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Turning someday into today

When I wrote The PATH to Strategic Impact, I thought I was writing about clear communication. One year later, I realize I was writing about something else entirely.

Looking at the many conversations I’ve since had with readers, it feels more like I was writing about the loneliness of leaders who see a path forward but can’t make others see it.

About the frustration of teams who want to do great work but can’t figure out what matters most.

About the heartbreak of ideas that could change everything but never leave the meeting room.

Clarity is not simply about finding better words.

It’s about making ambition tangible.
It’s about turning “someday” into “today.”
It’s about giving people the confidence to act when uncertainty would otherwise paralyze them.

It’s pretty obvious to me that progress doesn’t come from having the best plan.

It comes from making the path so clear that others can’t help but walk it with you.

Because when you do, the team can achieve together what even the most brilliant strategic thinker could never achieve alone.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

New rules

Every morning, leaders and teams across your organization face a choice:

  1. Play by the rules, hopefully a little better than yesterday.

Or

  1. Take a leap towards the extraordinary. Change the game. Play a better game.

But of course, many don’t even realize there is a choice.

Because the routines feel safe.
The rules feel settled.
And they’re good at it. (Perhaps even praised for it.)

So they keep optimizing a game that no longer serves the goal.
They run faster on a path that leads nowhere new.

Meanwhile, the leaders who do leap?

They stopped to ask different questions.
They challenged the brief (not just fulfilled it).
They reframed what success could look like.

And suddenly, the rules shift.
The playing field expands.
New outcomes become possible.

Not only in their company, but in the industry.

What game are you playing today?
And who decided the rules?

Does your team have permission to leap?

Keep lighting the path!

Moving people

Somewhere along the way, “professional” communication became dry, corporate, and utterly forgettable.

Businesses love the cautious wording. Overworked sentences. Industry-approved jargon.

The kind of words where no one leans in, no one remembers what you said, and no one feels anything.

Words that move people are very different. They are often simple, raw, and direct.

Something people recognize as real.
Something that sparks a thought they can’t shake.
Something that makes them see the world just a little differently.

Professional words aim to sound right.
Heartfelt words feel right.

If you want to find words that do that join us on Feb 11th for the 2nd edition of the free “Leaders Light the Path Session”.

Here’s what we’ll cover:
→ How to encourage people to challenge the status quo.
→ Why heartfelt words are underestimated in business.
→ Simple strategies to turn ambition into progress.

It’s a highly interactive session to help you find words that don’t just explain your ideas — but make them impossible to ignore.

Seats are limited to keep it small and interactive, but saving your spot is easy — just reply to this mail.

We’ll meet on Feb 11th at 11am Eastern / 5pm CET via Zoom.

Keep lighting the path!

Fearless honesty

Honesty scares the hell out of most marketers.
It shouldn’t.

Because it can be your best friend.

It builds trust.
It inspires loyalty.
It signals confidence.
It establishes authority.
It cuts through the noise.
It uncovers the real issues.
It avoids misunderstanding.
It challenges you to improve.
It attracts the right audiences.
It sets you free from the façade.

→ Now, how honest are you …
with your customers?
with your partners?
with your team?
with yourself?

Honesty might scare you.
But fearless honesty is the bold way forward.

Keep lighting the path!

How 2 Transformative Words Skyrocketed a Business

Who doesn’t love bold success stories?

The leader who inspired a movement.
The team that turned a company around.
The strategy that changed everything.

It seldom works.

But Alcoa’s story is truly remarkable.

It’s the story of how two words turned a struggling company completely around – leading to staggering results.

And it’s absolutely the stuff Hollywood movies are made of: They were laughed at, only to prove everyone wrong.

It’s a bit longer than usual so I put it into a short PDF. Download Alcoa’s story here as a free download. It’s totally worth your time.

PS: This is the final of a series of four case studies, one for each of the four PATH principles. Download all of them here.

Taking action

Why do some strategies sound brilliant in the boardroom but never take off in the real world?

Well, thinking up the strategy is one thing. But time and again I’ve seen that the real challenge is getting the team to act according to the strategy. That’s a completely different thing.

The idea of a strategy just isn’t enough.
Acting on that idea is what makes the leap happen.

Which means:
Communication makes the difference.

Is it
→ Plain and simple (so everyone understands it)?
→ Actionable (so everyone knows the actions)?
→ Transformative (so it encourages bold moves)?
→ Heartfelt (so everyone embraces it)?

