We like to think negotiations are purely logical, but if you make the mistake of creating bad emotions and bad feelings, it can lead to bad outcomes in your negotiation.
Two things you have to understand as you enter any negotiation are the impacts of emotions and fairness. I know we like to think that negotiations are purely logical, but they’re emotional, and you have to understand how perceptions of fairness, collaboration, and even being taken advantage of can impact negotiating stances and approaches both for you as well as for your opponent.
Imagine we’re walking down the street together and I find $10 on the ground. I pick it up and I decide I’m going to give you some of that money because you’re walking with me. I want you to ask yourself how you feel right now if I say, “I’m going to give you nine of these $10.” How do you feel if I say, “I’m going to give you 18 cents of these $10?” How about if I give you six of the $10? Fairness and emotions impact your willingness to negotiate. Even at 18 cents, you should be happy because it’s 18 cents more than you had before I found the money on the ground, but it feels bad. It feels unfair even though logically it’s a great decision.
Now let’s look at this in terms of your negotiations. You don’t want to be in a situation where you create those feelings in your negotiating opponent where they don’t want to work with you because they feel like you’re unfair. We like to think it’s logical, but if you make the mistake of creating bad emotions and bad feelings, it can lead to bad outcomes in your negotiation.
I’ve felt this personally. I had a client where in the past they would pay us X dollars per class for me to go and teach. Well, a new leader came into the organization and said, “Well, we’re not going to pay you X anymore. We’re going to pay you 40% of X just because we want to because we think the price should be lower.” This was a very difficult situation for me because I took it personally. I couldn’t control those feelings in that moment because it was a personal attack. This person was telling me that I was worth 60% less just because he said so.
Now I know this isn’t what he meant. Logically, it made sense for him to push down the price that we were charging, and I had to step back from the negotiation, set aside the emotions, and approach it much more logically. However, that negotiation could have gone poorly for him because he created negative feelings with me.
Spend some time in your negotiations and think through, “How would I feel if I was on the other side of this offer?” Would I feel good, or would I feel bad? And think about how you position your offers to make sure you take advantage of feelings of emotions and fairness in the deal.
Want to learn more about strategic negotiation? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Whenever you’re developing your brand, navigating public relations crises, tweaking your marketing, or guiding your product team to better infuse authenticity into your products, walk through each step of TRUTH to ensure it comes off as authentic.
Today’s post is by Colin Hodge, author of OUTRAGEOUS STARTUP GROWTH: Uncovering the Secrets of User Psychology to Scale Your Business (Wiley, April 13, 2026).
Authenticity is a crazy powerful attribute, whether personally or professionally. We humans are wired to recognize when someone is being authentic—or be on guard if something seems off. It’s so ingrained in our biology that we often cannot explain why someone or something feels inauthentic. It’s the super-fast, pattern-matching part of our brains using thousands of past experiences combined with reading subtle body language and tone of voice, then making a split-second verdict if someone or some object seems genuine.
One of the grandfathers of behavioral psychology, Daniel Kahneman, refers to this part of our thinking as “System 1.” This system is usually responsible for how we feel about new things that we encounter: our “knee-jerk reactions” and “gut feelings.” That includes our initial reactions to products that we encounter, including their names, logos, slogans, and user interfaces. If everything feels like it fits together, from the problem we think that the product is addressing to the brand elements, then it usually feels “authentic” to us. If something feels obscured, sugarcoated, or otherwise incongruent with the problem it’s addressing or the brand elements, it feels inauthentic.
To our brain’s System 1, situations that are transparent, consistent, and congruent among its elements get the stamp of approval for trustworthiness and affinity. This system of thinking, the “thinking fast” part of Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow, is incredibly quick at pattern-matching, spotting minute differences, and generating rapid assessments using those heuristics. Although quite impressive, these assessments are influenced by a number of biases.
