Breaking Through Constraints (SSIR)

Without innovations in infrastructure, inspiring ideas and powerful tools lack credibility because people have neither the opportunity nor resources to pursue their visions or apply the tools.

on action: the practices of leadership on adaptive issues from preparation to implementation. Whatever form your interventions take, if successful, they are likely to have certain qualities: • Pointing to a long-term solution (rather than a quick fix) to the adaptive challenge • Framing the challenge and offering interpretations of the issues and t

people in our organization started to feel like they now knew “Karen,” that once-faceless young analyst in a distant corner of the fight whom few had previously heard of, let alone actually met. When complex problems arose that might require Karen’s expertise, someone in another pocket of the organization could feel confident reaching out to her ac

helps us come to terms with the ways in which, by pushing hard to overcome the constraints on our lives, we make the effects of those constraints even worse than they otherwise would be.

any strategy development process must be consultative, one in which individual partners can become convinced that the benefits to them personally of achieving the goals will be worth the personal “costs” of doing new things or different things.