The Blog
Long-form essays, field notes, and frameworks from the FIRMSconsulting team — published weekly.
All posts
Published weekly-
Former C-Suite Executive and Advisor to Fortune 100 Leaders Amy Leneker on How to Lead and Live with Less Stress and More Joy
Amy Leneker, a former C-suite executive and advisor to Fortune 100 leaders, examines a common assumption in corporate life: that stress is an unavoidable cost of success. She argues that this belief is flawed, noting that when leaders feel disconnected from their values and priorities, “it doesn’t feel like you’re succeeding.” The discussion centers on…
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Growth and Innovation at Scale, with Former IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce Executive Jason Wild
Jason Wild discusses the discipline of building and scaling businesses through careful capital allocation, operational focus, and a clear understanding of risk. He explains how leaders often misjudge growth by pursuing expansion without fully understanding the underlying economics, noting that “growth only creates value when the returns exceed the cost of capital.” He emphasizes the…
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Dr. John La Puma on the Hidden Health Costs of Indoor Living
Dr. John La Puma discusses how everyday environmental choices shape sleep, cognition, and long-term health. Drawing on research from medicine, neuroscience, and environmental science, he explains why many professionals unknowingly experience what he calls “cognitive drag,” the gradual decline in mental clarity caused by indoor lifestyles, poor light exposure, and excessive screen use. A central…
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How to Build a Sustainable Career Competitive Advantage (Even After 40)
Developing a sustainable and realistic competitive and comparative advantage in your career is challenging. Everyone reading this understands how difficult and tiresome it is to upgrade your profile and skill set so that you remain attractive to your organization and clients day after day, week after week, and year after year. And it is not…
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BCG’s Julia Dhar on Why 70% of Major Change Efforts Fail
Julia Dhar, Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group and founder of the firm’s Behavioral Science Lab, joins us to discuss why most organizational change efforts fail and what leaders can do differently. Drawing on behavioral science and her work advising major organizations, she explains why the challenge of change is rarely about strategy alone and…
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The first MasterPlan Annual (MasterPlan 365) session with the new group
Yesterday, we had the first MasterPlan Annual (MasterPlan 365) session with the new group. The first session is always interesting. At the beginning of the call, we explained two things we wanted to focus on. The first question was what was your trigger moment to enroll in the MasterPlan program? The second question was whether clients…
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The Invincible Brain with Johns Hopkins Professor Dr. Majid Fotuhi
Dr. Majid Fotuhi, neurologist, neuroscientist, and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, has spent decades studying how the brain ages and what determines whether cognitive performance declines or strengthens over time. In this discussion, he challenges one of the most widely accepted assumptions about aging: that deterioration of memory and thinking is inevitable. The evidence,…
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Building Healthier Workplaces Through Attuned Leadership with Nidhi Tewari
Nidhi Tewari, a highly sought after wellbeing and work culture speaker who applies her experience as a licensed therapist to the work world, has spent more than a decade advising high-performing leaders on burnout, trauma, communication, and work culture. In this conversation, she brings a clinician’s precision to a topic many organizations still treat superficially:…
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Business Innovation and Strategic Growth Advisor, Lorraine Marchand, on Sustaining Growth Through Innovation
Lorraine Marchand, startup CEO, advisor to Johnson & Johnson, member of the Pharmaceutical Advisory Board at Columbia Business School, and faculty at Wharton, discusses how leaders can sustain growth through disciplined experimentation in an era shaped by AI and institutional risk aversion. Marchand’s perspective is grounded in a career that spans large corporations and entrepreneurial…
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How Overworked Leaders Can Find Peace Again (with Dr. Guy Winch)
Dr. Guy Winch explains why we must treat emotional injuries with the same urgency as physical ones. “We ruminate, we beat ourselves up, we criticize ourselves, we think we’re weak… and we end up compounding the emotional injury.” He introduces the idea of “emotional first aid” and why we need a psychological toolbox to stop…
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Ashley Herd, Former Head of HR North America at McKinsey, on What Effective Managers Actually Do
Ashley Herd, former Head of HR North America at McKinsey, joins this episode to discuss what effective leadership looks like in practice, especially in environments defined by speed, pressure, and increasing expectations around AI. Drawing on her experience training more than 250,000 managers, she introduces a simple but rigorous framework: pause, consider, act. In fast-moving…
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Northwestern Law Professor John McGinnis on Constitutional Stability in the Age of AI
John McGinnis, law professor at Northwestern University and author of Why Democracy Needs the Rich, examines constitutional design, democratic stability, and the accelerating force of artificial intelligence. Drawing on the Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, and public choice theory, he argues that a realistic understanding of politics is essential to preserving both liberty and effective state capacity.…