THE Global Peter Drucker Forum is an annual international management conference, held in Vienna, Austria, dedicated to the management philosophy of Peter Drucker. This year again, they graciously broadcast live the opening session of the conference from the Vienna Hofburg. What follows are a few of the insights from that session that have been slightly edited for clarity.

Richard Straub, Founder and President, Global Peter Drucker Forum:

We are living through an astonishing technological moment. Artificial intelligence and what we increasingly call thinking machines are acquiring capabilities that only a few years ago seemed unimaginable. We should not approach this development with fear. The potential is enormous. These technologies can amplify human capacities. Give people access to knowledge and capabilities they never had before and help us make connections that we couldn’t see before. It can help us to create new knowledge and new solutions for improving our lives at an unprecedented scale. But innovation cannot be an end in itself. The question cannot only be what can we create; it must also be what is the impact of what we create on people and institutions, on markets, on society. An algorithm can optimize the route to a given objective. It cannot decide whether that objective is good. A machine can make a decision and act on it autonomously, but it cannot accept moral responsibility for the consequences. That responsibility remains ours. That is why technology must remain our servant and never become our master.

Management is not simply about change; it is about finding the right balance between continuity and change. Wise leaders must understand what needs to change, but they must also understand what should not change. Such as the foundational principles and human values on which our societies depend. Human dignity, human agency, responsibility, freedom, trust, respect for others—these are not obsolete constraints from a slower age; they are the accumulated result of long human experience and deeply ingrained in the human condition. The next generation of innovators therefore requires the next generation of management capable of combining technological prowess with human agency, innovation with responsibility, economic value with human values.

Linda Hill, Professor of Business Administration, Chair of the Leadership Initiative, HBS:

Leading innovation is actually different from leading change.

[A leader she was studying said to her], “Linda, I feel like I’m leading through a fog. What does it mean to lead when you can’t see—when you have no vision?” What I learned from him is that when you are trying to do breakthrough innovation of any sort, you are actually leading through a fog. You actually have no vision, as many of the leaders told me. They are all very visionary, but in fact, if you're trying to do something that has never been done, you don’t have the answer. So, it is really about what we refer to as way-finding. You don’t know your destination, or you don’t know how you’re going to get there, and you’re taking people on an intellectual and emotionally very complex journey to get done whatever you’re trying to get done—whatever the problem is you’re trying to solve, or the opportunity you’re trying to address.

Leading innovation is really about convincing people there’s nothing called business as usual. We’re all on this journey, and it’s emotionally very, very complicated. [The leader told the hospital staff], “I’m scared, but I trust you.” And then he spent his time focusing on how we can create the conditions in which I can invite you to be willing and able to co-create the future with me. Not follow me to the future, because I don’t know what that future is.

Leaders must play three roles as they try to create these conditions for co-creation. One is the architect. How do you build the culture and capabilities so that your organization or team can innovate time and again? The other is what we refer to as the bridger role. Mostly, you never have all that you need inside your own team or organization to get it done. So you need people who can bridge across organizational walls, or boundaries, and get access to talents or capabilities you don’t have inside your organization. And finally, you often need catalysts. Catalysts are the leaders who know how to build multi-party coalitions, often across sectors, and create movement across a whole ecosystem.

Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour, INSEAD

We are the only species that can make things up and decide to make them real.

To make better leadership is the same as to make better art. It involves three movements. One is a movement from impulse to intent. What is the gift you are trying to bring to life and share with others? One is a movement from imposition to invitation. Are you pushing that gift on others, or are you inviting them to join you in making a certain world and bringing it to life? And the third is a movement from indulgence to intervention. Is your work just all for you and your friends? Or does it shape the culture in which you operate? And your interventions might be different. You might be strengthening a culture that was becoming too loose. You might be challenging a culture that was becoming too stuck. You might be bringing together cultures that were at odds with each other. Intent allows us to be. Invitation allows us to bond. Intervention allows us to build. And once we do all three, then we can bring people and cultures to life.

My suggestion is that one of the ways to do better is to think of our work as leaders as the work of art. As a way to bring people to life, to draw us closer, and to keep culture alive. So, stop thinking, "How do I fight the good fight?" and think instead, "How do I make better art?" That’s a lot harder, but it will make you more human and the rest of us too.

Lenka Pincot, Chief of Staff to the CEO, Project Management Institute:

Innovation is not only about adding. It’s not just addition. It’s also subtraction. Because especially now in the age of AI, we are flooded with ideas but project professionals if you want them to have clarity, focus, we need to declutter a little bit. Because otherwise they start tripping over all those new ideas—new initiatives. But without that space, we don’t create space for our future. So, this is where we need to get better—better at choosing what we should do instead of just adding and adding.

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. SHRM-SCP, President & CEO, SHRM:

Organizations speak to the word culture a lot. “I want you to live our culture; I want you to be our culture.” Most organizations lack cultural clarity. It’s a term I use a lot. It’s the idea that I want people who fit in our culture, but we have not taken the time to actually articulate that culture—described the behaviors that make one successful or not in that culture.

I am reminded. I was once the CHRO for a Fortune 500 company, and one of my earliest assignments from the CEO: Let’s come up with a statement that defines our culture. We did this. It was myself, the general counsel, the CFO, the Chief Marketing Officer, and the CEO. So, we sat around the table, and we came up with our guiding principles—the words that describe our culture at this company. I raised my hand and said to the CEO, “Would you mind if I just tested this just a little bit with a small focus group of our employees? Grudgingly, he agreed to do it. So we bring in some employees—a random selection—and I present it the best way I can. One of the women in the back said, “BS, BS, BS, BS.” That was her first comment. She said, “This isn’t our culture. This is the culture you aspire for us to have. This is your employer brand. You are asking us to manage to a culture that doesn’t actually exist here.”

