PracticeToLead (www.senzostack.com company)

This is the first podcast episode I’ve listened to twice, and each time, I felt really torn, both during and after. For context, in case you don’t want to listen to the podcast: Niall Ferguson believes that sometimes you need a bit of harshness to be more effective—he argues that being feared is crucial. On the other hand, Adam Grant takes the opposite view, saying that he has never needed to create fear to be successful or effective. As a fan of Adam Grant’s, I find it hard to disagree with his perspective, but at the same time, I feel that fear is a major motivator for people. If you look at the political landscape both historically and today, many leaders reached their positions by generating fear and ruling through it—even in the most democratic regimes. Fear of Nazis, Communists, Islam, the West, the East… it's everywhere. However, I also don’t believe that using fear as a weapon is the right approach. If your people are walking around afraid of you, they’re not operating at t...

Leaders often grapple with the challenge of finding the right balance between micromanaging and giving their teams the freedom to learn from their mistakes. Early on, my own approach involved identifying risks, discussing mitigation strategies, and, when things went wrong, issuing the dreaded “I told you so.” Over time, I’ve learned the importance of fine-tuning my communication to make it constructive throughout the process, but it’s still a delicate balance. This dynamic is very similar to parenting. As parents, we frequently find it easier to set boundaries for our kids than for our team members. At home, things feel more straightforward—if you drop a plate, it breaks; if you touch something hot, you get burned. Consequences are often immediate and clear-cut. The longest delay might be failing a test due to a lack of studying, but even then, it’s a direct and teachable moment. When my oldest child, who has always been interested in cars, started practicing for their driver’s test, t...

For years, I’ve stuck to a simple mantra when my teams embark on something new: “Don’t name it.” The underlying premise was clear: Naming a process (the most common case for me) could lead to rigid adherence to prescriptive procedures. Whether it was about Scrum, Kanban, or Agile, I believed that empowering teams with values and encouraging creativity would yield better results. After all, a process crafted by the team, for the team, tends to be better understood and more readily adopted. Recently, though, I had a moment of reflection. While listening to the “ Founder & CEO ” podcast, Mike and Patrick emphasized the importance of defining the market and achieving market fit. I found myself completely agreeing with them, and It struck me: Why was I open to labeling and segmenting the market for a company, yet resistant to naming the processes I wanted my teams to follow? After some introspection, I arrived at a convincing answer. Here’s my perspective: Define a Label: When you’re ...

  Context: I'm a Celtics fan, and I've been one for a long time. After watching Jason Tatum in college, I prayed that the Celtics would draft him. And they did. But even now, Tatum remains the most frustrating Celtic for me to watch. This blog post draws a parallel between Steve Kerr’s coaching decisions and the most frustrating managers I've encountered in my career. Like Kerr, these managers would point to their past successes and say, “But we won” or “We delivered.” However, benching one of your top performers to favor others, or forcing the team to conform to your style, for whatever reason, can have serious consequences. First and foremost, those successes required extraordinary efforts from the team's most experienced people, pushing them to their limits, and relying on some luck to achieve the goal. A team like USA Basketball, packed with talent and coached by seasoned veterans, shouldn't have to scrape through comeback games or narrowly win the final game. W...

  “Whatever you do, make sure that you keep a relationship going, don’t piss off others.” That is the advice I’ve been getting since my teenage years, for both my personal and professional career.   I lived and continue to live by that advice. It isn’t easy but it sure is worth it to live a life with no enemies and a large network of good people. BUT now I am starting to question the advice. I am not questioning if it is good or bad, but wondering if there is a better approach. In recent years, I also got the advice of engaging with your network, keep these bridges active, it is useless to have them there, take advantage of these relationships. Well, that was a step in the right direction. Don’t burn bridges, but also use them. STILL NOT ENOUGH - Limiting your interactions to your social circle, at work or home, will get you so far. The world is much larger than our circle and if our dream is to grow and expand our options, then we must learn how to connect to the availab...

As corporate leaders we are taught not to blame , we work hard to create a blameless work environment.  In the Private sector you hear all about mental safety and safe work environment. Yet, as we step into the public world, we ignore all of it, we turn into finger pointing monsters.  I’ve done this with my innocent little kids and I bet you did too.  Have you ever stepped into a room with a broken glass, something has spilled on the floor, and said “WHO DID THIS?”?  That question scares any of us even if not guilty. What if we ask “Is everyone ok?” wait for an answer and then ask “What happened?” When the explosion happened in Beirut , everyone raced to understand the root cause, questioning the “fireworks” storage explosion. Then we felt sorry for the people and city, and at the end we started looking for someone to blame. We have yet to see any reports about inspecting other storage facilities in Lebanon.  Any initiative to build policies and regulation for ...

Couple of years ago I was at an offsite with Christopher Avery “The Responsibility Process Guy” where I learned a lot but one thing really really stuck with me. He  warned us about avoiding questions such as What is wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? What did I do wrong? Mostly because our minds will work on finding an answer and providing that is likely what you need. Sometimes you ask “What is wrong with me?” when you misplace your keys and that question won’t help you find them.  Instead, you should be asking “when did I use them last?” or “where could they be?”.  Rather than “What did I do wrong?” try “What could I have done better?” I have also discovered that engineers are always seeking answers and solutions.  When I connected the two, I started monitoring and experimenting with my team.  The experiment was nothing more than a manager trying to get the proper answers from his team. Quickly I learned that the answers could vary depen...