The Adaptive Alchemist logo The Adaptive Alchemist

Recent Posts

Real-world insights on adaptive leadership, fluid organizations, and technological enablement from someone who's built, scaled, and fixed things in the trenches.

From One Team to Many - Part 3: The Stability Engine
Featured

From One Team to Many - Part 3: The Stability Engine

How to innovate at breakneck speed without your production systems falling apart. The dual operating system that balances mission team velocity with operational excellence.

9 min read
Organizational Design High-Performing Teams

2025

July

From One Team to Many - Part 3: The Stability Engine
9 min read

From One Team to Many - Part 3: The Stability Engine

How to innovate at breakneck speed without your production systems falling apart. The dual operating system that balances mission team velocity with operational excellence.

Organizational Design High-Performing Teams
Reducing cognitive load in software development
19 min read

Reducing cognitive load in software development

Your engineering teams are drowning in technical debt while competitors ship faster. These practices cut cognitive load immediately—no reorganization required.

High-Performing Teams
From One Team to Many - Part 1: Don't Add, Subtract
9 min read

From One Team to Many - Part 1: Don't Add, Subtract

Most organizations scale by adding teams when work increases. That creates the coordination hell you're trying to escape. The counterintuitive approach: grow by removing boundaries, not multiplying them.

Organizational Design
Running Your First Fluid Team Experiment
6 min read

Running Your First Fluid Team Experiment

Theory is worthless without practice. Here's your step-by-step roadmap for implementing your first fluid team, including common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Organizational Design
Choosing Your Fluid Organization Approach
7 min read

Choosing Your Fluid Organization Approach

Every organization is different. Here's how to pick the right frameworks and patterns for your specific context, based on real implementations.

Organizational Design
The Human Side of Fluid Organizations
14 min read

The Human Side of Fluid Organizations

When Sarah quit three months after we moved to fluid teams, her exit interview was blunt: "This is chaos. I don't know who's in charge anymore." The human cost of organizational transformation is real, and I learned the hard way that structural changes aren't enough.

Organizational Design
Leadership in Fluid Organizations: From Theory to Practice
10 min read

Leadership in Fluid Organizations: From Theory to Practice

You're convinced dual system leadership works. But shifting from command-and-control to context-setting? That's where most transformations fail. Here's the proven implementation playbook.

Leadership High-Performing Teams +1

June

May

Leadership without control (Part 2)
9 min read

Leadership without control (Part 2)

From autonomy principles to practice: clear rituals, defined boundaries, and visible metrics create the conditions for teams to own their work and navigate uncertainty with confidence.

Leadership
Leadership without control (Part 1)
5 min read

Leadership without control (Part 1)

Most leaders fear that giving teams true autonomy will lead to chaos. They're half right. Autonomy without clarity is chaos. But autonomy with clarity? That's where the magic happens. Your job isn't to prevent disorder, but to create clarity.

Leadership