About
Thirty years, same question.
Why do capable people, who genuinely want to do well, keep behaving in ways that guarantee they will not?
I started this work in the nineties, and the thing I expected to change never did.
The industries changed. The technology changed beyond recognition. The language leaders use about themselves changed three or four times. What did not change is that most organizational problems are behavioral problems wearing a business costume — and that almost nobody can see their own behavior clearly without help.
So that is what I do. I sit in rooms with leadership teams and name what is actually happening. Sometimes that is welcome. Often it is not, at first. It is always more useful than another framework nobody uses on Monday.
Witz Education has run that work for three decades — more than fifty thousand leaders, over five hundred organizations, from Dell and American Express to teams advising the White House. Built in Canada, now opening into the United States.
For most of that time I deliberately stood behind the company. That was the right call for a long while and it is the wrong one now. The message travels further when a person carries it, so I am stepping out alongside the business rather than behind it. This site is that.
The premise
We are feeling creatures that think, not thinking creatures that feel. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist
Thirty years of this work starts from that sentence. It is why the bottleneck is almost never the strategy.
What I believe
Four things, held firmly.
- OneBehavior is the strategy. You can have the right plan and lose to how the leadership team treats each other while executing it.
- TwoAdult state is a skill, not a personality. Nobody is naturally calm under threat. STOP is how you get there on purpose.
- ThreeBlame is the tell. Show me where an organization puts the blame and I will show you what it is not going to fix this year.
- FourPerformative anything is worse than nothing. There is enough of that already. If I cannot say it plainly and mean it, I would rather not say it.
The company
Witz Education
The programs, the trainers, the courseware and the open-enrolment cohorts live at Witz Education. Thirty years of it, and a team who deliver work I am proud to put my name on.
MAKING HUMANS BETTER HUMANS. We put it on hats because we meant it.