Tag Archive for: leading change

AI isn’t your change problem.

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Your Change Leadership is.

Most AI transformation efforts will fail.

It’s been true for transformations for decades. This one will be no different. Not because the technology isn’t ready. Because the organizations implementing it aren’t.

Leaders who couldn’t build change-ready teams before AI aren’t suddenly going to succeed at it under more pressure, more urgency, and more competing priorities.

The harder truth is that most organizations were already confusing activity with change leadership long before AI entered the conversation. Launching initiatives, building roadmaps, communicating milestones — those things create the appearance of transformation without building the underlying capacity to sustain it. AI adoption has simply made that gap impossible to ignore. 

When the pace of change required outstrips an organization’s ability to absorb it, people don’t innovate. They comply, wait it out, or leave.

Build Muscle Memory

What I’ve watched work — consistently, across three decades — isn’t faster implementation. It’s leaders who build change into the muscle memory of their teams through everyday behavior. Not through transformation programs, but through the questions they ask in one-on-ones, how they respond when something fails, and whether their teams feel safe enough to say “this isn’t working” before it becomes a crisis.

That capacity doesn’t get built by an AI initiative. It gets built by you, daily, in the way you lead.

How can you increase your change capacity?

Ask your team one question — “What’s one thing AI is supposed to be changing for us that hasn’t actually changed yet, and why?” Listen for the real answer, not the safe one. Then ask yourself whether your organization is building genuine change capacity or just keeping pace with announcements.

Those are very different things — and right now, most organizations are doing the latter and calling it transformation.

Is your team underperforming? Or is it underwater?

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Overcommitment isn’t a performance problem.

It’s a leadership one.

 

Execution problems are almost always misread.

You see slippage and then reach for familiar responses: tighten accountability, have more frequent check-ins, set seemingly clearer deadlines.

Those aren’t wrong, exactly. But they’re treating the symptom. What I see happening most frequently right now isn’t a discipline issue. It’s that your team is drowning.

Teams aren’t failing to execute because they don’t care or don’t know how. They’re failing because the volume of what’s been declared important has exceeded the organization’s actual capacity to pursue any of it well.

Progress gets spread too thinly.

New priorities layer on top of old ones. Legacy work never fully comes off the table. The result isn’t dramatic — no single project collapses — but progress gets spread so thinly across so many efforts that none of them build real momentum. I’ve talked about this with mid-level leaders in development programs and workshops. I’ve heard about it in coaching sessions with leaders. Dilution of effort is a harder problem to see than failure, which is exactly why it persists.

The instinct to add more oversight misses this entirely.

You can’t concentrate effort by increasing pressure on a system that’s already overextended. The only move that actually works is reducing the load — deliberately, visibly, with the willingness to say out loud that something that once mattered now matters less.

Here are two steps you can take immediately

  • Cut one active initiative, not because it’s unimportant but because capacity is finite and concentration is a choice.
  • Then define what success looks like for your top priority over the next 60 days — one owner, one visible measure, nothing ambiguous.

Execution isn’t always a discipline problem. It’s often a design problem. How can you fix the design?

That meeting is costing you more than you think.

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Your presence in certain meetings isn’t helping. It’s editing.

 

As a senior leader, what is your impact on meetings?

You’ve probably done the work of cutting low-value meetings from your calendars. Have you ever looked at what your presence in certain meetings is costing the people around you?

When a Director or VP or someone even more senior shows up to a working session or team meeting, the room changes.

The meeting becomes a performance

Debate narrows. Decisions that were forming get pushed aside. Most people in the room are managing up instead of solving the problem. Instead of a working session, and the real conversation happens afterward in the hallway.

I’ve seen this happen in so many meetings I’ve been in. It’s not about intent — most leaders attend these meetings because they care about the work. It’s about effect. Presence at the wrong stage of a decision doesn’t improve the outcome. It can shortcut the thinking that makes good outcomes possible. 

