Becoming a Better Leader: 2025 Unwrapped
- Kashif Hasan
- 13 minutes ago
- 7 min read
A selection of excerpts from my daily journalling.
I hope you find value.
Day 284 of Becoming a Better Leader
Woke at 4:58am. Not by choice. Couldn’t sleep. Too many ideas.
No caffeine until I’ve read two pages of Marcus Aurelius and reorganised the Trello board for my thought-leadership pipeline.
Planked.
Discipline is everything.
People think running a business is about design. Or code. Or even clients.
They're wrong.
It’s about being the calm in the centre of the chaos you create.
Today, I:
1) Rewrote our entire purpose statement during a cold plunge
2) Told a major brand their tone of voice was “a blocker to innovation”
3) Ate 4 Brazil nuts.
Will we exit? Probably.
But for now, I’m just focused on becoming the kind of founder that people fear not following, or FTPFNF for short.
====
Day 312 of Becoming a Better Leader.
It’s August. I’m on holiday with my family. Technically.
Oysters. Muscadet. The beach is beautiful. My daughters are playing and laughing.
But leadership doesn’t switch off. Even in Speedos.
Started the day with a plank.
Then breath work.
4 Brazil nuts.
Some silent chanting: “sleep, hydration, grit, discipline, forgiveness”.
I've forgiven the last four clients who ghosted our bids. They're on their own journeys. I get that now.
I watched my youngest build a sandcastle today and thought: thats how we scale.
Start with a moat. Construct preposterous ramparts. Fail fast. Rebuild higher.
Later, my eldest handed me a pebble shaped like a heart. Said it was “for when you stop working on your phone, Dadda.”
I skimmed it across the water. Six skips. Nice. She didn’t see.
“Culture eats strategy,” I could almost hear the ocean say to me, as the surf crashed on the sand.
I love my biological family. I really do. They’re my North Star.
Will we exit?
We’re two milestones from a 10X multiplier. That’s all I’m saying.
For now, I’m just trying to become the kind of leader who can shape-shift from dad to CEO as naturally as the tide erases my daughter’s moat.
#DisconnectToReconnect with your #Purpose
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Day 296 of Becoming a Better Leader.
I’ve discovered The Secret.
It’s not sales. Not delivery.
It’s not being a specialist.
It’s not even being any good.
It’s 'positioning'. Apparently.
So, today I commissioned an emergency re-positioning.
Did it feel uncomfortable?
Like being stretched on a rack.
It hurt good.
Now we:
“Activate deep-clarity through a wide-angle lens for brand pioneers navigating purpose with a curious sense of joy... And, AI.”
Feels bold.
Feels good.
Feels… Differentiated.
Tested really well. Internally.
The positioning consultant loved it.
We were almost:
“Service Dogs for Digital Awakening.”
I let it go.
Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.
By Q4 we’ll own our niche.
Nice. Tick.
Today, I:
🫶 Intermittent fasted between workshops
👉 Told a major client that competence is a commodity. It dilutes brand equity
🥳 Qualified out 2 viable leads because they didn’t resonate with new positioning
Will we exit?
Far too soon.
We’ve never been better positioned for growth.
Any advice?
One thing…
Never - ever - forget your: 'why?'.
====
Day 409 of Becoming a Better Leader.
Am I a leader?
Am I a psycho-analyst?
Am I healing?
Yes. Yes. Always.
When clients become hostile I remind them: anger is an expression of fear.
I probe: what is YOUR fear?
Decades-deep trauma haunts them.
Of course it does.
Let’s unpack THAT before we start the QBR.
I'm abundant with the superficial characteristics of empathy.
My cup overflows.
I let them sup.
Heal-first. That's how I lead. Never fails. Not once.
Today, I:
🥗 Ate 45 grams of complex carbs
💪 Planked a personal best
💕 Performed convincing acts of radical vulnerability during the all hands
Will we exit? Vulgar question!
Seems everyone's desperate to believe in something.
That’s why I’m focussed on weaponising ethics.
Best ROI in marketing.
====
Day 327 of Becoming a Better Leader
I asked my Head of Marketing for attribution data.
They said it’s not straightforward.
Nor is a PIP.
Let’s see how that plays out.
Data is king.
So is planking.
Today, I:
👍 Ate a cup of blueberries
🤠 Rewrote every case study as an AI-first exemplar
🫶 Slashed water usage by mandating all Claude prompts after midnight
Will we exit?
If our values are preserved, yes.
That’s why I’m totally focused on building a culture where people feel good about making me feel good about leading them.
====
Day 438 of Becoming a Better Leader
Jeffrey Bezos says: always put your customer first.
Is that enough though?
I go one more. I make them an even higher priority.
Yes.
Of course that sets an impossibly high bar for my team.
But…
Unlike Jeff, I expect them to fail.
Because, failure is learning.
Learning is painful.
As is love.
… I love them.
That's why I want them to wake up terrified they won't fulfil their potential.
Or worse. Let me down.
And it's why I've worked tirelessly to normalise dysfunction.
