Sublime

tracked—and then revised or adapted as circumstances dictate.

Does your company matter? That’s the most important question every business leader must answer. If you closed its doors today, would your customers suffer any real loss? 1 How long would it take, and how difficult would it be, for them to find another firm that could meet those needs as well as you did?

For sound decision making, esprit de corps, and superior performance, top-line goals must be clearly understood throughout the organization. Yet by their own admission, two of three companies fail to communicate these goals consistently. In a survey of eleven thousand senior executives and managers, a majority couldn’t name their company’s top prio

Does your organization regularly make aspirational and bold bets to deliver an outsized impact? Does it have a portfolio of ideas to diversify risks? And does the company have mechanisms to regularly defund and close initiatives that don’t work?

CEOs face another dilemma. They can choose short-term strategies that boost the company’s stock and make themselves look like heroes. Or they can work for long-term improvement—risking Wall Street’s disapproval as they lay the foundation for the health and growth of the company over the longer haul.

something I’ll call the three Ps: portfolio, process, and people.