Blog

Revenue Leads Expenses

By Peter DiGiammarino

Most leadership teams know the problem. They set an annual revenue target, build spending around it, and move forward as if the planned revenue inflow is already on its way. If revenue later develops more slowly than hoped, the organization is forced to pull back, delay hires, cut initiatives, and explain why the original plan … Continue reading Revenue Leads Expenses

Before You Build, Get Clear

By Peter DiGiammarino

Before You Build, Get Clear AI makes it easier than ever to build, prototype, and automate. It does not make it any less important to think. When the cost of building drops, the cost of building the wrong thing rises. Remember Peter Drucker’s aphorism that ends wtih “… are you doing the right thing?” That is … Continue reading Before You Build, Get Clear

Finding the CEO for What Comes Next

By Peter DiGiammarino

An IntelliVen Insight by Eric Palmer. AI is not a feature cycle. It is a reset of SaaS economics. Eric Palmer, a highly successful Senior Operating Partner with more than 30 years of experience leading private, public, private equity-owned, and venture-backed companies, recently shared what he is seeing across  software businesses. Eric uses and has … Continue reading Finding the CEO for What Comes Next

Time Horizon Discipline

By Peter DiGiammarino

Leaders often say: “We don’t have enough time.” “We’re far from our goals.” “Everything feels urgent.” Most of the time, the issue is not time. It is a mismatch between the decision and the planning horizon. Manage to Lead is built on clarity and disciplined change. Time horizon discipline is part of that clarity. Different … Continue reading Time Horizon Discipline

When Attention Is the Constraint, Focus the Work and the Reviews

By Peter DiGiammarino

Most things go wrong because leaders are spread too thin, not because the work is impossible. When the volume of initiatives outstrips reviewer capacity, important items get little or no attention. Meetings slip. Mental presence drops. The fix is to match what we take on to the attention we can invest, and to raise the … Continue reading When Attention Is the Constraint, Focus the Work and the Reviews

The Architecture of Resilience: How Early Labor Silences Fear in High-Stakes Leadership

By Peter DiGiammarino

By: Richard Block From a very early age, working was a given. It was simply what you did. In reflecting on these early experiences and contrasting them with the lives of my children and grandchildren, I see a significant divide. The loss isn’t just in the paycheck; it is in the “patterns of behavior” that … Continue reading The Architecture of Resilience: How Early Labor Silences Fear in High-Stakes Leadership

From Tool to Teammate: Six Practices That Make AI Work for Us

By Peter DiGiammarino

At IntelliVen, we work from a defined body of leadership and management practice: the Manage to Lead (MtL) System. It is documented in our text, taught in our classes, and organized into more than sixty tools and templates and 70 insights and tutorials. We use these tools every day with clients and trainees and we are … Continue reading From Tool to Teammate: Six Practices That Make AI Work for Us

When there’s no right answer: get input, get commitment, then decide

By Peter DiGiammarino

Calls about who the team counts on for what are hard. Leaders worry about making valued people feel overlooked or diminished. Direct reports mostly want clarity, fair reasoning, and as much scope and recognition as they can reasonably earn. This post offers a way to handle those tensions: get input one-on-one, secure commitment to support … Continue reading When there’s no right answer: get input, get commitment, then decide

Say the Same Words. Mean the Same Things.

By Peter DiGiammarino

Walk into almost any leadership meeting and you will hear the same words: Vision. Strategy. Mandate. Values. Culture. Everyone nods. Everyone is confident they understand. Then you listen a little longer and realize something important: People are using the same words to mean different things … and different words to mean the same things. That … Continue reading Say the Same Words. Mean the Same Things.

Steering Committees: Engaging Stakeholders for Guidance, Commitment, and Growth

By Peter DiGiammarino

Note: A complementary reading for MtL Module 8 Get Help Leaders who “get help” know success comes not from going it alone but from surrounding themselves with structures that strengthen thinking, accountability, and action. In Manage to Lead, we emphasize the value of an Accountability Board, Advisory Board, Coach, and Peer Group. There is another … Continue reading Steering Committees: Engaging Stakeholders for Guidance, Commitment, and Growth

Paying Fair: Four paths to fair pay and succession for private venture executives.

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 25, 2015

Background Public company equity-based pay practices, such as stock, restricted stock, and employee stock options are often a poor fit for private companies committed to reward leaders for performance and growth and to motivate leadership and capital succession. Equity based programs that make sense and work well in a public company come with many ills … Continue reading Paying Fair: Four paths to fair pay and succession for private venture executives.