On a project years ago, the team I was leading had gotten into a rhythm and were making real progress. Then my boss came in the room. She asked questions we’d decided upon weeks ago, added ideas she saw as helpful but lacked context. My team shifted almost immediately to make her happy, rather than make the right decision. It then took us multiple meetings to get back on track.

The practical fix isn’t to become less engaged.

It’s to be more deliberate about what kind of engagement a given moment actually needs — input, oversight, or a decision. Those are three different roles, and showing up the same way to all three is where the cost accumulates.

Two actions worth taking this week

  • Audit the recurring meetings on your calendar and identify which ones you attend out of habit rather than necessity.
  • Then pick one working session where your team is developing a recommendation and don’t attend — let them bring you the output instead. Notice what’s different about what they bring you.

If No One’s Challenging You, You Have a Problem

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Why your team has stopped asking why

You walk the team through a reasonable plan. And when you finish there are a no significant questions. No real pushback. Mostly nods.

If this was you, you may have walked out feeling good. “We have a good plan. We’re aligned. We’re moving.”

You’re not aligned. They’re being careful. And that’s costing you more than you know

There’s a new kind of silence in the room right now.

People are worried about their jobs. The economy is uncertain, layoffs are in the news, “AI is coming for our jobs.” The unspoken calculus on a lot of teams has shifted. Questioning a decision used to feel like contributing, like trying to make it better. Right now, for a lot of people, it feels like a risk.

So they go quiet. They execute. They keep their heads down and wait to see how things shake out.

What looks like alignment is actually self-protection — and you can’t afford to mistake one for the other.

Silence isn’t consensus. It’s a symptom.

When people are genuinely aligned, they still push back. They question to try to make it better.

When they’re disengaged or afraid, the questions stop. If you’re not paying enough attention, this could look like trust. It’s not the same thing.

What to do about it:

Be real about what’s happening. If people are anxious, pretending they’re not doesn’t help. Acknowledging it — “I know there’s a lot of uncertainty out there right now” — gives people permission to relax slightly and re-engage.

Ask one-on-one. “Do you feel like your input actually changes anything?” “Are you concerned about what I’ll think of you if you push back?” are questions people won’t answer honestly in a group. Ask them privately. Then be quiet.

Let pushback land. The next time someone challenges a decision, resist defending it immediately. Say “that’s worth thinking about” — and mean it. People who are scared are watching closely to see what happens when someone speaks up.

Make it visible when input changes something. “Based on what a few of you flagged, we’re adjusting the approach.” That sentence rebuilds trust faster than almost anything else — especially right now.

The cost of silence will catch up with the team — in poor decisions nobody flagged, in resignations that felt sudden but weren’t, in execution that’s technically fine and quietly mediocre.

The good news: it’s recoverable. But only if you notice it first — and create enough safety that people believe speaking up is worth it again.

Have you successfully turned a silent team around? I’d love to hear about it.

Align Case Study

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The Align. Design. Lead. framework

In our last article, we introduced the Align component of our Align. Design. Lead.TM framework—and why executive misalignment is a silent killer of strategy and speed.

This week, we’re sharing a real-world example of how we helped one SaaS company confront that problem head-on.

The Challenge: Strong product, but strategic drift and weak team cohesion.

Our client—a PE-backed SaaS firm—had recently rebranded and launched a product that dramatically shifted its value proposition. But while the business was evolving, the executive team wasn’t.

As the CEO told us:

“We’ve been working on the business for years, but not on the team.”

Despite their market opportunity, they were stalling—fragmented execution, slow decisions, and siloed leadership. Strategy was drifting. Culture was eroding.

Our Approach: Get the team fully aligned before the business needs to shift again

1. Diagnose what’s really going on

We interviewed each executive, surfacing gaps in strategic focus, role clarity, culture, decision-making, and use of time. We didn’t just look for disagreement—we looked for drift: the slow, often unnoticed slide away from shared direction and relevance, that quietly erodes performance.  These interviews identified strengths and disconnection points on the team, allowing us to target our work to impact what would truly make a difference for this team and company.