Linda Hill, Professor of Business Administration, Chair of the Leadership Initiative, HBS:

One of the things Ajay Banga talked about when he was CEO of MasterCard (now President of the World Bank) was DQ. What it means is decency quotient. So, this is a man who talks really high-level about purpose, strategy, all that, but then he said, “I just think we all need to be decent.” That is the MasterCard way. Who is going to tell the CEO I don’t want to be decent? Then he began to define what does decent mean. If someone sends you an email, you answer it. That is decent behavior. And if they don’t answer you within a week, you can assume they said yes to whatever you requested. So, he didn’t have to make any big organizational change; he just said that if they don’t answer you, they said yes. Guess what happened to the silos in the organization and the communication.

WHEN we think about persuasion, we picture the visible part: the rousing pitch, the polished slide deck, the closing argument that wins the room over. But the visible part is only half the equation. Persuasion’s real impact is determined by an invisible architecture.

Here's what that architecture is made of—the frame. In persuasion, the frame establishes what problem needs solving, what opportunity exists, or what future you’re proposing. You can think of it as the core interpretation of the reality that you’re asking your stakeholders to understand. This interpretation guides how an audience interprets the issue you’re persuading. The frame you choose determines whether your decisionmakers see a problem worth solving or a complaint worth dismissing, a strategic priority or a budget burden. It’s critical to understand that the framing, not just the issue’s merits, determines whether decisionmakers will care enough to act.

As persuaders, framing is also our biggest blind spot. Immersion in an issue makes one way of seeing it feel obviously right - which is not the same as it being the most effective or compelling frame for our decisionmakers. As you deepen your understanding of an issue you wish to champion, you become invested in that perspective, in that framing. This perspective becomes fixed and causes you to communicate from your own point of view rather than that of your decisionmakers. This is a big mistake. Wouldn’t it be fine if all our stakeholders shared the same perspective as you do? Unfortunately, they rarely do.

How do you find the framing that is most persuasive from the perspective of your decision-makers—not yourself? Early on in your preparation, you must step back and ask: What is the frame guiding my perspective on this issue that I am championing? This self-reflection needs to be followed by the more important question: What are the frames my decisionmakers are likely to be employing to interpret this same issue? The odds are limited that there will be significant overlap between your responses to the two questions.

For example, let’s say you are advocating a new product line. Your frame is focused on innovation to meet customers’ changing tastes. One of your decisionmakers, however, is from finance. Their frame is likely to be “What will be the payback window on this investment?” A decisionmaker from operations might be asking, “Can we deliver this new product without significant disruption to our existing business?” Meanwhile, a sales leader may wonder, “Can we generate sufficient demand with these innovations?” Each is evaluating the same proposal, but through a different lens shaped by their responsibilities and priorities. Without considering their framing of this issue, you are already in trouble when you meet them in the conference room. Effective persuasion requires that you not only understand these different frames but demonstrate why your proposal is relevant to the criteria your colleagues use to judge the merits of an idea.

This insight leads us to the foundational principle of framing. Your persuasive frame must connect with what your audience cares about: their challenges, their values, their identity, their metrics, and their interests. This is because people evaluate information through filters built from their existing beliefs and goals. Your colleagues do not evaluate information objectively. For example, Kunda’s (1990) research on motivated reasoning shows that when a message threatens what people already believe or want to believe, they don’t simply push back - they subconsciously recruit arguments to discredit it. But when your message aligns with their sense of identity, personal goals, and concerns, that information becomes convincing.

By now, you might be wondering why framing is called the invisible architecture of persuasion. The analogy I use to capture this dynamic is a window. When you look through the window, you see the perspective outside and rarely pay attention to the glass or the actual window frame. Framing is invisible because you’re not looking at the frame - you’re looking through it. It’s the container for the perspective and information you are conveying. The frame shapes what you notice, what you focus on, and what conclusions you draw. But the frame itself stays in the background. Depending upon the frame or window you choose, you will have a different experience of the same landscape. That is why framing is so powerful. When someone tells you a medical procedure has a “90 percent survival rate,” you don’t think, Oh, they’re framing this positively; you just feel reassured. When a leader calls a new initiative “evolution, not revolution,” you don’t notice the architectural choice - you just absorb the message that this change isn’t threatening who you are.

Ultimately, effective persuasion begins with a deep understanding of your decisionmakers and how best to frame your ideas in ways that resonate with them. It begins with genuine reconnaissance, not assumptions. Understand what your decisionmakers care about, what risks they fear, what values they want to preserve, and what language resonates with their sense of identity and purpose. You must actively investigate these dimensions. Connect to what’s central to them when it comes to your issue, not peripheral. Frames gain power when they tap into issues core to your decisionmakers’ values, identity, goals, and daily lives.

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

Illuminating Hidden Brilliance: The Power of Multidimensional Leadership in a One-Dimensional World by Tony Martignetti

Most high-performing leaders share a quiet secret: they have been suppressing the very dimensions that make them extraordinary. The pressure to specialize, perform, and fit the mold has created a generation of leaders who are accomplished on paper—and hollow inside. In Illuminating Hidden Brilliance, leadership advisor and keynote speaker Tony Martignetti challenges the myth of specialization and offers a proven framework for leaders ready to stop fragmenting themselves and start integrating all of who they are. This book is for visionary leaders at inflection points—executives navigating complexity, high performers who sense something essential is missing, and anyone who has been told their breadth is a liability. It is time to stop competing in a one-dimensional world and start leading from your whole, multidimensional self.

