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. 🎯

In March 2020, Marriott was collapsing. Its CEO, Arne Sorenson, was battling cancer. What he did next redefined leadership accountability:

Most leaders think accountability means consequences.
When performance drops, they tighten control.
When projects fail, they add oversight.
When mistakes happen, they hunt for someone to blame.

Then they wonder why their best people leave.

March 2020. Marriott faces the worst crisis in 100 years.
Hotels are shuttering. Thousands face furlough.
And Arne Sorenson is undergoing cancer treatment.

Most CEOs would’ve delegated the message.
Sent a memo. Protected themselves.

Not Sorenson.
He sat in front of a camera, hair thinned, visibly weakened, and spoke directly to Marriott’s global team.

He delivered the hard news. Took full accountability.
Announced he and Bill Marriott would take no salary.
The executive team? 50% pay cuts.

Employees didn’t just hear the message. They felt it.
Many returned when the company recovered, despite every reason not to.

Why?
Because Sorenson understood:
Accountability isn't about blame. It's about ownership.

Fear-based accountability focuses on control.
Ownership-based accountability builds commitment.

The difference shows up in a crisis:

• Fear-based cultures protect themselves.
• Ownership-based cultures protect the mission.

Here’s what Sorenson did that most leaders don’t:

He chose truth over spin.
No euphemisms. No sugarcoating.
He trusted people with the reality and gave them a plan.

He made sacrifice visible.
Pay cuts weren’t a cost-saving tactic. They were a statement:
Leaders go first. That’s how you earn the right to ask others to follow.

He gave teams control.
Instead of dictating execution, he co-created solutions.
People commit more when they help design the path forward.

The result?
Even under pressure, Marriott stayed aligned, committed, and resilient.

Here’s the shift most leaders miss:

Traditional accountability enforces standards.
Transformational accountability builds capability.

One makes people cautious.
The other makes them better.

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Russ Hill

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

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In 2014, Target was falling apart. Data breach. Failed expansion. Low morale. Brian Cornell took over and did the opposite of what most CEOs would do:

When Brian Cornell became CEO of Target in 2014, the board wanted results and fast. 

The company was reeling from:
A massive data breach
A $2B failed Canada expansion
A workforce on the edge of burnout

Most CEOs would’ve tightened control.
Cut costs. Pushed harder.

Cornell did the opposite.

He raised wages.
He invested billions in store remodels.
He celebrated every renovation publicly, with before-and-after photos that teams could share with family.

Each move made the mission tangible.
Employees could see the impact. Touch it. Take pride in it.

And something remarkable happened:
Productivity rose.
Customer satisfaction surged.
Revenue followed.

Not because Cornell demanded performance, but because he restored energy to a depleted team.

That’s the part most leaders miss:
Pressure without energy doesn’t create performance.
It accelerates burnout.

So what actually recharges team energy?

Cornell’s story reveals three levers:

1. Meaning.
People aren’t motivated by vision statements.
They’re motivated by evidence their work matters.

Cornell’s store remodels gave employees pride in their physical environment, something they could show their kids.

2. Progress.
The #1 driver of motivation at work isn’t praise or pay.
It’s seeing progress on meaningful work.

Every completed renovation became a milestone worth celebrating.
Momentum built from there.

3. Recognition.
Not generic praise. Not annual bonuses.
Specific, timely appreciation.

Cornell made frontline workers feel seen through real wage increases and public celebration of their work.

Most leaders talk about culture.
But culture doesn’t survive on pressure alone.

Energy fuels performance.
And leaders control the energy.

Cornell’s genius wasn’t vision.
It was directing attention where energy replenishes, not where it gets drained.

This is what I call energy management, and it’s just one piece of a bigger system.

The full 3rd Leader Framework includes:
Clarity (knowing where you’re going)
Alignment (getting everyone moving together)
Energy (fueling the team that’s doing the work)

Your team doesn’t need more pressure.
They need more energy.

And you set the tone.

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When Jane Fraser took over Citigroup, it was drowning in bureaucracy. 23 layers of management. 15 approvals to ship anything. But she made 3 moves that rewired how the company worked...

In 2021, Jane Fraser inherited a slow-moving giant.

Simple product decisions needed 15 approvals.
Ideas launched in January were still stuck in June.
Citi was losing ground to faster, leaner competitors.