2. Clarify leadership identity and intent

As they repositioned in the market and integrated acquisitions, we helped the team define how they needed to show up—to each other and the organization. We revamped communication rhythms, reset meeting structures, and anchored the team’s identity around shared intent.

3. Redesign behaviors and operating rhythm

The team needed to work together with the same rigor they applied to the business. We helped them define new norms, leadership behaviors, and cadence—all matched to the speed and pressure of their growth stage.

4. Shift decision rights and governance

Decision-making had become overly centralized with the CEO. We mapped where decisions should live, redesigned team structures, and installed collaborative decision practices. The result: distributed leadership, faster moves, and more ownership.

The Results: From fragmentation to forward momentum

  • The team began operating as one team—not just a collection of functions. Strategy drift slowed. Shared accountability rose.
  • Quarterly meetings evolved from tactical updates to forward-looking problem-solving, sharpening their ability to navigate what’s next.
  • Decision-making got faster and more collaborative, enabling quicker responses to real-time opportunities and risks.

 

“This work really helped me and the team grow over the past two years.”

— Company CEO

When execution is slow, look at the team—not just the plan.

This is what Align looks like in action—and why it’s often the first move to make when growth accelerates or stalls, product pivots hit resistance, or execution starts slipping at the top.

Is your leadership team feeling the strain of change but struggling to move together?

let’s talk.

No fluff. No generic offsites. Just clarity, traction, and alignment where it counts most.

Align. Design. Lead.TM is a flexible, non-linear framework that helps organizations move through inflection points with clarity and momentum. Whether you’re scaling, retrenching, or reimagining your business, the framework meets you where you are — helping you:

  • Align leadership teams to operate with strategic focus, speed, and cohesion
  • Design the organization to match your strategy—structure, roles, and workflows built for execution, not just org charts
  • Lead with the capacity and mindset required by mid level leaders to navigate uncertainty and drive change

For an overview of the full framework

 

Is your organization is under pressure but needs some assistance on where to focus next? We’d love to talk.

Schedule a call

Executive misalignment is a silent killer

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Here’s what to do about it

Align. Design. Lead. TM

This article is part of our series introducing Align. Design. Lead.TM —our uncomplicated framework designed to help build organizations that can adapt, perform, and thrive through complexity.

In our launch piece, we outlined the full model. Today, we’re diving into the first and often most overlooked phase:

 

ALIGN.

Most organizations don’t realize their leadership team is misaligned—until the effects show up in slower decisions, stalled results, and frustrated mid-level leaders.

Alignment isn’t about total agreement. It’s about unity: shared intent, clear roles, defined decision rights, and the leadership behavior to back it up.

At inflection points—when you’re rethinking your operating model, pivoting, merging, or scaling—executive alignment becomes the fulcrum of execution.

Why? Because in high-stakes moments, ambiguity flows downhill. If the top isn’t clear, the rest of the system fragments fast.

Consider these common scenarios:

  • Your strategy gets lean. In a retrenching environment, leadership clarity isn’t just helpful—it’s a  critical success factor. A unified team ensures that cuts and priorities are made with precision, not panic.
  • The senior team isn’t on the same page.  AI may help optimize operations, but it can’t clarify purpose, reconcile competing agendas, or build trust. Only aligned leadership teams can do that.
  • Your teams shrink and tech scales.  Alignment becomes your most significant strategic advantage. Flatter orgs move fast, but only if the top is pulling in the same direction. Without that cohesion, velocity turns to chaos.

Before you reduce headcount and reorganize, align your leadership team. 

Misalignment often creates the very inefficiencies that lead to downsizing. When leadership aligns first, decisions about where to reduce—and where to reinvest—become strategic, not reactive.

