Instead of studying leadership, why not spend some time studying leaders and strategies in the wild? You can learn a lot from leadership experts, but you always see the leader and what he or she does through the expert’s personal lens. Supplement that learning with studying real leaders in real life situations and draw your own conclusions. The posts in this series will help you.

Every week I’ll point you to articles by and about real leaders in real situations and to articles about how real companies are faring in the marketplace. Read them. Think about them. Draw your own lessons and conclusions from them. Then try to apply those lessons in your own real life.

This week I’m pointing you to articles about Amazon, Leah Busque, Corey E. Thomas, Jim Clark, and Tim Joseph.

From Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen: How Does Amazon Stay At Day One?

“Visit the office of Amazon’s head of Devices, Dave Limp, and you may get an offer to look at a piece of corporate history: the original short documents drafted by an internal team in 2011 to propose the development of Alexa, the intelligent personal assistant Amazon launched in late 2014. Call it an e-memento; Limp hasn’t deleted it. And it’s hardly the only memento. He can also call up dozens of other sets of documents, amazingly similar in format, setting forth the initial visions for what would become blockbuster products and services.”

From Kate Bassett: Leah Busque, TaskRabbit: ‘Set yourself big hairy audacious goals’

“Leah Busque’s lightbulb moment happened in February 2008. Busque was about to go out for dinner with her husband Kevin and some friends when she realised they’d run out of dog food for their Labrador, Kobe. ‘We’d already booked a cab to take us across town,’ says Busque, who was living in Boston at the time and working as an engineer for IBM. ‘I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if I could connect to someone in the neighbourhood – maybe someone who was in the store that very minute – and pay them to help us out?’ It was such a simple problem. But there wasn’t a simple solution.’”

From Adam Bryant: Corey E. Thomas of Rapid7 on Why Companies Succeed or Fail

“The chief executive of a network security company says that corporate culture can accentuate the collective or be a distraction.”

From Nancy Dahlberg: Legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur launches his sixth company, but in South Florida

“Jim Clark, the serial entrepreneur who founded Netscape, Silicon Graphics and WebMD, is at it again – this time in South Florida. CommandScape is a building-management platform for commercial and residential properties.”

From Elliot Begoun: Leadership can be a lonely place

“In this interview, Tim and I talked about leadership, why he decided to become a dairyman, how Maple Hill Creamery became the gold standard in grass-fed dairy products, and what they are doing now to grow the brand.”