Compared to the slower, more laborious “System 2” that analyzes complex problems using logical steps, System 1 tends to be more biased and is thus more susceptible to undue influences. When it comes to judging authenticity, we are vulnerable to so, so many cognitive biases, such as these:
Confirmation Bias: We seek and interpret information that aligns with our existing beliefs, ignoring contradictory evidence.
Halo Effect: We extrapolate a single positive (or negative) trait or association to the overall authenticity.
Mere Exposure Effect: The more we see something, the more we perceive it as trustworthy even if it’s not genuinely authentic.
Appeal to emotion, especially to nostalgia or fear: This can heighten the feeling of authenticity even if the facts don’t support it.
Bandwagon Effect: This occurs when the perceived “social proof” from many people sways us.
Anchoring Effect: Our first impression of authenticity sticks or a reference point to a different object creates a relationship between the two in our minds.
Authority Bias: An endorsement comes from a trusted figure, artificially raising its perceived authenticity.
Framing Effect: Our perception of the object is influenced by what’s around it or how it’s described.
But these biases aren’t all bad. Just like pattern-matching and spotting inconsistencies, our brains use these biases as shortcuts, because we don’t have the time or the energy to think critically about everything we observe, using System 2. They exist because we need to make quick assessments and decisions every day.
Psychologically, we may be programmed to seek authenticity over eons of evolution, where deception meant being outcast, starved, cheated, or killed. That deception could’ve been a trap, a scam, or a battlefield feint.
Let’s stir up some of our stereotypes and preprogrammed patterns now, to illustrate the point.
Close your eyes. Imagine yourself in a retail clothing store like Uniqlo, on the lookout for shoplifters and thieves. Picture what they look like and what behavior they would exhibit. Are they avoiding eye contact with the staff? Are they shying away from the security cameras? Do they look a bit nervous?
That’s your System 1 programming running to detect deception, with the help of your System 2 to critically break down the scenario and identify what System 1 is scanning for.
How to Make Your Brand “Authentic”
In a sea of products in your market that feels too whitewashed or too disconnected from the reality of how people are using them, be the lighthouse that draws them in with clarity.
The allure of authenticity means people perk up when hearing about your product, show real and powerful reactions, and pay attention to your product despite the crowded market.
So what is authenticity when it comes to a brand and its products?
First, it’s Transparency. Be direct and open about your products’ real uses, values, and mission. Consumers respond positively to directness and boldness, not fluffy corporate-speak messages.
Second, it’s Relatability. Connect with your audience in a genuine, no-bullshit manner. It’s refreshing and exciting to hear from a flawed and raw speaker rather than someone or some company that pretends to be perfect and sterilizes every word.
Third, its Uniqueness. Stand out from the crowd and stay true to what sets your brand apart. Being a copy of something else by definition isn’t authentic, so highlight your differences.
Fourth, it’s Trustworthiness. Be consistent with your messaging, deliver on promises, and maintain integrity. Humans are adept at spotting inconsistencies and can harshly punish companies they perceive as breaking the core promises of the brand.
Fifth, it’s Honesty. Communicate sincerely, directly, and naturally. We are wired to trust people who appear to be telling the truth without obfuscation and naturally what’s on their mind (“telling it like it is”).
There’s a simple acronym to remember what authenticity means for a brand: TRUTH (Transparency, Relatability, Uniqueness, Trustworthiness, and Honesty, as detailed later in the chapter). This “TRUTH checklist for authenticity” can be a handy tool in your startup.
Whenever you’re developing your brand, navigating public relations crises, tweaking your marketing, or guiding your product team to better infuse authenticity into your products, walk through each step of TRUTH to ensure it comes off as authentic.
For the same reason that we profile what shoplifters act like, we scrutinize similarly with brands and products. Our brains are on the lookout for liars and seek the safety of truthfulness. We’re drawn to trustworthiness, and the less a brand or person seems to hide, the more trustworthy it seems to be.
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Our reader poll today asks: Do you believe “the universe” puts opportunities in front of you and you can capture them if you’re paying attention?
