Consulting Outside the Lines
Crayons, Characters and Lessons From a Colorful Career
Consulting Outside the Lines
Crayons, Characters and Lessons from a Colorful Career. Years of leadership experience turned into an entertaining, highly readable book about what really happens when people try to lead, manage and create change. Real stories that never make the case studies, the lessons no one teaches, and a few crayons along the way-- are you ready to see what happens when the consultants go home?
Connie Lockhart
The book that says what everyone in the room is thinking.
Consulting Outside the Lines is a candid, practical, and occasionally irreverent look at what it actually takes to lead — and to help others lead better. It's not a framework book. It's not a feel-good manifesto. It's the real conversation that happens after the presentation ends.
Drawing on decades of work with executives, leadership teams, and organizations across the country, Connie Lockhart shares the strategies, mindsets, and hard truths that separate leaders who grow from leaders who stall. The lessons are direct. The stories are real. The advice is actionable.
Whether you're a seasoned executive, an emerging leader, or someone who advises them — this book will challenge how you think about leadership, strategy, and what excellence actually looks like in practice.
What's inside
Leadership that sticks
Why the best leaders are built, not born — and what intentional development actually looks like through relationships and lessons that people carry after you are gone.
Strategy that moves
How to close the gap between vision and execution, and what a simple cotton swap can teach us about how to make the strategy stick.
Excellence as a culture
Excellence is a habit, not a slogan. Standards are clear and accountability is not a punishment. People know that their work matters because the culture tolerates qustions
Coaching that changes things
When you move from "fixing" people to helping people see what they are capable of. A strategy that moves beyond the plan and into action - aligning people around what matters most.
The conversations no one wants to have
The uncomfortable situations we avoid rarely get easier, they only get more expensive. Great leaders learn to address the issue before it reaches resentment, confusion and poor performance.
Lessons from the field
Experience teaches you what theory cannot. Reality does not always follow the playbook. Real stories from real engagements — what worked, what didn't, and what you can take away.
Why I wrote this book.
Make leadership matter. Make a difference. I've spent decades in rooms where the real conversation happened after the meeting ended. Where the strategy that looked great on paper met the reality of the people who had to execute it. Where leaders who were brilliant in their domain struggled with the human complexity of actually leading.
If even one story makes you think differently, one lesson helps you lead differently, or one conversation inspires you to act then every page was worth writing.
I hope it is useful. More than that, I hope it starts the conversations that challenge us, change our perspective and ultimately help you make a difference.
— Connie Lockhart
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The book is in progress. Drop your name and email below and I'll reach out the moment it's ready — launch details, early access, and more.
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