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I retired from my full-time business career in 2011., spending the next few years in a…
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Tim Breene shared thisGreat to see this important work growing Well done ClemenceTim Breene shared thisTwenty-one SheCan project participants are taking part in a two-day Women in Agri-Food Systems workshop taking place in Kigali Convention Center prepared by Lead Access, Equity Bank Limited, AGRA, and Mastercard Foundation . They’re gaining valuable insights into women’s roles in agribusiness, connecting with leaders from key agricultural institutions, & showcasing their work at the exhibition. She Can project empowers women from 19 Districts in partnership with World Food Programme and Equity Bank Limited WFP Innovation Accelerator
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Tim Breene shared thisWhat a wonderful example of what happens when you empower and support communities so they can truly own the work that transforms their communities This model of community centered transformation delivers truly impressive results as the example from Burundi demonstrates Well done World ReliefTim Breene shared thisIn late 2025 World Relief in Burundi conducted an endline survey on the Outreach Groups Initiative (OGI), where in Bugendana, Gitega, 55 churches and over 600 volunteers were mobilized to reach 5,500 households with practical, relationship‑centered support. We saw exciting results. Households grew more resilient. Emergency savings nearly doubled, dietary diversity tripled, and families shifted from crisis‑driven coping to confident planning and healthier daily choices. Health and hygiene practices strengthened. Handwashing at critical moments increased, water treatment improved, and mosquito net use expanded, especially among pregnant women and children. Relationship norms moved toward partnership. Joint household decision‑making rose from 29% to 81.6%, reflecting stronger communication, shared responsibility, and greater dignity for women. Children were safer and more supported. Acceptance of physical punishment fell sharply, and communities showed greater willingness to report abuse and protect vulnerable children. Faith institutions were seen at the center of community life. Social capital rose, collaboration deepened, and church engagement in community well‑being surged from 4.9% to 87.4%. Faith leaders were seen as visible and trusted in problem‑solving and care. Bugendana’s story is a reminder that sustainable change begins within communities, and that local churches can be among the most powerful agents of that change. #OutreachGroupInitiative #WorldRelief #Burundi #Impact Photos: Bugendana OGI volunteers’ training
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Tim Breene reposted thisTim Breene reposted this🚨 ALERT 🚨 New DHS guidance permits detention of refugees who haven’t completed adjustment to permanent residency (a green card) after one year — even as the government has paused or slowed adjudications for some refugee groups. Holding people accountable for completing a process while the system itself is stalled has placed many refugees in an impossible catch-22. Refugees who were thoroughly vetted, promised safety, and have followed the rules deserve clarity, fairness, and a process that actually works. Read World Relief's statement here: https://lnkd.in/eqwaghQF Here is what I had to say... “The character of a nation is revealed in how it honors its commitments and how it treats the most vulnerable. Today, we have failed on both counts,” commented Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief. “Forcing refugees, who have already been stringently interrogated, to undergo further questioning was already an affront, but irrevocably breaking their trust by withdrawing the safety promised to them and placing them in physical custody displays a very low value of human life. To the great shame of our nation, we have made image bearers of God – who, in many cases, suffered for the sake of His Name – into pawns of petty political ends.” My colleague Hannah Daniel said, “Romans 13 indicates that a government should be a terror to the wicked, not to those abiding by its laws,” commented Hannah Daniel, director of government relations at World Relief. “What we see here is government terrorizing the law abiding, not those who have done evil. We are witnessing a fundamental rewriting of half a century of immigration law through extralegal actions, and in doing so violating the biblical principle to let our ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and our ‘no’ be ‘no.’ As citizens, we should be able to expect more of our government, and we have cause to be deeply concerned. As believers, we join in grieving with our sisters and brothers in Christ who are living in fear that they might be returned to the very persecutions they fled.”
