Sean Kelly

Founder & Investor. Building companies at the intersection of health, media & founder performance.

Hey there, I’m Sean. I play at the intersection of investing, media and human performance.

I’m a three-time INC 500 founder & entrepreneur with businesses in eCommerce, SaaS, media and B2B services that have collectively generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Right now, I serve as a General Partner at The Family Fund and am the CEO of Significant Publications, a B2B digital media holding company.

I'm particularly passionate about our brand FounderIV in support of today's founder-athletes. We help today's top entrepreneurs achieve breakout performance in their personal and professional lives.

I co-founded and led multiple other companies, including SnackNation, a health-centric foodservice and brand discovery platform that served 20,000 businesses across the US. 

Under my leadership, SnackNation was honored as one of the country’s Best Workplaces by Inc. Magazine, recognized for Top Company Culture by Entrepreneur Magazine, and certified as a Great Workplace by Great Place to Work®.

Forbes listed me as one of the top 30 leaders under 30 and one of America’s most promising CEOs under 35. Comparably also ranked me among the country’s top 50 small-to-medium sized business CEOs multiple years in a row. 

Outside of the business world, I’m a two-time national medalist in freestyle snowboarding, hold an advisory role at the growth capital firm, Meaningful Partners, have a degree in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University and am an avid sports fan of all Michigan sports teams (especially the Wolverines).

I currently live in Venice, CA with my wife and college sweetheart, Shannon, and our goldendoodle, Jameson.

Chairman

We built the first Founderland in 10 weeks.

And almost died.

This past year we gave ourselves 6 months and built an external team to do it and it still wasn’t enough time.

So for next year’s event we decided to make the build a year-round affair…

And are focused on making Founderland a brand that lives throughout the year, not just as once-every-October event.

It’s funny to see how random ideas become full-time jobs lol

Took a quick trip to NYC this week to discuss Founderland ‘26 with one of our top partners J.P. Morgan  

The verdict?

It’s going to be big. 

Perhaps not as big as JPM’s new $3B global HQ at 270 Park Ave (most spectacular office I’ve been in w/ a Warhol or Jasper Johns around every corner)…

But still pretty big and lots of fun with a yuge amount of deals commenced (misspelling intentional)

Thanks for the tour Michael Conte you’re a legend and friend.

And glad to see you’re carrying Ancient Crunch Inc. MASA chips in all of your shops!

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Current health travel stack:

Zoomed off to NYC, Philly and Austin this week.

Back to back meetings all day, late dinners and sports games at night, and planes trains and automobiles like we all know.

Seems like 1/2 of the people I’ve met have a cold.

Here’s what I take on the road to feel good while away…

and do my best to arrive home feeling not-dead to the fam. Works most of the time ;)

 - Sinus rinse bottle filled with filtered water, betadine and salt/baking soda (use after every flight, likely illness prevention tactic #1)

- Zinc acetate lozenges if I’m feeling worn down or fatigued

- KetoneIQ every morning when I wake up to get that cognitive boost

- Momentous whey protein, plant protein, and creatine (10g) + Supergut fiber blended 1-2x per day to supplement diet

- Momentous Sleep pack + medical mouth tape + sleep mask every night

- Metal shaker bottle that doesn’t get gross

- Some type of hydration packets 2x/day minimum (right now using Dry Water)

- WIP 100mg energy pouches for a little boost early in the day usually before workout

- Another ~20 or so supplements in my vitamin case that I pre-fill for each day prior to the week

Sure, sleep/nutrition/exercise are essential and the most  important…but it’s near impossible to not sacrifice them a bit while playing the part of road warrior…so at least for me, travel supplementation is key.

Momentous Ketone-IQ DryWater Supergut

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

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.

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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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When Lisa Su became CEO of AMD in October 2014, the company's market cap sat at roughly $3 billion. Her focus? A radical shift in strategy that nobody expected to work...

Most CEOs in her position would have played it safe. Protected the legacy PC business. Made incremental improvements.

Su did the opposite. She committed AMD to high-performance computing and graphics across three specific growth areas: gaming, datacenter, and immersive platforms.

The result? AMD's market cap grew from $3 billion to over $200 billion under her leadership.

