Slingshot Designs

Category: Leadership

  • Alignment Requires Measurement

    Alignment Requires Measurement

    A photo in the garden wasn’t about yoga. It was about prediction, measurement, and learning. The same questions that guide coaching, leadership, and continuous improvement can guide personal growth too: What do we expect to happen? What actually happened? What did we learn?

  • The Difference Between a Sting and a Wound

    The Difference Between a Sting and a Wound

    A hidden garden flag, a patch of stinging nettle, and a morning storm became a reminder that growth changes our relationship with discomfort. The sting stayed the same. The response did not.

  • The Work We Don’t Count

    The Work We Don’t Count

    I spent years believing work only counted if it appeared on a job description or generated a paycheck. Then I started paying attention to where value was actually being created. What I found changed how I see leadership, talent, and the people organizations overlook every day.

  • The Difference Between Preparation and Prediction

    The Difference Between Preparation and Prediction

    Most people spend their lives trying to predict the future. The people who navigate uncertainty learn something far more useful. I keep a Magic 8 Ball in my bathroom. Not because I believe it predicts the future, but because it reminds me that most things worth doing require preparation, not certainty. Every morning starts the…

  • Pulling Weeds and Untangling Traffic Jams

    Pulling Weeds and Untangling Traffic Jams

    Gardening is a meditative process that reveals intricate root systems, much like solving complex puzzle games.

  • Blind Writing

    Blind Writing

    What happens when you refuse to stop looking for the root cause. A decade-long search for answers, a vestibular migraine diagnosis, and the unexpected lessons that came from losing abilities I once took for granted.

  • Steel Toes & Plaid: The Harvest Was Successful. The Tea Was Awful.

    Steel Toes & Plaid: The Harvest Was Successful. The Tea Was Awful.

    A simple clover tea experiment led to an unexpected lesson about curiosity, potential, and why the most valuable outcomes are not always the ones we planned for.

  • Steel Toes & Plaid: Visibility

    Steel Toes & Plaid: Visibility

    Most organizations don’t have a talent shortage. They have a visibility problem. When leaders stop seeing the people closest to the work, ideas stop moving, trust erodes, and improvement stalls.

  • Steel Toes & Stilettos

    Steel Toes & Stilettos

    For years I thought I was writing about observation. It turns out observation was only the beginning. Steel Toes & Stilettos is a new series exploring strength, beauty, experience, identity, and the questions we ask when we’re finally ready to become ourselves.

  • The Difference Is Observation

    The Difference Is Observation

    A garbage truck, a spaghetti diagram, Guardian Industries, Toyota Kata, and a lesson that has followed me for decades: observation often comes before language.

  • The Picture Develops Slowly

    The Picture Develops Slowly

    Pressure compresses attention. Discernment expands it. From classrooms to corporations, parenting to public systems, the challenge is often the same: learning to see patterns rather than fragments and allowing the picture enough time to develop before deciding what it means.

  • The Difference Is Observation: When Frequency Becomes Harmony

    The Difference Is Observation: When Frequency Becomes Harmony

    What we do under pressure reveals the system. What we do next determines whether trust can grow.

  • A Robin, A Window, and a Second Chance

    A Robin, A Window, and a Second Chance

    This morning started with clean windows. It ended with a reminder that every system has unintended consequences. Including our own.

  • The Run Tells the Story

    The Run Tells the Story

    A single data point is rarely the story. Whether in quality management, nature, or personal healing, meaningful change often reveals itself through trends, patterns, and runs that become visible only with time.

  • Batch #2: Listening for Recovery Signals in Real Time

    Batch #2: Listening for Recovery Signals in Real Time

    Paying attention to subtle changes in the environment is crucial for recovery. Today’s observation of light behavior is a reminder that progress is happening.