The Persuasive Leader: Proven Strategies for Moving People and Ideas by Jay A. Conger

Most change efforts fail not because of poor strategy but because leaders struggle to win genuine commitment. Between 60 and 70 percent of major organizational change initiatives fall short or fail outright. The missing ingredient? Constructive persuasion. Drawing on over two decades of research and coaching thousands of executives worldwide, Conger shatters outdated myths about persuasion as manipulation or performance. Instead, he reveals persuasion as the essential leadership practice that transforms resistance into collaboration, ideas into action, and plans into sustained progress.

Shaping Chaos: Leadership Lessons Forged in the FBI's Most Dangerous Operations by Kyle Vowinkel

When pressure peaks, the leaders who prevail are not the loudest or the most forceful. They are the most prepared, most precise, and most trusted. Learn how to steady a team, move people from resistance to decisive action, and protect performance when the stakes are highest. In Shaping Chaos, West Point graduate Kyle Vowinkel distills hard-won lessons from the Army and the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU) into a cohesive leadership operating system. One of only five people in FBI history to serve on both HRT and CNU, Vowinkel takes readers inside missions where failure could be fatal, and translates those disciplines into tools for boardrooms, crises, and high-consequence environments

Match: The Situational Coaching^® Approach to Meeting Leaders Where They Are by Suzie Bishop and Marshall Goldsmith

How do you know your coaching is actually helping someone get better? That is the goal of coaching, after all. Help someone improve. Help them strengthen their leadership, performance, and behavior. Help them move forward with greater clarity, confidence, and effectiveness. But how do you ensure that the way you’re coaching does that? As coaching has grown, so have the methodologies and competing opinions about the “right” way to coach. Yet experienced coaches rarely describe their success in terms of rigid formulas. They talk about awareness, adaptability, and understanding what the person in front of them needs in the moment. That’s what Goldsmith and Bishop call “making the Match.”

The Scientific Mindset: How Thinking Scientifically Drives Better Business Decisions by Stefan H. Thomke

Test more. Assume less. How a scientific mindset drives smarter decisions in an uncertain world. Every day, leaders face high-stakes decisions about products, customers, strategy, and resource allocation. Yet many of these decisions rely on untested assumptions. Overconfidence, gut instinct, and "what worked before" often stand in for evidence, leaving companies exposed to costly missteps. And the problem goes beyond the workplace: we all make countless choices about our behavior, our health, and the information we trust. How can we decide better amidst today's uncertainty and complexity? In The Scientific Mindset, innovation expert Stefan Thomke offers a compelling solution: adopt a scientific mindset.

Casting Not Hiring: Build a Thriving Company Using the Secrets of Great Theater by Dan Sullivan and B. Jeffrey Madoff

Stop hiring. Start casting. Most companies hire to fill jobs. The best leaders cast to build greatness. In Casting Not Hiring, legendary entrepreneurial coach Dan Sullivan, and acclaimed director, playwright, and producer, B. Jeffrey Madoff introduce a radical new approach to building extraordinary teams, not by managing employees, but by casting talent like a director casts a play. Sullivan and Madoff show that the key to building a world-class business isn’t in résumés, job descriptions, or interviews. It’s in seeing people for their unique strengths, casting them in roles where they can shine, and aligning their talents with your company’s bigger purpose.

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”

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

• Predicting the Present by @kevin2kelly It is clear that all predictions of the future are really just predictions of the present. Their visions tell us more about what people were thinking of then, than of what we have now.
• Judge the Judger by @garyvee Be thoughtful on whose judgment you decide to accept
• How to Recognize When You Have Stopped Growing via @AdmiredLeaders
• What It Costs to Think by @chrbutler AI is best understood as infrastructure, and that the sooner we think of it that way, the sooner we can stop being astonished and get back to making things.
• AI Agents Are Here. Are Leaders Ready? via @KelloggSchool
• Work in a feedback desert? Tips to help your executive boss grow comfortable giving feedback by @artpetty While individuals at the executive level are typically savvy communicators in a variety of settings, the 'f' topic for 'feedback' is a stressor for many.
• 10 Theodore Roosevelt Leadership Lessons by @jamesstrock TR’s Project of Personifying American Nationalism Is Evergreen
• 5 Traits That Make One Leader Capable of Changing Everything by @BrianKDodd
• Words Matter. The Power of Language Is Sitting Unused Inside Your Company by @sorenkaplan
• The Uneasiness of the Open Office by @edbatista
• The New Identity Politics by @jamesstrock | 1 of 4
• 30 Hours in a Massive Earthquake by @SahilBloom When chaos hits, lower your expectations.
• Six Problems Leaders Misdiagnose as Fear of Conflict by @stopyourdrama Marlene Chism
• Struggling with a level-up leader? 3 ideas to help by @artpetty
• Everyone is Starting Over by @gabrielvaldivia " The careers that thrive will be the ones that embrace the blur—the awkward, in‑between state where your role, your tools, and your skills don’t have clean labels.
• Notes to Self: Why So Many Bad Leaders When We Know So Much About Good Leadership? by Kevin Crowe @LVSMITS_KC
• What do you do when you can’t agree on what’s even real? by Tamsen Webster
• Here’s Why Gratitude Is a Core Leadership Skill via @GetTheFabulous
• Everybody’s Talking Too Much by @jamesstrock Our current public square is serving consumers—but it’s not serving us as citizens.
• The More Powerful AI Becomes, the More Human You Need to Be by @PhilCooke
• Ant Colonies Know the Secret to Great Teamwork. 80% of Your Failed Projects Do the Opposite by @sorenkaplan
• The 3 Leadership Lessons Behind The Top Winning Cultures by @BrianKDodd
• Reading the Great Books in the Age of AI via @cosmos_inst
• Future of Accounting: AI, Trust & the Accountant of 2040 by @DanielBurrus
• The End of the “Communication and Media Department” by @PhilCooke The most effective ministries I’ve seen don’t necessarily have a great media department. They have a communication culture.
• Great Ad - Omaha Steaks: At America’s Table Since 1917 For 250 years, America's story has unfolded around the dinner table

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:

Jeffrey Cole and Harlan Lebo on disruptors:

"Intense focus on long-time rivalries distracts from an even more important priority: being prepared for unexpected change from a source that is unknown—especially “two guys in a garage”—and that tears apart a business model. Such change rewrites all the rules, reorganizes the players, and in extreme cases, eliminates an industry. The biggest mistake a successful organization can make that invites disruption is to focus exclusively on the competitive threat from a known rival."

