Hi Reader, Last week’s newsletter was about why your team needs a Charter. This week we dive deeper into each section, offering examples of each part to help your team start developing one. Think of your charter as the structured design work that every high-performing team does before they step onto the field. It is the intentional preparation that allows a group of talented leaders to operate as a unified team instead of a collection of individuals. In the absence of a charter, leadership...
8 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, Imagine a NFL team showing up to a game with no playbook, or no clear scheme to guide the way they play. Everyone is talented. Everyone is working hard. But each person is operating from their own playbook. That’s backyard football, not professional sports. A team that showed up like this would be considered incredibly unprepared. Every sports talk show in America would be talking about it. Now compare that to what NFL teams actually do - they embrace a style of play that gives...
15 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, Leadership teams pride themselves on being problem solvers. It is one of the reasons they exist. But even the strongest teams struggle with something far more foundational: accurately identifying what their real problems are in the first place. From our experience working with hundreds of executive teams, we’d argue that most teams do not have a problem-solving problem. They have a problem-diagnosis problem. And when teams misdiagnose the cause, they unintentionally revisit the...
22 days ago • 6 min read
Hi Reader, Every organization begins with belief. Before there is a mission statement or a strategic plan, there is a conviction, something that feels too important to ignore. It is the “why behind the why.” The deep conviction that made someone say, “This matters enough to build something around it.” But over time, as organizations grow and new people join, those founding convictions can fade into the background. What was once intuitive to the founders becomes harder to see, harder to teach,...
29 days ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader, In recent years, the ability to “navigate ambiguity” has become one of the most celebrated leadership traits. It appears in job postings, competency models, and even company values. It sounds modern and adaptive, a badge of readiness for a fast-changing world. But there is a tension worth naming. The more we elevate “navigating ambiguity” as a hallmark of great leadership, the easier it becomes to neglect one of leadership’s most essential responsibilities: creating clarity....
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, In every organization, change is constant. A new strategy, a restructuring, a product shift, or a realignment of priorities. Yet for all the energy leaders invest in designing change, far less attention is given to explaining it. According to a Gallup study, only 13% of employees strongly agree that leadership communicates effectively about what is happening in their organization. When people do not understand why a change is being made, uncertainty fills the void. Speculation...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, A recent Harvard Business Review study found that leaders spend nearly 20% of their time managing conflict. That is one full day every week devoted to navigating tension, and that doesn’t come close to telling the whole story of impact. In addition to the time spent addressing conflict, there is also relational strain that results in lost potential. When teammates have something unresolved between them, collaboration becomes cautious. Conversations stay safe. People hold back ideas...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, James Clear once wrote, “We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” When performance falls short, leaders often respond by raising the bar. They set a loftier vision, announce a bold new strategy, or demand higher expectations. It feels inspiring in the moment, but most recurring problems are not solved by aiming higher. They are solved by stepping back, looking deeper, and finding the forces that create them in the first place. It's much more...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader, Last week I was speaking at a conference, unpacking the characteristics of high-performing leadership teams. When I got to the characteristic of “highly disciplined operating rhythms,” I asked the group to raise their hand if they were not satisfied with the quality of their meetings. Ninety-five out of one hundred hands shot up. I think the other five were daydreaming. And this is almost always the case, isn’t it? Most leaders are unsatisfied with the effectiveness of the meetings...
2 months ago • 5 min read