It’s a mistake to think that the course of your organization is shaped by the boardroom resolution. It’s much more the sum of the thousands of tiny choices and actions that follow from it.

Each team member, from yourself making acquisitions to the junior drafting prototypes, contributes to the journey.

And if you want all of these actions aligned, you need to light the PATH!

So, how many of your team members truly understand the essence of your strategy and can act on it with clarity and conviction?

(The “PATH to Strategic Impact” is out now! Click to take a look inside.)

A silent saboteur

Mediocrity is a silent saboteur.

While great things quickly get promoted and bad things are fixed fast, average just stays around.

We grapple with it, reluctant to let go of it just as we would with the bad. Yet we often hesitate to make a decisive push towards excellence and make the edits that have to be made.

Essentially, we struggle to say: That’s just “okay” and “okay” is not enough.

Also, after all, a lot of work has already gone into that piece.

So, we keep on tinkering with it.

And some more.

Mediocrity’s trap is making us believe we’re moving forward when we’re just circling the same spot. We think we’re acting, but often we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Breaking free requires bold steps: a ground-up transformation or the courage to scrap it and pivot.

Instead, mediocrity captures our focus precisely because it teeters on the edge of holding potential for both greatness and failure.

In a way, it exploits our internal battles—our fears of failure, our aspirations for success, and the comfort of the familiar. In our reluctance to see the mediocre decline, and our hesitance to take the risks required for excellence, we find ourselves tethered to this “just okay” zone, expending energy without clear direction.

This middle area, not great but not terrible, acts like a sneaky problem, taking our energy and overshadowing our dreams. It’s like a tricky call, leading us away from doing our best, and suggesting the idea that this would be “good enough” and worth our time.

The battle here is in recognizing and resisting the subtle pull of the mediocre that threatens to dilute our potential.

Have you experienced the pull of mediocrity?

Ambitious vs. satisfied

“I’m satisfied with what I have. I don’t need more.”

It can be a huge source of frustration when ambitious leaders clash with this kind of a team member.

The leader wants more, but the team does not. They are satisfied.

Which, of course, means that the leader has failed to inspire the team to want more. There is no strong reason for them to want more. And so, they rightfully choose to invest their energy in other activities outside of their work life.

A natural reaction for some leaders would be to exchange the team and ask HR to find more ambitious people for their team. But that will only last for so long.

Unless … there’s a strong reason for team members to want more. If you want your team to be more ambitious, light them a path that’s meaningful and fulfilling for them.

Every thing is made by someone

Every thing has been invented, designed, engineered, produced, marketed, and distributed by someone.

The clothes you wear.
The bike you ride.
The music you listen to.
The book you read.
The painting you admire.
The house you live in.
The fridge you just opened.
The chocolate you love.

One of the things that are very important to my wife and me in how we raise our children is that they see this very clearly.

Things are made. By someone. And that someone could be you.

If you want something to exist, set out to make it.

It’s the crappy days we can learn the most from

When you’re used to being first, it hurts to end up on the 7th place. It hurts more when it’s not your fault but the fault of others.

But the reason why you end up being first most of the time is because you don’t stop at being hurt but take it as an opportunity to learn. And you don’t blame the others but take responsibility for the crap and take it as an opportunity to grow.

Lewis Hamilton, arguably one of the best Formula 1 drivers who ever lived, suffered from a bad decision by his team in the last race and ended up becoming 7th. There was nothing he could do about it.

But there was something he can take away from it. After he got over his initial frustration, his mood changed:

“I’m often grateful for crappy days like this, as it is days [like this] when you learn the most. If you’re winning all the time, you learn less.”

But there’s a twist about how the learning happens. While others focus on finding out who’s to blame, Hamilton’s Mercedes team has a different approach:

“We don’t like to kick each other when we’re down. I think… there’s no finger pointing, so no one individual that takes the blame. We win and we lose as a team. We have a very open and honest discussion and it’s not personal. It’s like: ‘hey man this should have been better, this should have been better, why didn’t we do this?’, we all take everything onboard. It’s constructive discussions, and if there’s any constructive criticism we take it onboard, then we huddle up, do the work, get on the call.”

So, what was a crappy day you were grateful for? And how did you learn from it?

Spread the Word

Picture of Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz