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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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Is Your Business Problem Congenital or Congestive?
Medicine makes an important distinction between congenital and congestive heart failure. A congenital condition is structural. The defect exists from the beginning. The heart may continue to function, but it was never designed optimally in the first place. Congestive heart failure is different. The heart’s structure may have been adequate, but over time it becomes…
⚙️ Sensemaking in organizations, Leadership & Practice, Strategic Sensemaking, Systems, Structure & Relevancebusiness architecture, business diagnosis, business leadership, business strategy, business transformation, change management, continuous improvement, Decision-Making, entrepreneurship, kaizen, Leadership & Practice, leadership development, leadership insights, operational excellence, organizational health, root cause analysis, Strategic thinking -
Are you comfortable being challenged as a leader?
Most leaders would answer yes. The better question is whether the people around them believe it. Leadership requires making decisions in the absence of complete information. Every day, leaders form conclusions about customers, employees, competitors, market conditions, priorities, and risk. Those conclusions become assumptions, and assumptions become the foundation upon which decisions are made. There…
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No One Tells a Cardiologist, “It’s OK…I’ll Watch YouTube.”
One of the things that has always fascinated me about medicine is how readily we accept the idea that expertise matters. If someone experiences chest pain, persistent fatigue, an irregular heartbeat, or a concerning test result, very few people respond by saying, “You know, before you spend money on a cardiologist, have you tried Googling…
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Clients buy for emotional relief, not technical accuracy
The consultant who sounds certain. The advisor who reduces complexity into one clean answer. The framework communicated with confidence. A polished implementation roadmap. When pressure is high and consequences feel immediate, clients are more than likely to gravitate toward the person who makes the discomfort stop fastest. A confident answer can feel like oxygen when…
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