Charles Blain

Mindset

Invisible Norms

Groups don't see their own norms. Fish don't notice water. Teams don't feel their culture. Organizations can't spot their assumptions. We only see our patterns when we step outside them. The question isn't "What are we missing?" It&

Leadership

Our People Know What to Do

Watch what happens when a manager steps away. The team doesn't collapse. They don't stop. They start talking to each other. Start solving problems. Start building something better. Our people always knew what to do. We just had to let them be.

Strategy

Strategy Lives

Strategies don't fail because they're wrong. They fail because we treat them like monuments instead of gardens. We carve them in stone, present them in decks, print them in manuals. Perfect plans waiting for a perfect world. But look at how real progress happens: Small shifts

MEASUREMENT TRAPS

We Measure Our Mysteries

We Measure Our Mysteries Watch what a company measures. Not for the numbers. But for the questions that keep their leaders awake at night. When Superhuman obsesses over NPS instead of feature velocity, they're asking a deeper question: "How do we transform email from obligation to joy?

Mindset

When Roles Dissolve

This morning, in another client call, I notice something. Some meetings feel like coffee with an old friend. Others like stepping into a ring. Until now, I thought this was about personalities or stakes or pressure. But watching this client ask about project timelines, I see it differently. The meetings

Innovation

The Human Layer

I'm sitting down drafting an invitation letter to a few team members to join me on a journey that I don't even know if they'll survive. I'm not sure if I'll survive. The cursor blinks. Each word feels like a

MEASUREMENT TRAPS

Between Metrics and Meaning

In a bullpen filled with SEO specialists and CRO experts, someone drops a question that halts every keyboard. "Is love a feeling or a decision?" The irony sits heavy. Here we are. Professionals who optimize for human choice all day. Who measure emotional response against rational action. Suddenly

Mindset

When We Become They

Individual clarity dissolves into collective maybe. Not because we care less. But because we think more about what others might do. And thinking about others potential actions becomes waiting for others. Until the possibility freezes.

Leadership

The Handoff Moment

In the conference room this morning, I watched faces tighten as we discussed a client relationship at risk. The instinct was immediate — add more processes, create more checkpoints, layer on more reviews. But something wasn't quite right about that response. What if the answer wasn't more

Mindset

The Wrong Kind of Right

I'm watching her face tighten as we scroll through the campaign data. The conference room feels smaller with each passing minute. We've found the issue — basic data reading mistakes, budget allocations that worked against her goals. A fixable puzzle, really. But she's not looking

IDENTITY PHYSICS

Your Tribe is the Strategy

The spreadsheet showed everything that should have mattered in my daughter's college choice: rankings, financials, programs, outcomes. But she was lost in Instagram, studying something else entirely. While I spoke the language of metrics and ROI, she was decoding the subtle signals of tribal belonging. The way students

Innovation

The Assembly Line Lesson

Henry Ford watched his skilled workers repeatedly walk back and forth, gathering parts for assembly. Everyone said faster workers were the key to better production. But Ford saw something different. The best worker in the world can't outperform a poor parts delivery system. The workers weren't

MEASUREMENT TRAPS

Data Casts Shadows

Your team just added six new metrics to the weekly dashboard. Someone spent three days building it. Now you can track everything. And that's the problem. The data that was supposed to illuminate your path is now casting shadows. Each new metric adds noise, not clarity. Each additional

Leadership

The Table in the Room

In a famous scene from Men in Black, military candidates squeeze into tiny classroom chairs, struggling with oversized test papers. All except one: a candidate who simply drags a conference table across the room to create a proper writing surface. This moment captures a fundamental truth about modern business: we&

Innovation

The Standards We Choose

You've heard it in boardrooms, delivered with that knowing half-smile: "The secret is to set low expectations. That way, you'll never disappoint anyone." It sounds like wisdom. Like protecting yourself. Like being strategic. But there's something we're missing. Consider Icarus

Mission Beats Permission

Yesterday, our dashboard redesign meeting crashed to a halt with seven words: "What if they don't like our choices?" The room shifted. Suddenly, we weren't discussing how to tell the clearest data story or create the most useful tool. Instead, we were anticipating reactions,

Marketing

Build Worlds, Not Logos

Standing in line at Epcot's Ratatouille ride, I heard the staff chatting in rapid French. Not classroom French — the real, living language of Paris streets. When I asked them about it, they explained: Disney only hires native speakers from each country represented at Epcot. This isn't

Strategy

Clarity Is Not An Event

Picture this: An eager CEO stands before her team, delivering what she believes is the perfect announcement. Her slides sparkle. Her logic flows. Every head nods in agreement — those automatic, noncommittal nods that every leader has learned to fear. Three months later, she's pulling her hair out: "

Marketing

Trust Speaks Human

It happens every time. In the fluorescent-lit shops and bustling restaurants of New York's Chinatown, Xiaomanyc's videos capture lightning in a bottle — that electric spark when two strangers truly connect. At first, we witness the familiar dance: a shop owner or restaurant worker barely looks up,

Innovation

The Engineering Trap

The sleek screens at Moscone Center glowed with promise. Every feature Facebook had - and more. Elegant privacy controls. Seamless sharing. Deep integration with Gmail's massive user base. Google+ wasn't just launching a social network; they were engineering a better one. The numbers seemed destiny-defining: 10

AI

The Dance with AI

A year ago, I was an AI prompt engineer. Today, I'm an AI conversation partner. That simple shift transformed everything about how I interact with artificial intelligence. In those early days, my screen was plastered with precision tools: prompt templates for ChatGPT, token optimization guides for GPT-4, instruction

Leadership

The Uncomfortable Advantage

Most of us run from tension. We see it in the room - that moment when someone questions if we're really serving the client - and we deflect. We add complexity. We call another meeting. We're missing the point. Here's what happened in our

Marketing

Your B2B Marketing Research Is Backwards

Most companies interview prospects to improve marketing, but your richest insights hide in casual conversations with existing clients. Here's how almost everyone approaches B2B research: * Schedule formal interviews * Prepare detailed questions about product features and ROI * Seek validation of marketing messages It's completely backwards because it

Analytics

The Hidden Fear That's Killing Your Marketing Results

Everyone talks about FOMO - that restless fear of missing out. But in marketing departments worldwide, there's a far more expensive fear at work: FOFO - the Fear of Finding Out. It's the reason your most important questions never get answered. You've seen it

Leadership

The Hidden Pattern in 'I Don't Have Time'

Every time we say "I don't have time," we're telling ourselves a story. It's a story that makes perfect sense in the moment, but reveals something fascinating about how we think about time itself. There's a universal pattern in how