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Surgical Healing doesn’t Follow Productivity Rules
There are those moments where something is taken from you or from the systems you lead… and you don’t quite have language for the tenderness that follows. It feels like an extraction — that moment when something that has lived inside a structure for a long time is suddenly removed. The absence is felt even…
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What Have You Dismissed Prematurely?
Have you ever heard about ambergris? I only recently discovered it… this odd, ocean-drifting substance that begins its life deep inside a sperm whale’s digestive system. Not exactly the origin story you’d expect for something perfumers covet. It forms as the whale protects itself from what it can’t digest, then eventually releases it back into…
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Succession Planning is not just Skills Transfer…and should NEVER be an Afterthought
I’ve long admired Warren Buffett. He’s been a bit of a mentor to me… not in the literal sense, but in the way someone can shape how you think simply by how they move through the world. I’ve read The Snowball, that long, patient biography that traces not just Buffett’s wealth, but his temperament, his…
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You Can’t Solve Spherical Problems with Flat Thinking
You can’t solve spherical problems with flat thinking…and yet, so much of leadership, decision-making, and strategy still operates as if reality will eventually cooperate if we just simplify it enough. Straight lines. Clean answers. Either/or choices. The problem is that many of the situations we’re navigating now…in organizations, in systems, in our own lives…aren’t flat…
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Routine can be a double-edged sword
On the one hand, it creates rhythm… steadiness… trust with yourself. It’s how things get done when motivation dwindles. It’s how we move forward without renegotiating every decision from scratch. Routine builds muscle memory for progress. But when routine goes unquestioned… What once supported momentum can quietly become a blindfold. You keep doing the thing…
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Are You Addicted to Work?
I’ve always been curious about addiction. The way I tend to look at most things in my life, I’ve wondered why some people get so deeply hooked… whether it’s food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, hoarding, smoking, or porn. What is it that pulls someone past moderation and into dependency? Over the years, that curiosity hasn’t been…
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He saved babies’ lives while being paid as a janitor.
Vivien Thomas aspired to become a doctor and demonstrated the intellectual capacity, discipline, and aptitude required for medical training. He saved every dollar from his carpenter job, toward medical school, certain he was building a future with his own hands. Then the stock market crashed. This was 1929 and the Great Depression that followed, didn’t…
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When Completion is Necessary Before any Plan
I came across this story in The Washington Post and wanted to share it immediately, not because it’s inspirational in the tidy, motivational sense, but because it quietly exposes how much of what we think are “rules” are really just expectations we’ve been trained to accept. We’ve been taught to expect outcomes to follow a…
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What Christmas Means for an Entrepreneur
The Christmas season arrives with a strange double signal for entrepreneurs. On the surface… it’s opportunity. Money moving fast. Peak demand. Short windows. A season where revenue can surge if you’ve positioned yourself well. Underneath that… it’s pressure. Noise. Saturation. Everyone selling at once. Everyone borrowing the same urgency, the same language, the same emotional…
Clarity BEFORE Execution. Structure BEFORE Speed
If you could better understand one thing about your business right now….
Most costly decisions begin with
an inaccurate understanding of the situation.
I help leaders understand what is actually happening before major decisions are made or
resources are invested in solving the wrong problem.
Giselle Hudson | Pre-Decision Diagnostic Advisor | Sensemaking for high-stakes business decisions 