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Tim Breene shared thisWe live in a world of facts , half facts and assumed facts If you want an informed view on refugee vetting and on what it means in human terms to be a refugee , read Myal’s interview with the Christian PostTim Breene shared thisI had the opportunity to speak with The Christian Post about DHS's initiative to re-interview legally present, extensively vetted, refugees. “I truly believe that this is part of a larger systematic effort of the government to revoke legal status from immigrants who have entered the country legally, are here under humanitarian … protections and had legal status when President Trump took office,” he maintained. “And I think that those are immigration policies which are less about safety and security and more about where immigrants have come from.” You can read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eMZ3fMh4
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Tim Breene posted thisWhy Poor Team Chemistry Persists — Despite Everything We Know Chemistry is one of the most powerful performance forces in any organization. Not surprisingly therefore, theories abound on the chemistry of teams. There are models, diagnostics, psychometrics, offsites, facilitators, and entire leadership curricula devoted to the subject. And yet, in boardrooms and executive teams across sectors, poor chemistry remains stubbornly common. The puzzle is not a lack of knowledge. It is a misunderstanding of what chemistry is. Most organizations treat team chemistry as a skill problem — something that can be trained, coached, or workshopped into existence. Team training typically focuses on behaviors: how to communicate more clearly, give better feedback, run cleaner meetings, manage conflict constructively. All of this is helpful — but superficial. Chemistry does not live at the level of behavior. It lives beneath it. It is the property of an emergent system that cannot be engineered directly but arises from the interaction of the parts overtime. It is shaped by trust under pressure, unspoken power dynamics, status anxiety, unresolved history, and identity threat. You can teach someone how to give feedback, but you cannot train away fear of becoming irrelevant, rivalry between peers, or the quiet calculation of who really holds influence. Teams are usually assembled for competence, not compatibility. Leadership groups are built by asking who is strong enough individually, not who can think together when stakes are high. Résumés outweigh relational fit. Star performers are assembled rather than blended. Yet chemistry depends less on brilliance than on complementarity — the ability to tolerate difference, respect contrasting styles, and stay curious under disagreement. Positive chemistry is not the absence of disagreement; it is the capacity to disagree without rupture. When tension cannot be voiced safely, it does not disappear — it leaks sideways into passive resistance, slow execution, and decisions made after the meeting. Poor chemistry is rarely about personality; it is about voice. Who gets heard. Whose mistakes are forgiven. Whose ideas land. Whose challenge is welcomed — and whose is seen as threat. Poor team chemistry persists not because leaders do not care, but because chemistry asks organizations to confront issues they often prefer to avoid — power, ego, incentives, time, and truth. Until leaders more deliberately engage with shaping the conditions that encourage good teamwork - clarity of purpose ,removing ambiguity in decision making , creating structured permission for dissent, aligning incentives for collaboration and slowing the team down long enough for trust to form, performance will continue to be undermined by the hidden costs of poor chemistry in the top team and beyond
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Tim Breene reposted thisTim Breene reposted thisAre you intentionally leveraging 70 20 10? Very grateful to Charles Jennings for an email exchange regarding research dispelling the common misperceptions around “70 20 10” There’s no doubt the work of Bob Eichinger, Mike Lombardo and the team at the Center for Creative Leadership was fundamental in highlighting a critical fact – that most learning, most of the time, comes not from courses and programmes, classrooms, workshops and eLearning, but from everyday activities We’ve known for years that the ‘70+20’ are critical and that it’s in these zones that most learning happens. It’s now time to put this knowledge into action. More recently, researchers have been validating the importance of the learning that happens as part of the daily workflow. One example of is the work of Professor Andries de Grip and his team at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Professor de Grip’s 2015 report ‘The importance of informal learning at work’ explains that On-the-job learning is more important for workers’ human capital development than formal training Acknowledgment: Charles Jennings #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #reskilling #chro #highereducation
