THIS MOMENT COUNTS · ISSUE 04 The pitch that should have failed Wednesday, May 13, 2026 · by Dr. Michael Gerharz 12 years ago, my wife and I landed a surprise hit in the German toy market. As total nobodies in the industry. We ignored every single piece of expert advice. Really, our pitch would fail every single test by every single expert. It worked out beautifully for us. The reason why is relevant to every pitch and every spotlight moment. So, what happened? My wife and I were sitting in...
1 day ago • 3 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · ISSUE 03 Why your key message doesn’t stick Wednesday, May 6, 2026 · by Dr. Michael Gerharz The room is packed. The screen is live. Every eye is on you. And somewhere in the next 45 minutes, you are going to lose them. I don't mean that they won’t get it. They probably will. Nod along. Agree. But. If you ask them after your talk what the point was, 99% won’t be able to give a concise answer. Because while you were polishing your presentation, you were asking the wrong...
8 days ago • 3 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · ISSUE 02 Has the show finally won over substance? Wednesday, April 29, 2026 · by Dr. Michael Gerharz In the past months, several of my clients all brought up a very similar question. One that troubles them deeply. It goes something like this:I've always wanted to be the thoughtful, honest, no bullshit communicator. And it worked well enough. But now every event I go to, I see polished and loud and confident speakers and I'm standing there thinking, have I lost? Like, has...
15 days ago • 3 min read
What the Best Leaders Say Issue 12 Leadership has a Hollywood problem. Somewhere between Al Pacino’s locker room speech and every inspirational CEO profile ever written, we absorbed an idea about what a leader is supposed to say when the moment counts. We’ve seen so many versions of it, and it always looks so compelling on screen, that most leaders now walk into their first big moment trying to recreate it, often without consciously knowing that’s what they’re doing. Two CEOs in this issue...
19 days ago • 10 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · ISSUE 01 Should you explain it simpler? Wednesday, April 16, 2026 · by Michael Gerharz At some point in your career, you sat in a room where someone was presenting something important. A strategy. A proposal. A decision that was going to affect your work. You understood exactly what they were saying. Every word was clear. And you wholeheartedly disagreed. You didn’t say anything because something about the room, the dynamic, the stakes, the relationship, made disagreeing...
22 days ago • 2 min read
This Moment Counts I have a problem with useful. For years, useful was my standard. Is this useful? Will this help someone? Can they apply this to their work? The answer was almost always yes. So I published it. And people appreciated it. And I kept going. Useful served people. I believe that. But useful is the wrong word for what happens in a room when a leader finds the exact right words. You don’t walk out of that room thinking: that was useful. You walk out thinking: everything just...
29 days ago • 2 min read
What the Best Leaders Say Issue 11 There is a skill most leaders wish they had more of. The problem is that it leads to a behvior they should be worried of. This issue is about that behavior. About where it comes from, what it costs, and what becomes possible when you trade it for something that feels, at first, almost reckless. It might turn out that, after reading this, the skill you wish you had more of, is almost the complete opposite. Table of Contents Essay PDF Version Readers’ Corner...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
What the Best Leaders Say Issue 10 At some point, every leader faces a version of the following decision: double down on what's working, or bet on what’s coming. This issue won’t tell you which to choose. But it will change how you see the choice. I highly encourage you to forward this to your strategy team and to your exec team to start a disucssion on this. Because today, one of the most important questions you can ask is: Are we set up for the future? Regardless of what it will bring?...
about 2 months ago • 8 min read
A strategy statement has one job: It must help people decide.Every day across your organization, teams face choices about what to build, fund, prioritize, or abandon. Strategy exists to guide those choices.Sounds good in theory, but we both know that in practice, it’s almost never that simple. You’ve certainly been in a meeting where that became obvious. The one that got tense when two execs came to opposite conclusions and both of them justified it with “the strategy.”But you know what? That...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read