The Hero-Leader Playbook Works Right Up Until the Transformation Needs Everyone Else
Roughly seventy percent of organizational transformations fail, and the number hasn’t moved in decades. A specific pattern shows up in many of them: a leader who decides alone, moves fast, and mistakes speed for progress. Here’s why that pattern breaks, and how PRESSURE is sequenced to catch it before the transformation stalls.
How to Choose a Keynote Speaker for 2027
Planning your 2027 conference or SKO? Here’s how to pick a keynote speaker who matches what your audience needs to walk away with.
Why Group Brainstorming Fails — And How to Fix It
Group brainstorming produces fewer ideas than silent, individual work. Learn the research-backed fix — and how PRESSURE, MEET, and LOOP apply it.
Sales Training and Pipeline Stalls Share the Same Issue
Training that doesn’t stick and deals that stall share a root cause. Learn the two mechanisms behind both, and how to fix each one.
How to Ask the Right Questions Before Setting Goals — A Problem-Formulation Framework
The two earlier posts in this series argued that goal-setting frameworks — OKRs, EOS Rocks, Scaling Up’s Four Decisions — assume a problem has already been agreed on, and that the agreement is usually missing.
Before You Set the Goal, Define the Gap
Ask a leadership team what problem their quarterly goal is solving, and the answer is often just the goal, restated. “Our problem is we need to hit two million dollars.” That isn’t a problem statement.
Your OKRs Aren’t Broken. Your Problem Statement Is.
A rollout goes sideways for a specific, boring reason: two people in the room were solving different problems, and nobody caught it before the goal went up on the whiteboard.
Why Most Goal-Setting Efforts Cancel Out Their Own Power
Goal-setting theory is one of the most tested findings in management science. Here’s why most organizations still get it wrong, and the three failure modes that erase the advantage.
The Coin Isn’t the Problem — Why Training and Change Investments Fail
Every dollar you’ve ever spent on training that didn’t stick proves it — you just didn’t want to call it that.
Why Modern Sales Hires Quit Dogmatic Legacy Teams
Your New Hire Isn’t the Problem. Your System Is Defending Itself.