Lead In 30

Co-founder of Lead In 30 - the future of leadership development. Organizations use Lead In 30 as the new way to train and develop leaders.

Co-Founder

Lone Rock Consulting

We help senior executives teams get aligned and accelerate achieving Key Results. Honored to work with leaders of some of the biggest companies in the world.

Senior Partner, Co-Founder

CULTURE PARTNERS 

Was senior partner and worked with senior executives of Amazon, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Cigna, HCA, Hormel, and other companies in 14 countries.

Senior Partner

Spectrum Association Management

Was on the senior leadership team of a market disruptor called Spectrum Association Management based in Texas. Helped transition the company from being a Hill family-owned startup to a corporation managing more than 900 communities. 

This experience was basic training in building process to drive scale and customer experience design to drive growth. Was quite the ride!

Vice President of Growth

Bonneville International

I worked as an executive for a national broadcast company during the final glory days of traditional media. We purchased underperforming media brands in top 50 markets and my role ultimately became to help turn them around. 

This is where I began learning the importance of culture management. How do you turn underperformers into revenue and ratings leaders in less than three years? I discovered you have to change the culture.

Vice President of Operations

KSL Media

Worked as a reporter and anchor, and then led news and sports teams at KSL Media. Covered news events ranging from a tsunami in Indonesia that killed 250,000 people to Olympic Games to Elizabeth Smart's disappearance and remarkable return.

Director of News, Programming, and Reporter/Anchor

KTSA Radio

Was general assignment reporter for KTSA Radio.  Covered everything from the LA riots following the Rodney King verdict to the lunch time massacre in Killeen to the daily news events in San Antonio. Ok, those were the BIG stories. Let's be honest - I was usually reporting on house fires and car chases.

News Reporter

Cofounder of Lead In 30 • Upgrade your leaders • Human resources and leadership development

It was one of the most memorable moments of my career. I was standing in the front of the room finishing a meeting with the top 200 leaders of a large hospital system in the DC area. I handed the microphone to the CEO to close us out. What he said shocked me and has stuck with me for years. After hours of discussion about the culture of his organization of 18,000 people that day he ended the meeting looking into the eyes of his top 200 and saying into the microphone, "I have come to an inconvenient and disgusting conclusion that I am the problem."

That's a direct quote.

He was gone less than two months later. 

He left.

For almost a decade I've traveled the world meeting with leaders of some of the world's biggest companies. Amazon, Walmart, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Cigna, Hormel, BD, Darden Restaurants, Fox, and HCA to name a few. I've averaged 165 flights a year. New York, London, Singapore, Sydney, New Zealand, and a lot of less notable locales have been stops along the way.

Here's what I've learned...

Leaders make or break an organization.

They are the competitive advantage.

Or the anchor sinking the ship.

One leader can change everything. Positively or negatively.

After years of consulting senior executives on their company-wide culture transformation projects I'm now spending all of my time with a smaller group of leaders. Call them executive coaching clients or whatever you want. They are leaders of teams, divisions, business areas, or enterprises that aren't yet who they want to become.

We help successful executives grow their careers through strengthening their leadership effectiveness.

That's the phrase we wrote as we founded our firm.

Perhaps you're that leader who could benefit from our questions, perspective, and proprietary models. Or maybe you know that leader.  

DM me. 

I'd love to chat. 🎯

Russ Hill

Jim Farley didn’t panic. He built urgency without chaos. That’s why Ford beat the clock on EVs. In 2020, Farley took over a Ford that was years behind Tesla...

Deadlines loomed. Pressure was mounting. 
But instead of demanding all-nighters and pushing heroics, Farley made a counterintuitive move:

He gave teams six-week decision windows.
If an experiment failed in week 3, they pivoted in week 4, not in the next quarter.

He publicly celebrated a team that killed its own initiative after the data didn’t hold up.

The message?
“We’re not chasing perfection. We’re chasing fast learning.”

During critical sprints, Farley held daily standups; not to pressure, but to unblock.

Because urgency doesn’t mean chaos. 
It means removing drag.

It means more communication, not silence.
It means more clarity, not more fear.

And it worked:
- The Mustang Mach-E shipped in under 3 years
- Smart risks replaced politics
- Teams stayed engaged without burning out

Urgency sharpens focus. Panic narrows it.

If your team is spiraling under pressure, ask yourself:
- Are we building urgency or just spreading fear?
- Are we removing blockers or just piling on noise?
- Are we pushing clarity or defaulting to chaos?

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Cofounder of Lone Rock Leadership • Upgrade your managers • Human resources and leadership development

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Michelle Gass joined Levi's as incoming CEO in 2020 and walked into a culture of paralysis. The teams weren't lazy. They weren't incompetent. They were terrified. Here's what happened:

Years of cost-cutting and operational tightening had created an invisible rule: don't risk anything. Don't try anything new. Don't be the person who fails.

So they didn't.

Product launches slowed. Innovation stalled. Meanwhile, competitors were moving fast, and Levi's - a 170-year-old icon - was at risk of becoming irrelevant.

Most CEOs would double down. Push harder. Set aggressive targets. Demand more output.

Gass did the opposite.
She launched what she called "permission to play" sessions.

Here's how they worked: Cross-functional teams got 90 days to test ideas that normally would have required 6 months of approvals. No business case required upfront. No punishment for failure. Just experiment, learn, iterate.

The only rule? Share what you learned, whether it worked or not.

Within 6 months, the results were undeniable. A digital-first denim line launched in half the normal time. Sustainable fabric experiments that would have been "too risky" became real products. Store teams tested customer experience changes that increased conversion by 12%.

The breakthrough wasn't the specific ideas. It was then that people started moving again.

Here's what most leaders miss: Movement isn't motion.

Motion is activity. Meetings, emails, busy work. Movement is progress toward what matters.

