Hero Culture Is a Design Smell
Hero culture is often celebrated as a sign of commitment, resilience, or exceptional talent. Stories of individuals saving the day under pressure circulate proudly inside organisations. Leaders praise dedication. Teams admire sacrifice.
Yet hero culture is rarely a virtue.
It is a design smell.
Monday Myth: You Must Build Everything Yourself
There is a persistent myth in software organisations that real engineering means building everything in‑house. Infrastructure, authentication, payments, analytics, experimentation frameworks, internal tools, if it exists, some teams believe they should own it.
Friday Reality Check: What Actually Runs Your Organisation
Most IT organisations believe strategy runs the company.
In practice, behaviour under pressure does.
When Habits Become Untouchable, Delivery Dies
Richard Branson recently summarised a discipline most organisations quietly abandoned: Sell the problem, not the solution.
The statement sounds obvious. Yet, in practice, many companies now operate in reverse.
Good Intent Is Not a Delivery Mechanism
All organisations are full of good intent.
Most failures do not start with negligence or apathy. They start with people trying to do the right thing.
Leaders care. Teams want to deliver. Strategies are crafted with conviction. Language is precise. Purpose sounds clear.
