What the scoreboard replaces

I sat with a client last month who swore her team hated their scoreboard. “It feels like the Panopticon,” she said. I asked her one question: “Who updates it?” “They do. Nobody makes them.” Bentham’s prison worked because you...

Flat-pack truth

The box promises a bookshelf for forty dollars. That’s the appeal. Cheap, flat, and yours to build. Then you open the bag of screws and unfold one sheet of diagrams. No words. Just arrows and stick figures assembling something that looks nothing like your...

Proven elsewhere, but not proven here

The company needed a new head of product. So they promoted their best salesperson. He’d hit every number for six years. He understood the customer. He knew how to win. None of that is product management. This happens constantly, in sports and in business....

The doubt never leaves

We tell ourselves that success quiets the doubt. It doesn’t. We meet leaders who are, by any measure, excelling. Vibrant. Successful. Respected. And they still carry the same unanswered questions everyone else does. Am I actually good at this? Does anyone see...

The roster trap

We keep making the same mistake, season after season. We assume that if we collect enough talent, the wins will follow. We sign the best free agent, hire the sharpest résumé, recruit the highest scorer, and wait for the scoreboard to catch up with the roster. It...