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Frameworks & Workbooks

The Change We Lead: Why Lewin Still Matters and Why We Must Evolve Beyond Him

Adaptability & Resilience, Evaluation & Continuous Improvement, Execution & Implementation, Frameworks & Workbooks, Innovation & Growth, Leadership & Culture, Project Management & Success

Change has always fascinated me – not just as a technical exercise in planning but as a deeply human journey where expectations, fears, responsibilities, and convictions meet in unpredictable ways.

For those of you following my writing, you know my writing often focuses on what happens beneath the surface of decisions: the psychology, the structures, the sense-making process leaders must master. When I think about change management, I find myself returning to Lewin not because his change model is perfect, but because it was the first to make change feel understandable. It broke complexity into the simplicity of human movement: unfreeze, change, refreeze.

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When Products Grow Old in the Mind Before They Break in the Code

Evaluation & Continuous Improvement, Frameworks & Workbooks, Project Management & Success, Tools & Systems

Every company talks about technical debt. Engineers whisper about it in standups, product managers put it in backlogs, and leaders sigh over it when velocity drops. Technical debt is the fragile code, the outdated modules, the patchwork fixes that make every release feel like a gamble. It’s real, measurable, and deeply frustrating. But there’s another kind of debt that often stays invisible until it’s too late. It’s called user debt. And unlike technical debt, it doesn’t just slow your team down-it erodes your purpose from within.

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Designing with Intention: The Strategy Behind Creative Excellence

Execution & Implementation, Frameworks & Workbooks, Project Management & Success, Vision & Goal Setting

There’s something uniquely fascinating about watching a talented young designer at work.

The instinct, the spark, the visual rhythm – all of it feels raw and alive. Yet talent, without structure, often becomes a pattern of repetition rather than evolution. Over the past year, I’ve watched this tension play out in real time through my conversations with a mentee who possesses remarkable creative potential but struggles with intentionality. His projects look good, sometimes even great, but when asked why a particular design decision was made or how accessibility standards were tested, the answers tend to drift into silence. It’s not lack of effort. It’s the absence of a strategy.

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Strategy Doesn’t Fail for Lack of Models. It Fails Because People Do

Execution & Implementation, Frameworks & Workbooks, Innovation & Growth

We are drowning in strategy frameworks.

Over the past sixty years, the business world has become obsessed with the architecture of strategy – from Ansoff’s growth matrix in the 1950s to Porter’s Five Forces, the Balanced Scorecard, Blue Ocean, and Transient Advantage. Each new decade brings new models, new diagrams, new acronyms. It’s a crowded marketplace of elegant thinking and crisp visuals, all trying to tame the chaos of competitive advantage into something linear and predictable.

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When Growth Outruns Operations: Lessons from the Middle of the Work

Adaptability & Resilience, Evaluation & Continuous Improvement, Frameworks & Workbooks, Innovation & Growth, Vision & Goal Setting

After twenty-five years of building, leading, and refining operational engines, I’ve come to see a pattern that many miss.

It’s not something I’ve learned from textbooks or management theory. It’s something I’ve learned from being in the room, having hard, thoughtful conversations with people who are right in the thick of it – leaders, partners, funders, vendors, and community builders who are sometimes, quite desperately, trying to keep up with their own growth. And I’ve seen this not just from a distance, but in the day-to-day of my own work – most recently as the Vice President of Operations at the Ottawa Community Foundation.

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Crafting Proposals That Win Strategic Planning Projects: A Blueprint for Success

Execution & Implementation, Frameworks & Workbooks

When it comes to bidding on strategic planning projects, the challenge lies in balancing the art of persuasion with the precision of strategic thinking. Unlike other bids, these proposals aren’t just about presenting your expertise – they’re about demonstrating that you understand the complexities of the client’s organization and can guide them through the uncharted terrain of their future. Writing a winning proposal for a strategic planning project requires clarity, insight, and an ability to inspire confidence in your approach. It’s not about selling a process; it’s about selling a vision of what’s possible when the right strategy meets the right execution.

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