On The Balcony

What a leader can and can’t reach from the topSeason 3 of On the Balcony is built around one question: can change be made more predictable? Each episode is one case, told by someone who was personally accountable for a consequential transformation.Our second case begins in 2014, when documents from the lawsuit over the San Bruno pipeline, owned by the utility Pacific Gas and Electric, revealed that one of their executives had gone to two commissioners and the commission president’s chief of staff, trying to get the case moved to a judge the company thought would be friendlier. Eight people had died in the explosion. The president of the California Public Utilities Commission resigned, and so did its executive director. Tim Sullivan had spent his career inside that agency, most recently as acting chief administrative law judge, and he was close to retirement. He offered to step in for a year, clean things up and go. He stayed three.Michael Koehler talks with Tim about his first weeks, when he published all sixty-five thousand internal emails a judge had ordered released, and about the three years that followed, in which ten of twelve division directors turned over inside a system where almost nobody can be fired. Michael calls the email release courageous, and Tim says he didn’t see it as a decision. When Michael later describes the turnover as a creative strategy, Tim says he didn’t think of it as a strategy, he just did it. A good deal moved in those three years, and Tim is clear about where it stopped. On the thing he most wanted to shift, getting people to look at their own part in the mess, he gives himself a B minus. KONU worked with the commission during this period and Michael led that engagement, so the two of them also look at what that work did and did not accomplish.What You’ll Explore in This Episode:Everything leaksWhy publishing sixty-five thousand internal emails within weeks of taking the job did not feel to Tim like a decision at all, and what he thought the alternative was.Information monopoliesHow holding a monopoly on what was actually happening became a source of power inside the agency, and why those silos were so stable.The secretaries read it, the managers didn’tTim’s email to all staff two or three times a week, who turned out to be reading it, and what that told him about where change in the agency could come from.“I just made it unpleasant”Ten of twelve division directors turning over in three years, the pot that has to be kept hot without boiling over, and Tim’s flat refusal to call any of it a strategy.What teaching couldn’t reachThe grade Tim gives himself on helping people examine their own part in the mess, and why he no longer believes education produces cultural change.What the outside help did and didn’t doMichael led KONU’s engagement with the commission, and the two of them look at what it moved, what it couldn’t reach, and where Tim is still uncertain.The ArtifactTim brings the Delphic maxim know yourself alongside Socrates in the Apology, “I neither know nor think that I know,” and what he discovered he had most completely misread about his own organization, including a complaint from his staff that was entirely true and also an excuse.Quotes from This Episode:“I didn’t see it as a courageous decision. I didn’t even see it as a decision to be made.”- Tim Sullivan“If you had a monopoly on what a situation was, you had power within the organization.”- Tim Sullivan“I was hoping to catch the line managers and the middle managers with this information, to make sure that it trickled down from the leadership. They just didn’t read it, and they decided they were too busy and it was unimportant.”- Tim Sullivan“I think there were, like, 12 division directors, and I think in the three years I was there, 10 of them turned over… it’s the public sector. Couldn’t fire people. I just made it unpleasant.”- Tim Sullivan“That’s an area where I would give myself, like, a B minus… I seem to think that I had this idea that education was a way of producing cultural change, and I found out no, it doesn’t work.”- Tim Sullivan“It was true. We were understaffed. All the things they said were true, but what I did not hear was the fact that this had become sort of a ritual excuse that people could repeat, or an incantation.”- Tim SullivanLinks & Resources:Apology by Plato — the line Tim brings is at 21d, familiar in English as "I neither know nor think I know" (Benjamin Jowett translation)California Public Utilities Commissionhttps://www.cpuc.ca.govAbout Tim Sullivan:Tim Sullivan is the former Executive Director of the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the safety, reliability and rates of the privately owned companies supplying California with electricity, gas, water, telecommunications and transport. He was named interim Executive Director in December 2014, after the San Bruno pipeline explosion and the ex parte scandal that followed, and served until his retirement in 2018. He had spent 26 years at the commission before his appointment, most recently as Acting Chief Administrative Law Judge and before that as Assistant Chief and as an Administrative Law Judge, where he developed its rules protecting consumer data. He holds a degree in mathematics from Yale and a Master in Public Policy and a Ph.D. from Harvard, and is the author of Resolving Development Disputes Through Negotiations.New episodes drop every other week.

