Leaders Must Go First, Not Be the Experts
There's a myth going around that leaders have to master AI before they're allowed to talk about it with their teams. Get certified, run a few pilots, come back once you know what you're doing. It's backwards, and it's costing companies time they don't have. What teams...
Why Control Plans Keep Six Sigma Improvements From Fading
A Six Sigma project is easy to celebrate when the final metrics look good. Closing the project, updating the tracker, and recognizing the team's work all matter. What happens after that celebration matters even more. We've seen teams deliver meaningful improvements,...
The Middle Ground Between Shadow IT and Organizational Paralysis
Most of the leaders we talk with in highly regulated environments are stuck somewhere between two bad options. Either they watch their frontline teams build workarounds because the approved tools can't keep pace with the mission, or they stall indefinitely waiting for...
Your AI Is Only as Smart as Your Weakest Data Pipeline
The problem usually is not the tool. It is what the tool is running on. We have seen it more times than we can count. An organization invests in automation, commits to a process improvement framework, builds clean dashboards with color-coded KPIs - and then wonders...
Seeing Around Corners: The Leadership Discipline of Strategic Foresight
There is a quiet risk inside many strategic plans. They look complete. They are well-formatted. They include milestones, owners, timelines, dashboards, and performance measures. On paper, they give leaders the confidence that the organization knows where it is going....
Strategic Foresight – Turning Challenges into Opportunities: Observing Change
As you saw the markers of change in hindsight [discussed in Part 1], now I want you to look at the markers of change we see today and project them forward. What do you see in foresight? ** This post is the second part (a summary...
Strategic Foresight – Turning Challenges into Opportunities: Mapping Past & Present
Signs begin to appear on the horizon […] but once, we’re in the present, critical thinking is concerned with how rapidly the issue at hand is developing … and how much we have to change to contain the situation or accelerate change in another direction. ** Post is a...
Collaboration? Easier said than done!
"Even high-performing teams can fail to collaborate because team members may end up having different interpretations about the principal task to be accomplished." “Collaboration? Easier said than done," answered the young leader when prompted about the status of his...
What can organizations do to thrive in a world of high complexities?
If organizations want to survive the turmoil of future technologies, they need to be open to change. The first act then is to rid themselves from practicing the following three fallacies. In meetings with partners and clients, it is not uncommon for them to ask about...