And movement happens when you remove the friction, not add more pressure.

I see this constantly when coaching executives. A director will tell me their team is "being thorough" or "doing their due diligence."

But when I dig deeper, the pattern is clear: people are stalling because they're afraid of being wrong.

Watch for these signals that fear is blocking your team:

They ask for "one more analysis" when they already have the answer. They schedule meetings to prepare for meetings. They wait for perfect information that will never come.

Contrast that with teams where fear has been removed: They make decisions with 70% of the information. They test small, fail fast, and adjust. They self-correct instead of waiting for permission.

They move.

The difference isn't capability. It's psychological safety.

This is exactly what we address in Lead In 30. We give leaders a systematic process to identify what's blocking movement, remove the friction, and create the clarity teams need to act without fear.

If your team has the talent but lacks the movement, let's talk.

P.S. If you found this valuable, repost for your network ♻️

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Lead with impact.

When Josh Silverman took over Etsy in 2017, teams were working 60-hour weeks, going nowhere. He made ONE radical decision that changed everything. Here's how he transformed chaos into clarity:

Most leaders think more direction means better results. They add initiatives, create new priorities, and launch fresh campaigns. 

But here's what actually happens: teams freeze. 
When everything's important, nothing's important.

Silverman inherited exactly this problem.

The company was drowning. Not in debt or bad products, but in priorities. Over 50 competing initiatives, each with its own champion, its own meetings, its own urgency.

Nobody could tell you what Etsy's actual strategy was. Ask five different employees and you'd get five different answers.

Silverman's approach was surgical.

He didn't ask teams to prioritize their own work. That's how you get 50 initiatives in the first place. Instead, he identified the 3-4 metrics that would actually move Etsy's business: seller growth, buyer engagement, revenue per customer, and platform stability.

Then he did something radical: he killed everything else. Not paused. Killed.

Product features that teams had spent months building? Scrapped if they didn't tie to one of those four goals. Marketing campaigns? Cut if they couldn't demonstrate impact on the core metrics.

The reaction was predictable. Outrage, resistance, and fear that critical work would fall through the cracks.

But here's what happened: within 90 days, teams stopped asking "What should I work on?" and started asking "Which of our four goals does this impact most?"

The energy didn't change. The direction did.

Etsy's stock price increased significantly within a year. But the real shift happened internally. Teams moved faster, made better decisions, and actually knew if they were winning or losing.

This is the Clarity Paradox: the more you add, the less people understand. When clarity is absent, the void fills with assumption. Teams make up their own priorities, pursue their own definitions of success, and wonder why leadership seems disappointed.

The 3rd Leader framework starts exactly where Silverman did: with clarity. 

Not the kind of clarity that lives in strategy decks, but the kind that changes how teams make decisions every single day. 

Then it creates the alignment that prevents people from working at cross-purposes. Finally, it generates the movement that actually changes outcomes.

If you're leading a team that feels busy but not effective, working hard but not making progress, the issue probably isn't effort. It's clarity.

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Jim Sinegal built Costco into a $400B giant. But the secret wasn’t strategy; it was something deeper. One principle, repeated for 40 years, made all the difference...

Before launching Costco in 1983, Jim Sinegal spent 30 years learning retail under Sol Price at FedMart.

What he learned wasn’t a tactic. 
It was a philosophy:

Charge members, not markup.
Offer deep discounts.
Pay employees better than anyone else.

Most leaders publish values on a slide deck once a year.
Sinegal lived his - every day, for decades.

When he and Jeff Brotman founded Costco, those principles weren’t negotiable. They were the operating system.

Fair wages. Low margins. Member value first.

Even after stepping down in 2011, Sinegal still showed up every Tuesday at HQ.
Same desk. Same routine. Same values.

He’s 89. And still there.
Not for nostalgia, for consistency.

That consistency built culture.
That culture built trust.

And trust built a $400B company with an $86B private label brand (Kirkland).

No gimmicks. No pivots. No quarterly reinventions.
Just one message, lived relentlessly for 40+ years.

That’s what The 3rd Leader framework is all about:
Clarity → Alignment → Movement.

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When Carol Tomé became CEO of UPS in 2020, the company was drowning in complexity. Thousands of processes. Endless meetings. Here's how she turned it around with one simple mantra:

She inherited a company running on autopilot toward mediocrity.

Package delivery drivers followed 23 different standard operating procedures. Middle managers spent 60% of their time in meetings about meetings. A simple pricing decision required 14 approval layers.

The company wasn't failing. It was suffocating under its own weight.
Tomé didn't start with a big announcement or a flashy restructuring plan. She started with questions.

Which of these 23 procedures actually prevent errors? Which meetings drive decisions versus consume time? Which approval layers add insight versus just delay?

The answers were uncomfortable.

Most processes existed because they'd always existed. Most meetings happened because they were on the calendar. Most approval layers were vestiges of leaders who'd long since moved on.

So Tomé introduced one mantra: "Better, not bigger."

Then she cut. Not randomly. Systematically.

She eliminated initiatives that created confusion without driving results. She simplified processes that buried frontline teams in unnecessary detail. She gave teams clearer guidance, not more guidance.

The distinction matters more than most leaders realize.

Your brain craves simplicity. Too much detail doesn't create clarity, it collapses it. When you pile on processes and initiatives, you're not helping your team execute. You're paralyzing them.

Within 18 months, UPS reported its strongest operating margins in over a decade. Customer satisfaction scores rose 12%. Employee engagement jumped 15%.

But the most telling metric? Decision velocity increased 3x. 
The company could move.

Complexity kills execution. Simplicity scales it.

If you want to apply this in your organization, start by asking three questions:

Which processes confuse your team more than help them? Which initiatives exist without clear ownership or measurable impact? Where are you adding when you should be subtracting?

