The Work Beneath the Work

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Topic

Teams

A collection of 4 issues

The Crisis You Shouldn't Resolve

There's a type of crisis you should leave to do its work. Not the strategic initiative that isn't moving. That's your problem to solve, and fast. The one to let stand: when your team is not meeting its own standards (beyond yours), and they

Who Says No to You?

Last week the CEO of McDonald's posted himself tasting his own burger and called it 'product' in a video gone viral for all the wrong reasons. Three million people watched. His team didn't save him from himself. Would yours save you from you? No

The B Player Problem Isn't Performance. It's Game Theory.

B players aren't underperformers. They're competitors. Not competitors against your rivals. Competitors against your team. Every organization runs on an agreed-upon game: here's the goal, here are the rules, here's what winning looks like. A players play that game. C players

Plans don't fail because they're bad plans.

They fail because the default motivational state underneath most organizations makes execution structurally impossible. There are only two motivational states a team can be in. The first is performance orientation. Teams regulate their effort based on progress signals, real scores, real feedback, real distance between here and the objective. The