Empowering Leadership: Cultivating Accountability and Growth in Your Team

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 21, 2015

I tell everyone who works with, or for, me that they are never to do something because I told them to do it. I do not want or expect anyone to do what I ask just because I told them to do it. Instead, I insist they do what they do because: They understand what … Continue reading Empowering Leadership: Cultivating Accountability and Growth in Your Team

Level Titles

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 13, 2015

It is a good practice to separate level titles from job functions. This independence allows general criteria to be applied as it makes sense to a given the job function and in a way that transcends job functions so that we can assign someone to a new role without having to rethink the level-title. The … Continue reading Level Titles

How to reduce risks on important projects.

By Peter DiGiammarino | March 30, 2015

Background on Managing Risk on Important Projects In the context of any strategic initiative involving a significant evolution in systems, process, or organization, risk is the chance that the effort will be less than a complete success … that it will be late, over budget, perform unacceptably when completed, fail to realize the expected business … Continue reading How to reduce risks on important projects.

How to make good decisions even in the face of unresolved issues.

By Peter DiGiammarino | March 23, 2015

Are people in your organization often second-guessing decisions that have been made?
Here’s a disciplined strategy for making decisions that will stick.

Six reasons every leader should join a peer group.

By Peter DiGiammarino | January 17, 2015

Every leader stands to benefit from the opportunity to meet monthly in a professionally facilitated session with about a dozen non-competitive peers who are in similar roles, in similar organizations, and at a similar stage of evolution. Leaders who make the one decision to join, as long as they show up, get six distinct benefits that are hard to achieve any other way: Leaders can be … Continue reading Six reasons every leader should join a peer group.

Leading Beyond Self: The Dynamic Balance of Management and Leadership in Organizational Success

By Peter DiGiammarino | November 12, 2014

Every organization has, or needs, a leader. And it is true that the power of one committed, clever person can make all the difference in the world. But no one individual, even the greatest leader, does anything of much significance alone. The simple truth is that it takes a team to lead an organization. The … Continue reading Leading Beyond Self: The Dynamic Balance of Management and Leadership in Organizational Success

How an Executive Performance Assessment Process helped a COO become a CEO.

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 29, 2014

Leaders of fast growing, early stage organizations operate at such a fast pace that often the last thing there is time to do is assess each member of the top team’s performance to determine how to prepare them for the next stage of evolution. Most team members know each other pretty well. They have a … Continue reading How an Executive Performance Assessment Process helped a COO become a CEO.

World Wide Strategy Week Conference Introduces the Seven Truths

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 23, 2014

Watch the Video above on Manage to Lead: Seven truths to help you Change. The 2014 World Wide Strategy Week, November 4th, featured IntelliVen CEO, PeterD, in a three-person panel on The Role of Leaders in Strategy Success. This seven-minute video introduced Peter and the Seven Truths to conferees.

How CEO’s should use Accountability Boards and Subject Matter Experts to help their organization perform and grow.

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 21, 2014

Every leader stands to benefit from the opportunity to regularly review with outsiders what s/he seeks to do, what has been done to do it, what has happened and what has been learned so far, and what s/he plans to do next. It is harder to set up, operate, and benefit from outside help than it may first … Continue reading How CEO’s should use Accountability Boards and Subject Matter Experts to help their organization perform and grow.

TOP-100, HALL OF FAME AMAZON BUSINESS BOOK REVIEWER, BOB MORRIS INTERVIEW WITH PETERD: PART 2

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 19, 2014

Top-100, Hall-of-Fame Amazon Business Book Reviewer, Bob Morris, recently conducted a two-part interview with IntelliVen CEO, PeterD. Click the image at left to see Part 2.  Click here to see Part 1. Excerpts from Part 2 follow: Morris: In your opinion, what are the most significant differences between great leadership and great management? DiGiammarino: I agree with … Continue reading TOP-100, HALL OF FAME AMAZON BUSINESS BOOK REVIEWER, BOB MORRIS INTERVIEW WITH PETERD: PART 2

Critical Mass for Business radio interview uncovers why peer groups are important to leaders.

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 15, 2014

Ric Franzi, on Critical Mass for Business radio, featured a 50-minute interview yesterday afternoon with Peter DiGiammarino to discuss IntelliVen and Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World. Click the play button below to listen to the entire show. An excerpt from their discussion follows: Franzi:  You have outlined a “Support Structure for … Continue reading Critical Mass for Business radio interview uncovers why peer groups are important to leaders.