Perplexity AI thinks the most important ideas in my Forbes articles over the past thirteen years have been: 1) Focusing on bringing out others’ self-confidence, 2) Managing executive onboarding through seven stages, and 3) Jump-shifting strategies, organization, and operations during points of inflection.
Focusing on bringing out others’ self-confidence
As a leader, your job is to inspire, enable, and empower others to do their absolute best together to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose. Great leaders emphasize confidence-building in their approach to delegation, understanding that people are motivated by doing good for others, excelling at what they’re good at, and doing good for themselves. Effective leadership is not about you, but about how you instill self-confidence in others to achieve what matters most.
Manage executive onboarding through seven stages
During the seven stages of executive onboarding think marketing, selling, buying, preparing, converging, evolving, and adjusting – in that order 1) before the first contact, 2) between the first contact and offer, 3) at the offer, 4) during the Fuzzy Front End between acceptance and start, 5) during the early days, 6) at the pivot from converging to evolving, and 7) when things change.
Perplexity notes these stages range from pre-contact self-assessment to navigating changes post-onboarding. Key aspects include understanding one’s strengths and preferences, mastering the interview process, conducting due diligence, creating a 100-day action plan, building relationships, co-creating future direction with the core team, and adapting to changes
Jump-shifting strategies, organization, and operations during points of inflection
Recognize and lead through strategic points of inflection – pivotal moments that fundamentally change how we think and act. Take a holistic approach to these inflection points, simultaneously reassessing and adjusting your strategies, organizational structure, and operations. The BRAVE framework (Behaviors, Relationships, Attitude, Values, Environment) can help you navigate these critical junctures.
What’s new?
I asked Perplexity which of my ideas were new to the world. It ducked that question, but was able to “highlight some frameworks that appear to be unique contributions or significant adaptations of existing concepts.” According to Perplexity, they include:
The Seven Stages of Executive Onboarding
While onboarding processes have been discussed in management literature before, Perplexity thinks the specific seven-stage framework (marketing, selling, buying, preparing, converging, evolving, and adjusting) appears to be a unique and comprehensive approach to executive transitions. This framework provides a detailed roadmap that spans from pre-contact to post-start adjustments, which is more extensive than many traditional onboarding models.
The BRAVE Leadership Framework
The BRAVE (Behaviors, Relationships, Attitude, Values, Environment) framework for navigating strategic inflection points is a distinctive approach to leadership during times of significant change. Perplexity thinks “This framework appears to be an original synthesis of various leadership concepts applied specifically to points of inflection.”
The Current Best Thinking (CBT) Framework for Career Development
While the CBT framework was originally designed by Roger Neill for problem-solving, Perplexity thinks the adaptation of this framework to personal career development appears to be a novel application. It says the approach of combining future possibilities, current reality assessment, and gap-bridging problem-solving for individual career planning is a unique contribution to the field of personal development.
The Six Levels of Delegation
The six level framework for delegation, ranging from “Do well yourself” to “Do never,” provides a nuanced approach to task allocation and leadership empowerment. While delegation concepts exist in management literature, Perplexity thinks the specific six-level framework appears to be a unique contribution to the field.
- Do well yourself – Individual contributors’ main area of focus
- Do yourself, but just well enough – Individual contributors
- Delegate and supervise – The realm of managers
- Delegate and trust – inspiring, enabling and empowering others
- Do later – deprioritization saving others time now
- Do never – the ultimate deprioritization, saving others time and attention
Perplexity notes that while these frameworks may incorporate elements from existing management and leadership theories, the specific formulations, applications, and comprehensive approaches to these topics appear to be original contributions to the field of executive leadership and organizational strategy. The novelty lies in how the various concepts are synthesized, applied to specific contexts like executive onboarding, and turned into practical, actionable frameworks for leaders to follow.
Not sure how I feel about you being able to get the most important ideas and frameworks in five articles out of 900+. But at least there’s something worth reading.
John Hall
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