This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Alex Franklin of First Principles Consulting, sharing why the smallest piece of a large consulting project turned out to be the one that multiplied everything else. Alex's point is that we hire for technical competency, which is eligibility for the role, and forget behavioural competency, which is suitability for it: passion, interests, work preferences, interpersonal style.

Working with a large mining client on process improvement, the change that made the biggest difference was a team dynamics exercise with the leadership team, using a third party behavioural tool to give people an outside perspective on themselves and each other. The result was a team rowing in the same direction rather than against each other, and a client who kept asking them back for refreshers year after year. The smallest thing they did, with the most outsized impact.

Connect with Alex Franklin:
LinkedIn
"Mining for Value" by Alex Franklin
firstprinciplesconsulting.com

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Ryan Castle sits down with Rajiv Mehta, aerospace engineer turned product leader turned researcher, founder of the nonprofit Atlas of Care and author of the new book "Camaraderie." Rajiv spent the first half of his career at NASA, Apple, Adobe and Motorola before walking away to spend 20 years on a single question: how do people actually take care of each other? His answer for leaders is blunt. Relationships before results. Without a foundation of real human connection, teams cannot sustain performance through the crises that inevitably arrive.

Rajiv also unpacks a three part idea about expertise: you are the expert on your own life, your expertise is far shallower than you think, and you already have the observation skills to close that gap. He introduces the Atlas Care Map, a deceptively simple paper and pencil tool he has run with everyone from Navy Seals to eight year olds, and explains why starting with friends and family is a safer entry point than starting with touchy work topics. Plus why distributed teams have to build deliberately what the office used to give away for free.

Useful links:
Connect with Rajiv Mehta on LinkedIn
Camaraderie: A Modern Leader’s Guide to Building Joyful, High-Performing Teams
Atlas CareMap
atlasofcaregiving.com
mappingourselves.com

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This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Kenny Cao of Cultivator Co, sharing why the decisions you refuse to let go of are the ones capping your ability to scale.

Kenny calls it the Sovereignty Trap. As a company grows, complexity increases but the decision architecture doesn't, so ambiguity in the organisation resolves the only way it can: authority concentrates upwards until the leader becomes the cognitive bottleneck. His fix isn't delegation, which he describes as temporary and task based, but sovereignty transfer, giving someone a domain instead of a job. He offers a practical diagnostic called the escalation ratio: track every decision that reaches you for one week, separate the sacred 10% that genuinely must stay with you from the default decisions that only land on your desk because no other pathway was ever designed, then do the maths. Anything over 10% is a design problem, not a capability problem. The shift he's asking leaders to make is from heroic manager to organisational architect, building a system strong enough to survive your own brilliance.

Connect with Kenny Cao:
LinkedIn
"The Cultivator" by Cao, 曹宗轩 Zōng Xuān (Kenny)
cultivatorco.net

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Ryan Castle sits down with Kyle Harkema, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at KMC Controls, scholar practitioner, and author of the newly released book "Strategic Clarity." Kyle unpacks the idea at the heart of his work: if your strategy isn't changing what people do on a Monday morning, it's not a strategy, it's a slogan. He explains why organisations don't execute strategy, they execute behaviour, and why so many leadership teams leave an offsite aligned and energised only to watch everything drift back to normal within weeks.

Kyle also explores why leadership's job is to create clarity, not certainty, and how great companies don't eliminate disagreement but instead build a shared decision framework that lets people make similar decisions even when the leader isn't in the room. He introduces the Strategic Orientation Index, a research-backed diagnostic that acts as both a mirror and a map for organisations, and shares real examples from KMC Controls of turning voice of customer insights into daily behaviour change across every department.

Useful links:
Connect with Kyle Harkema on LinkedIn
https://www.kylejharkema.com/

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Website: https://www.level10leaders.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/level10leaders/

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Dr Mike Ashby, sharing where leaders should focus their energy to drive real team growth. Mike explains that developing a team isn't one size fits all. Give your top performers autonomy and high impact challenges, limit the drag from your bottom 20%, and pour your energy into the middle, where the biggest opportunity for progress sits. He also lays out how growth follows an S-curve, with beginners needing structure, intermediates needing balance, and experts needing fresh challenges. The result is a development approach that meets people where they are and keeps the whole team moving forward.

Connect with Dr Mike Ashby:
LinkedIn

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Ryan Castle sits down with David Alsop, Chief Human Resources Officer at Ultradent Products, a founder-led dental manufacturing company ranked in Fortune's top ten Best Workplaces for large manufacturing and production for five consecutive years. David shares the philosophy behind his book "Making HR Matter," co-authored with Ted Forbes, and unpacks what it actually means to build HR strategy around business outcomes rather than HR tradition. He explores why the best leaders facilitate the room rather than dominate it, and how humility and feedback create the conditions for teams to innovate and grow together.

David also breaks down Ultradent's total wellness proposition, explaining why pay-led retention is little more than bribery, and what the convergence mindset looks like when individuals and organisations finally meet at their ignition point, where engagement and results come together.

Useful links:
Connect with David Alsop on LinkedIn
Making HR Matter

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/level10leaders/

This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Sara Reece of Workmind, sharing why understanding your operations has to come before any decision to automate them.

Sara explains that automation doesn't fix broken processes, it amplifies them, and that the real problem is usually leadership not understanding how the work actually gets done day to day. Her advice is to go to where the work happens, observe with humility, and map the real process before adding any technology. The result is smarter automation decisions, leaner workflows, and in some cases the realisation that no automation was needed at all.

Connect with Sara Reece:
LinkedIn

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Ryan Castle sits down with Tanner Kinzler, CEO of Kinzler Corporation, a multi-generational, partially employee-owned construction services business operating across the United States. Tanner shares three interconnected leadership principles that have shaped how he builds for the long term: structure for alignment, ask for help and give it generously, and play the long game. He unpacks why the best outcomes rarely come from brilliant moves, how asking for help with humility creates a flywheel of generosity, and why walking away from misaligned customers is one of the clearest tests of whether your values are real.

Useful links:
Connect with Tanner Kinzler on LinkedIn
Kinzler Corporation

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This Level 10 Leaders Power Tip is from Adam Law, sharing a practical approach to managing your issues list so your team meetings stay focused and productive.

Adam explains that reviewing the issues list before the meeting, resolving quick wins in advance, and filtering out topics that don't require full team discussion keeps meeting time locked on what actually moves the organisation forward. The result is fewer derailed meetings, sharper team focus, and a more intentional use of everyone's time.

Connect with Adam Law:
LinkedIn
SOS Care

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Ryan Castle sits down with Mike Ashby, co-founder of Level 10 Leaders and newly published Forbes contributor, to make the case that most businesses don't have a strategy problem. They have a consistency problem. Drawing on 25+ years in organisational development, Mike argues that the real gap isn't strategy or innovation. It's the daily failure to do the vital few things that actually move the needle.

Mike unpacks why "surprise and delight" is a costly distraction, why dashboards stay green until they suddenly don't, and what the execution habit really looks like at the manager level. If your quarterly goals are always on track for 11 weeks and then mysteriously aren't, this episode will show you exactly why, and what to do about it.

Useful links:
Connect with Dr Mike Ashby on LinkedIn
Why Consistency Can Outpace Innovation In The Long Term, Forbes

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