Mindfulness practice
How leadership reshaped mindfulness
This edition looks at what happens when one structure absorbs another — using mindfulness inside leadership development as the case that shows how the mechanism works.
Alexander Spradling, PhD
Organizational consultant and executive coach based in Austin, Texas. Worldwide coaching available in English, Spanish, and French. Specialized in diagnosing organizational problems from a structural and systemic perspective.
Coaching
The Manager-Coach dilemma (And how to solve it)
A manager who coaches has a different structural reality than a professional coach. This edition examines what the differences are, and how they impact how a manager can actually coach.
consensus
The consensus myths slowing down your decisions
Consensus is one of the most valued and misunderstood concepts in organizational life. That confusion is making decisions slower, messier, and sometimes worse than they need to be.
organizational structures
Why structure beats values
Most organizations espouse values that they genuinely believe in. And yet the values never quite develop deep roots. This edition examines why certain structural forces keep the gap open even when everyone agrees it should be closed.
Job placement
Talent isn't the problem. Placement is
Poor job fit typically shows up as disengagement, underperformance, burnout, and attrition that everyone sees coming and nobody quite manages to prevent. This edition examines why the reason is structural — and it starts before the person walks in the door.
Complexity
Good strategy. Unbearable burdens
This edition examines what happens to a strategic decision as it travels through an organization: why it accumulates complexity at every layer, loses coherence along the way, and arrives at implementation as something heavier and less recognizable than what was originally decided.
Leadership
Do the leader's work. The identity follows
Most conversations about leadership focus on identity, style, and personal qualities. The more useful question is not what kind of leader you want to be, but what leadership actually requires of you — regardless of who you are.
Feedback
Feedback isn't what you think it is
A feedback conversation is only one node in a structure. Whether it produces what it is designed to produce depends on conditions that had to exist before the meeting and on commitments that have to follow it.
organizational structures
What structure really is, and why it matters
This edition zooms out to examine what we mean by "structure", and how it relates to the broader concept of "system". Understanding these concepts more precisely may change how you see the problems your organization is producing.
Escalating decisions
Some problems aren't yours to solve
Two leaders with legitimate but conflicting mandates reach an impasse, and neither has the authority to resolve it. This edition argues that knowing when a conflict exceeds your authority to resolve is not a weakness. It is accurate self-knowledge.
Context
Why employees make baffling decisions
This edition examines what employees actually need to make good decisions independently, and why most setups leave critical pieces out without anyone noticing.
Cross-functional collaboration
Why cross-functional collaboration is hard
Cross-functional collaboration usually fails not because of bad communication or poor relationships, but because organizations fail to design the structural conditions required for it to succeed.