No Bullsht Leadership

What if leadership wasn’t about charisma, ego, or grand theories—but simply about getting things done? In No Bullsh*t Leadership, advertising executive Chris Hirst argues that effective leadership is far less mystical than we’ve been led to believe. It isn’t reserved for CEOs or military generals, nor does it require a “leadership gene.” Hirst insists that leadership is a craft—a set of learnable, repeatable behaviors built around clarity, decisiveness, and the ability to create environments where others thrive.

Hirst’s message is refreshing: leadership is difficult, but not complicated. We don’t need new jargon or fancier titles; we need everyday people in every sphere—from classrooms to factories to boardrooms—to step up and learn the straightforward principles of leading well. But to do that, we have to strip away the “leadership-industrial complex,” full of consultants and fluff, and focus on what actually drives change: action.

The Case for Everyday Leaders

For Hirst, today’s world doesn’t need more hierarchical managers perched at the top—it needs what he calls everyday leaders. Anyone who has responsibility for others—a team leader, a teacher, a nurse manager, or a volunteer organizer—is leading already. The problem is, few recognize themselves as such because most leadership discourse feels alienating. Leadership isn’t about having the loudest voice; it’s about taking responsibility, setting clear direction, and turning talk into tangible progress. Leadership by consent, not by command, is the new reality of modern organizations.

Cutting Through the Noise

Traditional leadership literature, Hirst warns, has put the idea of leadership on a pedestal. Many books and MBA programs have reduced it to buzzwords—"vision statements," "synergy," "mission alignment"—that cloud rather than clarify. The author’s antidote is to reframe leadership as navigation: moving a group of people from a starting point (A) to a clearly defined destination (B). Once you know where you are and where you’re going, your job is to guide, motivate, and empower your team to get there. Everything else—strategy decks, brainstorming sessions, or culture-building exercises—means little without action.

That pragmatic outlook permeates the whole book. Hirst encourages bias toward momentum over perfection, simplicity over jargon, and humanity over hierarchy. Instead of waiting for the perfect strategy, a good leader decides fast, acts fast, and learns fast. He draws from dozens of examples—from IBM’s 1990s turnaround under Lou Gerstner to England’s 2018 World Cup penalty shootout triumph—to show that effective leadership thrives under pressure when clarity and execution trump complexity.

A Blueprint for Action-Oriented Leadership

Across eight concise chapters, Hirst constructs a roadmap for results-driven, human-centered leadership. He begins by dismantling the myth of the "born leader" (Chapter 1), then defines the purpose of leadership as a simple journey from present state to desired future (Chapter 2). From there, he dives into decisive execution (Chapter 3), demonstrating that leadership is the art of getting things done—and that doing beats endless planning every time. Chapters 4 and 5 explore how to build winning cultures and attract the right people, while Chapter 6 focuses on endurance—leading requires both energy and resilience. Chapter 7, “Leading Yourself,” is a deep reflection on how leaders can sustain themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally, rejecting the glorification of burnout. Finally, Chapter 8 translates these lessons into the art of leading change.

Why It Matters Now

In a time of constant disruption—political divides, digital transformation, and workplace evolution—Hirst’s message feels urgent. Leadership has been mystified into paralysis; people are too afraid of being wrong to act decisively. His framework remakes leadership into something accessible and actionable: know yourself, decide quickly, support your people, and keep moving forward. “Leadership,” he writes, “is the art of getting stuff done.” It’s messy, imperfect, and full of mistakes—but it’s also deeply human.

By demystifying leadership, Hirst democratizes it. He tells readers that you don’t have to wait until you’re promoted or perfect to lead. You just have to start—today—with clarity, courage, and care for those around you. As he concludes, the growing good of the world depends on everyday leaders—ordinary people who choose to act, improve, and persist, even when no spotlight shines on them. No bullsh*t required.

At the heart of Hirst’s philosophy lies one blunt mantra: leadership is about getting stuff done. It’s not about charisma, vision decks, or eloquent speeches—it’s about execution. He compares leadership to navigating from point A to point B; everyone can plan the route, but only those who take decisive steps move forward. The problem with many organizations, he argues, is that they value talking over doing. They produce elegant PowerPoint strategies that never leave the shelf.

