Newsletter

The Future Of Leadership

Leadership wisdom for CEOs and senior technology executives.

A monthly newsletter read by 1,376 leaders.

I love Richard’s leadership newsletter. He focuses on my two favourite subjects, iQ & eQ, and distils monthly nuggets that I always gobble up with great enthusiasm. Bon appétit!

Fred Pelard
Strategy trainer, consultant & facilitator

Latest newsletter:

Changing on the Job (2nd edition)

#044: Why lessons from sport can sideline business success

  • “With their shared focus on performance and winning, and because our brains are wired to think in analogies and metaphors, it’s quick and easy to draw comparisons between sport and business leadership. But it can also be lazy and problematic”.
  • Changing on the Job (2nd Edition), by Jennifer Garvey Berger

Previous newsletters:

#043: What are the 7 Rules of Power?

  • Book review: 7 Rules of Power: Surprising – But True – Advice on How To Get Things Done and Advance Your Career
  • Without followership there is no leadership – A British Army Followership Doctrine Note
  • Pattern Recognition – Opportunities and Limits 

#042: Balancing listening AND speaking

  • Book review: Leadership Embodiment: How the Way We Sit and Stand Can Change the Way We Think and Speak
  • “Your employee culture is an information-gathering organism” – listen to Stan Slap on the Art of Building Effective Employee Cultures
Leadership BS

#041: Leadership BS 💩

  • Too much of the thinking on leadership has become a sort of morality tale, says Professor Jeffrey Pfeffey in Leadership BS
  • The Signs of a Good CEO, by Roger L. Martin
  • 8 Executive Time Management Techniques (based on real CEO coaching conversations)

#040: What is your worldview?

  • Top 25 books to have influenced my worldview – our fundamental cognitive orientation, encompassing the entirety of our knowledge, beliefs, values, and emotional responses, in turn shaping how we perceive and interact with the world around us
  • The Perils of Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt
  • Founder Mode, by Paul Graham

#039: Leadership beyond deliberate practice

  • Deliberate practive works well when you receive clear, rapid feedback. But what if you’re a senior leader navigating challenges that are devoid of such feedback?
  • Dive into The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
  • Plus more tools and techniques for navigating complexity
Leadership insights from Everything is Predictable

#038: The Myth of Deliberate Practice & Mastery

  • The difference between ‘kind’ & ‘wicked’ learing environments, and why Deliberate Practice won’t help you get better at ‘anything’
  • Leadership insights from Everything is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World
  • ‘Suppose everything we knew about coach education was wrong’

#037: 10 ways to get better, faster

  • Accelerating Executive Mastery: 10 ways to get better, faster >> 10 ‘common factors’ to work on to become a better Executive-level leader
  • Teaching Smart People How To Learn, by Chris Argyris, introducing  ‘single-loop’ & ‘double-loop’ learning
  • ‘Listening to learn’ & ‘Kind’ & ‘Wicked’ learning environments
Jean PIaget

#036: Dis-equilibrium, Growth & Executive Mastery

  • Executive Mastery: 10 ways to get better, faster >>
  • Who the hell is Jean Piaget and what are his theories all about?
  • Bill Torbert’s 7 Transformations of Leadership
  • Personal Renewal – “There are some things you can’t learn from others, you have to pass through the fire”🔥
Atomic Habits

#035: Forging a Theory of Executive Mastery

The Reflective Practitioner

#034: Accelerating Executive Expertise

  • Introducing Accelerating Executive Expertise, a deep-dive into the metagame of mastery. How can you combine existing and new knowledge and experience to accelerate the rate at which you develop in business, leadership and life? How can you get better, faster?
  • The Reflective Practioner: How Professionals Think in Action, by Donald Schön

#033: Leading Through an Unpredictable 2024

  • Summary of Superforecasting: The Art & Science of Prediction, by Phil Tetlock
  • What are the traits of ‘superforecaster’, ordinary people who consistently outperform experts at predicting future events and outcomes, and what can leaders learn?
  • Pattern Recognition: Opportunities & Limits

#032: Wisdom from Charlie Munger & Carl Rogers

  • My latest writing: Charlie Munger was a complexity thinker
  • Carl Rogers on personal growth. Under what conditions is it possible? How can one person help another? What is creativity, and how can it be fostered?
  • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life

#031: The Mental Models Paradox

  • The Mental Models Paradox, ensure your mental models are building blocks to higher wisdom, not brick walls constraining your thinking
  • Insights from Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building
  • Reframing What it Means to be an Executive and The Road to Self-Renewal

#030: How can an Executive Coach help you?

  • Erik de Haan’s book Critical Moments in Executive Coaching, including his “window on coaching” framework
  • CEO Job Description: In Reductionist Form
  • Experimenting as a way to deal with uncertainty

#029: Family & Leadership

  • Is it possible to lead at your best if you’re home life isn’t happy and health?
  • Professor Rober Kegan’s book In Over Our Heads: Mental Demands of Modern Life, and his 10 suggestions for what’s expected of parents
  • CEO and employee narcissm

#028: Executive Presence

#027: Are you on the Balcony, or the Dancefloor?

