Level 1: The Nametag Culture

When people show up but never buy in, and the clock is already running. In We’re All In, I described several case studies where cultures had decayed to the point of causing serious harm — not just to their bottom lines, but to real people. One of them was Barclays Bank. Barclays was among the leading … Read more

From Compliance to Commitment: How Adaptive Leadership Transforms Organizations

The old directive leadership style no longer works. Discover why a culture of commitment and adaptive communication are essential for executive success. Recently I sat down with George Torok, host of Your Intended Message, a business communication podcast, to discuss how Adaptive Leadership and effective communication are inseparable. For decades, many business leaders operated under a … Read more

Why Adaptive Leaders Must Adapt Now

The world didn’t send us a memo. But it did send a message. When I was writing The Power of Being All In, I had the opportunity to interview a number of senior leaders across industries about the leadership challenges they were navigating in a changed world. One of those conversations has stayed with me. … Read more

Why Culture Is Now Your Only Sustainable Advantage

There was a time when scale was an advantage. Or capital. Or access to information. Or geographic dominance. Those days are over. In the Information Age, accelerated by political upheaval, pandemic disruption, social unrest, and technological explosion, those advantages evaporate quickly. What worked yesterday gets copied today and is obsolete tomorrow. I’ve watched this play … Read more

How Remote Work Broke Connectedness

And How Leaders Must Repair It When the pandemic struck in early 2020, businesses did what they had to do. We shut down offices. We sent people home. We improvised. It was the right call. But it came at a cost most of us didn’t fully see until later. In the rush to preserve safety … Read more

Global Unrest And The Leader’s Burden

  Over the course of my military career, I learned early on that uncertainty was part of the fundamentals of strategic planning. The prominent military theorist Carl von Clausewitz described it this way: “No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Conditions shifted. Sometimes the ground literally shook beneath our feet. But what stands … Read more