The Head of Business Playbook — written from the chair, not about it. Sixteen chapters on the space between getting the keys and your first board review: the culture you inherit, the noise from every direction, hiring for character, the difficult conversation, and the leader you get to become anyway.
You're the only person in the building who owns the P&L, the team and the customer at once — and most of what defines your first year is invisible until you start. This playbook names the unknown and hands you the map: not theory about leadership, but the operator's version, written from inside the job. And if you're preparing for the chair rather than sitting in it yet, every chapter is an answer to an interview question you're about to be asked. Why these exist →
What nobody tells you is waiting — inside the building and outside the door — and every path to the chair, with its strength and its blind spot.
What experienced operators wish they'd known, and the 90-day frame: learn, decide, move — without changing anything structural too soon.
Culture is the sum of what's tolerated. Set the line, hold it upward too, and hire for the things that can't be trained in.
The structure that holds — with a built-in people-decision tool that weighs the cost of acting against the cost of not.
Develop the layer beneath you, and read the pack like an owner — the numbers behind the numbers.
The support structure named, the person who pushes you, and a live commitments tracker that turns intention into review.
In the first year, learning the job while doing it in public.
Preparing for the chair — and the interview that comes first.
Developing the operators who'll run their sites next.
Opens in your browser, sixteen chapters across tabs, with a live commitments tracker and people-decision tool. Nothing to install; works offline on an iPad.
A 25-page print-and-fill PDF for those who think on paper — the reflection prompts, the 90-day frame, and the plan, ready for pen and a quiet hour.
These aren't theory. They're the manual nobody handed me — written from three decades on the dealership floor, one hard-won lesson at a time. The questions worth asking and the answers worth keeping, organised at last, by someone who worked it out the slow way so you don't have to.
This playbook includes a "Working with AI" chapter built on the 4Ds. Want the full method? The free SMART AI guide library builds the judgement — Delegation, Description, Discernment, Diligence — you can carry into any tool.
Explore the free guides →