Culture

As a leader, you likely have no hesitation investing heavily in your technical infrastructure: servers, software, cloud platforms, AI tools. But are you fully maximizing their value? After 30 years on the people side of business, I have learned that technical infrastructure is only as strong as the human infrastructure™ supporting it.

Hybrid work is often framed as a debate about location. Office or remote? Three days in or two?Core hours or full flexibility? Yet leaders focused on operational excellence know the real issue isn’t geography. It’s design.

Leaders often ask: “Why is this initiative stalling?” “Why are we working so hard, yet progress feels slow?” “Why does the energy in the room feel… off?” These are important questions. But behind them is a deeper one: Where is the Human Infrastructure out of alignment? Alignment is What Activates Performance Every organization has People, Culture, and Systems. “What determines impact is how these three elements function together.” Think of them as the three sides of a triangle: 

For the past 25 years, I have noticed the issues of attracting, engaging, and retaining talented people remain unchanged. This has led me to wonder why traditional approaches to human resources continue to have limited success despite the best efforts of talented HR professionals.  Gallup consistently reports in their annual report that employee engagement continues to hover between 30% and 35%. Clearly, an innovative approach is needed to break the cycle of limited success. 

As 2025 nears its close, many leaders and organizations aren’t just feeling fear—they’re feeling fear fatigue. It’s the quiet exhaustion that builds when: Uncertainty becomes constant Strategic decisions stack up Culture feels stretched Leaders are carrying more than they can name Fear fatigue doesn’t look dramatic. It looks familiar: hesitation, blurred focus, emotional flatness, and systems that react instead of respond.

The challenges that face us today require a different form of leadership. One that is more adaptable to the changing environment and circumstances. When leaders engage in this form of leadership, they will find that they can achieve their results in less time and sustain the efforts for longer. This concept comes from the research of Ronald Heifetz on adaptive leadership.

Why do some OpEx programs implode, collapse, lose steam, or head off in unintended directions with unpredictable consequences? And why does this happen despite the best, herculean efforts of the OpEx professional to keep the organization marching in the right direction? We can point the finger to a key ingredient in the OpEx mix: when an organization’s PEOPLE and CULTURE are not aligned with the organization’s strategy, direction, and pursuits, then success, if achieved, will occur purely by CHANCE. And that approach is simply not good enough.

Our ability to change with intention requires well-informed awareness. This applies to change ranging from personal to organizational to societal. Intentionality requires us to pause, scan and be aware of the ecosystem surrounding us as individuals and collectives. The PESTLE Analysis tool is one of my favorites to leverage for a well-rounded pause and resulting analysis. It helps elevate the daily boots-on-the-ground experience to a more macro-level view of our current and emerging circumstances.

Change is hard…super hard. We often don’t talk about how likely it is that our change initiative will fail because we don’t want to jinx it. However, studies have put organizational change failure rates at over fifty percent. Just think about that…we’re more likely to fail than succeed. We have to break this failure cycle!