If you lead from the middle and you're reading this, you don't have time for a long page of acknowledgments. So I'll be brief, as long as you don't confuse my brevity for a lack of depth in appreciation.

Thank you to all the executives, up, down, across (and right in the middle) of so many organizations who contributed to this book by graciously granting interviews, filling out surveys, sitting in focus groups, or allowing me to observe “on the frontlines.” Thank you to all the companies that give me the privilege of keynoting to their executives to share and shape all that I've learned. Thank you to my research partners who help me design studies that unearth real insight. Thank you to the faculty at Indiana University's School of Business for Executive Education, who grace me with staff membership and allow me to leverage my classes with executives as a living learning lab. Thanks to Procter & Gamble, my employer for so many years, which gave me the opportunity to rise in my own way, learning the entire time, from so many, on how it's done in all directions. Thanks to the team at Inc.com, who helped me hone my writing style to one more fit for the busy leader in the middle. Thanks so much to Mike Campbell at Wiley for seeing the potential in this book's idea, and helping me to shape and mold it into the playbook it has become. And as always, a hearty thank‐you to my family members, those I live with and those distant, all of whom I can't live, create, and be inspired without.