1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Change is a constant. Leaders must be able to manage change effectively in induce future success. Business and life are relatedly dynamic. Today is a jazz riff of yesterday. Accordingly, helping others to do something new is an essential leadership skill.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

As far back as I can remember, I have always been a disobedient thinker. I depend daily upon primary source material to learn. I consistently try for the fundamental.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I am possessed of a triphasic sleep cycle, go to sleep by 4a local time, awake circa 730a and take two 45minute naps during the waking cycle. My to-do lists are aspirational, and I work them in order of subjective importance and priority.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

Obtaining the use of fundamental knowledge, first principles, is of vital importance. For a thinker, operating that way is quite nearly a matter of life and death. I tend not to use rules of thumb as they obstruct thinking by occupying terrain that ought to contain the fundamental.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius has his thoughts on life, death, leadership and the universe. We have become good friends over the years.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

I would suggest they fully digest Sun Tzu's "[t]he art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”