THE ONE THING

1. Two Micro-Habits That Separate Good Leaders from Great Ones

While we often focus on big leadership decisions and grand strategies, McKinsey's research with over 100 CEOs reveals something surprising: "For many CEOs, the journey toward excellence is paved with small habits woven into daily routines that fortify their capacity to manage their complex jobs."

These aren't revolutionary practices. They're deceptively simple micro-habits that compound over time.

Here are a couple of general habits that are helpful:

1. The "Look Inward" Habit

Before making any significant decision, emotionally intelligent leaders pause for what researchers call a "metacognitive moment" – a brief check-in with their emotional state. Are they frustrated? Anxious? Overconfident?

This takes literally 10 seconds, but it prevents countless reactive decisions.

2. The "Broken Shelf" Approach

When Nat Friedman became CEO of GitHub (after Microsoft's acquisition), he didn't start with a vision presentation. Instead, he screen-shared a list of 100+ customer complaints and said: "Today, we're going to fix one. Tomorrow, another. And we'll keep going."

He implemented a small micro-habit over time.

This created three effects:

• Shock therapy that changed the timeline from quarters to hours

• Bottom-up learning about where the real problems were

• Action that spoke louder than any vision statement could

The takeaway

Excellence isn't about perfection. It's about consistency. Pick one micro-habit that addresses your biggest leadership gap. Practice it for 30 days before adding another. The compound effect of these small practices is what separates good leaders from great ones.

INSIGHTFUL THOUGHTS

2. An HBR Article on the Difference Between Leadership and Management

The Harvard Business Review published an article years ago called: What Leaders Really Do

The article goes into the differences between leadership and management, and they summed it up nicely in the article:

In other words, a strong manager is great at “coping with complexity,” whereas a strong leader is great at “coping with change.”

Although both skills are needed in organizations, the surprising takeaway for me was that it’s sometimes better to have strong management with weak leadership than vice versa.

From the article summary:

I’m not sure I fully agree with that takeaway, but I do see how it makes sense in certain contexts.

NEW BOOK

3. Interested in a new book about AI Change Management?

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WORDS I LIKE

4. On the Most Important Job of a CEO

THE 80/20

5. An 80/20 Tip You Can Apply Today

Here’s a low-effort, high-impact tip you can use with your team today:

• What: Assign tasks to specific individuals (and not to groups)

• Why: This helps avoid the bystander effect (where everyone’s responsibility is no one’s responsibility).

• Example: “Sarah will be responsible for completing this task, and both Jessica and Steve will help her out,” is more effective than “Sarah, Jessica, and Steve will be responsible for completing this task.”