Yes, random opportunities arise for me all the time – 82%
No, I make all my own opportunities – 18%
Are you paying attention? The vast majority of you see opportunities appearing before you on a regular basis. Being open to those possibilities and knowing what your long-term goals are will help you see those opportunities as they arise because you understand how they fit in your long-term journey. If you’re convinced you make all your own opportunities, I invite you to reflect on where you’re headed long-term and as events unfold around you, ask yourself what opportunities there might be related to that event given what your long-term goals are. You might be surprised by how many new opportunities you find along your journey. You just have to be looking for them.
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Your negotiation strategy can make or break a deal. Learning negotiation tactics is key to becoming a more strategic negotiator.
Over the years, I’ve learned some great negotiating techniques and tactics. I’d like to share them now.
The Invisible Man
The first is called The Invisible Man. You can use this technique when you’re in the heat of a deal and you don’t want to give an answer right now, or you don’t like the position that the other party is taking. You just say, “Well, I have to check with my colleagues before I can give you an answer.” That other party isn’t in the room, so you’ve pushed back the negotiation. You’ve bought yourself some time, and now you have the ability to go back to the other party and say, “I know you wanted a 20% discount, but I’ve spoken with my colleagues and the best we can do is 10%.” You’ve created an invisible authority that the other party has to negotiate against. Read more
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Want to become a trusted advisor to leaders in crisis? Learn how to help leaders make smart choices under stress.
Today’s post is by Helio Fred Garcia, co-author with James E. Lukaszewski of Influencing Leaders: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor, to be published in August 2026.
Leaders are judged by how they deal with their greatest challenges. Some rise to the occasion and are rewarded for their thoughtfulness, courage, and leadership; many do not and suffer meaningful harm as a result.
I’ve been a crisis management advisor and professor for decades. I’ve advised hundreds of senior leaders in companies, governments, the military, and not-for-profits. And I have concluded that the single most-common cause of failed crisis response is lack of mental readiness on the part of leaders.
The most common cause of a crisis response failure is that leaders made choices based on personal preference. The landscape is littered with senior leaders who improvised and failed when the stakes were high: they panicked, prevaricated, or otherwise failed to behave like responsible leaders when it mattered most. This never works. That’s because under stress humans experience a fear response, which shuts down critical thinking and leads to self-protective decision-making. Leaders who make choices based on personal preference will predictably make choices that protect their comfort, but likely fail to live up to the standards stakeholders hold leaders accountable to.
Like other forms of management, crisis management is a rigorous business discipline. It is the management of choices leaders make when trust is on the line – and with it, all other measures of competitive position that trust makes possible: stock price, employee morale and productivity, customer demand for products and services, and the like. As with any other business discipline, there is a method to making smart choices in a crisis. It requires having clear decision criteria for every foreseeable decision in a crisis: what to do, what to say, when to do and say it, how to do and say it, etc. But just having those clear criteria is not enough: In a crisis, leaders need to actually follow those criteria.
Mental Readiness
Mental readiness has three distinct components:
Emotional discipline. This, in turn, has three elements:
Contain panic: This is a learned capacity. Firefighters learn to walk calmly into a burning building; military are trained to move toward the people shooting at them, etc. This goes against every human instinct. And yet, we can train ourselves to stay calm amidst the noise and do the uncomfortable things necessary to accomplish our goal.
Self-regulate: One of the most common leadership failures is the inability to regulate moods, impulses, drives, and to re-direct them to a more productive place.
Exhibit humility: The key to getting through a crisis is to demonstrate empathy toward those negatively affected by the crisis. Humility is what that makes empathy possible. Fail to show humility, and stakeholders – both internal and external – will lose trust in the leader.
Deep knowledge. This has two parts:
Pattern recognition: Crises follow predictable patterns. And patterns have two kinds of power: explanatory power, helping make sense of the past; and predictive power, helping anticipate what will happen next. One pattern: Some things never work in a crisis: denial, diminishing the significance of the harm, blaming others, lying, shooting the messenger. Another pattern: Most harm in a crisis is self-inflicted, the result of leaders doing the things that never work in a crisis.
