The Donversation

Dangerous ideas for leaders tired of advice that dies Monday morning

The color purple does not exist outside your brain. I know. Stay with me. Every color in the rainbow — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet — has its own wavelength of light. Its own address on the spectrum. When your brain combines signals from multiple cone types in your eye, it can ...

Jul 17, 2026

Your Best Customer Is Your Silent Boss

NOTE: A shared thought from my colleague Joel Block. Former blackjack player in one of the most elite teams in the world, built and sold a company to a Fortune 500, a hedge fund manager and venture capitalist Customer concentration risk is the king. Almost every small and middle-market company...

Apr 21, 2026

Baboons Stole Your Brain, And They're Eating Your Company Alive.

Baboons? Well, it’s a playful metaphor. But a good one. Let’s have some fun with the science behind it. Flying back after a workshop last week, I received an email. “I know industries spent $98 billion on employee training last year. We’ve used a lot of those programs. So why can’t our departmen...

Apr 21, 2026

Are Your "Alignment Sessions" Expensive Delay Mechanisms?

Your pursuit of alignment is costing you more than you know. Every ‘alignment session’ you schedule might be delaying decisions, diluting strategy, and destroying accountability—all while making you feel responsible and thoughtful. Here’s what research actually shows about what happens when orga...

Apr 21, 2026

📎Executive Edge Memo: META-Strategy Wins -- Lead With Weakness

Welcome back to the META-Strategy™ field lab. While most companies just develop a “TACTICAL-Strategy” — those fill-in-the-blank strategic planning templates with a 70+% failure rate — we study what else is needed to actually win. And it’s rarely what MBAs expect. Don’t go into battle with a temp...

Apr 21, 2026

📎Executive Edge Memo: META-Strategy -- Stop Fighting Harder. Shift the Battlefield

In this next dispatch, we continue exposing why traditional strategic planning—while necessary—isn’t enough to win. META-Strategy must come first. Why? Because it shifts the entire gameboard before the first move is made. Catch up on the series so far —— https://donschmincke.substack.com/s/meta...

Apr 20, 2026

📎Executive Edge Memo: META-Strategy -- It's Not What You Believe, It's What THEY Think You Believe

The Belief Pattern Strategy Many military victories, business disruptions, and competitive upsets share a hidden thread: someone shaped what the other side believed—then exploited it ruthlessly. Here we introduce the META-Strategy component of belief management: understanding that your competito...

Apr 20, 2026

📎Executive Edge Memo: You Brought Tactics to a Strategy Fight?

— For C-level executives and HR professionals looking to elevate their strategic impact.— “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is noise before defeat.”— Sun Tzu In my last post, I said most “strategic planning sessions” collapse strategy and plannin...

Apr 20, 2026

📎Executive Edge Memo: Strategic Planning is Dead. Again.

— For C-level executives and HR professionals looking to elevate their strategic impact.— “All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” — Sun Tzu Twenty-five years ago I was obsessed with the inconsistencies in how winning...

Apr 20, 2026

📎Executive Edge Memo: Road Warrior Tip -- Use a condom (for your keyboard!)

But let’s rewind. One day, I innocently set my coffee on a fancy coaster in a beautifully designed conference room. Great aesthetics—terrible physics. The coasters were thick and the mugs were stylishly conical with dangerously high centers of gravity. Distracted by my laptop, I didn’t notice the...

Apr 20, 2026

📎Executive Edge Memo: Road warrior tip -- How to Work and Eat Well

If you’re like me, you work over 15 hours/day when on the road. And you’re always working over dinner - at the hotel restaurant bar. But what if the hotel restaurant sucks? Like last night. Worse burger ever. What to do the rest of my nights here because i have 3 more speeches? Well, I took a re...

Apr 20, 2026

🔥We Want Authenticity? History Says We’re Lying. (exposing the 4th of July myth)

We say we want authenticity, but we never let that ruin a good revolution—especially on the 4th of July! --------- About 30 years ago, in my keynote speeches, I began exposing the inauthenticity of a story that shaped one very famous organization: The United States of America. This was wel...

Apr 17, 2026

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