The Drama Is Real. It Isn't The Whole Story. Watch an executive get defensive in a steering committee. Someone asks a direct question about the go-live date, and the sponsor's jaw tightens, the voice sharpens, the justification arrives before the question has finished...

Incompetence in the Executive Suite We rarely use the word incompetence for executives. It sounds too blunt for people with the right titles, the right degrees, the right number of years behind their name. So we find softer words instead — bandwidth, style,...

Foundations Most of the suffering in our lives — personal and professional — traces back to one thing. Not bad luck. Not the wrong partner, the wrong product, the wrong market. It traces back to a lack of effort or resources spent building the foundations before we...

M = f(t). Meaning Is a Function of Time. I wrote that down before I wrote anything else, because it's the whole argument in four characters. Meaning is not fixed. It moves with time. And most of the conflict I see leaders carry — with their staff, their kids, their...

Comparison is the fool's tool. And most of us are fools. Not occasionally. Not on our worst days. As a default setting. The mind reaches for comparison the way a hand reaches for a railing — automatically, without being asked to. Here is the first thing worth...

Most of life is spent training for a destination we never actually examine I keep a small drawing on my desk. A line that rises — possessions, association, the slow accumulation of what we call a life — climbs toward a peak labelled "material is important," then bends...

The Edge Nobody Negotiates For There is a moment in most negotiations where one side starts pushing harder. More data. More urgency. A firmer voice. It rarely works, and it rarely needs to. The edge that actually moves things is quieter than that. It comes from asking...