OGF Essays
Relational Spaces
Short essays drawn from the OGF research on strategy, execution, culture, and the connections among them.
The essays draw on qualitative findings and propositions from a developing framework. Phase 2 will examine the OGF quantitatively, so the ideas presented here are not settled causal claims.
The Series
Twelve essays on organizational gaps.
Each essay explains one part of the framework and ends with questions for leadership teams.
What If Nothing Is Wrong With Your Strategy Execution or Culture
Why misalignment often lives in the relationships between otherwise credible organizational domains.
Read the essay → 03When Strategic Intent Fails to Become Organizational Action
What can be lost as strategic intent moves into day-to-day organizational action.
Read the essay → 04What Your Operating System Teaches People to Value
How systems for managing work can contradict the culture an organization claims to hold.
Read the essay → 05When Strategy Conflicts With Who the Organization Believes It Is
Why new strategic direction may collide with organizational identity and inherited assumptions.
Read the essay → 06Strategy Execution Alignment Runs in Two Directions
Why strategy–execution alignment requires both translation and credible operational feedback.
Read the essay → 07Execution and Culture Are Constantly Rewriting Each Other
How formal systems and informal norms may continually reshape one another.
Read the essay → 08The Two Way Relationship Between Strategy and Culture
How leaders connect strategy to identity, and how culture affects which strategies seem credible.
Read the essay → 09Why Bad News Weakens as It Travels Upward
How reasonable choices at each layer can produce a version of reality that feels coherent at the top.
Read the essay → 10When Visible Agreement Hides Behavioral Divergence
Why the signals leaders interpret as alignment may reflect compliance rather than commitment.
Read the essay → 11Why the Visible Problem May Not Be the Root Problem
Why the most visible organizational problem may not be the relationship where the trouble began.
Read the essay → 12What to Ask Before Launching Another Organizational Intervention
A practical way to examine the relationship before responding to the visible symptom.
Read the essay →