Why do capable people stop performing under pressure — and why doesn't better planning fix it?

In this episode of Organizational Intelligence, I sit down with Natalie Gleeson, VP of Human Capital at Pure Harvest Smart Farms, to talk about pressure as an operating-system problem, not a people problem.

Natalie has spent more than 20 years leading HR across the UAE, and she brings a background in the psychology of work and neuroscience to how she thinks about leadership and culture. She's also the creator of The Future-Ready Set™, a framework built on three human capabilities: emotional intelligence, adaptability and resourcefulness.

We get into why pressure blocks people from using the skills they already have, what it means for a leader to "lend their nervous system" to the room, why good is often good enough, what middle managers know about what slows them down (and why nobody asks them), and why AI tends to amplify dysfunction rather than fix it.

Plus a rapid fire: draft to draft or polished reveal? Plan more or test sooner?

What I'm taking with me:

Pressure doesn't remove skills. It blocks access to them.
Leaders lend their nervous system to the room.
Good is often good enough.
Middle managers already know what slows them down.
AI amplifies what's already there, including the dysfunction.

Connect with Natalie
🌐 Website: https://nataliegleeson.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliegleeson


Connect with Organizational Intelligence
🎙 Subscribe for new episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Organizational-Intelligence 
🌐 Website: https://orgintelligence.io/
💼 Your podcast host, Yosr Najjar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yosrnajjar/

#OrganizationalIntelligence #Leadership #FutureOfWork #OrganizationalCulture #ChangeManagement #HumanCapital #AIatWork #Podcast

🎙 ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Organizational Intelligence explores how organizations actually function, through the intersection of teaming, culture, systems, leadership and the human experience of work.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: https://organiztionalintelligence.buzzsprout.com/

Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/organizational-intelligence-oi/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Organizational-Intelligence/

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #TeamEffectiveness #OrganizationalDesign #Leadership #DecisionMaking #WaysOfWorking #AIatWork

Organizational Intelligence is a podcast about people, practice and possibilities at work.

We explore how organizations actually function: how decisions get made, how information moves, how teams learn, how power works, and the everyday systems and behaviors that make work either harder or better.

🎙 ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Organizational Intelligence explores how organizations actually function, through the intersection of teaming, culture, systems, leadership and the human experience of work.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: https://organiztionalintelligence.buzzsprout.com/

Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/organizational-intelligence-oi/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Organizational-Intelligence/

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #TeamEffectiveness #OrganizationalDesign #Leadership #DecisionMaking #WaysOfWorking #AIatWork

Organizational Intelligence is a podcast about people, practice and possibilities at work.

We explore how organizations actually function: how decisions get made, how information moves, how teams learn, how power works, and the everyday systems and behaviors that make work either harder or better.

Host — Yosr Najjar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yosrnajjar/

What if your organization doesn’t have a talent problem, a strategy problem, or even an effort problem?

What if work is hard because of… how work actually works?

In this episode of Organizational Intelligence, I sit down with Karina Mangu-Ward, author of Teams That Meet the Moment and Partner at August, to unpack the everyday habits that quietly determine whether teams move, stall, learn, adapt—or simply compensate for bad systems by working harder.

We talk about why “going above and beyond” can actually be a warning sign, why the org chart tells us surprisingly little about how work gets done, why decision-making is one of the biggest organizational pain points nobody really owns, and why consensus may be slowing your teams down.

And then we get into something I didn’t originally plan to ask Karina about: AI.

Because if working in public was already difficult, what happens when every employee now has their own private AI window? Are we creating faster individuals… but organizations that learn even less?

We also unpack several of the practices from Teams That Meet the Moment, including Team Charters, Make a Proposal, Safe to Try, Even/Overs, Working in Public, Small Bets and more.

This conversation is ultimately about something deceptively simple: great teamwork doesn’t just happen because we hire great people. We have to design how people work together.

