Commoncog This Week
This week's Commoncog case is members-only, even though the analysis is free; next week's piece will be free.
Actually Effective Corporate Leadership Training (free), The Leadership Corridor: How James Kilts Built Leaders at Gillette (case; members-only) — This week's case is about a remarkable executive training program, one that has had a long history of producing a deep bench of future CEOs.
We last met Jim Kilts in The Only Thing That Matters, which referenced the case The Fast Track Quick Screen Elimination Process: Jim Kilts at Gillette. That case covered the first few months of Kilts's turnaround at Gillette, when he took over as CEO at the behest of legendary investor Warren Buffett.
There was one other thing that I found remarkable about Kilts: he was very proud of his track record producing a deep bench of executive talent, many of whom moved on to leadership roles in other companies in the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) business. And he had done so at three different companies where he'd been CEO.
This is, to be clear, not normal. If you read a lot of business biography, you'd realise that the norm is more like 'succession crisis' and less like 'a deep bench of talent suddenly emerges in every company you touch'. Many — if not most — large companies struggle to produce even one capable successor. Kilts has produced — literally — dozens.
It turns out that Kilts didn't invent the training approach he used — instead, he stole it from Kraft, who had developed it over the course of the 80s. (Arguably, Kilts was himself the product of the Kraft system; he was an Executive VP there from 1994 to 1997).
This week's case explores that system, and how Kilts implemented it at Gillette in the midst of a turnaround.
Note: members may leave comments at the bottom of the essay and the case.
💡 The Commoncog Membership Program is like an ongoing MBA, for a fraction of the price. Get full access to members-only articles, a rich and growing case library, plus an exclusive, members-only forum.
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Member Discussions
The Commoncog members-only forum is a private place for sensemaking on business and markets. We practice Chatham House rules.
Here are a couple of members-only discussions I'd like to draw attention to:
- What moats exist in the early AI era? Been thinking about this all week.
- Some discussion on Boyd's OODA loop and its overlap with Naturalistic Decision Making in the members forum.
- Miro just acquired Reforge. Wat. (The forum context there was several members kvetching about the quality of Reforge given their pivot to AI).
- Three more reports in the AI Field Reports thread: pi is an interesting framework on which to build custom agents, LLMs compared to superforecasters and a field report about maintenance of a vibe coded app under viral load.
- A member offers free coaching sessions to newer leaders working through organizational challenges, as he completes his executive coaching diploma.
- A member reports how Claude Code removed password protections and watermarks from PowerPoint files to create clean PDFs — after trying multiple Python libraries and even attempting to edit the PDF binary directly.
- Also: a member is cloning S3 in the hopes of testing the 'dark software factory' pattern.
Note that you'll have to be logged in as a member to view many of these threads. You may login here.
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Elsewhere On The Web
How Rockefeller and His Partners Built Standard Oil — Austin Vernon:
I didn't realize that the more popular texts didn't cover the details of Standard Oil's genesis. That piqued my curiosity, given my interest in oil and energy-related topics. Almost all commentary seemed to focus on railroad deals or other minutiae instead of what my background suggests should have been the key: returns to scale and capital efficiency.
Thankfully, my research assistant, GPT-5, found some excerpts of the excellent book "John D. Rockefeller: The Cleveland Years" by Grace Goulder, which I bought and read. Goulder is an interesting character, having written about local Ohio history most of her life. After her husband died, she took on the project of organizing the Western Reserve Historical Society's files on Rockefeller (he had been a vice president of the society for "decades"). The book was the result. Goulder's tone is much more neutral and friendly than many on the subject.
The book provides enough details to piece together how the early Standard Oil business model worked. The reality seems different than many popular accounts and is much more logically consistent.
Chinese Open Source: A Definitive History — by Kevin Xu; exactly what it says on the tin. Probably worth reading if you'd like to keep tabs on the Chinese open-weight LLM ecosystem. (Also: China's latest Five Year Plan includes "explore development paths for general artificial intelligence", so that's ... happening.)
Underrated sources of mental tension in meditation — by Sasha Chapin. Worth reading next to Cate Hall's Do Less. This is something I've been chewing on recently, as I've been experimenting with Loving Kindness meditation, after meeting my friend Tasshin Fogleman in Singapore last year.
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My parents are currently visiting their my daughter, their first grandchild, so I may be late with next week's piece on sensemaking. That's going to be a hard piece to write, since it'll be mostly theory — albeit theory made usable.
I'll try and prioritise time with my parents, who are growing old. Watching the cycle of life unfold is both sweet and heartbreaking in equal measure.
I hope this email finds you safe, sane and healthy. I'll see you (fingers crossed!) next week.
Warmly,
Cedric
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💡 The Commoncog Membership Program is like an ongoing MBA, for a fraction of the price. Get full access to members-only articles, a rich and growing case library, plus an exclusive, members-only forum.
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