One-shot. The small R&D team had been working for months, laying the groundwork for what they hoped would be a dramatic new product. It seemed like it had it all: market runway, clients who were accessible by the existing team, and good utilization of the firm’s existing capabilities. Unfortunately, many firms have a process that […]
Every airport is fundamentally the same. At its simplest, it’s a way to connect passengers to airplanes – and then put them back into the world once they’ve landed. Like Chutes and Ladders for adults, the airplane is simply a reality accelerator. You go in the airport door and come out somewhere new (averaging 400 […]
It seemingly comes from nowhere and is one of the most frequent symptoms that lead to firms reaching out for help. The call usually goes something like this: “We have a leader who has served extraordinarily well in [insert previous significant role]. We recently gave them responsibility in this new area, and it’s not going […]
I was observing a team meeting with a group earlier this year and it happened right before my eyes. The team had just finished a robust discussion and had done great work to diagnose the cross-functional issue. The team leader had looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement about the context and […]
There is dialogue in the press these days that suggests we have hit the top of our ability to drive economic growth – and a recession may be around the corner. What this means to many people, is that we should begin to be conservative with our firm’s investments and pull back to essentials only. […]
I was working with an R&D leader in a large manufacturing firm with the focus of jumpstarting vibrancy in their core markets. The presenting issue was the sales force was reporting that their portfolio did not have the gravitas it once did, and the competition was taking advantage in some of their most profitable […]
It’s one of the biggest sand traps for firms as they start to grow – particularly for those founders that have built the firm from the ground up and who are known as scrappy problem solvers. These founders and their teams become driven by finding the next new problem, and for some time, their intuition […]
I have been doing some coaching work with cross-functional teams in mature organizations and one topic that comes up over and over again is this: when a team finds some process or data that indicates something is clearly not delivering the desired outcome, how do they speak the truth to Senior Leadership? Many of you […]
Having been on both coasts, as well as Canada, to meet with multiple clients has confirmed something I’ve been hearing for awhile: demand is up and businesses are seeing a resurgence in their top lines. With the structures they’re using to fulfill business demands close to capacity, as well as an ongoing talent shortage, it’s […]
When answering the question in the title, the answer that comes to mind first is to hire more people. But as we’ll dive into below, there’s a lot more to it than that. Some of my recent travels have provided me the opportunity to spend time with more than a dozen CEO’s of growing mid-sized […]
