Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction On the surface, leadership has a clear criterion for judging performance. Did we accomplish the mission? That question matters, and the answer is grounded in the present. Organizations exist for a reason, and it is not accidental that those reasons are usually declared in a mission statement....
Category Archives: Mentoring
When Certainty Doesn’t Come
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction In When Expertise Isn’t the Answer, I argued that technical expertise is remarkably well suited to recognizing established solutions. Leadership, however, increasingly asks us to solve problems for which no established solution exists—not by abandoning expertise, but by extending disciplined expertise beyond the limits of pattern recognition. That...
When Expertise Isn’t the Answer
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction Most professions reward expertise and this generally plays as exactly what you’d expect for the profession to be effective. Patients deserve physicians who recognize subtle diagnoses. Aircraft deserve engineers who understand failure modes. Organizations benefit when accountants know the subtleties of tax law, software developers understand minute...
The Second Apprenticeship
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction Organizations love promoting experts. It makes intuitive sense. The engineer who designed the breakthrough product becomes the engineering manager. The scientist who built the most successful laboratory becomes department chair. The professor with the strongest research portfolio becomes dean. The physician with the broadest clinical, educational, and...
Imprecision in Thought: Capstone “I Didn’t Make This Up, Kid”
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction There’s something about the calendar turning toward July 4th that makes this feel a little less abstract. Maybe it’s being a bicentennial baby. Maybe it’s twenty years in uniform. Maybe it’s just the cumulative effect of watching the quality of our public conversations degrade while the volume...
Imprecision in Thought Part 3 Not the Same Thing: Where Thinking Actually Breaks
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction In part 2 of this series, we talked about the discipline required to avoid becoming the problem you’re trying to fix—slowing down, defining terms, showing your work, and resisting the very natural urge to react before you actually understand what you’re reacting to. All of that matters....
Imprecision in Thought — Part 2 The Discipline of Not Being Part of the Problem
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction In the last post, we talked about that moment when something sounds wrong—the face scrunch, the irritation, the immediate certainty that what you’re reading or hearing doesn’t hold up. The problem doesn’t stop with what you’re reacting to. It includes what you’re about to become if you...
You’re Part of the System Now: Burnout and Responsibility
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Some Final Thoughts on Burnout There’s a point in many high-stakes professional systems where the questions quietly shift. Early on, they tend to be personal:Why does this feel so hard? What’s happening to me? How do I get through this without losing something I can’t get back? That’s...
When Burnout Isn’t About Stress or Recovery
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Alignment, Identity, and the Limits of Fixing What Doesn’t Fit In the last installment, we followed burnout past the point where it could reasonably be treated as a private problem. Once responsibility for others enters the picture, the effects are no longer contained. They show up in judgment,...
When Burnout Stops Being a Private Problem
Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction In the last installment, I argued that burnout matters to individuals in ways that are intuitively obvious, but that its broader significance is organizational. It changes what professionals contribute, and it changes how they influence, motivate, and inspire others. Left unnamed and unexamined, it erodes judgment, mentoring,...