01
The Print Book
Gives you the method.
The S.Y.N.C. Method™
The hardest part of the first eighteen months in the chair is not what you thought it would be.
The S.Y.N.C. Method™ for SVPs, EVPs, and C-suite executives navigating the most consequential window of their career.
The Problem
The leaders who fail in their first 18 months are not the ones who stopped trying.
Forty percent of executives who are promoted or newly hired fail within the first 18 months. The research is consistent across industries, levels, and organizations. And the reason is almost never what the exit interview says it is.
It is not a strategy problem. Not a skill gap. Not a leadership style mismatch. It is a synchronization problem.
The newly promoted executive steps into a system that has been in motion long before they arrived. The relationships carry memory. The informal power structures have their own logic. The trust, where it exists, was built by someone else.
The instinct is to prove the promotion was right. To move decisively. To hold everything together while getting oriented. That instinct reorganizes the system in the wrong direction.
The organization looks functional because the leader’s force is absorbing the dysfunction. Until month twelve. Until month eighteen. The force runs out.
There is a different way into the executive chair. Not slower. Not harder. Aligned.
The S.Y.N.C. Method™
You do not need to hold it together. You need to build something that holds.
- 01
Synchronize
Read the system you have inherited. Move with its momentum, not against it.
- 02
Personalize
Lead from who you actually are, not who you think the role requires you to be.
- 03
Naturalize
Build leadership capacity that holds under pressure without requiring constant conscious effort.
- 04
Communitize
Build the conditions where people do not just collaborate. They belong.
- 05
Democratize
Build legacy as living architecture. What you build keeps building after you are gone.
Underneath the five phases runs the roundabout. Three roads, Self, System, Mission, entered in that order.
You synchronize with yourself before you can read the system. You read the system before you can serve the mission. Skip a road and the roundabout jams.
There is a different way into the executive chair. Not slower. Not harder. Aligned.
The Book
Stop Holding It Together
A Strategic Roadmap for Recently Promoted Executives
The S.Y.N.C. Method™ for Your First 6 to 18 Months in the Executive Chair.
John Taylor McEntire. Foreword by Jack Canfield. September 2026.
Forty percent of newly promoted executives fail within eighteen months. Not because they were not smart enough. Not because they were not working hard enough. They failed because the patterns that got them promoted are the patterns that quietly destroy them in the chair.
The instinct is to hold it together. To prove the promotion was right. To move decisively, fill silence with conclusions, solve problems before anyone else sees them. Those are the patterns that built the career. They are also the patterns that break under the load of the chair.
Stop Holding It Together is the roadmap.
The Structure
Five Routes. Twenty-five Stops. Six Junctions.
The S.Y.N.C. Method™ is a five-phase operating system built for the most consequential window of an executive’s career. Synchronize. Personalize. Naturalize. Communitize. Democratize.
Each phase is a Route. Each Route is a sequence of Stops, each one designed for the executive under load. Each Junction is where the work goes deeper.
Every Stop closes with a Minimum Viable Practice: the single highest-leverage thing you can do if you have ten minutes on a flight or fifteen minutes between meetings.
Field-tested, not theoretical
This is not theory warmed over from leadership school. It is a field-tested roadmap built across thirty-five years, four continents, six institutions, and more than sixty nationalities. It is the book the author would have given himself when he stepped into his first senior role and did not yet know what was about to be required.
The window is already open
The first six to eighteen months in a senior role are not optional. Whether you have a roadmap or not, you are already in them. The patterns you set in this window become the patterns that define your tenure.
You do not have to hold it together. You have to learn to lead it together.
Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook. Available everywhere September 2026.
The Ecosystem
Four components. One ecosystem.
The print book is the entry. Three companions extend it.
02
The Going Deeper Companion Series
Free with the book at the S.Y.N.C. Leadership Institute. Extended memoir, case material, and operational depth for every Stop and Junction. For when you want more.
03
The S.Y.N.C. Navigator™
An AI tool built on the S.Y.N.C. Canon™ (Truth, Whole, Imprint, Cultural Margin, Mutual Prosperity, Trust). Bring the actual situation you walked into this morning, not a hypothetical. Six modules tied to specific Stops in the book.
04
The Practitioner Community
Where executives and practitioners share situations, compare patterns, and work the Canon together. By invitation with the book.
The book is complete on its own. The ecosystem is complete with it.
Praise
Praise for Stop Holding It Together
“John embodies what aligned leadership really looks like. Stop Holding It Together reflects the clarity that comes when a leader stops writing the book they think they're supposed to write and instead writes the one they were actually meant to write. It speaks directly to the moment many leaders reach success and quietly realize that alignment now matters more than effort. The S.Y.N.C. Method™ gives leaders permission to slow down, listen more deeply, and lead from purpose rather than pressure.”
This is really strong work: thoughtful, grounded, and full of real-world wisdom that only comes from lived experience. John translates complex leadership challenges into practical, honest guidance that leaders can actually use. This book is indispensable for executives stepping into complexity.
John doesn't just teach leadership, he lives it. He brings clarity and depth to moments when leadership becomes more internal, and alignment matters as much as execution. Stop Holding It Together reflects a mature integration of personal insight and practical leadership, offering a grounded framework for navigating transition, responsibility, and growth at higher levels. When John speaks, people listen, and more importantly, they lead differently.
Stop Holding It Together speaks to leaders who step into greater responsibility and realize that alignment now matters as much as execution. John Taylor McEntire writes with credibility because he has lived the transitions he describes, leading in complex environments where misalignment carries real personal and professional cost. The S.Y.N.C. Method offers a grounded, practical way for executives to align self, system, and mission during moments that define their leadership.
John brings structure and clarity to moments when leadership requires more than performance. Stop Holding It Together offers a practical framework for navigating transition, responsibility, and alignment at higher levels of leadership. The S.Y.N.C. Method is thoughtfully sequenced and grounded in real execution.
The book Stop Holding It Together offers new leaders a deeply personal guide to successfully manage an organization of diverse people who each have their own emotional blind spots. John inspires readers with his experience of transforming years of 'analyzing and fixing' into a process to heal his old traumas and become an emotionally healthy leader. He addresses every aspect of good leadership, including the toughest: an organization's shifting emotional state.
Who This Is For
This is not only for newly promoted SVPs.
- 01
HR and L&D leaders responsible for executive transition support across teams or organizations.
- 02
Executive coaches looking for a roadmap they can hand their clients in the transition window.
- 03
Founders entering board chair seats for the first time, navigating governance instead of operations.
- 04
Mid-career professionals approaching senior promotion who want to see the chair clearly before they sit in it.
If you are responsible for someone else’s transition, or your own, the method works the same way.
About John
Built across 35 years and 41 countries.
John Taylor McEntire spent three and a half decades building what most organizations say they want and rarely know how to build: systems that hold without anyone holding them.
At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, he directed commercialization of more than 250 technologies and developed open-source policy adopted as a US Department of Energy national standard.
At a Middle Eastern sovereign innovation system, he built the region’s first technology transfer operation across eight universities, three national laboratories, and more than sixty nationalities. The operation produced forty licenses and seven startups.
In July 2024, after thirty-five years of being the person who held things together, he sat in his car in an empty parking lot at three in the morning and finally understood the cost. The book is what he wrote next.
Jack Canfield has called him a visionary. He is a four-time published author. Stop Holding It Together, with a foreword by Jack Canfield, is forthcoming September 2026.
Join the Launch List
The window is already open.
The first six to eighteen months in a senior role are not optional. Whether you have a roadmap or not, you are already in them. Join the launch list. Be first to know when the book ships. Receive the first chapter free.