People Strategy Playbook
Timely people strategy insights for high growth leaders and their investors as they navigate the relentless challenges of the growth gauntlet.
The Growth Journey of a Founder CEO: “The Shadow of a Leader”
In the early stages of a company, Founder CEOs are closer to peers than bosses. Everyone is working around the clock to make the business work. Relationships are often personal and somewhat informal. As the company grows, new employees join the company and the...
Navigating the Leadership Maze: A Guide for First-Time Managers (Part 2)
In our previous blog, we discussed three of the common challenges new leaders face: (1) Communicating with your team in a way that boosts engagement and productivity; (2) Delegating effectively; (3) Managing your time. In this blog, we are continuing our conversation....
Navigating the Leadership Maze: Tips for Struggling Middle Managers
Over the past two years, I have seen a dramatic rise in the number of middle managers seeking coaching because they are overwhelmed and uncertain of how to effectively manage their teams. They are putting pressure on themselves, but they are also feeling...
Lost in Translation: A Leadership Communication Conundrum
We all remember that old game of “Telephone” or “Pass it Down.” You whisper a phrase to the person next to you, they pass it on, and by the time it reaches the end of the line, "Three Blind Mice" has transformed into "Freeze, Pine, Rice." The changes are amusing. Now...
Sharpen Focus: OKRs vs. EOS
As companies grow and scale, injecting accountability structures into the culture becomes critical. As Peter Drucker famously said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Currently, two of the most popular goal setting frameworks are John Doerr’s Objectives...
What’s the Status of Remote Work in 2023?
One of the hot topics of 2023 in boardrooms and around leadership tables continues to be remote work. The pandemic is over, but companies are still struggling to attract their talent back to the office full time. I am often asked about the state of remote work and...
Why Do So Many Leadership Development Programs Not Get Results?
Hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours are spent worldwide on leadership development. Yet, study after study shows that most leadership programs don’t result in any meaningful improvement long term. Where’s the disconnect? Why do some...
Discovering the Top Three Skills Your Middle Managers Need
In the world of coaching and development, middle managers are gaining more attention. While executives and senior leaders often receive coaching, it's crucial to invest in the growth of middle managers too. These managers are often battlefield promotions and find...
Applying the Growth Gauntlet
We created The Growth Gauntlet to help leaders build high performing and sustainable organizations. The framework charts the evolution of our Six Imperatives: Sharpen Focus, Calibrate Culture, Strengthen Leadership, Elevate Talent, Align Structure and Amplify...
Amplifying Communication
Communication is the lifeblood of every company. It determines how aligned, productive, and healthy the company is. Communication provides and circulates the information needed for an organization to function, and areas where communication does not flow are inhibited...
Aligning Structure
“Structure follows strategy” is my mantra. Organizational structures, processes and systems exist to help you achieve your strategy. They provide clarity of roles and boundaries between functions. Processes are designed to advance work through the organization and...
Three Ways to Elevate Talent
Your organization can’t outperform its talent. As you grow and your organization becomes more complex, it becomes necessary to level up your talent. Current employees may need to step up into new responsibilities and new hires with different skills will be required....
Strengthening Leadership
An organization can’t outscale its leadership. Leaders are the load-bearing walls of a building. They are the infrastructure – and, as with construction, you can only scale to the size your infrastructure will support. As an organization grows, it must constantly...
Culture is the Boss
A lot has been written about organizational culture. Dr. Edgar Schein, renowned professor at MIT Sloane School of Business, considered the grandfather of organizational culture, describes culture as having three components: artifacts, espoused values, and underlying...
Sharpening Your Focus
Sharpening your focus seems obvious enough, but when your company has multiple opportunities and a host of growth-related challenges it can be hard to do. Plus, how you go about sharpening your focus changes at each stage of a company’s growth. As an early-stage...
The Four Stages of High Growth
Our practice has largely focused on high growth companies who have raised capital from private equity investors. High growth businesses, particularly those that are private equity backed, have an added dimension of complexity - limited time and resources. The PE...
Introducing the Six Imperatives for High Growth
Growth is hard. Taking an idea from inception and turning it into a stable, predictable, sustainable double-digit year over year high growth company is one of the most exciting and excruciating challenges a leader will face. It’s a 24/7 job that can often feel like...
2022 Growth Gauntlet Survey Results
We are excited to share the results of our first Organizational Growth Survey! We developed the survey in partnership with our colleagues at SSM Partners, a growth equity investment firm, and invited the CEOs of a select group of high growth, early-stage, SaaS and...
Innovation vs. innovation
Innovate or die. The accelerated pace of technology disruption is putting companies under increasing pressure to innovate. But many companies miss the fact that there are two kinds of innovation and to win, you need to be good at both. “Capital I” Innovation...
Unconscious Bias and the Remote Workplace
Among all of the challenges and opportunities presented by COVID-19, there is a potential impact that that isn’t being discussed very much – if at all: The remote work situation provides fertile ground for unconscious bias. As I talked about in a previous blog,...
The Dark Side of the “Family” Culture
I have worked with many companies who have described their culture first and foremost as “a family.” What they generally mean is that they greatly value the relationships that they have with their colleagues at work. Though there is nothing wrong with building strong...
You Don’t Have to Go it Alone: Executive Coaching Through Crisis and Beyond
The old adage “it’s lonely at the top” has endured for generations because it is a universal truth. As an Executive Leader, you are responsible for the decisions and actions of every employee in the organization. You are responsible, not only for making sure the...
The Crisis in 3 Phases
Co-Authored by Katie Spencer & Meg Crosby We have all been swept up in a tsunami of change that hit us hard and fast and has left us disoriented, exhausted, and with miles and miles to swim before we’re back on dry land. As we look to the horizon and plot our...
100,000 Opportunities to Build or Dilute Your Culture – Lessons from Delta
Last year, I was asked to serve on a panel in Atlanta with senior executives of Cox Automotive, Rheem Manufacturing, and Delta to share insights on cultivating an effective culture. Cox Automotive, Rheem, and Delta were on the panel because of their vigilant...
What We’re Reading: Blitzscaling
If your company is growing rapidly, then this book is for you! Blitzscaling is loosely defined as the playbook for “building a dominant world-leading business in record time.” Most importantly, Blitzscaling requires prioritizing “speed over efficiency in the face of...
You Can’t Leave without Telling Me!
Recently, I was out of town facilitating a Board/CEO retreat. The retreat was incredibly productive. Everyone willing to put tough issues on the table and candidly discuss them. At the end of the retreat, strained relationships had been strengthened, expectations had...
Leading an Investor-Backed Company
Growth is a double-edged sword. Success provides the opportunity to grow. Growth is a reward for hard work and success. And yet, growth is hard. It often requires a new focus, new leadership, different skills, and possibly a new structure. As CEO, you are tasked with...
Structure Follows Strategy
I was recently in a Board Governance Committee meeting discussing expanding the board. The CEO presented us with a list of possible candidates and asked, “Who on this list should we add?” Cue my mantra: “structure follows strategy.” We can’t answer that question...
Performance Management is Evolving: The New Paradigm
The necessity of developing talent is at an all-time high; yet, prehistoric performance reviews roam free – devouring hours of productivity and lowering morale without having any meaningful impact on organizational performance. Most HR departments don’t believe annual...
Talent Development Is a State of Mind
Years ago, McKinsey popularized the phrase “The War for Talent,” and warned that the companies who were best at acquiring and developing high quality talent would be the most successful. Fortune 100 companies answered the call, as did many companies in Silicon Valley,...