Stacking Small Wins

Our History Parts

In Fall 2025, Cameron Conaway opened his office door at Penn State Smeal to find Don Hambrick — one of the most cited management scholars in the world — simply stopping by to say hello. No ego, no performance, just warmth. It was a quiet illustration of the very theory Hambrick is famous for. In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, Cameron connects Hambrick's Upper Echelons Theory to a question every leader is worth sitting with: which three experiences from your history are most shaping how you show up right now? Show Notes: Upper Echelons Theory: An Update — Hambrick (2007) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20159303] 3-Minute Reframe Archive [https://cameronconaway.com/3mr/]

Stacking Small Wins

When it rains it pours — but it can go the other way too. A small win creates the conditions for another, and another, until momentum that started almost imperceptibly becomes real. The trouble is most of us are so wired to notice what's going wrong that we dismiss what's going right as too small to count. In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, Cameron connects poet Samuel Green's idea of "small noticings" to Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer's landmark Progress Principle research — which analyzed nearly 12,000 diary entries to discover that small, forward momentum on meaningful work is the single greatest driver of inner work life. Show Notes: The Progress Principle — Amabile & Kramer, HBS [https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40692] 3-Minute Reframe Archive [https://cameronconaway.com/3mr/]

How Layoffs Changed Us

In 2025, Cameron Conaway was leading one of the best teams of his career at Cisco when the company announced it was laying off 4,000 people. What followed wasn't just grief — it was a quiet, almost invisible shift in behavior. He stopped taking risks. Some colleagues stopped asking for feedback entirely. Others asked for it performatively, hoping visibility would protect them. In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, he connects that experience to a landmark 1981 paper by Barry Staw, Lance Sandelands, and Jane Dutton on threat rigidity — and explores why a threat environment is often the exact moment we become least able to give or receive honest feedback. Show Notes: Threat-Rigidity Effects in Organizational Behavior — Staw, Sandelands & Dutton (1981) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2392337] 3-Minute Reframe Archive [https://cameronconaway.com/3mr/]

Double-Loop Learning

For nearly twenty years, Cameron Conaway bit his nails down to nothing every time he sat down to write. He tried willpower, deterrents, accountability — nothing worked. What he didn't know was that he was fixing the behavior without ever questioning the belief underneath it. In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, he connects that personal story to organizational psychologist Chris Argyris's landmark research on double-loop learning — and leaves you with one question worth a five-minute timer. Show Notes: Double Loop Learning in Organizations — Argyris, HBR (1977) [https://hbr.org/1977/09/double-loop-learning-in-organizations] 3-Minute Reframe Archive [https://cameronconaway.com/3mr/]

Steph Curry, Age 15

Before the championships, before changing the game of basketball forever — Steph Curry spent the worst summer of his life deliberately getting worse. At 15, his father Dell Curry told him his shot had to be completely rebuilt. For three months he could barely make a basket. In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, I use Curry's story to explore one of the most underrated growth skills there is — the willingness to get worse before you get better, and how to know whose feedback is actually worth that kind of sacrifice. Show Notes: It's More Than Just the Shot — Kevin O’Connor, The Ringer [https://www.theringer.com/2019/02/12/nba/steph-curry-warriors-2019-all-star-game-charlotte] 3-Minute Reframe Archive [https://cameronconaway.com/3mr/]