Action as the Amplifier of Everything Else

Hirst introduces what he jokingly calls the Leadership Impact Equation: (objectives + strategy + team + values + motivation) × (action). The math is clear—if your action equals zero, your impact is zero. Many organizations, he notes, spend all their time “to the left of the x”—crafting values statements, revising strategies, and attending meetings—without multiplying those intentions through execution. Therefore, a leader’s first job is to create momentum. Even imperfect progress beats perfect stagnation.

Peter Drucker’s famous dictum—“strategy is just work”—echoes through the book. Planning matters, yes, but work only counts when it’s enacted. Lou Gerstner’s turnaround of IBM in 1993 provides a striking illustration: at the time, IBM had dozens of competing strategies but no unified action. Gerstner cut through the noise, told his team they didn’t need “another strategy,” and focused on one thing: doing. This pragmatic decisiveness saved the company from collapse.

Reframing Decision-Making

Getting stuff done requires making decisions even when the data isn’t perfect. Hirst borrows U.S. General Colin Powell’s 40/70 Rule: act when you have between 40% and 70% of the information you’d like. Below 40%, it’s too little; above 70%, you’ve waited too long. In a world obsessed with risk minimization, this rule is liberating—it reframes leadership as the courage to act amidst uncertainty. It’s better to make a few quick decisions and adjust than to drown in indecision.

“The most wrong you can be,” Hirst writes, “is to not take decisions at all.”

Managing Mistakes and Building a Culture of Learning

Mistakes are inevitable—but inaction is deadly. Great teams, Hirst writes, don’t fear failure; they fear stagnation. He uses an anecdote from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier: when an engineer reported losing a small tool that stopped all flight operations for 24 hours, he expected punishment. Instead, the captain publicly praised his honesty, reinforcing trust and safety across the crew. By rewarding integrity over blame, he strengthened the system. That’s what Hirst calls real culture change through behavior—turning failure into progress.

Checklists and Meeting Discipline

Hirst endorses simple tools to keep action consistent. Inspired by surgeon Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto, he advocates for nine-item checklists to ensure baseline performance under stress. He also rails against the “tyranny of middle-management meetings,” urging leaders to run short, purposeful meetings where decisions get made—not delayed. Start on time, finish on time, assign ownership, and follow up relentlessly. Musk might advise walking out of bad meetings; Hirst’s version is simpler: fix them into engines of progress.

In essence, No Bullsh*t Leadership reorients leadership around movement. Planning matters. Thought matters. But in the end, progress is measured by what you get done—not what you say. In a stagnant culture, people wait for permission. In a healthy one, they act, decide, and learn. That, Hirst says, is how leaders multiply impact.

If execution is leadership’s engine, culture is its fuel. Hirst defines culture simply as the environment the leader creates to help her team outperform. Unlike brands or products, culture can’t be copied—it’s the hardest and most enduring competitive advantage an organization can have. Yet, many leaders confuse culture with corporate buzzwords. Enron, he reminds us, had “integrity” emblazoned on its lobby walls.

Culture Is Behavior, Not Words

Hirst argues that culture isn’t defined by framed values but by how people act every day—especially leaders. The only reliable culture audit is to ask someone in the hallway: “What do you have to do to get on here?” The answer reveals the organization’s true code. If the gap between proclaimed values and lived behavior is wide, cynicism festers. Thus, the only way to fix culture is through leadership behavior.

He warns against “parent–child” cultures—top-down, rule-heavy environments where people wait to be told what to do. These systems breed dependency and inhibit performance. The antidote is adult-to-adult culture, where leaders trust people’s judgment. He cites two powerful examples: the retailer Nordstrom’s employee “rulebook” (a single line: “Use your best judgment in all situations”) and Timpson’s chain of UK shoe repair shops, which scrapped manuals and empowered local employees to make decisions. Both thrived by liberating their teams from bureaucracy.

Changing Culture Means Smashing Concrete

Cultural change, Hirst explains, is like re-pouring concrete—it sets fast and hard. To reset culture, you must take visible, emotional, physical action. Layout changes, seating plans, meeting structures—all signal that something new is happening. When Hirst took over a failing advertising agency, he literally tore down offices, scrapped private desks, and sat people by clients instead of by department. On Monday, the place felt different. That emotional shock cracked the “cultural concrete.”