Remove the 'dys' and what you left with?
Exactly.
Whatever it takes, I do. Great leaders do.
Gaslight my own very heart?
You bet. It’s part of my morning ritual. No better test of grit.
And let's be clear...
.... it takes big swinging sacks of grit to lead a terrified dysfunctional team clinging to the cliff-edge of relevance - pretending AI won't take their jobs.
Today, I:
🧘♂️ Chanted a new personal affirmation: “my calendar is a construct”
💥 Vibe coded digital twins for key middle management roles
🤌 Led an all hands plank on Teams. Cameras on. Mute off.
Will we exit?
In a sense, I already have.
#Failure is a #LoveLanguage
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Day 487 of Becoming a Better Leader
I am a leader.
Not a nanny.
Not a hostage negotiator.
The line between consensus-building and dictatorship can be blurry.
Not for me.
Every new starter is now forced to watch My Octopus Teacher in week 1.
Week 2, I mandate a 90-minute vitamin drip and a heavy dose of probiotics.
I think of this as our sourdough starter.
Only then do we begin onboarding.
Good headspace. Great gut biome.
Ready to launch. Rockets heavy.
Some protest.
That’s your chaff.
Smoked back into the marketplace.
My job is to protect the fragile ecosystem we’ve built.
Like a rainforest tribe, I worry they’ll be corrupted by outsiders and their pathogens.
I run my org like a small-batch kombucha brand.
Symbiotic. Fermented. Volatile.
Today, I:
🧊 Ice-bathed with the Strategy team (all PIPs are done here now.)
💉 Planked while listening to Naval Ravikant at 3x speed.
🌊 Stood waist-deep in cold water and whispered, “The ocean doesn’t care if we launch next sprint.”
Growth is the only leadership metric that matters.
Growth needs an enemy.
Trauma is that enemy.
So I feed it. Like #GutFlora
====
Day 306 of Becoming a Better Leader.
People ask me: where am I going wrong?
So, I tell them.
Don't sell features, sell benefits.
But don't sell benefits, sell 'wow'.
And gift-wrap the 'wow' with well crafted constructive ambiguity.
Followed by a hospital pass to (ideally) a third party on a fixed price (ideally).
You're welcome.
Because decomplexification is my 2nd greatest gift.
My greatest gift? Lies at the intersection of humility and empathy.
That's why I can relate to my team's feelings of underachievement - despite my lived experience.
Sharing my gifts feeds a maternal instinct.
My team suckle happily.
Seeing them fatten up makes me proud (metaphorically).
Today, I:
🥁 Performed a lucid hallucination of my 10 year road map.
🥣 Ate 37 grams of soaked chia seeds
🎐 Planked in the forest
Will we exit?
Q4 is a time to focus on higher priorities - ie - why have we left the Christmas corporate gift strategy too late to do anything about? And who is to blame?
====
Day 524 of Becoming a Better Leader
It’s that time of year again.
When I, as a leader, try to shrug off my messiah complex.
But.
When 50% of the population are below average intelligence... and every conversation feels like an intellectual coin toss…
It’s not easy.
Good.
I despise easy.
Today, I:
🥖 Removed all gluten from the premises
💥 Refactored last year’s resolutions to align with this year’s achievements
🎤 Rehearsed my acceptance speech for 60 Under 60 in Tech (South East England) bc: visualisation = manifestation.
Will we exit?
Please, God.
Please. 🙏
====
Day 502 of Becoming a Better Leader
Stop ideating now!
Not just because it sounds like a toddler slurring “irritating”.
But because good ideas are worthless.
It's the execution that matters.
Want proof?
Imagine a social media app where millions of mediocre people brag about their mediocre achievements - at work.
Awful idea.
And. Yet.
Key takeaway? I think that's obvious.
Corporations are intellectual sewage plants where good ideas are flushed away like watery stools.
The worst bob to the surface, grinning.
Corporations succeed not despite, but because of this.
Just ask the COO. She’s A/B testing the next org chart as we speak.
Today, I:
💥 Banned all brainstorms (hundreds of hours saved - imagine the possibility)
🔫 Ran the all hands with a single slide: Start Executing Bad Ideas Now (SeXBIN)
🎄 Invigilated the client Christmas planking tournament
Until next time.
Namaste.
====
Day 547 of Becoming a Better Leader
What triggers me?
3 things.
🛑 People who try to enter my echo chamber uninvited. As a leader I’m only attracted to those who are attracted to me
🫸 People who don't plank. A weak core is more than a metaphor
🚾 People who say: let's take a 5 minute 'comfort' break, after an hour on a call. I'm afraid it’ll take more than that to comfort me, Hannah.
Today, I:
😋 Ate 4 Brazil nuts
🤮 Planked until I full-body cramped. Then iced myself numb.
🙏 Practiced waiting for people to stop talking before I started talking - what I've started calling: Active Passive Listening
Will we exit?
Ask me in the new year.
Meanwhile...
Good luck wrapping up your tasks, closing those deals and panic buying presents.
Happy holidays!