What happens when the advocate becomes the authoritySeason 3 of On the Balcony is built around one question: can change be made more predictable? Each episode is one case, told by someone who was personally accountable for a consequential transformation.Our first case begins in 2022, when Mpox was first diagnosed in the United States. Dr. Raj Panjabi was White House Senior Director at the National Security Council, responsible for coordinating the federal response to public health crises. For most of his career, Raj had been on the advocacy side of the table, first as the founding CEO of Last Mile Health in Liberia, where he grew up. Now he was the one behind the door, and the advocates he had always stood beside were pushing on it.Michael Koehler and his KONU colleague Josh Albert, who worked alongside Raj at Last Mile Health, talk with Raj about the moment he read a Guardian interview with longtime AIDS activist Peter Staley and recognized his own talking points as the same wall Staley had faced in the 1980s. What followed was a different relationship with the community most affected, and a set of concrete changes that helped bring cases down from hundreds a day to a handful.What You’ll Explore in This Episode:Uncertainty is not the same as riskWhy the public's demand to know whether a threat is “high or low” asks for a certainty leaders often don’t have, and the questions Raj believes leaders should answer instead.When your talking points become a wallHow careful, well-intended communication can keep out exactly the information a response needs most.Inviting in the people pushing on your doorRaj’s call to Tony Fauci, the one accidental email he’s ever printed out, a tense meeting with advocates who arrived with frustration and with solutions, and how he stayed steady as the target of their anger.From listening to changing the planThe specific moves that followed, including delivering vaccines through Pride festivals and trusted community clinics, orchestrating response from leaders the community already trusted, and a detail no one in government anticipated: a visible injection mark that, for some, felt like being publicly outed.Trust you can’t build in a crisisHow clinics, trial networks, and a decades-long Fauci-Staley relationship built during HIV/AIDS made a faster response possible, why that trust still had to be renewed, and why tension can be read as information rather than a sign of failure.The ArtifactRaj brings the novel No Condition Is Permanent, a phrase his father carried through losing his job and rebuilding a life as a refugee.Quotes from This Episode:“I had been the one pushing on the door, and now I was the one behind the door being pushed on.”- Dr. Raj Panjabi“For my entire career I had been part of the advocacy community, and now for the first time, I was on the outside of it. I was the guy you screamed at.”- Dr. Raj Panjabi“You had to design the response not for somebody, but with them.”- Dr. Raj Panjabi“No talking point I had could stand up to that.”- Dr. Raj Panjabi“Working together is not a webinar, it’s a meaningful seat at the table.”- Dr. Raj Panjabi“[Leaders and employees] misinterpret the discomfort of disruption for failure when, in fact, it could be just the early phase of adaptation.”- Dr. Raj Panjabi“Sometimes when you face tension and frustration that often comes right behind it, perhaps it’s not a sign we’re failing. Perhaps it’s just information. It could be a signal that something hidden in your organization needs to come to the surface.”- Dr. Raj PanjabiLinks & Resources:Safer: A Playbook—Turning Fear into Action and Crisis into Community by Dr. Raj Panjabi (HarperOne, October 13, 2026)https://rajpanjabi.com/No Condition Is Permanent: A Historical Novel on Nigeria by Aliyi Ekineh (Galago Publications, 1989)Last Mile Healthhttps://lastmilehealth.orgAbout Dr. Raj Panjabi:Dr. Raj Panjabi is senior partner at Flagship Pioneering, associate physician at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School, and author of Safer. He served as White House Senior Director and Special Assistant to the President at the National Security Council, helping lead the world out of the COVID-19 pandemic and create the nation’s playbook for future public health emergencies. Before that, he led the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative and was founding CEO of Last Mile Health, bringing care to communities beyond the reach of any health system. He has been named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and one of Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders.New episodes drop every other week.

