Weekly Posts and Insights
How Do We Build Organizations That People Still Want To Belong To, Contribute To, and Lead - What I’m Teaching at Institute This Week
I am returning to Northeast Institute for Organization Management as a faculty member, teaching four courses that, on the surface, address different parts of organizational leadership: membership, organizational relevance, delegation, and innovation. Yet, despite the range of experience in the room and the different subjects I’ll be teaching, all four courses are asking versions of the same question: How do we build organizations that people still want to belong to, contribute to, and lead?
The Hidden Chain Behind Innovation and Conflict
Innovation, by its very nature, requires disagreement. It requires uncertainty. It requires people saying things out loud that may not work, may not be popular, or may challenge the status quo. And the moment human beings begin challenging assumptions, introducing new perspectives, or pushing against old ways of thinking, something naturally appears: conflict.
Teams & Conflict I Direct Application with Matt Harrington
Conflict in teams isn’t something to fear—it’s a sign of growth. In this episode, Matt Harrington unpacks Bruce Tuckman’s famous storming stage of team development and explains why conflict is not only natural but necessary. Healthy disagreement signals that a team is maturing, moving beyond surface-level cooperation, and learning to navigate real challenges together.
The Overlap of Conflict, Vulnerability, Trust, and Innovation
True innovation exists at the intersection of trust, vulnerability, and constructive conflict. As leaders, our role is to create the conditions for innovation to thrive. That means checking our egos, fostering trust, and modeling vulnerability. It means leaning into conflict, embracing discomfort, and having the courage to confront the most brutal facts of our current reality.
At The Heart of True Innovation are Trust and Vulnerability
Innovation, or the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market, has a lot to do with the tasks, processes, and smart people! However, true innovation relies more on the ability to trust and be vulnerable in the incubator stage of an idea or innovation.
False innovation can be defined, if we borrow some language from vulnerability author Brené Brown as, “the absence of honest conversation about the hard work that takes us from lying facedown in the arena to rising strong has led to two dangerous outcomes: the propensity to gold-plate grit and a badassery deficit.”