[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. There's a version of leadership that photographs well. The leader is present, available, and responsive. They attend the meetings, they answer the questions, they sign off on the decisions that arrive at their desk. By every visible measure, they are leading. This is the quietest dysfunction in most organizations, because it...

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. I continuously get asked why teams won't speak up in meetings, why the best ideas stay quiet or why talented people who used to lean in now sit back and wait to be told. Leaders are building out psychological safety seminars, running engagement surveys, and creating open forums, but nothing's changing. The best leadership...

Leadership + teams + the space between Mark Twain allegedly said it best: "It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for certain that just ain't so." Nobody puts that quote on a motivational poster about digital transformation, and they should. The leaders I see struggling most right now with transformations (digital or otherwise) aren't the ones who don't understand technology but the ones who understand their business so well, who have been so right for so...

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. Believe it or not, nobody actually calms down when you tell them to... (shocking, isn't it?!) I was having lunch with a leader recently who'd just come out of a heated team exercise. She was sandwiched between different people with different styles, expressing real frustration in the room. By nature, she's observant,...

A moment for the leader you've become There's a widely cited study out of the Karolinska Institute that found the average age of a cell in the human body is somewhere between 7 and 10 years. This is to say that: Your skin replaces itself in weeks. Your skeleton takes about a decade. Some cells stick around for life, but most of who you are, physically, is not the same person you were 7 years ago. I say this often, but with this in mind, wouldn't it be naive to think our working styles...

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...

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...