Source: Disrupters at the Gate: When Visionaries, Trailblazers, and Two Guys in a Garage Turn the World Upside Down

Constantine Alexandrakis on inertia:

"Inertia rarely announces itself as resistance. More often, it shows up as a subtle change in the feel of the organization—less candor, more caution, and often silence—or through the withholding of resources. Not just money or headcount, but emotional commitment. The strategy is agreed at the top, yet the right people aren’t assigned. Leaders nod in the meeting, then return to their own functional priorities. No one openly blocks the strategy. They simply fail to fuel it."

Source: The Catalyst CEO: Why CEOs Can't Lead Transformation Alone—And What the Best Do Instead

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

WHEN I started a business at 19, I knew next to nothing about leadership. The only thing I did know was that I wanted to put my people first, always. I was a servant leader through and through.

Being so others-focused was a huge strength. It helped me become a caring leader who was in tune with other people’s needs and who focused on making people feel valued. It helped me build a company and a culture that people loved being a part of. It filled me with a sense of purpose.

But years later, I would learn that this strength had a shadow side. In becoming so others-focused, I had become disconnected from myself. I’d taken servant leadership to the extreme, and now, I knew others’ needs better than I knew my own. I had strong, trusting relationships with my team and almost no relationship with myself.

That meant that in my worst and lowest moments, like when I was overworking myself and burning out, or when I felt let down by my team, my instinct was to put the blame externally. I became resentful, and I never once stopped to look at my own role in how I was feeling.

It wasn’t until I started working with an executive coach that I became aware of this pattern in myself. In one of our calls, we identified something he called a personal narrative. Narratives form in childhood, he told me, and most people have at least one, if not more. These narratives drive our behaviors and actions whether we’re aware of them or not, and they stay with us until we recognize that they’re there and attempt to rewrite them.

My coach helped me figure out that one of my narratives constantly told me that it’s my job to keep people happy. It came from my childhood, and everything I learned about how to be a leader who puts others first reinforced it. I learned that while it was helpful for me to have this narrative because it made me care about the happiness of other people, it also severely limited me.

I struggled to give honest feedback. In fact, I avoided giving it at all costs while telling myself I was caring for and protecting my team—but really, I was afraid of making them unhappy.

I never asked for help. I thought that supporting my team meant shouldering the burden on my own, even though it was burning me out and making me resent my job. In reality, I was afraid that if I added more work to people’s plates, it would make them resent their jobs and become unhappy.

I didn’t set boundaries or make necessary changes to evolve my career. I never considered my own needs or what would make me fulfilled because I thought that prioritizing myself would negatively affect other people and make me seem like an uncaring leader.

My fear of making others unhappy kept me miserable.

Uncovering my narrative and learning how to confront it changed everything for me. I learned that my job as a leader isn’t to keep people happy; it’s to be honest and supportive. I learned that I can be a leader who chooses myself, who asks for help, who has high expectations, and who has hard but necessary conversations and still be caring. And that actually, that way of leading makes me a more caring leader.

We all have narratives that drive our behaviors and limit us. The only way to change that is to courageously face ourselves, compassionately examine our patterns, and see ourselves and our actions clearly. In doing so, we not only expand our capacity to care for ourselves, but we also make room for others to step up.

I want to encourage you to look at the actions you take—or don’t take—as a leader. What do you tell yourself about why you do or don’t do these things? What are you afraid will happen if you do the opposite? What narrative do you want to guide you instead of the one you’ve been telling yourself?

And then, start small: Do one thing that feels uncomfortable. Switch up your default response. Set the boundary, ask for help, have the hard conversation. Each time, you’ll gather more evidence that the world doesn't fall apart when you choose yourself. And soon, you’ll see yourself become a better leader for you and everyone who’s depending on you.

To be a champion of human leadership, we must learn to lead ourselves well. And that starts with having the willingness and courage to see ourselves clearly.

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LEADERSHIP that is effective in uncertain times is equally effective in times of relative stability. The opposite, however, is not true. There are many actions taken by leaders in routine circumstances that give the leader power and influence, yet such behaviors may not work well when uncertainty dominates. Why? When things are going well, and not stirred by uncertainty or crisis, people are willing to put up with all sorts of poor leadership, often obeying leaders whether they trust them or not. Yet in uncertainty, trust becomes essential for influence. That’s when trust in the leader must be earned, rather than assumed. Against the Storm: How True Leaders Prevail When the World Shakes, holds more than a dozen practical techniques to build trust in uncertainty. Here are two:

1. Leader Meeting Control

All leaders host meetings. One type of meeting that is common, yet difficult, is the “town hall” meeting—meetings of 50-200 people with open questioning to the leader. Town halls are quite useful for academic, political, and business leaders. In those circumstances, the best leaders find ways to control dialogue. Uncontrolled dialogue in open meetings is a recipe for disaster—as many politicians have found out, having lost the ability to control their meetings and having been advised by their political leadership to stop having them.

