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Resilience isn't built in the middle of a crisis. It's built long before one starts. On a nuclear submarine, we didn't prepare for a specific emergency. We prepared for any   and every  emergency. The drills were relentless, sometimes inconvenient, and absolutely non-negotiable. Because when something goes wrong 400 feet below the surface, you don't get to call a consultant. Most companies I work with think about resilience like insurance. It’s something you buy after  somet

A submarine’s greatest strength is its stealthiness. Operating silently can literally be what saves the lives of the crew. At the beginning of a deployment, one of the first things a submarine will do is an operation called “Angles & Dangles” —a series of increasingly greater up- and down-angles to see what comes loose and makes noise. This is done in a safe environment and serves as a stress test of the quietness of the submarine, allowing the crew to find and resolve issues

In high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics , our grades weren’t published and there was no class rank. Without the race for 1st place, we studied together, challenged each other, and got smarter together. That flipped a switch for me: compete where it matters; collaborate whenever possible . The same dynamic has powered my work as a CEO and now as a Vistage  Chair. The largest leaps never came from a book or seminar; they came from peers who asked

High standards don’t have to create fear. In the U.S. Nuclear Submarine Fleet, we were trained to assume any failure was preventable if we treated the task with enough seriousness and attention to detail. That mindset makes sense when the stakes are nuclear . But it can create a fear of mistakes   And fear shuts down learning.   Bad news travels slowly, and rework gets expensive. What helped us counter that wasn’t lower standards.   It was a better learning loop.

As leaders, we often find ourselves in a lonely spot. No one to talk to about the hard decisions we are making every day. What if you had a confidential, unbiased, trusted group of peers to go to for advice? That's what we do at  Vistage Worldwide, Inc.   We bring together CEOs, Owners, and Leaders from non-competing small and mid-size businesses, facilitated by a trained and experienced chair, for deep analysis of the real issues we are facing. Who is at your table? Want to

Leaders engaged in a thoughtful discussion, exchanging ideas and addressing issues around a conference table. A common theme that I hear amongst business leaders is a sense of loneliness. Once you get to a certain level in an organization, it becomes extremely difficult to find people to open up to about your questions, issues, and challenges. Some things are just hard to share with employees or managers. This is where a leadership peer group can add a tremendous amount of va

What’s your mission?   We’ve all worked for companies that have mission statements, and probably most of the time didn’t pay a lot of...

What do you value? In my experience, companies that have really great cultures also have strong, well-communicated, and understood...

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