The Broad Room

Conflict is unavoidable, and often necessary. 

In this episode, Charleen Broad explains why harmony isn’t the same as alignment, what conflict does for a team, and why it becomes a strategy problem when disagreement has no room to surface. She draws on two models, Bruce Tuckman’s stages of group development and Sam Kaner’s Groan Zone, and shares the signs that separate healthy conflict from unhealthy conflict.

Try this week: before your next leadership meeting, tell your team to expect disagreement and that it’s welcome. Afterward, check the meeting against the five signs of healthy conflict.

Most leaders build for the size they are today, then rebuild every time they grow. In this episode, Charleen Broad shares a different approach, building like you're already big, through three pictures: the highway built before the city, the second hole dug in the sand, and the greenhouse built before the seedling outgrows its pot.

Try this week: pick one of the four starting points. 

• Write one document for the organization you want to be
• Delegate one task
• Name one future role
• Find one system that only works because you're holding it together.

What does strategic work actually involve? 

In this episode, Charleen Broad explains why organizational strategy is architecture: studying the environment, setting the foundation, respecting the building code and testing the load. 

Try this week: ask your leadership team the four questions an architect would ask. 1. What's changing in our market that our plan needs to account for? 

2. Is our mission clear enough for everything else to rest on? 

3. Do we know who decides what, and who's accountable for what? 

4. Can our team and our structure carry the growth we're planning?

 https://broadstrategy.ca

Two businesses can use exactly the same ingredients and still bake very different cakes.

In this episode, Charleen Broad explains Roger Martin’s “opposite test,” a simple question that shows whether what you’re calling your strategy is actually a strategy or just good business. Using the picture of a cake, two investment companies and two New Brunswick heat pump installers, she shows the difference between best practices that every organization needs and the strategic choices that make the right people choose you.

Try this week: the opposite test. 

Write down the statements you call your strategy, then write the opposite of each one. If no sensible organization would choose the opposite, move that statement to your list of ingredients. What’s left is where your real strategic work begins.

https://broadstrategy.ca

Sources:
Lafley, A. G., & Martin, R. L. (2013). Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. Harvard Business Review Press.

Martin, R. (2015). Roger Martin’s unconventional wisdom. The Bridgespan Group. https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/roger-martin-unconventional-wisdom

Every organization has a conversation it needs to have. This is the room for it.

In this first episode, Charleen Broad, founder of Broad Strategy, introduces The Broad Room. She explains why organizations rarely struggle for lack of effort, what guides her work, who the show is for, and what to expect each Monday.

Each week, The Broad Room takes one organizational idea and makes it clear enough to act on. Topics include strategy, leadership, culture and how teams work together, often explained through everyday metaphors, and each episode ends with something practical you can take back to your team.

New episodes every Monday, each paired with a post on the Broad Strategy blog.

https://broadstrategy.ca