Such meetings allow people with specific agendas—some well-meaning, some not—to take over the direction and purpose of the meeting. Competent leaders always put rules or procedures in place that give them some control over the dialogue. Such control has to be done thoughtfully and carefully, so as not to give followers the impression that the meeting is somehow rigged. Town hall meetings are not effective unless all participants can be heard.

One of the best ways to control dialogue in a meeting, yet all be heard, is what we call “card stack.” To card stack a meeting, give each participant a blank card, 3x5 or 6x8. To begin, ask them to write on one side something that the organization (or you the leader) is doing well. On the opposite side of the card, ask them to write something that the organization (or you the leader) is not doing well. Give them about 3 minutes, then collect up their answers to form a card stack. You now have tremendous power in your hand.

The card stack is a visible indication that everyone has been able to provide input. Once stacked, the leader may then start reading the cards, one at a time. The leader should not automatically read both the front and back of a card. Start by reading two or three positive comments, then select a negative comment to respond to. Holding the card stack, the leader has the opportunity to balance out the positive and negative, and should read more positive comments than negative ones. Control the tone.

Often in crisis or uncertainty, negativity emerges in the meetings. In some cases, it’s simply warranted because of threatening outcomes. In other cases, individuals may have their own agenda in being negative, and they may be persistently so. In such instances, the card stack is a terrific aid. The leader can address the negative issue to the right degree, then point out that the card stack is large and that the group can’t focus too long on one single issue—an issue that could also be dealt with at a later time in a different context.

The card stack represents a responsibility by the leader to respond to the written comments. If an issue has been written into the card stack, those who wrote it know that the leader knows. If the leader is viewed as responding over time, it’s a hugely positive perception. It’s a huge liability, though, if people know that the leader is informed of issues that are not dealt with. It will result in less feedback and honesty, less confidence that the leader is effective, and less trust. The strength in results that could be either positive or negative is an indication of the power of this technique.

2. Leader Pre-Mortems

In uncertain times, leaders have to anticipate catastrophic problems. The people who say, after a catastrophe, “I knew this was going to happen,” need to be uncovered and share their input BEFORE the crisis. It’s up to leaders to make that happen. The most proven technique for this outcome is called a Pre-Mortem.

The method of conducting a Pre-Mortem is as follows:

1. Assemble a group of knowledgeable employees representing all levels of the organization, a minimum of 8 people.
2. Explain that the purpose is to collect a series of catastrophic predictions, literal or imaginary.
3. Guarantee anonymity. Give each person a sheet of paper and a pen—nothing digital.
4. Ask the individuals to imagine a major fiasco affecting the organization, and to explain the failure.
5. Remind them of their anonymity. Give them limited time to write, say, five minutes, then collect the papers.
6. At this point, begin reading the most interesting fiascos aloud, creating group discussions about threats to the organization. Some of the issues may be too sensitive to work on as a group, so those may be skipped—but understand that someone knows that you as the leader have seen what they have described.

Pre-mortems have other advantages. Research reveals that review of imaginary or potential fiascos improves a leader’s intuition. The higher the leader, the more important experience and intuition is, rather than structured analysis. In uncertainty, the value of leader intuition skyrockets—at times being the only basis for decision-making. Pre-mortems improve that process.

The conditions of uncertainty that leaders currently face are record-breaking and mind-blowing. Leaders must not passively accept such conditions, but actively work for understanding, predictability, and trust. The need is for actions, not ideas. Find practical ways to lead in uncertainty—and just do it!

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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:

Richard P. Feynman on not knowing:

"Admitting that we do not know, and maintaining perpetually the attitude that we do not know the direction necessarily to go, permit a possibility of alteration, of thinking, of new contributions and new discoveries for the problem of developing a way to do what we want ultimately, even when we do not know what we want."

Source: The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

Lloyd Blankfein on the importance of history:

"Every so often, when a young person asks my advice on what to study in college as preparation for a career in finance, I always recommend history rather than math or economics. I say that because it is valuable to have a sense of what has happened before, a consciousness of historical cycles, and the ability to distinguish secular changes from the kind that tend to recede and recur. That kind of perspective helps you keep your head on when things go awry and keeps you from getting too cocky when things go well. Ultimately, an awareness of history makes you a better boss, a better leader, and a better risk manager. It makes you better able to practice resilience, knowing that things do recover."

Source: Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs

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

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

Dave Rossi on living with purpose:

"Without this sense of purpose, emotion and rumination can take over, acting like a thick fog that distorts vision and clouds judgment. While emotions are powerful, they are not the objective truth. They can trigger impulsive reactions that feel right in the moment but ultimately lead to regret. Living with purpose forces you to challenge your automatic responses. It requires you to pause and ask yourself: Am I acting from fear, ego, or programming, or am I acting from a place of alignment with my deeper values? This simple shift-learning to recognize emotion and then choosing behavior instead of reacting—is profound. You either live for approval or live for purpose."

Source: Alphas Die Early: For the Man on a Mission — And the Women Who Love Him

Nathan Bennett and Stephen Miles on the shifting role of COOs:

"COOs must simultaneously guide organizational development and manage high-velocity operations where necessary skills constantly evolve. Success depends less on executing predetermined plans than on orchestrating continuous adaptation—a skill set many traditional operators never mastered. Executive search professionals caution that operators without strategic depth face limited growth prospects. The label ‘solid operator,’ once praise, now functions as a ceiling. Today’s COOs are expected to act as strategic architects who not only translate vision into execution but provide operational insights that inform strategy—a significant departure from the historically narrower implementation focus."

