The Ladder Question
Most people don't fail because they lack capability. They fail because they never decide what truly matters.
I spent four decades being capable. Building things, leading teams, hitting numbers. I was good at it. But capability without direction is just motion. You can be exceptionally good at climbing a ladder that is leaning against the wrong wall.
The biggest shift in my life was not changing careers or countries — though I did both. It was moving from achievement to intention. From asking "what can I accomplish?" to asking "what actually matters to me, and am I building toward it?"
That shift does not come naturally. We are wired for achievement. Trained from school onwards to measure progress by output — grades, promotions, revenue, titles. Nobody sits you down at forty and asks whether the thing you have been optimising for is actually what you want.
So we spend decades climbing ladders. And then one day — through loss, or a health scare, or just a quiet moment when the noise stops — we ask the question we should have been asking all along.
Not "how high?"
But "why this ladder?"
That is the question Intention is built around. Not as a philosophical exercise. As a practical one. Because when you get clear on what truly matters, everything else — the performance, the leadership, the relationships — follows from that clarity.
The Wrong Fuel
The leaders I work with are not struggling with performance. They are struggling with everything around it.
Good at their jobs. Often exceptional. But the job has become the whole life. Family, health, fitness, time for themselves — not gone, just permanently last on the list. And they have been telling themselves that is just how it is at this level.
It is not.
What I see when people start doing this work is straightforward. They get clarity. Not about their strategy or their next career move. About what actually matters to them and whether they are living anywhere close to it.
That sounds simple. It is not easy. Most of us have not stopped long enough to ask the question honestly.
But when people do — something shifts. The noise reduces. Decisions get easier. They start showing up differently at home and at work. And here is the part that surprises most of them: the performance at work gets better too. Not because they pushed harder. Because they stopped running on the wrong fuel.
That is what Intention is built around. Not productivity. Not another framework. Just the idea that when you start living deliberately — when you take full ownership of your health, your relationships, your sense of purpose — everything else improves with it.
I am still building this programme. Deliberately and in public. If you are curious about being part of the first cohort, get in touch or follow along through the newsletter.
The Question I Could Not Stop Asking
I came home to Ireland thinking it would take a few months to settle back. It took considerably longer.
I launched into work almost immediately — SalesCraft, UpAGear, familiar territory. What I knew, what I had always done. It felt safe and logical. What I did not do was stop and ask the more honest question: what do I actually want to build, and what do I genuinely have to offer?
For most of my career I was the person in the room who looked like they had it together. CRO of a global organisation, leading teams across continents, hitting targets. From the outside it looked like confidence and clarity. From the inside it was something different — constant pressure, a quiet anxiety that never fully switched off, and a sense that no matter what we achieved it was never quite enough. I was not 100% enjoying my life. I knew it but I kept moving anyway.
It took losing someone I loved to really make that land. Grief has a way of cutting through everything that is not essential and asking you what you are actually doing with the time you have.
I started paying attention differently after that. To my health, my energy, my sense of purpose. Fitness had slipped badly since returning to Ireland — it always does when the foundations are off. Getting fit again became the first intentional act. The catalyst for everything that followed.
Then earlier this year a health scare stopped me in my tracks. It turned out to be nothing. But it could have been something serious, and in the days when I did not know that, I found myself sitting with some very direct questions about how I had been living and whether I was building something that actually mattered to me.
The products were good. But I knew I had more to give. A different kind of contribution. Something rooted in the whole story — not just the commercial career but everything underneath it.
That is what Intention is. Not a programme I designed from a textbook. Something I built from the inside out — from the questions I could not stop asking myself.
If you are somewhere in that same territory — performing well by most measures, but sensing something important is still missing — you are exactly who I am building this for.
Your Team Has Talent. It Needs Alignment.
Teams can be busy all day.
That doesn’t mean they’re moving in the same direction.
I’ve seen it too many times over the years.
Good people. Strong teams. Capable leaders.
And still… results aren’t where they should be.
For a long time, I thought it came down to talent.
It rarely does.
What you usually see instead is this quiet misalignment.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing obviously broken.
Just small things.
Priorities don’t quite match.
Messages get interpreted differently.
Conversations don’t happen when they should.
Everyone is working.
But not everyone is moving in the same direction.
That’s where things slow down.
Targets get missed, but not by much.
Deals stall, but no one can quite say why.
Decisions take longer than they should.
Individually, none of it looks like a big issue.
Collectively, it drags performance down.
The teams I work with don’t lack effort.
They don’t lack ability.