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Tim Breene posted this#Why Team Chemistry matters more than ever Team chemistry is often treated as a soft, almost accidental quality—something that emerges when the “right people” are brought together. However chemistry is one of the most powerful performance forces in organizations. At its core, team chemistry arises when people feel safe enough to speak honestly, disagree productively, and depend on one another without fear of humiliation or reprisal. This requires trust, vulnerability, and shared purpose—conditions that run counter to many modern organizational pressures. Speed favors decisiveness over dialogue. Scale favors process over relationship. Constant change favors adaptability over attachment. The very forces that make organizations competitive often undermine the human conditions that allow chemistry to form. What makes chemistry so difficult is that it cannot be mandated or accelerated without distortion. Trust compounds slowly and collapses quickly. Psychological safety is created not by slogans but by thousands of small leadership responses to error, dissent, uncertainty and more generally how change is led and executed. Even high-performing teams are only one poorly handled conflict or reorganization away from erosion. Chemistry matters because it is the invisible medium through which intelligence flows. Without it, teams hoard information, mute dissent, and substitute compliance for commitment. With it, teams think better than their smartest members, recover faster from setbacks, and sustain effort under strain. In periods of rapid change, chemistry becomes both more valuable and more elusive. With the advent of AI we are entering a time when the traditional linear plans and single path forecasts of the past are being overtaken by an abundance of nonlinear possibilities. As a result ,as AI increasingly saturates organizations ,leadership teams will no longer be able to function as traditional hierarchies ,polite consensus engines and/or sequential approval chains. Leaders will have to increasingly focus on the human work that machines cannot do. Stripped of their traditional informational and status advantages , leaders will be left with what cannot be automated -judgement ,courage ,moral responsibility and the ability to hold paradox and complexity without collapsing it into something simple and false
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Tim Breene posted this# Seeing the Long Line: We live in a world overflowing with certainty. Every day we are presented with “facts” that aren’t facts, conclusions that aren’t conclusions, and arguments that leap from premise to premise without ever touching the ground. We’ve become fluent in the language of half-truths and assumed truths. And the tragedy is this: the more information we have, the less understanding we seem to gain. In our attention economy, competing truths multiply, assumptions harden into convictions, and half-facts circulate with the authority of evidence. What is emotionally resonant is accepted long before it is examined. The result is not merely misinformation—it is misinterpretation. We do not just get the facts wrong; we get the frame wrong. A practical way to understand this is to distinguish between three kinds of “facts” we encounter every day. The first are demonstrable facts—verifiable, repeatable, and independent of opinion. They are the bedrock of sound reasoning. But they are, unfortunately, the least common currency in modern discourse. The second are assumed facts. These are the claims we inherit through repetition: “everyone knows,” “it’s obvious,” “it’s always been this way.” They feel true because they are familiar, not because they are substantiated. We mistake consensus for evidence. And the third are half-facts -fragments of truth but lifted out of their context. They are seductive because they are not wrong, but incomplete. Their danger lies precisely in their plausibility; they satisfy the mind while bypassing the deeper work of interpretation. In this environment contradictions go unchallenged, non sequiturs pass unnoticed, and complexity is flattened into slogans. Yet the deeper issue is not simply the quality of the information but the distance from which we view it. So here is a simple discipline Before accepting any claim, ask yourself: “Is this a demonstrable fact, an assumed fact, or a half-fact?” “What changes if I look at the long line instead of the short line?” Short-line thinking is fast, reactive, and surface-level; our horizon is short. Long-line thinking, by contrast, steps back— far enough back to see context, proportion, patterns, and history and far enough into the future to anticipate the impact of coming changes . It recognizes that truth is often layered, that opposing things can both be true, and that urgency is the enemy of discernment. When we see the long line, inconsistencies become visible. Assumptions lose their authority. Half-facts reveal their missing pieces. AI accelerates our capacity to know things, but not our capacity to interpret them.So rhe long-line framework isn’t outdated; it is now the guardrail for operating in an AI-driven world. Leaders and teams who rediscover the long line make better decisions not because they hesitate but because they see more. They regain the capacity to balance urgency with clarity, progress with reflection, and conviction with humility