This is the foundation of effective leadership. Clarity doesn't come from adding more strategy. It comes from ruthlessly eliminating what doesn't serve the mission.

In my work with leaders at Amazon, Walmart, and hundreds of other organizations, the ones who transform performance master this skill. They use frameworks that force simplification, not complexity.

You'll find this and more frameworks in my latest book: Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results, and Most Don't. Available now at https://lnkd.in/eaiPFZhw.

You can dive more into creating clarity by cutting the noise so teams can focus on what actually moves the business forward.

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Lead with impact.

When Dara Khosrowshahi walked into Uber in August 2017, the company was imploding. Travis Kalanick had just been ousted as CEO. The #DeleteUber movement had cost them 200,000 riders...

Susan Fowler's blog post had exposed systemic harassment. Employees were leaving. Investors were panicking. The board was fractured.

Every leadership playbook said the same thing: Come in strong. Make bold moves. Show decisive action. Fire people. Announce a turnaround plan.

Khosrowshahi did the opposite.

He brought something Uber had never seen: calm.

Leaders are emotional thermostats. Your mood sets the temperature for everyone around you.

Walk into a meeting stressed? Your team tenses up. Bring calm confidence? They settle in and focus. Project urgency as anxiety? They panic. Channel urgency as motivation? They mobilize.

This isn't theory. Research on emotional contagion shows that leader emotions spread to teams within minutes. Your state becomes their state whether you say a word or not.

Khosrowshahi's first major decision showed exactly what steadiness looks like.

Two weeks in, he sent a company-wide email titled "What I saw at Uber." Instead of a rah-rah speech, he acknowledged the dysfunction directly: "There are a lot of things we need to change about how we operate and the culture we have built."

No deflection. No blame. No manufactured optimism.

In his first all-hands meeting, employees asked hostile questions. He answered each one directly, often saying "I don't know yet, but here's how we'll figure it out." Where Travis projected certainty, Dara projected thoughtfulness.

When London threatened to revoke Uber's license, he didn't lawyer up aggressively. He met with regulators personally, apologized for past behavior, and negotiated probation.

Calm over combat.

Employees started using a phrase: "Dara energy." That calm confidence became Uber's new operating system.

Most leaders track everything except the thing that matters most: their own emotional state.

Here's the system I use with Fortune 500 leaders:

Before every important meeting, ask yourself three questions:

1. What energy am I bringing right now? (Assess honestly)
2. What energy does this situation need? (Be strategic)
3. What's the gap, and how do I close it? (Take action)

If you're bringing pressure but need collaboration: Remind yourself that your job is to enable, not control. Replace "I need them to" with "How can I help them."

This is one of the pillars of my new book, "Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results and Most Don’t."

Execution speed is not a mystery. 
It is what happens when clarity, authority, and trust exist in the same system.

If you want an early copy before the November 10 release, join the Advance Reader Group.

You’ll get the full PDF now, and two signed print copies after you leave an honest review.

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You announce a major change. The team resists. It looks like defiance, but it’s something else entirely...

Most leaders think resistance means disagreement.
It doesn’t. It means threat detection.

You’ve spent weeks crafting airtight logic - slides, data, strategy - to explain why your change makes sense.

You present it.

And instead of buy-in, you get silence... skepticism... subtle foot-dragging.
So you double down: more presentations, more rationale, more logic.

But here’s what your team is actually thinking:
- “Do I still matter?”
- “Do I have the skills for this future?”
- “What if I fail?”

You’re speaking strategy.
They’re experiencing survival.

That’s exactly what Arvind Krishna faced when he pivoted IBM into hybrid cloud in 2020.

His senior engineers - lifers in the mainframe era - pushed back.
Not because they disagreed.
Because their careers suddenly felt fragile.

Krishna didn’t counter with more logic.
He did something smarter: he made it safe to feel uncertain.

He held open office hours.
Engineers were blunt:
“I’m not sure I have the skills for this world.”

He didn’t sugarcoat. He validated:
“You’re right to feel that way. This is a shift. Let’s bridge it together.”

And resistance began to dissolve.
That’s what real leadership looks like.

Here’s the shift to make:

- Stop assuming silence is agreement.
- Stop seeing resistance as defiance.
- Start seeing it as an emotional signal.

Before explaining what’s changing, acknowledge what that change might threaten.

Try this:
“Some of you might be wondering if your skills still matter. That’s a legitimate concern. Let’s talk about it.”

Then pause. Really pause. Let people speak.
And when they do - don’t correct their fear. Name it. Normalize it.

Why this matters:

✔️ Most change efforts fail because emotional resistance goes unacknowledged.
✔️ Teams don’t fear strategy. They fear irrelevance.
✔️ Safe teams adapt. Unsafe teams stall.

If you’re announcing change and facing resistance, you don’t need a new strategy. You need a new leadership lens.

That sequence is at the heart of my new book Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results and Most Don’t.

It explains why the fastest teams are not the most talented, they are the most trusted. We’re letting a limited group preview it before the November 10 release.

Read the PDF, leave an honest Amazon review, and we’ll send you two signed copies as a thank you.

Apply here:
https://lnkd.in/e74z3WTy

In 2016, a power outage grounded 2,000+ Delta flights overnight. Ed Bastian had one choice: hide or own it. Here's what he did that turned the crisis into Delta's defining cultural moment:

Most Fortune 500 CEOs follow the same crisis playbook.

Let PR craft the perfect statement. Blame the technology vendor. Promise to "investigate thoroughly." Then disappear until the news cycle moves on.

Bastian did the opposite.

Within hours of the outage, he recorded a video from his phone. No script. No teleprompter. Just him, looking directly into the camera, taking full responsibility for the failure.

Then he announced immediate compensation for every affected traveler before the crisis was even resolved.

