before you’re enlightened
Distilled Om Swami wisdom. Add brain. Stir gently.
The Loneliness at the Top
To do your job effectively, you can't come down from the top, you are needed up there, the work is real, you will be on your own for the most part. At any rate, it isn't lonely because nobody else is there, but perhaps, because everybody there needs something from you.
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Eating Your Own Dogfood
For more than two decades now, I’ve rarely eaten dinner late into the night. I try to eat before sunset and on most days of the year, I am done with my last meal of the day by 5:30pm. It is not uncommon then that usually if I ever eat out, I’m usually there as […]
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Move the Needle
With one of my coachees we delivered 52.5x growth in share price over six years. Looking back, the operating principle that mattered most was a single question we asked ourselves before every meeting, every decision: is this going to move the needle? Nine out of ten leaders, by their own admission, know they're working on the wrong things. A leadership note on where founder attention should actually go, and why we drift.
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When the Founder Becomes the Bottleneck
At the last webinar, I spoke about the founder’s mindset and how it differs from an entrepreneurial mindset. Successful startups are almost always founder led for the simple reason that it’s the founder’s obsession with the problem that the company was founded in the first place. I spoke along the lines that somewhere the founder […]
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The Soul of the Bean
I am sipping a nice triple-espresso as I write this leadership note. Coffee is like peace of mind: there are substitutes, but no equivalent. Speaking of which, I remember exactly when my occasional rendezvous at Starbucks turned into a non-negotiable daily ritual. Back in Sydney, Gloria Jeans used to be my go-to place to grab […]
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The Myth of the Perfect Juggler
Recently, one of my readers asked a question in the last webinar that got my attention. It read, “How does one navigate the continual pressures of acing the game of life without falling short on any aspect? Gaining mastery of new theories, best practices, research – whilst taking out time for the mundane, and family […]
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Hope Is Not a Strategy
For every Slack or Notion that caught fire organically, there are thousands of excellent products that died in obscurity. Growth is manufactured. It's systematic. And it needs to be your organizational priority from day one, not an afterthought once the product is "ready."
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How to Build an A+ Team of Dragons
Following on from the leadership note I wrote last month, Why Excellence Costs More, I found your reflections and questions quite relatable and meaningful. Thank you. I agree that it is not easy to identify, attract, and retain A+ players. Then again, that’s the whole play. It’s like a game of chess, if you want to […]
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