[Un]Common Ground

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...

I've been in a lot of planning meetings over the past few months. Kickoffs, quarterly goal-setting, initiative launches, and I keep hearing the same phrase (or variation of): "We should..." "The team should..." "The team will..." The team will handle the rollout. The team will follow up with clients. The team will figure out the details. Which, at first encounter, sounds like delegation but it's actually diffusion. When no one's name is attached to an outcome, no one owns it. "The team"...

You've satisfactorily answered every question in the room, and somehow nobody feels satisfied. A senior leader prepares to announce a significant change, knowing it's big, knowing people might be uncertain, so they come in ready. With big energy, optimism and genuine excitement about what's ahead. The instinct makes sense: if people are going to be nervous, show them there's nothing to be nervous about, paint the picture of where we're going so vividly that they can't help but want to come...

Some of you know I recently got married to my favourite person in the whole world...what a day it was (photo shared at the end!). 113 of our closest people in one room, speeches about who we are as individuals and as a couple, stories about moments I'd forgotten and observations about our relationship I didn't know people had noticed. There was a moment during the speeches when I thought, Wow! Is that really how they've all seen me? Because there was a very obvious pattern. It was super...

Your inbox pings, and you open another RTO update from leadership. Here's what that email is really saying to you: "We need your help in making this work." Leadership has a vision, your team has concerns, and you're the bridge that determines whether this transition strengthens or fractures the organization. New FlexJobs data reveals the stakes: 53% of employees face RTO mandates (up from 23% last year), while 76% would consider leaving if flexibility disappeared entirely. This isn't an...