How to turn gravel into gold
The Big Lever Behind the Bloom
The weekly briefing
One useful idea on making hard things easier to move, every Saturday since 16 October 2025. Read any of them. Send one to someone who needs it.
The Big Lever Behind the Bloom
Can it really not be done?
What if you're not risk-averse, but leverage-blind?
And the three things you need first.
The difference between simple and easy.
Our sector makes the wrong things easy.
The case for winning something small.
Make the right thing the easy thing.
How to end decision drift.
The law of gravity.
The translation tax.
We decided this last week. Didn't we?
Never, never launch from a stage.
Consider this before you hit send.
There is never a need for this opener.
Did it clear the bar? Ever sat through a board meeting where seven things got passed and four months later, not one had changed? Saying yes is easier than changing the behaviour underneath it. The gap is usually **the bar** — the single sentence describing what the institution defaults to on a Tuesday at 4pm, and whether a board member, a finance officer, and a frontline manager could repeat it back the same way. The professional CHW standard moved across 50+ countries because the bar was tight enough that a CHW in Kenya, a finance minister in DRC, and a multilateral staffer in Geneva could all repeat it: **Salaried. Skilled. Supervised. Supplied.** The same discipline works for an internal AI policy, an ESG standard, a procurement criterion. You still need the 47-page document — you *also* need the bar.
The gap between "endorsed" and "adopted." A group of thoughtful people produces something careful, elegant, endorsed — and then nothing much happens. No shift in behaviour, no movement of capital. It's tempting to blame the idea; more often the problem is structural. Most standards don't fail because they're wrong; they fail because no one built the conditions for them to be used. Agreement is not the end of the work — it's the midpoint. I think of this as the **Uptake Engine**, a sequence often collapsed or skipped: **D** Define the gap and the bar · **R** Rally the coalition · **I** Identify the path · **V** Voice demand · **E** Engineer adoption. Over the next five issues I walk through each.
If it doesn't stick, it wasn't change. Influence happens at three levels — **Individual → Interpersonal → Institutional** — and most people never leave the second. *Individual:* get clear on your value, the problem you solve, in 30 seconds or less; clarity gets you in the room. *Interpersonal:* operate inside the room — surface hidden resistance, create urgency without panic, challenge authority without triggering ego, turn polite agreement into real commitment. People say yes, decisions get made, momentum builds — and this is where most think they've cracked it. They haven't. *Institutional:* systems change when standard operating procedures change — a policy, a budget line, a requirement. Default behaviour. What happens without you in the room. That doesn't happen because you were persuasive; it happens because you designed how it would stick.
If you don't have time for names, you don't have time for change. Every so often you're on a big call — a steering committee, a task force, a country delegation — and the host opens with "we've got a lot to cover, so we'll skip intros and jump into the agenda." It sounds efficient. It isn't. Skipping names sends a signal: *it doesn't really matter who's here.* And if it doesn't matter whether someone is here, they'll soon choose not to be — camera off, email open, silent when you need them. Presence precedes participation.
Don't settle for a False Finish. Someone says "sounds good," so you move on. A week later it's back, with "just a small concern" that resets everything. The problem: conversations that feel complete but aren't. **Every stalled decision is missing one of three conditions — Signal** (what exactly are we deciding?), **Safety** (is there enough trust to disagree?), **Structure** (who owns what, by when?). If one is missing you get soft agreement, not commitment. Five **False Finishes** — phrases that sound like yes:
Overcoming the Objection Loop. Recent issues covered vague delegation, chasing compliance, clarity unlocking contribution — different scenarios, same pattern: work slows when expectations stay implicit; meetings drag when resistance stays unnamed; momentum dies when ownership stays fuzzy. The most-requested script was *what to say when everyone agrees… and nothing happens.*
How to redirect without being a jerk. The conversation is drifting — wrong problem, wrong direction, thirty-seven minutes you'll never get back. But you're not running the meeting. Interrupt and you risk looking territorial; stay quiet and you waste everyone's hour. Frustration makes you look unhinged and triggers defensiveness. The best move is **curiosity.**
How rooms decide before anyone talks. Most leaders think influence is what they say — clearer logic, stronger arguments. But contested rooms aren't lost on content; they're lost on **design**. If the room isn't built to arrive at agreement, even great ideas stall — not because people disagree, but because nothing guides them toward convergence. The **Influence Operating System**, three layers; miss one and the room leaks energy:
Show, don't sell. When we want buy-in, our instinct is to persuade. But the fastest way to change minds is proof. In Liberia, trying to convince policymakers CHWs could transform the health system, they didn't need another PowerPoint — they needed to see it work. So we built a pilot, trained workers, tracked outcomes; within months district access climbed to 100% and the Minister adopted it country-wide. Proof isn't just results — it's **Visibility** (who witnesses it, who talks about it), **Timing** (capture attention while the win is warm), **Contrast** (document the before and after in sharp relief; the gap creates belief).
