I write about leadership, complexity, resilience, and decision-making in environments defined by uncertainty, risk, and consequence. My work draws on experience from special operations, organizational leadership, and complex adaptive systems science.
This page includes both original writing published here on verge.coach and selected essays previously published on Medium. Together, they reflect the evolution of my thinking and the practical frameworks I use in my work with leaders, teams, and institutions.
Featured Essays
These essays represent my current thinking and the ideas I most often bring into classrooms, boardrooms, and operational environments.
Why Leadership Development Fails in Complex Environments
An examination of linear leadership models applied to non-linear problems—and why they consistently fall short.
Leadership as a Process, Not a Position
An exploration of leadership as a dynamic, relational process that emerges through interaction, feedback, and shared purpose—rather than authority or status.
Teams as Complex Adaptive Systems
Why high-performing teams cannot be engineered through structure alone, and how culture, trust, and adaptability emerge from simple rules and repeated behaviors.
Resilience Beyond Grit
A systems-based view of resilience that integrates physiology, psychology, relationships, and meaning—moving beyond individual toughness to collective capacity.
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Judgment, bias, and acting effectively when information is incomplete and time is limited.
Selected External Publications (Medium)
The Signals We Send
A reflection on how leaders’ behaviors and virtues act as powerful signals that shape team culture, influence dynamics, and enable teams to thrive in complex, uncertain environments. Drawing on experience teaching young SEAL leaders, it argues that key behaviors, such as presence and participation, and virtues, such as humility, underpin effective, generative leadership.
Success as a Common-Pool Resource
A reframing of success as a shared resource that teams must steward together, applying principles from common-pool resource governance to clarify goals, balance contributions and benefits, and sustain collaborative achievement.
Lessons from the Panda
Uses the plight of the panda as a metaphor for how complex adaptive systems — ecological and organizational — are deeply interconnected, showing that understanding interdependence, resilience, and feedback can improve how teams and communities thrive together.
Through a Lens Complexly
Uses the story of whales and ocean ecosystems to illustrate how natural systems are non-linear, deeply interdependent, and circular — challenging us to shift from mechanistic thinking to a complexity mindset that embraces relationships and emergent dynamics.
I Change
A reflection on how change is constant and deeply interwoven with our perception, urging readers to see change not as a series of linear steps but as a complex, continuous trajectory that we can influence with intention and care. Drawing on the wisdom of the I Ching, it explores how understanding change’s patterns and paradoxes enriches our capacity to engage with it thoughtfully.
Quantum Sensemaking
An exploration of how insights from quantum physics challenge classical, mechanistic assumptions and open space for a more relational, observer-participatory understanding of reality. It argues that embracing quantum-informed sensemaking can deepen how we interpret experience, shape beliefs, and navigate complexity in both personal and social worlds.
A Note on Publishing
I now publish original long-form writing primarily on verge.coach. External platforms such as Medium serve as distribution channels for ideas, not as my primary body of work.
If you are interested in applying these ideas to leadership development, team performance, or organizational resilience, I invite you to explore my speaking and advisory pages or contact me directly.