Join us for What Stayed, a live Season Two gathering. March 31 · Virtual · Free · Limited spots · konu.org/eventsAs we arrive at the final conversation of Season Two, we turn to one of the deepest questions that has quietly threaded through the entire series: what happens when the conflicts we face are not simply disagreements, but conflicts about identity?In this episode, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Hugh O'Doherty, longtime teacher of Adaptive Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and a practitioner of peacebuilding shaped by his experience growing up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.Hugh's life unfolded inside a history of deep division, between Protestant unionists who identified with Britain and Catholic nationalists who identified with Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement brought an end to most large-scale violence in 1998, but the deeper work of peacebuilding, identity, grief, history, and trust, continues.Drawing on decades of work in conflict resolution, Hugh reflects on what exercising leadership looks like when people are asked to engage across seemingly unbridgeable divides. At the heart of the conversation lies a profound paradox: the very identities we cling to in order to know who we are can become the barriers that keep us trapped.Toward the end of the episode, Hugh shares a reading from Prior Unity, a reflection suggesting something radical. Beneath our divisions, unity is not something we must create. It may already be true.What You'll Explore in This EpisodeGrowing Up Inside Conflict: Hugh shares what it meant to grow up in Northern Ireland during decades of violence, where identity was shaped early and reinforced daily, in schools, communities, and public rituals. These early experiences formed the backdrop for his lifelong search to understand the roots of violence.Learning to Sit in the Fire: Working in early peace and reconciliation efforts, Hugh describes the experience of bringing people from opposing sides of the conflict into dialogue, and discovering how little preparation there was for what happens when the "other" is truly encountered. One of the most important capacities he developed was not intellectual. It was the ability to remain in the heat of conflict without fleeing from it.The Paradox of Identity: A turning point came when Hugh realized something unsettling: we often need the other as an enemy in order to know who we are. Letting go of that structure is not simply a change in opinion. It is a loss of identity. Adaptive leadership offers a way of understanding this. People do not resist change. They resist loss.Peace Agreements and Adaptive Work: Hugh reflects on the limits of traditional peace agreements. While they can stop violence, they often leave the deeper adaptive work untouched. Real reconciliation requires something much harder: helping people see how they themselves are participating in the very systems that keep conflict alive.The Inner Work of Peacebuilding: Over time, Hugh came to see that the work of peacebuilding is inseparable from inner work. The divisions we see in the world mirror divisions we carry within ourselves. The journey toward peace is therefore both political and deeply personal.Prior Unity: In the closing moments of the conversation, Hugh shares a reading that has shaped his own path: the idea that beneath our identities and divisions, the world is already a unity. Not a unity we must build, but one we may awaken to.Quotes from This Episode"I learned to sit in the fire." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty"The more I kept him as the other, the more I realized I was keeping myself imprisoned." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty"We need the other as enemy in order to know who we are." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty"People don't resist change. They resist loss." — Dr. Hugh O'Doherty"The world is a prior unity. It is not that there is a unity yet to be established which you must seek for and work on. Unity is so." — Adi Da Samraj, quotes by Dr. Hugh O'DohertyLinks & ResourcesLectures by Hugh O’Doherty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0I1yMElyFAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLlnwEUKxMQReading Shared in This Episode Adi Da Samraj. Prior Unity: The Basis for a New Human Civilization. Middletown, CA: The Adi Da Foundation Press, 2015.In this short philosophical work, Adi Da argues that humanity's deepest conflicts arise from the assumption of separateness. The book proposes a different starting point: the recognition that the world is already a prior unity, and that transformation begins with awakening to that reality.About Dr. Hugh O'DohertyDr. Hugh O'Doherty is an adjunct lecturer who has taught leadership and conflict resolution at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, and the University of Maryland. Raised in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, his work has focused on peacebuilding and dialogue across deep identity divides.He directed the Ireland–US Public Leadership Program for emerging practitioners from across the political parties in Ireland and led the Inter-Group Relations Project bringing together political and community figures to establish protocols for political dialogue. Hugh has consulted with organizations including the Irish Civil Service, the American Leadership Forum, the Episcopalian Clergy Leadership Program, and the Mohawk Community Leadership Program in Canada. His work has also taken him to Bosnia, Croatia, and Cyprus, and he has addressed the United Nations Global Forum on Reinventing Government.He holds an M.Ed. and Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.Continue the ConversationNew episodes of On the Balcony drop every two weeks. Receive additional reflections and resources at konu.org/balcony.Season Three will turn toward practitioners, people out in the world practicing adaptive leadership: their struggles, experiments, and lessons. If you know someone whose practice we should explore, Michael would love to hear from you.

