TL;DR: Good article. Worth digging through the MBA-speak to get to the value. As someone who has led a decent number of initiatives (and usually done at least

TL;DR: Good article. Worth digging through the MBA-speak to get to the value. As someone who has led a decent number of initiatives (and usually done at least a pretty decent job), I can confirm: The article makes good points and strongly suggests the author can walk the walk. The biggest thing that suggests this (at least, to me) is the general focus on mindfulness. The word doesn't appear in the article at all, but the entire framing of first focusing on -- and then gently redirecting -- your internal state is in exactly the same conceptual neighborhood. And being able to get your emotions under control in emotion-spiking situations might be the most fundamental executive skill. (Interestingly, the psychologist Lisa Feldman-Barrett has a related framework that's also very useful for this. [1] She points out that an emotional response can be mindfully observed and decoupled into its components -- and, in doing so, it can be much more easily reframed and redirected.) There were other little things that also suggest he knows his stuff when it comes to leading knowledge workers in modern organizations. The reference to nature analogies -- and the bit about complex systems -- will get a nod of recognition from anyone who's held the job for a while. And the habit-building approach he talks about near the end suggests that he knows how to teach skills in this domain, too. It's a bit Pavlovian, but that Pavlov dude got results. Having said that, I'll admit the points are covered in a thick layer of MBA-speak. Maybe it's just my personal style, but the mock conversation felt stilted and almost painful. And the attempt to turn "love" and "self-realization" into brandable concepts definitely made me laugh. (Good try, though!) [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/25/im-extremely-controversial-the-psychologist-rethinking-human-emotion https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/25/im-extremely-c...