Management

Training The Corporate Nervous System

February 11, 2026 By Cameron Leave a Comment

While an organization is not a living organism, it is a useful construct to look at the organization as if it were an actual, single individual. Leveraging this perspective, one can better assess the true capabilities and limitations of the organization as a whole. It provides more clarity and prevents confusion between the individual expertise of team members and the capability of the organization overall.

Assessing the organization as a single entity provides different insights about overall patterns, strengths, and weaknesses. It can also more readily uncover blind spots or a lack of real capability in important areas. Organizations go through life cycle development just like humans. There are different stages in the life of an organization, and the organization’s skills, needs, and behaviors change with the lifecycle. An adolescent company, growing like a gazelle, will be different than a seasoned business that has made it through 50 years of business ups and downs. Organizations, like people, change over time.

What is most impactful is the capability of the company as a whole, without over-reliance on individual superstars. It is best when sustainable competitive advantage is baked into the company’s DNA. This can include things such as innovation, BD/growth, manufacturing excellence, or consistently meeting project deadlines.

A common mistake is confusing an individual’s capabilities with the organization’s capabilities. They are fundamentally different. You might have a couple of superstars who do great work and have a strong impact on results. However, if they were to leave, the organization’s performance would be affected significantly.

You might have people who are creative and can adapt to change easily. That does not mean your organization can do the same. Clarity on the true capability of your organization requires a distinction between individual expertise and organizational expertise. Leaders tend to confuse their own personal capability with the capability of the company overall.

When the focus is on the capability of the entire entity, the creation of enterprise value is more effective. This approach to enterprise value relies on the development and enculturation of methodologies. A methodology is quite different from a process. A methodology is a principle-based approach to doing the work, is constantly updated, and focuses on creating value and impact. When methodologies are implemented in this fashion, a more unique and sustainable competitive advantage emerges that also enables smoother scaling with fewer disruptions.

Development and improvement of core methodologies should be baked into the regular operational rhythm of the business. It is not a training course. Rather, the people who execute the work (with the help of training professionals) need to develop the methods, practice the skills consistently, and update the methods on a regular basis.

The documented methodology is the “way you actually do the work.” The documented methodology is the “ground truth,” and everything else is just a conversation. The method does not change until the actual methodology document is changed. Those changes are made in a systematic, group-based approach grounded in finding a better way to do the work.

In this way, the actual corporate nervous system is trained. The goal is to actually do the work the way you say you do it because it is a better approach. Training the corporate nervous system in a way that focuses on systemic improvement in performance builds sustainable, company-wide capability.

Just like any life skill or physical skill, you cannot cheat the process of consistent training. Set aside regular time to go through the methodologies in detail with the teams who actually use them. They will resist, and they will say, “We already know how to do this.” Do it anyway. This is the equivalent of “doing scales” for a piano player. Consistently drilling the fundamentals will drive performance improvement. Like any organized physical training program, there is a schedule, an approach, and a goal to improve performance.

When you begin to view your organization through a more comprehensive lens, clarity emerges about where to focus efforts to build competitive advantage. Approaching organizational strategy and growth in this fashion allows you to more consistently train the corporate nervous system, year after year. Do this consistently, and it is unlikely your competitors will ever catch up.

In Defense of Millennials

May 28, 2017 By Cameron

I am a big fan of Simon Sinek. However, I recently saw his video about Millennials and I think he got it wrong. In a nutshell, his message was Millennials got dealt a bad hand because of the following:

Failed parenting strategies that didn’t teach them to be self-reliant.
Too much technology that got them addicted and prevented them from building deep interpersonal connections.
Impatience that prevents them from doing “deliberate practice” and building real seasoning required for mastery.
Corporate environments that don’t foster collaboration and working together.

His observations about Millennials hold some truth, but I believed he missed the real issue: If Millennials got dealt a bad hand, who was dealing the cards?

The current leadership generation that is in power dealt the cards, and it’s their belief systems and choices that created these problems for Millennials. In the video, there was a strong tone of “this is what is wrong with you” and it felt like the typical generational judgment of “can you believe kids today?” The problem with this judgment is it immediately sets up a conflict between the generations. With this approach, one side becomes better than the other, no one will tell the truth, and now everyone is into unconscious protection by making the “other side” wrong. It becomes an “us vs. them” scenario.

Part of the inherent problem is that the current leadership generation raised Millennials and the majority are parents of Millennials. If the current leadership generation doesn’t like the way they raised Millennials, it seems unlikely that they will find an effective way to lead them unless they take a more collaborative approach. The current leadership generation’s values – what they did and did not emphasize, where they put their attention and where they didn’t – all impacted the growth and development of Millennials.

If the view is that Millennials have all these things wrong with them, then the current leadership generation must fix it because there is nothing wrong with Millennials. They have grown up in a world moving at light speed. They are bombarded constantly with everyone overscheduling them by giving them a non-stop litany of lessons, groups, and experiences. And then when they grow older we say they have an issue sitting still and focusing. Hmmm. While the current leadership generation created the acceleration of technology, it didn’t grow up in it. Millennials are the first generation to grow up immersed in a technological society.

The first step for both generations is to recognize that they each have strengths and weaknesses. This is OK. The idea in generational transition is to recognize and honor each other, and craft an effective way to leverage each generation’s strengths and minimize their weaknesses.

Millennials have the challenges discussed above. They are also great at collaboration, understand technology like no other generation, and are focused on making a bigger impact in the world.

