AS an executive coach, I’ve noticed something interesting. People almost never hire me because they’re questioning their definition of success.

Business owners call because they want to grow their business or prepare for an exit. Executives call because they want to become a better leader, figure out why their team isn’t performing, or be more influential.

But coaching never stays in one place, and business is always personal. A good coach will never help anyone build a strategy without digging into the reason for the intended growth.

I’ve had leaders sit across from me with thriving companies, respected reputations, and everything they once thought would make them happy, only to finally find the courage to ask me, “Why doesn’t this feel like success?” And admit “I’m not sure I even want this.”

It’s rarely because something has gone terribly wrong. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. Their business is growing. Their career is thriving. People admire them. They’re well compensated for their efforts. They’ve achieved goals they once only dreamed about.

The problem isn’t that they aren’t successful. The problem is they never stopped to ask whether they were chasing their definition of success—or someone else’s.

From an early age, many of us absorb a remarkably consistent message about what success should look like: a bigger title, more responsibility, a larger paycheck, constant growth, a reputation for always being available, and always achieving.

What many people don’t realize is that the way leaders define success shapes every decision they make, the culture they create, and the lives of everyone around them. So, when we work together, we get very clear on whether or not your definition of success still fits.

Here are five signs it may be time to redefine what success means for you.

1. Your decisions are driven more by expectations than by values.

Many leaders don’t realize how often they measure themselves against invisible standards. We, as humans, love to compare ourselves to others.

You compare yourself to competitors, to colleagues, to neighbors, or even to previous versions of yourself without even realizing it.

And because of that comparison game, you find yourself feeling like you need a bigger company, more revenue, a bigger team, or more recognition. Then somewhere along the way, you lost sight of why you wanted to lead this team to begin with, and you’re not sure you even recognize yourself.

Try this: Before making your next major decision, ask yourself, “If nobody else ever knew about this choice, would I still make it?” Your answer may reveal whose expectations you’re actually serving.

2. Achievement no longer creates energy—it only creates the next expectation.

Many high achievers discover that reaching the next milestone doesn’t bring the satisfaction they expected. You got the promotion. You have the title. You have the car. Your company is respected. You have everything you thought you wanted, and maybe you could rest.

Instead, every accomplishment immediately gives way to the next goal. This promotion leads to wondering how and when you’ll get the next promotion. This revenue target leads to a larger revenue target. The business doubles, and suddenly the expectation is to double it again. It’s a never-ending cycle.

Try this: Instead of immediately asking, “What’s next?” spend time celebrating the work you’ve done, then reflecting on where the energy was highest. Decide

3. Your identity has become fused with your title.

I have found that many leaders struggle to separate who they are from what they do. Whether it’s CEO, Partner, Founder, Business Owner, CFO, COO, etc. – the role slowly becomes their identity.

When that happens, every company decision, every piece of feedback, every promotion (or missed promotion) feels personal – when really, it’s business. Healthy leadership requires enough distance to recognize that your title describes your work—not your worth.

Try this: Complete this sentence without mentioning your profession: “I am someone who...” If that’s difficult, it may be time to reconnect with who you are outside your role.

4. You “should” yourself out of wanting something different.

This is one of the most common internal conflicts I hear: “I’m not sure I’m happy, but I shouldn’t complain. I have so much. Others would love to be in my position.”

Gratitude is important. But gratitude doesn’t require you to ignore the voice telling you something no longer fits. Too many leaders convince themselves they must continue living a life that no longer aligns simply because they’ve worked hard to build it. Being grateful for your opportunities and wanting something different are not mutually exclusive.

Try this: Swap “What will they think if I /change?” for “What will I think of myself if I don’t change?”

5. You tell yourself, “I’ll be happy when___.”

Many leaders unknowingly postpone living until some future version of success finally arrives. The problem is that every milestone simply creates another one, and “when” never comes.

If fulfillment always lives on the other side of the next achievement, you’ll spend your entire career chasing a horizon that keeps moving. The goal is to find happiness now. Why wait?

Try this: If you find yourself saying, “I’ll be happy when ____” ask yourself, “What’s keeping me from being happy now?” Your answer may reveal that many of the things you value most are available long before your next accomplishment.

Your Team Is Watching

The definition of success you choose shapes your leadership. Leaders who constantly pursue “more” often create organizations where everyone feels pressure to do the same. Teams begin believing that achievement is valued more than purpose, output more than sustainability, and growth more than meaning.

Whether you intend it or not, people learn what success looks like by watching you. If you define success only by external accomplishment, your culture will eventually reflect that definition. But when leaders model thoughtful boundaries, purposeful ambition, healthy relationships, and values-driven decisions, they give others permission to do the same.

Now What?

The first thing you can do for yourself is define your own definition of success. The company will certainly have goals, and part of your success may be defined by those goals. But those aren’t your only measures.

Take some dedicated time to write down what you think success looks like for you, and to deep-dive into how these align with your core values. Your definition may include going to soccer games or taking time off to be with your family. That’s okay! That’s the point of the exercise! Find what matters to you so you can design the life you want – not the one handed to you by others.

You are not alone if you’re wondering if the definition you’ve been living by still fits -- if the ambition inadvertently altered the trajectory of the business and your future. The goal is to ensure that the ambition that drives you is aimed at somewhere you actually want to go.

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HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in August 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.