What they lack is clarity.
And that’s the difference.
Alignment isn’t about getting everyone to agree on everything.
It’s about being clear.
Clear on what matters.
Clear on what’s expected.
Clear on what happens next.
When that’s there, things change quickly.
Execution sharpens.
Conversations get more direct.
Decisions happen faster.
Not because people suddenly improve.
But because the noise is removed.
And when the noise is gone, performance follows.
If this sounds familiar, don’t jump straight to more activity.
Step back and look at how your team is actually operating.
The Nod
I was in a small village pub a few weeks ago. Tuesday night. Not exactly peak hours.
The place was full.
I found a seat at the bar and watched.
Behind the counter was a father and his son. The father — mid-sixties, steady hands, decades in the trade — was pulling pints and talking to the regulars like he’d known them forever. The son — maybe mid-thirties — was moving between tables, taking orders, clearing plates, checking on the younger crowd in the corner.
They barely spoke to each other.
A nod.
A glance.
A shift of weight.
The father would finish a Guinness and, without looking up, the son was already there to take it to table seven. Someone’s glass dipped low and one of them was moving before the customer noticed. A plate landed on the counter and disappeared again before it had time to cool.
No instructions.
No correction.
No “can you grab that?”
They just moved.
Not fast in a frantic way. Not rushed. Just certain.
You could tell they’d done this together for years.
It wasn’t efficiency.
It was familiarity.
There’s something different about people who’ve stood side by side long enough to trust the silence. You don’t need to narrate what you’re doing. You don’t need to defend your decisions. You don’t even need to explain the next step.
You just know.
Watching them, I realised how rare that is.
In most environments now, everything is verbalised. Processed. Structured. Documented. Measured. We talk about communication as if more words equal better connection.
But those two behind the bar said almost nothing.
And nothing was missed.
There was pride in it too. Not showy pride. Quiet pride. The kind that comes from doing something well for a long time.
It struck me that trust doesn’t always look dramatic.
Sometimes it looks like a father finishing a pint and a son already moving before the glass leaves his hand.
Sometimes it looks like not having to say anything at all.
I left before closing time.
They were still moving the same way when I walked out.
From the Desert to the Sea
I grew up in Donegal dreaming of the sun.
Not a good summer. Not a lucky week.
Real sun. Heat. Blue skies that stayed.
At the time, it felt a long way away.
Because it was. Donegal gives you a lot — resilience, perspective, a sense of place.
But 365 days of sunshine isn’t one of them.
Still, the idea stayed with me.
Years later, I had a choice. I’d built a career, moved countries, taken chances.
And at some point, I realised something simple: I didn’t have to wonder anymore where I might live.
I could decide.
So I left Chicago and moved to California — the Coachella Valley. Right in the middle of the desert.
That first summer? 50 degrees.
You don’t forget heat like that. It’s not just warm — it’s something you respect.
But there was something else too.
The light.
The consistency.
The predictability.
Autumn, winter, spring — incredible.
Warm days, cooler evenings. A rhythm you could rely on.
For a while, it felt like I’d found exactly what I’d been looking for.
And then, quietly, something shifted.
Because even in all that sun, I found myself thinking about something else.
The sea.
Movement. Air. Space.
I’d sit outside in the evenings and think about what it would be like to wake up and see the water instead.
Funny how that works.
You get what you thought you wanted — and then you realise there’s more to it.
Then it was time to come home.
After decades abroad, we moved back to Ireland. And somehow, we ended up in Blackrock.
Right on the sea. Now I wake up and look out at the water.
It changes every day.
Calm, rough, clear, grey.
Nothing like the desert. And yet, in a strange way, exactly right.
Looking back, none of it was accidental.
Donegal to Scotland.
Scotland to the US.
Chicago to California.
The desert to the sea.
At every stage, there was a decision.
Not always easy.
Not always clear.
But mine to make.
That’s the part people don’t always see.
From the outside, it can look like luck. Timing. Opportunity.
But at some point, you take responsibility.
For where you go.
For what you build.
For the direction your life takes.
Early in my sales career, I believed — without really knowing how — that one day I’d lead a global sales team.
No roadmap. No guarantees.
But I believed it anyway.
And over time, it happened.
Not by accident.
By decisions.
By backing myself when there was no obvious path.
The same applies to how you live your life. You don’t need every answer.
But you do need to take responsibility for it.
Because no one else will.
I dreamed of the sun.
I lived in the desert.
Now I wake up beside the sea.
Different places. Different chapters.
Same idea.
You don’t wait for life to happen.