The current leadership generation has their own challenges. They are not very good at collaboration, probably still go to the manual to figure out technology, limit themselves by old hierarchical rules, and typically can’t handle the information overload anywhere near as well as Millennials. They are also resilient, focused, and determined; and have tons of practical experience about how to get organizations to accomplish things in terms of what works and what doesn’t. They are seasoned.

The goal is to take away the conflict and keep people out of their defense mechanisms so that both generations can recognize the other generation’s strengths and acknowledge their own challenges. Luckily, business already created a structure to address this – the cross-functional team.

Organizations can create a cross-functional team with key existing leaders from the current leadership generation and the emerging leaders from the Millennial generation. Simply put them together to solve the challenge. However, this approach requires both sides to let go of “being right” and focus on what might actually work. Some call this approach innovation. When both must work together to come up with workable solutions, both generations need to have their voices in the room where they can safely speak their truth and challenge their own assumptions about the world.

There is no way around it. Each generation has its own view of the world. A set of beliefs that both define them and limit them. No one has a pure, accurate, clear objective view of how everything works. Therefore, the inner work is to challenge what you think to be true and assess that view as honestly as possible. Only by working together can the generational transition happen in a meaningful and powerful way. Most generations fail to pass on their wisdom to the next generation and few have tried to do it in a systematic way.

The fact that so many generations are simultaneously working together today provides an enormous opportunity to find a unique and creative solution to the challenge of meaningful and effective generational transition.

The Spirit of Acknowledgment

July 20, 2016 By Cameron

We have all heard the distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The letter of the law in an interpretation at a technical level; one that is accurate but somewhat mechanical. The spirit of the law is governed by the original intent behind the creation of the law in the first place. We all intuitively understand that the spirit of the law is about an authentic desire to make something intrinsically better.

The spirit of the law has an authenticity that drives us toward an envisioned future state with the expectation that the future state will allow our part of the world to function much better than the current state. The letter of the law is just a means to an end, while the spirit of the law is a better way of being and operating.

This distinction applies to acknowledging the people who work for you – and this is a powerful distinction. Many management training courses will tell you that the techniques of acknowledgement narrowly consist of how to say something or how to phrase a letter or note. While useful techniques, they fall flat if they are only applied in a mechanical fashion. If a manager is only concerned with getting what they want, the experience can have a feeling of manipulation.

Many newly minted managers will learn the techniques of praise, feedback, and the various ways they can tell people “a job well done.” Developing these technique is important and will be mastered over time. But as you get more experience and integrate these techniques into your repertoire, you realize they are only delivery systems and not actual authentic appreciation. Employees can spot mere technique without genuine emotion very easily. To have real impact, you have to go deeper by truly expressing genuine appreciation. You can’t fake this feeling nor generate it from technique alone.

Genuine acknowledgement requires examining your real truth by looking within yourself and answering honestly, “Do I really appreciate the people who work for me,” and “Do their efforts, their sacrifices, no matter how large or small, really matter to me?” You can only generate real and authentic appreciation if the answer is an honest yes.

Many managers, often behind closed doors, will grumble things like, “They are getting paid to do their job” and “Nobody ever thanked me…and I still did the job well.” Often times those managers think that no one is appreciating them, so why should they appreciate others? They won’t say these things out loud, but they will think them.

There are various levels of meaning for the simplest of things. When a manager says “Good job!” usually the employee learns very quickly how to interpret that feedback:

Option 1: “Good job, you produced the result I wanted.”
Option 2: “Good job, you went above and beyond and I really appreciate it.”
Option 3: “Good job, you make a difference here and I really appreciate your impact on the team and the results you generate.”

If you can’t generate the feeling state of genuine appreciation, then there are two basic paths to explore. One, you need to do some inner work and clear your own obstacles. Two, you have the wrong people and you really are not getting the kind of performance you want. If you have the wrong team, you can get caught trying to provide positive feedback and not really meaning it.

Don’t confuse demonstrating appreciation with accepting mediocre performance. High standards and deep appreciation are NOT mutually exclusive. True depth of acknowledgment is much more powerful than most leaders realize. The individual before you, at whatever level, decided to work for your organization of their own free will. They probably put in a significant effort on the project, re-arranged personal commitments, worked long hours, worked weekends when their spouse had to cover their children (he or she has a job too). Yes – this is required to be successful in today’s competitive workplace.

All the more reason to acknowledge rather than ignore it because “we all have to do that.” When a leader has that deep appreciation and acknowledgment inside them, it can practically be felt in their presence. It is both as simple and as complex as “they really mean it…no ulterior motive; they just appreciate all I have done.” When a leader goes within themselves and holds a true decision to express the gratitude and appreciation for what their people do – their people will feel it at a gut, emotional level. We all need reminding that most communication is non-verbal. Research has begun to unveil the complexity of the human face and how we are genetically encoded to read the facial expressions and emotions that seem to be universal on the planet. Your employees can often discern what you really feel just by looking at the expression on your face.

So the inner work of the leader, particularly in the changing demographics coming in the workplace, is to learn to hold a clear, clean strong field of acknowledgement and appreciation. The ultimate goal is to recognize the depth of the individual and that they decided, of their own free will, to put in the effort and turn in a solid performance.

Your job as a leader is to fan that flame of individual, free will choice because there is nothing more powerful in organizational life. Encourage them to get better, be clear about where they have to improve, and honor the power of someone’s true internal commitment to turn in a good performance. Do this and next time you will see something even better.

The most powerful competitive advantage in any organization is the free will choice of its people. If those employees decide – because they choose to – to commit to your organization and what it is doing, it is likely to be one of the great companies of our time.