WoW Wednesday​

With Thanksgiving arriving tomorrow, our inboxes and feeds are flooded with sentiments of thanks. It is a wonderful time of year to pause and reflect on our blessings, but in the fast-paced world of business, “thanks” can often become a throwaway line—a box we check at the end of a quarterly town hall to boost morale scores.

As we head into the holiday, I want to challenge us to look at gratitude not as a sentiment we speak, but as a culture we operationalize. John F. Kennedy framed this distinction perfectly:

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

In leadership, the gap between “uttering words” and “living by them” is where retention is either won or lost. Employees can spot performative gratitude a mile away; it’s the generic “kudos” email sent while simultaneously denying resources or ignoring burnout.

True appreciation in a business context is demonstrated through investment. When a leader lives their appreciation, they stop viewing their team merely as assets to be managed and start treating them as partners to be empowered. This creates a tangible ROI on gratitude:

• Autonomy: You show gratitude for competence by micromanaging less and trusting more.
• Advocacy: You show gratitude for hard work by fighting for your team’s budget, resources, and visibility behind closed doors.
• Mentorship: You show gratitude for potential by investing the most valuable currency you have: your personal time.

This principle holds equal weight in our living rooms. We often fall into the trap of assuming our families know we are grateful for them simply because we haven’t said otherwise. But in an era of constant distraction, the highest form of appreciation we can offer is our undivided presence.

• The Shift: Instead of just telling a partner or friend “I appreciate you,” demonstrate it through the currency of attention.
• In Practice: It’s putting the phone away during dinner. It’s doing the chore that everyone hates without seeking credit. It’s listening to understand rather than listening to reply.

Whether in the boardroom or the dining room, the goal is the same: to move beyond the easy act of speaking thanks and embrace the harder, more rewarding work of showing it.

As you gather with family and friends tomorrow, I hope you find moments to demonstrate your gratitude through action. May your turkey be moist, your football team victorious, and your post-meal nap completely uninterrupted. 🦃🏈😴

And remember, calories don’t count on the fourth Thursday of November. That’s just science.

Happy Thanksgiving!

---

For those looking to dig deeper into the data behind this, I highly recommend reading “Leading with Gratitude” by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton.

The authors do a fantastic job of exposing the “gratitude gap”—the chasm between leaders who think they are appreciative and employees who feel undervalued. It moves beyond “soft skills” fluff and offers rigorous strategies to turn gratitude into a driver of high performance. It effectively teaches you how to close the gap between JFK’s “uttering” and “living.”

The Stoic Blueprint for Modern Business 💡

In the dynamic world of business, we often strive for control. We seek to dictate market outcomes, manage risk down to zero, and impose our will on the environment. But what if the secret to strategic mastery wasn’t about control, but about acceptance?

This week’s wisdom comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Euripides: “Whoever embraces necessity counts as wise, skilled in divine matters.”

For the modern leader, this quote offers a powerful lens: necessity is not a defeat; it is the non-negotiable constraint that fuels the most powerful form of innovation. True business skill lies in recognizing the rigid, unchangeable facts of the market and designing brilliant solutions around them.

---

Expanding on Necessity: The Foundation of Strategic Clarity 🏛️

Embracing necessity means distinguishing between challenges you can influence and those you cannot. This distinction is the bedrock of strategic clarity.

1. Strategic Redirection, Not Resistance

The wise leader accepts the structural shifts in the market—such as permanent consumer behavioral changes, unavoidable regulatory mandates, or the fundamental physics of a supply chain—as fixed boundaries. Instead of spending capital and political will on resistance, they immediately pivot to strategic redirection. They ask: “Given this unchangeable fact, what is the most powerful path forward?” This saves immense time and resources that would otherwise be wasted fighting an unwinnable battle.

2. Forced Focus and Resource Optimization

Necessity acts as a focusing mechanism. When a necessity (like a sudden 30% jump in raw goods costs) is acknowledged, you are forced to re-evaluate every process and product that relies on that good. This often leads to radical efficiency gains that were previously deemed impossible. By accepting the constraint, the leader sharpens their focus onto the value-generating activities that remain viable, optimizing resources where they can have the most impact.

3. The Catalyst for Radical Innovation

Often, the greatest innovations arise not from an open field of possibility, but from severe constraints. The accepted necessity acts as the ultimate design prompt. If a technology is no longer cost-effective (a necessity), the company is forced to invent a completely different, more efficient process. This shift from incremental improvement to fundamental transformation is the hallmark of embracing necessity.

---

Finding Personal Wisdom in Constraint 🙏

While the quote has huge strategic implications, its deepest power often resonates in our personal lives.

I recently faced a personal necessity: the need to dedicate several individual days to travel and be present for one of my kids college tours. This was non-negotiable family time, requiring me to be physically away from the office and internal / external meetings for short periods of time.

My initial reaction was frustration—how could I possibly manage my demanding schedule while prioritizing this personal necessity?