Totems: Small Rituals, Big Meaning

Borrowing from Sir Clive Woodward’s Olympic “hand sanitizer rule,” Hirst emphasizes totems: tangible, repeatable practices that reinforce desired behaviors. For Team GB, mandatory handwashing before entering rooms wasn’t hygiene alone—it became a symbol of shared accountability and excellence. For Hirst’s agency, open seating became a totem of collaboration. Symbols become daily reminders of culture, more powerful than slogans.

Ultimately, culture isn’t cute—it’s competitive. It amplifies decision speed, builds trust, and makes people want to stay. As Peter Drucker warned, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Hirst’s twist? Strategy only matters if culture gives it legs. Building one demands not another offsite meeting but daily, lived behavior consistent with the story you tell. Culture is leadership made visible.

Leaders lead people, not spreadsheets. But to do that well, they must assemble—and prune—the right team. Hirst frames this with one brutally simple question: “How good are you for the careers of the people who work for you?”

The best leaders, he says, attract and retain ambitious people because working for them is an accelerator to personal success. They intentionally align the team’s goals with individual ambitions so everyone wins together. When people feel their leader helps them grow, loyalty, performance, and innovation soar.

Diverse Teams Win

Hirst insists that diversity isn’t a moral add-on—it’s a performance multiplier. Diverse teams, he notes (echoing McKinsey’s 2015 report), outperform homogeneous ones by 35%. But this requires inclusion—the freedom to speak up without fear. Echoing Mike Brearley’s cricket teams and Niall Ferguson’s networks, he describes effective teams as ecosystems combining “stolid professionals and maverick playmakers.” The best leaders balance personalities, ensuring mavericks are valued but aligned to shared goals.

Tough Love: Removing the Wrong People

Inspired by Jack Welch’s model, Hirst acknowledges a sensitive truth: sometimes progress means letting go. Teams can’t flourish if “Jakes”—capable but toxic performers—derail culture. Keeping them signals hypocrisy to everyone else. When leaders remove blockers, morale improves instantly. As Hirst notes, “a principle is only a principle if it costs you money.” Upholding cultural integrity may hurt short-term, but it builds long-term trust.

Conversations and Gratitude

Alongside the hard stuff, Hirst reminds leaders not to forget the easy conversations—praise, thanks, and recognition. Positive feedback is the catalyst for engagement; Jack Welch famously wrote hand-signed thank-you notes across continents, and people kept them for decades. A simple “well done” can do more for motivation than a bonus meeting. Ultimately, leadership is a balance between hard honesty and human warmth.

Energy is leadership’s currency. Hirst likens leadership to “hill-climbing”: grueling, continuous, and uphill all the way. To lead others, you must have the stamina to climb longer and stay upright when others fall. In this chapter, he explores resilience not as a cliché but as a tangible, trainable skill—mental endurance paired with emotional calibration.

Hard Work, Not Heroics

Referencing Ashton Kutcher’s unlikely wisdom—“opportunities look a lot like work”—Hirst crushes the myth of effortless genius. He cites sociologist Daniel Chambliss’s study of elite swimmers, who coined the phrase “the mundanity of excellence.” Top performers aren’t superhuman; they just execute small tasks consistently well. Great leadership, the study showed, comes from loving the craft, not chasing results—a point echoing Angela Duckworth’s notion of grit.

Radiators, Not Drains

Energy is contagious. Hirst divides teammates into “radiators” who lift the room and “drains” who suck energy dry. Whenever possible, surround yourself with radiators—and be one yourself. Maintain your composure even when things collapse; your steadiness sets the team’s emotional thermostat. You don’t have to be a cheerleader, but you can’t afford to be volatile. Leadership means showing up like the “Duracell bunny,” still beating the drum after others stop.

Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

Failures, Hirst insists, are non-negotiable parts of progress. From his early career misfires to sports analogies like Stan Wawrinka’s “Ever tried. Ever failed. Fail better,” he reminds readers that resilience is learned through scars. Will Smith’s treadmill metaphor—“I’ll die before I get off first”—captures the gritty persistence of true leadership. Resilience isn’t macho; it’s simply the capacity to stay moving when quitting would be easier.

Leading isn’t about infinite energy; it’s about managing it wisely, replenishing it often, and transmitting it to others when they falter. The resilient leader isn’t superhuman—they’re sustainable.