Study multiple crises: Often leaders need to see an example of another leader making a scary choice that leads to success. In my work with leaders, I help them recognize that they can get through a crisis well by showing them what leaders did in similar crises.
Intellectual rigor: One way to understand strategy is to think of it as ordered thinking: of deferring certain topics until you’ve considered certain prior topics. The sequence of consideration matters. If we jump into how we might respond to a crisis before considering prior issues, we will likely respond poorly. We need to ask other questions before prescribing options — questions that analyze the nature of the crisis, the risks the crisis represents, how we might mitigate those risks, who is affected by the crisis, and what those stakeholders will expect from us.
The key decision criterion for what to do or say in a crisis is driven by the elements of trust. Trust can be understood as the natural consequence of promises fulfilled, expectations met, and stated values being the lived experience of stakeholders. Fulfill a promise; meet an appropriate expectation, live your declared values – trust is locked in. Break a promise; miss on an expectation; behave contrary to stated values – trust falls.
The decision criterion for what to do and say is simple: Imagine those who matter to the organization, and ask: What would reasonable people appropriately expect a responsible organization to do in this kind of situation? The answer often provides a roadmap to a productive resolution of the crisis. It allows us to respond in ways that align with the appropriate expectations of our stakeholders, and thereby maintain trust as we address the underlying issue.
Of all the expectations stakeholders may have, there is one that applies for every stakeholder of every organization in every form of crisis. In a crisis, every stakeholder expects the organization to care: That some system or process or judgment failed and needs to be remedied. That people are hurt or hurting as a result. And that the leader cares about – and sometimes needs to care for – those directly affected.
In short, effective crisis response is never about how the leader feels; it’s what our stakeholders need to experience in order believe that we care.
I have the privilege of being in the room with leaders when they face their biggest challenges. I serve as a kind of CEO-whisperer, helping the leader make productive choices even when all the choices still lead to an undesirable outcome. I help the leader choose the less bad outcome – the one most likely to demonstrate that they care. This, too, is a learned capacity.
Want to become a trusted advisor to leaders in crisis? Learn how to help leaders make smart choices under stress.
Helio Fred Garcia is executive director of the Logos Institute for Crisis Management and Executive Leadership. He teaches crisis, ethics, leadership, and communication in a number of universities and professional schools, including Columbia University and New York University. He is co-author with James E. Lukaszewski of Influencing Leaders: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor, to be published in August 2026.
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Our reader poll today asks: When a new direct report joins your team, how do you approach their onboarding?
I spend as much time as necessary training them and getting them up to speed – 31%
I spend substantial time training them, but move on when I feel they’re comfortable – 41%
I spend some time training them, but rely on them to educate themselves mostly – 19%
I spend little time training them and hope they’ll figure it out quickly – 5%
I spend no time training them — they have to get themselves up to speed – 4%
Setting people up for success. 72% of you report spending substantial amounts of time with new team members getting them up to speed on their role. This is a worthwhile investment. The shorter their “time to competence” is, the sooner they’ll be delivering value and taking work off your plate. While that initial time investment can feel overwhelming, it’s almost always a high return activity. For those of you who don’t invest time in the initial training, you are saving time up front but could be causing problems down the road. If your team members aren’t properly trained, they’ll make mistakes you have to fix, they’ll be less efficient, and they’ll feel more challenged in their role than they need to be. That can lead to low morale and attrition. Spend time setting your people up to succeed. It’s an investment in them that pays off for both of you.
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Define your next decision by answering these 5 questions.
The first step in the decision-making process is clearly defining the decision you’re going to make. There are some key questions you should be asking as you’re defining the decision:
First, what’s the desired outcome?
Is there a specific metric that you’re trying to drive?
What are the choices that we’re trying to make?
What are the possible choices that we can choose from?
When do we have to decide?
Who is this decision going to affect?