Here's what actually happened:
When Su joined AMD in 2012, only 10% of sales came from non-PC products. The company was heavily dependent on a declining market.

By February 2015, just months into her CEO tenure, she had shifted 40% of AMD's revenue to non-PC markets. This wasn't luck. It was deliberate strategic execution.

But the real transformation came from how Su owned the outcomes publicly. She presented AMD's long-term strategy in May 2015, staking her reputation on specific technology investments in gaming, datacenter, and immersive platforms.

When she announced AMD's new FinFET-based chips in January 2016, she wasn't hedging. She was committing to a complete architectural overhaul with Zen processors.

The Ryzen launch in Q2 2017 proved her right. AMD's CPU market share surged to nearly 11%, and the company overtook Intel in market capitalization for the first time in its history.

This is what separates leaders who transform organizations from those who manage decline. Su didn't just announce a strategy. She attached herself to specific technology bets and market outcomes that everyone could measure.

Ownership at the top creates ownership throughout.

If you're ready to build the kind of ownership culture that transforms teams in 30 days, send me a message. I'll share how leaders at Amazon, Walmart, and Lockheed Martin are using the 3rd Leader framework to create cascading accountability.

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Lead with impact.

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.

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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Culture isn't built by memo. It's built by modeling. Ho Ching proved this managing hundreds of billions at Temasek. Here's how her restraint transformed an entire organization:

Most leaders miss this entirely. They craft vision statements, send company-wide emails about values, and wonder why nothing changes. They're solving for communication when they should be solving for demonstration.

Ho Ching understood something most CEOs never grasp.

As CEO of Temasek Holdings in Singapore, she managed hundreds of billions in assets across dozens of countries. She could have claimed any perk imaginable - private jets, luxury hotels, executive cars.

Instead, she flew economy. Stayed in modest hotels. Avoided every executive privilege that came with her position.

Her team noticed.

When the CEO flies economy on 12-hour flights despite managing a sovereign wealth fund, it sends a signal that permeates everything. Executives started questioning their own expense reports. Directors began pushing back on lavish office renovations.

Teams adopted a stewardship mindset - treating every dollar like it mattered, because their leader did.

Accountability and stewardship became core cultural norms at Temasek, not because Ho Ching mandated them through policy, but because she modeled them through daily choices.

People follow what you do far more than what you say. You can't mandate accountability. You can only demonstrate it so consistently that it becomes the organizational default.

Most managers understand this intellectually but struggle with execution. They know modeling matters, yet fall back on policies and memos when culture needs fixing.

The gap isn't understanding. It's implementation.

I've helped hundreds of leaders at companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Lockheed Martin develop the systems that turn leadership principles into consistent behavior. If you're ready to build culture through what you model, not what you memo, let's connect.  

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Lead with impact.

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 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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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 Linda Rendle became CEO of Clorox, employees were afraid to challenge assumptions. She introduced one practice that changed everything. Here's how removing fear accelerates alignment:

Most leaders think their teams are aligned because everyone nods in meetings.

But Rendle discovered something different when she took over at Clorox. Employees would agree in the room, then privately express doubts. Critical blockers went unspoken because people feared rocking the boat.

The silence was costing them speed, innovation, and results.

She knew alignment couldn't happen in an environment where truth-telling felt dangerous. So she introduced open challenge sessions where anyone, regardless of role, could surface blockers, outdated practices, or hidden risks without repercussion.

What emerged shocked the leadership team.

Teams surfaced processes that had been slowing approvals by weeks. They flagged assumptions about customers that were years out of date. They identified resource allocation decisions that made no sense given current market realities.

The problems had always been there. People just hadn't felt safe naming them.

Within months, productivity and decision speed jumped. Not because Rendle changed strategy, but because she removed the fear preventing honest conversation.

The lesson applies to every level of leadership.

You can't align teams around what they won't say out loud. Most managers confuse silence for agreement, when it's actually fear masquerading as consensus. The nodding doesn't mean alignment, it means people have learned it's safer to stay quiet.

Real alignment happens in the messy conversations leaders often avoid. It requires creating space where teams can speak uncomfortable truths without repercussion.

Creating psychological safety isn't soft leadership. It's how you remove the invisible blockers slowing everything down.

