Posts
When ‘We’re a Family’ Is an Operations Problem
I want to be careful here, because what I’m about to say is often misread. So let me be direct about what I’m not saying: culture matters enormously. Relational trust is one of the most powerful assets any small organization can have. The sense of shared purpose and genuine care for each other that characterizes…
You Can’t Hold People Accountable for a System You Never Built
There’s a conversation that happens in almost every organization I work with, in one form or another. A leader is frustrated because their team keeps dropping the ball on something. The balls are different every time: a deliverable that keeps slipping, a process that nobody follows consistently, a decision that should have been made weeks…
Tribal Knowledge Is Not a Competitive Advantage
In the early days, the fact that everything lives in someone’s head feels like an asset. Your team is fast, flexible, intimate. You don’t need documentation because you have people who just know. And there’s something genuinely good about that — the relational density of a small team, the shorthand, the trust. Then someone leaves.…