August 2026

An advertisement recently caught my attention because it was both clear and revealing. It promoted a book designed to help candidates succeed in interviews by teaching them what hiring managers want to hear, how to position weaknesses, and how to avoid raising concerns. The message was not misleading, and that is precisely why it stood out. It reflects a reality that many organizations have not fully addressed.

Candidates are not simply applying for jobs. They are preparing for the hiring process itself. This raises a more important question for business leaders and hiring managers. What, exactly, is your hiring process measuring?

The Rise of the Prepared Candidate

Interviews have long been viewed as a way to evaluate a candidate’s experience, thinking, and character. In practice, they have increasingly become a performance environment. Candidates study common questions, rehearse responses, and refine how they present themselves under scrutiny.

They learn how to project confidence, align their answers with perceived expectations, and avoid responses that might create hesitation. This behavior is not unethical. It is a rational response to a system that rewards those who understand how to navigate it effectively. The challenge for employers is that preparation can mask important differences between candidates.

Performance and Predictability Are Not the Same

When hiring decisions are shaped primarily by interviews, first impressions, and instinct, organizations may not be identifying the most capable candidate. They may be selecting the most effective performer within the interview setting. The distinction has meaningful consequences.

A strong interview does not guarantee consistent execution. Early cultural alignment does not ensure long-term contribution. A compelling narrative does not confirm behavioral consistency under pressure. These gaps often become visible only after the hiring decision has been made, which is when the cost of error begins to accumulate.

Why the Gap Continues to Exist

Most hiring systems were designed for efficiency rather than precision. Interviews are inherently limited in what they can reveal. They are time-constrained, context-controlled, and influenced by communication style and personality.

These conditions tend to favor candidates who are articulate, composed, and socially intuitive. While these qualities are valuable, they are not complete indicators of how someone will perform in a role that requires reliability, discipline, and sustained output. Without additional data, organizations are often drawing conclusions from a narrow and highly managed interaction.

Expanding the Signals You Use

A more effective hiring process does not eliminate interviews. It places them within a broader set of inputs. Organizations that are improving hiring accuracy are combining interviews with work-history analysis, reference validation, and validated assessments that measure underlying traits and tendencies.

There is a common assumption that candidates can easily manipulate assessments in the same way they can shape interview responses. Well-designed assessments account for this risk. Many include mechanisms that assess response consistency and detect patterns associated with attempts to present oneself unrealistically favorably.

This capability helps distinguish between candidates who understand how to perform well in an interview and those who are more likely to perform well in the role. It introduces a level of objectivity that is difficult to achieve through conversation alone.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

Poor performance, turnover, and misalignment are often treated as downstream operational challenges. In many cases, they originate in the hiring process, where critical information was either unavailable or not fully considered.

A Better Question for Leaders

A more effective approach begins with a shift in perspective. Instead of asking whether a candidate impressed the interview team, leaders should ask whether they have gathered enough meaningful information to make a confident decision.

This requires moving from impression to evidence, from performance in a short interaction to patterns over time, and from instinct alone to informed judgment supported by multiple data points.

A System That Must Evolve

Candidates will continue to improve their ability to navigate hiring systems. They will become more prepared, more polished, and more effective in presenting themselves. This trend is unlikely to reverse.

The responsibility for adaptation falls on the organization. If the hiring process does not evolve, the same pattern will continue to emerge. The candidate who performs well in the interview may not be the same individual who performs well in the role.

That gap is not accidental. It is often the result of a system that has not kept pace with the way candidates prepare.

Many business executives think authority comes from speaking more forcefully, proving expertise, or controlling the room. In practice, credibility is usually lost through much smaller behaviors.

A leader apologizes before asking a question. They over-explain a recommendation. They defend themselves too quickly when challenged. They keep difficult tensions alive because they want to avoid discomfort for one more meeting. None of these decisions look catastrophic in isolation. Over time, they quietly reshape how people respond to you.

What stood out to me in my conversation with Dr. Liz DuBois-Erskine was how often leadership problems are caused by behaviors designed to avoid judgment. Many executives try to solve these issues at the strategy level, even though they are often more behavioral in nature.

Why Over-Apologizing Undermines Executive Presence

One of the fastest ways leaders undermine themselves is through habitual apologizing. Accountability and ownership are not the problem. Constant unnecessary apologies are.

“I’m sorry” has become conversational filler in many professional environments, particularly among women operating in high-pressure cultures where being perceived as collaborative matters. The problem is that repeated apologizing communicates something deeper than politeness. It subtly suggests uncertainty about your right to occupy space in the room.

That changes how people receive you. It is preventable.

A leader who says, “Thank you for waiting,” sounds composed. A leader who says, “I’m sorry you had to wait,” often sounds deferential, even when they hold authority. The distinction is small linguistically and massive psychologically.

Executives underestimate how quickly teams absorb these cues. People are constantly assessing whether someone believes in their own legitimacy. Language often exposes that faster than credentials ever will.

This is especially damaging in leadership roles, as many professionals mistake approachability for self-minimization. They believe softening every interaction makes them easier to work with. In reality, excessive softening often creates ambiguity around confidence and decision ownership. You can be collaborative without constantly signaling guilt for existing.

How Strong Leaders Handle Criticism Without Losing Credibility

Many leaders feel less credible the moment they get criticized. You can watch it happen in real time. The explanation gets longer. The tone sharpens. Context starts flooding into the conversation. Everyone in the room immediately understands that the person is protecting themselves instead of solving the issue.

Dr. DuBois-Erskine described a former first responder leader who handled criticism differently. His response, when he was wrong, was immediate: “I was wrong.” There was no justification attached.

That kind of response is rare because most professionals experience accountability as a loss of status. Strong leaders tend to understand that the opposite is true. Defensiveness drains authority faster than mistakes do.

What makes this effective is not humility for humility’s sake. It changes the emotional temperature of the room. Once someone stops fighting reality, everyone else usually stops fighting too.

