Five Things: October 23, 2026

Check out As in guillotine... for more. NOTE: It’s been a hectic few weeks with the new gig, and I attended my first industry conference in Philly earlier this week, so this is a bit more random collection of things than usual. Each one’s worth a click, though, so get to reading! _ONE Before Rolling Out a New Strategy, Assess Your Team’s Readiness | Steven Morris Skill gaps are not personal failures; they’re structural realities. And when they go unexamined, they produce an execution struggle that’s easy to misread. Throughout my career, I’ve inherited more direct reports and entire teams than I’ve gotten to hire from scratch, which meant I had to develop a process to objectively evaluate strengths and weaknesses before making any strategic decisions that would affect them. That evaluation process always includes the systems that support their work because, as Morris correctly notes, sometimes the people doing the work aren’t the problem. I like his “Readiness Triad” (Appetite,…