You take responsibility — and then you move.
Didn’t Miss This One
Talking to my brother Eunan recently, I realised something.
I haven’t been back to Davy Brennan Memorial Park since I came home.
Not yet.
I played there countless times before I left Ireland 38 years ago. blue and white with Naomh Conaill. I also wore the green and gold with Donegal at under-16 and minor.
In Ireland, pulling on a county jersey isn’t just sport.
It’s identity.
You’re not just representing yourself.
You’re representing your place.
That was another life.
Since then, I’ve led global teams. Sat in boardrooms. Measured performance in revenue, targets, P&L. Built something on the other side of the world.
The boy who ran onto that pitch in blue and white feels distant now.
And then Naomh Conaill made another county final.
Their 13th since 2003. Seven wins already. I’d missed every one of them.
Thirty-eight years abroad means you miss things. Not just matches. Weddings. Funerals. Birthdays. The ordinary moments that quietly matter.
But this time I was home.
October 2025. O’Donnell Park. Two finals. Senior and reserve. Back to back.
I’d walked through those gates before.
September 1978. Sixteen years old. Donegal U16 versus Dublin. Green and gold on my back.
Forty-six years later, I walked through them again.
Not as a player.
As someone who had been away long enough to wonder if he still belonged.
The answer came quickly.
A hand on the shoulder.
“McGlinchey, is that you?”
A laugh I hadn’t heard in decades.
“Jesus, look who’s back.”
Faces older. Hair thinner. But the feeling was immediate.
You don’t realise how much you’ve missed something until you’re standing in the middle of it again.
We stood there for over four hours.
Two games.
Two wins.
The second final whistle — our 8th senior county title — the roar wasn’t just noise.
It was release.
It was pride.
It was the sound of people who’ve stood beside each other for years, believing together.
And I was there.
Not watching from across an ocean.
There.
A few weeks later, Ulster quarter-final. We lost.
It stung.
But not the way losses used to sting.
Because this time it wasn’t about the result.
It was about presence.
About not missing it.
About standing shoulder to shoulder with people who knew me long before job titles and travel schedules and airport lounges.
I talk now about alignment. About teams. About trust.
But none of that started in a boardroom.
It started on that pitch.
Learning to move together. To back each other. To take a hit and get up because someone beside you expected it.
Standing in O’Donnell Park, not playing but watching, I realised something simple.
Success changes.
Belonging doesn’t.
The jerseys I wore are long gone.
But what they built in me isn’t.
I’ll go back to Davy Brennan Memorial Park one day.
I know it’ll hit harder than I expect.
That’s where it started.
For now, it was enough to walk through those gates in Letterkenny and realise something I hadn’t fully admitted to myself:
I didn’t miss this one.
Narin
There’s a beach near where I grew up in Donegal — Narin and Portnoo.
No towering cliffs. No drama.
Just miles of golden sand, the Atlantic rolling in steady and cold, and Inishkeel island sitting just offshore — close enough to walk to when the tide pulls back.
It’s not loud beauty.
It’s open. Wide. Honest.
When I go back now, I walk it.
At first it was practical. Stretch the legs after a flight. Get air into the lungs. Shake off the travel.
But somewhere along the way, it became something else.
It became the place where I couldn’t hide behind pace.
For most of my career — Scotland for 26 years, the US for 12, and a lot of airports in between — I’ve operated at speed.
Decisions with consequences. Targets that mattered. Teams relying on clarity. You don’t survive in that environment by hesitating. You survive by leaning forward. By anticipating. By acting early.
That rhythm shapes you.
It becomes normal to move.
Then you stand on a stretch of sand that doesn’t move for you.
The tide comes in.
The tide goes out.
Inishkeel appears. Then disappears again.
No urgency. No reaction to you.
And you realise something.
Not that you’re obsessed with control.
But that you’re deeply wired for momentum.
When my calendar emptied after moving home, I wasn’t anxious.
I was unsettled.
There was no friction. No immediate demand.
My instinct wasn’t to rest.
It was to create movement.
What’s next?
What can I build?
Where’s the edge?
That instinct built my career. It helped me lead. It helped me grow businesses. I’m not disowning it.
But standing on that beach, with nothing requiring anything from me, I felt how constant forward motion can narrow you.
When you’re always pushing ahead, you can miss what’s already there.
You miss the pause in someone’s voice.
You miss the quiet disagreement.
You miss the moment because you’re already shaping the outcome.
The ocean doesn’t shape outcomes.
It just moves in its own time.
