or hyphens, wtf. I am using Australian english6:34 PMMost companies older than seven years are fortunate simply to survive. Very few scale. Even fewer exit well. Exit is not an event. It is the final exam of how the company was built. Companies that command premium valuations are Built to EXIT: deliberately constructed to be predictable, transferable, and independent of the founder. Buyers don't pay for potential. They pay for reliability.

Every January, we confuse ambition with progress. Most resolutions fail not because we lack discipline, but because heroic effort doesn’t scale. Sustainable change works the same way great businesses do: clear long-term direction, fewer priorities, and disciplined routines that compound over time. High performers don’t rely on motivation. They design rhythms that protect energy, sharpen judgement and make progress inevitable.

Using AI as a thought partner can sharpen how leaders reflect, prioritise and plan. This guide shows how to use structured prompts to clarify long-term direction, choose one life area and key relationship to focus on, and translate insight into simple, sustainable routines. Designed for busy founders and CEOs, the prompts turn thinking into action without over-engineering or overthinking the process.

Great companies don’t hide from hard truths. They build systems, rhythms and cultures that drag reality into the light early and often. This article breaks down how leaders can confront the brutal facts with clarity, discipline and confidence, and use them to build a stronger, more resilient organisation.

I recently sat down with Blake McLean, UTS Sports, Exercise and Rehabilitation Associate Professor and Head of Performance R&D with the Oklahoma City Thunder, 2025 NBA champions. We discussed his research, which focuses on both player and non-player performance, and how it applies to organisational performance. Blake is also a keynote speaker at the CEO Summit 2026.

If you’re familiar with the Flywheel concept from Turning the Flywheel, you’ll remember when author Jim Collins sat down with Jeff Bezos and the Amazon team. It was the early 2000s, before Amazon Web Services existed, when Amazon was purely a product and e-commerce business.