Notes on systems, noise and decisions.
Things that come up often enough in engagements to be worth writing down properly, so I can stop re-explaining them.
Meetings Are Often a Symptom, Not the Problem
Before you cancel the recurring meeting, find out what it was quietly doing. Most of them are a manual workaround for information that has nowhere else to go.
What Technical Support Taught Me About Organizational Design
In thousands of support calls, the problem the caller described was almost never the fault — but how they described it told me exactly where they were standing.
Sometimes the Correct Recommendation Is: Don't Buy Anything
The hardest recommendation to charge for is the one where nothing gets purchased, and most consultants are structurally unable to make it.
Drafting next
Why the Hardest Business Problems Don’t Belong to One Department
On seams, ownership gaps, and the problems that survive every reorganization.
Your Organization Has Noise — Even When Everyone Is Good at Their Job
Unwanted variability is not incompetence, which is exactly why it goes unaddressed.
The First Answer in the Meeting Is Not Necessarily the Best Answer
Anchoring, speaking order, and the cost of confident delivery.
Stop Treating Employees Like Deterministic Machines
Designing processes that account for normal human variability instead of punishing it.
When Every Department Is Performing Well but the Company Still Isn’t
Local optimization and the arithmetic of global outcomes.
Why Customer Complaints Often Begin Far Away From Customer Service
Tracing a complaint back through the departments that generated it.
The Difference Between Solving a Problem and Moving It to Another Department
How work gets displaced and counted as resolved.
The Value of the Person Who Doesn’t Answer Immediately
Silence, processing time, and who gets heard in a room.
Why Another Meeting May Be Evidence That Your Information Architecture Failed
The meeting as a workaround for a system that does not distribute information.
Would you rather just talk it through?
Most of these started as something a client described in a first conversation. If one of them sounds like your situation, describe it to me directly.