Summary Leadership

29/09/2026

Seeing the problem is not solving it. Analysts can name every force working against their team. They don't yet change any of them.

The question that moves you up: Which force could I modify?

www.summaryleadership.com

29/09/2026

Personality tests get used for hiring and promotion decisions constantly. Here's where that research actually holds up, and where it runs out.

Leadership research has measured the person for about a century. Th...

29/09/2026

A one-minute follow-up to the video above: five concrete moves for a leader who has the skill but not the arena.

Right leader, wrong arena? A leadership mismatch between a leader a...

29/09/2026

Tony Hayward spent 28 years at BP before Deepwater Horizon ended his run in months. Stanley McChrystal rebuilt the Joint Special Operations Command, then lost his post in Afghanistan almost as fast. Both had track records strong enough to earn the next job. Neither kept it. New video on why:

Are you the right leader in the wrong arena? This leadership develo...

29/09/2026

4 levels of leadership: Passenger, Analyst, Engineer, Architect. Passengers endure problems. Analysts identify them. Engineers solve them. Architects prevent them.

Which one are you? Rate yourself by what you did the last time something went wrong.

www.summaryleadership.com

28/09/2026

Right leader, wrong arena? Here are 5 ways to fix it.

When a leader's results drop in a new role, the traits usually did not change. The arena did. The P×E model gives 5 pathways:

1. Modify the arena
2. Develop the athlete
3. Expand trait flexibility
4. Select a different arena
5. Build protective structures

Each one has a different cost and needs a different level of authority. Start with two questions: What does the arena require? Which conditions do you have the authority to change?

Watch (50 sec): https://youtu.be/tkzKbDW-iHg

Right leader, wrong arena? A leadership mismatch between a leader a...

04/08/2026

Two things set the price on any leadership behavior. Threat decides what it costs to be wrong. Stability decides whether last year's pattern still tells you anything about next quarter. Somebody who improvises fast earns a fortune while the rules keep moving. Drop that same person into an operation where the procedure already contains the answer and the improvising reads as indiscipline. He is the same man in both jobs. The price of what he does is not.

A practical method for diagnosing the interaction between an executive and the role.

04/08/2026

JCPenney hired the man who built Apple's retail operation. You know the Apple Store? Lines around the block and consierge service? Yeah, that guy. At JCPenney, he killed the coupon system, redesigned the stores, and seventeen months later annual sales had dropped from 17.26 billion to 12.99 billion. He left. Nobody thinks he got stupider on the drive over. His customers were trained to wait for a sale, and the instincts that packed Apple's stores emptied his. Most people, watching a leader fail, start asking what is wrong with the leader. My question is what the job began paying for that it never paid for before.

A practical method for diagnosing the interaction between an executive and the role.

02/08/2026

Classic Charlie

the most classic of the classics

03/02/2026

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