Source: Riding Shotgun: The Role of the COO

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

IN the early stage of an enterprise software startup, the founder is often the best - and main - salesperson. And that makes sense – founders have the deep product knowledge, intuitive understanding of the market, and heartfelt enthusiasm to win over customers, even when they thought ‘sales’ wasn’t really their thing. But if you want to scale up, at some point founder-led sales are going to hit a ceiling, and founders have to work out how to transition to a different model.

This can be difficult: Intuition, improvisation, and sheer force of character often work to get deals over the line when a founder is the one working with the customer, but it is very hard to recreate once they pass the torch.

The foundational principle of my go-to-market framework – which I detail in my new book, Built to Grow: A Handbook for High-Performance Sales Teams – is that every startup passes through three distinct phases on the road to success.

First, you experiment with the tactics that will form the bedrock of your business. Second, you build systems and processes that create a repeatable and sustainable business. And then you scale everything: you hit the gas pedal and accelerate, investing heavily to drive growth.

When it comes to sales, founders and CEOs play a different role and must have different priorities in each of these phases. The approach that gets a business going isn't the same one that will get it to $100m in sales. Here's the roadmap founders need to follow.

Experiment

At this stage, no one knows better than the founder how to sell the product. The imperative during the early stages of building a go-to-market strategy is for founders to think very hard about how they can replicate themselves. The best way to do this has two components:

First, founders should experiment with, identify, and document their ‘repeatable sales motion’: the winning strategies and tactics that have enabled them to successfully sell in the early days.

In parallel, they should bring their first two or three ‘trailblazer’ sales hires on board who can experiment with them, and work out how to evolve their more improvised sales approach into this repeatable sales motion. Some of the important questions to ask here are: “Who is my ideal customer and where do I find them? What are their pain points and how do I communicate with them? And how do I best support their buyer’s journey, step-by-step, and close a sale with them? Writing all this down will create the company’s first brief sales playbook–a cornerstone of a startups GTM strategy.

During this early, experimental phase, founders are going to stay very involved with sales, alongside those key trailblazer hires. Once they have all this formally documented in their first, albeit brief, sales playbook, and 2 or 3 non-founder salespeople hitting quota, they graduate from ‘Experiment’ to ‘Build.’

Build

During the build phase - going from 3 to 8 or 9 salespeople - the founder or CEO’s goal is to pressure-test their repeatable sales motion and to prove that non-trailblazer salespeople can use the newly written playbook to successfully sell the product. They also lay the foundation for sustainable growth and operational excellence. This means establishing best practices for revenue management – which comprises opportunity management, pipeline management, and forecasting.

At the same time, you keep expanding the sales playbook - and if the newly hired salespeople are struggling to hit quota, you need to debug your approach. Are you not targeting the right type of customer? Is your messaging, pricing, or packaging wrong? Or maybe you haven’t hired the right profile of salespeople, or not trained them well enough?

The only way to grow sustainably is to keep refining the playbook until you prove that all non-trailblazer salespeople can use it to successfully sell and hit quota. This will allow you to transform sales into a disciplined function rather than an improvised and inconsistent art form. What you want to avoid at all costs is one day in the future having 30 salespeople who are each experimenting in their own way, doing their own thing, and thus making quarterly sales targets a gamble.

Founders are still pretty involved at this stage, but a big part of the build phase is preparing to be more hands-off later – establishing a dedicated head of sales and a fairly senior sales operations leader. Both of them will also continue to help select and integrate the right AI-supported sales tools for the growing sales team.

There's a balancing act here: founders want to hand over day-to-day management of the sales function, but remain close to their customer and their newly hired sales leader to understand if they have hired the right person for the job.

When the company has seven or eight dedicated salespeople that are able to use the sales playbook to reliably hit quota, it is ready for the next step.

Scale

This is the big one. If you have 7 or 8 salespeople reliably hitting quota, you are likely on to something, and it’s time to invest and take the market. In Scale, you're building from eight to 100 or more salespeople, and an $80m or $120m company has to be run differently from a $20m one. Everything changes in this phase, and sales productivity and efficiency become the name of the game. Think about it: If you have 80 salespeople, it makes a huge difference if each salesperson has 3 customer meetings per day versus 6 customer meetings per day.

The founder or CEO really can't be involved in the day-to-day management of the sales team at this stage. Now, they must rely on their sales leadership, specialized sales teams, and distinct customer success, sales enablement, and operations functions. That said, the founder still needs to understand enough about how a well-run revenue organization should function. As a founder or CEO you don’t want to be left surprised when your sales leader isn’t hitting their revenue targets until the end of the quarter, when it’s too late to take action.

A big failure mode for startups is being too slow to mature their management style and capacity at this stage, so founders need to be very clear-eyed about their management team. As they scale, they need to make sure they have enough executive horsepower in each of their functions and hire accordingly. Founders need to be intentional about building the right management team to have by their side for the crucial and intense years to come. For many, this is the time when founders have no choice but to significantly upgrade their go-to-market leadership. In parallel, founders should place extra focus on protecting the customer experience, which is one of the first things lost when a company suddenly starts to grow very quickly.

Getting a startup on track for a successful IPO or acquisition–or to become a large, independent private company–can be a long and difficult journey. But with the right go-to-market strategy, a successful pivot from founder-led sales to a repeatable, playbook-based sales motion, and a conscious focus on revenue fundamentals, startups can give themselves the best possible chance of reaching take-off velocity.

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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:

Ryushun Kusanagi on living in the now:

"Clinging to the past and using it as a reason to negate the present is a mental trap-a distraction from what truly matters, and a source of inner turmoil. Life is full of missteps and failures. What matters is how you respond to them. Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t look back in regret. Don’t give in to pessimism. Instead, focus on the present, understand it correctly, and dedicate yourself to what you can do right now. Of course, if you’ve hurt someone, it’s important to acknowledge it and sincerely apologize. Doing this is part of taking responsibility. Embrace that moment and take the opportunity to start afresh."

