📌 Rule No. 19 —Stop Doing What Doesn’t Work.

🎓 MASTER Rule No. 19 —Stop doing what doesn’t work.

Success can become its own trap. The habits, strategies, and mindsets that helped you reach your current level often become blind spots as you grow. Knowing when to stop, take a hard look, and change course is one of the toughest jobs you’ll do as a leader. Don’t call it quitting. Call it knowing when enough is enough.

September 1, 2026

This Master Classes is in development.

Help us build each of the 50 Master Classes, by adding your insights and sharing your entrepreneurial stories.

Class begins Monday, January 4, 2027, with each Rule being built out as we go. Each will contain the study sections listed below and will continue to evolve through your contributions. As business leaders continue to challenge these ideas, the Institute becomes more and more valuable, not because it’s finished, but because it never will be.

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👥 Executive Insights | “Let me tell you how that played out in my company.“

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📚 Recommended Reading

What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There

by Marshall Goldsmith

“The higher you go in the organization, the more your problems are behavioral. The problems that got you to your current level of success are rarely the ones that will get you to the next level.” – Marshall Goldsmith

📘 Book Summary

Marshall Goldsmith’s book is a blunt reminder that the biggest obstacles for successful leaders aren’t skill gaps—they’re behavioral blind spots. Goldsmith lays out the twenty common habits that undermine high achievers: defensiveness, needing to win too much, refusing to apologize, clinging to old methods, or simply ignoring feedback. His point is direct: the behaviors that earned you early success often become liabilities as the stakes rise. Advancement requires self-awareness, humility, and the courage to change the habits that no longer serve you—especially the ones you’re most attached to. The book teaches leaders to confront their own arrogance, listen more than they talk, and deliberately replace ego-driven actions with growth-driven ones.

🔑 Key Executive Takeaway

If you want to reach the next level, you must be willing to shed the behaviors that built the last one. The leaders who stagnate are the ones who refuse to evolve. The ones who rise are those who face their blind spots head-on and let go of the habits that no longer produce results.