Welcome to Musings—
A space where I cut through the noise and get to the heart of effective leadership and strategy execution. Here, I share hard-earned insights, practical frameworks, and candid reflections to help you navigate the complexities of leading teams and driving change.
Each post is designed to be a quick, impactful read—something you can digest between meetings and apply immediately. Whether you're refining your leadership approach, tackling execution challenges, or seeking to foster a more cohesive team, you'll find valuable takeaways here.
Dive in, reflect, and let's grow together.
The Case for Doing Nothing
I'm writing this from New Orleans JazzFest. One of my favorite places on earth.
Yesterday, between sets, I just sat. No phone. No podcast. No plan. Just the hum of the crowd thinning out and the distant sound of someone's soundcheck bleeding across the fairgrounds. And somewhere in that quiet, my brain did something it rarely gets to do anymore: it wandered.
Thoughts I hadn't made time for started surfacing. Nothing particularly urgent—just loose, unfinished ideas I'd been carrying around without realizing it. It felt like the mental equivalent of a good stretch.
I Used to Think Momentum Was a Sports Cliché. I Was Wrong.
Every time a sportscaster said "they've got momentum now," I cringed a little. It felt like a storytelling device to explain a scoring run that wasn't real analysis.
But I've changed my mind.
Research I've recently come across actually proves out why momentum is real.
The Unicorn That Lost Its Horn: All-Time Strategy Trap Fail #5
In early 2019, WeWork was one of the most talked-about companies in the world.
It was valued at $47 billion. Investors lined up for an IPO that was imminent. It felt unstoppable.
And then it all came crashing down.
Within months, confidence evaporated, the narrative unraveled, and the valuation collapsed with stunning speed.
When the Shortcut Becomes the Trap: All Time Strategy Trap Fail #8
In April 1846, the Donner and Reed families set out for California with one north star: arrive safely before winter.
A clear, simple goal—one that required steady progress and smart decisions along the way. But when they started falling behind schedule, they reached for a shortcut. And that’s when everything began to unravel.
Why “?” Beats “!”
An emphatic statement tells. A question invites.
And that small mark of punctuation often determines whether teams react or reflect.
Statements drive activity. Questions drive accountability.
The Tyranny of the Urgent
“Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future…”
Some days it feels like Steve Miller was singing about my calendar.
I’ll start the morning with clarity about what really matters. Then the little things show up—emails that “just need a quick reply,” meetings that expand beyond their purpose, texts that break my focus. One after another, they eat away at my day.
The Cost of Nice, the Power of Kind
Nice is a trap. Kind is a catalyst.
At first glance, nice and kind sound like synonyms. But when coaching a team through execution, they couldn’t be further apart.