Five competencies. Nine sessions. One executive.
You keep executing. You keep delivering. The outcomes are different. There is a ceiling, and you can feel it before you can name it.
Most executives experience this as a performance problem. They work harder, execute more cleanly, and stay confused about why it is not working.
Nobody prepared you for that moment, because those same skills got you promoted every time before.
The reason is not performance. It is altitude. The skills that produced your career (speed, precision, reliable execution) brought you to a level where they are no longer sufficient.
The same gap opens on the way up. An executive handed a larger mandate is asked to operate at an altitude the last role never required, and the transition is rarely taught.
An integrated system that changes not just what you decide, but how you see. Each competency is applied to the participant's real decisions, real numbers, and real organizational challenges.
Nine Tuesdays at 4:00 pm Eastern, October 13 through December 15, 2026, with one scheduled break for Thanksgiving week. Between-session assignments carry structural weight. Each one feeds directly into the next session.
| Date | Session | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 13 | The Foundation | The ceiling. The two altitudes. The cohort contract. |
| Oct 20 | Decision Clarity: Foundations | Ownership. Framing. Threshold. Your real decision in the room. |
| Oct 27 | Decision Clarity: Application | The retrospective. Pressure architecture. The crack in identity. |
| Nov 3 | Financial Fluency | Three statements. Every number is a decision's echo. Your three numbers. |
| Nov 10 | Strategic Perspective | The avoided question. Three strategic traps. The landscape read. |
| Nov 17 | Organizational Influence | The social current. Authority versus influence. The enrollment approach. |
| Thanksgiving week: no session | ||
| Dec 1 | Personal Leadership System | Four defaults. Pressure architecture. Building the system. |
| Dec 8 | Flywheel Integration | Five reinforcement pairs. Where your flywheel breaks. The cohort mirror. |
| Dec 15 | The Return | The Return Brief. Two failure modes. Cohort commitment. The conversation. |
Nothing is reported out of the sessions, so what the company sees is behavior. Decision framing gets sharper. Financial questions change shape, from what a number is to which decision produced it. Fewer problems get passed upward, and the ones that reach you arrive with the options and the threshold already defined.
A nine-session working engagement with an experienced executive, not a course. Comparable short-format programs at major business schools run $10,000 to $20,000. Cohort 1 is $3,500 per seat.
Cohort size is capped at twelve. The founding price applies to Cohort 1 only and closes when it fills. If the cohort does not run, tuition paid is refunded in full.
When a major business school designs an executive program, they are optimizing for thirty to sixty participants, a rotating faculty, and content that applies across every industry simultaneously. That is an appropriate design for what it is. The Executive Accelerator is designed for a different situation.
| What You Are Comparing | University Executive Program | Executive Accelerator |
|---|---|---|
| Who leads the sessions | Faculty, often researchers with limited executive operating experience | Chip Carlson, who held the roles being discussed for three decades at the operating level, across multiple functions and geographies |
| What you work on | Published case studies from other companies, often decades old and set in industries unlike yours | Your decisions, your numbers, your team, your current situation. Every framework is applied to what you are actually navigating |
| Cohort size | 30 to 60 participants per program, large enough that most participants never get direct engagement with the facilitator | Twelve maximum. Every participant gets direct attention in every session |
| Session format | Lectures, breakout groups, and pre-assigned discussion cases. The structure does not change based on who is in the room | Concept delivery, participant application, cohort discussion. The session adapts to what participants are actually working through |
| Confidentiality | Sessions are often recorded, content archived, some programs livestreamed or made publicly accessible after the fact | Sessions are not recorded. Nothing discussed in the cohort leaves the cohort. |
| Tuition | $10,000 to $50,000 for a comparable program length. Much of that cost funds the institution, not the instruction | $3,500 founding cohort, with twenty-seven hours of direct practitioner engagement with a group of twelve |
The one area where university programs hold an advantage: the credential carries institutional weight. A certificate from a major business school carries brand recognition that Talk with Chip LLC does not carry. That gap is real, and it is worth naming directly. If the name on the certificate matters more than the work done during the program, a university program may be the right choice. If what you need is a structured engagement with your actual decisions, your actual numbers, and a small group of serious peers working at the same altitude, this is built for that.
Chip Carlson has spent more than three decades in distribution and sales at the operating and senior executive level, including as Vice President of International Business Development for one of the largest publicly traded automotive parts retailers in North America, with sales over $16 billion.
In that role he was P&L responsible for the integration and management of a 3,000-person international division, growing it from 19 stores to 65 and from 1,100 to 3,000 employees, and opened a 375,000 square foot distribution center.
He took from his career something most executive education does not teach: an understanding of exactly why talented leaders hit the ceiling, built from watching it happen across hundreds of organizations and from making the same decisions himself, under pressure, with real consequences.
The Executive Accelerator is the program he wished had existed when he needed it. Everything in it comes from direct experience, not theory and not methodology borrowed from someone else's consulting practice.
The competencies the program covers are not sector-specific. The ceiling Chip teaches to is the same ceiling regardless of industry. Participants have come from technology, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, and consumer goods. The cross-industry cohort is part of the design, not an accident of enrollment.
Enrollment is by application. Not to screen for credentials, but to confirm the fit is right and the participant is ready for the work. Applications are reviewed in the order received.
Complete the online application. A seat is held only once the enrollment agreement and tuition are both received.
Apply for Cohort 1If you have received your acceptance, use the link below to submit tuition and secure your seat.
Secure Your Seat - $3,500Not sure if the program is the right fit? Pick a time and ask anything you need to know before applying.