Wall Street analysts predicted massive reputational damage. Instead, the response became a masterclass in crisis leadership.

What made Bastian's approach culturally transformative wasn't just what he did. It's what he refused to do.

He refused to let lawyers and PR teams sanitize his message. That directness signaled to every Delta employee: when we fail, we own it immediately. No committees. No blame-shifting. No waiting for perfect information.

He refused to use passive corporate language. "We're investigating" is what legal teams write. Taking direct responsibility is what real leaders do. That choice told employees their leaders would model the same accountability expected from frontline staff.

He refused to wait until the full cost was calculated before offering compensation. The decision came fast, even though they didn't know the financial impact. That bias toward action over analysis became a cultural permission slip: when customers are hurting, we move first and worry about spreadsheets later.

This is how singular moments become cultural inflection points.

Most managers won't face a crisis this public. But you'll face your moment where your team watches to see if your values are real or just wall art.

That moment is coming faster than you think.

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Doug McMillon saw it before anyone else. Walmart's supply chain was a sleeping liability. No crisis yet, but fragility everywhere. So he did what most CEOs don’t:

He built the fix before the fire.
Years before COVID disruptions, he invested heavily in automation, real-time inventory systems, and predictive logistics.

No media coverage. No quarterly boost. Just quiet prevention.
Then the storm hit.

In 2021–2022, Target struggled with stockouts. Amazon missed delivery windows.

Walmart? They kept shelves full and trucks moving.
That’s the power of preventative leadership.

But here’s the problem:
Most companies don’t reward prevention.

They reward the hero who pulls the all-nighter, not the planner who avoided the crisis.

They promote the manager who “handles escalations well,” not the one who has none.

They praise the engineer who patches the outage, not the one who built the alert that caught it two weeks earlier.

This is how firefighting cultures form.

The real work of prevention is invisible:
Planning buffers before they’re needed
Investing in root cause fixes, not surface wins
Creating systems that scale sanity

The best leaders don’t just ask:
“What happened?”
They ask:
“What system let this happen?”

You’ll know you’re rewarding the wrong behaviors when:
- Planning meetings keep getting canceled for “urgent issues”
- Employees stay late to fix recurring bugs, and get applauded
- The phrase “We got lucky” shows up in every postmortem.

Prevention isn’t flashy.
It doesn’t make headlines.
But it makes history.

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Emma Walmsley didn’t bluff her way through a crisis. She told her team and investors exactly what GSK had failed at and what she didn’t know yet. The result? 

Trust surged, top talent returned, and innovation restarted.
Most leaders think saying “I don’t know” will cost them respect.

The opposite is true. 
Admitting uncertainty builds more credibility than faking confidence ever will.

When Emma Walmsley became CEO of GlaxoSmithKline in 2017, the company was struggling.

Its R&D pipeline had stalled. Top scientists were leaving.
Analysts questioned whether GSK could compete in modern pharmaceuticals.

Walmsley did something most executives avoid: she told the truth.

In her first earnings call, she told analysts that GSK had "failed to invest appropriately in innovation.”
No predecessor would’ve used that language. No spin. No deflection.

Then she went further.
She told her top 20 leaders she didn’t have the answers and asked them to redesign R&D from scratch.

That honesty unlocked what years of PR couldn’t:
• Research partnerships with 3 top universities that had previously refused to engage
• A 34-point jump in internal trust within 18 months
• Re-engagement from scientists who had stopped taking GSK’s calls

Why did this work?
Because your team already knows when you're bluffing.

The VP who spends 45 minutes defending shaky market projections doesn’t protect his credibility.

He destroys it. 
His team walks away executing on targets no one believes in.

Most leaders default to false certainty because we’re trained to believe authority means having the answers.

But what your team needs isn’t omniscience.
It’s clarity on what you know, what you don’t, and how you’ll solve it, together.

Here’s a simple 3-part framework:
- Say what you know, with specifics.
- Name what you don’t, without hedging.
- Propose how you’ll figure it out, using the team’s intelligence.

The skill is knowing when to lean into transparency and when to project steadiness.

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Tony Hsieh eliminated all managers at Zappos to fix bureaucracy. 260 employees immediately quit. Here's why consensus-driven leadership destroys companies just as fast as founder mode:

Tony built Zappos into a billion-dollar company by trusting employees completely. Customer service reps could spend $2,000 solving problems without asking permission. The culture was legendary.

Then bureaucracy crept in. One resignation letter changed everything.

In 2013, Tony got a resignation letter that shattered his vision. This wasn't just any employee complaining - this was someone who embodied everything Zappos stood for. 

Someone who had lived the culture and was now walking away because the very thing Tony thought he'd eliminated had returned: soul-crushing corporate bureaucracy.

He introduced holacracy - self-organizing teams, no bosses, distributed decision-making. Pure democracy. The business press celebrated it. Employee engagement scores initially hit all-time highs. People felt energized by the radical experiment.

Then reality hit.

Simple decisions that took minutes now required multiple team consultations. A website change that should have taken days needed 6 months and 3 circle consultations. By the time teams reached consensus, competitors had shipped similar features months earlier.

Projects stalled as teams struggled to figure out who had the authority to decide anything. Customer service scores dropped because representatives became unclear about their power to solve problems.  

Employees spent more time talking about work than actually working.

By 2015, Tony issued an ultimatum: commit to holacracy or leave with generous severance. Around 260 people - roughly 18% of the workforce - walked out the door.

While Tony was drowning in democratic discussion, Reed Hastings at Netflix was proving the opposite approach worked.

Reed didn't eliminate hierarchy - he weaponized it. "We're not a family. We're a team," he told employees.

Just clarity and accountability. When someone wasn't performing, they got generous severance. When decisions needed making, leaders made them.

