Leadership
You Are Not the Boss... If You Have to Tell People You Are
When you announce your authority before you've earned it, you're not climbing. You're excavating.
Leadership
Insights on leadership in hospitality, entertainment, and experience-driven ventures.
Business Strategy
Know When to Fold: The Art of Strategic Surrender
Why the smartest form of persistence is knowing when to let go of what's not working.
Leadership
Vision Alone Never Built Anything
Why do brilliant founders with perfect vision still fail? Because they confuse seeing the destination with knowing the path. The architect draws the house. The contractor knows the foundation comes first. Leadership is having the humility to listen.
Business Philosophy
Are You an Impostor?
You've built an elaborate job that's holding your own company hostage. You wanted freedom. You built a prison.
brand-strategy
Love, Laughter, Logic: Why Southwest's New Direction Could Ground Its Soul
Southwest Airlines ended its 54-year "bags fly free" policy on May 28th, 2025, trading a vision that inspired loyalty for a business model that generates revenue and in doing so, committed the fastest way to ruin a historic brand: betrayal.
breakthrough
Simple ≠ Easy
We confuse easy (familiar, low effort) with simple (few moving parts). This creates complexity debt that compounds. True simplicity requires ruthless subtraction.
Leadership
Seeing Around Corners: The Power of Perspective
The smallest change in perspective can transform entire outcomes. Someone once said, 'If you don't have leverage, create it.' That's the ultimate perspective shift; refusing to accept apparent limitations and instead asking what you're missing.
Leadership
The Connector's Edge: How Curiosity and Care Outperform Strategy Alone
Great leaders do more than analyze data. They connect patterns others miss. With curiosity and genuine care, they anticipate change, build trust, and guide teams through complexity with clarity and resilience.
Leadership
Part 4: Leading Beyond Process
An Alternative That Actually Delivers "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." - Ernest Hemingway Lisa sat in her car after another brutal stakeholder meeting, staring at her phone. Three missed calls from her team. Two escalation emails from her
Leadership
Part 3: Leading Beyond Process:
How Traditional Project Management Has Perfected the Art of Failing Successfully Traditional project management has perfected the art of failing successfully. Think about that for a moment. We've created systems so focused on process compliance that they can deliver complete failures while celebrating success. Green dashboards. Met deadlines.
Leadership
Part 2: Leading Beyond Process
The Efficiency Paradox: How Project Management Creates the Waste It's Supposed to Eliminate In Part 1, we exposed the fundamental flaw of traditional project management: its obsession with measuring process adherence instead of actual outcomes. Now let's examine the first devastating consequence of this misalignment, how
Leadership
Part 1: Leading Beyond Process
Project management is essential for coordinating complex initiatives and delivering results. However, there's a fine line between effective project management and counterproductive mismanagement that stifles productivity and demoralizes teams. As Peter Drucker observed, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." The question