#1 AMAZON BESTSELLING LEADERSHIP BOOK

UNCOMMON SENSE

The Fight to Fix Your Workplace Culture in the Wild West of Business

STOP WORSHIPPING THE PROBLEM.
BUILD A CULTURE THAT SOLVES IT.

Your organization does not need more leadership theory. It needs a practical way to move ownership closer to the work, turn problems into proposed solutions, and convert vision into execution.

35+

Years Leading in the Trenches

15

Mergers & Integrations

12+

Different Industries

$4.5B+

Shareholder Value Created

THE PROBLEM ON YOUR DESK IS RARELY THE ONLY PROBLEM.

Most organizations do not lack smart people, good intentions, or ambitious goals.

Yet unfinished work, unclear ownership, and recurring problems continually travel upward until the executive table absorbs them. The people closest to the work wait for answers. Leaders work harder. The same problems return wearing different clothes.

Uncommon Sense exposes the organizational current producing that burden—and shows leaders how to reverse it.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

  • Replace problem worship with problem solving.

  • Move ownership closer to the work.

  • Build vision and subvision.

  • Put structure before people.

  • Require proposed solutions.

  • Raise the bar without increasing executive burden.

THE LANGUAGE PEOPLE REMEMBER

  • Asking a Cat to Bark

  • The Rattlesnake in the Baby Crib

  • The Square-Wheeled Wagon

  • The Scorpion and the Frog

  • The CTO Who Took the Baby Hostage

  • If You Aren’t Wrecking, You Aren’t Riding

The Melisms make complicated leadership failures easy to see—and difficult to unsee.

THE UNCOMMON SENSE SYSTEM™

FOUR PILLARS THAT CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR TRACTION

01

MAKE THE TOWN SAFE™

ELIMINATE CULTURE BANDITS

Remove the friction and toxic behaviors that erode trust. Create a safe environment where good people can focus, contribute, and execute.

02

LOWER THE SLOPE™

REMOVE UNNECESSARY RESISTANCE

Fix the broken systems, unnecessary resistance, and square wheels that make talented people fight the organization to do their jobs.

03

ALIGN THE TEAM™

BUILD STRUCTURE AND SHARED LANGUAGE

Clarify roles, accountability, and shared language so leaders move in the same direction and decisions happen faster.

04

RAISE THE BAR™

ACCELERATE HEALTHY PERFORMANCE

Once the town is safe and the team is aligned, ownership rises, speed increases, and performance accelerates—without sacrificing the culture.

“The book stands on its own—practical, relevant, and useful at every level. I highlighted it as a senior leader, then bought it for the entire team. The language got sharper. Ownership moved closer to the work.”

— Senior Executive, Fortune 100 Company

Mel Blackwell

LEADERS INSPIRE PEOPLE WITH THE VISION—THEN CREATE THE CONDITIONS TO ACHIEVE IT.

Make the Town Safe. Lower the Slope.

Align the Team. Raise the Bar.

That is how you build a problem-solving culture where everyone does their own job—at and above goal.

TALK WITH MEL →

BUILT IN THE ARENA

HE DIDN’T STUDY HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURE.

HE LED IT.

For 35 years, Mel Blackwell led teams directly in the trenches—as a key executive, corporate fixer, turnaround leader, and operator accountable for turning vision into execution.

Across startups, established enterprises, 15 mergers and integrations, and 12+ industries, he helped create more than $4.5 billion in shareholder value.

Year after year, annual budget increases and rising shareholder expectations demanded more from the business. Mel learned that those expectations could not be met sustainably by executives pushing harder from the top. The organization performed better when problems and goals were embraced by the people closest to the work—pulled down, owned, solved, and pushed back up with stronger answers and exceptional results.

That discipline became even more critical during treacherous turnarounds, when organizations had ventured onto thin ice and could no longer afford confusion, delay, or problem worship.

Mel built Uncommon Sense Cultures where leaders established a clear, high bar—and the people closest to the work reached up, took ownership, pulled the goal and the problem down, built the how, solved what stood in the way, and pushed stronger solutions and results back up.

Different industries. Different decades. Different economic and regulatory conditions. The same operating result: people owned stretch goals, solved problems where they occurred, and delivered at and above goal.

AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER, PAPERBACK, KINDLE, AND AUDIOBOOK

COMMON SENSE MAY HAVE BROUGHT YOU THIS FAR.

UNCOMMON SENSE CAN CHANGE THE CURRENT.

Stop carrying the same problems. Start building the culture capable of solving them.

Signed copies and bulk orders are available for leadership teams, conferences, and executive events.