The CEO’s Prism
Hey, you know that feeling when leadership pulls you in a million directions? Like you’re juggling investor demands, team vibes, and your own doubts, all while trying to keep your vision alive?
It’s like you’re pure light—full of potential—until the prisms of this role scatter you into a thousand colors. But here’s the thing: you can pull those pieces back together. Let me share a little physics trick that’s changed how I lead—it’s about realigning those prisms to let your true light shine again. Ready to hear how?
To every leader who’s felt fractured by the role: You began as pure potential — visionary, authentic, whole. Then the lenses of leadership refracted you:
Investor demands vs. team morale
Short-term targets vs. long-term legacy
Public persona vs. private doubt
Endless decisions vs. vanishing clarity
You became a spectrum of fragments: The Strategist. The Face. The Firefighter. The Human.
Here’s the physics lesson that changes everything: When white light fractures into colors through a prism, a second prism can restore its original wholeness. Your leadership has the same power to recompose.
The CEO’s Second Prism: Reclaiming Your Core Light
Your greatest leverage isn’t scaling outputs — it’s focusing your energy:
Pause the Refraction Five minutes of deliberate stillness daily silences stakeholder noise. Time cost: 0.3% of your day.
Align the Lenses Redesign the metric, meeting, or ritual that distorts your vision. Time cost: 1 hour this week.
Embody the Light Lead from your authentic values, not external pressures. Your culture reflects your unchanging core. Time cost: Daily presence.
Why This Is Strategy, Not Philosophy
Clarity fuels innovation.
Purpose steadies execution.
Presence sustains resilience.
Good leaders manage the colors. Great leaders remember they are the light.
Name one lens fracturing your focus:
A lagging metric, like a sales target ignoring customer retention?
A reactive habit, like checking emails during strategy sessions?
A voice you’ve overvalued, like an overly critical advisor?
Reshape it. For example, replace a flawed metric with one tied to your long-term vision. The moment the lens aligns, your light recomposes itself. Lead whole. Build your legacy in full spectrum — then let it shine as one.