Join us for What Stayed, a live Season Two gathering.March 31 · Virtual · Free · Limited spots · konu.org/eventsThere are many leadership assessments in the world. Most measure competencies — skills, behaviors, strengths, and gaps. The Leadership Circle begins from a different starting point. It integrates leadership theory, systems thinking, and adult development into a single model that connects behavior to the structure of mind beneath it.In this episode, Michael Koehler and his colleague Judit Teichert sit down with Bill Adams and Bob Anderson — co-founders of The Leadership Circle, long-time pioneers in leadership development, and authors of Scaling Leadership and Mastering Leadership.This conversation is less an explanation of a model and more a reflection on its evolution. Bill and Bob revisit the foundational distinction between reactive and creative leadership, share personal moments of reckoning with their own patterns, and explore what happens when even creative leadership begins to feel insufficient for the scale of today’s adaptive challenges.If reactive leadership is driven by managed anxiety, and creative leadership introduces vision and choice, what comes next?Bill and Bob suggest that the next stage may require something more relational than individual brilliance — a shift toward collective intelligence, deeper self-awareness, and leadership informed not by separateness, but by unity.What You’ll Explore in This EpisodeReactive to CreativeHow strengths, when run reactively, become liabilities. Why development begins when we can see our patterns rather than be run by them. And why reactive leadership is less a comfort zone and more managed anxiety.When Growth Hits a CeilingA powerful story of a CEO who unknowingly capped his organization’s growth — and what changed when he realized he was up against himself.Adaptive challenges cannot be solved from within the very structure that created them.Scaling LeadershipDrawing on over a million survey comments, Bill and Bob describe the central shift in effective leadership: from leading through individual capability to developing people and building collective capacity.Leadership scales when development becomes shared work.The Next StageBob describes what he calls integral leadership — leadership grounded in the presumption, if not the direct realization, of the inherent unity of all things.If our current paradigm is built on separateness, what might leadership look like if it were grounded in unity instead?This episode does not offer easy answers. It invites deeper questions:How do we lead in the unknown?How do we slow down when urgency tempts us to push harder?What if the future emerges not from force — but from listening?Quotes from This Episode“Strengths run reactively have liabilities.”— Bob Anderson“Reactive leadership isn’t a comfort zone. It’s managed anxiety.”— Bob Anderson“I am my own project for life. And it’s a big project.”— Bill Adams“If we want things to change, I have to do most of the changing.”— Bill Adams“Are we going to clean this up neatly? The deep recesses of racism that have been in our lineage for millennia? Patriarchy, violence, war, exploitation? We’re going to clean that up neatly? No. It’s going to be a mess.”— Bob Anderson“Integral leadership is founded on the presumption — if not the direct realization — of the inherent unity of all things.”— Bob AndersonLinks & ResourcesThe Leadership Circlehttps://leadershipcircle.com/YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@TheLeadershipCircleDeep Connect Serieshttps://leadershipcircle.com/deep-connect-series/The Future of Leadership is Integral Informed by Unity White Paperhttps://leadershipcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Future-of-Leadership-Integral-In-formed-by-Unity.pdfUnity Academyhttps://leadershipcircle.com/leadership-coach-certifications/unity-academy/Scaling LeadershipScaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter MostRobert J. Anderson & William A. Adams (2019)Mastering LeadershipMastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business ResultsRobert J. Anderson & William A. Adams (2015)About the GuestsBill Adams is CEO of Full Circle Group and The Leadership Circle, a serial entrepreneur and executive advisor who has worked with CEOs and senior teams across Fortune 500 companies and global organizations.Bob Anderson is Founder and Chairman of The Leadership Circle and co-creator of the Leadership Circle Profile™, integrating adult development, systems thinking, and leadership theory into a comprehensive developmental framework.Continue the ConversationNew episodes of On the Balcony drop every two weeks.Receive reflections and additional resources at:konu.org/balcony