Your team isn't the problem. Most leaders aren't bad at vision — they're bad at structuring work. They default to vague delegation ("Can someone take a first pass?" "Everyone add your thoughts") and then nothing happens. Not because people don't care, but because no one did the upfront thinking to shape the ask. Follow-through fails for three reasons: no clear owner, no concrete task, no obvious place to put the work. If you don't structure the work, people won't magically structure it for you.
Why packed agendas shrink outcomes. When we gather teams we unconsciously assume productivity = density — more slides, more topics. But attention is finite; rushed meetings create thin outcomes. At CHIC we time-stamp lightly: one or two debates + decisions per hour, no more. Space equals quality; fewer items, deeper ownership.
Start answering the right questions. Most leaders don't struggle for substance; their message doesn't land. It sounds like "I want to give you some context…" "Let me walk you through what we did…" High-stakes listeners are tracking three things: **Crux. Change. Choice.** Close three gaps every time: *Noise → Crux* (you share every detail; they want the headline and what's at stake). *Narrative → Change* (you describe what you do; they need the impact). *Neutrality → Choice* (you stay descriptive; they want to know what to do next).
Don't chase compliance. Broadcast momentum. Most follow-ups default to pressure — "just checking in," "reminder," "still waiting on a few people." It feels neutral; it lands as nagging. People act because they believe people like them are already acting. In our coalition work, we never chase laggards — we spotlight leaders: "Thanks to the majority who've already done X — especially Caro, Emmanuel, and Aisha. Those inputs will shape Y. If you haven't yet, you can still do X here by Friday." No scolding, no roll call of failure — momentum and a clear on-ramp.
Leaders don't fill space. Silence makes most people uncomfortable; we rush to fill it because we're afraid. But filling space isn't leadership, it's self-protection — and jumping in too fast cuts off thinking, yours and everyone's. I've seen conversations shift not because someone spoke but because someone didn't. Silence gives the shy space to speak and others space to think; it signals confidence.
Authority isn't in the kickoff — it's in the close. Most meetings don't end, they *fade out*; everyone feels it's "probably finished" but no one can say what happened. Later that haze becomes drift, duplication, follow-up confusion. The person who can synthesize, name decisions, and tether meaning to action becomes the de-facto leader — not by title, by clarity.
Sorry, not sorry. I'm Canadian — an expert at apologizing. "Sorry to bother you." "Sorry to take your time." It sounds gracious, but in meetings every apology lowers the ceiling for the room: you've told people this meeting is a burden, and they'll act accordingly. Instead, frame it as a privilege and a purpose — "This is the best group to tackle this," "I'm energized to dig in together." Energy rises to the story you tell.
One small ritual that scales care. Connection isn't a soft skill — it's infrastructure. All change is relational; institutions are just people, and people respond to those they believe care about them. CHIC is thousands of CHWs, researchers, and advocates — and every one gets a birthday note with a sentence or two about their specific contribution. Fifteen minutes a month, costs nothing, builds deep roots of buy-in.
The five-minute ritual that changes every meeting. Trust isn't built once — it decays, so we keep topping it up. Before diving into an agenda we begin with five-minute random 1:1 breakouts. Online, it mimics entering a physical room; either way it warms the group and primes participation, lowering cognitive load.
Why "What do people think?" kills momentum. Most meetings start with "So what do people think?" — and the room stalls. That question sounds open but is paralyzing. At CHIC we never start from zero: every debate begins with something to build on — a draft, three options, even a half-baked proposal. Blank space invites silence.
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