Blog Highlight

Ron Westrum describes three types of organization. Depending on how many yesses you had, your company probably lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Seeing what’s next is hard, even when you’re visionary. In strategy planning, managers often look to the past for situations of worst-case scenarios—that is, the most extreme record of past events.

No one can predict innovation despite the eager pundits. They are ones who profess on talk shows without consequences.

We know these people already. They finger-point everywhere except themselves. They see the office as a jungle and make it so.

When you are leading a team, an unthinking, semi-automatic reaction won’t do. There are inner struggles you can’t and shouldn’t escape.

The real question to any leader is this: Will I be willing to endure the emotional pain to go through the human messiness of argument and truth-seeking?

Short-term pressure—that’s what everyone complains about. They speak openly about the market pressure for short-term performance.

In a decentralized organization, business leaders would directly negotiate. But how do you judge if the deal was overpriced or not?

Then things started backsliding. Somehow red tape has been growing back like ivy vines. But this isn’t a cultural issue. It’s a design issue.

Everyone wants to tell their own version of the story. That’s the trouble with autobiographies. Especially a CEO’s memoir. How much truth is in there?