Last week, I hit the ebb. The wave I’d been riding—the ideas, the energy, the progress—started to fade. I felt stuck. Not broken, but heavy. Like I was paddling hard with no momentum behind me.

Instead of forcing my way forward, I did something I rarely used to: I paused. I listened. I looked at the data, my rhythms, and what nature always teaches—after the swell comes stillness.

In Japanese philosophy, there’s a word: 間 (Ma). It’s the space between things—not empty, but full of possibility. The kanji shows a gate, with sunlight shining through. It’s the pause that lets the light back in.

This week, I remembered: you don’t lose progress in the pause. You find your power there. Read More…

What if leadership isn’t about control, closure, or constant output—but about creating space for insight?

That’s the question I found myself asking during a recent ice storm that took out the power for days. With no Wi-Fi, no meetings, and no distractions, I was left with time. Time to pause. Time to listen. And, unexpectedly, time to refine the finishing touches on the Human Impact Kata: Managers’ Impact course.

At first, I resisted the stillness. Like many of the leaders I work with, I’m used to moving things forward. But in that pause, something shifted. I began to see things I hadn’t noticed before—patterns, connections, themes I had been too busy to see. And one of them was this: So many of the qualities I had built into the course began with the same letter: C. Read More…

My journey with the Ensō Mindset began with the quiet presence of my Jiichan, my Japanese grandfather. Though I never watched him practice calligraphy, I can imagine his brush moving across the canvas, creating bold strokes in his shodō paintings—an artist and a businessman shaping the world with deliberate, intentional movement. His art, now in my hands, became the inspiration for how I understood leadership, resilience, and ultimately, how my own brain worked.

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