To coaching and development
In my work and business life, I have had the good fortune of having managers and business partners who were deliberate about their own professional development as well as the development of the people in their charge. This has had a lasting impact in my own growth and has informed my work with managers in the last 25+ years.
Indeed, having learned from them and espousing their noble goal, I work as an executive coach and a designer and facilitator of leadership development programs. My coaching conversations and leadership development programs help managers and business owners be more effective in their role and more fulfilled in their professional life.
My clients describe themselves as thoughtful, discerning, inquisitive, reflective, and lifelong learners. My passion lies in providing them the means to harness that energy towards their own development and that of the people in their charge.
I’m a fellow explorer. I’ve had excellent experiences in being managed by people who worked hard at developing me, I tried to do the same in my own managerial positions, and it has been a topic of academic study and research for me, before making it my professional focus.
What makes my work unique is its multiple perspectives: practice and academia, experiences in industry and in the not-for-profit worlds, numbers and people, common sense and models, having run (still running!) my own business and helped managers and business owners run their own. I have worked with thousands managers and business owners, in 30+ countries, on three continents, in three languages.
To analysis and thinking
How I analyze the complex problems we tackle together
Writing helps me think. Each piece is an attempt to clarify something that puzzles me about management, leadership, or how we organize ourselves. Over time, I’ve noticed some recurring approaches in how I tackle these puzzles.
This isn’t a methodology I set out to follow—these are patterns that emerged from writing and thinking. They continue to evolve as my understanding deepens.
What I Tend to Notice
The gap between surface and depth I’m consistently drawn to moments where conventional explanations feel incomplete. When everyone agrees that something works a certain way, I find myself asking: but what’s really happening here? This archaeological approach to reality shows up whether I’m examining “leading by example,” workplace learning, or democratic participation.
The power of precision splitting Where others see single concepts, I notice productive tensions waiting to be explored. Management versus leadership. Why versus what for. Clock time versus craft time. Stock versus flow. These distinctions aren’t semantic games—splitting concepts apart often reveals choice points we didn’t know we had and frameworks for thinking more clearly.
Human experience as the foundation Systems, processes, and theories matter, but they’re useful only insofar as they help us understand what life is actually like for real people. I consistently start with the question: what is this like for the person living it? This human-first analysis shapes everything from workplace economics to communication frameworks.
The value of assumption inversion Sometimes the best way to understand something is to systematically question its foundational premises. What if you can’t actually lead by example? What if we’re not working from home but at home trying to work during a crisis? What if efficiency isn’t always the point? These inversions expose hidden assumptions worth examining.
Power structures and benefit flows I’ve become increasingly interested in following the actual distribution of advantage and constraint. Who benefits? Who bears the costs? How do financial pressures shape behavior? This structural mapping helps explain why good intentions often clash with systemic realities.
Working with dynamic complexity I’m suspicious of solutions that promise to eliminate messiness. People are complex, organizations are complex, democracy is complex. Rather than fighting this complexity, I’m interested in how we can work skillfully with the uncertainty, contradictions, and multiple layers that characterize real human systems.
Temporal reframing Our relationship with time and attention shapes everything—from how quality emerges to how we prioritize what matters. I often find myself questioning conventional assumptions about efficiency, speed, and the rhythm at which meaningful work actually happens.
What I’m Usually Trying to Do
Invite reflection, not prescribe solutions I’m more interested in helping people think clearly about their own situations than in giving universal answers. Most of my pieces end with questions rather than action items, trusting readers to apply insights to their unique contexts.
Connect seemingly separate ideas The same dynamics that shape workplace behavior often show up in democracy, technology, or personal relationships. I’m interested in these deeper patterns that cross domains, revealing how human systems operate across different scales and settings.
Make the invisible visible Much of what shapes our experience—power dynamics, unstated assumptions, emotional undercurrents, structural constraints—remains unspoken. I try to name what’s happening but not being discussed, bringing hidden forces into conscious awareness.
Question the foundational I’ve noticed I’m increasingly drawn to examining the basic assumptions that underlie common practices and beliefs. Rather than accepting conventional wisdom at face value, I’m interested in what happens when we systematically question the premises we usually take for granted.
How This Shapes My Client Work
This analytical approach directly informs how I work with managers and business owners:
- In coaching conversations, I help you see the structural and human dynamics you’re navigating, not just the surface problems you’re trying to solve
- In consulting work, I challenge your stated assumptions, unearth the unstated ones, and help you think through the actual forces shaping your decisions
- In leadership development programs, I design experiences that help managers question their foundational beliefs about how human systems actually work
The same frameworks you see in my essential essays become tools for analyzing your specific leadership challenges.
How This Evolves
These patterns emerged from writing, not from planning. As I continue to write and think, they shift and develop. I review and update this page quarterly, not to impose consistency on my thinking, but to track how my approach actually evolves in response to the problems I encounter.
Want to see these approaches in action? Browse my essential reading or explore all my essays.
Ready to apply this thinking to your challenges? Learn about working together.
Last updated: June 2025. Next review: September 2025