The CEO wears many hats. Others on the team, in the organization can help fill many of those roles. But, there’s one critical job only the CEO can do: link the outside world... customers, partners, shareholders; the economy, government, society, etc...with the inside world...your organization.

I’ve learned twice as much from failures as from successes.

The best way to establish cumulative competitive advantage for a brand, product or service is to establish a consumer habit and then incentivize and reinforce that habit continuously over purchase/usage cycles and time. Every time your customer chooses your brand, product or service, your advantage over the competition your customer didn’t choose accumulates and grows.

Too many strategy reviews are long on data and analysis, but short on imagination and inquiry. The key to breakthrough business strategies is two simple but powerful exercises...imagining possibilities...choices that could result in sustainable competitive advantage in value creation...and then rigorous testing of each choice by asking: what would have to be true for one choice A to be a better choice than another.

Choosing your successor is one of the most emotionally difficult decisions anyone will ever make. But, since it’s the most important, it requires your personal leadership of a disciplined process to choose the right person to take your organization into the future.