When the ground shifts under a business leader's feet, the temptation is to look for new tactics. The best leaders look for something else first: their values. Carl Anderson's 1997 values-based leadership framework gives executives a disciplined way to identify their non-negotiable principles, translate them into values, and examine the leadership philosophy they are actually operating from, before the next hard decision lands.

You rarely turn to the children's section for business insight. But reading The Velveteen Rabbit to my daughter this week, the Skin Horse's monologue about becoming 'Real' stopped me cold — and it reframed everything I've been thinking about this summer. Not about scaling businesses. About what we owe each other. Whether to duck and cover or jump into the current. As for me and my house, we're paddling like mad.