Research Notes

What the research actually says.

Longer-form synthesis of the evidence on why executive teams stall — sourced, quoted accurately, and translated into the specific disciplines you can act on. No inflation, every claim cited.

Latest · July 2026

A priority is a refusal

Every executive team can name its priorities — the least useful fact about them. Half of 4,701 CEOs move a tenth or less of their money and people year over year. A priority that has caused no refusal is a preference with better branding.

Read the note →

July 2026 Sprawl persists because it works at first Every over-committed team is told to focus — a destination with no mechanism. Sprawl persists because load speeds a team up first and slows it down a quarter later, so the cost gets misattributed. The fix is a limit, not a list. July 2026 More candor will make it worse The standard fix for a team that tolerates mediocrity is more candor. For most executive teams it makes things worse. Two meta-analyses disagree about task conflict — but agree on the one variable that decides which way it goes. July 2026 Your post-mortem would not have qualified The best-evidenced practice in management takes under twenty minutes and works about as well for teams as individuals — yet almost no executive team runs a session that would qualify. Why the constraint is safety, not process. July 2026 What decision paralysis actually costs Every dollar figure for the cost of indecision traces back to marketing, not research. What the primary studies actually establish about decision speed — and the three places paralysis really costs a team, none of which appear on a P&L. July 2026 Your leadership team is aligned. So why isn’t anything happening? Executives say they’re aligned, then the priorities don’t move. BCG, David Livermore, and twenty years of consulting all circle the same finding: alignment is the symptom, not the cause — and one of four disciplines has quietly broken underneath it.

Field notes, by email

Straight thinking on executive-team execution.

One short note, roughly monthly, on the disciplines that decide whether a leadership team executes. No fluff, no pitch. Unsubscribe anytime.