You often spot it sitting quietly in a meeting as you listen to others.  It starts well, and your encouraged.  But it doesn’t come together.  The discussion loses focus, drifts somewhere else, and now you must decide whether to step in to bring it back on track.   You can have a clear strategy with an aligned leadership team and still see misalignment.  Alignment doesn’t break down because people disagree.  It breaks down because they’re working from different interpretations of the same results.  This is where leaders...

I recently wrote about how leaders create learning through feedback. This matters. But it’s incomplete. It focuses on what leaders give, not what they receive. Every strategy is already giving you feedback. The question is whether you can see it. Strategy is a hypothesis. It assumes that if we take certain actions, we will achieve a desired outcome. The results tell us if that assumption is correct. Continue. Adjust. Or change course. That’s feedback. Every result in your business is...

Drift doesn’t happen because people are off track. It happens because good people are making rational decisions without a clear reference point for the work. You’ve already done the hard leadership work. You have a clear strategy. It’s been shaped by your leadership team, communicated across the organisation, and understood by capable people who are energised to deliver. And yet, over time, execution drifts. Not in one moment. You’d see that. It happens gradually. Like a game of telephone, everyone...