One of my favorite business analogies comes from the game of chess.

Occasionally you'll watch a grandmaster pause, study the board, and quietly announce, “Checkmate in four.”

To everyone else, it seems impossible.

How could anyone know that?
What if the opponent makes an unexpected move?

Years of studying thousands of positions have trained him to see relationships, combinations, and consequences that others simply haven't experienced. He's not looking at the next move. He's looking at the entire board.

Leadership works much the same way.

The higher you rise within an organization, the harder it becomes to see your own position objectively. That's not a weakness. It's the unavoidable consequence of leadership. Every executive develops expertise through a particular lens. Engineering. Finance. Sales. Operations. Technology. Marketing. Legal. Human Resources.

Those perspectives are invaluable.
They're also incomplete.

Business isn't a collection of departments. It's an interconnected system where every decision influences another. A pricing decision affects sales. Sales influences operations. Operations impacts customer experience. Regulation changes markets. Technology reshapes competition. Culture determines execution. Capital dictates opportunity.

The board is always changing.

No single executive can see every interaction, every dependency, or every unintended consequence.

My career has been an unusual one, but not because I've worn many hats. Since entering enterprise technology in 1989, I've spent more than three decades studying how organizations work. Engineering taught me to think in systems. Enterprise sales taught me why people make decisions. Consulting exposed me to hundreds of companies across nearly every major industry, revealing patterns that transcend individual businesses. Entrepreneurship taught me resilience and execution. Becoming an author and broadcaster taught me that every leader and every company has a message worth discovering. Filmmaking deepened my understanding of story and human motivation. International business, including work in China and extensive travel abroad, broadened my understanding of culture, innovation, and competition.

One discipline, however, is often overlooked.

Public policy.

After years of observing both business and politics, I've come to believe that many executives underestimate how profoundly government shapes markets. Tax policy. Regulation. Trade. Energy. Healthcare. Artificial intelligence. National security. Incentives created in Washington and state capitals often determine where capital flows, which industries accelerate, and which business models struggle.

Over time, these experiences have merged into a single way of thinking. I don't see companies as organizational charts. I see them as living systems, each influenced by technology, people, markets, culture, incentives, and policy. Like a chessboard, every move changes the possibilities of the next.

This is why I enjoy working with CEOs and founders.

Not because they need someone to run their companies.
They don't.

They need someone who sees the board from a different angle. Someone who can connect ideas that normally live in separate conversations.

Someone who recognizes the hidden opportunity beneath the immediate problem. Someone who understands that today's decisions become tomorrow's position.

My role is not to tell leaders what to do.

My role is to help them see what experience has taught me to recognize before it becomes obvious.