The cause wasn’t strategy. It wasn’t talent.
It was trust.

Fraser saw what most leaders miss:
Teams move at the speed of trust.

At Citi, trust had eroded.
7 different committees had to sign off on basic launches.

Employees delayed action until someone higher up blessed it.
Taking initiative felt risky. So no one did.

Fraser reversed that spiral with 3 deliberate moves:

1. She cut layers - from 23 to 13.
Approvals dropped from 15 to 3. Execution finally had oxygen.

2. She pushed authority down.
Regional heads could now approve $50M deals without HQ.
Product teams could ship features without executive review.

3. She backed people when they used that authority.
When someone made a bold call and it worked, she praised it—publicly.
When they missed? She protected them.

That’s how trust becomes real. Not words, action.

Here’s the leadership principle Fraser demonstrated:
a. Visible authority transfer. Don’t just delegate, make it clear who owns what.
b. Failure cover. When someone takes a risk, back them, even when they miss.
c. Approval pruning. Every extra sign-off signals: “We don’t trust you yet.”

Want speed?
Cut approvals.
Push decisions down.
Then stay in the foxhole when those bets go sideways.

Most leaders try to fix slow execution with better tools.
But if your team doesn’t trust you, no tool will help.
Speed follows safety.

The question isn’t “Is your team talented?”
It’s “Do they trust you enough to move fast?”

This is one of the core 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.

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

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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Mary Dillon watched the beauty industry crumble in 2020. Most CEOs froze. She pivoted in 30 days. Here’s how speed, not perfection, helped Ulta beat the crisis:

Perfection is paralysis in disguise.
Most leaders know this. 

But when the moment comes, they freeze.
They wait for more data. More certainty. Better timing. A flawless strategy.

Meanwhile, the market moves without them.
That’s exactly what happened when retail collapsed in 2020.

Store traffic dropped 60%. 
Beauty sampling, an industry staple, became a health hazard overnight.

Most companies stalled. Not Mary Dillon.
Within 30 days, she transitioned Ulta’s consultations online, a move they’d never made at scale.

She greenlit virtual try-ons, launched curbside pickup, and repurposed thousands of store associates to support digital fulfillment.
When Target offered a partnership, she said yes, while competitors were still debating.

The pivot wasn’t perfect.

Systems glitched.
Customers got frustrated.
Employees needed rapid retraining.

However, Ulta’s digital engagement increased five times.
While rivals watched revenues fall 40%, Dillon’s bias for action preserved momentum.

Here’s the deeper insight:
You can’t steer a parked car.

Adaptive leaders don’t wait for perfect plans.
They move, test, and adjust.
Every week of delay is a week of missed learning and lost opportunity.

Most execs spend months building decisions they could test in days.
They optimize for certainty in a world that offers none.

Dillon understood that adaptability isn’t recklessness. It’s strategy.
- Act
- Learn
- Adjust
- Repeat

The leaders who win aren’t the ones with perfect slides.
They’re the ones who move while others hesitate and learn faster than the rest.

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Pixar’s best movies didn’t come from lone geniuses. They came from a brutal feedback ritual called the Braintrust. And one tiny rule made it genius: 

At Pixar, directors present unfinished work to a room of peers who tear it apart.

No sugarcoating. No spin. 
Just brutal honesty about what’s broken and why.

But here’s the catch: 
The Braintrust can’t tell the director what to do.

Only what’s wrong.

That one rule changes everything:
• The power dynamic disappears
• The feedback isn’t threatening
• The director keeps full control

And because autonomy is protected, people actually listen.

The result? Some of the most successful films in animation history.

Most leaders try the opposite:
They ask for feedback, then punish honesty.
Not overtly, but by defending, deflecting, or discrediting.

And the team learns the real lesson: honesty isn’t safe here.
Here’s the principle to steal: Separate diagnosis from solution.

Tell your team:
“I’m going to make the final call, but I need your honest read on what’s not working and why.

Don’t worry about the solution - just help me see the problems clearly.”

Then listen. Don’t explain. 
Don’t justify. Just take it in.

The feedback will be sharper. And you’ll actually use it, because your ego isn’t in the way.

I’ve built these principles into a 30-day transformation program that’s helped leaders at Amazon, Walmart, and Lockheed Martin lead with clarity and confidence.

