Practical Resources for CEOs, Boards, & Executive Teams.

The core insight for boards & CEOs? It’s not just about setting a vision or chasing growth—it’s about making two defining, non-negotiable choices. First: Where to play—choosing the right markets, segments, and opportunities that give your company permission to matter. Second: How to win—articulating the sharpened, differentiated value only you provide, staking your ground versus competitors. You need discipline to make real tradeoffs, focus resources, and anchor strategy to what only you can deliver.

Strategy is a response to an obstacle—not a slogan, a stretch goal, or a list of things you hope will happen. If you haven’t clearly defined the core challenge your organization faces, you don’t have a strategy—you have noise. A pragmatic framework: diagnose the problem, clarify the challenge, and focus resources on a coherent plan of action. For CEOs, boards, and senior leaders, this book is a masterclass in separating real strategy from wishful thinking. Required reading if you're done with vague goals and slide-deck theater.

Range highlights the incredible power of broad experience. It reveals how relying too much on narrow expertise can backfire in unfamiliar or complex domains. Drawing on insights about how even top experts struggle with ambiguity and how creative thinkers connect ideas across fields, it warns against getting stuck in an overconfident inside view. With shrinking organizational silos and more engagement from outsiders, Range makes the case for embracing diverse experiences to drive better innovation and decision-making, avoiding mistakes made by narrow specialists.

Companies fail to cross the chasm because they don’t fully grasp the fundamental differences between early adopters and the mainstream market. It’s not enough to keep doing what worked before—you need first principles thinking focused on customer need, perceived value, and willingness to pay for new segments as you scale. This mindset shift is critical for CEOs, boards, and investors driving growth in transformative industries, where understanding buyer evolution shapes market success.

This is the most important book you’ll read about sales and sales team optimization—and it has nothing to do with typical tactics. Dixon and his colleagues deliver powerful insights based entirely on deep data analysis. They uncover why buyers avoid making decisions and why pushing harder—what most sales reps are trained to do—actually kills the golden goose. This book is essential for CEOs and executive teams serious about fixing broken revenue organizations and transforming sales through smarter, evidence-backed approaches.

Building on the Jobs to Be Done framework, this book reframes how we understand customer demand. Customers seek to make progress toward their own goals and objectives, rooted in struggling moments. They see product features and technology as a means to an end. By learning what pushes people to change and including insights from non-consumers and unusual product uses, you can uncover the real competitive landscape and be better positioned to help customers make progress on their own terms.

It’s not that large, established firms were too blind to see emerging markets and the power of new technology - which is often how this book is characterized. The real insight is that top customers control your resources, limiting your ability to invest in and capitalize on new opportunities. This classic remains essential reading for CEOs, boards, and investors aiming to break free from legacy constraints and fuel innovation-driven growth.

We call this book Good Friction / Bad Friction. One of the book’s key insights: intentional friction, thoughtfully applied, can foster innovation and prevent costly mistakes, while mindless friction is a silent killer of growth and morale. Understanding how to recognize, quantify, and address these different types of friction is critical for leaders who want to empower teams, adapt to change, and maintain momentum in ambiguous, fast-moving environments. The best CEOs and boards recognize and design for the difference.

The success of an organization heavily biases how we interpret its strategies and tactics. We tend to extend this “halo effect” to individuals who’ve worked within successful companies, regardless of whether they actually drove those wins. For CEOs, boards, and investors, understanding this bias is crucial to making objective assessments and avoiding overcrediting leadership or teams.

The core insight: mastering tactical empathy—understanding and actively addressing the other party’s emotions and perspective—is key to breaking impasses and creating mutually beneficial outcomes. This approach, combined with precise communication and handling high-stakes pressure, enables leaders to secure partnerships, resolve conflicts, and maximize shareholder value when there is no room for error.

Experiencing the state of flow—total, effortless concentration on a challenging task—merges action and awareness, so time distorts and performance peaks. This isn’t accidental: flow demands pursuing goals just beyond your current skills, with clear objectives and rewards in mind. As a leader, understanding flow means you can create environments where teams hit this optimal zone of engagement, creativity, and productivity. Elevating flow across your organization is a serious unlock—especially when innovation, focus, and high output matter most.

Sleep is the greatest untapped performance resource most leaders ignore—despite mountains of evidence on its impact for health, cognitive horsepower, and decision-making. Sure, some claim they can run on four hours, but for 99% of us, undersleeping drives risk, bad judgment, and burn-out. Understanding why deep sleep is so transformative and aligning life around natural energy circuits isn’t woo-woo; it’s a competitive edge. Prioritizing sleep literally changes what you see as possible (and how well you do it).

Not everyone gets their best ideas by talking out loud: in fact, our culture’s extrovert bias means most organizations miss out on what quieter voices offer. Group brainstorms rarely tap that depth—turns out, real creativity and insight come from accommodating every style, especially introverts who process and communicate differently. Building teams and workspaces that respect both ends of the spectrum isn’t soft, it’s how you get better thinking, innovation, and retention. Embracing introvert strengths helps everyone—yes, even the extroverts.

We think we’re in charge of our own minds, but the science behind mindfulness and non-attachment offers an entirely different lens on how we think, react, and lead. Wright shows how feelings and modular mind systems actually run the show, often below our awareness. Getting some distance from thoughts—not identifying with every mood or reaction—paradoxically gives leaders more autonomy and clarity. More space in your mind means more capacity to see clearly, make great decisions, and handle chaos.