Everything published, most recent first. Two a week: a standalone piece, and a reflection on that week's conversation.
333 essays
Seeing organisations as complex social systems highlights governance as a cultural force. Responsibility extends beyond senior leaders to all managers, shaping behaviour through clear standards, accountability, and consistent leadership practice.
Good evening, and welcome to the second edition of The Scribbler. A newsletter featuring an expanded set of articles addressing a key challenge facing organisations. This month I am taking
Governance allocates authority, responsibility, and decision rights. When it is remote or sealed off from scrutiny, power goes unchecked, accountability erodes, and resource decisions become arbitrary and subjective.
Reframing so-called “negative” people as pragmatists exposes unchecked optimism as a driver of the sunk cost fallacy—loss aversion, ego, and false hope. Drop the Kool-Aid, face reality, and better decisions come into view.
When managers fall into the sunk cost fallacy, more data rarely helps because the problem is emotional, not rational. Biases like ego, loss aversion, and optimism drive persistence. Awareness, governance, and decisive leadership matter more than analysis alone.
Ever get the sense that the meeting you are in is more about appearances than actions? Find that people keep on raising decision items that were already settled? Notice irrelevant issues dominate the agenda? Quite possibly an aspiring CIA operative is sabotaging your meeting.
Instead of a new column, this week I am surfacing something from the archives—a selection of articles about privacy.
A crisp document should be narrative and substantial, not slides. As Bezos argues, six-page memos beat PowerPoint, which sells rather than thinks. When meetings reward persuasion over reasoning, organisations get polished form but weak substance.
Organisations that are above average in their track record of developing leader-managers put an emphasis on creating challenging opportunities, not just for aspiring talent but for incumbent Line Managers who can too easily become stale.
By leveraging the management tool of control to harness the energy released by the leadership tool of motivation, the informal leadership networks that arise can handle the greater demands that result from the organisational change process.
When alignment and planning are conjoined, the process releases untapped potential. This is because a leader-manager is energising people by unlocking feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. An approach that ultimately leads to greater wellness.
Competent planning is a vital reality check on exuberant strategy, and sound strategy gives planning the direction to bring about change.
When Line Managers lack the hard skills of process design and implementation, the capacity to initiate changes in procedure, or the ability to write sound policy, and instead try to *lead* their team to success by hiring or co-opting other managers in the business to solve their problems, an engine
Informal leadership works best through small, closed ties of three people, combining trust and task focus. When ties are only bilateral or too numerous, informal leadership weakens and can undermine organisational effectiveness.
Informal leadership is most effective when conducted with a small number of closed ties (involving three people) and a mix of friendship- and task-orientated activities. When the ties are open (involving only two people) or become too numerous, informal leadership begins to break down and can hinder