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IBM was paralyzed by complexity. 15 sign-offs for one product decision. Then Ginni Rometty asked a single question and everything changed:

When Rometty became CEO in 2012, IBM was stuck.
Declining hardware. Conflicting stakeholders.
M&A moves took months. Engineers were chasing the wrong work.
Employees called it “the maze.”

She didn’t fix it with org charts or consultants.
She gave IBM a filter:
“Does this move us toward data, cloud, or AI?”

That was it.
No strategy decks. No approval matrices. Just one clear test.

And it worked:
• Red Hat ($34B) passed the filter.
• 70,000 new hires aligned to it.
• Profitable units were sold because they didn’t fit it.

Decision bottlenecks dropped 40%.
Not from headcount cuts, but from clarity.

The result? IBM became a credible cloud player again.

Why it worked:
Most leaders build better processes.
The best build better filters.

The power of a filter:
- Simple enough to recall mid-meeting
- Specific enough to force trade-offs
- Tied to real outcomes (not internal metrics)

But the magic isn’t in the question.
It’s in using it every time, even when it’s hard.

If it forces you to kill pet projects, say no to “easy” wins, and disappoint powerful stakeholders.
Good. That’s the point.

Complexity drains courage.
Clarity restores it.

The same science underpins "Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results and Most Don’t," my new book.

It turns leadership from opinion into system; built on clarity, repetition, and behavioral triggers that drive execution.

If you want to test these ideas early, you can join our Advance Reader program this week.

Read the book in PDF form. 
Apply it. Share your honest review.

We’ll send you two signed copies for your time, because ideas only matter when they’re practiced.

Join here:
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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.

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

Your team just closed the biggest deal in company history. You’re proud. You fly out for a conference. But when you return, the culture is gone, and Vindi Banga knew exactly why:

You sent the congratulations email.
Jumped on a plane. Felt proud of what your team had built.

Seven days later, you walk back into the office, and it’s all unraveling.
Standups skipped. Quality checks ignored. A subpar vendor was approved without review.

What happened?
If culture disappears the moment you leave the room, it was never culture.
It was compliance.

Most leaders confuse the two.
They see process adherence and call it transformation.
But performance under supervision isn’t culture, it’s theater.

The real test is this: 
What happens when no one’s watching?

Vindi Banga understood this in 2008.

At the time, he was running one of Unilever’s largest global divisions.
In a quarterly business review, a regional team proudly presented sustainability metrics.

Everything looked great on paper.
But Banga had seen their supplier contracts.

They’d chosen the cheapest options, skipping all sustainability checks.
The wins in the presentation came from the sustainability department—not this team’s actual decisions.

Banga could’ve added more oversight. Created a taskforce.
Instead, he made a deceptively simple shift:

Every month, teams had to reconstruct three real decisions they’d made.
A supplier choice. A product launch. An operational shift.
And explain them against Unilever’s values.

No blame. No performance review.
Just honest reflection:
- What did we consider?
- What did we prioritize?
- Where did our values show up or not?

Procurement teams quickly realized:
If we’re going to explain why we chose this vendor, we’d better have made a decision we stand behind.

That’s the trick:
When you know you’ll explain your decisions later, you make better decisions now.

Not because someone’s watching.
Because you’re watching yourself.

The impact was massive.
Sustainability stopped being a department; it became a behavior.

By 2010, Unilever launched the Sustainable Living Plan, and the brands tied to it grew faster than the rest of the business.

Why?
Because the culture held, even when leadership wasn’t in the room.

Here’s your diagnostic:
Don’t ask, “What are our values?”
Ask, “Do our decisions reflect them?”

Better yet, try this:
Ask a team member:
“Walk me through the last important decision you made without checking with me first. What did you weigh? What almost made you escalate it?”

You’ll find out what values actually drive behavior.

If it’s not the ones you say you stand for, you’ve built compliance.

Want to fix that?
Start auditing real decisions against your values.
Monthly reviews. Clear reflection. Honest answers.

It works.

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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:
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Jacinda Ardern turned a national crisis into a leadership masterclass. She didn’t lean on authority. She led with vulnerability. And the country followed her tone. Here’s how: 

During New Zealand's COVID-19 crisis, Jacinda Ardern did something most leaders thought was impossible.