The result? Netflix became one of the fastest-growing companies in history while Zappos fell off Fortune's Best Companies to Work For list for the first time in 8 years.

Steve Jobs put it even simpler: "Real artists ship."

Tony solved for Alignment but sacrificed Clarity and Movement. Perfect alignment around going nowhere is still going nowhere.

Leaders are trapped between two broken extremes: founder mode autocracy that burns out teams, or consensus mode paralysis that stalls everything. Both destroy companies. Both drive away top talent.

The answer isn't balancing these approaches. It's replacing them with a systematic framework that delivers Clarity, Alignment, and Movement simultaneously.

I explore this framework and the full Zappos story in my new book, Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results, and Most Don't. Available now at https://lnkd.in/eaiPFZhw.

When Nintendo's profits fell, CEO Satoru Iwata cut his salary by 50%. Most executives protect themselves first. He absorbed the pain. Here's the leadership lesson that changes everything:

Most CEOs in crisis mode blame the market or lay off staff. Iwata did the opposite.

The result? Teams didn't scatter. They rallied.

Here's what most leaders miss about trust:
Your team isn't listening to your words about sacrifice. They're watching whether you're willing to feel it first.

When Iwata cut his salary, he did something most executives avoid: he made his pain visible before asking anyone else to absorb impact.

That shift in sequence, me first, then us, completely changes team psychology.

Instead of resentment ("easy for you to say"), you get commitment ("we're in this together").

Leaders often underestimate the power of example. People follow what you do long before they follow what you say.

The rally at Nintendo didn't happen because Iwata gave better speeches afterward. It happened because he demonstrated that leadership meant absorbing impact, not delegating it.

Your team is watching how you handle pressure. And they notice the gaps.

When you ask them to work weekends, but protect your own calendar. When you freeze their hiring budget but approve your conference travel. When you demand transparency about their mistakes but hide your own.

These moments teach them that sacrifice flows in one direction.

Flip the sequence: Before you ask your team to take on extra load, what are you willing to absorb first? Before you implement budget cuts, where are you cutting from your own resources?

The visibility matters. They need to see you feeling the impact before they're asked to.

Accountability doesn't rise through motivational talks. It rises when people watch you demonstrate that being a leader means going first into discomfort, not last.

The fastest way to build trust is to take responsibility before assigning it.

If this resonates, I recently explored this idea in one of my podcast episodes: “Stop Breaking Glass – How Effective Leaders Stay Calm.” You’ll hear the exact framework: Breathe → Elevate → Lead, a system for staying steady under pressure so your team feels protected, not exposed.

Listen to it here:
https://lnkd.in/e2kHfmQX

If every decision goes through you, it's not leadership. It's a traffic jam. Here's how Daniel Ek turned Spotify into a decision-making machine:

Your calendar is back-to-back approvals. Product decisions. Pricing decisions. Hiring decisions. Your team waits hours (or days) for answers you could give in minutes - if you weren't drowning in other people's decisions.

Most managers believe this is control, that approving every decision keeps quality high and mistakes low.

The opposite is true. When decisions stack at the top, 3 things happen.

Speed dies. Your competitor ships in 2 weeks, while your team waits 3 months for approvals.

Innovation stops. Your people stop proposing bold ideas because they know you'll water them down through 4 rounds of review.

Your best people disengage. They came to build and create. You've turned them into order-takers who execute your vision instead of owners who contribute their own.

Daniel Ek figured this out at Spotify. He built the company around small teams with real decision-making authority.

Product squads could ship features without executive approval. Engineering teams could choose their own tech stack. Marketing teams could launch campaigns.

But not chaos. Guardrails everywhere.

Teams owned decisions within their domain. They couldn't change company strategy or blow the budget. They had clear boundaries, transparent metrics, and quarterly check-ins.

The result? Product cycles that used to take months took weeks. Innovation came from dozens of teams experimenting simultaneously instead of 5 executives guessing what might work.

Here's what most leaders miss: Your job isn't to make every decision. It's to build a system that makes good decisions without you.

Start by sorting decisions into 3 buckets:

1. Strategic (company direction, major investments, key hires) - you own these.

2. Operational (how to execute strategy, resource allocation within budget, team structure) - push to your direct reports.

3. Tactical (daily execution, minor resource shifts, individual choices) - these should never reach you.

For everything you push down: Define clear boundaries. Set outcome metrics. Create transparency so you can monitor without micromanaging.

The test: If a decision can be reversed easily and the worst case is a learning moment, it shouldn't require your approval.

The best organizations don't have hero leaders making all the calls. They have systems that create good decisions at every level.

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When Anne Fudge took over Young & Rubicam in 2003, the legendary ad agency was in crisis. Clients were leaving. Revenue was dropping. The board brought her in to fix it fast...

Everyone expected her to show up on day one with a turnaround plan.
She did something that looked like the opposite.

For 100 days, she didn't announce a single initiative. She walked the halls instead. Sat in cubicles. Had hundreds of conversations with people at every level of the company.

And she asked the same question every time: "If you were CEO, what would you change first?"

The people who actually served clients told her what executives had been too afraid to say out loud. Those insights didn't just inform her strategy—they became her strategy.

Most leaders think they need to talk more. The best leaders listen more and speak last.

Here's what Fudge understood that most leaders miss: Questions unlock truth. Listening unlocks commitment.

When you ask people what they'd change, you're not just gathering data. You're signaling that their perspective matters, that it's safe to tell the truth, and that you're building solutions together rather than imposing them from above.

That's the shift from Answer-First to Question-First leadership.

Most leaders resist this approach because asking questions feels like admitting weakness. But here's the paradox: When you ask instead of tell, you actually build more credibility, not less.

People commit to solutions they help create. 
They resist solutions imposed from above.

Start Monday with one question: "What's one thing we should stop doing?"

