Harmonic Architecture
Roles and Responsibilities
Who owns what: decision rights, accountability, and the boundaries between roles.
Writing on Roles and Responsibilities
13 issues
Walk in as a peer
The CFO meets you where you show up. Walk in begging for resources and you'll be treated like a beggar.
You're in the Party Planning Business
Speed of sending isn't the same as speed of getting the thing done. Most teams optimize for the wrong one.
When High Responsibility Becomes a Liability
The leaders who care most about responsibility are the likeliest to destroy it in others.
Skills Are Cheap. How You Work Is What Sets You Apart.
Past basic competence skills are a commodity. How you work is what actually gets rewarded.
Be an Offer Maker, Not an Order Taker
Order takers wait to be told which hill. Offer makers pick one and make the case.
Drive consensus, or go lone wolf?
Seven decision rights, from lone wolf to full consensus, and when each one is the right call.
What's interesting to your boss should be fascinating to you
Impact is how you get paid. Align yourself to the three things your boss actually cares about.
The Three Questions That Reveal What's Really Going On
Most teams focus on what’s being delivered. But that’s only one-third of the picture. Here’s how to diagnose misalignment before it becomes failure.
"We're the Bosses"
Agents choose to act rather than be acted upon. Why agency is harder to grow than it looks.
Move Authority to Information
Information and authority don't always sit in the same place. Organizations have to figure out how to bring these two pieces together.
Leadership buoyancy; how pressure influences your leadership level
Every level of promotion in your company will come at a cost.
What can a game about beer distribution tell us about organizational design?
Good people operating in a bad system create bad outcomes.
Authorship drives ownership
People own what they write. Hand over authorship if you want real ownership.
The other eleven
No element fails alone. When one is out of tune the symptom usually shows up somewhere else in the ring.