Source: The Practice of Not Reacting

John Maxwell on not taking sides:

"If you’re a leader and you allow yourself to get drawn into taking sides and working against other groups of people, you’re limiting your leadership. As leaders, we all need the people on the other side. Our side doesn’t have all the answers. Believing we do is arrogant. I’m not always right, and neither are you. And those on the “other side” are not always wrong. If you don’t listen to them, you’re shrinking your influence and limiting your impact. If you can’t work with people who disagree with you, you will never become the leader you could be. No one will ever convince me that you can choose only half of the people and get as much done as if you work to lead all the people."

Source: High Road Leadership: Bringing People Together in a World That Divides

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

CHANGE initiatives rarely fail because of flawed strategies or poor execution. They fail because of human behavior: what people do when they feel threatened or at risk of losing status, control, or relevance. A senior leader withholds resources from another team. A project team member hoards information about transition status. Each move undermines the initiative's success. When combined with others, they can derail it.

These are the wrenches people throw during high-stakes change. They can be hard to spot and address because they are often covert, uncoordinated, and unpredictable. Without quick and effective responses, dysfunction grows and plans unravel. Left unchecked, the self-interested behaviors become cultural norms, and the downward spiral to failure accelerates.

Why People Throw Wrenches During Change

Change initiatives typically start well. The leader’s vision of a better future is clear and widely supported. The kick-off builds momentum, and work begins. Before long, people piece together their relative position in the post-change organization.

Employees view disruptions through the lens of personal gain or loss. What will this mean for my role, status, influence, or security? As the answers become clearer, emotions flare, which drives actions intended to improve their position.

Four forces explain self-interested behavior:

• Self-preservation: People try to protect the status, certainty, freedom, camaraderie, and confidence they have.
• Power: People seek the capacity to influence outcomes. They do so through formal authority or personal influence. Change can threaten existing power sources or create opportunities for new ones.
• Politics: People maneuver to influence those who define the future ways of working. Alliances, favor trading, and even rumors can modify outcomes.
• Emotions: Anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, and contempt can harm colleagues and jeopardize the initiative. When emotions surface, self-protection outweighs concerns for others and their organization.

All four forces can be in play at any point in an initiative, so leaders need to anticipate them. Understanding what people perceive they will lose helps you predict likely self-interested behaviors and decide how to best address them.

The Wrenches We Throw

The most common self-interested behaviors vary in their intensity and the risk they pose to an organization. They fall into four categories, based on strategic intent and level of disruption: Influencing, Conspiring, Bullying, and Sabotaging.

These behaviors also evolve as the initiative progresses, because each phase of change reveals more about what people stand to gain or lose. During the planning phase, there are few details to analyze. Preparation activities such as testing, training, and day-in-the-life exercises begin to clarify future conditions. The full picture emerges after the launch when people live and feel their new roles. The clearer the personal consequences become, the stronger the emotional response, and the greater the likelihood of more aggressive behavior.

Responding When Wrenches Appear

When a political maneuver or power play catches us off guard, we often become spectators instead of responders. Silence, or a defensive reaction, can strengthen the behavior and increase its damage.

A consistent, stepped process, designed to interpret people’s behavior, helps you neutralize self-interested tactics. The Four-Step Response offers a simple approach to recognizing and responding to political maneuvers and power plays: Observe, Assess, Select, and Deliver.

1. Observe: Notice what the person says and does. If someone says, “I’ll support your region if you support mine when resources are allocated,” they are favor trading.
2. Assess: Identify the emotion that may be driving the behavior. Anxiety and anger call for different responses. Anxiety signals worry about uncertainty, whereas anger signals hostility over a perceived injustice or error.
3. Select: Choose the response best suited to the behavior and the circumstances around it. Consider the person’s role, the emotion they are feeling, and where the behavior surfaced.
4. Deliver: Give your response, then pause for a reaction. The behavior may stop. If not, their response will indicate your next move, whether to hold, engage or escalate.

If, for example, a team member repeatedly withholds information, an effective response might be to name the behavior directly: “The testing team needs the data we agreed to share. Without it, testing will be delayed. What is preventing you from providing it?” Their response may reveal a technical obstacle or a fear about losing control. Both guide how to proceed.

Following these steps helps you spot self-interested behavior early, identify the emotion behind it, and respond in ways that protect your credibility, relationships, and results.

We All Throw Wrenches

It’s easy to view people who withhold information, spread rumours, or blame and attack as villains. The reality is that we all throw wrenches when change threatens us. It's normal, and it’s human. Knowing what you personally stand to gain and lose can help you manage your behavior and respond better to others' actions.

You can’t control the wrenches thrown or the people who throw them. You can control how you respond. Observe the behavior, assess the emotion driving it, select the best option, and deliver it with purpose to protect the initiative’s progress and results.

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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:

Brady, Kliman, and Smith on seeing the full story:

"We feel strongly that empathy and humility aren’t distractions from value creation; they’re the drivers of value creation. In fact, they’re essential if we want to lead difference-filled teams that solve problems creatively, build trust across difference, and adapt in real time to new challenges. These aren’t soft skills. They are strategic capabilities for a complex world. Empathy, the emotional engine behind perspective-taking, is where real understanding begins. Without empathy, it’s impossible to truly see another person’s point of view, because you wouldn’t care enough to try. Empathy and humility ground us in the understanding that we don’t possess all the answers and that other people’s experiences matter just as much as our own in terms of making sense of any situation."

