Four key roles support a good decision-making process, and should be patterned into your organization. Speaking (extremely) generally, in my work with independent schools and colleges, some employees (mostly faculty) often ask for more influence on decision-making, while others (mostly staff) often express a desire to be better informed of decisions that affect them. In some ways, these two groups represent the poles of “participatory…

Decision-making is the most important “system” in your organization. Design that system carefully. — Consistently good decision-making is huge source of competitive advantage. While some organizations explain positive patterns of decision-making as “part of their culture,” if you dig deep enough, you’ll find a key leader or influencer who promotes clear decision process as an article of faith. …

Glad to hear it. Leadership on the Line is one of those books people are referring to all the time but it's hard to notice the reference. The central concept is about recognizing the difference between "technical" and "adaptive" challenges. Enjoy!

Use these tips to find openness, objectivity, and trust in talent. — Anyone who has ever done design work for pay will tell you that there are two universal truths, always in play: 1) Everyone agrees that design by committee is bad. 2) Everyone wants to be on the committee. Managing this head/heart conflict is often the principle complexity of designer/client relations……

The first step in strategic decision-making is to focus on the right task. — Early in my career I was lucky to have clients who taught me a lot. Here’s a recollection of one lesson. It was 1998 or so, and my firm was the agency of record for Wegmans Food Markets internet work. We were working on a system for online ordering and…

A Unified Planning Framework for Culture, Strategy, and Brand — At many non-profit institutions, particularly educational institutions, strategic plans show a preference for addition over consolidation—for expansion over alignment. This programmatic and operational accretion drives steady increases in budgets and staffing, and concomitant growth in goals for endowments and annual philanthropic support.

See horizontal connections across operations, and learn how human factors contribute to success or failure. — Systems Thinking is critical for effective strategy, communications, and creative planning. But what makes a good systems thinker? Most talented systems thinkers I know are generalists — and I have long remarked that folks who spend meaningful time in personal hobbies seem to bring perspective and valuable divergent thinking to…

Purpose-built document formats in office communication can aid organizational alignment. — In olden times, the Memorandum was the mainstay of organizational communication. It was a way to document something that needed to be shared and remembered; its format held just enough formality to garner attention, but not so much that it felt arduous or overwhelming to produce or receive. In the…

Laziness, Novelty, and Fear of Loss are Powerful Motivators for Humans. — As a designer, I can rely on a single assumption to guide most of my work: humans are lazy. (This is ‘trumpian shorthand’ for “people tend to maximize benefit and minimize effort around self-interest.) Whether I am enticing them with advertising, seeking to change their mind with a new mental…