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.
Everything I Do Is the Same Move
Teaching, advisory work, Near Enemies, and even real estate finance looked like separate workstreams for a long time. They weren’t. They were the same diagnostic move in different rooms.
Expertise as a Blind Spot
Expertise gives us speed, pattern recognition, shorthand, and judgment. It can also make us so fluent in a frame that we stop noticing it is a frame.
How to Find the Hidden Obstacle That Is Actually Preventing Progress
A project that looked like a construction-cost problem turned out to be a parking assumption nobody had thought to revisit. Sometimes the fastest way forward is to treat the given as a variable.
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.