Essential Readings :

Context

When crisis strikes, our instinct is to search for heroic leadership, that singular figure who will emerge with “the right answers” and unwavering direction. Yet in complex, rapidly changing environments, this reflex often drives us down the wrong path, and we end up overlooking our greatest resource: collective wisdom and leadership that are distributed throughout our organizations.

My keynote "The Leader We Needed Was Us" challenges the traditional hero-centric leadership model by revealing how embracing collective leadership enables organizations to maintain both speed and coherence in even the most challenging circumstances. Drawing from my experience leading high-stakes pandemic response initiatives, I share frameworks for cultivating distributed leadership capabilities that serve daily operations, succession planning, and crisis response.

For those interested in exploring this paradigm shift further, here’s a curated selection of my underlying thought leadership, to help you deepen your understanding of how organizations can leverage collective wisdom to consistently deliver in complex, dynamic environments.

Content

Let's explore six pieces that further illuminate this perspective.

🔗Stable Leadership in Unstable Times (Part 1)

Originally published in Forbes, co-authored with Karl Moore

This piece examines the fundamental paradox of leading through turbulence: stability becomes possible by letting go of control. By distinguishing between operational consistency and strategic flexibility, it challenges traditional command-and-control approaches that falter in volatile environments. The article demonstrates how effective leaders create anchoring frameworks that enable distributed decision-making while maintaining coherence—directly supporting the keynote's emphasis on coordinated autonomy rather than centralized authority.

Let's explore six pieces that further illuminate this perspective.

🔗Stable Leadership in Unstable Times (Part 2)

Originally published in Forbes, co-authored with Karl Moore

Building on the stability paradox explored in the first instalment, this follow-up piece delves into practical techniques for cultivating organizational resilience through collective leadership. It explores how leadership teams can create psychological safety for distributed initiative-taking while maintaining strategic alignment. Through case examples, it illustrates how organizations that distribute leadership responsibility navigate complexity more effectively than those relying on single points of “heroic” leadership. This connects directly to the keynote's focus on finding collective focus amidst chaos through structured organizational energy.

When it comes to talent, companies are usually better off with the internal candidate they know

Forthcoming in the Globe & Mail, co-authored with David Knechtel

In this article, David and I examine the all-too-common tendency of organizations to look outside rather than within for leadership talent, despite compelling evidence that internal candidates typically outperform external hires. By analyzing both organizational research and case studies, we reveal how external hires command higher compensation yet demonstrate poorer performance, while being significantly more likely to leave. The piece challenges common narratives that discount internal candidates as "not ready" or "not strategic enough," demonstrating instead how internal promotions bring deeper organizational knowledge, stronger relationships, and improved team engagement. This connects directly to the keynote's emphasis on recognizing and activating leadership potential that already exists within organizations rather than searching for external saviours.

🔗When TO Do Strategy

Originally published on Linkedin

While most strategic discussions focus on content and process, this piece examines the critical timing of collective strategic reflection. It argues that organizations miss crucial inflection points when strategy remains the exclusive domain of senior leadership rather than an ongoing, distributed practice. By identifying five triggers that signal the need for participative strategic recalibration, it provides practical guidance for recognizing when collective wisdom should be activated. This supports the keynote's framework for building shared understanding across organizational levels.

🔗That Feeling of Crisis: Rachel Kiddell-Monroe

Originally appeared on The Decision Lab podcast

This conversation with Rachel Kiddell-Monroe of Médecins Sans Frontières explores how humanitarian organizations maintain effectiveness in extreme circumstances. Rachel shares powerful insights about Médecins Sans Frontières' approach to distributed leadership in crisis zones, where central command is impossible but coherent action remains essential. The discussion reveals how clear shared purpose enables coordinated autonomy even when formal leadership is distant—directly supporting the keynote's exploration of acting as one without micromanaging.

🔗Creating Great Choices with Roger Martin

Originally appeared on The Decision Lab podcast

This interview with strategy thought leader & elite practitioner Roger Martin explores how integrative thinking helps us get past false dichotomies like centralized vs. decentralized leadership. Roger's perspective on engaging multiple models simultaneously provides a valuable lens for understanding how organizations can maintain both coherence and autonomy. His insights on developing leadership capacity throughout organizations reinforce the keynote's message about cultivating diverse leadership capabilities that complement rather than compete with each other.

Coherence: How It All Comes Together

Looking across these diverse explorations, a consistent thread emerges.

These pieces illuminate different facets of collective leadership. They demonstrate that organizational resilience emerges not from heroic individual performance, but from distributed capability activated through shared understanding. Whether examining stability paradoxes, strategic timing, crisis response, or integrative thinking, these explorations share a common thread: when we stop waiting for the perfect leader to emerge and instead cultivate leadership at all levels, our collective capacity expands exponentially.

Connection: Personal Growth

My advocacy for this approach isn't merely theoretical. It's deeply personal.

My understanding of collective leadership—my own best ways of supporting the team and our mission, my strengths, and my own barriers that I needed to overcome—really took off during my work in pandemic response in the early weeks (and then months) of Covid. It’s what enabled me to achieve what I did, and fundamentally shifted the direction of my career. Years later, it continues to be a prime example of me at my best, as well as a guide for what I need to work on the most. My experiences since then have only strengthened my belief that the most effective and resilient organizations are ones where nobody waits for “The Man with the Plan” to show up, but instead where everybody just shows up to lead as they can, warts and all.

Carrying Insight Into Action: Next Steps

Is your organization struggling with any of these challenges:

• Different parts of the organization drifting in different directions
• Low levels of accountability / ownership
• Decision-making that’s not keeping up with the increasing pace of change

If so, this talk can help you take some immediate steps to get change underway or contribute momentum to ongoing initiatives. Contact me to discuss how I can help.

Looking for an even bigger boost? Consider the Extended Session option, which pairs this keynote with an interactive workshop component, offered to help your team co-design more customized solutions and build shared commitment, for an immediate boost to collective leadership.

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