Reflections on Leadership What Problem Are We Trying to Solve? Leadership Drift This Week What Problem Are We Trying to Solve? An organization can spend considerable time and money correcting employees while overlooking the conditions that make their jobs harder than they need to be. It can demand accountability from people while letting leaders avoid it. It can promote values that its own decisions contradict. The activity looks like improvement. The underlying problem remains. Sometimes the...

Reflections on Leadership Leadership Is Too Important to Be an A-hole. Leadership Drift This Week Leadership Is Too Important to Be an A-hole Language warning: I’m using a few stronger words than usual in this edition. Not to be pedantic, but if a commander-in-chief muses that “taking out” a couple of major American cities is a “small price to pay” for keeping the country safe, they're objectively not keeping the country safe. It’s easy to ignore imbecilic decrees; there seems to be an...

Reflections on Leadership Strengthening Leadership Without Becoming a Jerk Leadership Drift This Week Strengthening Leadership Without Becoming a Jerk Plenty of leaders aren't particularly difficult to work with until something changes. The pressure increases. The stakes get higher. Decisions that used to affect only them now affect other people. Time gets short. Something isn't working, and eventually the leader decides there isn't time to talk about it anymore. So they start telling instead...