Ling- English
Leadership under any name
Two high schools. Same banner. Same word. If every school is producing leaders, who exactly are they going to lead? Something has gone wrong with leadership — and it's worth saying precisely what.
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March 2026: Speak, Compete, Organize, Think
Here’s how language works Edwin L. Battistella | Oxford University Press Blog Veni, vidi, vici. Friends, Romans, countrymen. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. You already know the rule of three. Battistella draws on S. Jay Keyser’s study of repetition in the verbal arts to
Ling- English
The fourth book
In a small city, a bookseller named Javier curated a pile of books for every visit—drawn from conversations about dissertations, hockey, and a losing soccer team. This is an essay about that kind of knowing, why it rarely survives the big city, and the workaround one reader has invented: buy three,
Ling- English
Whose Accounting?
Everyone in business knows the phrase: you need a fresh set of eyes. But fresh eyes almost always look through an inherited lens. This essay moves from zero-based budgeting to the examined life — and argues that scrutiny alone isn't liberation. When the criteria we use to examine our commitments wer
Ling- English
Purpose Won’t Cover a $400 Emergency
A new NBER working paper forced over a million real tradeoffs across 126 dimensions of life from 3,300 respondents. When people can’t just endorse everything, when they actually have to choose, a clear hierarchy emerges. Family well-being, financial security, and health dominate. Children’s health alone carries
Newsletter
February 2026 — What the Layoff Needed, What the Slide Did, What the Prophet Forgot, What the Berries Required
Something has been bothering me this month and I haven’t been able to name it cleanly. The closest I can get is this: we are living through a moment in which the future is being used to make decisions about people in the present. Not the actual future of
Ling- English
The day my boss said: Not one of your best performances?
My boss once addressed a serious misstep with a single question. What he chose not to say taught me more about leadership and respect than any debrief ever could.
Ling- English
The question behind the question
A hostile challenge becomes a teaching moment when a facilitator shows how professional respect and self-awareness matter more than credentials.
Essays
My Success, Your Failure
When the project succeeds, it’s because of the leader’s clear direction. When it failed, the team didn’t execute properly. When retention improves, the leader has created the right culture. When people leave, they weren’t a good fit. When the product shipped on time, the leader kept
Ling- English
Abandon All Hope of Mattering
What if everything we assume about leadership and influence is backwards? True influence exists only when you completely abandon the intention to influence—a paradox that reframes management as craft rather than performance.
Newsletter
January 2026 - Coordination is the Tax, Silence is a Choice, Culture is Behavior, Efficiency is the Enemy
Welcome to the usual mix of the month: a handful of pieces that caught my eye over the past few weeks. Some overlap in theme, which I’ll let you draw your own lines on. 1. The reason your organization moves slowly, works in silos, and has too many meetings
Essays
A note
This week I’m setting aside the regular essay to say something simple. A lot of people around you (family members, neighbors, colleagues) are affected by what’s happening in our country at the moment. Many of you are too. I am. If you manage people, you already know this.