“Values are the worst.”

I heard a leadership coach say that in a meeting last fall, and my heart sank.

But the truth is, they aren't completely wrong.

Values ARE the worst when they are nothing more than words on a wall.

But when they are intentionally integrated into daily work, they become something else entirely.

They shape behavior.
They guide hard decisions.
They clarify how the work should get done.

They become the backbone of alignment.

This week’s Rooted Insights explores how values move beyond statements and become design criteria for the real work.

Leadership comes with weight.

Most of the time, that's expected.

But sometimes the weight becomes so heavy that simply working harder or pushing through isn't enough. Looking back on leading a statewide team through the early days of COVID, I realized one of the most important leadership lessons of my career:

There is a lot we can't control.

But alignment is one of the most powerful things we can influence.

In this edition of Rooted Insights, I reflect on what happened when uncertainty was high, the burden felt unsustainable, and a team learned to carry the weight together.

Most organizations think alignment is a communication problem.

Make the strategy clear. Cascade the goals. Keep everyone informed.

But what happens when everyone agrees on the plan… and execution still falls apart?

In this edition of the Rooted Insights blog, I explore why alignment often breaks down between planning and execution, and why communication alone is rarely enough.

For a long time, I believed that if values were defined clearly enough, they could guide behavior even when I wasn’t in the room.

I relied on them heavily as a leader.

Values gave my team a way to make decisions without me. If we defined them behaviorally, they became a shared set of rules. They anchored conversations, feedback, and debriefs.

And for a while, it worked.