1️⃣ Succession is not a vacancy drill INSEAD argues CEO succession should be treated as a continuous board discipline, not an emergency process. It cites badly managed transitions, outsider bias, and the handover after appointment as recurring failure points.
💡 Why it matters The useful question is not who looks CEO-shaped. It is who fits this company, this strategy, and the next five years.
☕ Coffee talk How many boards only discover the bench is thin when the incumbent finally looks tired?
2️⃣ Good managers know when to go low First Round pushes back on the lazy version of “do not micromanage”: senior leaders who stay too far from the work become budget allocators with no feel for the actual execution.
💡 Why it matters Delegation is not absence. The skill is changing altitude without stealing ownership from the team.
☕ Coffee talk If the only time leaders enter the details is during a fire, who trained the fire?
3️⃣ Stress needs range, not posture HBR’s forthcoming July-August piece says executives perform better when they understand their default stress reactions and build a wider range of responses under pressure.
💡 Why it matters Pressure is now part of the operating environment. Leaders who only have one stress mode make the whole system narrower.
☕ Coffee talk Which executive habit looks like decisiveness mostly because everyone else has stopped challenging it?