Then do the hardest part - stay quiet and actually listen. Don't defend, don't explain, don't problem-solve yet. Just let your team tell you what they see.

The most transformative thing a leader can do is ask a better question.

I've worked with leaders at Amazon, Walmart, and Lockheed Martin to build this approach into their daily leadership. The transformation happens when leaders stop imposing and start uncovering.

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Most CEOs sent memos when COVID hit. Tony Fernandes went live. And saved AirAsia with one move most leaders avoid...

When COVID grounded AirAsia in 2020, most executives issued top-down updates about layoffs and cost-cutting.

Tony did something radically different.

He hosted weekly livestreams - unfiltered Q&As with pilots, crew, and baggage handlers. He didn’t spin a PR message. He listened. He acknowledged fear. He celebrated small wins.

No strategy deck. Just empathy, live.

The result? What should have caused mass resignations turned into loyalty.

AirAsia rebounded faster than competitors, kept more staff, and reengaged its workforce around a shared future.

Because strategy without empathy is just noise.

Execution isn’t logical. It’s emotional.
People don’t follow plans, they follow voices that make them feel safe.

Fernandes understood this. That’s why his people followed him through crisis.

Here’s the leadership test:
If your team isn’t moving, it’s probably not because the plan isn’t clear.
It’s because they don’t trust they’ll be okay inside it.

A great vision needs an empathetic voice.

You can find this and more insights in my new book, "Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results and Most Don’t"

If you want an early copy, join the Advance Reader Group.

You’ll get the full PDF now, and two signed print copies after you leave an honest review.

Join here: https://lnkd.in/e74z3WTy

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When teams break down under pressure, it is almost never a systems problem. It is a standards problem. Here's why:

Two teams can have the same training, the same procedures, and the same workload, yet deliver completely different outcomes. 

The difference is the leadership expectation at the top. 

Weak leaders tolerate chaos and explain it away as “being in the trenches.” Strong leaders set a non-negotiable bar for excellence and build environments where people are set up to win.

Your team will always mirror the standards you hold.

Capacity inside a team is rarely fixed. 
Leaders who assume their people are “maxed out” end up creating the ceiling themselves. 

When you stop assigning challenging work, hesitate to delegate, or protect people from stretch opportunities, the team interprets that as doubt. They pull back, play safe, and contract to match the expectations you set.

The ceiling becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But when a leader signals belief and backs it with support, people consistently outperform their own assumptions about what they can do. 

High-capacity teams are almost always built by leaders who expect more and equip people to rise to it.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

1. Remove tolerances that drain performance.
Identify the lowest standard you’re currently accepting. Chronic lateness, “good enough” work, technical performers who spread negativity - whatever it is, that tolerance sets the floor for the entire team. Raise it, and the rest of the team will rise with it.

2. Use stretch goals properly.
Stretch goals only work when they’re paired with support. Set targets that push the team 20–30 percent beyond their comfort zone, then remove obstacles, provide resources, and explain why you believe they can deliver. The combination of challenge and support drives expansion.

3. Lead with visible belief.
Teams rarely outperform the level of belief their leader communicates. When you model growth, people step into growth. When you signal doubt, people shrink.

Leadership is not about loading people with pressure. 
It is about raising the standard, backing your expectations with action, and creating an environment where excellence is normal, not extraordinary.

Catch this episode on our podcast, Lead in 30: https://lnkd.in/egJnM3eA

Every organization has values. What separates good leaders is how they act when those values collide with real-world pressure. Alan Jope faced one of those moments, and his decision left a lasting mark:

In 2021, a private equity firm approached Unilever about acquiring a profitable personal care brand. The financials looked perfect. $200M revenue, 18% margins, immediate accretion to earnings.

The board saw an easy win.

But Jope's team discovered the brand's supply chain relied on palm oil from suppliers with documented deforestation practices. It violated Unilever's sustainability commitments.

Not technically. Explicitly.

Investors pushed back. One board member asked the question Jope knew was coming: "Isn't this exactly why we have audits? To fix these issues after acquisition?"

The path of least resistance was obvious. Buy the brand. Fix the supply chain later. Everyone wins.

Jope rejected the deal entirely.

Not because it was easy. Because Unilever's values meant something only if they guided decisions when the stakes were real.

The result wasn't chaos. Employee engagement scores rose 12% in the following quarter. Brand equity strengthened as customers and talent saw that the company meant what it said.

Teams watched their CEO choose principle over profit and thought, "Maybe we actually mean what we say."

Clarity without consistency fails. 
People trust what leaders prove, not what they say.

Values aren't beliefs you discuss in offsites. They're behaviors you demonstrate under pressure.

And the moment you compromise them for convenience, your credibility collapses.

I watched this play out with a director at a Fortune 500 tech company. She'd promised her VP they'd ship a new feature by end of quarter, tied to her bonus and promotion review.

Two weeks before deadline, her lead engineer showed her the code. It worked. Technically.

But the error handling was incomplete. Ship it now, and 5% of users would hit crashes they couldn't recover from.

She called the VP: "We're pushing the launch 3 weeks. The feature isn't ready."
He wasn't happy. She didn't get promoted that cycle.

But her team watched her choose quality over her own advancement. Six months later, when she asked them to pull weekends for a critical launch, they showed up.

Because they'd seen what she was willing to sacrifice.

Your team is watching. Not what you post about integrity. What you do when living your values costs you something.

That's when they start believing.

This principle sits at the core of The 3rd Leader framework. When I work with leaders, we focus on building trust through decisions, not declarations.

Because your team doesn't believe what you say in town halls. They believe what you prove when it costs you something.

P.S. If you found this valuable, repost for your network ♻️

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Lead with impact.

When Feike Sijbesma took over Royal DSM in 2007, he inherited a 20,000-person petrochemicals giant that was slowly dying. Most CEOs would have started with layoffs and restructuring...

