Newsletter
Something has been bothering me this month and I haven’t been able to name it cleanly. The closest I can get is this: we are living through a moment in which the future is being used to make decisions about people in the present. Not the actual future of
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My boss once addressed a serious misstep with a single question. What he chose not to say taught me more about leadership and respect than any debrief ever could.
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A hostile challenge becomes a teaching moment when a facilitator shows how professional respect and self-awareness matter more than credentials.
Essays
When the project succeeds, it’s because of the leader’s clear direction. When it failed, the team didn’t execute properly. When retention improves, the leader has created the right culture. When people leave, they weren’t a good fit. When the product shipped on time, the leader kept
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What if everything we assume about leadership and influence is backwards? True influence exists only when you completely abandon the intention to influence—a paradox that reframes management as craft rather than performance.
Newsletter
Welcome to the usual mix of the month: a handful of pieces that caught my eye over the past few weeks. Some overlap in theme, which I’ll let you draw your own lines on. 1. The reason your organization moves slowly, works in silos, and has too many meetings
Essays
This week I’m setting aside the regular essay to say something simple. A lot of people around you (family members, neighbors, colleagues) are affected by what’s happening in our country at the moment. Many of you are too. I am. If you manage people, you already know this.
Essays
A question for you about Field Notes I'm considering publishing my Field Notes—25 years of ethnographic observations from inside organizations around the world. I wrote these seriously, as organizational anthropology: what you'd document if you stumbled into an unknown tribe and tried to understand behaviors
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Confidence isn't the same as clarity. Real agreement requires understanding someone's reasons, reasoning, and assumptions—but only if you hold reasons of your own. Without that foundation, you're not thinking. You're echoing.
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Line and middle managers are the heart of every organization. Their daily decisions—what they say and do, and what they choose not to say and do—have immediate, unmediated impact on team members, families, and communities. Like teachers in a classroom, their influence is real and life-changing. Yet
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When someone on your team becomes "indispensable," it might feel like you've found a star performer. But indispensability isn't value—it's a trap. It's organizational failure disguised as individual excellence. It means someone can't take vacation, can't disconnect, can't be fully present for their
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When you do someone's performance evaluation, their survival in the company depends on your decision. So when they give you positive feedback, can you trust it? The structural asymmetry means you cannot know whether their praise reflects genuine experience or necessary performance. This isn't about