Practice Makes Culture: How Welcoming Elephants, Creating Ownership, and Facilitating Daily Practice Transform Organizations by Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth

After decades of organizational transformation efforts, the failure rate remains stubbornly high: over 70%. What’s missing? The human element. In Practice Makes Culture, you'll discover why most transformations still fail and how to ensure yours succeeds by addressing what other approaches miss: the emotional dynamics, hidden narratives, and everyday behaviors that truly shape your organization. This practical guide introduces a powerful framework centered on three critical focus areas: Elephants: Address the emotional aspects of change, recognize diverse perspectives, and tackle difficult conversations that most leaders avoid. Ownership: Create transformation that people actually want by ensuring those affected by change are the ones steering it. Practice: Transform meetings into powerful practice fields for cultural change through consistent, daily reinforcement of desired behaviors.

Inviting Genius: How Good Leaders Use Conflict to Become Great by Matthew Abrams

Most teams don't fail because of conflict. They fail because they avoid it. In Inviting Genius: How Good Leaders Use Conflict to Become Great, Matthew Abrams offers a roadmap for leaders who want to build high-performing teams without sacrificing humanity. After 15 years working with visionary leaders, Abrams shows that tension isn't the problem. It's the path. As you apply the concepts within Inviting Genius, you will Stop avoiding the conversations that matter most — Build a healthy leadership team that decides faster and executes better. — Unlock the full intelligence, innovation, and passion that already lives within your team. — Build a culture where people stay, grow, and do their best work. This isn't a book about managing conflict. It's about using it.

Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times by Owen Fitzpatrick

Right now, your brain is selling you a story about who you are, what's true, and what you should believe. And you're buying it, even when it sabotages your success. In Inner Propaganda, psychologist Owen Fitzpatrick reveals the internal persuasion system shaping your thoughts, your decisions, and your reality. After decades studying external propaganda, from witnessing first-hand modern influence operations in North Korea, Afghanistan, and Washington D.C., to analyzing the incredible double agent who helped change the outcome of World War II, Fitzpatrick reached a startling conclusion: The same tactics that sway nations also operate inside each of us. But understanding your own propaganda is the key to understanding everyone else's. Once you see how your brain manipulates you, you finally understand why others believe what they believe. As the current media landscape fragments our relationships, this can help you bridge divides rather than deepen them. To do this, he offers a deceptively simple framework: Feels Right, Fits In, Makes Sense—three forces that explain why ideas take hold, why we cling to them even when they harm us, and how to reshape beliefs that actually support better mental health, clearer decision-making, and stronger leadership.

Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment by Paul Osterman

A revealing look at the decline in formal employment in favor of hiring contractors, freelancers, temps, and marginal workers, who are excluded from traditional benefits and career ladders. Companies cannot exist without workers, but they are increasingly reluctant to have employees. Instead of providing the benefits and protections that have traditionally come with employee status, businesses are turning to tactics that let them treat people as interchangeable parts, to be used and discarded as needed. Drawing on an original survey of over 6,000 workers, Disposable Workers reveals the striking extent of this transformation across the occupational hierarchy, affecting everyone from janitors to nurses. Paul Osterman identifies three distinct categories of disposable workers: contractors, freelancers, and marginal employees. The marginal category, unique to Osterman’s analysis, describes workers who are employees from a narrow legal standpoint but are held at arm’s length by their firm―left without job security, skill training, or opportunities for promotion.

The Radical Promise: Mastering The Art of Doing What You Say You Will Do by James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner and Steve Farber

The Radical Promise delivers a story-driven framework for leaders to increase their trust and credibility or rebuild it when their actions don’t match their words. The storyline and concepts are equally applicable to every person, regardless of title or position, who is challenged to keep promises and commitments to make sure that what they "say" (promise) is what they do. The Radical Promise is an entertaining and thought-provoking book for today's leaders, as well as those aspiring to be or become even better leaders, seeking key lessons they can apply to their own organizations and professional lives.

Here is a selection of Posts from July 2026 that you will want to check out:

• Organizational Complacency Statistics: USA 2026 by @Mark_Sanborn
• It turns out, resistance to your change initiative is (mostly) a good sign by @artpetty
• Has AI Already Killed How-To Nonfiction? Sales Trends, My Personal Data, and What It Might Mean for the Future by @tferriss The market for transformation—for sitting with one mind, at length, on a subject it has bled for—might just get smaller, weirder, and more interesting. I’d bet on it.
• A Field Guide to Information Overload: How to navigate an environment built to distract us by Hana Lee Goldin
• Theodore Roosevelt and Nationalism by @jamesstrock
• Moral courage is a leadership competency by Ena Inesi via @LBS
• What the Room Knows by @Julie_WG
• World Cup Showcases Positive Nationalism by @jamesstrock Let's Build on This.
• Surrendering My Thinking to Claude by @davidburkus
• How to Stay Focused When Everyone Else Has an Urgent Request via @LetsGrowLeaders
• When AI Makes Answers Cheap, What Are Business Schools For? by @jacobides The best institutions won’t just teach AI. They will redefine their own value and develop managers with the crucial skills for the AI age
• 3 Words That Separate Elite Leaders from Everyone Else by @BrianKDodd
• To Him Who Restores by @donhornsby
• Founder Energy by @jamesstrock Unity Is Our Strength.
• The Myth of Suffering for Greatness by @BStulberg
• The Cost of Convenience via @LBBOnline
• We Don’t Control Time—But We Do Control Our Decisions by @AlanSteinJr
• 7 Leadership Lessons on Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Organization's Future by @BrianKDodd
• When the Wheels Come Off: Why Leaders Fail in a Crisis by @PhilCooke
• Building Greatness by @JonGordon11
• Proof Over Persuasion: NASA’s Unlikely Path to Organizational Transformation via @AdmiredLeaders
• What a Legendary Winemaker Can Teach Us about Leadership via @KelloggSchool
• Why Do So Many Christian Conferences Fail to Change Anything? by @PhilCooke
• Preserving Process in the Age of AI Design by Olivia Bruhmuller
• MIT Sloan reflects: 250 years of American business and management via @MITSloan
• Your Biggest Leadership Failure Hasn’t Happened Yet by @PhilCooke
• The Pause as a Design Tool by Giuseppe Fioretti

See more on Twitter.

