Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders – Details, episodes & analysis

Part 2 shifts from insight to application. Dan breaks down how leaders can translate long-term vision into focused, repeatable execution — without burning out or losing adaptability.

Dan walks through the structure and mindset of the 12-Week Year, explaining how shorter planning cycles, weekly scorekeeping, and fewer priorities help leaders move faster and smarter. Mike connects the framework to leadership behaviors, strategic thinking, and real-world performance in uncertain environments.

• Why shrinking timeframes increases energy and focus

• How weekly feedback loops improve performance

• The danger of treating plans as to-do lists

• Why strategic thinking requires protected time

• The 12-Week Year as a leadership mindset

• Why five priorities outperform ten

• How weekly reviews replace annual frustration

• Intensity paired with recovery sustains performance

• Strategy lives in execution, not intention

• Shorter cycles create faster learning

• Planning is leadership work, not admin work

• Focused systems outperform motivated chaos

• Define 3–5 priorities for your next 12 weeks

• Schedule a weekly 10–15 minute review

• Protect time for thinking, not just doing

Connect with Dan Mintz on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-mintz/

Why Leaders Feel Busy — But Still Fall Behind

In Part 1, Mike and Dan explore why capable, driven leaders still struggle to execute — especially in a world defined by speed, uncertainty, and constant change. This episode reframes productivity as a leadership challenge, not a time-management problem.

Dan shares his experience as a CEO who felt stuck on a treadmill — planning, reacting, and falling short despite deep expertise. Together, they unpack why annual and quarterly planning fail to create urgency, how uncertainty amplifies execution gaps, and why feedback is now one of the most critical leadership tools.

• Why knowledge and effort aren't enough

• The illusion of progress created by long planning cycles

• How uncertainty affects focus and confidence

• Why feedback is tied directly to engagement and retention

• "Busy" doesn't mean effective

• Annual thinking delays accountability

• Uncertainty demands clarity, not paralysis

• Feedback helps people understand their value

• Execution breaks down when timelines are too long

• Leaders need shorter cycles to stay grounded

• Feedback is no longer optional — it's foundational

• Focus creates confidence in uncertain environments

• Identify where your plans lose momentum

• Reflect on how often you receive or give feedback

• Ask: What would change if progress was reviewed weekly instead of yearly?

Connect with Dan Mintz on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-mintz/

Intro:
In Part 2, we move from principles to practice—how mission guided product choices (like co-viewing), how to tell your people's stories, and how to balance transparency with judgment so you don't create "us vs. them." 

Summary:
We cover building for community (e.g., co-watching during lockdowns), using story to connect head and heart, and showing up in outages to refocus teams on the customer. We also tackle transparency: share enough signal to empower people, but curate it so it builds unity, not silos. We end on a core message: building stretches you—it's how you learn who you are as a leader. 

Highlights & Key Takeaways:

• Mission Guides Features: When the mission is clear, smart features follow. 

• Tell Stories That Reflect Your Users: Don't just tell; collect and echo their stories. 

• Show Up in the Mess: Presence in crises rallies commitment. 

• Transparency + Judgment: Share what people need to act; avoid "us vs. them." 

• Build to Discover Yourself: You learn who you are by building under real stakes. 

Next Steps:

• Define one feature your mission demands this quarter.

• Capture three customer or employee stories you can retell internally.

• Audit a recent "transparent" update: did it inform action—or fuel factions

Connect with Michael Cerda: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcerda/

In this second episode of my visit with Art Lucas, founder of the Lucas group, one of the largest executive search and contract staffing firms in the country, Art continues to discuss the art and science of the recruiting industry. He shares steps in engagement strategies and how to retain the best of our team. If you haven't listened to the first part, make sure you schedule time to hear how one of the pioneers in the recruiting industry scaled from a start up into a global force.  Art Lucas.

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For more Leadership Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders visit: http://lightingthepath.net/blog/

Impact is a word that drives careers. What you accomplish is based on how you impact your job, your clients, your company.