Here’s how we help clients in the Align phase of the framework:

  1. Diagnose alignment by mapping current vs. desired state across strategic and cultural dimensions.
  2. Clarify leadership identity and intent—what your team stands for, how it shows up, and what the business needs now.
  3. Define leadership behaviors and operating rhythm to match the speed, pressure, and complexity of your environment.
  4. Map decision rights and governance—so everyone knows who decides what, how, and when.

The payoff? Sharper execution, faster decisions, and a leadership team that accelerates momentum instead of diluting it.

The risk of inaction? Strategic drift. Culture erosion. A widening gap between what you say and what actually gets done.

If your team understands the strategy but isn’t agile in moving it forward—this is where you want to begin.

Align. Design. Lead.TM is a flexible framework that helps organizations move through inflection points with clarity and momentum. Whether you’re scaling, retrenching, or reimagining your business, the framework meets you where you are — helping you:

  • Align leadership teams to operate with strategic focus, speed, and cohesion
  • Design the organization to match your strategy—structure, roles, and workflows built for execution, not just org charts
  • Lead with the capacity and mindset required by mid level leaders to navigate uncertainty and drive change

For an overview of the full framework

Is your organization is under pressure but needs some assistance on where to focus next? We’d love to talk.

No fluff. No one-size-fits-all. Just clarity, momentum, and the confidence to move forward.

Schedule a call

How to Design an Agile Organizational Structure

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Because Standing Still is So Last Century

 

In today’s business landscape, staying stagnant is a death sentence. The organizations thriving right now? They’re nimble, they’re agile, and they’re ready to pivot faster than a start-up launching a new app. The key to agility starts with your organizational structure.

Gone are the days of rigid hierarchies where decisions trickle down like molasses. What you need is a structure that doesn’t buckle under the weight of change but bends and flexes with it. Think fewer “command-and-control” towers and more “empowered decision-making” hubs.

Building an agile organization is particularly challenging issue for my rapid-growth life science clients. They feel they’re living the “changing tires while going 85 mph” saying. Here’s some of what I’m encouraging them to do:

3 Steps Closer to an Agile Organization

Flatten the Hierarchy

Let’s be real: no one wants to wait weeks for approvals that could’ve been done over Slack in 30 seconds. Empower your teams with the authority to make decisions quickly, within their domains. Of course, we’re not suggesting anarchy (though that would be fun to watch); clear accountability is still crucial, but trust your people to handle more, and watch them rise to the occasion.

Get started:

  1. Eliminate unnecessary approval layers: Identify and remove at least two approval steps in your current process. This will force faster decision-making and create a culture of ownership at all levels.
  2. Implement a “skip-level” feedback system: Encourage direct communication between front-line employees and senior leaders to eliminate bottlenecks. This bypasses the need for middle management to relay every message and keeps leadership more informed.
  3. Create small, autonomous teams: Restructure departments into cross-functional, self-sufficient teams responsible for their own goals. Give them authority to execute without constant executive oversight.

Embrace Cross-Functional Teams

Why does IT always have to sit in one silo while marketing builds a wall around theirs? Break down the barriers. Create teams that bring together diverse perspectives and skill sets. This fosters innovation and allows your organization to solve problems from all angles. Plus, it’ll stop the “that’s-not-my-department” excuse we’ve all heard one too many times.

Get started:

  1. Mix up your meetings: Mandate that every project meeting include members from at least three different departments with a stake in the outcome. This fosters diverse perspectives and cuts down on siloed thinking.
  2. Launch pilot cross-functional projects: Choose two critical projects and form cross-functional teams to execute them from start to finish. Track the efficiency gains and use them as case studies for expanding the model.
  3. Reward collaboration, not just individual results: Incentivize employees based on the success of the team rather than individual performance alone. This shift in rewards drives teamwork and encourages knowledge sharing across functions.

Prioritize Communication (Seriously)

Agility isn’t just about the org chart—it’s about how information flows. Encourage open, honest communication at all levels. And not just the “nice talk” that comes out of a company-wide email. Real communication happens when leaders listen, employees feel heard, and feedback is acted upon. It’s like therapy for your business, but cheaper.

