Mike Palm spent forty years guiding Fortune 500 organizations through the transitions that break most change efforts. Across 117 projects in utilities, manufacturing, financial services, and oil and gas, he learned where frontline leadership development consistently fails. His new book, Logic Puzzles for Managers, Volume 1, puts fifty real management scenarios into a logic-grid format that forces supervisors to reason through decisions before they face them on the job.

Mike Palm spent forty years guiding Fortune 500 organizations through the transitions that break most change efforts. Across 117 projects in utilities, manufacturing, financial services, and oil and gas, he learned where leadership development fails at every rung of the pipeline. His series, Logic Puzzles for Managers, puts 150 real management scenarios into a logic-grid format that forces leaders to reason through decisions before they face them on the job.

The series follows the leadership pipeline. Volume 1 covers the peer-to-supervisor transition: the former peer who resists your authority, the first budget you defend, the skip-level that exposes what your team actually says. Volume 2 covers managing other managers: the governance gap nobody owns, four departments competing for one position, the succession slate you carry to a board. Volume 3 covers political navigation at the senior level: coalition building, pre-board alignment, crisis positioning, and the moment a room decides before you finish the sentence. Fifty puzzles per volume, each one built on a situation working managers recognize from their own organizations.

Every solution cites the research behind it. Palm traces each answer walkthrough to published management literature in Chicago style, drawing on Gallup and HR.com engagement data, Charan on the leadership pipeline, Galbraith on matrix design, Pfeffer on organizational power, and Cialdini on influence. Readers train judgment against the literature rather than against one consultant's opinion.

Palm is the Managing Partner of Convergent Results, a change management consultancy in Cockeysville, Maryland. He holds the PMP, CCMP, CSSBB, and CMRP designations. His practice draws on methodologies he built at United Research and Gemini Consulting in performance management systems, problem-solving and team-building, and natural work team design. He serves as President of the Board of the Meeting Place Foundation, a nonprofit supporting recovery programs in the greater Baltimore area.