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Tim Breene liked thisTim Breene liked thisI am honored to share that, at the end of May, I will begin a new role as Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer at Gordon College. While retirement looked appealing God had other plans for me. It is difficult to step away from a truly exceptional team of dedicated finance professionals at the University of New Hampshire, I do so with deep gratitude. The relationships built across Durham, Manchester, Plymouth, Keene, and the Law School, along with the opportunity to serve in so many different capacities over the past 15 plus years, have shaped both my career and my life in meaningful ways. I also want to extend a heartfelt thank you to the many colleagues, mentors, and friends who have influenced me along the way. Whether through knowledge shared, support offered, or simply friendship, I will be eternally grateful for the role so many of you have played in my journey. My sincere thanks to the Gordon leadership team and Board for their trust and confidence. I’m looking forward to contributing to the mission and working alongside the Gordon community in this next chapter. As this transition reminds me: “A person’s heart plans their way, but the Lord directs their steps.” — Proverbs 16:9
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Tim Breene liked thisTim Breene liked thisWe're proud to announce Gordon College's 2026 Commencement speaker: Dr. Nicole Martin, President and CEO of Christianity Today. Dr. Martin's founded Soulfire International Ministries, served as Chief Impact Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Christianity Today, and was unanimously elected to head its leadership in November 2025. She holds a doctorate from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and serves on boards at Fuller Theological Seminary, the National Association of Evangelicals, and Morehouse College, among others. "I look forward to sharing my passion for the gospel and encouraging students as they continue their call to faithful leadership and kingdom work," Dr. Martin said. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eVZhr6hy
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Tim Breene liked thisThank you to Karen Meechan and eveyone involved with ScotlandIS, it is an honour to be welcomed onto the board for a second stint. I shall do all I can to be a great advocate and ambassador for the IT industry in Scotland.Tim Breene liked thisMeet our next new Board Member - Peter Proud FRSE, CEO and Founder of Forrit! A long-standing ScotlandIS member, Peter has held key senior roles in IBM, Microsoft and Accenture prior to founding the AI-driven, Azure-native CMS company. As a representative of established SMEs on our board, Peter aims to provide practical insight, strategic guidance and advocacy that will benefit members and the wider Scottish digital economy - welcome on board! #tech #CMS #leadership #SME
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Tim Breene liked thisTim Breene liked thisBut the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” – Matthew 28:5-6
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Tim Breene liked thisTim Breene liked this“Strategy” is doing too much heavy lifting. It’s become a catch-all phrase for: - Goals - Vision - Tactics - Planning - Execution That’s a problem. Because when everything is strategy, nothing gets executed with precision. To lead with clarity (and scale without chaos), you need to separate the layers: 🔵 Strategic planning Sets the long-term direction. Clarifies your competitive position. Defines what you’ll say no to. 🟡 Tactical planning Translates strategy into focused initiatives. Aligns teams around shared milestones. Bridges vision and execution. 🔴 Operational planning Drives day-to-day execution. Turns strategy into actions, habits, and output. Keeps teams moving in sync. Most companies blend all 3 into 1 bloated “strategy doc.” The result? - Teams are unclear on priorities - Daily tasks don’t ladder up to big goals - Projects run in parallel but not in alignment When you separate these layers, everything changes. - Strategy stops being theoretical - Tactical plans gain real teeth - Operations finally move the needle This is how great companies scale: They set direction at the top. Build a bridge in the middle. Execute relentlessly at the bottom. Your leadership team doesn’t need more tasks. They need clarity on what level they’re operating at. And why it matters. If you want faster decisions, tighter focus, and better execution… start by separating your planning layers. Strategy sets the destination. Tactics chart the course. Operations drive the car. Alignment lives here. Want a PDF of this cheat sheet? Get it free here: https://lnkd.in/eFPQK_Z4 ♻️ Repost to help a CEO in your network. Follow Eric Partaker for more strategy insights. - - - P.S. Want to Become a World-Class CEO? Our next cohort of The Founder & CEO Accelerator starts April 22nd. Join a powerful network of 50+ CEOs who've already applied. LIMITED spaces available. https://lnkd.in/efpdnVUD
