Century City Chamber of Commerce
"Decision-Making Under Pressure", a members-only executive session, May 2026.
Ethan Starke · Executive Advisor
Executive advisory for the decisions no one sees you make.
Ethan Starke works with leadership teams, executive committees, chambers, universities, public agencies and founders on the private side of leadership: judgment, identity and alignment under pressure. Every engagement is designed to create executive work, not merely deliver content.
The record
Los Angeles World Airports
A confidential leadership diagnostic across fifteen executives, with a division-level report. Reference available on request.
What appears here is limited to what clients have agreed can be shown.
Find the right executive session · One of four
What is happening?
No email required · The room brightens with each answer
Who is in the room?
What needs to change?
How much time do you have?
After the fourth answer
Where your situation points.
Recommendations, not a diagnosis. The fit is confirmed in a conversation.
Six territories of executive work
01 / 06
Territory one · Leadership Under Pressure and Decision Quality
The plan exists. The pressure is real.The decisions in between are wherethe year is won or lost.
Decisions Under Uncertainty
Presented as "Leading Under Pressure: The Decisions No One Sees You Make"
Responsible commitment without complete information, and the difference between prudent delay and avoidance.
Executive Judgment
Experience creates confidence; it does not automatically produce judgment. This session works on the difference.
Strategic Clarity
For organizations with plans, goals and initiatives, but no shared answer to what matters most.
Executive Attention
What senior leaders repeatedly attend to becomes what the organization treats as important.
Territory two · Executive Identity and Authority
Performance problems that keepreturning are usually identitypatterns wearing a new disguise.
Identity Is the Operating System
Leadership behavior emerges from identity. Work on the operating system, not just the behavior.
Leadership Shadows
Presented as "If a Leader Falls, Who Notices?"
The unexamined patterns of a leader become the tolerated patterns of the organization.
Responsibility Without Collapse
Carrying responsibility is the job. Carrying everything is the failure mode.
The Executive Mirror
Executives evaluate the organization more rigorously than their own contribution to its problems.
Executive Energy and Sustainable Performance
Depletion normalized as commitment is an organizational cost, not a badge.
Territory three · Organizational Alignment and Culture
Aligned on paper, misaligned in theroom: conflicting assumptions, incentivesand priorities doing quiet damage.
The Alignment Myth
Alignment is not agreement or harmony. It is coherence you can operate on.
Becoming an Aligned Organization
One integrated operating picture instead of fragmented improvement initiatives.
Anatomy of Misalignment
Misalignment is rarely a communication problem. This session diagnoses what it actually is.
Execution Is an Alignment Outcome
Execution problems answered with pressure come back. Answered with diagnosis, they close.
Culture as Organizational Evidence
Culture is what the organization rewards, tolerates, repeats and protects.
Alignment Rhythms
Alignment is maintained through rhythm, not declared at the annual retreat.
Organizational Identity
Mission statements are common. A lived organizational identity is rare.
Territory four · Executive Teams, Trust and Accountability
Five capable executivescan share a table andstill not be a team.
Executive Team Effectiveness
Shared purpose, role clarity, decision discipline and collective responsibility, worked as a system.
Trust as Infrastructure
Low trust taxes speed, candor and execution. Trust is infrastructure, not sentiment.
Accountability That Builds Adults
Accountability that increases ownership instead of fear, dependency or compliance.
Psychological Safety Without Lowering Standards
Candor and dignity on one side, demanding standards on the other. Both.
Productive Conflict
Between artificial harmony and destructive conflict there is a discipline. This is it.
Conversations That Create Reality
Organizations are shaped by the conversations leaders initiate, avoid, reward and permit.
Territory five · Leaders and Founders in Transition
The company grew. The complexitygrew faster. The leader's operatingmodel has to catch up.
Scaling Yourself Before Scaling the Company
Presented in founder rooms as "Clarity Before Scale"
Organizational scale requires leadership evolution before it requires more complexity.
From Operator to Architect
From solving the work personally to designing the system that accomplishes it.
Reinvention Without Losing Yourself
Necessary reinvention without the feeling of betraying what built the success.
Founder Psychology
The company often becomes an external expression of the founder's internal architecture.
The Founder Bottleneck
When the capabilities that created the company begin to limit its scale.
Territory six · Change, Resilience and Institutional Leadership
People do not experience change as aplan. They experience it as a challengeto meaning, competence and belonging.
Leading Through Change
Leadership through uncertainty, transition and disruption, beyond the project plan.
Institutional Stewardship
Leading the organization as an institution entrusted to you, not an asset belonging to you.
Organizational Resilience
Resilience built from relationships, systems, reserves and learning, not from endurance.
Building Adaptive Organizations
Learning and adjusting without losing coherence, neither rigid nor reactive.
The Long Game
Stewardship of decisions whose full consequences arrive after the leader's tenure.
Legacy and Continuity
Legacy is the capacity that remains when the leader is no longer central.
The formats
Then choose the shape of the room.
