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Welcome back to the Launch Key 🚀

I was working on this week’s leadership topic when I got steamrolled by the Charlie Kirk memorial. Not since Billy Graham have we seen revival like the service Sunday. Tech partners for TPUSA tracked more than 277,000 devices near State Farm arena and the power of the internet streamed the good news to more than 100 million people.

I did not foresee Erika’s public forgiveness or cabinet-level leaders preaching the gospel. But I pray it’s a watershed moment for our country. 🇺🇸 

Let's get into it.

• Gmail users may wish to read online since some parts may be clipped.

• Comment below and let me know if we’re on the right track.

Table of Contents

• Pull to Eject

  • Leader humility can’t be forced

• Old School Wisdom

• Free Knowledge

• Heading 1

• Recommendations

• Visual Crapshoot

Pull to Eject

You are not in charge of everything.

You can’t control all the possible outcomes. You can make plans and contingencies and have multiple options on hand. But owning and running any business will drive you to your knees.

I remember looking in the mirror and literally saying out loud “you made this mess, you need to clean it up” about something going wrong with my business years ago. We had 3 young children at home. I had 20 employees. And I thought I could fix it all - when in reality I could only cut costs at that point.

You will only think that you are in charge of the situation, but you need help. You need it from everyone:

• employees

• clients

• the market

• family

• strangers

And that requires humility.

The term ‘humble leader’ sounds like an oxymoron, but research shows that humility is a key quality of leaders who are able to motivate employees to deliver strong performance.

Service business can’t control when customers will spend. Adding headcount makes it very difficult to say ‘No’ (see April Launch Key). Overhead affects your timing and ability to do work for existing clients. It’s hard to please everyone.

Strategic changes in the marketplace also shape what you can and can’t do. Threats, from the classic SWOT Analysis, are everpresent.

I was naive to the beginning of the outsource movement 25 years ago, because I wrongly thought our clients would continue to pay for our talent. I was blindsided by just how fast regime change in Washington DC could affect an energy business. One executive order shut down innovation in the natural gas industry overnight.

More humility in my own leadership might have helped recognize and make changes faster to cauterize the cash flow losses of those two mistakes. Hindsight is 20/20.

Leader humility can’t be forced

Something that has bothered me for a while is forced ‘leadership.’

The startup courses - the educational system teaching it - just never seemed to me like the right way for future entrepreneurs to really learn. All the venture funding copy-cat cohorts across the country. Similar to travel ball for kids, it all feels more like ‘follow the money.’ Like most ChatGPT results, teaching leadership has been watered down into generic bullet points.

Years ago my father gave me some good wisdom about leadership. He said that your children will never see how you lead and what you do at work. And the way to model leadership to your own kids was to volunteer in their schools. Coach little league. Teach Sunday school. Lead scout trips.

There is nothing as humbling as failing a team of 12-year olds. I made plenty of coaching mistakes, but the kids saw leadership via osmosis.

Last week, thanks to 30-year friend Gary Frey, I was surrounded by legitimate leaders. The CEO Convergence included leaders with backgrounds from all over the map. A German former KGB spy. A South African entrepreneur. Military careers, software developers, restauranters, creatives, accountants - almost a hundred of us all told.

Everyone had weathered storms and lead their companies to success. I would guess the average age was 55. Nobody was there to ‘network.’ There were breakout sessions on tactics that might help your business. There was great weather, good barbecue and stories shared with humility that might help other businesses not make the same mistakes.

I gained a couple of new contacts with fresh perspectives that I can call tomorrow for advice. I also still have a few guys I can count on who walked on a sideline or sat in a dugout with me.

I hope you do too.

Now go launch something 🚀 

Old School Wisdom

Years ago we read Jim Collins Good to Great in a business book club I led. There are great insights in the data but one thing that stuck out was how celebrity CEO’s weren’t the winners. Humble leaders were.

Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner.

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Free Knowledge

Do Humble CEOs Matter? An Examination of CEO Humility and Firm Outcomes

Amy Y. Ou - National University of Singapore

David A. Waldman, Suzanne J. Peterson - Arizona State University

Findings largely support our theoretical assertions, suggesting that CEO humility has important implications for firm processes and outcomes.

Recommendations

💼 Thriving Freelance - Gigs and Growth : Hundreds of job opportunities sent directly to your inbox each week, plus timely resources to support you as you grow and evolve.

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Visual Crapshoot