Guides & Resources

These resources are built for leaders who want to think better about strategy - whether or not they ever pick up the phone. Each guide is grounded in the Essential Strategy Formula and informed by 30+ years of working inside organizations where the stakes are real and the plans have to hold up under pressure. Some will challenge what you've been taught about strategic planning. Some will give you tools you can put to work immediately. All of them are designed to help you see your organization more clearly — because what you can see, you can address. What you can't, runs the show without your permission.

Everything on this page is free!

I hope you find these guides informative and useful!

CEO Survival Guide

40–60% of new CEOs fail within the first 18 months. Not because they lack talent — because they don't have a roadmap. This guide is that roadmap. Built from 30+ years of working alongside executives in organizations of every size and complexity, it walks new CEOs and executive directors through three critical phases of transition — from discovery through strategic foundation-building to activation — grounded in the Essential Strategy framework that treats your organization as the living system it actually is.

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PGEE Strategy Health Check

You can't fix what you can't see. This self-assessment walks CEOs and executive directors through 20 diagnostic questions across Purpose, Growth, Evolution, and Equilibrium — designed to surface the patterns, gaps, and imbalances that traditional planning processes miss. No grades. No judgment. Just a clear-eyed look at where your strategy is strong, where it's quietly breaking down, and where to focus next.

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CEO Guide: Choosing a Strategic Planning Facilitator

Every CEO has a risk appetite. Few have defined it clearly enough to guide anything. This guide cuts through the vague boardroom language and gives you a practical framework — the Essential Strategy Risk Appetite (ESRA) Framework — for connecting risk directly to strategic intent. Four questions, aligned to Purpose, Growth, Evolution, and the Critical Path. No jargon. No heatmaps. Just the structured conversations your leadership team needs to turn risk appetite from a governance placeholder into a leadership tool.

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Essential Strategy Quick Reference

Every organization needs three things to succeed: Purpose, Growth, and Evolution. Most strategic plans address one or two. Almost none address all three, and that's why they fail. This quick reference guide introduces the Essential Strategy Formula, the science behind it, and the PGEE foundation that connects strategic intent to organizational reality. If you're going to rethink how you build strategy, start here.

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