The moment I truly embraced it as an unchangeable necessity, everything changed:

• The Constraint: Significant, mandatory small chunks of time off the grid.
• The Pivot: I stopped trying to squeeze in work during travel and instead focused intensely on optimizing the days and weeks before and after the tours. This necessity forced me to master extreme time blocking, delegate critical tasks more thoroughly than ever before, and front-load major decision-making.
• The Result: My preparation became exponentially more efficient. The necessity of mandatory downtime forced a profound innovation in my workflow and delegation style, proving that focused, high-leverage work before a break is vastly superior to distracted work during it. I was present for my family and my team was empowered to execute in my absence.

Embracing that necessity unlocked a new, more disciplined, and ultimately more effective professional rhythm.

---

The Path to Mastery 🎯

Embracing necessity is the true test of leadership skill. It is the ability to look at the unyielding facts of your business environment—or your personal life—and declare, “This is the boundary. Now, let’s build something brilliant inside it.”

This mindset transforms reactive struggle into proactive mastery, positioning you as a strategist skilled in the “divine matters” of understanding and working with the flow of reality.

---

📚 Book Recommendation

I recommend “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” by Jim Collins.

Collins introduces the Stockdale Paradox: The necessity of confronting the brutal facts of your current reality while maintaining unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. This perfectly captures the spirit of the quote. It’s about being ruthlessly honest about the “necessity” you face while maintaining the disciplined commitment to do what it takes to succeed within those constraints.

In today’s complex and fast-paced business world, the old notion of the infallible leader has no place. The truly effective leader understands the power of interdependence and humility. Admitting you don’t know every answer is the first step toward finding the best answer. 👇

This week’s wisdom comes from business leader Georgette Mosbacher:

“Never hesitate to show your own staff that you need help. They need to be reminded how important they are to the process.”

---

How This Resonates in Business Today 🌐

This quote is a powerful reminder that asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s a sign of a secure and courageous leader. It resonates today because:

• Fosters Psychological Safety: When a leader shows vulnerability, it explicitly demonstrates that it is safe to not have all the answers. This creates a high-trust environment where team members feel comfortable flagging potential risks early, admitting mistakes, and sharing unconventional ideas without fear of judgment or retribution. This is the cornerstone of agile and innovative organizations.
• Unlocks Talent and Ownership: By specifically asking for a team member’s unique expertise, the leader gives them a profound sense of trust and ownership over a critical solution. This doesn’t just build morale; it leverages specialization. The staff are reminded how vital their specialized skills are to the collective success, leading to higher engagement, better retention, and superior outcomes.

Two (2) Practical Leadership Examples 🤝

• Delegating the Technical Deep-Dive: A CTO initiating a new product launch might not have the most up-to-date knowledge on the latest cloud infrastructure requirements or security protocols. Instead of making assumptions, a strong leader openly tells their technical lead, “I need you to own the architectural review on this, as your expertise here is far beyond mine. We will be relying on your final assessment.” This act validates the lead’s authority, ensures the product is built on the most sound technical footing, and accelerates the decision-making process.
• The Problem-Solving Huddle: A manager notices a significant operational bottleneck slowing down customer service, but the cause isn’t clear from the reports. Instead of trying to build a new process solo, they gather the frontline staff—the people who interact with the system daily—and says, “I’ve hit a wall on how to streamline this. I need your collective, on-the-ground experience to help me build a better, practical process.” This approach generates immediate, actionable solutions that work in reality, while simultaneously elevating their staff from doers to strategic partners in the company’s continuous improvement.

---

Book Recommendation on Vulnerable Leadership 📚

I recommend: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown.

Why: Brené Brown’s research-backed approach defines leadership as “courage over comfort.” She provides a clear framework for why vulnerability is the fundamental skill set of brave leadership. The book gives leaders practical, actionable steps on how to cultivate courage, build trust, and have the tough conversations that Georgette Mosbacher’s quote encourages. It perfectly explains the how and why behind showing your staff that you need them.

We often celebrate the big ideas and the grand strategic plans. But how many brilliant visions have simply faded away, never materializing into real-world success? Today’s quote hits hard at the difference between inspirational leadership and effective leadership.

Visionaries are celebrated, but true leaders are those who translate that abstract future into tangible action. As the great inventor Thomas Edison wisely noted:

“Vision without execution is hallucination.”

If your strategy lives only in PowerPoint slides and board meetings, it’s not a plan—it’s a corporate daydream. The only way to prove your vision is real is by building the execution framework to support it.

---

The Core of Effective Leadership

This quote serves as a powerful reminder that leadership is a verb, not a noun. Turning an idea into reality requires disciplined effort across the organization. Here’s how successful leaders embody this principle:

1. Prioritizing Reality over Rhetoric

• Effective Leader: Breaks the vision down into measurable, actionable steps. They focus on KPIs, resource allocation, and accountability, ensuring the vision is tracked against data, not just optimism.
• The Hallucination Trap: A leader who constantly talks about “disrupting the industry” without clear budgets and ownership is engaging in wishful thinking. The team stops taking the vision seriously when there’s no funded path forward.

