Leadership and the art of plate spinning

What are your company’s ten most exciting valuecreation opportunities?
Who are your ten best people?
How many of your ten best people are working on your ten most exciting opportunities?

It’s a rough and ready exercise, to be sure. But the answer to the last question—typically, no more than six—is usually expressed with ill-disguised frustration that demonstrates how difficult it is for senior executives
to achieve organizational alignment.


3 paradoxes that are both particularly striking and quite difficult to reconcile.

1) Change comes about more easily and more quickly in organizations that keep some things stable
2) Organizations are more likely to succeed if they simultaneously control and empower their employees.
3) Business cultures that rightly encourage consistency (say, in the quality of services and products) must
also allow for the sort of variability—and even failure—that goes with innovation and experimentation.

(via McKinsey Quarterly)