[Un]Common Ground

The [un]common stuff that lives between strategy and execution, that teams don’t talk about. Your first read every Wednesday morning, meant to be applied and forwarded. Years ago, we had a director in one of our cohorts who barely spoke during sessions. He was completely present, prepared and engaged, just...quiet. In a one-on-one, he told me: I feel like I'm only using 10% of what I'm able to do here. He'd known for a while his skills were underutilized, but it appeared that nobody around...

The [un]common stuff that lives between strategy and execution, that teams don’t talk about. Your first read every Wednesday morning, meant to be applied and forwarded. Years ago, we had a director in one of our cohorts who barely spoke during sessions. He was completely present, prepared and engaged, just...quiet. In a one-on-one, he told me: I feel like I'm only using 10% of what I'm able to do here. He'd known for a while his skills were underutilized, but it appeared that nobody around...

The [un]common stuff that lives between strategy and execution, that teams don’t talk about. Your first read every Wednesday morning, meant to be applied and forwarded. Across everyone who completed our S.P.A.R.K. Assessment in 2025, we pulled the 242 with leadership titles, from the C-suite through to frontline management. Three strong patterns showed up: → 84% defaulted to a flexible working style → 70% stopped their own work to help others on their team → 65% felt guilty saying no and...

Leadership + teams + the space between Most leaders wait for something to happen before they look. That waiting is costing more than you think, on both sides of the table. Recognition is so much more than a pat on the back. I've watched leaders spend years genuinely believing they were doing it well, remembering birthdays, posting shout-outs, writing thoughtful reviews, while the people on their teams quietly recalibrated what they were willing to bring. The gestures were thoughtful and...

The [un]common stuff that lives between strategy and execution, that teams don’t talk about. Your first read every Wednesday morning, meant to be applied and forwarded. Every headline sounds the same right now. Automation. Disruption. Replacement... timelines measured in months, not years. It's enough to make anyone start asking what the next 6, 12, or 24 months will actually look like inside their organization. Here's some food for thought for you... the CEO of Anthropic, the $380 billion AI...

The leaders who build the most confident, fastest-moving teams are rarely the ones with the highest standards. They are the ones whose standards are the most clearly understood by the people around them. For clarification, high standards and clearly communicated standards are not the same thing. The gap between them is where a surprising amount of organizational capability stalls. Most experienced leaders have spent years developing a finely calibrated sense of what good looks like. They can...

We've all been on both sides of the same failed exchange. You finish explaining something, ask if there are questions, and receive confident nods all around. Three days later, your inbox is flooded with the same question asked 12 different ways. Or the reverse: someone walks you through a process, you nod along because stopping them feels awkward, and the moment they leave, you think...THAT could've been a shorter meeting. Do they think I don't know what I'm doing? The miscommunication runs...

A friend recently shared this sports event with me because it's so relevant to the work we do at The Venned Group. During the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso found himself wheel-to-wheel with 7x Champion, Michael Schumacher, at the infamous 130R, a corner taken at over 180 miles per hour with walls on either side. Rather than back off, Alonso stayed flat on the throttle, and it was Schumacher who hit the brakes. When asked about it later, Alonso shrugged: "At times like that, I...

I was reviewing my notetaker’s notes the other day after a meeting. They were immaculate. Perfectly sorted, action steps clearly highlighted, even the smallest contextual details captured accurately. We use Motion, which meant those action items had already been translated into tasks and offered to be placed into my calendar before the call had officially ended. The efficiency was undeniable and so was the feeling that followed. Irrelevance is the closest word I can find, although...