Aspirations Consulting Group, LLC

09/11/2026

ACG Strategic Insights: When Continuity Planning Depends On Someone Who Isn't In The Room.

Most continuity plans get tested once. On the day they're written, someone walks through the scenario, checks the boxes, and files the document away. It sits untouched until the day it's needed, and by then nobody remembers whether it actually works.

What those plans rarely test is the moment that actually decides whether they hold: the CEO is unreachable, the operations lead is on another continent, the one person who understands why a client commitment was structured a certain way has vanished from the room.

FEMA's exercise doctrine, the ISO 22301 continuity standard, and the UK Cabinet Office's resilience framework all converge on the same lesson, and September's National Preparedness Month is a good reason to sit with it: a plan isn't real until the handoff has been rehearsed.

In today's ACG Strategic Insights, I look at why that rehearsal is the piece of continuity planning leaders skip most often, the three dependencies an honest test exposes, and what it actually takes to remove the usual leader from the room and see what happens next.

Read more Insights: https://buff.ly/NdZEhgv

~ Jerry Justice
Living to Serve, Serving to Lead™

Continuity plans get written once and rehearsed rarely, at the one moment that actually proves them: the handoff. Drawing on FEMA, ISO 22301, and the UK Cabinet Office, this piece examines key-person dependency and what it takes to test a leadership handoff honestly.

09/11/2026

Two friends sit in the water together. One is in a wheelchair. Neither of them cares.
That's the whole story right there.

Real friendship was never about convenience. It shows up when the wheelchair gets stuck in the sand. It shows up when your house is a mess or your bank account isn't where you want it to be. It shows up when your family drives you crazy and you need someone to vent to who already knows and loves them anyway.

I've sat across from CEOs and startup founders who had every resource in the world and still felt alone. Success does not buy you loyalty. Money does not buy you someone who shows up.

The people who matter most in your life are rarely impressed by your title. They're the ones who sit with you in the water when it would be easier to stay on the shore.

Take a minute today and reach out to that person. Not because you need something. Just because they'd do it for you without asking why.

Who is that person for you?

~ Jerry Justice
Living to Serve, Serving to Lead™

09/11/2026

AI Investment Is A CFO Discipline, Not A Technology Bet.

AI spending isn't the win. Connecting that spend to real business outcomes is.

lays out what separates companies that get real returns from AI from the ones that just rack up model bills.

Cost by design, not the fanciest model for every task. Forecast in stages, from foundation to scale to full operating capability. Measure outcomes, not activity, because a cheap tool that creates rework has zero economic value.

The line that sums it up: earn the right to commit through evidence, not enthusiasm.

Every dollar you put into AI needs a purpose, a baseline, an owner, and a path to measurable value. That's not a technology decision. That's a finance discipline.



https://buff.ly/OfirAyp

‘The companies that succeed with AI will not be defined by how much they spend. They will be defined by how well they connect spending to business results.’ Here’s how to do just that.

09/10/2026

: TODAY'S LESSON IS ON .

The thirteenth law discussed in ’s book, The 15 Invaluable Laws Of Growth, is the law of modeling. It says that it is hard to improve when you have no one but yourself to follow. Most of us grow because we saw someone else grow, develop, and progress. Get out and meet people who are able to show you a new path. Follow in the footsteps of a mentor or model.

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09/10/2026

ACG Strategic Insights: The Inflation Number That Matters Most Is Buried in Your Contracts.

Every month, the headline inflation number gets read the same way, as a signal that pressure is easing or building. It's rarely the number that decides whether your company can actually recover its own rising costs.

That number is usually sitting somewhere quieter, in the escalation clause on a supplier contract, the index named in a facilities lease, or a renewal date set months before revenue catches up with cost.

In today's ACG Strategic Insights, I walk through why US, UK, and Eurozone inflation data can tell three different stories in the same month, why CPI, PPI, ECI, CPIH, RPI, and HICP aren't interchangeable, and what a practical six point contract audit looks like when you're checking whether your agreements protect margin or quietly erode it.

If your last contract review predates this year's inflation swings, it's worth a look.

Full piece is up now: https://buff.ly/V7e9Gxk

~ Jerry Justice
Living to Serve, Serving to Lead™

Every month's inflation headline gets read the same way, as a single number that eases or worsens margin pressure. The number that actually determines whether a company can recover its own rising costs is buried in its escalation clauses, renewal timing, and index selection. A practical audit across...