In leadership teams, prolonged defensiveness creates organizational drag. Meetings become slower. Feedback becomes indirect. Problems stay hidden longer because employees learn that accountability triggers self-protection rather than problem-solving.

The irony is that leaders often defend themselves to preserve credibility when the defense itself is what destroys it.

Why Executives Lose Influence When They Over-Explain

One of the more damaging executive habits is excessive complexity masquerading as expertise. This shows up constantly in leadership communication. A proposal becomes overloaded with explanations. Contracts become unreadable because every line is trying to justify value. Presentations become performances instead of decision-making tools.

The underlying issue is usually fear. People who feel pressure to prove their intelligence often communicate in ways that make everyone else work harder to understand them. That creates distance instead of trust.

Dr. DuBois-Erskine described a client whose contracts technically matched her verbal agreements, but prospects consistently hesitated after receiving them. The issue was not legal accuracy. The issue was interpretability. The language became so layered with positioning and justification that clients lost clarity around what they were actually buying.

This happens inside companies constantly. People optimize communication to appear knowledgeable rather than to make decisions easier for others.

What Happens When Leaders Avoid Difficult Conversations

Leaders who avoid difficult conversations usually believe they are preserving stability. What they are actually preserving is unresolved tension.

Organizations are remarkably sensitive to unspoken problems. Teams know when conflict exists long before leadership acknowledges it directly. Once people sense something is wrong, they start adapting their behavior around uncertainty. That is where culture deterioration begins.

People become cautious. Meetings become performative. Employees start managing emotional risk instead of operational risk. The conflict itself becomes secondary to the anticipation of eventual fallout.

Dr. DuBois-Erskine framed this in relational terms that apply cleanly to organizations. Avoiding conflict does not remove discomfort. It simply creates a second layer of discomfort, with everyone now waiting for the unresolved issue to explode later. That waiting period damages teams more than many leaders realize.

Executives often assume that leadership means maintaining a calm surface. In reality, strong leadership frequently means introducing necessary discomfort early enough to prevent larger instability later.

Why High Performers Stay Too Long in Roles That Undervalue Them

One of the more uncomfortable realities in leadership is that people often tolerate environments long after those environments have made their values clear. Dr. DuBois-Erskine shared the example of a client carrying four times the industry-standard workload while repeatedly asking leadership for support. The response she received was praise without structural change.

That combination is common in unhealthy organizations. “You’re doing great” becomes a substitute for meaningful support.

High performers are especially vulnerable to this because organizations frequently reward overextension right up until burnout arrives. The employee interprets praise as validation. The organization interprets endurance as capacity. Nothing changes.

The turning point came when the client stopped asking whether leadership would finally recognize the imbalance and started asking why she believed the situation was acceptable in the first place. That internal recalibration mattered more than the eventual job change.

Executives often focus entirely on external negotiations while ignoring the internal standards that shape what they tolerate. Organizations rarely correct patterns that employees continuously absorb without consequence.

Without clear boundaries or consequences, unhealthy treatment patterns often become normalized. That is true in companies, partnerships, and leadership teams alike.

How Collaborative Leadership Changes Team Performance

There is a tendency in executive conversations to frame collaborative leadership as softer leadership. That misses the point entirely.

The distinction Dr. DuBois-Erskine raised around male-dominated environments was less about personality and more about communication structure. In some institutional cultures, particularly legacy industries, ideas are still rewarded when delivered with minimal emotional framing and maximum compression.

In other environments, leaders create stronger alignment by making space for broader participation and collective reasoning before decisions are finalized. Neither approach is universally superior. What matters is whether the communication style fits the operating environment and whether the leader understands the tradeoffs attached to it.

Collaborative leadership works best when it still preserves clarity and decisiveness. Otherwise, collaboration becomes endless processing disguised as inclusion.

The strongest leaders are usually the ones who understand when people need direction and when people need involvement. Confusing the two creates frustration quickly.

Last month I was in Las Vegas for a major convention. I stayed at a very nice hotel, and each night I tried to fall and stay asleep. I emphasize the word tried because, unfortunately, there was non-stop, 24-hour-a-day road construction outside the hotel, as the city of Las Vegas is preparing for the Formula One race later this year. All night, there was jackhammering and bulldozing on the streets where the cars will be racing.

Upon checkout, I was asked, “How was your stay?”

I responded, “I love this hotel. It’s too bad about all that noise from the road construction.”

The front desk employee practically cut me off and curtly stated, “It’s out of our control.”

Of course, I knew it wasn’t the hotel’s fault. I didn’t blame them, but she was quick to point that out anyway. I can only imagine how many similar complaints she has heard from numerous guests over the past few weeks and will hear from many more until the project is over. She obviously has become annoyed by hearing the same complaint again and again, and somehow lost empathy or sympathy for her guests.

So how do you communicate something like this, that’s “out of your control?”

Here are a few ideas using the hotel as an example:

1. Respond With Empathy – First, respond to any and every comment about it with sympathy and empathy. Act like you care. You could say something like, “I understand how you feel about the noise. I wish we could do something about it, but the city of Las Vegas is preparing for the big race later this year. I’m sorry this happened.”
2. Apologize – It may not have been your fault, but that doesn’t mean you can’t say, “I’m sorry this happened,” which is how I ended the empathy statement above.
3. Be Proactive – If enough guests are complaining about something that is completely out of your control and you know the problem is going to continue, proactively inform them when they check in. You can even put a note in the room to warn them about the problem that really is out of your control.
4. Come Up With a Solution – This may or may not be possible. In this example, the hotel could offer free earplugs. While it’s not their fault and really is out of their control, they could show a sign of effort to manage the problem, even if it isn’t the perfect solution.

A problem may be out of your control. That’s okay. What’s not okay is to use “It’s out of my control” as an excuse. Instead, see it as an opportunity to show empathy and care for your customers. It’s the words you use and the way you say them that counts.