Get started:

  1. Hold daily 15-minute stand-ups: Require all teams to hold short daily meetings to quickly align on priorities and progress. This promotes transparency and keeps everyone connected, even in fast-moving environments.
  2. Introduce a “one-question” leadership check-in: Leaders should ask one simple, yet powerful question weekly: “What’s one thing I don’t know that I should?” This opens up critical conversations that can uncover hidden issues or opportunities.
  3. Use internal social platforms to promote open dialogue: Encourage the use of tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams for real-time, informal communication across all levels. This helps break down barriers between leadership and teams while fostering a more connected culture.

Remember, agility is less about changing your structure every six months and more about building a structure that’s flexible, adaptable, and ready to tackle whatever’s coming next (spoiler: it’s probably something disruptive). Because standing still? That’s so last century.

Why Going Back to The Office Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea After All

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Let’s face it – the world of work is unlikely to ever be the same again. Most companies that have been remote over the last two years are unlikely to ever require 100% office attendance of all their employees. And that’s a good thing.

No two employees are exactly alike.  They have differing capabilities for working productively at home, and different work-life balance needs. Companies are recognizing that one size doesn’t fit all. The best companies will find ways to accommodate the best talent. And every company will make decisions about how flexible they want to be. Likewise, every person will make decisions about which organization is the best fit for them.

Even with this increased flexibility, there are benefits to going into the office … at least a couple of days per week:

  • Your career – good companies will work to create a culture where your work location doesn’t dictate opportunities. All other things being equal, there will still be an unspoken bias that favors those who come to the workplace more often than their peers. For most executives and managers, this won’t be consciously planned. It’s just human nature.  People give opportunity to those they trust the most. And trust is built through relationships. Relationships that include face-to-face time are typically built more quickly and deeply. Grabbing lunch, a chance meeting walking down the hall, or popping into their office for a quick chat. That VP who just hired you? You’re sitting in her office and notice that picture off to the side with her golfing friends and begin a discussion about your favorite courses in the area. Those are meaningful ways that people develop closer personal ties. And they happen more effortlessly and more deeply face-to-face.
  • Your sanity – some people don’t miss going to work one bit. Maybe it’s the commute. Or you’re a complete introvert and don’t need or want social connection as much as the next guy. It could be you’ve just gotten used to the convenience of crawling out of bed, pouring yourself a cup of coffee, and firing up the laptop. Most people, however, need social interaction to maintain their mental health. Covid has been difficult for all of us for numerous reasons and social isolation is a big part of it. Even if you have a bunch of friends that you’ve been able to stay close to for the last two years, being at work provides a greater variety and number of interactions – both of which are healthier for most people. And sometimes we just need to get away from our home because there are distractions that we need a break from. For some people, there are times when “quiet time” to reflect and get things done is more doable at the office than at home.
  • Your options– being at work at least part-time opens up options that aren’t as easily available if you work from home full-time. Here is a partial list of things that are often done more easily, effectively, or enjoyably from the office:
      • Collaborating on the fly
      • Improving your health as you get up and move around. (It takes many more steps to go grab a coffee or lunch at the office than going to your kitchen.)
      • Work / life balance: the kind where work ends when you walk out the door, not when you finally eat dinner or go to bed
      • Networking before, during or after work
      • Developing a new set of daytime acquaintances that aren’t tied to family and “weekend friends,” which promotes mental health
      • Shopping for the perfect gift at that cool store around the corner
      • Celebrating team and individual successes, holidays and birthdays, and important milestones like promotions and retirements

There is no question that returning to work will also be difficult for many people, and that’s to be expected. It was a big change when you abruptly started staying home and it will be a big change if and when you go back to the office, even if only for a day or two per week. There are steps you can take to help yourself prepare and adjust once you’re back. And make no mistake, your attitude toward going back will impact how hard it is for you to return.

