Pogo

You've been sold one. Nobody gave you the other.

The leadership development industry is worth $366 billion. For decades it has built the ship: the frameworks, competency models, training programs, and org charts. What it has never been able to build is the leader, the person standing inside the ship.

Look closely at the word itself. Lead-AND-ship. Between the leader and the ship sits the And, the living connection that no program can install, no certificate can confer, and no consultant can sell you.

POGO: The Leader and the Ship is a leadership book for people who are done with leadership books. It skips the traits-and-skills checklists, which belong to management, and takes on harder questions:

• Why a title makes you captain of the ship, but not necessarily a leader
• Why integrity cannot be taught or programmed, only modeled
• Why goals create boundaries to potential
• Why "less is more," and why the ship produces more when the leader does less
• Where a leader lands, how long they stay, and why
• What you would do if you walked into a room with nothing but blank paper

The title comes from an three-year-old boy who bounced before he could walk, like a Pogo stick, full of energy, grinning, and making everyone around him laugh. That boy was the author's older brother, and the name stuck. It also captures how real leaders move: land where the friction is, do the work, and bounce to the next one. And it nods to Walt Kelly's Pogo and his famous line, "We have met the enemy and he is us."