Hey,

Happy summer. If you're a sports fan it's been a good one so far. The Knicks finally got it done, and with World Cup games happening across the country, there's no shortage of things to watch. Fingers crossed for the USMNT tonight.

A pattern I noticed over 3+ conversations in the last 6 months was that TBM programs that launched with real energy keep hitting the same wall. When momentum stalls and trust is challenged, the team retreats to the tool. Instead of doing the harder change management work, most teams create new reports or roll out new features.

I started doing some research into the psychology behind this and landed on "displacement activity." It's the formal term for what happens when you clean your entire desk instead of writing the difficult email. When the real task creates discomfort, you substitute something that feels productive. Teams do the same thing. The hard change work creates discomfort, so they substitute work that looks like progress.

Instead of looking for new reports to build, audit what people keep calling your TBM office for. There might be a center of excellence or expertise forming naturally, whether it's a dataset that nobody else has or a type of inquiry that keeps popping up. Figure out what process that inquiry is associated with and try to habit-stack onto it. If business leaders keep asking your team to validate costs during business case development, don't just answer the question. Attach yourself to that process. Add value by improving it or eliminating pain. That’s the hard change management effort that makes the capability real.  

Beyond sharing lessons I’ve learned over the years and while growing Falconbridge, I'm planning out topics for this newsletter and I'd rather build that from what's actually on your mind. Reply and tell me.

Gboyega Adebayo
Founder & Managing Director, Falconbridge