If you don’t go through these steps of defining the decision, you’re going to have unclear objectives, and that may lead you to make a bad choice. If you don’t define all the possible alternatives, you might miss a great opportunity. And last, not being clear about timelines or who’s going to be involved is going to increase risk, it’ll cause confusion, and it’s going to frustrate people in the decision-making process.
Allow me to offer an example of when we clearly defined a decision to be made. In my corporate life, one of the organizations I ran had paper-based payments that we were getting from our business partners, and we wanted to move from paper to electronic.
So we defined the desired outcome: no more paper.
We said, “The choice we’re trying to make is how to best make that shift for our business partners.”
We said, “The possible choices are going paper, electronic, or some hybrid.”
We clearly defined the timeline. We said, “We need to decide by the end of the month. And within six months, we need all the paper to go away.”
And we thought through who is going to be impacted by the decision: our organization, our business partners, as well as ultimately, our customers.
And by going through this step of clearly defining the decision, we were able to successfully make a decision upfront and execute it well on the back end.
So as you go to make your own decisions, think through this set of five questions and drive that clarity of the decision you’re trying to make.
Want to learn more about decision-making strategies? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning decision-making strategies. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Most leaders think they know themselves, but 95% of behavior is unconscious. Learn the one question that reveals your hidden Ego and transforms your impact.
Today’s post is by Christie Garcia, author of Your Ego Is Showing: How Ego Management Unlocks Authentic Confidence and Meaningful Success.
I fell three stories off a fire escape on a Friday morning in San Francisco. When the paramedics arrived, my first concern was whether I could still throw my holiday party that evening.
That moment was a perfect portrait of my Ego running completely unchecked. I have what I call a Controller Ego. Controllers are driven by achievement, push hard, move fast, and pride themselves on handling anything and everything. The downside is that we also tend to be emotionally unavailable, hyper-rational in moments that call for real emotions, and completely blind to the “real” impact we have on the people around us.
That blindness is what I want to talk about, because it is not just a Controller problem. It is a human problem, and it may be the single most expensive leadership habit you have right now.
In my work as an executive coach, I have found that 95 percent of the time, leaders are operating on autopilot. Their Ego, the unconscious brain, is driving every decision, every reaction, every conversation. The unsettling truth is that everyone around them can see it. They are usually the only ones who cannot.
I call this the self-awareness gap.
There are three Ego types I work with: the Complier, the Protector, and the Controller. Each has real gifts which are often our biggest weaknesses when overused. I like to call these overused gifts our liabilities or our Ego tactics. These tactics quietly sabotage our relationships, happiness, and success in both work and life. With almost two decades of coaching, I have yet to meet a leader who has not identified with at least one of them.
The Complier is warm, easy to work with, and deeply people-oriented. The liabilities of the Complier Ego is that they forfeit their power to keep the peace. I worked with a leader I will call Diane. She was a beloved director at a mid-size nonprofit, the kind of person everyone wanted on their team. But in every senior leadership meeting, she would agree with whoever spoke last, even when she privately disagreed. She told herself she was being collaborative. What she was actually doing was accumulating resentment quietly, until one day she sent an email to her executive director that was so out of character it blindsided everyone, including Diane herself. When we unpacked it, she realized she had been swallowing her truth for nearly two years. Her Complier Ego had convinced her that speaking up was a threat to being liked. What it actually cost her was her credibility.
The Protector leads with integrity and logic. They are often the most principled person in the room, and the most guarded. I think of a client I will call Marcus, a COO who was brilliant at strategy and notoriously hard to read. His team respected him but never felt close to him. When a high performer resigned, she told HR that she never felt like Marcus believed in her. Marcus was floored. He had been her biggest internal advocate for two years. The problem was that his Protector Ego had built walls so effectively that his support was never communicated to the employee. He assumed she knew how proud of her he was. One of the Protector’s liabilities is their black-and-white thinking. They struggle to see the gray, which prevents them from sharing details, giving praise, or telling people how they really feel (both good and bad). Most often, the Ego’s beliefs are that people should know how he feels, they should just do their job, and results speak for themselves. Unfortunately, in this situation, they did not. His team needed to hear it from him directly, and he had no idea that was missing.
