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Are You Incapable of Selling, or Is It This?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: We are remarkably quick to turn repeated outcomes into identities: I can’t sell, I can’t lead, I’m not cut out for this. But before deciding what the result says about you, it may be worth diagnosing the conditions that produced it. Sometimes we turn repeated results into…
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How Many Jobs Are Hiding in That One Hiring Description?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Job descriptions often combine several related but operationally different functions because having one person cover them can make economic sense. The question is whether that calculation takes into account the actual work, its volume, competing priorities and the capacity one person has to deliver all of it…
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You Cannot Deviate From a Baseline You Do Not Have
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: A deviation only tells us something when there is a consistent baseline against which to recognise it. Before trying to correct what has gone wrong, it is worth asking whether a reliable standard, rhythm or way of working ever existed in the first place. Dr Howard Luks…
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How the Best Football Teams Answer The One Question Every Business Must Answer™
Every four years, the world watches football’s greatest coaches make decisions that appear almost instinctive. Should they play with three at the back or four? Should they press high or defend deep? Should they attack through the middle or exploit the wings? Should they rely on experience or give youth an opportunity? To the casual…
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Most Leaders Never Get to Practice
How strange it is that we expect business leaders to perform at extraordinarily high levels while structuring their lives in ways that would completely dismantle almost every other performance discipline we admire. If you watch elite athletes closely, or musicians at the highest level, most of what they do is not performance itself. Most of…
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Why adopting a particular leadership style can be detrimental in more ways than one
While scrolling LinkedIn, I came across an illustration that immediately caught my attention. It showed two types of leaders. One was the mechanic. The other, the gardener. The mechanic sees the organization as an engine. Something that can be understood through parts, diagnosed through logic, and repaired through intervention. When something goes wrong, the instinct…
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Good Business Practice: Trust… but Verify
“First off, don’t let the force of the impression carry you away. Say to it, ‘hold up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from—let me put you to the test’ . . .” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.18.24 Epictetus is pointing to a moment we often miss… the split second where something happens,…
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The 7-step, “bulletproof” problem-solving process…with a twist
I came across Bulletproof Problem Solving by Charles Conn and Robert McLean… two men shaped by decades inside McKinsey & Company, strategy rooms, and high-stakes decision environments. Their work is built on what they describe as a seven-step, “bulletproof” problem-solving process… a method refined in consulting environments where rigor is non-negotiable and conclusions must hold…
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Living your Best Life Now
We talk about living our best life now but ignore the now, and treat it as though it is a destination waiting somewhere ahead of us… after the right opportunity arrives, after the body changes, after the money settles, after the grief softens, after we finally become some shinier version of ourselves. But life does…
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Ideas Aren’t Solutions If Diagnosis Didn’t Come First
There’s a costly habit that shows up in businesses that are otherwise filled with smart, capable people… the reflex to move from discomfort straight into ideas. The moment something feels off, the room fills with solutions. It looks like progress because there is movement. It sounds intelligent because the ideas are often good. But beneath…
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