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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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Delegate the Work. Not the Decision.
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal Post in two sentences: Delegate the work, because leverage is how meaningful things get built. However do not surrender the decisions that define direction, ownership, and responsibility. Recently I caught myself about to pick up ‘something that was never mine to carry.’ It was small and it became my responsibility only…
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Our Decisions Can Never Consistently Rise Above Our Understanding of Ourselves
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal Post in two sentences: Leadership development invests heavily in developing what leaders do, yet pays far less attention to understanding the person doing it. Our decisions can never consistently rise above our understanding of ourselves. My reasoned choice is as indifferent to the reasoned choice of my neighbor as to his…
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The Anatomy of Business Dysfunction: When the Head and Gut Disconnect
Today’s 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁 in two sentences: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘆𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗼𝗺𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝘆𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁. 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗴𝗻𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻’𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲. A fish stinks from the head has become shorthand for a simple truth: when organizations fail, leadership is usually to…
business dysfunction, business leadership, business strategy, Decision-Making, execution, Leadership & Practice, leadership development, middle management, operational excellence, organizational culture, organizational design, organizational effectiveness, organizational health, strategic alignment, strategy, systems thinking, workplace culture -
A Practical Look at Faith in Business
Faith is often avoided in business. It either sounds too religious for the boardroom or perceived as too impractical for strategy meetings. Yet every entrepreneur exercises faith. None of these come with guarantees. In a Return to Love, Marianne Williamson tells us that there is no such thing as a faithless person. The question isn’t…
Alignment, belief systems, business growth, business leadership, business mindset, business strategy, business success, conscious leadership, Decision-Making, entrepreneurship, faith, intention, intentional leadership, Leadership & Practice, leadership development, mindset, mindset shift, organizational leadership, personal growth, problem solving, purpose, resilience, Self leadership, Strategic thinking -
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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What Happens When the Obvious is Misleading?
The obvious deserves attention. It just doesn’t always deserve to be part of the conclusion. We are conditioned to respond to what we can see. Most of us don’t witness the beginning of a problem. We encounter it only after it has worked its way to the surface. By then, what we call “the problem”…
business leadership, business strategy, continuous improvement, critical thinking, Decision-Making, executive leadership, Leadership & Practice, leadership development, Organizational Alignment, organizational development, organizational effectiveness, pre-decision diagnostics, problem solving, root cause analysis, sensemaking, strategic diagnosis, Strategic thinking, strategy, systems thinking -
Seize the Moment, not the Day
We have all heard the phrase Carpe Diem. Seize the day. In Choose Hard, M.J. DeMarco offers a subtle but important shift. Don’t seize the day. Seize the moment. We don’t make decisions in days, weeks, months, or years. We make them in moments. Every conversation. Every email. Every purchase. Every difficult discussion we avoid.…
better decisions, business growth, business strategy, continuous learning, critical thinking, Decision-Making, executive leadership, Leadership & Practice, leadership development, leadership mindset, management, organizational effectiveness, organizational leadership, strategic alignment, Strategic thinking
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