The Controller, my own dominant Ego, is ambitious, decisive, and gets things done. The liabilities of the Ego are that we tend to define success through accomplishments and unintentionally make the people around us feel like tools rather than partners. A client I will call Tom was a sales director who consistently hit his numbers and consistently lost his top performers. The exit interviews always pointed to the same theme; he was inspiring to be around but exhausting to work for. Nothing was ever quite good enough and they can always accomplish more. Tom’s first instinct when I shared this was to defend his high-quality work and standards. His second, once he got quiet, was to admit he had no idea how to celebrate a win before moving to the next one. His Controller Ego had convinced him that satisfaction was the enemy of improvement. What it was actually doing was burning out the very people he needed most.
Here is what all three of these leaders had in common. They were not trying to create these problems. Their Egos were running the show unconsciously, and nobody brought these liabilities to their awareness without triggering their Ego. Once they heard the feedback in a productive way, they were able to look in the mirror and truly find the value in the feedback.
This is where Ego Management begins. Not with fixing yourself, but with seeing yourself clearly and taking ownership of your unintended impact.
Once you choose to acknowledge the perception of your impact and start owning this truth you can get curious. What is my part in this? Not what went wrong, not who dropped the ball, but where did I contribute to this outcome? It is a question the Ego prevents you from asking yourself. It doesn’t want you to know the truth. It wants you to stay stuck, disappointed, unsatisfied, and in the drama of life and relationships. Diane started asking it before every difficult meeting. Marcus started asking it when a relationship felt distant. Tom started asking it every time someone on his team went quiet.
The Ego never fully goes away. It grows with you and gets smarter as you learn about it. The goal is not to eliminate it but to recognize it early enough to choose differently. One percent better today. And then again tomorrow.
That is how leaders stop letting their Ego show and start letting their best self lead.
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Our reader poll today asks: When you have an underperforming employee who you know you need to move on from, which dynamic best explains how you handle the situation?
I act quickly and decisively (sometimes a little too quickly, perhaps) – 7%
I act after careful deliberation, but I don’t wait to take action – 43%
I hold out hope and keep them for longer than I should but then I act – 36%
I delay way too long on taking action until it’s clear I’m acting too late – 8%
I never take action and simply ignore the performance issue – 6%
The cost of inaction. More than half of respondents say they’re too slow to act when taking required action with an underperforming employee who needs to move on. While it can be hard to fire, demote, or move someone to a different role, the cost of that delayed action can be significant. They’ll continue to underperform in their role, be dissatisfied with their work, drag down and frustrate their colleagues, and cost you more time trying to manage them. It’s best for everyone involved to move quickly once it’s certain the person won’t be successful in their role. That lets you move someone into the role who will perform better and helps the underperformer move on to a different role where they can hopefully be more successful. All delays come with a cost. It may feel easier to avoid the situation but you’re simply creating new problems by not taking decisive action.
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Stopping and considering decisions before you make them is only the start to critical thinking.
Let’s look at the importance of critical thinking. So many times when people ask us, “Can you go solve this problem,” we rush off and start solving it without stopping to think before we do.
We’re facing new demands that require extensive amounts of information before we can make a decision. There are multiple departments involved in all of your problem-solving efforts, and each department is contributing its own input. As part of your problem-solving process, there are going to be multiple stakeholders involved. This increases the complexity of trying to get to an answer.
When you do ultimately come up with a recommendation, those big decisions will involve numerous trade-offs. Not everyone is going to be happy with what you recommend. There are going to be long lag times in acquiring the required data to make your decision, and when you finally do make the call, there’s going to be high scrutiny over whether you were right or wrong. And a bad call can have both business as well as personal and professional implications. Add to this unforeseen bottlenecks in getting the process done of getting to that answer, multiply it by the number of problems you’re trying to solve every single day, and then divide by the limited amount of time you have to get to an answer.