2. Mastering the Feedback Loop

• Effective Leader: Establishes a system where execution is constantly measured against the vision. If the execution is failing, they pivot the action and the process, not abandon the core goal.
• The Hallucination Trap: A leader who assumes a strategy is working simply because they announced it and fails to check the ground-level data. They operate on fantasy and are often the last to know about internal roadblocks.

3. Empowering the Executors

• Effective Leader: Delegates authority, provides the necessary tools and training, and creates a culture where team members feel psychologically safe to report execution problems without fear of blame.
• The Hallucination Trap: A leader who micromanages or fails to equip their team acts as a bottleneck, ensuring the vision remains stuck in their own head.

4. Defining the “First Step” and Maintaining Momentum

• Effective Leader: Defines the clear single first step and builds initial momentum. For instance, launching a new product requires defining the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and the launch date, not just talking about the 5-year feature roadmap.
• The Hallucination Trap: Leaders who allow the planning stage to become endless due to “analysis paralysis.” The vision never leaves the conference room, and competitors quickly move ahead.

5. Allocating Resources (Time, Talent, Capital)

• Effective Leader: Shows commitment by actively moving organizational resources to support the vision. If the vision is ‘digital transformation,’ they invest capital in new technology and allocate the best talent to lead the shift.
• The Hallucination Trap: A leader who proclaims a new direction (e.g., “Customer First!”) but maintains the old resource structure is sending a mixed message. The team sees the lack of real investment and recognizes the vision as purely theoretical.

Leadership is the fundamental art of turning the invisible (a vision) into the visible (results). It’s not about having the idea; it’s about being the steward of the process that makes the idea real. If your team is confused about the next five steps, your vision is likely in the danger zone. Great leaders ensure the next step is always clear, funded, and accountable.

---

📚 Recommended Book

Book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins

Collins’s work directly addresses the disciplined execution required to achieve lasting success. His concept, the Hedgehog Concept, helps leaders distill their complex vision into a simple, executable strategy—a crucial step in preventing the “hallucination” of an overcomplicated, unachievable plan. The book provides a rigorous framework for bridging the gap between a lofty vision and real-world, consistent results.

“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius

---

An Inside Job: The Source of True Confidence

In an era defined by constant change and disruption, leaders often feel the pressure to control every variable—from quarterly results to market trends. We chase external metrics believing they will confirm our competence and, thus, our confidence. However, the ancient wisdom of Stoicism offers a profound pivot: external events are simply neutral information. The true metric of leadership strength lies in your mental fortress. This quote isn’t just about managing stress; it’s the formula for developing a self-confidence so robust it can withstand any crisis.

The Core of Self-Mastery in Leadership

Building genuine self-confidence isn’t about what you achieve; it’s about mastering how you respond to what you can’t control. This is the essence of self-mastery:

• Focusing on Response, Not Result: The external event—be it a project failure, a difficult market, or a critical client—is merely an input. Your power lies in choosing your output: your thought, your emotion, and your subsequent action. For instance, when a product launch fails, an unconfident leader may internalize the failure as a personal indictment, leading to defensive behavior. A leader practicing self-mastery, however, immediately separates their self-worth from the outcome. They choose a rational response (analysis, iteration) over an emotional one (blame, despair), thereby reinforcing their own capability to lead through adversity. This continuous choice for rationality builds confidence as a habit.
• The Power of Premeditation: A key Stoic practice, premeditatio malorum, means mentally rehearsing potential negative outcomes. This isn’t pessimism; it’s proactive confidence-building. By regularly visualizing and preparing for setbacks—like a key employee resigning or a budget being cut—you dilute their shock and emotional sting. When the actual event occurs, you have already framed a rational starting point for action, preventing the initial panic that often erodes self-assurance. This preparation allows you to enter challenging situations with a quiet conviction, because you know you’ve already accounted for and planned against the worst possible scenarios.

Final Thoughts

If you want your team to trust you, you must first trust yourself. And that trust is earned not by avoiding hardship, but by proving to yourself, over and over, that no external challenge can hijack your internal state. This ability to remain anchored and rational under pressure is what ultimately instills confidence in your team, making you a reliable leader. Start today by recognizing that the most powerful control you have is over your own mind.

---

📚 Book Recommendation

The recommended book is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, the very text this quote is drawn from.

Why? Meditations is not a philosophy textbook or a leadership manual; it is Marcus Aurelius’s private diary and personal exercises in applying Stoic philosophy. Reading it offers an intimate look at a powerful leader grappling with real-world problems (plagues, wars, betrayal) by constantly returning to this central tenet of self-mastery. It’s the ultimate guide for a leader who seeks to build authentic, crisis-proof confidence by understanding that the only true path to power is through governing one’s own judgments and character.