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Designing With People, Not Just for Them
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Organizations often introduce new systems and processes without adequately involving the people who understand how work actually gets done, only to interpret subsequent workarounds and inconsistent adoption as employee resistance. Designing with people rather than simply for them brings practical knowledge and experience into decisions about what…
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Bob’s Your Uncle… and What We Stop Questioning
If you’ve ever watched a British cooking show or listened to someone from the UK explain how to fix something, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “Bob’s your uncle.” “Tighten the screw, reconnect the cable… Bob’s your uncle.” Today, it simply means “…and there you have it,” or “…it’s as easy as that.” It’s a cheerful…
assumptions, Best Practices, business leadership, business strategy, change management, context, continuous improvement, critical thinking, curiosity, Decision-Making, discernment, history, Language, Leadership & Practice, leadership development, leadership insights, organizational culture, organizational effectiveness, organizational learning, problem solving, Process Improvement, sensemaking, strategic alignment, Strategic thinking, systems thinking -
Yes Does Not Mean Agreement
One of the more subtle ways organizations derail themselves is by confusing agreement with commitment. The distinction seems almost insignificant until you begin looking for it; and once you find it, you will realize just how many strategic decisions are built upon an assumption that was erroneous. We tend to believe that a meeting has…
accountability, agreement, business leadership, business strategy, change management, commitment, Decision-Making, execution, execution gap, Leadership & Practice, leadership communication, leadership development, Organizational Alignment, organizational behaviour, organizational culture, organizational effectiveness, strategic alignment, Strategic thinking, team alignment -
Your Comfort Zone is Not the Enemy
I’m currently reading Choose Hard by MJ DeMarco. He reframed the comfort zone in a way that made me reconsider one of the most common ideas in personal and professional development. For years, we’ve been encouraged to “get out of our comfort zone.” The implication is that comfort itself is the problem. If we’re comfortable,…
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The Leaders We Have Vs. Leaders We Need
One of the defining strategic challenges of this decade is the widening gap between the leaders we have and the leaders we need. This is not simply a leadership shortage. It is a leadership mismatch. Organizations continue to promote people into roles that were designed for yesterday’s problems while expecting them to solve tomorrow’s. The…
adaptive leadership, business strategy, change management, continuous learning, executive leadership, future of leadership, future of work, Leadership & Practice, leadership design, leadership development, leadership mindset, organizational culture, organizational development, Strategic Alignment Journal, strategic leadership, systems thinking -
What truths has your organization become unable to hear?
Every organization depends on information flowing upward. Customers complain. Processes break. Risks emerge. Frontline employees notice inefficiencies long before they are likely to appear on a management report. The quality of leadership decisions is directly tied to the quality of information leaders receive. When people stop speaking honestly, reality becomes filtered. Leaders begin making decisions…
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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 -
Beware of Inertia
Have you ever walked into a room looking for something and forgotten why you entered? For a moment, you stand there trying to reconstruct your original purpose. You moved and are now standing in the room yet somewhere along the way, you forgot your reason for being there in the first place. Organizations can experience…
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Agreement Does Not Guarantee Alignment
Agreement and alignment are often used interchangeably, but they describe very different conditions. Agreement is relatively simple. It occurs when people arrive at a common position or decision. A proposal is accepted. A contract is signed. A partnership is formed. A strategy is approved. Agreement answers the question: Do we support this? Alignment is something…
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A Blank on the Map: The Cost of Premature Certainty
In Blank on the Map, explorer and mountaineer Eric Shipton describes an expedition into a region of the Karakoram where the maps contained large areas marked simply by what was not known. There were mountains, valleys, rivers, and glaciers already there, but they had not yet been explored or accurately recorded. The blank existed on…
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