Join us for What Stayed, a live Season Two gathering. March 31 · Virtual · Free · Limited spots · konu.org/eventsMindfulness has become respectable.It improves focus. It reduces stress. It helps leaders perform under pressure.But what if mindfulness isn't primarily about performance?In this episode of On the Balcony, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Matthias Birk—organizational psychologist, executive coach, former Global Head of Coaching & Advisory at Goldman Sachs, Global Director of Partner Development at White & Case, Zen teacher, and founder of Self-Transcendent Leadership.What unfolds is not a conversation about mindfulness as a productivity tool.It's a conversation about perspective.Matthias distinguishes between what he calls within-paradigm mindfulness—using meditation to cope more skillfully within the identity you already inhabit—and beyond-paradigm mindfulness, which loosens that identity altogether.One reduces suffering within the game. The other questions the game itself.At the heart of the episode is a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke:Be forever dead in Eurydice, singingly rise, praisingly rise, back into pure relation. Here, among the vanishing, be—in the realm of demise. Be the pulsating glass, shattered yet of its own vibration. Be—and yet know the non-being's ground, The infinite bottom of your innermost sound. So that you might complete it—this one only time.For Matthias, meditation isn't an accessory to leadership. It's not like playing golf. It's about being fully alive in the here and now—and discovering what remains when achievement, anxiety, and identity begin to soften.What You'll Explore in This EpisodeMeditation before it was fashionable Matthias began practicing Zen as a teenager, long before mindfulness entered corporate vocabulary.Within-paradigm vs. beyond-paradigm mindfulness Mindfulness can help you manage stress inside demanding roles. But it can also invite you to question who you are beyond those roles.Achievement and insecurity From McKinsey to Goldman Sachs to global leadership, Matthias reflects candidly on ambition and belonging—and how meditation shifted his relationship to that inner voice.Self-transcendence Drawing on Abraham Maslow's later work, Matthias explores what it means to move beyond ego-centered striving toward expression, service, and alignment with something larger.Leadership as expression What if leadership isn't about constructing a persona—but about listening deeply enough to express what's already there, this one only time?Quotes from This Episode"Meditation is not a hobby. It's not like playing golf. It's not something you do on the side. It is about being fully alive in the here and now." — Dr. Matthias Birk"If you don't brush your teeth, they're going to rot. If you don't brush your mind, it's going to come up with not great stuff." — Dr. Matthias Birk"The real benefit of mindfulness is that you can live a free life." — Dr. Matthias Birk"One of the saddest things is to live a life and never hear your innermost sound." — Dr. Matthias BirkLinks & ResourcesSelf-Transcendent Leadership — Dr. Matthias Birk https://www.self-transcendent.com/Publications & Articles by Dr. Matthias Birk https://www.matthiasbirk.com/publicationsSelected ArticlesWhy Leaders Need Meditation More Than Ever — Harvard Business Review (March 2020)Now Is a Great Time to Start Practicing Mindfulness — Harvard Business Review (January 2021)Why It Is Important (Especially for Leaders) to Feel Their Fear and Pain — Mindful Magazine (September 2022)At the Beginning You Hold the Structure, Then the Structure Holds You — Tricycle: The Buddhist Review(September 2023)Guided Meditation 7-Minute Guided Mindfulness Meditation — Insight Timerhttps://insighttimer.com/Matthias_Birk/guided-meditations/guided-mindfulness-meditation-2Continue the ConversationNew episodes of On the Balcony drop every two weeks. Receive additional reflections and resources at konu.org/balconyAbout Dr. Matthias BirkDr. Matthias Birk is an organizational psychologist, executive coach, and founder of Self-Transcendent Leadership. He began his career at McKinsey & Company advising clients on leadership development and organizational change, and later served as Global Head of Coaching & Advisory at Goldman Sachs and Global Director of Partner Development at White & Case.He is an ICF-certified executive coach, trained in family therapy at the Ackerman Institute in New York, and has taught leadership for over a decade as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and NYU. He is also a long-time Zen practitioner and teacher at New York's Still Mind Zendo.He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children—and is an equally passionate and mediocre surfer.