What the Courtroom Teaches Leaders About Listening
I’ve spent forty-one years in courtrooms, and I’ve watched people sit through the same trial, hear the same witnesses, review the same evidence, and leave with entirely different understandings of what happened. Sometimes the disagreement comes down to credibility. One person believes a witness, and another doesn’t. Other times, the difference is more interesting. Two […]
The Plan Was Never the Point
Why the best-run associations are quietly loosening their grip on the five-year plan. Years ago, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones gave me a piece of advice I have never been able to shake. “The words are either in your heart,” he said, “or they’re not.” A few days later, I prepared to speak. My notes were finished. […]
Leadership Succession: A Title Transfers Overnight. Judgment Never Does.
Recently, a regional credit union trade association finished a national search that started back in March: a search firm, months of vetting, and finally a new chief executive who took the seat today, carrying more than thirty-five years in the credit union movement with him. Somewhere else, a construction firm is trying to solve […]
The Fachidiot Problem: When Expertise Creates Collective Blindness
The Germans gave it a name. Most organizations still haven’t solved it. The Germans have a word that English never quite managed to produce. Fachidiot. (FAHKH-ee-dee-OHT) Cambridge translates it as a “blinkered specialist”—someone who understands a particular field but cannot see beyond its boundaries. It is not a flattering term. It is memorable because most […]
Why Leaders Must Connect the Dots Before Deciding
Most organizations do not suffer from a lack of information. They suffer from a failure to connect it. The finance team sees the numbers. Operations sees what is breaking. Legal sees the exposure. Sales hears what customers are saying. The board sees strategy. Employees see what happens when that strategy reaches the field. Each person […]
A Leadership Transition Is a Stress Test, Not a Reset
Replacing a person is succession planning. Preserving the organization’s ability to decide is leadership continuity. A leadership transition creates a seductive story. One person is leaving. Another is arriving. The board needs a search process, an announcement, an onboarding plan, and a clean transfer of responsibility. Complete those tasks and the transition appears to be […]
Association Leadership: Turning Mission Into Member Value
Why Association Boards Need Better Member-Value Translation How Association Directors Turn Mission, Member Value, and Revenue Into Coherent Direction Relevance Usually Slips Quietly An association rarely loses relevance in a single vote. It loses relevance when the board, staff, volunteers, sponsors, chapters, and members begin using different definitions of value. By the time renewal numbers […]
The Risk We Stop Seeing
Every major organizational failure leaves behind the same question. “How did we miss it?” The surprising answer is that, most of the time, the organization didn’t miss it at all. Someone saw the warning. Someone questioned the assumption. Someone noticed that the project wasn’t behaving the way similar projects had behaved before. Someone recognized that […]
Own the Seam Before It Gets Expensive: When Every Department Is Right, the Organization Can Still Be Wrong.
Most leadership problems do not begin where they finally become visible. By the time the room is frustrated, the customer is angry, the board is uneasy, or the field team has lost confidence, the real failure is usually older than the symptom. It started earlier. It started in the handoff. It started in the assumption. […]
The Costliest Sentence in Leadership: “That’s Not My Department.”
Every organization says it wants collaboration. Few are designed for it. The modern workplace rewards specialization. Finance knows finance. Operations knows operations. Legal knows legal. IT knows technology. Marketing knows the customer. Each function becomes increasingly sophisticated within its own domain. That specialization creates expertise. It also creates invisible walls. The greatest organizational failures rarely […]