Below the Waterline · No. 1
Below the Waterline: The Other Organization You Run
Every company is two organizations. The one on the chart makes the decisions. The one below the waterline decides whether they happen.
Building Experiences · No. 11
Hosting Ends a Week Later: How to Debrief an Experience
The doors close and every part of you wants to go home. That is the moment almost everyone mistakes for the finish line.
The Strategy Manual · No. 7
The Hedgehog Concept: Finding the One Thing Your Company Should Be Great At
Most leadership teams are foxes: many reasonable ideas, no single decision. The hedgehog, the BHAG and the North Star are how you choose one big thing on purpose.
Below the Waterline
Group dynamics for people who run companies. What drives the room when nobody is saying it.
Group dynamics
The Work Beneath the Work
Every company does three kinds of work. The one nobody writes down is the feeling the work produces, and it decides whether the other two get done.
Below the Waterline · No. 2
Feelings Are Data
The flatness in your leadership meeting is not resistance. It is the most accurate reading of the organization you will get this quarter, and it is free.
Strategy & Change
Why strategy stays on the slide, why change programs stall, and what the research says instead.
Change
Your Detailed Change Plan Is the Most Dangerous-Looking Safe Thing You Own
In 1994 thirteen CEOs deep in major change programs were asked what made change work. The answer surprised the people asking.
Organization
What Is Your Company Actually For?
Ask five people on your leadership team and you will get five answers. The Tavistock tradition calls the one that matters the primary task.
Change
Why Your Change Initiative Stalled Before It Started
The cause is rarely execution. It sits in the architecture: the decisions made before launch that determined whether the change could ever work.
Change
Why Most Change Efforts Fail, and What the Research Actually Says
There was energy in the room, people nodded, and by the end of Q1 the initiative had quietly died. The framework was rarely the problem.
OKRs
A field manual for goal setting that changes Monday’s decisions, written from inside the rooms where it fails.
The OKR Manual · No. 11
OKRs for Sales
Sales measures everything, which makes it easy to pick the wrong numbers. Quota is the job. The Key Result is the change in how the team sells.
The OKR Manual · No. 10
OKRs for VC & PE Firms and Their Portfolios
A fund owns stakes in businesses that each define their numbers differently. How to line up a portfolio on a few outcomes without sending a template.
The OKR Manual · No. 9
OKRs for B2B SaaS & Product Companies
Product companies have read all the OKR advice, and many still watch the plan fade by week four. The fix is to measure impact, not shipping.
The OKR Manual · No. 8
OKRs for Software Service Companies
Most OKR advice is written for product companies. If you sell people's time, delivery belongs on the dashboard and the OKR is the firm you want to become.
Work in progress
Four long series, written in public. Each one is a manual I wished someone had handed me before I walked into the room.
Letters from the room
One essay a fortnight, in your inbox. No funnels, no frameworks for sale.