  • Technical leadership vs adaptive leadership, from The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ron Heifetz
  • Leadership, and moving between the balcony and the dancefloor
  • What Does “Becoming More Senior” Really Mean?
  • Using Deliberate Practice to improve performance – how can you 10X your results?

#026: Is this the most disruptive period in history?

  • Adaptability lessons from High Output Management, by former Intel CEO Andy Grove
  • VUCA, the ‘Exponential Age’ and recency bias
  • What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?
  • Podcast: Tacit Knowledge, Mental Models and Accelerated Expertise, with Cedric Chin

#025: Accelerated Expertise – taking skill development to the absolute limit

  • Summary of Accelerated Expertise: Training for High Proficiency in a Complex World – “take[s] the concept of skill development to the absolute limit”
  • Skepticism: Why critical thinking makes you smarter
  • Podcast: can internet gurus help you find certainty in an uncertain world?

#024: The Duck-Rabbit & the Polarities of Leadership

  • My new article The Duck-Rabbit & the Polarities of Leadership
  • Advice from The HIGH GROWTH HANDBOOK: Scaling Startups from 10-10,000 People, by Elad Gil
  • The Paradoxes Of Changing Your Mind
  • Podcast: Expanding leadership through polarities

#023: Time Management for Leaders, Power of Both/And Thinking

  • My new article Time Management Techniques for Leaders
  • Reviewing The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking, by Roger L. Martin
  • Podcast: Josh Waitzkin on Beginner’s Mind, Self-Actualization, and Advice from Your Future Self

#022: Are you a pessimist or optimist? How does the world really work?

  • My article Executive coaching: a complete guide to finding the right coach for you
  • Exploring the complexity of the global energy tranistion HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going
  • Podcasts about how to become a better listener, Where does greatness come from, and the beginner’s mind, self-actualization, and advice from your future self

#021: Most read leadership articles 2022 + startling facts from Chip War

  • Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology unpacks the existential geopolitical challenges presented by production and supply chains
  • The “Duck-Rabbit” and the Art of Entrepreneurship
  • The Ultimate Burnout Guide: Symptoms, Causes, and Prevention

#020: A complete guide to finding the right Executive Coach

  • This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends unpacks the history of cyber weapons and a global underground marketplace which allows governments and other malicious actors direct backdoor access into pretty much any system on the planet
  • The Leader’s Calendar – how do CEOs allocate their time?

#019: Better manage your diary & time Unleash your complexity genius

  • My article: Time management techniques for leaders
  • Unleash your Complexity Genius: Growing your inner capacity to lead, discover 8 Genius Engagement Moves (GEMs) to help you navigate a complex world – noticing, breathing, moving, sleeping, experimenting, laughing, wondering, and loving
  • The Case for Optimism, Becoming and Better Strategist and more…

#018: Cancer, Life, Leadership & Uncertainty – Strategy Hacks Podcast

  • My appearance with my Oncologist on the Strategy Hacks podcast, discussing my journey through Stage 3 cancer and what we’ve both learned about life, leadership and decision making under uncertainty
  • Summary of Talent: How To Identify Energizers, Creatives & Winners Around the World, about how to find people who will 100x your organisation

#017: Putting yourself at risk for growth & infinite progress

  • Summary of The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
  • The difference between coaching and therapy, and why entrepreneurs need a coach, mentor and therapist

#016: Why feedback is the lifeblood of change in a complex world.

  • Summary of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organisation, including Peter Senge’s five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, building a shared vision, team learning and systems thinking
  • Feedback, “the lifeblood of change in a complex world” and why even Winston Churchill needed it

#015: How do you navigate complex environments? Intuition & the voices in our head

  • Leadership lessons from a Mountain Guide
  • Whilst our inner voice can push us forward, it can also pull us back. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head (and How to Harness It) identifies ways we can better harness our chatter
  • Podcast: Redefining the Role of Manager

#014: What is a Deliberately Developmental Organization?

  • Dive into what DDOs are and how they can help everyone in your organisation grow
  • Summary of Moose Heads on the Table, a book about self-managing organisations
  • Podcast: How harnessing chaos can make companies more nimble


#013: Emotions, Grand Transitions & Coaching for your team
#012: What is Cynefin? Do you want to lead like a Navy SEAL?
#011: The problem with TED Talks & other Leadership BS Secrets of our Success
#010: Exponential Leadership + web3 & The Future Of The Internet
#009: Capitalism Without Capital, Frameworks, Uncertainty & Talent
#008: Reading & sensemaking, 360 Feedback & WTF is the Metaverse?
#007: 10 seminal pieces of writing + talking about racism & privilege
#006: How One Business Is Opening Up Its Coaching Programme To You All
#005: Guide to remote/hybrid work + Deliberately Developmental Organisations
#004: What is the future of leadership? Our survey said…
#003: Want to be a better leader? It’s complex.
#002: The Art of Thinking & Changing Your Mind
#001: Uncertainty, Prediction, Sensemaking & Bringing down the system!