Today's guest Art Lucas has lived a life of impact, one that has impacted an entire industry. He founded the Lucas group in 1970 based in Atlanta, GA as a small one-man business with the important vision of helping military personnel transition to the civilian workforce after completing their military service.

Today, Lucas Group has transformed into a major enterprise with locations worldwide focusing in Accounting and Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing and Sales, Operations, Information Technology, and Military Transition. Art shares his story of building one of the largest firms in the executive search and contract staffing industry in this first part of a 2 part series by focusing on the art form and science of creating value for clients and candidates.

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For more Leadership Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders visit: http://lightingthepath.net/blog/

Scott Eblin president of The Eblin Group is a leadership expert, global speaker, best-selling author, and executive coach, Scott works with some of the best-known companies and organizations in the world.  

What struck me about Scott is he works with leaders across all stages of their careers to learn how to lead as well as live at their best in a constantly changing world. He does this by confronting head-on the reality of today's 24/7 environment and helping clients create repeatable actions that lead to positive outcomes. He advocates simple, practical and immediately applicable steps that help leaders consistently be at their best – not just in their professional lives, but also at home and in their communities.  

Scott's work and experience is captured in two best-selling books: The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success whose third edition is being released October 2108 and Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative. 

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For more Leadership Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders visit: http://lightingthepath.net/blog/

If the thought of building a strategic plan makes your eyes glaze over, welcome to the club. Harvard Business Review has a library of articles on the importance and how to's of building a strategic plan. Yet, I've found most approaches stay in the realm of concept without implementation at an operating level. Until I met Jill.  

I still vividly remember when I first saw our next guest Jill Hickman in action. She was facilitating a Board of Directors retreat that I had been a part of and I was amazed by the way she created synergy and wrangled naysayers and outliers and developed this vibrant energy. The reason why I wanted her to be a guest on our show is because strategic planning is a gift for her. But more importantly, it is her process to move it from the vague, feel-good event to a key part of a tactical executable plan.  

The term strategic planning for many people causes their eyes to roll towards the back of their head because people get caught up in meetings and discussions don't come out with anything that is executable. For more than 20 years, the Jill Hickman Company has been providing coaching and consulting services to executive leaders, creating corporate universities and facilitating strategic planning retreats for teams and Boards. Jill's extensive corporate background spans both public and private sectors from small startup firms to Fortune 500 companies, including those in manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and business services. Her entrepreneurial spirit has built an amazing company with a global reach. 

Topics covered in this episode:

• Why Strategic Plans matter 
• Putting feet to a plan so it matters 
• Demystify the strategic planning process 
• Traps that submarine the plan 

Jill Hickman, president 

Jill Hickman Companies 

jill@jillhickman.com 

(281) 358-8580 

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For more Leadership Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders visit: http://lightingthepath.net/blog/

Total Performance Leadership™ (TPL), is a research-based architecture that identifies the common characteristics shared by organizations driven by a common purpose. TPL organizations look and feel good – the deeper you look, the better the view Rob's passion is long lasting and meaningful relationships. Helping CEOs and boards drive revenues, cut costs, maximize the effectiveness of human and capital resources, and build enterprise value are hallmarks of his practice. Rob's clients have run the gamut from $6 million privately held enterprises to $75+ billion publicly held multinational corporations, The disciplines of TPL increases engagement, fuels productivity and reduces turnover. 

Topics covered in this episode:

• The Disciplines of Total Performance Leadership
• Case Study of QuikTrip 
• It starts with a Cohesive Leadership Team
• The driving force of a defined sense of purpose
• The Key mistake Leaders make

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Based in Houston, Rob Andrews is Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Allen Austin, a leadership advisory and executive search firm. Rob leads Allen Austin's global CEO, Consumer Packaged Goods & Durables Practice, and is also a member of the firm's Leadership Advisory, Private Equity, Industrial and Marketing Officer practices. Building on his earlier career experience as an operating president with major convenience store and supermarket chains, Rob conducts searches for board members, CEO and senior officers across a broad range of sectors. His prior experience with national retail brands includes senior operating, marketing and administrative assignments with revenues of up to $2.4 billion and headcount of 10,600.

