I've had those moments when I look at a particularly crowded stretch of my calendar and wonder what idiot agreed to all of this. Unfortunately, I’ve met her. And still look her in the mirror every morning. But here's the frustrating part: I usually can't point to one spectacularly bad decision that got me there. Most of the decisions were perfectly reasonable when I made them. The project was worth taking on. The commitment seemed manageable. And sometimes the things occupyin

“It’s always the same three people.” I’ve been hearing some version of this a lot lately. Nobody wants to volunteer for the committee. Nobody steps up for the project. Nobody new wants to take on a leadership role. So then I usually ask some version of: How are you asking them? Quite often, the answer is an email. An email that went out telling everyone there was an opportunity to serve on the committee and asking anyone interested to let the organization know. Except nobody

Six people are trying to order a pizza. This should not be difficult. Everyone wants traditional crust. Everyone wants extra cheese. We're off to a good start. And then someone says pepperoni. Someone else hates pepperoni. Someone wants mushrooms. Someone doesn't eat meat. And someone suggests pineapple, at which point the group has larger problems. Forty-five minutes later, everyone is hangry and no pizza has been ordered. The problem isn't the toppings. The problem is that

One year ago, I launched RealTalk Strategies. Since then, the projects, clients, organizations, states, classrooms, conference rooms and Zoom screens have varied considerably. The questions underneath the work? Surprisingly consistent. I keep finding myself asking: What problem are we actually trying to solve? Do we all mean the same thing when we use that word? Who owns this? Do we have the capacity to do what we're committing to? Will this actually work in real life, not ju

I’ve developed a healthy suspicion of the word just. We’ll “just” create a task force. We’ll “just” send out a survey. We’ll “just” start posting more on social media. There may be no word in organizational life doing more unpaid labor than just. Because the thing that comes after it almost always sounds easy. Create. Survey. Post. How hard could it be? Well. There can be an astonishing amount of work hiding inside a single verb. Take that, task force. Someone has to figure o

If you ever want to see what happens when hundreds of years of individually reasonable decisions accumulate in one place, spend a little time trying to explain Pennsylvania local government. We have 67 counties and more than 2,500 municipalities. Cities, boroughs and townships. School districts. Authorities. Elected row officers. Different responsibilities sitting at different and occasionally overlapping levels of government, sometimes in ways that make perfect sense once yo

The process worked perfectly on paper. Until we introduced people. We did all the things. We brought people into the conversation. We explained why the change mattered. We built the process. We brought in the trainer. Everyone seemed to understand what we were trying to accomplish. And then, two days later, half the organization was quietly doing exactly what it had done before. Not necessarily because anyone was actively resisting the change. They just went back to what they

If you’ve never heard the children’s song “There’s a Hole in My Bucket,” the premise is pretty simple. There’s a hole in Henry’s bucket. “So fix it, dear Henry,” Liza tells him, suggesting some straw. The straw is too long. Cut it. The knife is too dull. Sharpen it. With what? A stone. The stone is too dry. Wet it. With what? Water. How do you carry the water? In the bucket. “But there’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole!” And here we are. How many times do we solve prob

You can rationalize an astonishing number of things. We humans are remarkably talented at this. So are organizations. Think of the legacy program that maybe three people still use on a regular basis. The numbers tell you it costs more in time and money than the value it creates. But as soon as someone suggests shutting it down, there’s a sudden wave of nostalgia. “But everyone loves that program.” “It’s been around forever.” “We can’t just get rid of it.” And so it stays. Or

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Since I started working in the consulting world, that’s exactly the sentence I’ve wanted to say in more meetings than I can count. And not just about the word inconceivable like Vizzini and Inigo in The Princess Bride. "Strategic." I do not think it means what you think it means. "Engagement." I do not think it means what you think it means. "Cost-effective." I do not think it means what you think it

You know what sucks? Facing the uncomfortable truth that sometimes you aren’t listening to your own words. Last week, I wrote about what our presence teaches people, and how we as leaders often enable the patterns that are creating our frustration. We're doing more than solving today's problem, I wrote. We're quietly, if unintentionally, normalizing tomorrow’s behavior. This week, it felt like looking in a mirror. Those words were staring right back at me. For a while now, I'

What is my presence teaching people? It's not a question I'd ever really thought to ask myself until I found myself leading a meeting that felt... unusually quiet. I expected ideas. Suggestions. Healthy debate. Instead, people seemed to be waiting. For me. At first, I wondered why the people responsible for the work weren't driving the discussion. Why wasn't anyone willing to offer an opinion or make a decision? Then it hit me. For years, those conversations had always includ

We have a funny habit in organizations. We elect someone chair, hand them an agenda, and assume they know how to facilitate a room full of passionate people with competing priorities. Even though most of them have never been taught how. Last week, I wrote about recognizing when a conversation has run its course and it's time to move the work forward instead of going around in circles again. Recognizing that moment, though, is one thing. Knowing what to do next is something el

Have you ever watched someone dump the entire contents of a toolbox onto the floor because they needed one screwdriver? Before they spot the screwdriver, their eyes land on the Allen wrench. Which reminds them about the loose table leg they've been meaning to fix. Then they notice the new bookcase the kids said they'd put together but never did. Well, since the Allen wrench is already out... Three hours later, the screwdriver is still sitting in the middle of the pile. Everyo

One of the easiest mistakes we make is assuming that because something is important to us, it should immediately become important to everyone else. Yet think of an orchestra: Every instrument matters. No one says the violins are more important than the percussion or that the trumpet deserves more attention than the cello. But if every musician decided to play whenever they thought their part was important...you wouldn't get music. You'd get noise. A conductor doesn't decide w

A year ago, I thought the hardest part would be pressing publish. A year ago, I was just a couple of weeks away from launching the Leading Out Loud blog. It was this crazy idea that I had things I wanted to say about leadership, developing teams and building organizations. And honestly? I was scared. Who was I to think I had anything worthwhile to contribute to that conversation? What if people laughed? What if I had no idea what I was talking about? What if I ran out of thin

Raise your hand if you've ever gone on vacation but couldn't resist checking your email because your team might need you. Or if there was a virtual meeting while you were away and people showed up at two different times because you were the one who sent the calendar invitation – and when no one else could change it, they just created a second meeting instead. Or the press release didn't go out because no one knew who else could sign off on it. Or the social media account sat

One of the things I've noticed about volunteer organizations is that we spend a lot of time helping people get nominated, appointed or elected—and almost no time helping them become a team. Think about it. We explain the bylaws. We hand out committee assignments. We talk about officer roles and meeting schedules. We make sure people know when to show up and how to vote. What we don’t talk about is what it actually means to act as a board instead of a collection of individual

The Stockdale Paradox hit my radar screen this week and completely changed the way I think about how organizations approach change. The concept comes from Admiral Jim Stockdale, who spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. When asked who didn't make it out, he famously answered: "The optimists." Not because optimism is bad. Quite the opposite. The problem was that some prisoners convinced themselves they would be released by Christmas, then Easter, then the next hol

It’s easy to jump to conclusions. Easy to make assumptions. Easy to decide we already know what’s happening. Easy to predict how a conversation will go or what someone “really meant.” What’s harder is recognizing how much of that interpretation might be based on incomplete information. The truth is, we rarely have the full story. One of the most important leadership skills isn’t having the answers. It’s recognizing how much you don’t know yet. That can feel deeply uncomfortab