“Enhancing vocabulary, not conduct” is such a precise critique.
If leaders pay a price for transparency, vulnerability, or trade-off clarity, no framework will override that. Development has to intersect with real consequences.
This is precise and useful. The Hackman reframe — behavior as rational response to system design — is the right move away from personality diagnosis.
Where I'd push further: the enabling conditions are themselves a product of something deeper. Organisations develop their own implicit belief systems, encoded in structure, incentive, and what gets tolerated. Most people inside them don't know this exists.
Leadership can declare new intent sincerely. But if the implicit belief system hasn't changed, employees read both signals and trust the one with the track record. The gap between declared belief and embedded belief is where most transformation dies — and it's largely invisible to the people with the most power to close it.
The following quote, "Where I'd push further: the enabling conditions are themselves a product of something deeper. Organisations develop their own implicit belief systems, encoded in structure, incentive, and what gets tolerated. Most people inside them don't know this exists.", reminds me of Toyota. I remember how Toyota allowed its competitors to walk the production floor without any chaperones. Why? Because they were confident observers could not grasp or comprehend the enabling conditions that allowed them to produce vehicles the Toyota way.
“Enhancing vocabulary, not conduct” is such a precise critique.
If leaders pay a price for transparency, vulnerability, or trade-off clarity, no framework will override that. Development has to intersect with real consequences.
…Otherwise it’s cosmetic at best.
This is precise and useful. The Hackman reframe — behavior as rational response to system design — is the right move away from personality diagnosis.
Where I'd push further: the enabling conditions are themselves a product of something deeper. Organisations develop their own implicit belief systems, encoded in structure, incentive, and what gets tolerated. Most people inside them don't know this exists.
Leadership can declare new intent sincerely. But if the implicit belief system hasn't changed, employees read both signals and trust the one with the track record. The gap between declared belief and embedded belief is where most transformation dies — and it's largely invisible to the people with the most power to close it.
The following quote, "Where I'd push further: the enabling conditions are themselves a product of something deeper. Organisations develop their own implicit belief systems, encoded in structure, incentive, and what gets tolerated. Most people inside them don't know this exists.", reminds me of Toyota. I remember how Toyota allowed its competitors to walk the production floor without any chaperones. Why? Because they were confident observers could not grasp or comprehend the enabling conditions that allowed them to produce vehicles the Toyota way.
Though they were so confident in their organisation, they happily taught their way to anyone that wanted to learn...
I ended up expanding my comment here...
https://abitofidletime.substack.com/p/do-our-organisations-have-beliefs
Love this- and it is so true. Until you can understand what you need to change, you can't change.