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The Unspoken Contract: How Academic Departments Run on Invisible Labor #changingtimes #leadership

I have been thinking for a long time about whether, and how to say this out loud. Not because the problems are subtle, but because naming them plainly is uncomfortable in systems that depend on people silently absorbing strain. What follows is an attempt to explain why I am choosing to name them any...

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Killing Sacred Cows, Part 4: The Research Enterprise Is Powered by Invisible Labor #career #ideas

Killing Sacred Cows — Part 4 of a series examining the unspoken norms, taboos, and protected assumptions in academic research that are rarely questioned, even when they undermine effectiveness and resilience. This series names those assumptions, puts them up for debate, and asks whether they still d...

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Capacity Is the Precondition for Innovation #ideas #leadership #operations

Peter Drucker's The Discipline of Innovation makes a case that has held up for four decades: innovation is not a matter of luck or temperament. It is a structured, systematic process rooted in observation, analysis, and disciplined execution. Drucker identifies seven sources of innovation opportunit...

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Strategy, Part 3: Small Bets, Pilots, & Strategic Practice #approach #changingtimes #leadership

In Parts 1 and 2, we explored why traditional strategic planning often fails: long lists of objectives, abstract values-based pillars, and a tendency to overemphasize prestige metrics or unit-level plans. We also discussed the power of trade-offs and strategic bets as a way to surface priorities, ma...

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