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Tim Breene reacted on thisTim Breene reacted on thisIn 1915, the Gordon Missionary Training School had begun to outgrow its space in Boston, and the need for a new building became clear. What followed came together through a series of conversations and decisions. Martha Dodge Frost, after an initial visit, returned with a gift that made the project possible. Sarah E. White chose to redirect money she had set aside for something else. Anna Thing contributed what was needed to complete the auditorium, remaining closely connected to the school even from across the country. The building that followed was named Frost Hall on the Fenway. When Gordon later moved to Wenham, the name came with it. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/ee_FRGRnHer Beloved School: The Women Who Built Frost HallHer Beloved School: The Women Who Built Frost Hall
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Jumping the S-Curve: How to Beat the Growth Cycle, Get on Top and Stay There
Harvard Business Review Press
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Reinvent Your Business Before It's Too Late
Harvard Business Review
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The Chief Strategy Officer
Harvard Business Review
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English
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French
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Aneace Haddad
While this article is excellent, filled with actionable insights, it also has a “walking on eggshells” feel to it. I’m struck by the underlying assumption running throughout the article: that the reader is someone wanting or needing to give feedback to a CEO mostly unwilling to receive that feedback. In my opinion, the problem starts much earlier, when hiring or promoting a CEO who hasn’t exhibited a strong hunger to continuously and regularly seek out feedback.
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James Schulte
I have personally experienced this myself on both sides of the table, as Board member and as a member of the leadership team. The expectation in any boardroom is clear: directors should bring insight, healthy debate, and accountability. But what happens when one doesn’t? More often than you’d think, nothing. In over 400 Board Effectiveness Reviews we’ve conducted globally, we’ve seen a recurring pattern: at least one director consistently underperforms—and remains in place for years. Not because no one notices, but because no one addresses it. Why can giving feedback be so straightforward in the C-suite, yet so difficult in the boardroom? In this new article as part of Egon Zehnder's partnership with HBR Executive, my colleagues Chuck Gray, Pamela Warren, and Greig Schneider the hidden dynamics of board underperformance—and offer practical strategies to tackle it. How have you experienced this? How have you addressed this yourself?
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Katy Nelson
One of the most important conversations I heard in Davos today wasn’t about more AI. It was about whether we trust the systems we’re building enough to deploy them at scale. At a Rethinking Risk session at Davos 2026, leaders from media, government, multilateral institutions, and global finance kept circling the same concern: the erosion of trust. The conversation included Ravi Agrawal, Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Policy; Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); Amer Bisat, Minister of Economy and Trade, Republic of Lebanon; Amb. Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Federal Republic of Nigeria; Stephanie von Friedeburg, Managing Director & Global Head of Public Sector, Citi. Across very different vantage points, the message was consistent: misinformation, selective or low-quality data, and a growing post-truth environment are undermining consensus, multilateralism, and sound risk analysis. When trust erodes: — due diligence weakens — uncertainty rises and risk premia increase — fact-based decision-making breaks down for governments and businesses alike The key takeaway: AI doesn’t fail at deployment because the models aren’t powerful enough. It fails when the systems around it aren’t trusted. Rebuilding trust isn’t just a technical challenge. It requires rigorous verification and higher-quality data; transparent analytics and governance; and inclusive, cross-stakeholder consensus-building. As the World Economic Forum continues to emphasize, trust isn’t a soft value layered onto innovation. It’s a prerequisite for scale, resilience, and long-term economic coordination. If we want AI to reduce risk rather than amplify it, we have to start by designing systems people and institutions can trust. That may be the hardest work ahead. And also the most important.