Her 1 pm briefings became national rituals that people actually wanted to watch.
While other world leaders pointed fingers, Ardern opened with:
"I know you're scared. I am too."

No spin. No defensiveness. No blaming the team.
She communicated like a friend over coffee, not a politician behind a podium.

The result?
• Compliance rates that beat most comparable nations
• Approval ratings that hit 65% during peak crisis
• A national tone that mirrored her calm, honesty, and empathy

Because here’s the truth:
Your energy is your culture.

Not your mission statement. Not your values slide deck.
The energy you bring into every room gets copied by everyone else.

And it cuts both ways:
A Stanford study found that leader anxiety spreads to teams within 2 minutes, lowering performance by up to 15%.

That means your facial expression in the Monday standup?
Your reaction to bad news?
Your tone in a tense moment?

All of it becomes part of your company culture.

Let me show you what this looks like:
A product launch fails. Two leaders, same outcome:

Leader A walks in tight-jawed. "Who’s going to explain this disaster?"
Silence. Shame. Risk-aversion sets in.

Leader B walks in, breathes. “Well, that didn’t go as planned. What do we know now that we didn’t last week?”
Engagement. Learning. Growth.

Same failure. One kills innovation. The other builds trust.

Your team reads your energy signature. Every day. Every meeting.
Not just your words, your shoulders, your jawline, your eyes.

Want to know what culture you're actually creating?

Try this 48-hour energy audit:
Record 3 meetings and watch them with the sound off. What does your body language say?

Ask 2 team members: “What emotion do I typically bring into interactions?” Don’t defend. Just listen.

Track your internal state before high-leverage moments. Patience? Openness? Stress? Know your baseline.

Journal energy ripple moments. When did your vibe shift the room? Why? What would you do differently?

Find your contagion hotspots. Is it the Monday huddle? The 1:1? The town hall? Show up intentionally.

Because here’s the hard truth:

Your team is already running this audit on you.
They just don’t send you a report. They show it through:

• How safe they feel to speak up
• How quickly they recover from mistakes
• How often do they bring you real problems, not rehearsed ones

Jacinda Ardern knew this.
She made a deliberate choice to lead with steady energy and trust.
And it spread like wildfire.

So ask yourself: What’s spreading from you?

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When Indra Nooyi launched “Performance with Purpose,” PepsiCo insiders rolled their eyes. She said the same thing over and over again, but for a reason:

Every town hall.
Every executive meeting.
Every memo and casual conversation.

Nooyi repeated the mission until people could recite it in their sleep.
Some joked about it. Others thought it was excessive.

But she knew what most leaders miss:
Clarity fades faster than you think.

You’re clear on Monday.
By Wednesday, inboxes and Slack messages have buried your strategy.
By Friday, your team’s working on five different priorities again.

That’s not a communication failure.
It’s a leadership gap.

Research shows memory decay starts within seconds, and without reinforcement, even critical information disappears.

Nooyi didn’t just say the strategy.
She made it muscle memory.

📌 Repetition turned values into reflexes
📌 Consistency built trust and alignment
📌 Familiarity became the focus

It worked. Not because it was new every time.
But because it was the same every time.

Here is the real test of communication at scale.
Can every person on your team state the top three priorities without preparation?

If the answer is no, the leader has not communicated enough.

The job is not to entertain the team with novelty.
The job is to embed clarity so deeply that execution becomes second nature.

This principle forms a core pillar of my new book, “Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results and Most Don’t.”

It introduces a simple, repeatable operating system leaders can use to maintain clarity and drive results every week.

I am inviting a small group to read the book before its release on November 10.
You will receive the full PDF immediately.

If you choose to leave an honest review on Amazon, we will send you two signed print copies as a thank you for your time.

One is for you.
One is for a colleague who needs to deliver.

Join the Advance Reader Group here:
https://lnkd.in/e74z3WTy

Thank you for helping leaders raise the standard of what it means to deliver.

The executive team left the offsite aligned and energized. Three months later? Zero progress. Here’s why most orgs confuse clarity with accountability and how Ajay Banga fixed it at Mastercard:

The vision was clear.
The strategy was strong.
The goals were documented.

