Ideas
Ideas I'm working through about leadership, organizations, judgment, and the places where the apparent problem isn't always the actual one.
Why the Apparent Problem is Rarely the Actual Problem
I kept trying to organize my teaching, advisory work, Near Enemies, and the book as separate things. Then I realized they were all the same move: finding what the apparent problem is obscuring.
The Near Enemies of Organizational Life
Organizations have Near Enemies too. A strength, story, norm, or reputation can acquire authority over questions it was never meant to answer, creating a collective blind spot that is remarkably hard to see from inside the system.
Accountability vs. Self-Blame
Accountability asks what was yours and what you will do differently. Self-blame keeps expanding the assignment until the whole outcome becomes evidence against you.
The Loyalty Trap
Silence is not inherently wise or cowardly. The harder question is what the silence is serving, and whether loyalty has started asking you to give up truth, judgment, or yourself.
Reflection vs. Rumination: Why Thinking Harder Is Not the Same as Thinking Better
Reflection and rumination can look almost identical from the inside. The difference is direction: reflection extracts something useful and carries it forward. Rumination keeps asking thought to produce an answer it may not be able to produce.
Why Smart Organizations Solve the Wrong Problem
Leadership teams can work very hard on alignment, communication, or execution and still get nowhere because the stated problem is only where the consequences are showing up. The actual problem is often one level underneath.
When Strength Becomes a Liability
A strength can be completely real and still end up doing the wrong job. For leaders, indispensability can look a lot like effectiveness until the organization can’t scale without them.
Why High-Performing Leaders Get Stuck When Everything Looks Fine
Some of the most dangerous problems in high-performing organizations do not look like problems. They look like progress, especially when the assumptions underneath them have stopped being questioned.
What Is the Near Enemies Framework?
Near Enemies is a framework for understanding how real strengths can distort, overreach, or take on jobs they were never meant to do, and why those patterns are so hard to see from the inside.