Success is often boring.

I was on a golf trip this past weekend with three friends from law school.

I typically golf only on this trip.

I hit some really good shots. I also hit a lot of bad shots. I even missed the ball a few times.

I watched the final round of the British Open on my way home.

One thing I have noticed about golf is that the bad shots do not go away. The bad shots get less bad. The bad shots get more less-bad than the good shots get better.

And that process takes way more time than people think it does.

In golf and in life, doing the same thing well repeatedly is the game.

Sure, the highlights focus on the spectacularly good and the spectacularly bad. But most of the game is played in the boring excellent middle.

The hundreds of short passes that Spain executed to keep the ball away from Argentina in the World Cup Final.

The irons to the middle of the green. The three foot lag putts. The up and down from trouble.

The fundraising pitches and the motivational conversations that you sometimes have to do hundreds of times.

It takes years of work.

And it’s the ability to do those things, over and over again, without thinking about them, that makes the difference.

Sure, I can hit a good drive. But my average drive isn’t very good at all. And if I’m honest I think it’s better than it really is. (Or at least it should be better.)

I’ve run into a lot of people who think mastery comes from doing something really well once. When mastery really comes from improving your average over thousand of repetitions.

Where are you not as good as you think you are? And what would more reps do for you?

Want to dive in deeper? I’ll be writing about performing when it counts when I expand on this piece for Substack.

https://substack.com/@jeffmunn

I work with founders, business owners, and CEOs for a year at a time. It’s a six-figure investment, and more than half renew.

More than one has called the work “priceless.”

We do a lot less than you’d think.

Every relationship starts with a two-day retreat. I began doing these a few years ago, and frankly, I had no idea what I was doing.

In theory, I got it. Space. Reflection. Room to think.

But instinctively, I started teaching. To add value. Show how clever I was. Prove I was worth the fee.

Over time I saw how wrong that was. And how little I need to do instead.

Here’s what a dozen retreats — 1:1 and group — have taught me.

Your Insight Beats My Information

I can tell you things. Stories, frameworks, methodologies. And I do. But it has humbled me how often a client stops me mid-sentence because they’re chasing something of their own. An insight in the making.

That insight is the whole point. The less I teach, the more room there is for it. More and more, I just point a client back to their own capacity to know.

Sometimes I don’t even have to do that.

The Work is in the Silence

We talk plenty over two days. But we also fall into silence, and I’ve learned to enjoy what can arise there.

I once had a four-hour lunch with a client. Much of it was him staring out the window, shaking his head, chuckling.

“I’m going to have so much more time.”

He’d seen how much he was doing that he didn’t need to do — thinking eight moves ahead when reality wouldn’t warrant one. I didn’t add a thing. I just enjoyed watching him see it. (And that insight was as true for me as it was for him.)

Less is More (And It’s the Hardest Part)

Slowing down is the hardest thing for most founders. They live in maximize mode: doing, fixing, making sure nothing slips. The adrenaline creates a kind of productivity myopia — a constant fear that something will get missed. I can see the withdrawal start when I tell them we’re going to do as little as possible for two days. No agenda. No structure. Yes, we’ll talk. Yes, things will surface. But my one job for those two days is this:

Can I understand my client’s world?

If we can slow down enough to see how they are creating the world, we can see the assumptions, rules, and truths that got them here.

And we can see what’s in the way of whatever’s next.

Want to go deeper?

Unpack more of the how and why in my weekly Substack — https://substack.com/@jeffmunn

“This is the last straw.”

A CEO client said that to me last week about one of his most senior people.

I’d heard versions of the story before. High-stakes meeting. A fair question from a colleague. And his senior guy turned it personal, blows up the room, and walks out.

Not the first time. Not the second.

So I asked: “You already know where this is headed. Why are you resisting calling it now?”

Long pause.

“It’s probably kindness.”

His care is real. Years of history, genuine contributions, and a man going through a heavy personal burden in addition to work.

But here’s what else was true. Even in the meetings where nothing went wrong, the room was braced. Everyone is half-waiting for the next eruption. The honest conversations his leadership team needed weren’t happening.

The kindness wasn’t protecting anyone. It was taxing them — including the man himself, exhausted from trying not to be who he’d been for most of his adult life.

Your Work to Do

Here’s what I see with every founder I work with:

The thing you most need to work on keeps showing up. Different people, different years. Same problem.

It’s not bad luck. Long before you founded a company, you picked a way to be safe in the world. Control. Competence. Being the responsible one. Being good.

That first pick built everything.

Some of us picked twice. Two guiding principles.

The decisions that sit on your desk for months are the ones that force your two picks to fight.

My client’s first pick: be right. Twenty years as the trusted number two to the founder. The advisor who never got it wrong.

His second: be kind. Be better to others than his father was to him. Give people their shot at redemption.

The Decisions That Sit

A firing splits those down the middle. Being right says end it. Being kind says one more chance. Neither can win without betraying the other. So the decision sat. For years.

“If your old boss handed you this exact situation and asked for a recommendation — what would you tell him?”

He laughed.

As the analyst, he’d have answered in thirty seconds.

The conflict was actually false. He can be right AND kind. Clear about where it ends, generous about how — severance, time, a dignified exit on the man’s own terms.

The only casualty is the version of kindness that never delivers hard news. That version was never protecting the man. It was protecting my client’s picture of himself as the kind one.

Delay isn’t kindness. It’s just the slowest way to deliver the same news.

Sometimes There is Another Way

I talked to my client again yesterday. We talked in earnest about the part of him that wanted to be done, and the part of him that wanted to make it work.

“What I want is for you to be able to do either of these things, a firing or a path forward, comfortably. If you think firing a long term hire will make you a bad person, this identity will limit you as you build the company beyond the one your predecessor built.”

He surprised me with his next step. The person we have been talking about is great at many things. He is loved by his team. He is valuable in many ways.

He just blows up in meetings with his peers.

So my client changed his role. He is no longer on the leadership team, but still in charge of the people who will do anything for him.

My client knows it might not work. But he is willing to try.

What About You?

What was your first pick?

And if you made two — what decision is sitting on your desk right now, forcing them to fight?

Is there a way through both of those aspects?

Or better yet, to see their impact on you and make the best choice regardless?

Going Deeper

If you want to go deeper on this and other leadership topics for founders and CEOs, I write every week on Substack. Including diving deeper on the topics I write on here.

Here’s the link to take a look—

https://jeffmunn.substack.com

One of the hardest things for my founder clients to do, at least as we start working together, is take a break.

My clients have teams. They have people who can, for some period of time, run the company without the founder.

And yet, at least at first, the founder resists this idea.

“I want them to know I’m there for them.”

What they won’t say out loud:

I need them to need me.

No. You need them NOT to need you.

Your company isn’t worth anything until it doesn’t need you.

Until you can go away, for a month, or a year, and come back to everything as good or better than it was before.

We’re in the middle of the summer. Some founders proudly say they are taking time off, while staring at their phones in the middle of family outings and muttering things like “this will only take a second.”

Don’t get confused between what your business needs and what you need.

Take the time off.

The Fourth of July is a great time to test this out.

See who needs who.

Does the business need you, or do you need the business?

Is your business really a business if it can’t survive without you?