Managing Friction: Top-Down and Bottom-Up

In government and business, I have often heard that “teams in the field don’t understand the big picture” coming out of headquarters. Or, emanating from the grassroots level, “headquarters is clueless about what´s happening in the field.” How do you manage the natural friction between corporate headquarters and its divisions or subsidiaries? In Afghanistan, the tension […]

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Stepping Up to Uncertainty

In both business and the military, preparing leaders and their teams/units to manage in unpredictable environments – from strategy to tactical execution – is crucial. U.S. military planners have come up with a term to describe dynamic and unstable environments: VUCA. This acronym, which is also now often applied to business, stands for Volatile, Uncertain, […]