But when Ajay Banga checked the dashboard 90 days later, nothing had moved.
Not because people didn’t understand the plan.
But because no one owned it.

This is what I call clarity theater.

It’s when leaders mistake strategic clarity for actual execution capacity.
They assume that if the destination is defined, the work will follow.

But at Mastercard, Banga understood the real engine wasn’t clarity.
It was ownership.

So he rewired the executive team.

Every strategic priority has a name attached.
Not a task force. Not a working group. A person.

- Digital inclusion: 1 executive. Quarterly targets. Compensation tied to results.
- Cybersecurity: 1 owner. Board reporting every 90 days.
- Customer trust: 1 lead. NPS scores linked to bonus.

No shared accountability. No hiding in the crowd.

Suddenly, leaders stopped saying “What should we do about this?”
They started saying “Here’s what I’m doing about this.”

But accountability isn’t just a structural shift.
It’s a cultural one.

Here’s what makes it break:
Politics.

No one wants to own failure. So they push for co-ownership.
Or ask for “alignment meetings” instead of making a call.
This is just accountability theater in disguise.

Banga knew that ownership only works if leadership makes it safe.
Safe to try. Safe to miss. Safe to learn.

If you want to diagnose whether your org has real accountability, try this:

Pull up your strategic goals. Remove every name.
Now ask your team: Who owns what?

If you get silence, you don’t have accountability.
You have intentions.

The fix requires 3 questions:

1. Who owns this outcome?
Not a team. Not a title. A person.

2. How will we measure impact?
Visible, shared metrics. Tied to what matters.

3. What support do they need?
Resources, air cover, and real authority.

Most leaders stop at question 1.
Great leaders obsess over question 3.

Because accountability isn’t pressure.
It’s empowered ownership.

Clarity defines the destination.
Accountability builds the engine to get there.

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Angela Ahrendts took over a luxury brand in chaos. Every team tracked their own metrics. She fixed it by eliminating almost all of them:

When Ahrendts joined Burberry in 2006, she found a fragmented company.
• Dozens of competing KPIs across regions
• Each department optimizing its own scoreboard
• A brand that felt like 15 companies wearing the same logo

Most CEOs respond by adding dashboards.
She made one radical move instead:

Every decision would be judged by one lens. 
Does this strengthen brand consistency?

That became the metric.

Designers stopped arguing over features.
Store managers stopped improvising layouts.
Regional teams aligned, fast.

No micromanagement.
No extra layers.
Just one filter, applied everywhere.

Burberry tripled in value in 5 years.

Why did it work?
Because simplicity scales.
Leaders who remove noise create space for focus.
Every scoreboard that matters fits on one page.

That same philosophy anchors "Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results and Most Don’t."

It’s a manual for simplifying leadership to the essentials; clear priorities, visible scoreboards, and disciplined weekly execution.

Before the official November 10 release, a small group of early readers can access the full PDF, apply the framework, and share honest feedback.

In return, we’ll send you two signed copies of the book to keep and share.

Join the Advance Reader Group:
https://lnkd.in/e74z3WTy

March 2021. Walgreens was burning out from the inside. Pharmacists were drowning. Corporate pushed five priorities at once. Then Rosalind Brewer did something radical:

When Brewer became CEO of Walgreens in March 2021, she walked into organizational chaos.

Pharmacists were administering 3 million COVID vaccines per week. 

Store teams were stretched thin. 
Corporate was still pushing digital transformation, retail redesigns, and cost-cutting.

Nobody could tell you what the actual priority was.
That’s not ambiguity. That’s organizational violence.

Most CEOs try to balance everything. 
Brewer did the opposite.

In Walgreens’ first-ever global town hall, she said:
“Everything stops except vaccines. I don’t care about your other projects right now. Getting shots in arms is the only thing that matters.”

And then she backed it up.
She redirected billions away from retail expansion and into healthcare infrastructure.

She created leadership roles focused solely on the vaccine mission.
She killed off initiatives that didn’t serve the new north star.

Employees finally had clarity. Resources aligned. 
Execution accelerated. And burnout began to ease.

Here’s the lesson most leaders miss:
Brewer’s power move wasn’t adding “vaccine focus” to a list of priorities.
It was removing everything else.
She had the courage to disappoint people in service of the mission.

That’s not controlling. That’s leadership.
Too many leaders avoid this level of clarity because they fear it will feel constraining.

