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What Martha Stewart Built Before Her Category Had a Name
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Martha Stewart was building what we would now call a personal brand, creator business and lifestyle empire years before the language existed to describe any of it. Her story is a useful reminder that sometimes the work becomes clear before the category does. When Martha Stewart started…
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When confidence outruns understanding
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Confident misunderstanding can cause an organization to define the wrong problem, accept the wrong reality and commit itself to the wrong direction. Once that happens, talent, strategy and execution begin amplifying the error. Confusion can be uncomfortable, but it carries an important admission: we know that we…
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How to Avoid Floundering in a Sea of Indecision
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Insufficient understanding can send us towards the wrong solution, but waiting for complete certainty can leave us moving along the same course by default. The aim is to determine what must be known, what can remain uncertain and when there is enough understanding to decide responsibly. I…
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What Is the Minimum Condition Necessary for Your Purpose to Be Fulfilled?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: We often confuse what we are accustomed to doing with what must be done, gradually adding conditions until the threshold for action becomes unnecessarily high. Asking what minimum condition is necessary for the purpose to be fulfilled can help us separate what is essential from everything we…
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Lingering Legacies: When Persistence Masks Irrelevance
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: The Salvatori Building continued to serve different purposes as Trinidad evolved. Its story reminds us to examine whether adapting an established structure is preserving its relevance or postponing a necessary change. For an entire generation of Trinidadians, the Salvatori Building was one of the defining landmarks of…
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As Practitioners, We Often Need What We Sell
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences Practitioners are often drawn to work that meets a need they understand from the inside. Needing another person to help us apply our own tools doesn’t weaken our expertise; it may deepen our understanding of why those tools matter. I recently reorganised a list of people I…
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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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They Asked for Training. I Asked Why.
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal Post in two sentences: A request for customer service training became a six-country customer journey mapping engagement because one question revealed that the problem had been misdiagnosed. Return on Decision begins before execution: it is determined by whether we solve the visible problem we were given or take the time to…
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Is this Decision Asymmetrical?
Asking “Is this decision asymmetrical?” is a vital mental model for risk management and strategy. Before discussing strategy, before discussing execution, before discussing budgets, restructuring, hiring, expansion, partnerships, marketing campaigns, software purchases, or new opportunities, the question to ask is: Is this decision asymmetrical? Most leaders spend considerable time trying to determine whether a decision…
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The Speed vs. Clarity Trap
My tag-line is ‘Clarify BEFORE you Amplify’. It’s the foundation on which I live my life, steer my solo profession and help clients. Yet clarity is not a go-to for most business owners. They may speak about needing clarity but the reality is they want results quickly and getting clear first takes too long. Paying…
Alignment, business diagnostics, business growth, clarify before you amplify, clarity first, Decision-Making, execution matters, high stakes decisions, Leadership Thinking, leadership under pressure, operational excellence, organizational clarity, reduce risk, strategic clarity, strategy before execution
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