Modern business leaders are operating in an environment where communication shapes trust, perception, customer loyalty, employee confidence, and even long-term business value. According to Joshua Altman, many companies still underestimate how deeply it affects every part of an organization.

Altman leads Beltway Media, a Washington, D.C.-based communications firm that works with organizations ranging from startups to federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Before founding the firm, he spent years as a multimedia journalist at The Hill covering federal policy and election cycles.

Today, he helps organizations strengthen message clarity, improve strategy, prepare for crises, and build trust with both internal and external audiences. For CEOs and executives trying to improve alignment, credibility, and visibility, the conversation raises an important question: What happens when communication is treated as an afterthought instead of a core leadership function?

Why Communication Problems Reveal Leadership Problems

Altman believes communication breakdowns are rarely isolated issues. “When trust and perception break down, something underneath is already broken,” he explained. Organizations that struggle during moments of crisis often discover they never built enough trust with employees, customers, investors, or stakeholders before the problem emerged.

That lack of trust becomes expensive when companies face public criticism, leadership mistakes, internal culture problems, product failures, and operational disruptions.

“You need that well of trust to fall back on,” Altman said. “If you haven’t built it before the crisis, it’s very difficult to create it in the middle of one.”

For many companies, communication failures begin long before a crisis becomes visible. Messaging becomes inconsistent. Departments stop aligning. Leadership assumptions replace real feedback. Internal and external narratives drift apart. Eventually, the organization loses clarity about what it stands for and how it wants to be perceived.

What Most Companies Get Wrong About Marketing, Branding, and Communication

One of the most common misconceptions Altman sees is the belief that communication simply means marketing. In reality, communication is significantly broader.

Altman explained that modern organizations increasingly combine marketing, branding, messaging, reputation management, internal communications, and stakeholder trust under a unified communications function. “Everything about your company communicates something,” he said.

That includes social media posts, sales and customer service interactions, AI chatbots, leadership messaging, and internal employee communication.

Altman describes communication through what he calls a “story, narrative, brand” framework. The story explains what happened. The narrative creates meaning and connection. The brand becomes the collection of experiences and associations people attach to the company.

“Brand is the swag,” Altman explained. “It’s everything people interact with about your company.” Companies building long-term trust understand that communication is not a department. It is the connective tissue of the entire business.

Why Every Company Is Becoming Its Own Media Company

One of the biggest shifts in modern business is that organizations no longer depend entirely on traditional media outlets to shape public perception. Today, companies can create and distribute their own content directly to audiences worldwide. That creates enormous opportunities for organizations willing to do it consistently and authentically.

Altman believes many companies still underestimate how accessible modern media production has become. “It’s easier than ever to compete,” he explained. What once required large production crews, expensive equipment, and dedicated infrastructure can now be accomplished with smartphones, inexpensive lighting, and basic audio equipment.

However, Altman also believes companies often make a critical mistake when trying to professionalize their media presence. They overproduce. As artificial intelligence generates larger volumes of low-quality content online, audiences seek authenticity.

“There’s so much inauthentic content now that people are looking for something real,” Altman said.

In many cases, overly polished content feels less trustworthy than simple, direct communication. That does not mean quality should disappear. Audio should still be clear. Lighting should still be adequate. Messaging should still be thoughtful. Modern audiences increasingly respond to messaging that feels human instead of manufactured.

How Communication Silos Quietly Damage Companies

Many organizations struggle with fragmented content across departments. Sales says one thing. Marketing says another. Operations says things differently. Human resources develops separate messaging. Leadership introduces priorities employees never fully understand.

According to Altman, one of the clearest warning signs is when departments cannot accurately explain what other departments are communicating. “Most teams don’t fully know what the other teams are saying,” he explained.

That misalignment creates real business costs. Customers receive inconsistent experiences. Employees become confused. Product messaging weakens. Leadership loses credibility. Long-term brand trust erodes. Altman believes growing organizations must intentionally create message discipline early rather than trying to repair fragmented communication later.

Why Search Behavior Is Changing How Companies Must Communicate

One of the most important insights from the conversation involved how customer search behavior has evolved. Many buyers now research solutions before speaking with a salesperson.

More often, they ask full questions through search engines and AI tools. That shift changes how companies must structure communication. Organizations that answer customer questions clearly and consistently establish credibility long before direct sales conversations begin.

Altman explained that modern strategies must account for AI-driven search behavior, answer engines, and conversational discovery. “The companies that win are the ones providing useful answers,” he said.

For executives, this creates a powerful opportunity. The organizations that consistently answer customer questions better than competitors position themselves as trusted authorities within their industries.

How Strong Message Architecture Creates Organizational Alignment

Altman encourages companies to simplify communication strategy by organizing messaging around several foundational questions. What is the company story? What narrative connects the story together? What experiences shape the brand?

He also recommends evaluating communication through four dimensions:

• What people read
• What people see
• What people hear
• What people experience

Those four categories create a practical framework for evaluating whether communication remains aligned across the organization.

For example:

• Websites and articles affect what people read
• Visual branding and video affect what people see
• Podcasts and audio environments affect what people hear
• Customer interactions affect what people experience

When those areas become disconnected, organizations lose clarity and consistency. Strong communication systems ensure every part of the company reinforces the same underlying message.

Why Companies Should Start Small Instead of Overhauling Everything

Many organizations delay improving communication because the process feels overwhelming. Altman recommends the opposite approach. Start small. “You didn’t build the problem in one day, so you don’t have to fix it in one day,” he explained.

For many companies, the best first step is creating more authentic video content. From there, organizations can begin repurposing content across multiple channels instead of constantly reinventing messaging from scratch.

One valuable insight Altman emphasized is that repetition is not a weakness. Most audiences do not see every piece of content. Even when they do, repeated messaging strengthens familiarity and recognition. “There are no content police,” Altman noted. Companies often assume audiences are tired of hearing the same message long before that is actually true.