🎧 In this episode:
• Why individual heroics can be a sign of organizational dysfunction
• Why the org chart is “not wrong, but not enough”
• The decision-making problem almost every organization has
• Why “I propose we…” can completely change a conversation
• Consensus vs. “safe to try”
• Why leaders struggle to make real trade-offs
• The vulnerability—and advantage—of working in public
• Why AI may be creating a crisis of working in private
• Three tiny language shifts anyone can start using tomorrow

ABOUT KARINA MANGU-WARD

Karina Mangu-Ward is the author of Teams That Meet the Moment and a Partner at August, where she has spent more than a decade helping teams and organizations rethink how they organize, decide, collaborate and learn.

🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES

Buy Teams That Meet the Moment: https://a.co/d/0bm61V30

Connect with Karina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karina-mangu-ward-276a558/

Explore August: https://www.aug.co/

Teams That Meet the Moment resources and assessment: https://www.aug.co/book

Meet the host: Yosr Najjar https://www.linkedin.com/in/yosrnajjar/

🎙 ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Organizational Intelligence explores how organizations actually function, through the intersection of teaming, culture, systems, leadership and the human experience of work.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: https://organiztionalintelligence.buzzsprout.com/

Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/organizational-intelligence-oi/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Organizational-Intelligence/

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #TeamEffectiveness #OrganizationalDesign #Leadership #DecisionMaking #WaysOfWorking #AIatWork

Organizational Intelligence is a podcast about people, practice and possibilities at work.

We explore how organizations actually function: how decisions get made, how information moves, how teams learn, how power works, and the everyday systems and behaviors that make work either harder or better.

Host — Yosr Najjar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yosrnajjar/

Performance dips. Leadership reacts: a survey goes out, a manager gets replaced, a training gets rolled out. Things improve for a quarter, then the same problems come back wearing different clothes. Why?

In this episode of the Organizational Intelligence Podcast, I sit down with Dustin Snyder, founder of Way Forward and author of Sink or Swim, who spent 20 years building the case that behavior inside organizations isn't the cause of dysfunction — it's the output of it.

Together, we explore why replacing people without changing the conditions around them just reproduces the same outcome with new faces, and how leaders can learn to diagnose the system instead of prosecuting the individual.

We discuss:

• Why behavior at scale is a rational response to environment, not a character flaw
• Why progressive discipline and coaching rarely change behavior — because they ask people to override how their brain reads the environment
• Why engagement surveys measure sentiment but never the drivers, and what happened when UPS's best-ever engagement score preceded a company-wide strike
• Why turnover is the most lagging indicator of dysfunction, and why "money" is rarely the real reason people leave
• Why employer value propositions fail when they're aspirational marketing instead of the truth
• What Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping (SWIM) actually is, and how psychodynamic interviewing surfaces what surveys can't
• The difference between resistance and disorientation — and why "I want to do well, I just can't figure out what well looks like anymore" is a cry for help, not defiance
• Why absenteeism clusters instead of distributing randomly, and what that tells you about the system producing it

Serious topics, but definitely not a stiff conversation. Expect cigar talk, Muay Thai and Strongman training, mountain climbing — and a closing question that might ruin your week: What challenge are you avoiding right now?

ABOUT DUSTIN SNYDER

Dustin Snyder ran a $300 million manufacturing division and led its turnaround before founding Way Forward. He built Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping (SWIM), a diagnostic methodology used to uncover the systemic root causes behind recurring people problems. He is the author of Sink or Swim, with a second book, Learn to Swim, coming soon.

CONNECT

Dustin Snyder on LinkedIn:   / snyderdustin
Explore Way Forward: https://wayforward.work/
Connect with me:   / yosrnajjar
Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn:   / organizational-intelligence-oi

What's something your organization blames on individuals that might actually be a system problem? Share it in the comments.

Subscribe for more conversations about how work actually works — and how we can build organizations where people and performance thrive together.

