About Adam Stack
Adam is a former professional climber—2nd-place adult national champion and 2nd-place junior world champion—who completed first ascents around the world and appeared in documentaries alongside Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold.
In the business sector, Adam was brought in to lead two growth acceleration efforts, both of which resulted in successful acquisitions—one by IBM and the other by Marlin Equity Partners. Using his one-page project plan, he’s helped companies align quickly and scale smarter. He also co-led the collaboration between AWS and Kubecost, which helped Amazon quickly deliver on its customers’ need for fine-grained visibility into EKS application costs.
The work Adam is proudest of work is leading an AI initiative for CE Broker and the Florida Department of Health that improved healthcare outcomes through targeted education delivery.
Driven by a deep curiosity about how great projects succeed, Adam has spent five years studying history’s greatest projects to answer a single question: What makes an audacious project succeed when 99% of them fail?
While his research is ongoing, Adam shares key findings with organizational leaders as they emerge—including his signature concept, “The Heartbeat,” a system that cuts meetings by up to 40% and helps teams focus on what matters most.
His clients range from scrappy 10-person startups to multi-billion-dollar enterprises. If you’d like to work with Adam, reach out—he loves sharing his research to help ambitious, disciplined people win.
Reach Adam: Adam@adamstack.com
Projects
The Great Project Study
The Great Project Study is driven by a single question: What makes an audacious project succeed when 99% of them fail?
This ongoing study has spanned five years and has systematically analyzed 11 of history’s Great Projects and 6 epic failures (that should have become great), with a combined budget of $120 billion.
To qualify for the study and earn the title of a “Great Project,” a project had to transform an organization, reshape an industry, or—in the rarest cases—change the world—and operate at the upper limits of an organization’s ability. To qualify as an epic failure, a project had to aim just as high, but ultimately fall short of delivering on its goal.
While the study includes large projects, this is primarily due to the availability of information and the fact that decisions and consequences are amplified, making them easier to analyze. A project does not need to be large to be great—it simply needs to have a distinctive, positive impact and stretch the boundaries of what an organization is capable of.
Out of this work came The Heartbeat—the study’s signature concept, a meeting-like tool designed to drive relentless execution and commitment to a shared goal.
While the research is still ongoing, Adam shares concepts like The Heartbeat when they’re ready—with the goal of increasing the number of people who experience the thrill of great achievement, like the team that built the world’s tallest building in just one year and 45 days.