And walking there, tide out, crossing to Inishkeel on wet sand that will disappear in a few hours, I’m reminded of something I’m still learning:
Not everything needs accelerating.
Not everything needs improving.
Some things just need noticing.
Strip away the targets. The meetings. The noise.
Who are you then?
I’m still answering that.
But I know this — standing on that beach, with nothing to optimise, feels different.
And different, at this stage of life, might be exactly what I need.
All or Nothing
I don’t do moderation.
Never really have.
If I’m in, I’m all in. If I’m out, I’m gone.
For the past two years, I was gone.
Not once in the gym.
I went from five days a week — structured, disciplined, consistent — to nothing at all. No tapering off. No “I’ll just keep it ticking over.” Just stopped.
The move home. The disruption. The reset. I let the routine break.
And when I let something break, I tend not to half-break it.
The weight came on.
A lot of it.
I’m not proud of that. But I understand it. This is how I operate. When the switch is off, it’s off.
Now I’m back.
There’s a gym in the building in Blackrock. No commute. No excuse. So it’s five days a week again. Sometimes six.
First week back, I tried to lift like I’d never left.
Bad idea.
Two years off is two years off. The bar doesn’t care about your past discipline. The lungs don’t care about your former pace.
My trainer just shakes his head. He knows the pattern.
He knows I’ll show up.
He also knows I’ll try to compress two years into two months if he doesn’t rein me in.
Here’s the thing about being all or nothing.
It builds things.
It built my career. It drove the long hours. The travel. The standards. The refusal to drift. When I committed, I committed completely. That intensity creates momentum. It creates results.
It also means that when I step away, I don’t step back gradually. I drop it.
There isn’t much middle ground in me.
I’ve tried to manufacture it before. “Balance.” “Moderation.” It sounds sensible. It sounds healthy.
It’s not natural to me.
What is natural is commitment.
Right now, the switch is on again.
Five days.
Sometimes six.
Sore most mornings.
Trainer still shaking his head.
Not because I’ve found equilibrium.
Because I’ve chosen direction.
There’s risk in being wired this way. You can burn too hot. You can disappear entirely when the focus shifts.
But there’s power in it too.
All or nothing isn’t always wise.
But it’s honest.
And at this stage of my life, I’d rather work with the wiring than pretend I’m built differently.
AI Scales Activity. Leaders Scale Revenue.
AI will scale activity.
But activity has never really been the hard part.
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere right now. Every conference, every boardroom conversation, every strategy discussion seems to circle back to the same idea: AI will transform sales.
And it probably will.
Just not in the way most people think.
When people talk about AI in sales, the conversation usually drifts quickly to productivity. How many emails can be generated. How quickly research can be done. How many prospects can be identified in seconds. All of that is impressive, and it’s getting better by the month.
But when I look at it through the lens of someone who has spent most of his career building and leading sales organisations, I see something slightly different.
AI is going to scale activity.
Sales teams have always been able to increase activity. More calls, more emails, more outreach, more follow-ups. You can always find ways to do more. In fact, many organisations have spent years trying to engineer exactly that.
But doing more has never automatically meant achieving more.
Revenue doesn’t come from activity alone. It comes from direction.
Who you choose to engage with.
Which problems you decide are worth solving.
When you step into a conversation — and sometimes when you don’t.
Those are not technical decisions. They’re leadership decisions.
AI can generate thousands of potential leads in seconds. It can analyse conversations and highlight patterns. It can help people move faster.
But it can’t tell you which markets matter most right now. It can’t replace the judgment that comes from years of experience sitting across the table from customers.
Technology can help people move faster.
It just can’t tell them where to go.
And that’s where leadership becomes even more important, not less.
In fact, the more powerful these tools become, the more important human judgment becomes. Because if everyone suddenly has access to the same technology, the real advantage moves somewhere else.
It moves to clarity.
To knowing where to focus.
To understanding the problems that genuinely matter to customers.
To helping teams spend their time in the right places rather than simply more places.
There is another side effect coming as well. AI is about to dramatically increase the amount of sales activity happening everywhere. More emails, more outreach, more messages that appear personalised but often aren’t.
When that happens, the organisations that stand out won’t necessarily be the ones generating the most activity.
They’ll be the ones generating the right activity.
The real opportunity with AI isn’t replacing people. It’s freeing them. Freeing them from some of the repetitive work that eats up time. Freeing them to spend more time understanding customers, building trust, and helping organisations make better decisions.
That’s where revenue has always been created.
AI will scale activity.
Leaders still scale revenue.