Source: All the Difference. Six Leadership Actions to Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value

Jim Schleckser on peanut buttering:

"A lot of the mediocre and hardworking CEOs we have run into over the years are exceptionally good at what we call ‘peanut buttering.’ When it comes to allocating their time to the various tasks and stakeholders in their businesses—their boards, their supply chains, their investors, their communities, etc.—these CEOs do their best to spread their time as evenly as possible across all of them. The concern, of course, is to make sure everyone feels like they’re getting the CEO’s attention. In this effort, the CEO will work very hard, sometimes as much as eighty or more hours a week. The bad news is that this is the surest way possible to dilute the CEO’s impact on any one issue. Unfortunately, this concept of tending to every stakeholder is taught at many major business schools, which only perpetuates the error. This is done, in part, because CEOs aren’t certain what actions will drive the business forward; consequently, they work on all fronts, hoping one will yield results."

Source: Great CEOs Are Lazy

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

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

The Mattering Effect: Creating a Life of Meaning and Worth by John R. Miles

If you’ve ever wondered, If I stopped performing, producing, fixing, achieving, proving, would I still matter? then this book is for you. As John R. Miles explores The Great Erasure happening in our lives―the sense of loneliness and disengagement despite outward success--he also provides a way for you to remember that you mattered before any professional or personal titles or achievements. Miles examines the cultural shift that has replaced human significance with human usefulness, resulting in exhaustion, self-erasure, and quiet despair. Where others have also diagnosed the symptoms, Miles identifies a deeper cause and offers a solution through M.A.T.T.E.R., a research-based framework grounded in six elements―meaning, autonomy, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity―that, when used together, can restore sustainable significance, dignity, and spiritual coherence.

Lead with Quiet Confidence: A Practical Guide to Success for Introverts by Jennifer Marcou

As an introvert, you can become an influential, confident, and authentic leader, without pretending to be extroverted, without performing, and without draining your energy. You don’t need to be the loudest voice in the room to be a powerful leader. Introverted professionals often bring deep thinking, strategic insight, and calm influence. Yet, our strengths can be overlooked in systems built around extroverted norms. Becoming a strong leader is not only about capability; it’s about how your capability is perceived. For introverts, this creates a unique challenge. We don’t lack for capability or value, but may feel insignificant because our significance is expressed in ways that often go unappreciated and underestimated in traditionally extroverted environments. In Lead with Quiet Confidence, you’ll discover research-aligned tools for introverted leadership, quiet influence, and authentic confidence-building:

In Person: How Working Together Fuels Creativity, Productivity, and Growth by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington

For the first time in history, millions of workers can do their jobs from anywhere—and the result is the most contentious workplace debate in generations. Employees fight to protect their freedom. CEOs issue return-to-office mandates by gut instinct. Everyone argues, but no one has the data. Until now. Harvard-trained economists Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington are leading researchers on remote and in-person work. They've spent years tracking millions of work hours across industries, analyzing Fortune 500 firms, startups, tech companies, and call centers. Their findings? Remote work is good for crossing tasks off a to-do list, but can erode the quality of our work, stifle creativity, and hurt mental health. When we're together, our brain-to-brain synchrony increases 10x, accelerating creativity, mentorship, and innovation. That’s why Pixar animators, Nobel Prize winners, and Silicon Valley founders have come up with their best ideas face-to-face with one another.

Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World by Adam Grant

When we vibe with other people, it fuels our happiness and success. Yet building meaningful ties is one of the most pressing problems of our time. As face-to-face interaction gives way to digital screens, communication gets outsourced to AI, and the world becomes more polarized, our loneliness crisis shows no signs of slowing. To reveal how we can forge faster, stronger, and longer bonds, Adam Grant offers groundbreaking studies, expert insights, and myth-busting stories. Filled with the eye-opening takeaways that have brought millions of readers to his books, Vibe teaches us that similarity is not necessary for solidarity, chemistry doesn’t always happen quickly, and closeness doesn’t always take time. Vibe will change how you interact with people. No matter how good you are at connecting, you can always get better—and help others get better too.

Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure by Andrea Petrone

Most CEOs reach the top by mastering performance, yet few define who they are as leaders. In Reinvention at the Top, CEO Executive and Performance Coach Andrea Petrone addresses the silent identity gap that emerges at the highest levels―helping leaders stop performing the role and start leading as themselves. Andrea introduces the The Throughline Framework, a practical methodology for clarifying who you are, crafting a message that moves people, and leading with authentic presence. Drawing from over 20 years advising CEOs and Senior Leaders of Fortune 500s, mid-caps, and high-growth companies, this book provides actionable tools for navigating new roles, major transitions, and legacy-defining decisions with clarity and conviction.

Human Leadership: The Courage To Face Ourselves And Each Other by Kristen Hadeed

For more than a decade, Kristen Hadeed defined herself as a servant leader. As the founder and CEO of a company widely recognized for its compassionate culture, she made sure her people came first, always. But after years of pouring everything she had into her business and her leadership, Kristen came face-to-face with a hard truth: Behind closed doors, she felt trapped beneath the weight of carrying it all. She had built a career around putting others first and abandoned herself in the process. The work she once loved was now tangled up in a web of pressure and expectations. From the outside, she appeared to have it all together. But inside, she was falling apart. Human Leadership is Kristen’s raw, personal account of losing herself in service to others and the difficult work of finding her way back. It’s a story of burnout, ambition, resentment, grief, reinvention, profound self-examination, and the courage it takes to share what you discover with the people around you. By learning to face herself, tell the truth, and take ownership of her choices, Kristen became a more courageous, compassionate leader and built a life and business that would take care of her, too.

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”