Chapter 7, “Leading Yourself,” is the heart of Hirst’s philosophy—and his subtle rebellion against the cult of “always-on” leadership. “The successful leader,” he writes, “must be a selfish leader.” Not selfish in ego, but selfish in self-care: knowing that you can’t lead others if you’re broken or burned out yourself.

Know Thyself and Prioritize You

Socrates’ ancient advice anchors this chapter: “Know thyself.” Hirst urges leaders to manage their energy with the same vigilance they manage projects. “Nobody cares about your career as much as you,” he says—so don’t outsource your well-being. Set boundaries, rest, and recognize that presenteeism—the habit of being seen rather than effective—is toxic. Your team follows your example: if you work absurd hours, so will they. Culture starts with what the leader normalizes.

Stoicism, Self-Doubt, and Control

Drawing on Marcus Aurelius and Stoic philosophy, Hirst reframes emotional control as a leadership superpower. External chaos is inevitable, but your response is within your control. He quotes Aurelius: “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed.” Hirst complements this with the story of tennis player Johanna Konta, whose breakthrough came when coach Juan Coto taught her to focus only on controllables—effort and attitude. Konta soared from world rank 146 to top 10 in sixteen months. Leaders, too, must “trust their process” and avoid emotional overinvestment in what they can’t control.

Vulnerability and Wholeness

Hirst confesses, “I’m an insecure leader.” Self-doubt, he argues, isn’t a flaw—it’s a feature. It keeps you open-minded and humble. Referencing Brené Brown’s research, he highlights vulnerability as a true measure of courage. His client “Kat,” a brilliant and openly vulnerable leader, succeeded not by hiding fears but by sharing them. That authenticity built lasting trust and allowed her teams to flourish. “Vulnerability,” Hirst concludes, “isn’t weakness; it’s the birthplace of change.”

Live a Whole Life

Finally, Hirst insists leadership is only one part of a full human life. Like a Trivial Pursuit piece, we need all segments—family, hobbies, learning, rest. Churchill painted; Hirst took part in the Energy Project, a program measuring well-being across physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. His takeaway: leadership excellence isn’t a sprint—it’s a full-body, lifelong process. If you don’t nurture the “other yous,” the leader-you collapses.

“You can’t lead well by only working at leading.”

Leadership, stripped of mystique, begins with mindful self-leadership: prioritizing your health, balance, clarity, and humility. Take care of yourself if you ever hope to take care of others.

Change, Hirst argues, is leadership’s ultimate test. It’s easy to manage when things go right; it’s heroic to lead when things fall apart. His framework for transformation, built from turning around broken organizations, blends blunt realism with methodical hope: you can’t fix what you don’t confront, and you can’t transform without relentless action.

The Ten Steps of No Bullsh*t Change

• 1. Look, Listen, Learn. Diagnose with humility. Walk the floors, talk to staff, and apply Hirst’s “Reception Test”—you can gauge an organization’s health by its lobby energy.
• 2. Define Your Objective and First Five. Like a commando unit, recruit your first five believers who will champion your cause before others do.
• 3. Create Belief. People don’t resist change; they resist disbelief that change is possible. Early wins build credibility.
• 4. Make It Personal. Show how change benefits individuals, not just the company.
• 5. Speak Truth to Power. Honesty beats spin. Hirst says, “A leader’s job isn’t to be liked; it’s to be believed.”
• 6. Focus (Schwerpunkt). Borrowed from Clausewitz, focus your team’s energy on one point of maximum effect.
• 7. Decide What to Stop Doing. Quoting Warren Buffett, he warns that success often means ruthless subtraction.
• 8. Hunt Marginal Gains. Inspired by Team GB cycling, pursue tiny improvements relentlessly—they compound.
• 9. Be Consistent. Align words, actions, and totems to give coherence.
• 10. Prepare for the Long Haul. Transformation takes years, not months. Leaders must maintain patience as well as urgency.

These steps form a playbook for what Hirst calls “action squared.” When organizations stall, their problem isn’t ignorance—it’s inertia. A leader’s job is not to inspire perfection but to break the post anchoring the team to the ground and create movement—even messy, imperfect progress.

In the end, he brings readers back to his timeless refrain: leadership is navigation. Change isn’t about new slogans; it’s about shoulders to the wheel, daily decisions, visible courage, and unrelenting momentum. As Dr. Seuss quipped in a quote closing the chapter: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”