Ruthless Grace is the combination of high discipline and high empathy. Ruthless - not cruelty or punishment - but the likelihood of a sunrise and sunset tomorrow. Grace reminds us that we are human and our teams are human.

Approachability is an advantage. Making coaching easy is an advantage. This tool minimizes the effort to manage expectations, manage perceptions, and share helpful feedback across three communication channels.

The RACI matrix almost got it right but still harbors too much ambiguity. In your team’s formal planning, govern only what is worth documenting outside email, and nothing else. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

In innovation, most attention is the work within the project. Before your next project begins, consider what questions your team should answer. This documentation provides transparency, alignment, and sets you up for success.

When the Agile Manifesto was written, money was loose (dot com bubble) and frequent go-live dates were in style. As the intensity of innovation increases, Agile contributes to VUCA and low marginal cost is worth high upfront costs. Economics pressure us to innovate how we innovate.

Innovation professionals spend a lot of time in meetings. Rethink the relationship between meetings and “real work.” Have a firm grasp of the numerous ingredients of effective meetings.

Documentation is unpopular to build, but once you have it, it’s valuable to your current and future teams. Documentation is valuable for so long, it qualifies as an Asset Portfolio.

Manage your team like a factory because you want discipline, predictability, rhythm. Manage like a factory because you care about speed, quality, and waste.

A script is a simple, raw, unambiguous format to get the sequence of actions on paper, primed for a Future State Process Flow.

Visual representation of the customer journey or employee experience - sequence of actions, primary path, and peripheral paths.

Surely some activities in your organization are important to measure. A scorecard captures the “Metrics That Matter” - Leading and Lagging. Historical, Current, and Target values.

Your colleagues, especially your manager, need to know if you’re bored, buried, or somewhere in between. Share your workload so the team can balance the workload!