When Things Stop Working
When an important initiative starts going sideways, the strategy is rarely the first place I look.
I look at how the work is actually getting done. Who owns the decision that's been sitting unresolved? Does the team closest to the work have a way to surface problems before they become bigger problems? Are the priorities everyone agreed to still the priorities when Monday morning rolls around? These things sound simple and they usually are.
But I've seen good plans get stuck because nobody owned the next decision. I've seen teams know something was off weeks before leadership heard about it. And I've seen priorities that looked perfectly clear on paper become much less clear once the work started.
The answer usually isn't another strategy session or a better looking plan. It's figuring out what's actually getting in the way, putting the right structure around the work, and leaving behind a way of operating that the team can actually sustain.
That's the kind of work I've found myself drawn to throughout my career, getting into the middle of something complicated and helping make it work.
Most plans don't fail in the boardroom. They fail somewhere in the space between agreement and execution, and that space is where the real work is.