Development · assessment · coaching
Less knowing,
more doing.
Knowledge is cheap. Behavior is everything. Success requires getting in more reps at doing the right things until they become habit. That's the game: Pick the two or three behaviors that actually cost you, then practice them relentlessly. Not until you get them right — until you can't get them wrong.
Knowing isn't doing.
You have probably already done at least one of these. All three are study. None of them is practice, and none of them ever put you under real resistance.
The book with the secret sauce.
Five pillars. Ten habits. One framework, guaranteed to work for every leader who reads it — as though a weekly one-to-one costs a naturally organized person and a naturally spontaneous one the same amount. It doesn't. There is no secret sauce, and pretending otherwise is why the resolution lasted nine days.
The class that ended in applause.
Ninety minutes, a good facilitator, a room that nodded along together. The applause at the end was real. By Monday, everyone ran the same meeting the same way they always had.
The report that named you accurately.
It was well-built and it was right about you. You nodded. It stung a little. Then it went in a drawer, because a description of who you are is not an instruction for what to do on Thursday.
Every one of those was study. Necessary, but never enough on its own — what was missing was practice against real resistance, not just repetition when it's easy.
One piece of advice
Ask one question of them. Ask one question of yourself. Repeat until something changes.
Ask someone you work with
"If you could give me one piece of advice that would make me more effective, what would it be?"
"What have you seen that makes you say that?"
Advice alone isn't actionable — "be more decisive" tells you nothing about Monday. The second question turns their advice back into the thing they actually saw, which is the part you can work on.
How to run it
Don't schedule it. This is a hallway question, not a meeting. The moment it needs an invite, it stops happening.
Say nothing back but thank you. No explaining, no context, no "well, the reason I did that." Defending it once teaches them not to answer next time.
Ask five people, not one. One answer is an opinion. The same answer from three people is your reputation.
Ask again in ninety days. If the advice has changed, you have. If it hasn't, you haven't.
The other half
The same question, turned inward. Two lines in a notebook — that's the whole practice.
What happened today that I'm still thinking about — and what does it tell me about how I'm leading?
What is the one thing I'll do differently next week — and when exactly will I do it?
One conversation won't change much. Neither will one week of writing. The gap between how you see yourself and how others describe you when you're not in the room only closes with repetition.
What a rep actually looks like
Not a principle. Not a mindset. A specific thing you do, cued by a specific moment, that takes under a minute and requires no change to your character. This is what gets rehearsed when nothing's on the line, then run for real when something is — not until you get it right, but until you can't get it wrong.
The Controller
- Behavior
- Takes delegated work back at the first sign of a mistake, redoing it rather than coaching the fix.
- Cue
- A direct report's deliverable comes back imperfect, less than 48 hours before it's due.
- The Rep
- Name the one thing that's wrong. Ask them to fix it by end of day. Don't touch it yourself until they've had the chance.
- Dispute
- "If I don't fix this myself, it'll be wrong, and it'll reflect on me."
- Anchor
- "Some things are up to us, and some are not up to us." — Epictetus
- Measure
- "Gives me ownership over my work instead of taking it back."
Under a minute of process. No new personality required. That is the entire design principle — the rep has to be cheap enough that you still run it on the worst week of the quarter.
Who this is for
Two honest lists.
This works if you:
- Have tried to change a habit before and watched it not stick
- Care about how you come across to people, not just what you meant to do
- Are willing to practice something small and specific, on purpose, even when it's inconvenient
- Would rather find out whether it worked than feel good about having tried
This is not for you if you:
- Want a label more than a behavior to change
- Are looking for a diagnosis of someone else, not yourself
- Want a program to roll out to a team or an organization
- Need clinical support — that is a different profession and I will say so and refer
Where the study happens
A pattern, a belief, one specific thing to try — that's a post, most weeks, on the Substack. Reading it isn't the work. Running it is.
If you want more
Most of what's here is free — the method, the examples, the Substack. From time to time I take on a handful of clients who want the full version: an assessment, a written plan, and the ninety-day proof that it worked.