Team Chemistry

The team that can't start the meeting until the manager arrives has a new manager now. It's made of math, and it never gets tired of being needed. Episode 4 of Team Chemistry is a double feature - the same trap, twice. I read two articles on the conductor trap: the pattern where a whole room of capable people collapses into a single-file queue, waiting on one node to fire. In "The Conductor Trap:...

There's an entire industry devoted to making better leaders. There is almost nothing devoted to the people they're leading - which is strange, because that's where most of the work happens. This episode is about followership: the underdeveloped half of the leadership equation, and arguably the half that decides whether anything actually gets done. Host Michael Morand sits down with Jyoti Chopra, E...

We keep looking for leadership at the front of the room. Most of it's happening three seats over, in a nod. We treat leadership like a person - a title, a corner office, a slightly better chair. This episode argues we've been pointing at the wrong thing. I read two articles back to back: "Reframing Leadership: A New Toolkit," on what leadership actually is once you stop mistaking it for a job desc...

The hero gets the documentary. The team does the actual work. For a century we've told the same leadership story: one visionary, one will, everyone else as set dressing. In Episode 4, I read two articles - "Rethinking Leadership: From Stars to Constellations" and "Followership: Leadership's Apology Tour" - that take the lone star down out of the sky and go find everyone who was standing in its sha...

The story of innovation almost always comes with a single name attached - the founder, the inventor, the visionary. Steve Weinstein has spent 30 years showing that's not how it actually works. "No great idea ever makes it to market... It's great execution that does." In this episode of Team Chemistry, Steve makes the case that innovation is a team sport - a relay race where the idea is only the fi...

You were taught to read a balance sheet. Nobody taught you to read a room. The most important skill at work is the one no class ever covered: how teams actually function. In Episode 2, I'm sharing two articles written a year apart – "Team Dynamics: The Missing Class" and "Team Science: Connections Over Components" – that expose the same blind spot. The first names the gap. The second delivers the...

Who you are on a team isn't fixed. The same person can be boldly creative on one team and cautiously analytical on the next, outspoken in one room and silent in the next – not because they changed, but because the team did. In the inaugural episode of Team Chemistry, host Michael Morand sits down with Cory Stern – VP and Global Head of HR for Med Tech Functions at Johnson & Johnson, founding a...