Former Goldman Sachs executive Erin Coupe shares how she transformed her life and career by replacing routines with rituals, practicing meditation, and stepping into self-leadership.

In this episode of the Strategy Skills Podcast, Kris Safarova and Erin dive deep into practical lessons for entrepreneurs, consultants, and online business owners who want more clarity, energy, and independence.

Based on her book, I Can Fit That In: How Rituals Transform Your Life, Erin explains how to:

• Build rituals that fuel focus, creativity, and business growth.

• Use meditation to calm your mind and access deeper ideas.

• Lead yourself first — so you can lead teams, clients, and businesses better.

• Align achievement with values to avoid burnout and emptiness.

• See AI not just as a tool for efficiency, but as a partner in self-discovery.

This conversation is perfect for online business owners, consultants, authors, and executives building a life and career on their own terms.

Learn more about Erin here: https://www.erincoupe.com/

📚 Get Erin’s book, I Can Fit That In, here: https://www.erincoupe.com/i-can-fit-that-in

Here are some free gifts for you:

Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Srividya Jandhyala, professor of management at ESSEC Business School and author of The Great Disruption, offers a clear framework for how geopolitics is reshaping corporate strategy. Her central thesis is direct:

“The fundamental idea, ‘Where are you from?’—the nationality of the company—is the defining feature of the type of reactions you face from all stakeholders, not just governments, but also customers, suppliers, and clients”.

She explains why geopolitics now sits inside business decisions rather than adjacent to them. Corporate choices create externalities that trigger responses from states and nonmarket actors. For example, decisions around semiconductors illustrate how commercial moves collide with concerns about national security and dependence in key markets. The implication is that access, permissions, and standards increasingly compete with price and product as decisive variables.

Jandhyala distills four structural foundations every multinational should monitor:

• Market access — Where tariffs, export controls, or rivalries may close doors.
  
  

• Level playing field — Corporate nationality can tilt advantage or disadvantage against competitors.
  
  

• Investment security — Whether assets, workforce, and property rights will be safe and returns can be repatriated.
  
  

• Institutional alignment — The “USB vs. power plug” analogy: some systems work seamlessly, while others clash. Geopolitics is increasingly a contest of standards

• Build a repeatable discipline. Go beyond headline news by scanning developments, personalizing them to the firm’s footprint, planning responses, and pivoting as conditions change.
  
  

• Map exposure by corporate nationality. Quantify where origin shapes market permissions, customer sentiment, or partner constraints.
  
  

• Treat corporate diplomacy as a core capability. Relationship-building with governments and stakeholders now consumes significant CEO time, creating both opportunities and trade-offs.
  
  

• For CEOs: View geopolitical flux as a field for advantage, not just risk. “Be imaginative about how you can exploit your corporate nationality, your position in the value chain, and your global market presence.”
  
  

• For middle managers: Expect new roles and metrics; government engagement, redundancy planning, and cross-functional information brokering are becoming central.
  
  

• Use the right cognitive frame. Executives must decide explicitly whether and where geopolitics deserves share of mind, recognizing that equally astute observers may reach different conclusions.
  
  

Jandhyala’s counsel is rigorous but pragmatic: geopolitics is now part of the operating environment. Companies that treat it as noise will miss risks and opportunities. Those that build structural awareness and corporate diplomacy into strategy will be better positioned to compete when “permissions, politics, and standards” define the terms of play.

📚 Get Srividya’s book, The Great Disruption, here: https://shorturl.at/SWrdT

Here are some free gifts for you:

Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

In this rigorous and insight-rich episode, Dr. Colin Fisher, author of The Collective Edge, deconstructs high-performing teams using decades of organizational research and field-tested frameworks. If you lead, manage, or influence teams, the insights here can recalibrate how you build and guide collaboration.

We explore four foundational elements (Composition, Goals, Tasks, and Norms) and dismantle prevalent myths that often derail even experienced leaders.

Key insights include:

• Composition: A team’s effectiveness begins with clarity. In a landmark study, only 7% of top management teams agreed on how many people were actually on their team. “We can’t compose the team thoughtfully unless we agree on who’s in the team in the first place.” The ideal team size? 4.5 people. Why? It balances task performance and member satisfaction, minimizing coordination cost while maximizing cohesion.
  
  

• Goals: Most teams fall apart not because of conflict, but because “members don’t share the same understanding of what the group’s goals are.” Dr. Fisher emphasizes that goals must be clear, challenging, and consequential, repeated often, and refined constantly.
  
  

• Tasks: Don’t assign group work to solo tasks. Effective team tasks must require interdependence and diverse expertise. Leaders must provide “clear goals but autonomy over process.” Micromanagement erodes both accountability and innovation.
  
  

• Norms: Often invisible yet decisive. Norms around psychological safety and information sharing distinguish resilient teams from dysfunctional ones. Without them, even the most capable groups collapse under miscommunication or fear of speaking up.
  
  

Dr. Fisher’s core thesis is deceptively simple: The secret sauce is sustained attention to the basics. His research confirms that elite leaders are not mystical intuitives but methodical questioners and attentive listeners.

If you care about sustainable performance and intelligent team design, this conversation delivers a precise blueprint.

📚 Get Colin’s book, The Collective Edge, here: https://shorturl.at/91Khp

Here are some free gifts for you:

Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo