The Field Guide · From the Lunch with Leaders talk
Stop building a career.
Build what outlives you.
You can't build a business that outlives you if the vision only lives in you. This field guide takes the four tools from our family table and puts them to work at your leadership table, so your people can carry what you started long after you've stepped back.
Inside the guide
Forty-one pages written to be used, not shelved.
It is the companion to my talk Build What Outlives You at Harbor + Union in Franklin, Tennessee. If you were in the room, it's everything I said and a few things I didn't have time for. If you weren't, it's the whole talk, ready for your table.
Every idea from the talk, page by page
Each slide with the remarks behind it, the core insight, and the framework that makes it work on Monday morning.
A “Try This” for every idea
A concrete action on every page, plus room to write. You leave with moves, not notes.
The self-audit
An honest look at where your vision lives today, and whether anyone besides you could carry it.
The four moves checklist
Basecamp, Compass, Stone, Blessing. One move each, small enough to start before Friday.
Reflection prompts for your table
Questions to take to your leadership team and to your family, because the same things break in both.
Four tools
From our family table to your leadership table
I lead two organizations. One has employees. The other has my last name. The same things break in both, and the same four tools repair them.
Basecamp
Step out to look up. Identity before assignment.
Compass
Write it together, or pull it alone.
Stones
Tell the story that makes people ask.
Blessing
Say what you see in the people beside you.
Adapted with credit from Greg Gunn's Family-iD framework.
“Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it.”
Habakkuk 2:2 (NKJV)
The most expensive thing in your company is the vision nobody knows about. Write it plainly enough that someone else can run with it, and you're building for the generations, not the quarter.