On opinions

I read a piece this week by a cookbook author I adore, Katie Parla, about a pasta shop in Gloucester, Massachusetts, run by a woman named Danielle who has an opinion about everything. The correct flour. The right shape for your sauce. A better olive oil than the one...

Rules before the fight

I sat in a leadership meeting last month where the real issue never got said out loud. I could feel it. Everyone in that room could feel it. We talked around it for forty five minutes before I finally named it directly. The relief was immediate. Not because the...

The prescription we stop taking

Here’s a thing that shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but does. A leadership team gets a clear diagnosis. The meeting rhythm is broken, scorecards are inconsistent, and accountability is soft. We build the fix together. It’s specific – weekly...

The fugu license

I keep coming back to fugu. Not because I’ve eaten it (I haven’t, and I’m not sure I’d volunteer), but because of what it represents. A dish of pufferfish that carries enough toxin in the wrong tissue to stop a heart within hours, and there is...

Borrowing discipline from the pros

I keep coming back to sports. Not the highlight reels. The infrastructure behind them. Few organizations chase performance with the discipline you find in professional sports. The planning, role clarity, and sheer demand for week-over-week improvement are on a...