09/10/2026

A woman held a door open for a stranger last week. Small thing. Ten seconds of her day.

That stranger walked into a job interview in a better mood than she would have otherwise. She got the job.

Her first act as a new manager was hiring someone who'd been out of work for eight months.

None of that shows up in any report. No one traces it back to a door.

But it happened.

We measure kindness by how it feels in the moment. We should measure it by where it ends up.

A kind word to a tired employee. A five minute call to someone who's struggling. Giving credit publicly instead of keeping it for yourself.

You rarely see where these things land. That doesn't mean they don't land.

Every leader I respect shares one habit: They treat small moments like they matter, because they know they do.

The compounding is just invisible to the person who starts it.

Here's the question worth contemplating today: What's one small act of kindness you can offer someone in the next hour? Share it in the Comments below to inspire others to think of their own.

You won't get to see most of what it becomes. Do it anyway.

~ Jerry Justice
Living to Serve, Serving to Lead™

09/10/2026

AI In Incentive Plans: Opportunity, Risk And The Role Of The Compensation Committee.

Only 2 percent of public companies have written AI into their executive incentive plans, even as AI spending accelerates across the board. That gap says a lot.

Most boards are still leaning on traditional financial metrics while AI reshapes productivity, cost structures and growth.

's review of roughly 2,500 proxy statements found just 58 companies tying pay to AI, and most of those reward adoption and transformation rather than hard financial outcomes tied to AI itself.

The real work ahead isn't inventing new AI metrics for the sake of it. It's asking whether your current measures already capture how AI is changing where value gets created.

Productivity per employee. Margin expansion. Operating leverage. These may matter more than the metrics boards have relied on for years.

Compensation committees that get ahead of this will shape how their companies define performance for the next decade. The ones that wait will be reacting to a standard someone else sets.

Where does your board stand on this?



https://buff.ly/a5IRKn1

As AI reshapes business performance, compensation committees face new governance questions around measurement integrity, accountability and whether existing incentive frameworks still reflect how value is created.

09/10/2026

Today is World Su***de Prevention Day.

The theme for 2026 closes out a three year global campaign called Changing the Narrative on Su***de. The call to action is simple. Start the conversation.

For three years, the world has pushed to move away from silence and shame. This year marks the final chapter of that push, and the message hasn't changed. Talking about su***de doesn't put the idea in someone's head. Silence is what costs lives.

If you're reading this and you're struggling, I want you to hear something clearly.
You matter. Not your output, not your performance, not what you produce for anyone else. You.

Whatever weight you're carrying right now, it doesn't have to be carried alone.

Asking for help isn't weakness. It's one of the bravest things a person can do.

If you or someone you love is in crisis, here's where to turn:

In the United States, call or text 988 to reach the Su***de and Crisis Lifeline. It's free, confidential, and available every hour of every day.

Outside the US, Befrienders Worldwide and findahelpline.com connect you to crisis lines in your own country and language.

If someone's life is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number right away.

I've built my career around leadership and growth, but none of that means anything if the people around us aren't okay.

Leadership starts with looking out for each other.

Check on your strongest friend today. Check on the coworker who always seems fine. A single conversation can change the course of someone's life.

Su***de is preventable.

Every single time someone reaches out, or someone else reaches in, that's proof.

~ Jerry Justice
Living to Serve, Serving to Lead™

09/09/2026

: TODAY'S LESSON IS ON .

Every single person needs time to rest and recharge. As leaders, rest isn’t optional, it's essential! Without rest, even the most passionate leaders can experience burnout. The best leaders know how to press pause so they can keep going—they know that rest is where creativity, clarity, and resilience are born.



https://buff.ly/RU92JzX

09/09/2026

Where Capital Meets The Grid.

Money isn't the bottleneck in the AI data center boom anymore. Power is.

, who built into a 50-plus facility operator before leading its $15 billion take-private, says the winners in this cycle will be the firms that understand operations as well as they understand capital.

His new venture, , is betting on ex*****on, not just checkbooks, to unlock the next wave of hyperscale compute.

Power availability, supply chains and workforce limits now decide which bets pay off.

Worth a read for anyone tracking where infrastructure and capital collide.



https://buff.ly/OSfB13I

PDI co-founder Dave Ferdman shares why power, supply chains and ex*****on—not money—now decide which data center bets pay off.