The Inner Work of Becoming a Cadence-Based Leader
Coming September 2026
CEO Cadence is a framework for sustainable, intentional leadership grounded in psychological reality rather than productivity platitudes. David Johnston developed it over twenty years of executive leadership and reinforced it through hundreds of coaching engagements with sitting CEOs and senior leaders.
The framework teaches four integrated movements that cycle and deepen throughout your tenure:
These movements apply to every dimension of the role: the weight of ultimate responsibility, the paradox of hierarchical isolation, the emotional labor of constant decision-making, the identity questions that surface when the role defines you, and the personal sustainability that allows tenure to be a marathon rather than a sprint.
CEO Cadence is not a quick-fix playbook. It's a map of the interior landscape of leadership—psychological, relational, and deeply human. For CEOs ready to sustain. For leaders interested in what's actually true beneath the surface. For anyone willing to do the work that allows presence to become the foundation of performance.
Where your attention goes, your leadership goes. Most executives have never consciously designed where their attention actually lands. They've inherited a default pattern from whatever worked before. CEO Cadence starts here—building an intentional architecture for what you focus on and when.
Your board, your direct reports, your peer executives, your community—each relationship runs at a different pace. The ones that break down usually do so not because the relationship was wrong, but because the pace was wrong. The board wants quarterly check-ins; you're checking in monthly. Your CFO needs weekly alignment; you're meeting monthly. Misaligned tempo creates friction that looks like friction in the relationship itself.
The leaders who make the worst decisions under pressure usually made the real mistake six months earlier when they stopped getting honest input. They sped up their decision-making at the exact moment they should have slowed it down. CEO Cadence includes a framework for knowing which decisions need speed and which ones need time, and how to actually get honest feedback before you decide.
"There is a moment that arrives for every CEO when the gravity of the role becomes unmistakable. It does not arrive with a title change or a press release. It arrives in the quiet hours when no one is watching."
The first chapter introduces the foundational premise of the entire framework: the structural weight of the role, the psychological architecture that shifts when you become CEO, and why awareness is the foundation for everything else. You'll discover why the role does not change you—it reveals you.
The framework in the book comes alive in the masterclass. This is a small-cohort, online program that runs over six weeks. Each session goes deeper into one of the three pillars. You'll work through exercises, case studies, and real scenarios from the participants' own leadership contexts.
This is not a passive experience. It's not slides and recordings. It's discussion, reflection, and real application to your actual work. Limited enrollment ensures genuine cohort engagement.