Why Leaders Need Outside Perspective to Diagnose Communication Problems

One of Altman’s strongest points was that leaders are often too close to their own organizations to objectively evaluate communication effectiveness. Founders and executives naturally develop blind spots. That is why outside perspective becomes valuable.

“You cannot be fully objective about your own communication,” Altman explained.

External experts can identify:

• Message inconsistencies
• Leadership blind spots
• Brand confusion
• Internal misalignment
• Credibility gaps
• Communication risks

Altman also emphasized that while data matters, decisions cannot rely solely on metrics. Analytics provide information. Human judgment provides meaning. Data can reveal trends, engagement patterns, click behavior, and performance metrics, but qualitative conversations with customers, employees, and stakeholders still matter enormously.

“The data informs the conversation,” Altman said. “It doesn’t replace human understanding.”

Why Crisis Communication Must Be Prepared Before a Crisis Happens

Many companies only take communication seriously after a crisis begins. Altman believes that is one of the biggest mistakes organizations make.

“The companies that come through crises strongest are the ones that prepared in advance,” he explained. He compares crisis communication planning to a fire drill. Organizations should create communication plans, assign responsibilities, practice scenarios, and revisit those systems regularly.

The goal is not predicting every possible crisis. That is impossible. Instead, companies need frameworks that help leaders respond quickly, consistently, and credibly when unexpected problems emerge. “Hopefully you never need it,” Altman said. “But if something happens, everyone already knows what to do.”

Where AI Helps Communication Teams and Where Human Judgment Still Matters

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how organizations create and distribute content. Altman sees significant value in using AI as a productivity tool. It can help with research, outlines, information organization, and workflow efficiency.

However, he strongly cautions against treating AI as a replacement for human judgment. “AI is a tool,” he explained. “That’s all it is.”

Communication still requires context, strategic judgment, emotional intelligence, credibility, and human interpretation. Altman warns that organizations relying too heavily on AI-generated communication risk creating content that feels generic, inaccurate, or disconnected from real human concerns.

The Most Important Advice for Modern Business Leaders

At the end of the conversation, Altman shared the principle that guides much of his work. “Be the signal, not the noise,” he said.

In a world flooded with content, audiences ignore communication that lacks value. Companies that stand out are the ones consistently providing useful, relevant, trustworthy information. “Everything you create should give people a reason to stop and pay attention,” Altman explained.

For modern business leaders, that may be the clearest communication strategy of all. The organizations that win long term are not necessarily the loudest. They are the ones people trust enough to actually listen to.

Most executives understand authority. They know where it comes from, how it is assigned, and what it allows them to do. What far fewer understand is why authority often fails at the exact moment leadership is supposed to matter most.

That distinction sat at the center of my conversation with Rabbi David Lapin. He has worked in environments where pressure was not theoretical. Political pressure, economic pressure, social pressure, and moral pressure all converged at once. In those conditions, leadership gets stripped down quickly. Position still exists. Power still exists. But people stop responding to titles alone and start looking for something deeper.

Lapin’s point was direct. Authority is granted. Character is built. One can be taken away. The other cannot.

Why Authority-Based Leadership Becomes Fragile Under Pressure

Reliance on authority alone makes leaders dependent on the people who gave them power in the first place. That dependence creates a quiet distortion. Instead of serving the organization, the customer, or the mission, leaders begin serving the people who can preserve their status. They manage upward. They protect perception. They become careful in the wrong places.

Most teams can feel this long before they can describe it. People can be fooled by what a leader says, but not by the energy behind it. They know when decisions are coming from conviction and when they are coming from fear. They know when someone is protecting a principle and when someone is protecting a position.

That is why some leaders lose credibility even while holding power. The title remains intact, but followership erodes.

What Is a Leadership Fingerprint?

One of Lapin’s most useful ideas is the leadership fingerprint. It is not a list of values framed on a wall. It is the small set of values a person has actually paid a price to uphold.

Most people claim similar values such as honesty, fairness, kindness, and respect. Those words are easy to say and difficult to live. The real question is not what a leader admires. It is what a leader has sacrificed for. That is where identity becomes visible.

A leader’s fingerprint is formed by the values that have survived discomfort, loss, tension, and tradeoffs. Two executives can both say they value honesty and behave very differently when honesty threatens a deal or a promotion. The difference is not in the language. It is in the price each is willing to pay.

This is also why leadership identity is less flexible than people assume. It is tempting to believe values can be rearranged like priorities on a planning sheet. In practice, the pattern is already embedded in past decisions. What matters is uncovering that pattern with honesty.

That discovery removes the illusion. It forces a leader to confront not what sounds right, but what has actually governed behavior.

Why Values Make Decisions Faster, Not Slower

There is a common assumption that values complicate leadership. Many believe they slow decisions and introduce unnecessary friction. The opposite is closer to the truth.

When a leader knows what cannot be traded away, decision-making becomes faster. It is not easier emotionally, but it is clearer. The internal debate shortens. Leaders who define their values in advance do not need to renegotiate them in the moment. They recognize the line and act. The cost may still be high, but the confusion is reduced.

This clarity also stabilizes teams. People trust leaders who are consistent at the level of principle, even when decisions are difficult. What erodes trust is not hard calls. It is selective integrity.

The Identity Question Most Leaders Avoid

When executives say they are struggling with leadership identity, the issue is often misdiagnosed. The real uncertainty is usually not about how to lead. It is about who they are when the role is stripped away.

Lapin framed identity in a practical way: look first at what you will not do.

That is a more reliable test than any stated aspiration. A person’s red lines reveal more than their ambitions. The same is true of organizations. Any company can describe what it wants to be known for. Far fewer can clearly state what it refuses to become. That refusal is where identity takes shape.

Modern executives are often asked to blur lines in subtle ways, not through obvious violations, but through small compromises that accumulate. Delay the truth. Protect the narrative. Preserve the metric. Reduce short-term disruption. A leader who has not defined clear boundaries in advance will almost always define them too late.

Ego Is Not Just Vanity. It Is Strategic Distortion.