The importance of stopping and thinking critically before you rush off and undertake all these very comprehensive efforts is very high. That critical thinking process is what’s going to differentiate you and the solutions you develop versus rushing off without any thought at all.
Distinguish causes vs. consequences
As you begin your critical thinking efforts, I’d like you to think about causes and consequences. One of the biggest challenges we’re going to face with any problem solving is that desire to rush off and get to an answer quickly because we feel like we’re being responsive to our stakeholders when we do. But think about it.
Have you ever solved a symptom only to find out there are other symptoms that arise after you solve it? Have you ever put in place a recommendation only to find out you created new problems down the road? When you’re going through this critical thinking process, first, consider causes.
Look at the symptom that is problematic. Then figure out the real reason it’s happening. And come at that possible symptom from multiple perspectives. Once you generate a recommendation, stop and think critically. What new problems can you create if you implement this recommendation? What are the new symptoms that will be caused? Think that through before you implement your recommendation.
Let me offer an example. I know a client situation where the organization was going to roll out a brand-new website that would be facing their customers. The problem was they continued to miss deadlines for rolling the website out and going live. Now let’s look at causes and consequences. What was the cause of the website not rolling out? Well, the code wasn’t ready. Yeah, but that’s a symptom. That’s a symptom of a problem. Why wasn’t the code ready? Well, the specifications weren’t done. Okay. Well, that’s also a symptom. Why weren’t the specs done? Well, because they didn’t agree on the features and functionality of the new website. But let’s not stop there. Why was that symptom happening? Well, they weren’t given clarity by leadership around one aspect that was a major strategic decision in terms of how they would roll the website out. That was the cause of all these issues and why the rollout wasn’t happening.
Now let’s think this through. Once that strategic decision is made, what are the consequences of it? So leadership finally decided to make the website a closed network. Therefore, new customers would have to call in to register instead of registering on a website. Let’s look at the consequences of that decision and the new problems that can emerge. New customers are now going to have to call a call center associate. That’s then going to flood the call center with incremental calls. The consequence of that is the staff in the call center is going to be over-worked. And then the consequence of that is current customers are going to experience service issues. They won’t get their calls answered as quickly. And then the consequence of that is we might lose current customers.
By stopping and thinking about causes first and then consequences, once you do make a recommendation, you’re going to identify the true problem that you need to solve and, hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid causing future problems. When you go out to solve a problem, think backwards about the causes and think forward about the consequences.
As you go to apply these notions to your critical thinking processes, I’d like you to think about a problem you’re working on. Look at the causes. Spend some time thinking about what’s really causing this issue. Continue to work backward until it’s clear you’re solving a problem and not a symptom. Then, once you’ve generated a recommendation, think through the consequences. What are the new problems that could emerge if you implement your recommendation? Think about a problem that you made a recommendation on where it didn’t go so well. Which of these two did you miss? Did you miss the real root cause? Did you miss possible consequences of your recommendation?
By spending this extra time thinking about these aspects and putting in the critical thought, there’s a much higher likelihood that whatever recommendation you come up with is going to solve the true problem and you’re going to account for some of the possible consequences down the road.
Want to learn more about critical thinking? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning about critical thinking. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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A leadership story about scaling operations, and demonstrating how clear decision boundaries, accountability, and culture helps teams to adapt without losing trust.
Today’s post is by Dan Leiva, author of AMPLIFIED: The Operator’s Playbook for Scaling Human Potential in an AI World.
The alert came in just after 2:17am. This alert did not signal that there was a system outage, it showed something worse. Everything was working exactly as it was designed to. But that was the problem.
A product rollout of global scale had just gone live, and the systems had been optimized and automated – ready to go! They were fast. Faster in fact, than anything the company had deployed before.
However, it only took a few minutes for the customer complaints to start coming in. The complaints were not about bugs or failure. Instead, they were about the decisions that the system was making on their behalf.
Inconsistent discounts had been applied, and service prioritization felt arbitrary, especially when long-standing customers were suddenly being treated as if they were new ones.