Sijbesma did something different.

The company's identity was embedded in 100+ years of chemical manufacturing. Employees saw themselves as producing materials, optimizing yields, managing costs. That's what they'd always done.

Sijbesma recognized something crucial: you can't change 20,000 people's behavior by changing the org chart. You have to change what they believe they're building.

He reframed DSM's entire purpose around a single question: How do we improve global health and nutrition?

Not through efficiency metrics or cost reduction. Through meaning.

This wasn't just messaging. He restructured investments, shifted R&D priorities, and aligned every business decision to this new north star. When people understood they were solving global malnutrition rather than optimizing chemical yields, something shifted.

Alignment moved from resistance to momentum.

DSM transformed into a global leader in life sciences and nutrition innovation. The same 20,000 people, radically different results.

Here's what made it work: Sijbesma understood that alignment accelerates when people grasp the case for why they're being asked to do something. Not what. Not how. Why.

Most leaders try to convince people to do something different. They build presentations, create incentives, and restructure teams.

But alignment isn't persuasion. When people understand the purpose, alignment becomes passion.

This is the foundation of the 3rd Leader framework: Clarity drives alignment, and alignment creates movement.

Purpose-driven leaders build teams that move faster and deliver better results because they've solved the hardest problem first. They've answered why it matters. 

If you're ready to transform how your leaders create alignment and drive results, let's talk about bringing Lead In 30 to your organization.

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Lead with impact.

Greg Moran

Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners

Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners is an early stage (seed and series A) venture firm focused exclusively on future of work and HR related technologies. Our mission is to be an active partner to great founders trying to find a way to achieve their vision.

Serve as board member or board observer to Truvelop, Ceipal, Conquer, Chatterworks, Hitch and Spacebands.

Managing Partner & Founder Coach

Conquer

At Conquer we are making selling smarter through our enterprise sales enablement platform. Our comprehensive solution combines automation, advanced analytics and AI-driven insights to empower sales teams and drive revenue growth. 

By leveraging our platform, sales professionals can optimize their strategies, enhance customer engagement, and close deals more efficiently.

Chief Executive Officer (Interim)

Conquer provides sales enablement software to large sales teams.

Board Member

Interim Chief Revenue Officer

Outsorcy

Outsorcy connects businesses with top-tier global talent to drive efficiency and growth. Specializing in outsourcing solutions, we help companies build dedicated teams, find world-class professionals, and streamline operations across marketing, technology, and business support. With a focus on flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and quality, Outsorcy empowers organizations to access diverse, skilled professionals worldwide, enabling them to scale efficiently and achieve their goals.

Camden Partners

Serve as an Operating Partner to Camden Partners. Since our founding in 1995, Camden Partners has focused on investing growth equity in lower middle market companies. We actively partner with strong management teams leveraging our domain expertise, operating experience and extended network of resources to help growth companies reach their full potential.

Operating Partner

Outmatch (now Harver)

Harver (formerly OutMatch) is a leading HR technology company that is transforming the way organizations hire and assess talent. 

Our innovative platform combines advanced data science, AI-powered assessments, and interactive pre-employment tools to help companies make smarter, data-driven hiring decisions. 

With Harver, companies can streamline their recruitment process, identify top candidates efficiently, and reduce bias in the hiring process. Our mission is to revolutionize talent acquisition by providing organizations with the tools they need to build high-performing teams and drive business success.

OutMatch makes people decisions more scalable, predictable, and personal with an end-to-end talent decision platform. The world’s most recognized brands rely on OutMatch to scale recruitment, understand their talent, and personalize candidate and employee experiences. Over 1,000 global companies trust OutMatch technology to process millions of candidates annually, and to achieve 25X return on investment through better people outcomes.

OutMatch is a portfolio company of Rubicon Technology Partners (headquartered in Boulder, Colorado) and Camden Partners (headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland).

President and CEO

Chequed.com

Oversight of all aspects of this emerging growth technology company. Provided vision and direction to the initial and ongoing product development. Raised outside equity based capital. Negotiated strategic partnership with major academic institution for R&amp;D. Initiated, negotiated and completed the acquisition of leading industry player to incorporate into Chequed. Ongoing responsibility for capital raising, recruitment of management and board level hires, acquisition integration as well as general management responsibilities.

Founder / President & CEO

Talent Management Group / W Business Books

Author of two books on recruitment strategy for the field hiring manager:

1.) Hire, Fire & The Walking Dead, W Business Books, May 2006 (http://www.amazon.com/Hire-Fire-Walking-Dead-Recruiting/dp/0832950017/ref=sr_1_1/105-7883773-0736465?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181612256&sr=8-1)

2.) Building the TalentEdge: A Manager's Guide to Recruiting the Best, AuthorHouse, October 2005

Consultant, Author and Speaker

Talent Technology Corporation

Created a channel sales/partnership program and oversaw the initial phases of execution for this provider of human resource component technology. Responsibilities included partner identification, outreach, screening, contract negotiation and initial marketing of new partner relationships. Served as front line for acquisition identification culminating in successful completion of PeopleFilter Technologies in April 2008. In addition, oversaw the Industry Sales group focused on sales of the Resume Mirror product line to the top 500 staffing firms worldwide.

Director, Industry Sales and Partnerships

Better People, LLC

Better People provides technology-driven recruitment process outsourcing to emerging growth and established companies throughout North America.

Chairman

PeopleAnswers America, LLC

Acquired the rights to build the sales distribution channel for this web based behavioral assessment one-demand software company. Created and executed upon direct, partner and dealership strategy throughout North America resulting in multi-million dollar sales growth within 3 year period.  Provided direct enterprise sales (quota carrying) as well as sales executive support. Utilized full-time dealership and direct strategies as well as a traditional reseller relationship as primary methods of growth. Responsible for the creation of all channel start-up and ongoing training and development programs as well as internal communication and marketing initiatives. Created recruitment, evaluation and performance appraisal process used for management and development. Successfully sold distribution channel back to PeopleAnswers, Inc. of Dallas, Texas.

