Blog

How to Sync Your Leadership Team’s Skills with Organizational Growth

By Brent Green

If you are a CEO or a senior leader of a growing organization, you know how critical it is to have the right mix of skills, knowledge, and behaviors among your top team to drive growth and performance. How do you adapt your team’s composition and dynamics to match the needs and demands at different … Continue reading How to Sync Your Leadership Team’s Skills with Organizational Growth

Beyond the Paycheck: An Employee Guide to A Dream Job

By Briana Hilton

Employee satisfaction is influenced by factors well beyond the paycheck. Research highlights the crucial role of elements like company culture, leadership quality, opportunities to advance critical skills, and career advancement opportunities in influencing workplace contentment across various income levels. As Open Sourced Workplace notes, organizational culture, leadership behavior, skill development, and career advancement are intertwined, … Continue reading Beyond the Paycheck: An Employee Guide to A Dream Job

Six P’s to peak meeting performance.

By Peter DiGiammarino

Transform the way you participate in board sessions, executive reviews, operating meetings, design and code walkthroughs, All Hands meetings, interviews, and more! Adopt the **Six Ps** for enhanced individual and group performance. Prepare Read materials sent in advance with enough lead-time to reflect on their content. If you are the meeting owner, make it easy … Continue reading Six P’s to peak meeting performance.

Prompt Engineering: How We Put Generative AI to Work For Our Business

By Breanna DiGiammarino

Summary: In just six prompt engineering iterations we achieved real business value with generative Artificial Intelligence in that we are now able to: Significantly reduce the time required to review and assess client submissions using our WHAT-WHO-WHY rubric. Provide a comprehensive evaluation and quality suggestions for each entry. Make explicit and accessible our assessment and … Continue reading Prompt Engineering: How We Put Generative AI to Work For Our Business

Four Steps to a Smooth Transition

By Peter DiGiammarino

Below are four steps to smooth the transition out of a top role. It is critical to execute the steps in order. (See also: Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes by William Bridges): Get Out Clean Most leaders are not experienced at dismissing someone, especially senior people, so your departure may be chaotic and traumatic … Continue reading Four Steps to a Smooth Transition

MtL Workshops: A Proven Way to Accelerate Your Team’s Leadership Skills, Alignment, and Growth

By Peter DiGiammarino

Are you looking for a way to help your team reach its full potential? If so, you may be interested in IntelliVen Manage to Lead (MtL) Workshops. MtL half-day Workshops help leaders develop the skills and knowledge they need to architect, build, govern, and change their organizations. MtL Workshops are based on a proven system … Continue reading MtL Workshops: A Proven Way to Accelerate Your Team’s Leadership Skills, Alignment, and Growth

From Vision to Action! How to Align Your Team and Execute Your Plan

By Whitney Bembenek

In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, having a clear and well-defined strategy to win the game you are playing is critical. It’s the roadmap that guides your organization towards its goals and ensures that every action and decision aligns with your vision. However, crafting and implementing an effective strategy can be a complex and daunting task. … Continue reading From Vision to Action! How to Align Your Team and Execute Your Plan

How AI Chatbots Can Boost Your Content Creation

By Breanna DiGiammarino

AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard can help you create better content faster and more easily by providing relevant feedback, reasoning and resources. This post shares tips and considerations for using AI chatbots to develop content gleaned from experience during a recent IntelliVen content and community development project for a San Francisco-based, fast-growing startup … Continue reading How AI Chatbots Can Boost Your Content Creation

Diligence Support for Federal Sector

By Mark Tice

If you are looking for opportunities to invest in firms that provide professional services and software to the U.S. federal government, you know how challenging it can be to assess the potential and risks of these businesses. Working with the federal government is not just another market, it is more like a different planet. Everything … Continue reading Diligence Support for Federal Sector

The Secret to Creating a Productive Private Company Board of Directors

By David Halwig

Successful, fast-growing private companies often struggle with how to set up and operate a high-functioning board of directors. What tends to evolve is a group of well-intentioned people that meet every few months for a couple of days to learn about all the great things the company is doing instead of having a crisp discussion … Continue reading The Secret to Creating a Productive Private Company Board of Directors

How Our Brains’ Hidden Process Can Sabotage Feedback

By Dennis Werkmeister | May 27, 2023

Feedback is about both performance and perception. For constructive feedback to be received well, and to promote intended change, it helps to understand some things about how our brain works. Our brain makes meaning of the world around us, help us decide the appropriate action for a given situation, and create learning to build a … Continue reading How Our Brains’ Hidden Process Can Sabotage Feedback

What to Do When Your Employees Want More Communication

By Peter DiGiammarino | May 9, 2023

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post was initially drafted by Bing using ChatGPT-4 connected to intelliven.com in response to a client question. See end notes for more. Communication is essential for any organization to succeed. It helps align goals, foster collaboration, build trust, and resolve conflicts. However, many leaders struggle to communicate effectively with their employees, especially … Continue reading What to Do When Your Employees Want More Communication

levels of executive management

How emerging executives can achieve high-impact with key players more senior than themselves.

