By Kevin McDonnell You’re Not Stuck—Your Thinking Is Most leaders like to think of themselves as adaptive, creative problem solvers. But under pressure—during integrations, restructurings, or periods of rapid growth—we tend to default to what’s familiar. The frameworks that once made us successful become shortcuts. Experience becomes a filter. Instead of increasing clarity, it quietly narrows situational awareness . Situational awareness is not just knowing what’s happening

As organizations scale, leaders often struggle to answer a deceptively simple question: What actually changes about managerial ability as careers progress? Titles grow, scopes expand, and decision rights widen—but many organizations lack a coherent model explaining how thinking, judgment, and time-horizon must evolve. More than three decades ago, Elliott Jaques offered one of the most rigorous answers to this question in his seminal work on Stratified Systems Theory (SST)

As organizations grow, the nature of executive work changes. In smaller enterprises, top leaders often make key operational calls directly—approving projects, allocating budgets, or resolving issues in real time. But as a company matures, this model quickly reaches its limits. The volume and complexity of decisions expand exponentially, and no small group of executives can (or should) decide everything. At scale, the true role of the executive team shifts from decision-making

In most organizations, strategy doesn’t fail because people disagree with it — it fails because they don’t know how to apply it. Managers aren’t confused about what the company wants to achieve; they’re uncertain about where, when, and within what limits to act. That’s why effective strategies always include two anchors: context and constraint. Without them, vision becomes rhetoric and execution becomes guesswork. Strategy Without Context Is Just Ambition Context explai

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How to Escape Cognitive Ruts and Solve Business Problems with Clarity, Context, and Collaboration By Kevin McDonnell You’re Not Stuck—Your Thinking Is We all like to believe we’re innovative thinkers. But in reality, most executives fall back on familiar strategies, frameworks, and processes—especially under pressure. Experience becomes a filter. Instead of helping us see problems more clearly, it often narrows our field of vision. Cognitive psychology has a name for this:

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