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Chris Hodges on growth:

“Growth is rarely impressive in the moment. Most days it looks ordinary. Quiet. Unnoticed. It’s choosing to learn when it would be easier to coast. Choosing to reflect when reacting feels faster. Choosing to stretch when settling feels comfortable. I’ve had to make those choices more times than I can count. Start where you are. Use what you have. You don’t need to see the whole path or have everything figured out. You just need the humility to stay teachable and the courage to take the next step.”

Source: Legacy Letters: Timeless Principles I Learned, Lived, and Leave Behind

Ron Friedman on feedback:

“When feedback is tied to a formal review, the conversation shifts from growth to judgment. That shift triggers anxiety and defensiveness, two emotions that make it almost impossible to learn. Busy managers often assume that no feedback communicates that everything is fine. But employees tend to interpret silence differently. A lack of feedback makes them feel invisible. Feedback is therefore About more than just guidance. It’s a signal that we’re valued, respected, and seen.”

Source: Superteams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

PERSONAL agency is the ability to see choices and the belief in your ability to act on them. Agentic people take ownership of their own lives.

You Can Just Do Things author Cate Hall believes that personal agency is learnable. And while agency may not matter on an average day, “agency really matters when you’re faced with an opportunity that could change your life completely. A little moment when choosing to deviate from your routine could have outrageous results.” You Can Just Do Things provides valuable insights into growing our agency and living an intentional life.

Hall says that most people are selectively agentic. That is, they don’t apply the same can-do approach and resourcefulness equally in all areas of their life. If you divide life into three areas: work, relations of all types, and self-relationship, which includes health, mindset, and spirituality, then you might be high-agency in one but not the others. “The exertion of willpower makes you feel like you’re trying. But the feeling of effort doesn’t mean that you’re Actually Trying.”

You may think that you’re really struggling to deal with problems in the other areas of your life. “But struggling is not evidence that you’ve tried everything. To the contrary, the continuous need for willpower may be the sign of a badly engineered life.”

I’ve talked with people who don’t think they have a choice. They just take has been handed to them. “The human default is to voluntarily accept constraints, convincing ourselves that they are mandatory. We choose to accept a set of expectations placed on us by others—or that we imagine others are placing on us. Then, we act as if we’re stuck indefinitely.” We must habitually question our thinking and challenge the path we are on. Is this what we really want? In this way, we can in real-time decide if a change needs to be made and of what variety.

One of our most valuable tools is feedback. “You cannot expect to reliably progress in areas where you’re not getting reliable feedback.” Avoid binary responses to feedback. “Instead, embrace mental fluidity, examining all of the possibilities between ‘they’re completely wrong’ and ‘the worst-case scenario is true, and now I must die of shame.’”

Failure is just part of growth. Iras Glass once said, “‘If you’re not failing all the time, you’re not creating a situation where you can get super lucky.” Hall adds that most people “take failure extremely personally, rather than as a prompt to consider radical re-invention.”

“‘This is the way I am’ is an all-purpose excuse. It’s easy, credible, and hugely limiting. Instead, I find that adopting the belief that traits are changeable, working at them as though they are, and seeing what happens is a much more useful way to approach life, one that will over the long term reliably yield more freedom than adopting the opposite belief.” If you think you are unreliable, observe someone who has a reputation for reliability and ask “‘What kinds of things do reliable people do that I could adopt?’ Reliability is made of micro-actions. For some people, these micro-actions do seem to come more naturally than for others. But they are clearly learnable behaviors.”

As we go through life, we might learn the wrong lesson from our limited experiences. Hall advises us to “Be skeptical of what you’re ‘learning’ when the personal stakes are high. Once you’ve really invested in the wrong lesson, it can take years—or a lifetime—to unlearn, unless you make a point of becoming aware of your conditioning.”

When it comes to the emotions we try to avoid at all costs—what she calls the Cringe Minefields—they are where our biggest self-improvement gains are likely to come from. “You simply cannot see the landscape of options in your life objectively-the possibilities on the other side-if the cringe is controlling you.”

You can increase your chances for luck. “The more times you interact with the outside world, the more chances you have to get lucky-to find the collaborators, friends, and projects that, together, provide the right soil for you to bloom.”

We humans are unfortunately hardwired to readily reject options that will require effort when we think the chances are good that we won’t succeed. Flipping the script from ‘That won’t work’ to ‘How do I make this work?’ can help you discover degrees of agency you didn’t realize you had.

Even the most successful-looking people are winging it to some degree just like us. “They all feel self-doubt and confusion at times. They’ve all wasted a ton of time and made bad decisions.” And that’s inspiring. “Because if the world is being shaped by scared, insecure, confused, irresponsible people like us, then we too can shape the world.”

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I’VE SPENT 45 years in the pest control industry: 30 in corporate leadership and 15 building my own company, Pied Piper Pest & Lawn, from the ground up. In that time, I’ve seen just about every kind of infestation imaginable. But some of the worst ones never required a spray wand.

Early in my management career, I started noticing something strange: the same thought processes I used to assess and control pest infestations worked just as well for diagnosing problems with employees, clients, and suppliers. The behaviors were almost identical. The strategies for dealing with them? Surprisingly similar.

Whether you’re managing a cockroach or a coworker who helps themselves to whatever they want, understanding their behavior is the key. Once you know what motivates them, what they’re scared of, and what their kryptonite is, you can manage your environment and make your business a place where good people actually want to stay.

