below.That’s the status quo in too many organizations. The CEO knows exactly what she wants. The board refines and approves it. It sounds brilliant. But then the relay chain takes over:Directors “translate” the business terms → managers “interpret” what it could mean for everyday tasks → and teams can only guess what the strategy actually is. Every layer adds a thought, nuance, perhaps fear and no one can really explain the original intent. But why does...
about 10 hours ago • 1 min read
There’s a very simple reason why most messages don’t spread. It has nothing to do with how smart the message is or how polished and elaborate your argument is. Me and you have seen too many smart, polished, and elaborate arguments fail. The reason is much simpler: People are selfish. They treat their message as if it’s their own. They want others to spread it exactly as they said it. And then they wonder why no one repeats it. Here’s the problem: Sharing is not about you. It’s about what the...
2 days ago • 2 min read
Is this the biggest lie we tell ourselves:“I’ve made it very clear”. Well, not in the strict sense of the word, of course. It’s not technically a lie. You did make it very clear. But we both know that clarity is not really what happens on the stage (or in the email). Clarity is what happens in the hallways, two days later. The actual lie is this: It’s the middle managers’ fault. They just didn’t get it. They passed it along wrong. Spinned it. Mis-quoted you. Which they did. Only that it...
3 days ago • 2 min read
“I’m not a charismatic speaker. Really. I’m an operator.”Well, I don’t believe that matters. I hear this “apology” all the time. Usually from the people who actually run the business. They say things like “I’m too quiet. I’m not funny enough. I hate the spotlight.” Good!, I say. Because your team doesn’t need another entertainer. They have Netflix for that. Don’t forget that you aren’t doing a TED Talk. You are doing Leadership. A TED Talk is designed to entertain strangers for 18...
8 days ago • 1 min read
You’ve done everything the modern leadership books told you to do. You stopped micromanaging.You gave your team ownership.You “empowered” them to find their own solutions. So why does it feel like you're just watching them waste time?Shouldn't “letting them fail” feel like progress? It’s certainly not because your team isn’t smart. And it’s not because you’re a control freak. It’s because you’ve been sold a false binary. Most leaders bounce between Control (which burns you out) and...
10 days ago • 2 min read
“Why am I, the CEO, rewriting this press release at 9 PM? Why am I the only one who sees that this paragraph contradicts our core values?” Oof. At this point, my client was visibly emotional, a mix of angry, frustrated, and simply tired. And it’s such a common phenomenon. In the meeting, everyone says “Got it,” but you know, for a fact, that they are going to go back to their desks and do the wrong thing. So you have two choices: Do it yourself. Let them fail and clean up the mess later. Both...
11 days ago • 2 min read
Sam Altman tried to stomp out a small fire started by his competitor, but he mostly just created a lot of smoke. I think his response to Anthropic’s SuperBowl ads, which mock chatGPT’s plans to launch ads, is worth an analysis. By spending more than half his text arguing from a place of being personally hit (“We are not stupid,” “They are dishonest”), he achieved the opposite of what a leader should do. This is heat, not warmth. It burns, but it doesn’t invite anyone to sit down and listen....
15 days ago • 1 min read
When you watch a typical CEO keynote, you usually feel like you’re being sold to. You have your guards up and you are constantly looking for the holes in their argument.When you watch Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, you don’t feel sold to. You feel informed. He walks you through a series of facts that seem undeniable.How exactly does he do this?Yesterday, I wrote about how he strips away the adjectives and builds his argument with nouns and verbs.But having the right materials is only half the...
16 days ago • 2 min read
When you don’t have an argument, you start selling vocabulary.And the easiest way to spot this is your adjectives. Words like “seamless,” “robust,” “strategic,” and “customer-centric.”Words that sound like business.And feel like you went to the right school. But to me, they signal only one thing: You don’t have an argument. (Or at least: you don’t trust your argument yourself and so you have to artificially juice it up.) I mean, I get it. You want your message to land. You want them to say,...
17 days ago • 2 min read