When sunrise finally came, the executive team was looking for an answer to a simple question: Who owned the decision? They were met with silence.
The fact is that the engineers had worked hard to build what was asked of them, while the data team had ensured that models had been trained properly. In addition to this, the operations team had signed off on the workflows, but still nobody could clearly identify where human responsibility ended and system autonomy began.
These moments reinforce an important leadership lesson when it comes to scaling large-scale operations: efficiency is great – but without accountability, it is not progress. It is risk.
In essence, when organizations start to grow, there is a natural instinct to optimize, reduce problems, increase speed, and automate decisions.
While these steps are essential, scaling often fails to account for a critical reality: every system functions as a decision-making engine. Without clear governance, scaling simply amplifies ambiguity.
In fact, ambiguity does not happen when things are working. It happens then they aren’t, and unfortunately by then it is already too late.
This brings about an important and immediate lesson: before you scale a system, you must define its decision boundaries.
You can do this by asking three questions:
What decisions is this system allowed to make?
What decisions must remain human?
Who is accountable when outcomes don’t meet expectations?
Most organizations can answer the first question easily; however, they may take more time to answer the second question. The third? Few can answer clearly.
The early morning call had confirmed that it was not a technology failure, but a gap in leadership design. In fact, the system had been executing perfectly, even when conditions changed, and while it had been built for efficiency, it had not been built for adaptability.
This is where lesson number two comes in: resilient systems are not the ones that are faster. They are the ones that can adapt when under pressure.
Better code does not promote adaptability, instead it depends on how people interact with the system.
Can someone pause it? Can it be overridden? Can it be questioned without causing problems? If the answer is no, then what you’ve built is no longer a system, it is a constraint.
As the day continued, the team started to make an important change, and decided not to start by rewriting the technology, but instead by redefining its ownership.
This was done by assigning proper accountability for decision-making layers, and creating paths of escalation, where humans can step in quickly. Perhaps, more importantly, they made clear and visible intervention points within the organization.
The result was a system that didn’t slow down. Instead, the organization gained confidence in how they used it.
This leads to the third lesson: culture and governance are as important as technology itself.
Without a clear understanding of when to trust a system versus when to challenge it, even the most sophisticated infrastructure remains dangerously fragile.
People either disengage and think “the system knows best,” or they often overcorrect “we can’t trust this at all.” Unfortunately, neither is sustainable.
Strong leadership encourages teams to stay engaged with the system and not become subordinate to it. This creates a middle ground.
In other words, organizations need to build habits, and not just tools. In addition to this, it is crucial that automated decisions are regularly reviewed, so that there is space for feedback from frontline teams. It is ultimately about rewarding people not just for being efficient, but for practicing sound judgment.
The system was still in place at the end of the week, and while the automation did not disappear, it did start to operate differently. Boundaries were clearer. Oversight was stronger, and there was a renewed sense of ownership, as the technology had not changed nearly as much as the leadership approach had.
Now for the final takeaway. The future of scaling is not about replacing human decision making. It is about amplifying it.
An organization that gets this right won’t only move faster, they will move with intention, and understand when to trust their systems, and when to trust their people.
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Our reader poll today asks: Which of these two activities do you find to be more challenging?
Retaining great employees – 38%
Recruiting great employees – 62%
Is your role compelling? Two thirds of you report finding it harder to recruit than to retain great people. What are the challenges for recruiting? Is it a limited talent pool? Competitive options you have to beat out? Lack of a compelling role? Discomfort with the recruiting and interviewing process? Whatever is holding you back, put focused time into solving that problem. If it’s the talent pool, figure out where else you can fish to find “non-traditional” candidates. If it’s competitive options, focus your pitch on areas where your role is different (e.g., advancement, mobility, stability, professional development). If you’re not comfortable with interviewing, find a mentor who can help you improve. New employees are what keep you growing and improving. They bring new skills, new perspectives, and new energy to your organization. Don’t be satisfied with simply saying “it’s hard to find great people.” Go do something about it!
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