Here are four field-tested principles I use to keep both kinds of pests from taking over.

1. Know your pest before you decide how to control it.

In pest control, the biggest mistake an amateur makes is the shotgun approach: buy whatever’s on the shelf, apply it everywhere, and hope for the best. It rarely works. That’s because different pests require completely different treatment methods. What eliminates a flea infestation will do nothing for termites.

The same logic applies to managing difficult people. In my book Infested, I break workplace pests into four categories: Bloodsuckers (those who drain the energy and resources of everyone around them), Raiders (those who take without giving), Saboteurs (those who quietly undermine systems and morale), and Assailants (those who actively attack the organization or the people in it).

Misidentifying the type of pest is where most managers go wrong. A passive-aggressive underperformer who does the bare minimum to avoid being fired is a Saboteur, not a Bloodsucker. Treating them the same way will get you nowhere. Take the time to honestly assess the behavior pattern before you act. Observe, gather data, and resist the urge to react emotionally.

2. Look in the mirror: Sometimes the infestation starts at the top.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth I learned early: some pests, like roaches and rats, thrive specifically in dirty, poorly maintained environments. If your building is clean and well-managed, they have nowhere to hide. If it isn’t, you’re practically rolling out the welcome mat.

The same dynamic plays out in business. Toxic employees tend to flourish in organizations with weak management, unclear expectations, and inconsistent accountability. Difficult clients and suppliers take advantage of vague contracts and disorganized processes. Before you zero in on a problem person, ask yourself: What conditions in my business are allowing this behavior to continue?

One thing pest control and management have in common is the need for honest assessment. You have to judge situations on what is actually there—not what you hope might be there or what you think should be there. Base your decisions on real, verified data. And always be willing to consider that the problem might partly be you.

3. Build systems, not just solutions.

In pest control, a one-time treatment rarely solves the problem permanently. The real goal is to create conditions that prevent reinfestation. That means sealing entry points, eliminating food sources, and implementing a regular monitoring protocol. You don’t wait until you have a rat problem to start thinking about rats.

Healthy businesses work the same way. Once you’ve addressed a problem—whether it’s a toxic employee, a predatory client, or a supplier who’s been quietly taking advantage of you—your job isn’t done. You need to put checks and balances in place so the problem can’t recur unchecked.

At Pied Piper, I put simple systems in place like color-coded tool tracking to tighten up our inventory and stop equipment theft, post-service client calls within 48 hours to catch service failures early, and clear written expectations for every role so that underperformers couldn’t hide behind ambiguity.

These aren’t complicated or expensive. They just need to exist, be consistently followed, and updated as the business evolves. A system that nobody enforces is just a document.

4. Fix before you fire—but know when it’s time to relocate the raccoon.

In pest control, the goal isn’t total elimination. It’s control and balance. Most of the animals we call pests aren’t evil; they’re just in the wrong environment. A raccoon in the wild is doing exactly what raccoons do. A raccoon in your attic is a different matter entirely.

I apply the same philosophy to managing people. My first instinct is never to fire—it’s to fix. Firing someone has consequences that ripple through the rest of your team. It creates anxiety, disrupts operations, and signals that the organization is unstable. Whenever possible, I try to get to the root of the behavior and address it head-on. Sometimes a conversation, a role change, or clearer expectations is all it takes.

But sometimes the raccoon just has to go. If someone is actively harmful to your team, your clients, or your culture, and genuine attempts to correct the situation haven’t worked, the most humane thing—for everyone, including them—is to part ways. Just do it ethically, with documentation, and without drama. In pest control, we’re careful with how we handle animals even when we’re removing them. The same standard applies here.

A healthy ecosystem is built, not found.

A thriving business, like a healthy natural ecosystem, doesn’t happen by accident. It requires the right balance of people, clear systems, consistent accountability, and a leader willing to take an honest look at what’s working and what isn’t. The best businesses—and the most pest-free homes—aren’t the ones that react fastest when things go wrong. They’re the ones that make it hardest for things to go wrong in the first place.

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IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig on managing emotions:

“Stress, anger, and anxiety can cause narrow-mindedness and the fight-flee-or-freeze syndrome. It’s not at all helpful when you need to engage in critical thinkIng, problem solving, innovative thinking outside the box, or designing experiments to learn. Positive emotions, on the other hand, have been scientifically linked not just to higher health and well-being but also to broader attention, open-mindedness, deeper focus, and more flexible thinking, all of which underlie creativity and innovative thinking.”

Source: Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age

Walter Lippmann on getting the questions right:

“The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully. Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer. It was to this that our people and the world responded, preferring him instinctively to those who did not know what the real questions were.”

Source: Roosevelt Is Gone, Today and Tomorrow, April 14, 1945

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

ORGANIZATIONS often believe they’re selecting the best candidate when in reality they’re selecting the person who best matches familiar credentials, patterns, or assumptions. That distinction matters.

As the 2011 movie Moneyball demonstrated through baseball recruiting how success improves dramatically when talent is evaluated against the factors that actually predict performance — not the ones people traditionally favor.

The same lesson applies in hiring. If companies want to identify exceptional talent before competitors do, they need a clearer, more disciplined way to define what success in a role truly requires.

What Baseball Got Right About Talent

Billy Beane of “Moneyball” fame inherited one of the smallest budgets for any MLB team player salaries in 2002. Frustrated with his inability to outbid other teams for talented players, he took a different approach. He called Paul DePodesta, a Harvard alum and professional sports executive interested in data analysis.

They combed through decades of data on hundreds of individual players to devise a better strategy for recruiting players. They discovered scouts were overlooking statistics that could better predict a player’s performance versus relying on subjective things like attitude or whom they’d played for in the past. In short, scouts were asking the wrong questions to assess talent.

