Observations from inside the ecosystem
I've spent the better part of two decades inside and alongside organisations — sometimes with all care and no responsibility, sometimes with all responsibility and overwhelming care. These are field notes from that time: the patterns that repeat, the conditions that produce them, and the conversations that change them.
The Climate in the Room
The executive team agreed, and that should quietly worry you. Consensus and alignment are not the same thing, and the difference rarely shows on the surface. A look at how a board produces the very climate it's trying to read, why a calm room can hide an expensive silence, and what a regulator found when it asked thirty-six boards to feel their own temperature.
Fourteen Wolves
In 1995, fourteen wolves were released into Yellowstone and, the story goes, changed the course of its rivers. It's a beautiful story. A good deal of it is also contested , and that's the point. Why a board's best-reasoned intervention never stays where it's put, and what it costs to act on an organisation you haven't yet learned to read.