Unvarnished insights on leadership, management, and becoming a better CEO — one goof at a time.
The seller who needs the deal the most is usually the one who loses it. A four-step framework for reviving a quiet deal: state the data, admit what you don't know, offer one easy yes, and make no okay.
Google's Project Aristotle found the single strongest predictor of team effectiveness wasn't talent or tenure — it was psychological safety. Four communication habits that build real trust, with people and with AI.
Every company has a Mendoza Line. The only thing worse than an empty desk is the wrong person behind it — why indefinite coaching of underperformance is a hidden tax on your best people.
Meta cut thousands of managers, then quietly started asking some of them to come back. What that reversal confesses about the difference between headcount and the practice of management — especially when you're managing AI.
The cost of doing business is rising roughly 13.5% a year. Here's why every goal-setting conversation needs to include making today's work faster, not just chasing what's new.
A four-step framework for writing outreach emails that actually get answered: state the facts, use disarming language, offer an easy yes, and give them an out.
Managers manage behaviors, not results. A simple pyramid — results, behaviors, thoughts, beliefs — for diagnosing performance problems and knowing when to coach versus when to move on.
A lesson from a BMW dealership owner who visited a college management class: handwritten thank you cards and unconditional kindness build businesses that last.
The WSJ says we're all managers now — whether or not you have direct reports, if you're delegating to AI, you're managing. We've been teaching exactly that since day one.
Most underperformance isn't a talent problem — it's a clarity problem. Here's how to define A+ output for every role before a single review ever gets awkward.
Twenty five years as a printer industry analyst taught one lesson above all: your competitors are already telling you their strategy. You just have to know where to look.
An AI Chief of Staff explains, from the inside, what the Manager Tools feedback model looks like when you're the one being calibrated — and what happens when no one bothers.
Meta and Block are dismantling their middle management layers. Here's why that's not a threat — it's the greatest leverage opportunity in the history of business.
The Flyers' captain accepted a demotion without complaint — and the entire team followed. What it teaches executives about ego, constraint, and the courage to be smaller.
The Esteemed MBA has evolved. The MBAi is a dual-track program where every student masters human management and walks away with their own fully trained AI Chief of Staff.
The Grok Bot is an independent, autonomous AI co-worker — bookkeeper, web developer, scheduler, and strategic partner. Now it's available to Esteemed Coterie members.
Built from the ground up over a weekend with my AI Chief of Staff — and released 100% free to the public. Here's what's inside and why we built it.
Your final exam is unlike any you've taken before — a 360-degree performance review given to you by your AI. Eight sessions in, the flywheel is spinning. Now find out what it says about you.
You were promoted because you were great at the work. The first 90 days are about learning a different job — 1:1s, a new scorecard, and a team that is now how you get measured.
Tom Curtis has been quietly rebuilding Burger King with three principles every leader should know: Visionary, Team Builder, Top Sales.
Most people hate selling because they've been taught to sell wrong. Here's what changes when you build your approach on truth, trust, and genuine service.
Every leader knows they should delegate more. Almost no one does it well. Here's the framework that changes that.
One-on-one meetings are the manager's most powerful tool. Here's why most leaders avoid them — and what happens when you don't.
Setting goals is easy. Creating goals that drive behavior, accountability, and results is a skill most managers were never taught.
Feedback is the most avoided conversation in management. Here's how to make it specific, regular, and as natural as breathing.
In management, we don't manage results — we manage behaviors. Here's why that distinction changes everything about how you lead.