The scouting process failed to include individual components that made up a player’s performance and match that to what the baseball team needed — much like hiring managers looking at academic qualifications or years of experience as a proxy for the responsibilities the individual needs to take on in a new role.

In the end, Beane’s big bet on analytics paid off. Despite their smaller budget, the Oakland A’s won against bigger teams and made history by winning 20 consecutive games in American League baseball. Recruitment in sports was transformed as Beane’s method made player assessment a quantifiable process rather than a subjective one.

A Better Way to Define Success

The Moneyball lesson teaches us that, to win, we must know what we’re looking for and ignore our biases. There needs to be a mechanism that enables a clear choice, linked to the specifics of what we want to achieve. That’s where a Cipher comes in.

A Cipher is a structured and prioritized method of zeroing in on what matters most for a specific role. It explicitly lays out, in a prioritized fashion, how success will need to be achieved in the role you’re looking to fill. It creates a clear understanding of what the person will need to do to be successful in the role, how “integration into the existing culture” is defined within the organization, and what’s required to manage their team. Ultimately, this framework establishes uniform comparison across multiple candidates for any role, enabling better decision-making based on data rather than a gut feeling.

You can create your Cipher by simply using the acronym CODE to help you define a role:

Charge: the one-sentence impact this person must have on the company. What will be different because they were hired?
Outcome: the tangible result that will prove the hire worked. What will the organization be able to point to as evidence of success?
Deliverables: the five to seven accountabilities most critical to achieving that Outcome.
Efforts: the specific actions, decisions, and behaviors required to complete those Deliverables.

Here’s an example of what this looks like in practice:

Most everyone in the US has probably heard of New England Patriots QB Tom Brady. Not everyone knows that he was passed over in his draft — 198 times. Why? Brady didn’t look especially athletic, he wasn’t particularly fast, and he didn’t match the physical profile many scouts expected from an elite quarterback. Furthermore, no one else seemed to be interested in him, so why should “we” be?

But Bill Belichick and newly hired QB/Assistant Coach Dick Rehbein were willing to look past biases to find the talent they needed. Even with his extensive overall experience, Rehbein was new to coaching the QB position and brought no biases to the draft, which allowed him to pick up the game’s greatest player of all time.

While the Cipher didn’t exist back then, the evidence suggests that they employed a deeper analysis to arrive at the conclusion that Brady was the QB to bet on. It’s easy to envision them using something like the following:

Charge: An adept and charismatic QB to lead the Patriots franchise back from mediocre results to the glory days.

Outcome: Perform individually as an athlete while leading the team to deliver AFC (American Football Conference) championships in two out of three years. Deliver at least one Super Bowl championship within the same three-year window.

Deliverable 1: Leverage superior athletic ability for success on the field.
Efforts:

• Pass on time with superior arm strength and pinpoint accuracy.
• Move quickly to escape defenders and extend plays.
• Be tough enough to carry the ball in short-yardage situations.

Deliverable 2: Incorporate intelligence and experience into making the right calls during the heat of battle.
Efforts:

• Learn and drive the offense with audibles as needed.
• Read the opponent’s defensive schemes and anticipate likely moves.
• Possess a “sixth sense” connection with receivers.

Deliverable 3: Develop a humble continuous improvement system, leading peers as a role model.
Efforts:

• Identify areas for improvement whether the game was won or lost.
• Be completely dedicated and give 100-percent effort consistently.
• Stay positive in the face of impossible challenges.

If you’re a fan elsewhere, imagine how much better your favorite team would’ve been had they looked past their biases and scooped up Brady before the Patriots did.

The lesson from sports isn’t simply that data beats intuition. It’s that better outcomes come from asking better questions. Organizations miss strong candidates every day when they rely on reputation, polish, pedigree, or familiar proxies instead of clearly defining what the role demands. A structured framework like the Cipher helps leaders evaluate talent against the realities of the job rather than against bias or convention. In a competitive market, that shift can mean the difference between hiring the obvious candidate and identifying the right one.

Before asking who looks like the best candidate, ask what success in the role actually requires.

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SOME things never change. When it comes to human behavior, some things stay the same. And those behaviors can make the future more knowable even as so much is changing all around us. Throughout history, circumstances change, but human nature does not. You may not know specifics of the change, but you can know how people will respond. And that can help to explain how we got where we are.

In Same as Ever, Morgan Housel presents us with 23 things that never change. He asks, “What would be true in every imaginable version of your life, not just this one? Those universal truths are obviously the most important things to focus on, because they don’t rely on chance, luck, or accident.”

Every current event-big or small-has parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, siblings, and cousins. Ignoring that family tree can muddy your understanding of events, giving a false impression of why things happened, how long they might last, and under what circumstances they might occur again. Viewing events in isolation, without an appreciation of their long roots, helps explain everything from why forecasting is hard to why politics is nasty.

Let’s look at six of the twenty-three timeless truths Housel presents.

Risk is What You Don’t See

Risk is what you are not prepared for. “As financial advisor Carl Richards says, ‘Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.’” It’s what you don’t see coming.

If you knew what was coming, you would be prepared for it. Forecasts are based on what you think you know—based on what has happened. What makes it risky is that you can’t imagine it coming. If you did, you would prepare for it.

I can promise you that will be the case going forward. The biggest risk and the most important news story of the next ten years will be something nobody is talking about today. No matter what year you’re reading this book, that truth will remain. I can say that confidently because it’s always been true. The fact that you can’t see it coming is exactly what makes it risky.

We easily underestimate what we don’t know.

