Executive Strategist, Startup Advisor & Author of 'The Reaction to Inaction' · ShelterZoom
LinkedIn ↗Jack Jackson is an executive strategist, startup advisor, and author of 'The Reaction to Inaction,' a book on the hidden cost of hustle culture and performative productivity that he spent 18 years developing — carrying two notebooks into every meeting and filling 23 to 25 journals. Over that career he led go-to-market and scaled multiple startups from inception to exit and held executive leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies, and he was recognized as a most-influential leader in tech. The book was inspired by watching a talented colleague lose the company's biggest customer to weeks of forms, approvals, and red tape; the day Jack realized 'nobody can make a decision,' he named it. To write it he interviewed Fortune 50 CEOs, professors, and psychologists and read more than a hundred leadership books, concluding that leadership literature is full of theory but has no practical blueprint 'from the janitor to the CEO.' His answer is the Action Framework, built on 'spheres of influence' that empower every level of an organization to decide, take initiative, and act. He is currently under contract with ShelterZoom, which runs the Action Framework.
“This is 18 years in the making. This is 18 years of making mistakes, getting some Ls, and getting some dubs too.”
“I named the book that day. I said, 'God, that's the reaction to an action. Nobody can make a decision.' And that day I began carrying two notepads.”
“Nobody says, here's a framework from the janitor to the CEO to build a company, to make it a high-performance, innovative company that will dominate over the next 100 years. My book does that.”
“You look back on that email and you go, there is no value to that. There is no value in sending an email except for signaling that I'm a hard worker.”
“The highest performing executive leaders, professionals, CEOs — they're not the guy that's working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They understand that there's high-value decisions in certain hours of the day. And then everything else should run itself.”
“Instead of putting a 30-minute calendar call on for you and I to talk about how you're on an island, the best way to feel better about that is just go talk to a customer. Add value, and everything else speaks for itself.”
“If you put children in a schoolhouse with no fence, they all stay very close to the schoolhouse. But if you put a fence 200 yards out, they will go all the way to that fence — because they have a sense of safety.”
“Whether you're the CEO or you're the janitor, everybody understands where their fence is and how they can play inside that fence. They can innovate, they can be creative, they can fail — all in the idea of making the company better.”