By Peter DiGiammarino | May 4, 2023

An up-and-coming executive engages with an important sales prospect, client, supplier, partner, or colleague on par with their degree of comfort and security with the other party. The more seniority the other is perceived to have relative to their own, the more anxiety and insecurity is induced, the less is said, and the less impact … Continue reading How emerging executives can achieve high-impact with key players more senior than themselves.

Five Steps to Turn a Prospect into a Sale

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 15, 2023

Developing a systematic approach to cultivating demand for its products and services is a key step in the evolution of every successful organization. Many early-stage leaders long for a silver-bullet solution; that is, they look to hire someone with a lot of contacts and an extroverted personality to hit the market and drum-up demand.  Such … Continue reading Five Steps to Turn a Prospect into a Sale

Will you make sure you and your team accomplish the most important thing in the coming year?

By Peter DiGiammarino | November 29, 2022

Leadership Offsites focus the top team for growth and performance as the current year closes and the next one starts. Offsites are typically of two types: Plan Change – Identify what needs to be done differently to perform better and / or grow faster. Initiative-to-Action – Launch the most important initiative(s). Kurt Lewin, the father of Organization … Continue reading Will you make sure you and your team accomplish the most important thing in the coming year?

The #1 problem with teams is not what you think

By Peter DiGiammarino | August 1, 2022

Every leader needs to know that they and their team agree on the problem they solve for whom. While this seems simple enough, in practice almost nobody in their organization answers in exactly the same way, and even small differences can disrupt operations. Examples, practice cases, and your own case reveal that even well-known firms … Continue reading The #1 problem with teams is not what you think

How to Access Manage to Lead System Workstreams and Tutorials

By Peter DiGiammarino | December 20, 2021

Manage to Lead (MtL) is a system of integrated tools, methods, and principles that executive teams use to pave and follow a reliable path to architect, build, govern, and change their organization for breakthrough improvements in performance and growth. Users frequently comment on how helpful MtL Tools are when preparing: A Business Plan An Investor … Continue reading How to Access Manage to Lead System Workstreams and Tutorials

SETD program

Driving new growth: Don’t assume your team’s skills are right for what’s next

By Peter DiGiammarino | August 24, 2021

In mountain climbing, reaching a mid-mountain plateau is not as fulfilling as ascending to the summit. Rarely will any climber start out to scale a mountain with the idea of stopping at a plateau below the summit. But in planning the assault on the mountain, veteran climbers know that different skills and capabilities are needed … Continue reading Driving new growth: Don’t assume your team’s skills are right for what’s next

breakthrough performance program

Achieve Breakthrough Performance with More Effective Leadership

By Peter DiGiammarino | November 11, 2020

Growth is good. But growth can be really hard. Maybe your organization’s growth has plateaued. Why has it stalled? Is the issue in strategy, alignment, execution, backlog, or capacity? Maybe all these areas? Or maybe you have the opposite problem, and growth is exploding and your team can’t keep up. What needs to change to … Continue reading Achieve Breakthrough Performance with More Effective Leadership

umass

UMass Amherst announces affiliation with IntelliVen

By Peter DiGiammarino | September 9, 2020

September 9, 2020 AMHERST, Mass. – The University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced a new collaboration with IntelliVen, a leading executive team development organization, to provide interactive, remote learning programs designed to raise the performance and effectiveness of leadership teams. The collaboration represents another step in developing a robust portfolio of options for UMass Amherst alumni … Continue reading UMass Amherst announces affiliation with IntelliVen

leadership skills

3 Truths and 6 Power Skills to Master Organization Politics

By Peter DiGiammarino | August 16, 2020

Organization politics make a lot of people uncomfortable. The untrained hope is that if politics are ignored, and if a job is done well, then well-earned rewards will come. Things rarely play out that way.

skills by stage

Case: The Ideal Mix of Sr. Executive Team Skills for Success

By Dr. Brent Green | August 11, 2020

Do you know what your fellow executives need to do to improve but lack the time, training, and skill to share what you know?

Here’s a fast and easy way for executives to tell each other what s/he needs to know to improve.