But when there’s no single priority, teams burn energy guessing.
They interpret mixed signals. They hedge. They lose trust.
And productivity collapses under the weight of ambiguity.

The Clarity Test:
If your team can’t tell you the #1 priority without checking notes, you haven’t led. You’ve confused them.

Brewer understood that clarity creates freedom, not constraint.
When people know exactly what matters, they’re free to innovate inside the lines.

They stop wasting time on guesswork and start solving the right problems.

If you want to build a culture that moves faster, focuses better, and performs under pressure, it starts with this kind of clarity.


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Anne Wojcicki’s company got shut down by the FDA. Most founders would’ve folded or pivoted. She turned it into a regulatory breakthrough:

In 2013, the FDA sent a warning letter that halted 23andMe’s health reports overnight.

Instead of retreating, Anne Wojcicki made a rare decision:
She rebuilt everything based on the FDA’s feedback - line by line.

No shortcuts. No public fights. No shortcuts.
Just clarity, discipline, and long-game conviction.

This is confidence without certainty in action.

She didn’t charge ahead blindly.
She paused to learn what success looked like on the FDA’s terms.
Then she made deliberate bets, starting with ancestry tests before circling back to health.

She wasn’t certain she’d win.
But she was clear on how she’d try and what would change her mind.
Most leaders never practice this.

They confuse waiting for more data with being careful.
They delay by another quarter.
They let the moment pass to “de-risk” just a little longer.

But your best people don’t wait.
Your competitors don’t either.

Analysis paralysis kills more careers than bold mistakes ever will.

Here’s how to lead when the stakes are high and the map is fuzzy:
• Stop asking “Do I have enough data?”
Ask: “What would I need to know to change my mind?”

• Make reversible bets first.
Wojcicki didn’t fight for full FDA approval all at once.

• Define real feedback loops.
“Learn as we go” only works if you know what success looks like in advance.

Bold leadership ≠ recklessness.
It’s the skill of moving forward with conviction, even when the future is uncertain.

That’s not a personality trait.
It’s a repeatable skill we teach at Lead In 30.

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Most leaders try to avoid conflict because they believe it hurts culture. Safra Catz understood that unmanaged agreement hurts performance even more. Here's what happened at Oracle:

During the pivot to cloud, Oracle faced enormous internal resistance.
Legacy teams wanted to protect what had worked in the past.

Cloud revenue remained close to zero.
Every strategic move carried significant risk.

A traditional leader might have forced alignment and pushed forward through authority alone.
Catz chose a different approach.

She designed structured conflict into decision making.
Debates followed clear rules.
Evidence mattered more than internal politics.

People were encouraged to challenge ideas instead of each other.
Every proposal had to withstand its strongest possible counterargument.

If a leader could not clearly articulate the risk in their own plan, the discussion continued.
The idea was not approved until the pressure test was complete.

This system created clarity instead of tension.

It exposed flawed assumptions early.
It turned disagreement into progress.

The organization moved faster because ideas were validated before execution.
As a result, Oracle’s cloud momentum accelerated while other competitors stalled in quiet consensus.

The lesson is simple.
Teams that avoid conflict avoid the truth.
Teams that use conflict well deliver outcomes.

This principle is at the core of my new book, “Deliver: Why Some Leaders Get Results and Most Don’t.”

It provides a simple, repeatable system any manager can use to convert expectations into results.

I am inviting a small group to join our Advance Reader program before launch on November 10. You will receive the entire PDF right away.

If you choose to leave an honest review on Amazon, we will send you two signed print copies as a thank you for your time.

One is for you.
One is for the colleague who needs it next.

Join the Advance Reader Group here:
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Thank you for helping leaders everywhere learn to deliver results.

Complacency doesn’t walk in loudly. It creeps in through compromise. Paul O’Neill proved how one bold decision can reverse that spiral:

Complacency is a leader’s quietest enemy. 
What you tolerate becomes your team’s standard.

Mediocrity never announces itself. 
It sneaks in through “good enough,” one small compromise at a time. 
Before you know it, what was once unacceptable becomes normal.

Paul O'Neill proved you can reverse this erosion by refusing to tolerate mediocrity in just one area.