Wild Minds

When it comes to what makes the extraordinary person extraordinary, you have to take the good with the bad. “Something that’s built into the human condition is that people who think about the world in unique ways you like almost certainly also think about the world in unique ways you won’t like.”

When you think I want to be like them, you only see the extraordinarily successful part of them. What you don’t see is the messy part that makes them be who they are.

People who are abnormally good at one thing tend to be abnormally bad at something else. Part of this idea is realizing that people who are capable of achieving incredible things often take risks that can backfire just as powerfully. The same personality traits that push people to the top also increase the odds of pushing them over the edge.

Does Not Compute

The world does not work in rational ways. That’s because humans are not rational. And there is no way to quantify that. “Historian Stephen Ambrose notes that Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley got all the war-planning reasoning and logic right in late 1944, except for one detail-the extent to which Hitler had lost his mind.”

Outcomes are not always rational. Part of that is because not everyone thinks the way we do or agrees on how things should be done. Properly incentivized, people will do irrational things. Behavior that makes sense to them, but from a wider perspective makes no sense at all. We believe our own, often irrational stories. At the same time, Housel observes, “We’d never get anywhere if everyone viewed the world as a clean set of rational rules to follow.”

When the Magic Happens

People change, and innovations happen when it is too uncomfortable not to make a change—when their future depends on it. “Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t.” Sometimes people wait too long to change, and then the stress of the moment becomes debilitating, and they go into survival mode.

The fear, the pain, the struggle are motivators that positive feelings can never match. A carefree and stress-free life sounds wonderful only until you recognize the motivation and progress it prevents. No one cheers for hardship—nor should they—but we should recognize that it’s the most potent fuel of problem-solving, serving as both the root of what we enjoy today and the seed of opportunity for what we’ll enjoy tomorrow.

Overnight Tragedies and Long-Term Miracles

When improvement happens slowly, almost nobody notices. “The most important things come from compounding. But compounding takes a while, so it’s easy to ignore.” The same is true for personal growth. And when we don’t see instant progress, we often quit. But if we stay with it, we are rewarded.

On the other hand, bad news comes at us in an instant, and we can’t help but give it our attention.

Growth always fights against competition that slows its rise. New ideas fight for attention. Some might try to step in and slow the fall, but everyone gets out of the way of decline.

Tens of billions of individual steps have to go right in the correct order to create a human. But only one thing has to happen to cause its demise. The idea of “complex to make, simple to break” is everywhere. Growth and progress are way more powerful than setbacks. But setbacks will always get more attention because of how fast they occur. [So,] it is so easy to discount how much progress is achievable.

Incentives: The Most Powerful Force in the World

Crazy incentives cause people to behave in crazy ways. Truth is often just what you want to believe. “No matter how much information and context you have, nothing is more persuasive than what you desperately want or need to be true. And what makes incentives powerful is not just how they influence other people’s decisions but how blind we can be to how they impact our own.”

One of the strongest pulls of incentives is the desire for people to hear only what they want to hear and see only what they want to see. When good and honest people can be incentivized into crazy behavior, it’s easy to underestimate the odds of the world going off the rails.

Incentives can keep crazy, unsustainable trends going longer than seems reasonable because there are social and financial reasons preventing people from accepting reality for as long as they can.

Housel ends this truth with a question we should all be asking:

“Which of my current views would change if my incentives were different?”

He then warns, “If you answer ‘none,’ you are likely not only persuaded but blinded by your incentives.”

There are 17 other truths presented in Same as Ever that are well worth your time to reflect on.

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IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Eric Ries on the incoherent organization:

“An incoherent organization is one where what gets rewarded contradicts what gets proclaimed. Where the values on the wall are betrayed by daily reality. Some such companies claim they value innovation but ostracize those whose experiments fail. Others promise work-life balance while ensuring only workaholics are invited to strategy meetings. Still others swear they put customers first but praise employees who engage in deceptive sales practices. Departments clash due to opposing cultures-product aspires to be Apple, but finance aspires to be Goldman Sachs. The result is a company at war with itself. And like a human body suffering from an autoimmune disease, it becomes increasingly weak and vulnerable.”

Source: Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great

Walter Lippmann on the forgotten foundation of democracy:

“What separates us from the totalitarian regimes is our belief that man does not belong to the state. This is true. But if we are to be clear about what that really means, we must say also what it is that man does belong to. There are, perhaps, many different ways of saying it. But there is no better way of saying it than to say it as the authors of our liberties were accustomed to say it. They said that man belonged to his Creator, and that since he was, therefore, an immortal soul, he possessed inalienable rights as a person which no power on earth had the right to violate. This was what the founders of the American nation meant when they said that all men were created equal.”

Source: The Forgotten Foundation, Today and Tomorrow, December I7, 1938

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

WE can be too close, too present in a situation, to look at it constructively. Good decision-making occurs when we can step back and look at the situation from a broader, more objective perspective. We respond differently when we see differently.

Authors L. David Marquet and Michael Gillespie warn us in Distancing, “When excited, stressed, or threatened, we are pushed further into a state of self-immersion, a closed-in feeling of me-here-and-now, which narrows, filters, and distorts what we see, reinforcing our previously held beliefs.”

There are three ways we can step back and get some distance:

We can be someone else
We can be somewhere else
We can be sometime else

Be Someone Else

Being someone else is about learning to become your own coach. If you can see yourself as a coach might see you, you can uncover answers that you already have inside. It is distanced self-talk. This distanced self-talk “helps red helps reduce stress because it removes some of the emotional baggage that tends to cloud thinking, decreasing performance.”

A coach helps you to see your future self. Who do you want to be? How do you want to talk about this episode of your life?

When we imagine ourselves as someone else, we access the strengths of that alter ego and break out of any self-consciousness and attachments to our prior decisions.