Listen to the Lead In 30 Podcast episode on creating psychological safety so teams speak honestly. And if you're ready to transform how you lead and deliver results, Lead In 30 gives you the frameworks to do it in 30 days.

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 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.

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.

Darrell Rigby works with Bain & Company on innovation. What he discovered will make every CEO uncomfortable. Here's why your innovation program is probably just expensive theater:

Your company just spent $50,000 on a 2-day innovation hackathon.
47 ideas generated. Zero products shipped. Your team feels productive. Your executives see activity. But your customers see nothing new.

When Rigby studied corporate innovation programs, he found something disturbing: most companies were measuring the wrong thing entirely.

They tracked hackathons held, ideas generated, brainstorming sessions completed.

All motion. No movement.
The shift Rigby pushed? Stop counting activities. Start measuring validated learning and shipped value.

But here's what that actually means in practice:
Motion tracks inputs: "We held 3 customer research sessions this month."

Movement tracks validated outcomes: "We confirmed enterprise buyers will pay 2x for automated reporting, we have 5 letters of intent in hand."

See the difference? One measures busy work. The other measures evidence.
This maps directly to what I teach leaders: "Movement isn't about being busy. It's about disciplined progress toward what matters most."

Most leaders reward teams for brainstorming 100 ideas. Few reward them for shipping 1 validated solution.

Why is measuring movement so much harder?
Because you can't schedule "validated learning" on a calendar. You can schedule a hackathon. You can count ideas on a wall. You can report "12 design sprints completed this quarter."

Movement requires accepting uncertainty until evidence arrives. That's uncomfortable for most organizations.

Watch what gets celebrated in your next all-hands meeting.
"100 customer interviews completed!" gets applause.
"We killed 3 features because customers didn't validate the need" gets silence.

Until that reverses, you're running theater.

The hard truth? Leaders default to theater because it's easier. Counting activities is simple. Measuring validated learning requires defining what "validated" means, establishing evidence standards, and accepting that you might be wrong.

But only one approach actually ships products customers want.

This motion versus movement problem shows up everywhere in leadership: team meetings full of updates but no decisions, strategic planning sessions that produce slide decks but no validated strategies, performance reviews that reward activity over outcomes.

The Movement vs. Motion framework is central to how I work with leaders at Amazon, Walmart, and Lockheed Martin. Deliver, my latest book, features the complete system for leading through clarity, alignment, and movement (not theater). Get access here: https://lnkd.in/eaiPFZhw

Tom Szaky's TerraCycle handles waste nobody else will touch. His entire global operation runs on 6 words. Here's how one sentence eliminated complexity for a company operating in 20 countries:

"Eliminate the idea of waste."
That's it. That's the filter guiding every decision at TerraCycle.

When an employee in Brazil faces a decision about accepting a new waste stream, they don't email headquarters. They don't check a 50-page manual. They ask one question: Does this eliminate the idea of waste?

The answer tells them what to do.
Most leaders respond to complexity by adding more complexity.

More meetings. More approval layers. More decision frameworks. More steps between problem and solution.

TerraCycle did the opposite.

While competitors built elaborate waste acceptance criteria, TerraCycle gave employees one sentence. The result? Decisions made in days instead of weeks. Partnerships secured while competitors were still scheduling alignment calls.

They didn't win because they had more data than competitors. They won because they had sharper clarity.

Here's what most leaders miss: Your team doesn't need more information.
They need a filter for making decisions when you're not in the room.
Purpose is that filter, but most purpose statements fail the real test.

Take your company's purpose statement right now. Pick a decision your team made last week. Could they have used your purpose to make that call without escalating to you?

If the answer is no, you don't have a purpose. You have decoration.

Real purpose statements are decision engines, not marketing copy. They answer the question your team asks 50 times a day: "What should I do here?"

When purpose works, complexity collapses into direction.

TerraCycle proves it. One sentence guides decisions across material science, international partnerships, and waste stream evaluation. Not because it's clever. Because it's clear.

Purpose is the simplest form of clarity and the most powerful.

I've spent the last decade helping managers build this kind of clarity into their leadership. The 3rd Leader framework shows you how to move from complexity to clarity to results in 30 days.

If you're ready to lead with purpose-driven clarity that eliminates decision paralysis, let's talk about how Lead In 30 can transform your leadership.

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