Why Is This Even a Debate?
The iced-coffee debate exposes how easily personal preferences become hiring standards. A closer look at the bias behind “professionalism” and what employers should do better.
Read full articleIdeas & Writing
Ideas from inside the work.
Essays on the leadership choices, organizational conditions, and emerging questions shaping what comes next.
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The CHRO’s Role in AI Must Include What Happens to People Next
Redeployment belongs in the AI business case. How CHROs can help people move into new work, including when their next opportunity lies outside the organization.
Read full articleWhat Great Organizations Make Possible
Great organizations leave both their people and the business stronger. Drawing on executive experience, this article examines how that strength is built and sustained.
Read full articleWhat High-Trust Executive Teams Do Differently
High-trust executive leaders put enterprise success ahead of functional interests. Trust fuels the shared commitment that enables them to lead and deliver together.
Read full articleWhen Integration Makes an Organization Stronger
Realizing an acquisition’s value requires careful judgement about how the businesses come together. The strongest integrations draw on what each organization does best.
Read full articleHow Leaders Preserve What Is Worth Keeping
Knowing what to keep is one of transformation’s hardest judgements. How leaders distinguish the strengths their future depends on from the familiar practices holding them back.
Read full articleBuilding an Organization People Can Believe In
Belief in an organization can deepen or disappear through ordinary working experiences. A reflection on the leadership practices that earn people’s confidence and commitment.
Read full articleExecutive Assimilation Is a Two-Way Responsibility
Successful executive transitions require adaptation on both sides. What incoming leaders, CEOs, and boards each owe the relationship.
Read full articleTwo Workforces. One Operating Model.
People and digital systems increasingly contribute to the same outcomes. Designing their work together requires a clearer view of where human judgement and accountability belong.
Read full articleThe Conversations That Shape Organizational Culture
Values become meaningful when leaders have to apply them. How everyday conversations turn stated expectations into standards people can trust.
Read full articleWhy Construction Firms Need a Stronger Operating Model to Scale
Many construction and mechanical engineering firms are benefiting from data center growth. Those that succeed beyond the current surge will evolve their operating models, often the key constraint to sustainable scale and performance.
Read full articleWhen Culture Problems Are Operating Model Problems
Repeated culture problems deserve a deeper diagnosis. How the way an organization operates can sustain the very behaviors its leaders are trying to change.
Read full articleTrust Is an Operating Asset
Trust helps teams make decisions quickly and deliver consistently. Examining how it is built reveals an operating advantage leaders can actively strengthen.
Read full articleWhat AI Reveals About How Work Really Gets Done
AI is bringing long-standing barriers to execution into view. Recognizing what those barriers reveal can change where leaders invest their transformation efforts.
Read full articleThe CHRO Is Already an Enterprise Architect
The CHRO’s enterprise mandate is already present in the work. A closer look at the role’s influence on business performance and the conditions required to fulfill it.
Read full articleHow AI-Driven Productivity Could Weaken Consumer Demand
Workforce decisions that improve one company’s margins can carry different consequences when repeated across an economy. The demand risk missing from many AI business cases.
Read full articleWhy a Stable Unemployment Rate Can Mask a Weak Hiring Market
The distance between an available job and an actual hire tells a story the unemployment rate cannot. Understanding that gap changes how leaders should assess the labor market.
Read full articleAI Is Reshaping the First Rung of the Leadership Ladder: The Unintended Consequences
AI is eliminating many of the administrative roles that have traditionally given women their first foothold in the workforce and a pathway into leadership. Organizations must redesign those early-career opportunities, or risk narrowing the pipeline of future women leaders.
Read full articleThe Leadership Responsibility for the Experience of Work
Fairness and dignity should hold throughout a person’s experience with an organization. Why that standard belongs within enterprise leadership accountability, from hiring through departure.
Read full articleEmployees Get Performance Reviews. Organizations Should Too.
An organizational performance review can reveal why capable people struggle to deliver. Applying that scrutiny helps leaders make better judgements about both people and the business.
Read full articleThe Reverse Recruitment Economy: When Job Seekers Become the Customer
As job seekers become paying customers, recruitment’s incentives are changing. Where useful support ends, unequal access begins, and employers share responsibility.
Read full articleWhy Value-Based Care Depends on Clinical Leadership
Clinical leadership connects individual expertise to the performance of the care team. Investing in that capability is essential to making value-based care work consistently.
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The Discipline of Better
Ideas on leadership, organizational performance, work, and what comes next.