Be Somewhere Else

Often referred to as going to the balcony, be somewhere else takes you out of the moment. Be a fly on the wall. Zoom out. Your inner coach gets you to focus on the situation and see the bigger picture. You mentally relocate yourself and see yourself in relation to your environment and your relationships.

If you find yourself thinking about how you look or what others might think of you, you’re doing it wrong. That means you’re still stuck in your own head. You have to dislodge yourself and really become that person on the balcony.

When we think about situations as being further away, we construe them less in terms of their lower-level, specific, concrete, and idiosyncratic features and more in terms of their essential, abstract, and more general qualities.

Be Sometime Else

Become your future self. “We need to distance ourselves from the me-here-and-now self in order to be true to our ideal self.”

The authors suggest three time horizons to consider given the situation: A day (near future), a year (mid-future), and a decade or end of life (far future).

Near future decisions ask “How much will this matter to me tomorrow? How will I feel about this in an hour? Or how important is it to respond to this right now?” These kinds of decisions have immediate consequences.

Mid-future time horizon is from six months to two years. Not for life-changing decisions. This time horizon “helps us shed the short-term concerns about practicality or convenience in favor of loftier ideals and values.” Here we ask questions like, “What would my one-year-from-now self want me to do now?” or “If another team were to do this in six months, what would we suggest they do differently?”

Far-future time horizon is for ten years or more. It provides the temporal space to imagine how you would need to be in terms of your ideals for the future. How do you want it to end? Write the end of your story now.

This approach helps us shed or better process our emotional baggage. Helps us discard our biases. It changes the nature of our fear of regret: We shift from fear of action to fear of inaction. We accept the risk of failure and become more concerned about the risk of not trying.

Distancing requires that you first recognize the need to pause. When you have a decision to make that would like you to push you into a self-immersed state, call the pause and determine one of the three distancing dimensions and give yourself time to pick your next move.

The immersed self is our default state. We are our primary point of reference, the protagonists in our own stories. We live inside our heads, stuck in a myopic first-person point of view wherein—problematically—our emotions cloud our thinking, and we are unable to separate our thoughts from our feelings.

When we focus on ourselves and our situation, we tend to catastrophize. We need to get out of our own head and focus on others. Our self-focus becomes our blind spot, and we become even more immersed in our narrow perspective. We live in the moment, unable to see other perspectives.

Using the tools provided, we can help ourselves to create distance and see a bigger picture. Our inner coach is always focused on moving forward, and by our example we can help others to do the same.

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EXCELLENCE is not a destination. It is the way we move in the world. It’s the direction we grow towards.

In The Way of Excellence, author Brad Stulberg defines excellence as “An ongoing process of growth and becoming that imbues life with meaning and vigor. It emerges from involved engagement in something worthwhile that supports your values and goals. Excellence combines mastery and mattering. It is not something that is out of reach, but rather it is your birthright, a core part of your nature.”

Stulberg also notes that excellence is not perfectionism or obsession. It is becoming a better version of yourself—seeing the future. “When it comes to the pursuit of excellence, we are often faced with the comfort, pleasure, or ease of short-term decisions that contradict our values and long-term goals.” Denying our present to secure a better future. We have to be able to distinguish between what is significant and what is not.

To be excellent, you have to care about what you do. “If you want to have a rich and meaningful life, then you have to expose yourself. You have to make yourself vulnerable.”

Goals add to the richness of life not for their achievement but because of what you become in the pursuit of the goal. You remember most not getting to the peak but what happened on the climb.

Excellence comes from consistency. “Staying consistent often requires demonstrating a bit of restraint today so that you can pick up where you left off tomorrow.” Stulberg tells us to “focus less on any single result and more on the trendline.”

Each and every one of us will face setbacks, unforced errors, and moments when our emotions flare and our plans fall apart. What matters most is how we respond—again and again and again. It’s called having a next-play mentality, and it’s a central feature of consistency.

Don’t make the activity complex. Keep it simple and don’t major in the minors. “Complexity is a way to avoid facing the reality that what really matters for progress in most endeavors is simply showing up and doing the work.” Eliminate distractions.

Top performers don’t always feel motivated. They are disciplined to act. It removes the decision to act. By doing the work, we also gain confidence. Confidence and humility go together. “When we have confidence, it means we’ve done the work to gain it. Doing the work to gain it is hard. And doing hard things makes us humble. It teaches us that we can push limits, but also that we have limits to begin with.” And from that we grow.

Discipline bridges the gap between motivation and action, making the former less necessary for the latter. When you have discipline, you don’t need to feel a certain way to show up and get started. You just do. Discipline is not a chest-thumping, performative act of toughness. It is being the kind of person who shows up for what matters and does what you need to do.

All of this requires time for rest and renewal. Step away from time to time to recharge.

Excellence is about the long game. Patience. “Regardless of our activity, we need to stay in the game long enough to gain at least some wisdom before we can achieve our best.” It also improves your chances for luck, and all great accomplishments contain some luck.

Excellence requires gumption—that sense that nothing can stop you. Obstacles can come from without and from inside of you. Rigidity, arrogance, and doubt can stop you in your tracks. When that happens, you may need to step away. “We can stay fresh by spending time outside of our primary pursuits.” Stay curious. “When we adopt curiosity as a default attitude toward challenges, we put ourselves in a better position to meet the moment and grow.”

Surround yourself with the right people. Excellence is a journey best taken with like-minded others. “Succeed or fail, the journey is almost always better when you have the right climbing partners. If you travel alone, you risk becoming isolated, re: entful, and burning out. If you travel with others, you’re likely to find joy, meaning, and purpose.” Try not to go it alone.

