Experience helps leaders recognise patterns faster. It can also tempt us to skip the work of understanding where we are. This week: why the value of experience lies in knowing why the answer might be different this time.
I watched an executive delay a piece of work for three weeks because it was not quite ready. It was good in week one. By the time it reached the room, the decision had largely been made without her. Perfectionism has a good reputation. The question is when it stops helping.
Licence counts aren't a strategy. Real leadership defines the problem before choosing the tool, not access mistaken for transformation.
Nothing is worth capitulating to somebody else's inferiority complex. Being nice to others at the expense of kindness to yourself and the others who be better for hearing what you have to say is an act of self-erasure, not generosity to others.
what happens when structure is sound but nobody inside it is actually being trusted to use their judgement, and what that costs organisations that are leaning harder into process as complexity increases.
The nice action is actually an unkind action. One step further, the nice action isn’t altruistic. It’s not really being done for the other person; it’s being done because you don’t want to be uncomfortable.
Governance as a meeting is a norm worth rewriting. Governance as architecture is what replaces it.
For years I've told leaders to embrace failure as the cost of building anything new. Then a few people asked if I'd really give up a steady income to go out on my own, and I caught myself holding my own risk to a harder standard than theirs.
People don't resist change, they resist ambiguity: not knowing if they'll still belong, still matter. Change management handles the mechanics. Leadership creates clarity from uncertainty, and gives people real agency in how they move through it.
We expect leaders to look composed on their worst days. That standard is a norm worth rewriting. Leadership isn't measured by avoiding stumbles, but by recovering from them, giving yourself the grace you offer everyone else, and standing back up.
