Insights

Thinking on strategy, leadership, and Second Stage growth

Articles, frameworks, and resources from 25 years of advising private company owners and leadership teams. The goal is always the same: help leaders see their situations more clearly so they can act with more confidence.

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AI Strategy

Why It Feels Like You Know: "AI Surface Expertise" and the Siren Call of AI for Strategy & Leadership

AI delivers expert-finish work without the substance. Why capable leaders feel competent in fields they do not know, and what to check before deciding.

AI Strategy

Why Isn't AI Working for My Business Strategy?

The tools are probably fine. AI stalls on your strategy when no one builds the reasoning around it, and that gap is where the value was supposed to live.

AI Strategy

AI Logic Engineering: Building Quality Into AI

Raw AI thinking-power is abundant and mostly mediocre. Logic engineering is the discipline that turns it into quality by design.

AI Strategy

AI Strategy Is a Business Strategy Problem

For owner-led companies, AI is a lever inside decisions you already make. Treat it as a separate initiative and you'll buy tools you don't need and miss the ones you do.

AI Strategy

I spent 30 hours writing a 45,000-word prompt. Here's what I learned.

I built a 45,000-word AI tool, and a 15-minute prompt reached nearly the same answer. Here's what that taught me about where expertise still matters.

AI Strategy

Cognitive Runaway and the AI Slop That Seduces Us

Mediocre AI thinking reads clean and confident. Accept it as quality and pass it on, and the standard quietly slips. That slip, repeated, is cognitive runaway.

Second Stage

When Your Solutions Become Your Problems

The solutions that built your company are the ones now holding it back. Why growth turns simple systems complex, and the shift to systems thinking.

Family Business

What Does a Family Business Consultant Do?

The advisor who works where the business and the family meet. What a family business consultant does, how they differ from other advisors, and when to bring one in.

Family Business

Family Business Succession Planning

Succession is built over years, not arranged in the last one. The leadership, ownership, and governance work that makes a family company ready to change hands.

Fractional CMO

What Is a Fractional CMO?

A senior marketing leader who runs your marketing part-time. What the role does, when a company needs one, and how it compares to the alternatives.

Second Stage

What Is a Second Stage Company?

Past startup, not yet a big company, and it got harder instead of easier. What the second stage is, and what it takes to move through it.

Second Stage

The Growth Stack: The Layer Your Operating System Can't Reach

You built the operating system and growth still feels stuck. The problem is usually the layer EOS was never designed to reach.

Resources

Tools and
frameworks

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About Dave's writing

Frameworks that
create self-recognition

Dave writes about the inflection points private companies navigate: strategy, leadership, the dynamics of family and closely-held businesses, and the particular challenges of the Second Stage. The goal is frameworks that create self-recognition and thinking that's useful the day you read it...and 3 years later.

Resources

Tools and frameworks

Service

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Ready to have a conversation?

The first conversation is a diagnostic, not a pitch. Dave will ask about what's working, what isn't,
and where you feel the friction. If there's a fit, you'll know it from that conversation.

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