Ego becomes dangerous when it places the leader back at the center of the story. Once that shift happens, decisions that should be measured against purpose are measured against personal impact. Recognition, security, reputation, and loss begin to influence judgment. The organization becomes secondary, even when the language of service remains intact.

This is where blind spots form: self-interest begins to distort perception. Highly capable leaders often fail at critical moments for this reason. They are not short on skill. They are constrained by what is at stake for them personally. Fear narrows judgment. The leader begins protecting the wrong outcome.

The correction is not to eliminate self-interest, which is unrealistic. It is to recognize it without allowing it to dominate the decision. That distinction separates leaders who can be trusted under pressure.

What Nelson Mandela Understood About Leadership That Most Executives Miss

Lapin’s perspective on leadership was shaped in part by his work during the rebuilding of South Africa alongside figures such as Nelson Mandela. What stood out was not rhetoric or strategy, but presence.

Mandela did not rely on authority to create alignment. He carried a sense of dignity that was independent of position. That distinction is not abstract. It changes how a leader behaves when power is uncertain or contested.

He did not need recognition to validate his identity. Years in prison had already settled that question. When recognition came, it amplified who he already was rather than defining him.

That created a rare kind of influence. People did not respond out of obligation. They responded because they trusted the source of the decision.

Mandela also operated from a principle that most leaders struggle to hold consistently. Dignity cannot be taken. It can only be surrendered. That belief removes a significant portion of the fear that distorts decision-making under pressure. When a leader no longer treats dignity as something fragile, they become far less susceptible to compromise.

Why Moral Clarity Is Hardest When It Matters Most

The greatest test of leadership rarely comes during stable periods. It appears when pressure builds from multiple directions at once. Investors demand returns. Markets shift. Internal performance becomes uneven. In those moments, leaders face a dual responsibility. They must deliver results while ensuring that the path to those results does not compromise the organization’s core.

Lapin described this as the role of a shock absorber. A leader must absorb pressure from above without transferring that pressure in a way that distorts decision-making below. That requires a clear separation between outcomes and methods. Results matter. They cannot be ignored. But the choices that produce those results must still align with the organization’s deeper commitments. When that alignment breaks, performance may hold in the short term, but it rarely sustains.

The Discipline of Staying a Student

The most practical advice Lapin offered was also the simplest. Approach every interaction as a student. That posture changes the dynamic of leadership. It reduces defensiveness. It increases curiosity. It creates space for insight that would otherwise be missed.

People are far more willing to share what they know when they sense genuine interest. The quality of information improves. The depth of conversation improves. The leader gains access to perspectives that would not surface in a more transactional exchange.

This is not about humility as a virtue. It is about learning as a strategy.

Leaders who continue to learn from every level of an organization see more clearly. They adapt faster. They avoid the isolation that often comes with senior roles.

The Kind of Presence That Does Not Need Explanation

There are leaders who do not need to assert authority. Their presence carries weight before they speak. That presence is not personality. It is alignment. Identity, values, and behavior reinforce each other over time. There is no visible gap between what the leader stands for and how decisions are made.

People recognize that consistency quickly. They follow not because they are required to, but because they trust the integrity behind the direction.

That is the kind of leadership most organizations say they want. It is also the kind that cannot be produced through structure or policy. It is built through consistent choices, often made under pressure, where the easier path would have been to compromise.

A lot of founders want growth before they want evidence. That instinct creates a dangerous illusion. Early downloads, positive feedback, and a spike in attention can look like traction, but they rarely prove that a business is viable.

Jonathan Maxim has worked across hundreds of app launches, and a consistent pattern shows up. The companies that struggle are not short on ambition or effort. They lack structure in how they validate, measure, and refine their growth. The companies that scale are not guessing. They are testing, adjusting, and building systems that produce repeatable outcomes.

Why Early Momentum Fails to Become Real Traction

The first wave of users usually comes from the founder’s immediate network. Social posts, email lists, and personal connections generate initial activity, which creates the impression that the product is gaining momentum. That activity is useful for feedback, but it does not represent market demand.

Real traction begins when a company can consistently acquire users outside of its existing network and understand how those users behave. Maxim looks for a clear threshold before taking growth seriously. At around 1,000 users, patterns begin to emerge in onboarding and activation. At 10,000 users, the data becomes strong enough to evaluate whether the business can scale with its current model.

Without those benchmarks, decisions are based on incomplete signals. Founders often respond by increasing marketing spend, which amplifies problems instead of solving them.

How to Know If Your Product Is Ready to Scale

The most reliable indicator is the first-time user experience. When a user downloads the product, the path from curiosity to value needs to be immediate and clear. If users hesitate, drop off, or fail to understand how the product solves their problem, the company is not ready to scale.

Maxim evaluates how quickly a user connects with the product. The sequence is simple. The product should capture attention, identify the user’s problem, and deliver a meaningful experience within the first few interactions. When this sequence is weak, growth efforts will produce diminishing returns because the product is not converting interest into engagement.

Many founders focus on features, design, or technical complexity. Those elements matter, but they do not replace a clear and effective onboarding experience. Without it, marketing becomes a cost center instead of a growth driver.

Why Customer Acquisition Cost Exposes Weak Business Models

Customer acquisition cost reveals whether the business can sustain growth. A product may attract users, but if the cost to acquire each user exceeds the revenue generated, the model cannot hold.

One example Maxim shared involved a construction project management app with a customer acquisition cost near $1,000. The product was priced at $20 per month, which required customers to stay for several years before the company could break even. The issue was not only marketing efficiency. The pricing structure did not support the economics of the market.

The solution required a shift in how the product was sold. Multi-seat pricing, higher per-user rates, and prepaid contracts increased the average revenue per customer. This change aligned the revenue model with acquisition costs, allowing the business to move toward profitability.

Many founders try to reduce acquisition costs without addressing pricing or packaging. That approach limits the company’s ability to scale because it focuses on one lever while ignoring others that have equal impact.

