The works behind every gslk tool.
gslk is not a collection of advice. Every feature implements a specific, named work — with an author, a date and a source. The library runs from Sun Tzu and Xenophon to Ostrom and Edmondson, and every page ends the same way: what your club can do this week.
The honesty rule: where a model is contested, widely taught but weakly evidenced, or its instrument is commercially licensed, each page says so plainly. No claim here is stronger than its source allows, and every page states whether its primary source is in the public domain.
Every work grounds one or more of the ten gslk competency domains. Pick a domain to see who wrote about it — from antiquity to this century.
Leadership and character
Leading begins with a person who can first run themselves. The Stoics, Sun Tzu and modern behavioural models — on what a leader DOES rather than what a leader is.
How an organisation is built
How a group of people becomes an institution that runs without its founder: span of control, functions, rules, the authority a subordinate grants, and handover to the next generation.
Polybius' mixed constitution: why good organisations decay with nobody to blame
The first generation earns its authority; the second is born holding it. The wheel starts turning down at the second.
Katz: the three skills of an administrator
Three skills — technical, people, big picture — and the mix changes as you rise.
Strategy and choice
Seeing the situation as it actually is, and choosing what you will NOT do. From Machiavelli and Clausewitz to Porter and Rumelt.
The Prince: power as it actually is
Not a handbook of cynicism but a demand to look honestly: first see who actually holds power, only then decide what to do.
Clausewitz: friction, uncertainty, and a purpose set from outside
The gap between the plan and the execution is made by friction — the small things no plan ever counts. And no means can state its own purpose: that is always set from outside it.
Porter's five forces and the choice of position
Five forces shape profitability, and rivals are only one of them. Strategy begins when you choose what you will NOT be.
Mintzberg: a plan is not a strategy
Most strategy forms while you act, and only afterwards does somebody write it down. A written plan does not mean a strategy exists.
Rumelt: the kernel, and the signs of bad strategy
Strategy is not a list of goals. It has three parts: diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent action. Without a diagnosis, it is a wish list.
Brand and value
What someone thinks of you when you are not in the room — and how that is grown on a zero budget. It is the same model this platform's own research measures.
Brand Equity: The Five Assets
There is no money for advertising, yet a club already owns all five brand assets and bought none of them. Aaker names them, and a named thing is something you can actually protect.
Marketing Myopia
The railroads decided they were in the railroad business. While they thought that, their passengers moved to cars and planes.
Impact and responsibility
Who besides your own club is better off — and to whom the organisation answers. From Cicero on duty to stakeholders and sustainability.
The same work written for a member: what to do with it in the club.