When O’Neill became CEO of Alcoa in 1987, investors expected a classic turnaround playbook: slash costs, boost profits, cut headcount.

Instead, he stunned them by declaring that worker safety, not margins, would be the company’s top priority.

Alcoa already had above-average safety records. 
But O’Neill wasn’t interested in averages. 
He made safety the operating system.

Every injury had to be reported to him within 24 hours. 
Business unit presidents who failed to comply were replaced. No excuses.

At first, the market panicked. 
Some investors sold their stock. 
They thought he’d lost his mind.

But here’s what happened:
To report injuries that fast, communication had to improve.
To reduce injuries, systems had to evolve.
To improve systems, teams had to collaborate better.

Safety became the keystone habit that quietly upgraded everything.

Over 12 years, Alcoa’s injury rate dropped. 
Profits soared. Net income rose from $200M to $1.4B. 
Market cap exploded from $3B to $27B.

One standard. Zero tolerance. Massive ripple effect.

Because culture always rises, or falls, to the level of what leaders tolerate.

The question isn’t whether you understand this. It’s whether you live it:
In meetings when deadlines slip

In 1:1s, when expectations aren’t met
In the small moments when it would be easier to let something slide

O’Neill didn’t change everything. 
He changed one thing relentlessly.

And everything followed.

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Yvon Chouinard made one sentence Patagonia’s operating system. Most people thought it was too narrow. But it became the company’s clearest advantage:

When Chouinard said, “We’re in business to save our home planet,” every consultant called it naive.
Too restrictive. Too political. Too limiting.

But that sentence gave Patagonia something most companies lack:
A clear decision filter.

• When a product used unsustainable materials, they killed it.
• When faced with cheap suppliers vs. sustainable ones, the choice was made.
• When store locations conflicted with their values, they walked away.

No debate. No confusion. Just clarity.

This didn’t slow innovation; it unlocked it.
People knew what “right” looked like.
So they moved faster, made bolder calls, and trusted each other more.

Now look at most companies:
• Products built no one asked for
• Campaigns contradicting the brand
• Engineers rebuilding things that worked fine

Not because people are lazy.
Because they’re guessing.

That’s what happens when leaders fear being “too directive.”
They stay vague to avoid being labeled a micromanager.

So the team guesses what matters and gets it wrong.

Here’s the truth most leaders miss:
Micromanagement isn’t about clarity.
It’s about control.

Micromanagement says: “Check with me before doing anything.”
Clarity says: “Here’s the standard. Go make it happen.”

Micromanagement burns you out.
Clarity scales without you.
Clarity isn't restrictive; it’s kind.

Your best people don’t want “freedom to guess.”
They want freedom to execute with confidence.

And confidence only comes from knowing what matters.

If you're ready to build this kind of clarity into your leadership, the 3rd Leader framework has helped execs at Amazon, Walmart, and Lockheed Martin do exactly that in 30 days.

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In 2012, Adobe tanked their own revenue by 8%. Wall Street downgraded the stock. Customers revolted. But their CEO didn’t panic; he redesigned the system:

Shantanu Narayen made a radical bet:
He shifted Adobe from selling packaged software to cloud subscriptions.

The impact was brutal at first:
• Revenue dropped 8%
• Customers complained
• Analysts panicked

But Narayen didn’t fire anyone.
He didn’t demand harder work.
He redesigned how the company worked.

Sales shifted from chasing upfront revenue to driving lifetime value.
Engineers moved from annual releases to continuous shipping.
Marketing stopped selling features and started demonstrating ongoing value.

Every system changed.
Because you can’t get subscription economics from a perpetual license system, no matter how hard you push.

Within 5 years, Adobe’s model became the industry standard.
Recurring revenue exploded.
And competitors raced to follow.

This is the kind of shift most leaders won’t make.

Why?
Because it’s easier to blame people than fix the system.

Deming said it best:
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”

So if you don’t like the results?
Redesign the system.

Three questions to get you started:
- What are you really measuring, and is it driving the right behavior?
- Do your incentives align with your stated goals?
- Are you willing to trade short-term pain for long-term gain?

Most leadership programs focus on changing people.
Lead In 30 starts by redesigning the system leaders operate in.

That’s how we help leaders at Amazon, Walmart, Lockheed Martin, and Hormel deliver measurable results in 30 days.

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