A peek inside the machinery
My Favorite Problems
The problems I keep coming back to usually involve some collision of people, context, and day-to-day execution. I love building an understanding what is really happening, helping people grow, making hard choices, connecting strategy to real work, and building changes that hold up once actual humans get involved.
I have put enough thought into some of these that I built frameworks around them. Not because every problem needs a branded diagram, but because a visual model can make a fuzzy problem easier to see, talk about, and do something about.
Figuring out what is actually going on.
Some of my favorite work starts before there is a defined problem. Everything is a mess. Nobody's seeing the expected results. Everybody seems to have a different idea of what the priorities are and what the blockers are. And everyone has a different story.
I like going into that kind of situation, talking to the people closest to it, understanding their actual workflows, finding patterns and contradictions, and separating symptoms from the problem underneath them.
Then comes the fun part. I get to ask a million questions until the real problems start to emerge
Helping people grow into the kind of leaders their teams need.
Would you hire an air traffic controller based on their skills as a pilot? Do we measure a star athlete by the skills required of a head coach? Of course not. So why do we assume someone who is a technical expert in their field will automatically have the competencies of a great people manager?
They need to develop new muscles. They need to learn to not always be the person who solves the problem, but instead to solve it through their team.
This one is personal to me. When I moved from being a software developer to a development manager, there was no roadmap that said, "This is how your contributions and measures of success and priorities should change from yesterday." I figured it out as I went along. And now I've got a better picture of how to help someone else make that transition.
That picture eventually became SHIFT InContext:
- SSee the bigger picture
- HHeighten your team’s potential
- IInfluence in every direction
- FFocus on leverage
- TTransform your definition of success
Turning “strategy” into an actual set of actions.
I like the moment when a room full of smart people has a long list of good ideas someone finally says,: so what are we actually going to do?
Good strategic planning creates enough shared context to evaluate tradeoffs. It connects the big picture to priorities, makes assumptions visible, and helps bring to light the difference between what will actually move the needle right now and what's just a shiny distraction.
Making the big picture make sense on the ground.
Objectives, goals, KPIs, OKRs - they can all make perfect sense at the executive level, but what do they mean to the people doing the day-to-day work? Do they clarify priorities and dependencies? Do they make it clear which teams own what? Is what the business envisions technically possible? Are tradeoffs between quality, timelines, and features clear?
I like to burrow into that middle layer. It requires understanding the intent at the top and the reality experienced by the people doing the work. Sometimes those two groups are operating with different context, and someone needs to facilitate a meeting of the minds.
That is where the Context 4D Framework came from: Diagnose the Disconnect, Define the Common Language, Design the Bridge, then Deliver & Reinforce.
Making change work.
You can put 14.8 bullets on a slide about how great this change will be. There are still going to be people that will resist it. Probably most of them, because, human nature.
The reality is, change is messy. People absorb new ideas at different speeds, managers put their own spin on the message, and new info pops up halfway through. Your initial plan breaks in three places, and someone uncovers a critical unresolved dependency 17 minutes before launch.
The InContext Compass is deliberately directional rather than rigid: Name the Why, Engage the People, Set the Path, Watch and Adjust, with Continuing Momentum at the center.
And let's be clear—the people side is everything. You can't judge whether a change is actually working just from a dashboard. You have to talk to the human beings living inside it.
Making work easier and less fragile.
I like leaving something better than I found it.
Sometimes that means clearer documentation, a clearer process, or clearer ownership. Sometimes it's manager tools, shared vocabulary, or feedback loops. And sometimes it's removing the burden of six unnecessary steps that everyone assumed were adding value that they just weren't aware of.
The goal is not process for the sake of process. It's creating an environment where doing the useful thing becomes easier, clearer, and less dependent on somebody remembering the secret handshake. It's about increasing quality and lowering risk.
The common thread
I like problems where the answer is hiding in the context.
Sometimes that context is structural—the systems, dependencies, history, and competing priorities. Sometimes it’s human—what people actually care about, what they understand, what they notice, and what they need from each other. Usually, it’s both.
I like digging in until the core issue is clear, helping teams make sense of the big picture, and turning that clarity into action.
That might look like a new way of working, a solid decision, or simply realizing what the actual problem was all along.
Talk to me about a favorite problem →