Field Notes

Taking over an organization is exciting. There is fresh energy, new priorities, and usually no shortage of ideas about what needs to change. New leaders often arrive convinced that once they communicate a better vision, the organization will naturally begin moving in a new direction. It rarely works that way. Organizations are more than mission statements, organizational charts, or strategic plans. They are collections of habits, relationships, incentives, and informal power

Every leadership team has had the meeting. The vision is clear. The priorities are defined. The goals make sense. Everyone leaves the room believing they know exactly what needs to happen next. A few months later, very little has changed. The temptation is to assume the strategy was flawed. Sometimes that's true. More often, the breakdown occurs somewhere between great strategy and the behavior required to execute it. Organizations don't execute strategic plans. People execut

Here's how I discovered the myth of motivation. I spent well over a decade counseling, consulting, and coaching high-performers, founders, and team leaders. If there is one recurring, systemic mistake I see people repeat across every industry, it is this: “waiting for motivation”. By that, I mean business owners often know exactly what they need to do—or stop doing—to scale their operations, yet they continue running in the exact same patterns they desperately want to change.

Introduction Ever feel like you’re just going through the motions? You aren’t experiencing a massive, dramatic crisis, but year after year, your biggest dreams keep getting pushed to the back burner. There is a danger in allowing your life to drift. While society loves to focus on catastrophic failures and dramatic public downfalls, the truth is that most failure isn't loud—it’s incredibly quiet. If you want to know how to stop drifting in life and regain control of your tra

Why most people Succeed or Fail through Adaptation and Drift The Outlier Problem Most discussions of success and failure focus on visible outcomes. We study billionaires, founders, celebrities, bankruptcies, scandals, and collapse. Yet most people will never experience either extreme. Their lives will be shaped by smaller decisions involving ambition, adaptation, goal alignment, persistence, and drift. Understanding those ordinary processes may be more useful than studying th

A Performance Gap Is a Leadership Gap You Don't Have a Talent Problem I hear a lot of talk about A-players and B-players. “An A-player is a top-performer and self-starter. They crave challenges and drive innovation. B-players need clearly defined goals and strategies provided to them.” Ask 100 people, and they will all say they’re self-motivated and enjoy a challenge. They are likely correct. They do not lack energy or talent. But, top performers have identified key behavio

A coherent worldview is important because it contributes to human survival and flourishing. Having an accurate picture of reality helps with decision making, identity-level stability, and persistence in the face of hardship. For the individual, the structure of reality is key to doing hard things when motivation fails. Humans cannot respond to suffering without interpreting it. A model of reality functions as an interpretive structure that assigns meaning, responsibility,