No one is better at gauging how to best meet your personal and professional needs than you are. And that’s why taking a second look at what you’ve gained… and lost… over the last two Covid years might lead you to a more nuanced view of the benefits of going back to the office at least part time. Even if it’s not your choice, appreciating the silver lining is good for your mental health and probably your career.

When Your Team Needs to Redefine Itself

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Most organizations are either operating in a permanent hybrid model or they’re planning to go there early in 2022. That means redefining who you are as an organization and as a team. How will you do that successfully?

Lots of Questions

How’s your team adjusting to hybrid work or planning for a hybrid future? This next-new-normal way of working will be most successful if you start the transition by deeply reflecting on who you are now and, often, redefining who you will be 

 –as an individual and a team. What goals are a priority? How will you prepare for the inevitable shift in priorities? How will people really work together? How will you navigate and build our relationships? Even in ‘normal’ years, these questions take center stage during the business planning cycles many of you are immersed in right now.

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with two executive teams. Their businesses are very different. One is over 20 years old with almost 4000 employees. The second is a start-up driving towards commercializing its first product. While different, both of them were exploring a common question…

Who are we today and who do we want to be?

In both cases we started with who the team wanted to be so we could frame that sometimes more difficult conversation – who are we now?

Answering this question requires that these executives become aware of and more comfortable with the answers to several other, deeper questions about themselves and the team:

  • Do we fully understand who each of us is?  Do we understand how each of us filters information, makes decisions, and communicates?
  • Are we aligned around a common vision of where this company or department is going? And how are we, as a team, are leading it? This may seem obvious, but misalignment amongst leadership is a common cause of organizational dysfunction and average performance.
  • Are we role-modelling the characteristics we want this organization to exhibit?
  • How are we pushing each other to step out of our comfort zones in a productive and effective way? Innovation doesn’t happen when everyone is comfortable.
  • How do we provide impactful feedback to each other so that we increase the team’s effectiveness rather than diminishing it?
  • What about when the inevitable happens – when we’re sometimes annoying each other? Are we avoiding certain people? Aggressively confronting them? How well is it working? Is there a another option that gets better results.
Why so many questions? Because good answers require good questions… and these are all stones that need to be turned over.  In today’s environment, personal and organizational curiosity is a prerequisite for leadership and business growth. And if you’re not digging deeply enough, you’re limiting the depth and speed of your growth.
Want some guidance on asking the right questions and ensuring you get meaningful answers? We’ve been helping individual leaders, teams and organizations do just that for over 20 years.  Let’s talk.  978-475-8424 or e.onderick-harvey@NextBridgeConsulting.com

 

Who Are We Today? Who Do We Want To Be Tomorrow?

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Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of working with two executive teams. Their businesses are very different.  One is over 20 years old with almost 4000 employees.  The second is a start-up driving towards commercializing its first product.  While different, both of them were exploring a common question.  Who are we today and who do we want to be?

In both cases we started with who the team wanted to be so we could frame that sometimes more difficult conversation – who are we now?

Answering this question requires that these executives become aware of and more comfortable with the answers to several other, deeper questions about themselves and the team:

  • Do we fully understand who each of us is?  Do we understand how each of us filters information, makes decisions and communicates?
  • Are we aligned around a common vision of where this company or department is going?  And how are we, as a team, are leading it? This may seem obvious, but misalignment amongst leadership is a common cause of organizational dysfunction and average performance.
  • Are we role-modeling the characteristics we want this organization to exhibit?
  • How are we pushing each other to step out of our comfort zonesin a productive and effective way?  Innovation doesn’t happen when everyone is comfortable.
  • How do we provide impactful feedbackto each other so that we increase the team’s effectiveness rather than diminishing it?
  • What about when the inevitable happens – when we’re sometimes annoying each other? Are we avoiding certain people?  Aggressively confronting them?  How well is it working? There’s a third option that gets better results.

Why so many questions?  Because good answers require good questions.  In today’s environment, personal and organizational curiosity is a prerequisite for leadership and business growth.  And if you’re not digging deeply…, you’re limiting the depth and speed of your growth.