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IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

Mark Pincus on doing something great:

“Being truly ambitious and committed to winning means: 1. Maintaining ruthless objectivity about your ideas. 2. Being willing to kill them often. 3. Losing any emotional attachment to specific implementations. 4. Testing multiple variants quickly rather than going all in on one.

“When you’re trying to build products, good is worse than bad. B+ ideas are good enough to get funding, get customers, attract talent, and keep hope alive. But they’re never good enough to be great. You can avoid good and get to great by asking questions: Would your smartest friends invest their own money? Are you pursuing this idea out of desperation?”

Source: Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love!

Anne-Laure Le Cunff on experimentation:

“No matter how good your tool or deliberative your thought process, one thing never changes: There is no right choice. If you’re used to zero-sum thinking, that point of view may frustrate you. But it’s almost impossible to fail when you see everything as an experiment. In a life of experimentation, there is no wrong choice, either. A pact isn’t a destination. It’s a path you walk to discover more about yourself and the world. Success and failure are fluid constructs, not fixed labels. If you simply keep going as is, it means you found an ideal groove-amazing! If you decide to stop, it means this direction didn’t feel good-now you know! The only failure is to confuse mindless movement with mindful momentum. As long as you keep on adapting, learning, and growing, you are winning.”

Source: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World

Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

A colleague once approached me to discuss a difficult career decision. He had been asked by a very senior person in his organization to consider a new role. Based on his description, it was only marginally better than his current one — somewhere between a lateral move and a promotion. The career paths didn't seem stronger, and it required a relocation he was reluctant to make.

He didn't want to accept the offer. But he was uncomfortable with the risk of saying no to a senior leader. The key question on his mind was: how could he decline the offer and avoid damaging his career or his relationship?

We worked together on talking points, potential questions, and avenues the conversation could take. But after all that preparation, I sensed he was still worried. So I asked him directly: how confident did he feel about the conversation he was about to have? To his credit, he openly acknowledged his concerns. We agreed that in addition to the right talking points, he would also have to prepare himself psychologically — to engage with his senior leader on equal terms, not from a position of trepidation.

A few weeks later, I followed up. The conversation had gone really well. He had declined the offer, and the senior leader had praised him for the way he had done so.

This experience stayed with me because it illustrates something leaders encounter constantly: our preparation may be top-notch, but we are unable to put the plan into action when it matters. The gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it is rarely a knowledge problem. It is a readiness problem.

A quote widely attributed to the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl captures this well: "Between the stimulus and response, there is a space and, in that space, lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

Most leaders understand this intellectually. Fewer use that space deliberately. Through my own experience navigating challenges across a 30-year career, I've arrived at three questions that help me — and those I mentor — use that space more resourcefully.

1. Am I guided by a clear vision of how I emerge?

When a challenge hits, our instinct is to focus on the problem. But the leaders who navigate adversity most effectively begin by envisioning the outcome — not as a wish or a hope, but as a vivid image of a future they believe they can bring into existence.

This applies at every scale. It could be a vision for how you emerge from a restructuring, how you want a difficult conversation to land, or even how you want to show up on a tough day. The principle is the same: first envision the desired outcome, then bring that vision to life.

The harder part is that serious challenges disrupt the baseline from which we project into the future. Conceiving an aspirational vision from a new and unwelcome reality requires a meaningful shift in perspective — and that shift begins with acceptance. Accepting a challenge doesn't mean agreeing with it. It means clearing the mental space to start building forward. After all, if we can create musical instruments and art by upcycling garbage, we can always create a brighter future for ourselves, no matter the circumstances.

2. Am I using all of the resources available to me?

Tougher challenges come with ambiguity, uncertainty, and high stakes. In such moments, the question is whether we are drawing on everything available to us — especially the wisdom of our inner selves and that of our human ecosystem.

Earlier in my career, I was asked to move to a position that looked promising on paper — the right experience, senior leadership support, a strong financial package. But my intuition resisted it from the moment I heard the offer. I sensed that the leadership and culture of the organization might hinder my progression, though I couldn't articulate why.

I followed my intuition and declined. There was no backlash, and better opportunities came later. Reflecting on that decision, it felt as if something within me knew better than my conscious mind — and fortunately, I listened.

Each of us possesses this inner knowledge. We call it intuition, instinct, or gut feeling. Learning to trust it is a key part of the art of decision-making. Equally important is connecting with the wisdom in our human ecosystem. As a Turkish maxim puts it: "Talk with many, think with a few, and decide on your own."

3. Am I prepared — not just strategically, but psychologically?

This is the step leaders most often skip. We prepare our arguments, our data, our talking points — but not ourselves. The doubts and fears we experience in making a decision can linger while we are acting on that decision. Taking the time to prepare ourselves psychologically, just as a coach of a sports team would, is critical.

Three elements of that preparation stand out. First, prepare for others' emotional reactions. As emotions are contagious, an unexpected reaction can easily throw us off balance. Second, develop self-belief. Feeling doubtful doesn't mean we don't believe — it means we still need to confront our doubts and find actionable ways to overcome them. Third, lean on coaching. An outside perspective — formal or informal — can help us see what we cannot see ourselves.

I learned this firsthand when a friend and coach told me directly that she thought I was struggling in a new leadership role. It wasn't easy for my sense of self to swallow that comment. After all, I had already reached a senior position. But after reflection, I accepted that change had to start with me. The coaching that followed was transformative — not because it gave me answers, but because it held up a mirror through incisive questions.

Using the Space

When faced with a challenge, reflecting on these three questions reveals the true extent of control we have over our lives. They shift us from reacting — driven by fear, habit, or ego — to responding with clarity, resourcefulness, and inner strength. The space between stimulus and response is always there. The discipline is to use it.

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