Vice President of Sales/Founder

Multi-Exit Founder & CEO, Advisor, Investor, Board Member | Posting daily insights to help you scale to $100m+. Host - The Founder’s Journey Podcast

Founders often face isolation, burnout, and the “now what?” stage after their first taste of success. I’ve been there—and I’m here to help you scale smarter and faster.

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve launched and exited multiple companies with valuations exceeding $100M, completed a dozen global acquisitions, raised nearly $500M in capital, and advised dozens of high-growth founders to do the same.

Now, I’m focused on “Scaling Together” through The Founder’s Collective—a curated membership community for ambitious entrepreneurs seeking strategic coaching, actionable resources, and meaningful peer connections. Through monthly coaching sessions, playbooks, live Q&As, and in-person events, members gain a powerful ecosystem to overcome isolation, lead effectively, and accelerate growth. If this resonates, apply today:
https://www.thefounderscollective.com/apply-to-join

I also take on a limited number of personalized coaching clients who want to supercharge their trajectory. If that’s you, DM me.

Beyond business, investing, and coaching, I’m a dedicated traveler, an avid home cook (inspired by Julia Child!), and a lover of the outdoors—especially fly fishing, hiking, and skiing in Colorado and Montana. Most importantly, I’m a proud husband and father of two amazing kids, each on their own unique journey.

At Conquer we are making selling smarter through our enterprise sales enablement platform. Our comprehensive solution combines automation, advanced analytics and AI-driven insights to empower sales teams and drive revenue growth. 

By leveraging our platform, sales professionals can optimize their strategies, enhance customer engagement, and close deals more efficiently. 

Today’s the day. And it all starts here.
Launch day for Scaling Across Borders: Season 1 – Kosovo.

This has been one of the most meaningful projects of my life.

When we started, I had no idea what to expect. I just hoped we could tell a different story about Kosovo… that it’s not a war-torn country, but a young, energetic nation full of talent, ambition, and grit.

It did more than that.
It touched a nerve. It showed a side of this place that the world rarely sees. The response here has been overwhelming.

Kosovo is an underdog story, and it’s been the honor of a lifetime to help tell it.
This country deserves to be seen, taken seriously, and invested in.

Somewhere along the way, I realized Scaling Across Borders wasn’t just a storytelling experiment for me or Outsorcy. It became a mission.
Because Kosovo isn’t the only misunderstood place.

There are founders everywhere, building world-class companies in overlooked corners of the world, whose stories never get told. They’re not chasing hype or creating videos to announce their latest raise. They’re building the future of their nations.

That mission continues beyond Kosovo.
It’s about authentic stories of grit and resilience, where travel meets entrepreneurship.

But it all starts here, tonight, in Pristina.

To the incredible team at Outsorcy  and my partners (Jim Trimarco Demian Costa Blendrit Elezaj Rilind Elezaj Ira Grossman  Siddharth Sehgal ), to Wanto Studios, my family (Allison, Olivia and Jackson) . and, of course, to the great people of Kosovo who trusted me to tell a small part of your big story ... thank you.

This experience changed me.
And it’s only the beginning.

🎥 Join us live from Pristina tonight at 6 PM CET / Noon EST / 9 AM PST on YouTube for the global premiere.

👉 Subscribe today to follow the journey. Link in comments.

Kosovo! Let’s go!!!!!

Scaling Across Borders - Kosovo episode now live! Link in comments.

This chapter is all about the people who left Kosovo, built their careers around the world… and chose to come back.

And the ones who arrived by accident ... and stayed on purpose.
Founders. Educators. Builders.

A generation turning Kosovo into a global hub for talent, tech, and opportunity. 🇽🇰

Featuring:
• Blendrit Elezaj — connecting Kosovo’s talent to the world
• Gent Dedushi — from Google + NYC to building at home
• Albina Balidemaj, PhD — shaping future leaders at RIT Kosovo
• Alejtin Berisha — bringing world-class education systems to Kosovo
• Zach Dowd, Ethan Allan & Dion Berisha — building Techatlon inside ICK

🎬 Episode 2: The Ones Who Came Home

📍 Now streaming! Link in comments.

Watch the full episode, drop a comment, and tell us what part of their story hit you the hardest.

New episodes every week. Don’t forget to subscribe.

Scaling  Across Border Episode 3 is Live! 

This one is about the people building Kosovo’s new economy from the ground up… not with factories or resources, but with pure intent and zero permission-seeking.

You’ll meet:

Gentrit Gojani and the KODE Labs 
Mergim Cahani 
Dorina Grezda and Shpend Lila at Innovation Centre Kosovo (ICK) 

Watch Scaling Across Borders — Episode 3!
Link in comments.

We're live in Kosovo! Join our livestream for the Scaling Across Borders premiere! 🇽🇰 

https://lnkd.in/enyiKVHf

Open video: Scaling Across Borders Premiere! on youtube.com

I’ve had days where it felt like nothing was moving.
No big wins. 
No breakthroughs.

But here’s the truth founders hate admitting:
The days that look quiet are often the ones that compound the most.

What kept me moving wasn’t some dramatic reinvention.
It was the small, almost boring actions done consistently.

So today, don’t go hunting for the perfect plan.
Pick one small move and execute it.

Momentum isn’t magic, but it’s built.

Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly insights: https://lnkd.in/e8wJrt5A

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The Battle

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Greg Moran

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taplio

The Battle

Russ Hill

Greg Moran

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Russ Hill's LinkedIn Performance

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