When it comes to building a high-performing organization, your greatest resource is the potential of your senior leadership team.
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Check out our previous posts below where we share real-world case studies and insights from our work with executive teams across industries.
How Curiosity Unlocks Strategy
When Amy Edmondson was a PhD student at Harvard, she set out to study how effective teamwork influenced patient safety in hospitals. Her hypothesis was simple: the best teams would make the fewest mistakes.
But when the data came back, it showed the opposite.
The highest-performing teams were reporting more errors.
Her first reaction? Panic. Something had to be wrong.
But then she paused. And instead of dismissing the data, she got curious. She asked a different question:
What if those teams weren’t making more mistakes but rather they were just more willing to talk about them?
Jazz Needs Scales. Your Team Needs Structure.
I’ve been sitting with this quote from Steve Denning lately. It’s one I keep coming back to and one I find many of the teams we work with need to hear:
“There are those who believe that creativity is about getting rid of structure, systems, and processes and letting a thousand flowers bloom. I believe structure is necessary because structure and creativity have the same parentage. It is structure that enables creativity... Without structure, there is nothing for creativity to get leverage upon.”
Too often, we talk about structure like it’s the enemy of creativity or something that boxes us in, holds us back, or limits the full expression of our ideas.
But what if we’ve been thinking about it wrong?
What if structure isn’t what stifles creativity, but rather what makes it possible in the first place?
Leadership Isn’t a Solo Act—It’s a Team Effort
Meet Didi, a leader who gives everything she has to her team until there’s nothing left to give.
In Episode 6 of Netflix’s The Man on the Inside, we watch as Didi, the director of a retirement community in San Francisco, moves through a relentless day. One staff member after another comes to her with problems they’ve been conditioned to believe only she can solve:
The restaurant is out of salt shakers.
The Wi-Fi is down.
The leader of the resident council is demanding her time.
The Activity Coordinator wants to catch up.
Then, just as she’s handling it all, the real weight of leadership crashes down. One of the residents in their retirement community has passed away.
Didi steps up like a superhero, juggling every crisis, every request, every responsibility alone. After informing the entire team about the death of the resident, she crawls under her desk, puts on ocean sounds, and shuts the world out. Under her desk is a picture of her deceased mom (which seems to comfort her), so we get the idea this is something she does regularly to cope with stress.