There is a quiet recalibration happening in boardrooms, strategy sessions, and senior hiring decisions that has not yet been named clearly enough. The floor on output quality is rising. A well-structured analysis, a coherent market assessment, a clearly argued strategic recommendation; these used to signal something about the person who produced…

I trained to be a professional tennis player. That's not the career trajectory that led me here, but it shaped almost everything about how I work. I wasn't the most talented player on the court. I knew that early, and so did my coach. The question was what to do with that information. I could have adjusted my ambitions, found a comfortable…