Hi Gail, thank you for all the feedback, and I'm glad you enjoyed the cliff metaphor. You almost had me for a second when you said "because it's more fun and there are few consequences!"  Some truth to that I suppose! :)  Your experience with back room conversations, systemic issues, and the realities executives face sounds all too familiar.

I really like your recommendations. Experimenting with strategy with the whole team and probing cross functional implications sounds like very sound advice. I'm with you on rejecting the whole idea of creative tension. I've seen it cause more harm over and over again. I also loved the idea of separating out incompetence from failure.

I'm really looking forward to your upcoming blog post. I will make sure we have a reference back to your post here too, so we can all follow the thread.

Thank you sharing your experience and all your great insights here!

Bill