What Happens When Founders Scale Too Early

Scaling too early creates a compounding effect. If onboarding is weak, more traffic leads to more drop-off. If pricing is misaligned, more users increase losses. If retention is low, acquisition becomes an ongoing expense without long-term return.

Maxim emphasizes a structured approach to growth. The first phase focuses on validating the product and improving activation rates. The second phase identifies the most efficient audience and begins controlled scaling. The third phase strengthens retention and monetization. The final phase introduces referral systems and partnerships that amplify growth.

Skipping steps creates instability. A spike in users may look like progress, but without the supporting systems, that growth cannot be sustained.

Which Metrics Actually Matter for Profitability

Many companies track impressions, clicks, and downloads, but those metrics do not determine success on their own. The critical question is where revenue is being lost in the funnel.

A typical funnel includes impressions, clicks, downloads, registrations, free trials, and purchases. Each stage has a conversion rate, and one stage usually limits overall performance. If users download the app but do not complete onboarding, the issue is activation. If users register but do not purchase, the issue may be pricing or perceived value.

Maxim focuses on identifying the primary constraint and resolving it before moving to the next stage. This approach prevents teams from spreading their efforts across multiple problems without solving any of them completely.

How Successful Apps Deliver Value Faster

Large platforms succeed because they reduce the time between user entry and perceived value. Users do not need to navigate complex setup processes before experiencing what the product offers.

Maxim points to this as a consistent advantage. When users feel the benefit of the product quickly, they are more likely to engage, return, and convert. The onboarding process should guide users directly to that experience.

A clear structure helps achieve this outcome. The product should introduce itself, identify the user’s need, and deliver a relevant experience within the first few interactions. When this sequence works, conversion becomes a natural next step instead of a forced action.

Why Growth Requires a System, Not a Spike

A single marketing channel or campaign can create temporary results, but it does not provide stability. Sustainable growth comes from a combination of channels that reinforce each other.

Maxim describes a balanced approach that includes paid acquisition, organic content, retargeting, email, SMS, and referral programs. Each channel contributes to a larger system that can be measured and adjusted over time.

Companies that rely on one source of traffic often experience plateaus. When that channel slows down, growth stalls. A structured system provides control because it allows the company to increase or decrease activity based on performance data.

The Role of Founder Mindset in Growth Decisions

The most significant barrier to growth is often not technical. It is the founder’s willingness to respond to data. When results challenge initial assumptions, some founders adapt while others resist.

Maxim evaluates this early in his work with companies. A founder who can adjust pricing, messaging, or audience based on evidence is more likely to succeed. A founder who prioritizes personal preference over data creates friction that slows progress.

Data provides a neutral reference point. It allows decisions to be based on measurable outcomes rather than opinion. This clarity reduces conflict within teams and improves the speed of execution.

Why Better Questions Lead to Better Outcomes

The quality of a company’s growth strategy depends on the questions being asked. Instead of focusing on how to scale quickly, Maxim encourages founders to ask where the most viable opportunity exists.

Specific questions lead to better decisions. Which audience has the strongest demand for this solution? Which segment is the most cost-effective to acquire? Which problem creates the highest willingness to pay? Which version of the product can demonstrate value fastest?

Taking time to answer these questions improves the business’s direction. Moving quickly without clarity often leads to wasted resources and missed opportunities.

Growth is not a function of speed alone. It is the result of disciplined testing, focused execution, and a willingness to adapt based on evidence. Companies that follow this approach do not rely on momentum. They build systems that make growth repeatable.

There is a growing assumption inside executive teams that adopting AI is a strategy. It isn’t.

What I took from my conversation with Dr. Victoria Mensch is that a lot of organizations are struggling with clarity, identity, and leadership discipline. AI simply accelerates whatever already exists. If the foundation is strong, it compounds results. If it’s not, it compounds confusion.

It reframes the real risk. Companies aren’t falling behind because they lack tools. They’re falling behind because they’re applying powerful tools to flawed thinking.

Why curiosity, not certainty, separates leaders who adapt

The leaders who navigate disruption well are not the ones with the most answers. They are the ones willing to operate without them.

Dr. Mensch pointed to curiosity as the defining trait. That sounds soft until you see what it actually requires. Curiosity means admitting your current model may no longer apply. It means taking in information that contradicts your experience. It means moving forward without full data.

Most executives have been rewarded for certainty their entire careers. That becomes a liability when the environment shifts faster than their experience can keep up. The ones who struggle tend to double down on what worked before. The ones who adapt are willing to question it early, before the market forces them to.

The most common AI mistake is treating it like a tool

There is a quiet but costly misunderstanding happening in boardrooms right now. Executives are asking how to use AI inside their current processes. The better question is whether those processes should exist in their current form at all.

Dr. Mensch made this point directly. If you apply AI to a broken workflow, you don’t fix it. You scale the inefficiency. Faster output doesn’t equal better outcomes. It just produces more of whatever system is already in place.

That requires a different starting point. Instead of asking how to automate what exists, leaders need to ask how they would design the operation if they were building it today. That question is uncomfortable because it exposes how much of the business is built on legacy decisions. But it’s the only way AI becomes transformative instead of cosmetic.

The identity trap is what actually slows innovation

Companies protect what made them successful. Leaders protect the expertise that got them to their current position. That creates a quiet tension when change is required. If the business evolves, what happens to the identity tied to the old model? Dr. Mensch described this as an identity crisis. It shows up in two ways.

First, organizations try to innovate without disrupting their core. They want new results without changing the system that produced the old ones. That rarely works.

Second, experienced leaders become overconfident. They filter new information through old frameworks and dismiss what doesn’t fit. That’s not stubbornness. It’s pattern recognition misapplied to a changing environment.

The companies that move forward faster are the ones willing to detach their identity from their current model. They treat success as temporary, not permanent.

Clarity is crucial

Dr. Mensch specifically called out clarity as something that creates a measurable shift in performance. She didn’t mention inspiration or urgency. She mentioned clarity.

