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The Blind Spot of Expertise
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Experience helps us recognize patterns, make informed decisions and interpret complex situations, but it can also lead us to rely on familiar explanations without recognizing what makes a situation different. The value of expertise lies not only in what we know, but in our willingness to question…
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Death by Playbook: Why Copy-Paste Growth Fails
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Growth playbooks can provide useful guidance, but adopting another organization’s strategies, structures and practices without understanding the conditions that made them successful can create more problems than they solve. Sustainable scaling requires an understanding of your own business’s ambitions, capabilities and constraints rather than assuming that someone…
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Broken by Design: Why Good Intentions Ruin Great Businesses
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: A bustling neighbourhood café attracted loyal customers despite its apparent disorganization, but when a new owner introduced operational improvements, the business lost much of what had made it successful. Improving a business without first understanding what makes it work can destroy the very things that create value,…
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What If You’re Getting Better at the Wrong Thing?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: An organization can meet its targets, improve efficiency and execute its strategy successfully while becoming increasingly disconnected from the environment in which it operates. Strong performance may provide reassurance precisely when the organization needs to question whether its strategic direction remains relevant. Today, I participated in the…
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Is Stoicism Really Teaching Business Anything New?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Stoicism may be more than 2,000 years old, but many of its lessons about judgment, ambition, responsibility, and adversity are principles we already recognize in business. Perhaps the real challenge isn’t discovering what ancient philosophy can teach us, but understanding why we struggle to apply what we…
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The Real Reason RFPs Are Dangerous and Why They’re Bad Practice
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: RFPs become dangerous when organizations assume that what they are requesting is what they actually need, turning untested assumptions into formal requirements. The result can be a perfectly executed procurement process that delivers exactly what was specified without resolving the problem that prompted it. There is something…
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There Is a Difference Between Doing Your Job and Letting It Become You
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Commitment asks us to bring ourselves to our work, but overidentification can lead us to surrender our sense of self to it. When our roles become our identities, we risk compromising not only our well-being but also our judgment, our relationships, and our capacity to help others…
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“We’re training them to stand up so that we can stand down.”
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Leaders must prepare those coming behind them to stand up so that, when the time comes, they can responsibly stand down. This requires developing their judgment, giving them the authority to act and ensuring they can carry responsibility when the leader is no longer in the room.…
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No One Gets to Enjoy Their Own Legacy
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: No one gets to enjoy or control the final meaning of their own legacy because that meaning will be determined by people who interpret our choices after we are gone. Rather than performing for an imagined future audience, leaders might pay closer attention to what their decisions…
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Could Every Problem Be a Thinking Problem?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Not every problem originates in our thinking, but the assumptions we bring to a situation can influence how we understand it, respond to it, and sometimes contribute to its persistence. Could examining our thinking be one of the most important steps we take before deciding what needs…
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