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Paul Walker
Interesting new Boston Consulting Group (BCG) research on how GenAI is reshaping the communications function (posted by Paul Holmes). A few highlights that jumped out at me: 1. Productivity upside is massive. Comms could reclaim 26–36% of its time today with GenAI — and push toward nearly 50% once processes are reshaped with domain-driven apps. 2. Cost impact is real. The function shows material cost reduction potential, rising to nearly 30% with process redesign. 3. Task mix is “AI-ready.” More than 80% of comms work sits in the sweet spot for augmentation and human-AI collaboration — not pure automation, but places where human judgment and machine output reinforce each other. For me, the big takeaway is that the payoff isn’t just productivity. It’s higher quality, personalization, and faster response in moments when communication really matters.
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David Noble
Today, Harvard Business Review and Egon Zehnder announced an exclusive partnership called HBR Executive. Read the inaugural article “Leading Through Overwhelm: New Habits for a New Reality” where I am interviewed and offer some thoughts drawn from Real-Time Leadership , the book I authored with Carol Kauffman PhD https://ego.nz/3ZG3XhV
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Henry D. Wolfe
New Research Unveils How Leading Boards Drive Action In Uncertain Times "The world is moving at breakneck speed, and a new study by Corporate Board Member and the EY Americas Center for Board Matters reveals just how dramatically this pace of change is reshaping corporate governance." My comment: I would suggest that this "reshaping" is not nearly good enough. Try reshaping a football team's offense that still runs the T Formation with more sophisticated plays. The "offensive formation model" in this case is not conducive to the modern game. The same applies to the public company governance model. "The research reveals a changing dynamic in boardroom decision-making. While boards and management teams report strong alignment on current risks—with 87 percent of directors believing they see eye-to-eye with management on risk assessment—this consensus may be masking a more troubling issue: the potential for groupthink in an era when diverse perspectives are more critical than ever." My comment: Of course they are aligned on risk as that is a primary function of the public company governance model but maximizing longer-term value is not. And, diverse perspectives? If you want diverse, look at the PepsiCo board. Yet, one of the most prolific activist investment firms in the world, Elliott Management, has taken a big position in Pepsico due to underperformance. "Diverse" is not nearly as important as "competence" and more specifically, competence relative to the value creation requirements of the company. See more re the situation with PepsiCo's board via link in comments. #governancearbitrage #corporategovernance #boardsofdirectors #shareholdervalue https://lnkd.in/g8RqiHNh
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Business Talent Group
The 2025 High-End Independent Talent Report found that the majority of C-suite interim executive requests are for CFOs, amid skyrocketing demand for interim leaders across the board. Heidrick & Struggles' Sunny Ackerman spoke with CFO Dive about how companies are calling on on-demand talent as they grapple with economic uncertainty: https://lnkd.in/g3DXybnB #Interim #CFO #Finance
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Cristina Ljungberg
Most of us are aware of the Sustainable Development Goals, but did you know that we are only on track to meet 17% of those targets? 🤯 The Inner Development Goals initiative was established to help us develop the human skills necessary to manage increasingly complex sustainability challenges. These are the inner abilities required to complement and accelerate the external approaches needed to meet the SDGs. The IDG Foundation is now inviting those working in HR, senior leadership, and sustainability roles to join a free introduction session on the IDGs, exploring how this initiative can serve as a catalyst for cultural transformation. Learn more and register in the post below! #SDGs #IDGs #innerdevelopment
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Egon Zehnder
The expectation in any boardroom is clear: directors should bring insight, healthy debate, and accountability. But what happens when one doesn’t? More often than you’d think, nothing. In over 400 Board Effectiveness Reviews we’ve conducted globally, we’ve seen a recurring pattern: at least one director consistently underperforms—and remains in place for years. Not because no one notices, but because no one addresses it. Why can giving feedback be so straightforward in the C-suite, yet so difficult in the boardroom? In this new article as part of Egon Zehnder's partnership with HBR Executive, Chuck Gray, Pamela Warren, and Greig Schneider unpack the hidden dynamics of board underperformance—and offer practical strategies to tackle it. https://ego.nz/3TQrR75
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