Rob is also the architect of Total Performance Leadership. Purpose-driven companies make more money, have more engaged employees and more delighted customers, and are better at innovating than companies without a purpose. At the core of these organizations are authentic and passionate leaders capable of communicating, aligning and mobilizing the entire organization around a shared purpose.

Website: http://allenaustin.com

Phone: 713.489.9724 

Email: randrews@allenaustin.com

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For more Leadership Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders visit: http://lightingthepath.net/blog/

Dr. Rob Pennington is an Award Winning Professional Speaker and Author of an amazing book, Find The Upside of the Down Times. He has a rare gift of cracking barriers we fight to reduce conflict, anxiety and stress, and helps people raise their expectations to see the what they are truly capable of.  

Rob is the Co Founder of Resource International, an organizational Consulting and Executive Coaching group.  One of his many programs Successfully Managing the Stress of Change and Successful Work Relationships which has become standard "flagship trainings" in some of the largest organizations in the country. 

In this episode, he shares: 

• How to engage people in the middle of change 
• Managing stress, Wrestling with conflict 
• Release the baggage for stronger communication 
• Helping to process emotions is more than a soft skill 
• Helping leaders process anger 

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Resource International co-founder, Dr. Rob Pennington, is an educational psychologist who specializes in improving the performance of leaders and teams through a balance of authority and collaboration. Trained through the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in organizational development in the early 70's and a former faculty member of three universities, Dr. Pennington's decades of research and experience support organizations in developing executives who can successfully lead massive change. His extensive work with CEOs and their Leadership Teams allows him to efficiently produce more effective results than might otherwise be achieved, always with an eye on the bottom-line and the ROI of his engagements.  

In his award winning autobiographical self-help book, Find the Upside of the Down Times: How To Turn Your Worst Experiences into Your Best Opportunities (Amazon & Kindle), Dr. Pennington provides readers with insights and tools to turn life's challenges into opportunities for growth and even blessings. He shares his own very personal journey of survival and discovery after some of the biggest challenges life can throw.  

Website: http://drrobpennington.com

Products: http://drrobpennington.com/get-access

For more Leadership Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders visit: http://lightingthepath.net/blog/

I couldn't think of a better voice for our first show than Mark Sanborn president of Sanborn & Associates, Inc., an idea studio dedicated to developing leaders in business and in life. Mark is an international bestselling author and noted expert on leadership, team building, customer service and change.  

Mark is one of the people I've heard whose message is a wonderful mixture of high intellect with awesome engaging style delivered with a charismatic heart. I've followed his work over the years, using his book The Fred Factor as training for my company on world class customer service. His most recent release is the Productivity Principles – closing the gap between how good you are to how great you can be. 

Listen in as we discuss: 

• How Better beats Best 
• Overcoming lack of awareness 
• The Importance of Clarity 
• The Art of Slowing Down 
• The Power of Re Focus 

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Mark Sanborn, CSP, CPAE, is president of Sanborn & Associates, Inc., an idea studio dedicated to developing leaders in business and in life. Mark is an international bestselling author and noted expert on leadership, team building, customer service and change. 

He has created and appeared in 20 videos and numerous audio training programs. His video series Team Building: How to Motivate and Manage People made it to the #2 spot for bestselling educational video series in the U.S. 

Mark's list of over 2600 clients includes Costco, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, FedEx, Harley-Davidson, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, KPMG, Morton's of Chicago, New York Life, RE/MAX, ServiceMaster, ESPN, GM, IBM, Avnet, Sandvik and John Deere. 

Website: https://marksanborn.com

Resources: https://marksanborn.com/resources

For more Leadership Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders visit: http://lightingthepath.net/blog/