That shows up in three ways:

• Clear outcomes
• Clear expectations
• Clear communication of what is changing and why

Most companies underestimate how much confusion exists below the executive level. Decisions are made at the top, translated poorly in the middle, and executed inconsistently at the front line. Then leadership wonders why adoption is slow.

Clarity removes that friction. It also creates alignment. When people understand where the company is going and how their role connects to it, execution improves without additional pressure.

There is another piece many leaders miss. Clarity requires repetition. One announcement doesn’t change behavior. Ongoing communication does.

AI can increase burnout if leadership doesn’t change how it measures value

There is a dangerous pattern emerging in companies adopting AI. Tasks become faster. Expectations stay the same. Then they quietly increase.

The logic is simple. If work takes less time, more should be produced. That sounds efficient. It also ignores how value is created.

Dr. Mensch pointed out that when companies continue to measure output in hours or volume, AI becomes a pressure multiplier. People are expected to keep pace with machines, which leads to exhaustion rather than improvement.

Leaders need to shift from measuring activity to measuring outcomes. That requires defining what good actually looks like, not just how much work gets done.

It also creates space for something most companies say they want but rarely structure for: better thinking. AI handles repetition. People handle judgment. If leadership doesn’t make that distinction operational, burnout becomes inevitable.

The only sustainable advantage is how well you think under uncertainty

Executives are dealing with more information than at any point in history. That doesn’t make decisions easier. It makes them slower and more fragile.

The instinct is to wait for more data. The problem is that complete information never arrives.

Dr. Mensch’s approach is more practical. Accept that uncertainty is constant. Build decision frameworks that function inside it.

That includes:

• Running future scenarios instead of relying on a single forecast
• Identifying assumptions behind decisions
• Being explicit about what could change

This doesn’t eliminate risk. It makes it visible. The leaders who move faster are not guessing. They are operating with structured awareness of what they don’t know.

Curiosity cannot exist in a culture that punishes failure

Every company says it wants innovation. Fewer are willing to tolerate the conditions required for it.

Curiosity requires experimentation. Experimentation includes failure. If failure carries a penalty, curiosity disappears.

Dr. Mensch made an important distinction. Failure isn’t the problem. Lack of learning is. Organizations that improve treat failed efforts as data. They analyze what happened, extract what’s useful, and move forward with better assumptions.

Organizations that struggle treat failure as a mistake to avoid. That leads to risk aversion, slower decision-making, and eventually irrelevance.

This is not a cultural slogan. It’s a structural choice. If leaders want curiosity, they have to build systems that make it safe to test ideas.

Technology doesn’t fail. Adoption does.

Adoption is a leadership problem. That comes back to clarity again. If people don’t understand why a change is happening or how it benefits them, they resist it. Not because they oppose progress, but because they lack context.

The companies that implement technology successfully spend as much time on communication and alignment as they do on the tool itself.

Leadership starts before the title

One of the more grounded points in this conversation was also the simplest. Leadership is not defined by position. It’s defined by behavior.

That matters because many organizations wait for direction instead of creating it. Individuals defer responsibility because they don’t have authority. Teams stall because they expect clarity to come from above. That creates a bottleneck.

Dr. Mensch’s view is more direct. Leadership starts with how you manage your own decisions, energy, and response to uncertainty. That applies at every level of the organization.

Companies that move faster don’t rely on a few decisive leaders. They develop more people who can think, decide, and act with ownership. That’s what scales.

The companies that benefit from AI will be the ones that rethink themselves first

There is no shortage of AI tools. There is a shortage of companies willing to rethink how they operate. That is the dividing line.

The organizations that treat AI as an upgrade will see incremental gains. The ones that use it as a forcing function to challenge their assumptions will see disproportionate results.

That requires stepping back before moving forward. It requires questioning systems that feel familiar. It requires leaders who are willing to trade certainty for relevance.

Most companies will try to move faster. The better ones will start by thinking differently.

Modern leaders are increasingly questioning whether traditional compensation and performance systems still work in today’s business environment. According to Jacob Chase, many organizations are still rewarding visibility, politics, and job titles instead of true contribution.

Jacob Chase is the founder of The INFIN, a company helping organizations rethink how they measure contribution, align compensation, and identify the people truly driving performance inside a business. After leading a 150-person real estate services company, Chase became frustrated by a problem he could not ignore: some of the employees creating the greatest operational and cultural value were consistently overlooked by traditional compensation and performance systems.

That realization led him to develop a decentralized, real-time approach to compensation and performance assessment that measures how teams actually depend on one another instead of relying solely on manager-driven annual reviews and static job descriptions.

Today, Chase works with organizations that want to improve engagement, retention, accountability, and leadership visibility by uncovering the hidden dynamics that traditional HR systems often miss. Through The INFIN, he advocates for performance systems built around transparency, service, collaboration, and measurable contribution instead of politics, title inflation, and perception management.

For CEOs and business owners trying to improve engagement, retention, and accountability, the conversation raises an important question: what if the people receiving the most recognition and compensation are not the employees creating the most value?

Why Traditional Performance Reviews Fail to Identify High-Value Employees

Most performance review systems are centralized. Executives or HR departments define evaluation criteria, managers complete annual reviews, and employees are ranked against predetermined standards. The problem is that centralized systems often miss the reality of how value is actually created inside organizations.

Chase believes most companies unknowingly reward people who are good at managing perceptions upward instead of serving the people around them. “When you have centralized evaluation systems, the incentive becomes political,” Chase said. “People optimize around visibility, self-promotion, and pleasing leadership. But that often misses who the organization actually depends on.”

In many companies, the people creating the most operational value are not always the loudest voices in the room. Some employees stabilize culture, quietly solve problems behind the scenes, prevent issues before they become visible, and elevate the performance of everyone around them. Traditional review systems struggle to quantify those contributions because they focus heavily on job descriptions, title expectations, and manager observations.