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #OrganizationalDesign

🎙 ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Organizational Intelligence explores how organizations actually function, through the intersection of teaming, culture, systems, leadership and the human experience of work.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: https://organiztionalintelligence.buzzsprout.com/

Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/organizational-intelligence-oi/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Organizational-Intelligence/

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #TeamEffectiveness #OrganizationalDesign #Leadership #DecisionMaking #WaysOfWorking #AIatWork

Organizational Intelligence is a podcast about people, practice and possibilities at work.

We explore how organizations actually function: how decisions get made, how information moves, how teams learn, how power works, and the everyday systems and behaviors that make work either harder or better.

Host — Yosr Najjar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yosrnajjar/

The future of work may not need another shiny new idea.

It may need fewer bad meetings, clearer decisions, better access to information, more intentional ways of working—and leaders willing to do less.

In this episode of the Organizational Intelligence Podcast, Yosr Najjar sits down with Sam Spurlin, founder of Deliberate Works and former Principal Consultant and Head of Special Projects at The Ready.

Together, they explore why organizations hire smart people and then place them inside systems that prevent them from using their intelligence.

They discuss:

• Why big organizational problems do not always require big transformation programs
• Why empowerment fails when people lack information, skills, and genuine authority
• How invisible and inherited ways of working shape behavior
• Why great meetings never happen by accident
• How small practices can quietly shift power and participation
• Why organizational debt keeps people busy doing work that may not need to exist
• The question more leadership teams should ask: What are we going to stop doing?

Serious topics, but definitely not a stiff conversation.

Expect organizational rants, hockey, uncomfortable truths—and a surprisingly important debate about the best bird.

ABOUT SAM SPURLIN

Sam Spurlin helps organizations rethink how work actually happens. Through Deliberate Works, he supports leaders and teams in experimenting with organizational design, self-management, meetings, decision-making, and more intentional ways of working.

CONNECT

Sam Spurlin on LinkedIn:    / samspurlin 
Explore Deliberate Works: https://deliberateworks.com/
Connect with Yosr Najjar:   / yosrnajjar 
Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn    / organizational-intelligence-oi  \

What is one way of working your organization has inherited without ever consciously choosing it? Share it in the comments.

Subscribe for more conversations about how work actually works—and how we can build organizations where people and performance thrive together.

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #OrganizationalDesign

🎙 ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Organizational Intelligence explores how organizations actually function, through the intersection of teaming, culture, systems, leadership and the human experience of work.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: https://organiztionalintelligence.buzzsprout.com/

Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/organizational-intelligence-oi/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Organizational-Intelligence/

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #TeamEffectiveness #OrganizationalDesign #Leadership #DecisionMaking #WaysOfWorking #AIatWork

Organizational Intelligence is a podcast about people, practice and possibilities at work.

We explore how organizations actually function: how decisions get made, how information moves, how teams learn, how power works, and the everyday systems and behaviors that make work either harder or better.

Host — Yosr Najjar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yosrnajjar/

Organizational Intelligence (OI) is a series of real conversations about how work actually works inside modern organizations -  how decisions get made, how trust is built (or broken), how information flows, and how teams adapt under pressure. Each episode unpacks one sharp idea about the invisible operating system: leadership, meetings, communication, decision-making, psychological safety, learning, accountability..  that determines whether people and organizations thrive.

🎙 ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Organizational Intelligence explores how organizations actually function, through the intersection of teaming, culture, systems, leadership and the human experience of work.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: https://organiztionalintelligence.buzzsprout.com/

Follow Organizational Intelligence on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/organizational-intelligence-oi/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Organizational-Intelligence/

#OrganizationalIntelligence #FutureOfWork #TeamEffectiveness #OrganizationalDesign #Leadership #DecisionMaking #WaysOfWorking #AIatWork

Organizational Intelligence is a podcast about people, practice and possibilities at work.

We explore how organizations actually function: how decisions get made, how information moves, how teams learn, how power works, and the everyday systems and behaviors that make work either harder or better.

Host — Yosr Najjar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yosrnajjar/