Eight ways the work is delivered. Same method in every one of them: real decisions, worked live.
The eight formats, in the order of the ladder
01 / 08
Bring in perspective
Executive Keynote
30 or 60 minutes · Theater or ballroom · Any size
Ideal when: the room needs one to three ideas built for reflection, not applause.
Outcome: leaders leave with a shared mental model they can use the next morning.
Outcome: leaders leave with a shared mental model they can use the next morning.
Bring in perspective
Executive Conversation
30 to 60 minutes · Fireside or moderated · Conferences, executive dinners, boards
Ideal when: the program is built around dialogue: a conference session, an executive dinner or a board meeting that wants an exchange rather than an address.
The form: a moderated conversation, a fireside or an interview; a book conversation when the room wants one.
The form: a moderated conversation, a fireside or an interview; a book conversation when the room wants one.
Align on a decision
Executive Roundtable
The Executive Briefing.
60 to 90 minutes · Boardroom or U-shape · 8 to 25 seats · Off the record
Ideal when: a senior group needs one theme worked candidly among peers, with nothing on the record.
The form: a facilitated peer discussion on one theme, senior and off the record, 8 to 25 seats.
The form: a facilitated peer discussion on one theme, senior and off the record, 8 to 25 seats.
Align on a decision
Executive Working Session
The signature format.
90 to 120 minutes · Boardroom, cabaret or U-shape · 12 to 40 seats
Ideal when: participants bring live decisions and work them with the method: one primary exercise, structured dialogue, written commitments.
Outcome: leaders leave with one decision clearer and the tools to work the next one.
Outcome: leaders leave with one decision clearer and the tools to work the next one.
Build capability
Leadership Laboratory or Workshop
A half day or a full day · Cabaret or flexible room · 12 to 40 seats
Ideal when: the aim is capability built through practice: applied learning cycles, four in a half day, six to eight in a full day.
Outcome: practice, not theory. Leaders leave having run the method on real cases, not having heard about it.
Outcome: practice, not theory. Leaders leave having run the method on real cases, not having heard about it.
Also delivered for managers and staff as a custom-built program.
Build capability
Leadership Series
Three sessions over weeks or months · or a six-week cohort of 20 to 40
Ideal when: the change has to hold over months: three executive working sessions spaced across weeks or months, or a six-week hybrid cohort with an in-person kickoff and capstone.
Outcome: capability that holds, because application between sessions is part of the design.
Outcome: capability that holds, because application between sessions is part of the design.
Also delivered for managers and staff as a custom-built program.
Address the organization
Executive Intensive or Offsite
One or two days · Offsite venue · The leadership team · Retreat form available
Ideal when: one organizational challenge deserves the whole leadership team, away from the building, for a day or two.
The form: one or two days around that challenge, with significant preparation before anyone enters the room; retreat form available.
The form: one or two days around that challenge, with significant preparation before anyone enters the room; retreat form available.
Address the organization
Organizational Advisory
Ongoing · Begins with a conversation, not a date
Ideal when: the challenge is organizational and continuous, not a single room on a single day.
Outcome: it usually opens with an Organizational Pulse Check: confidential leadership interviews and a written report.
Outcome: it usually opens with an Organizational Pulse Check: confidential leadership interviews and a written report.
The operator
Built from operating experience.Refined through executive practice.Structured for application.
Before teaching decisions, Ethan made them: two decades in the CEO seat, companies built across three continents, a defense-robotics venture founded and exited.
ICF Associate Certified Coach · Advanced Certified Personal and Executive Coach
MS in Management, University of Illinois · California-certified small business · Insured · Ethan Starke LLC
MS in Management, University of Illinois · California-certified small business · Insured · Ethan Starke LLC
The method has a spine in print: The Stoic Entrepreneur, The Science of Letting Go, and The Aligned Organization, coming in 2027.
The request
Specify the engagement.
Ethan's office confirms availability within one business day. Corporate and institutional engagements are scoped according to format, audience, customization and duration.
Request received.
Ethan's office will confirm availability within one business day and reply from office@ethanstarke.com. If your requested date is unavailable, you will receive alternatives in the same reply. If your request needs a conversation first, the reply will include times for a short call.
Your reference ·
Development over time
The Executive Leadership Seriesand the flagship certificate cohort.
The Executive Leadership Series: three working sessions a chamber or company can host or sponsor. Resilient Leadership, the flagship certificate cohort, with three focused specializations: Decision-Making Under Pressure, Leadership at Scale, and The Aligned Organization. Scoped as custom programs through the same request.
Request through the same formInstitutions
Universities, chambers, associations,public agencies.
Executive education pathways for institutions: guest sessions that grow into series, certificates and annual programs, delivered under the institution's name or Ethan's. California-certified small business, direct-award eligible. Start with the same request; select the institutional audience.
Start with the same requestKnow a company that should meet Ethan?
Received. Ethan's office will follow up with you first.
The Starke Perspective: essays on the private side of leadership.
Received. Welcome to The Starke Perspective.