How to Identify the Employees Who Actually Create Organizational Value

Chase approaches performance differently. Instead of relying primarily on top-down evaluations, his model focuses on organizational dependency. In simple terms, the central question becomes: who do people actually rely on?

“Value is really about dependency,” Chase explained. “Who depends on your contribution? Who consistently turns to you? Who makes the organization function better because you’re there?”

This creates a broader understanding of performance beyond simple productivity metrics. For example, who helps others solve problems, improves team reliability, teaches and mentors teammates, reduces friction across departments, earns trust during difficult situations, and consistently strengthens the organization’s culture? These contributions are often invisible inside traditional review systems, yet they heavily influence organizational performance.

Chase compares his approach to the stock market. A company’s market value is not determined by a single person’s opinion. It is shaped by countless perspectives from investors evaluating both hard numbers and intangible factors. Similarly, organizational value should not be determined by one manager’s perspective alone.

“The best performance data is decentralized,” Chase said. “Everyone who works with someone has information about their contribution. When you aggregate those perspectives, you get much closer to the truth.”

How Toxic Employees and Weak Managers Hide Inside Traditional Performance Systems

One of the most dangerous blind spots in traditional performance management is the highly capable but culturally destructive employee. Most executives have encountered some version of this person.

These employees often possess critical institutional knowledge, and leadership may view them as indispensable, while the teams working around them experience them very differently.

The result is often hidden disengagement. Employees stop contributing discretionary effort, collaboration weakens, retention suffers, and morale quietly deteriorates. Yet leadership may never fully see the problem because traditional review systems rarely capture peer-level impact.

Chase explained that decentralized feedback systems surface these issues almost immediately. “If people perceive a problem, it shows up in the data quickly,” he said. “You can compare managers or employees across teams and see patterns instantly.”

In one early pilot test inside his own organization, Chase discovered leadership issues that had previously gone unnoticed. “We thought things were going well because turnover was low and the business was performing,” he explained. “But when we started gathering broader organizational feedback, manager problems became obvious almost immediately.”

Leadership issues are expensive long before they appear in traditional business metrics. By the time performance numbers reveal the damage, top employees may already be disengaged or preparing to leave.

Why Performance Metrics Alone Often Create Bad Employee Behavior

Many organizations rely heavily on measurable KPIs to evaluate performance. Sales numbers, call times, productivity quotas, and customer satisfaction scores all matter, but they only tell part of the story.

While those metrics matter, Chase warns that centralized metrics often create local optimization instead of organizational success. Employees learn how to optimize for the score instead of the mission.

For example, a customer service representative measured primarily on call length may prioritize ending conversations quickly instead of solving customer problems thoroughly. On paper, their metrics look strong. Operationally, they may be damaging the business.

“The incentive structure shapes behavior,” Chase explained. “If you only reward narrow metrics, people optimize narrowly.” That is why Chase believes organizations must combine operational data with broader human feedback. Performance is not only about outputs; it is also about how those outputs affect everyone else inside the organization. A high-performing salesperson who creates downstream chaos for operations, customer service, or account management may not be creating nearly as much value as the numbers suggest.

How to Build a Real-Time Employee Feedback System People Actually Trust

One reason many organizations struggle with modern performance management is that employees do not trust the process. If feedback systems feel punitive, political, or performative, participation collapses.

Chase believes successful systems require two critical ingredients.

First, psychological safety matters in employee feedback systems. Employees must trust that their feedback is confidential because, as Chase explained, “They have to know the information is anonymous. Otherwise, people won’t share what they’re actually thinking.” That means organizations must carefully structure how feedback is aggregated, timed, and presented. Employees should not feel exposed for providing honest input.

Second, employees engage more when feedback helps them grow. People engage far more consistently when the process genuinely helps them grow. According to Chase, feedback systems become sustainable when employees receive meaningful insight into their strengths, growth opportunities, role within the team, how others experience their contribution, and how they can increase their value over time. “When people learn more about themselves, participation becomes naturally engaging,” Chase said.

Why CEOs Must Decide Whether They Truly Want Honest Performance Data

One of the most revealing parts of Chase’s perspective is his belief that the biggest obstacle to better performance systems is not technology. It is leadership psychology.

“The biggest roadblock is whether leaders genuinely want to know the truth,” he said.

Decentralized feedback can challenge assumptions. Executives may discover that highly visible leaders are underperforming, quiet employees are driving disproportionate value, toxic behaviors are being tolerated, compensation structures are misaligned, certain managers are creating disengagement, and political behavior is distorting performance outcomes.

That level of transparency requires humility and leaders who are willing to surrender some control. But Chase believes organizations that embrace this level of visibility create stronger cultures, healthier incentives, and higher-performing teams. “When you move from political systems to service-oriented systems, behavior changes fast,” he explained.

How Modern Companies Are Aligning Compensation With Real Contribution

For CEOs interested in modernizing performance management, Chase recommends starting with one core objective: measure contribution more accurately. That means moving beyond job titles and static annual reviews. Organizations can then identify where value is consistently being created, which leaders elevate team performance, which employees strengthen collaboration, and where disengagement is quietly spreading.

Only after understanding those dynamics can modern compensation systems become truly aligned with organizational value, team impact, and long-term business performance. “The first practical step is measuring who is genuinely contributing inside your organization,” Chase said. “Once you can see that clearly, you can start aligning incentives and compensation accordingly.”

The Most Important Leadership Lesson for CEOs Building High-Performance Cultures

Chase reflected on the mindset shift that changed his own leadership philosophy. Real leadership growth began when he stopped assuming his perspective was enough.

“I realized it wasn’t just my perspective that mattered,” he said. “That allowed me to better understand what was actually happening and make better decisions accordingly.” For many business leaders, that may be the most important takeaway of all.

The health of an organization is rarely visible from the top alone. The people closest to the work often see the truth first. Leaders willing to listen may discover opportunities to improve engagement, retention, culture, and performance long before traditional systems ever reveal a problem.

“When you move from political systems to service-oriented systems, behavior changes fast.”