Blog

How Our Brains’ Hidden Process Can Sabotage Feedback

By Peter DiGiammarino

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 brains works. Our brains make 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

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

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

By Peter DiGiammarino

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

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

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

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

By Peter DiGiammarino

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

Achieve Breakthrough Performance with More Effective Leadership

By Peter DiGiammarino

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 Amherst announces affiliation with IntelliVen

By Peter DiGiammarino

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

3 Truths and 6 Power Skills to Master Organization Politics

By Peter DiGiammarino

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.

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

By Dr. Brent Green

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.

Key to Operating Success in a Crisis

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 2, 2020

With baby boomers entering their last stages, Private Equity invested in senior residences ahead of the certain increase in demand as an aging population would surely seek community, comfort, support, and safety from communal living. COVID-19 changed the calculus overnight. WeWork and Airbnb represent two more niches that are forever changed…as are many more.

WORK FROM HOME PRACTICES THAT WORK

By Ian Sander | March 11, 2020

With COVID-19 driving so many to work remotely, we want to share tips and best practices collected from having worked remotely almost exclusively over the past few years as well as from recent research. Our goal is to maintain high performance for members of our community while fostering safe, productive, and sustainable working conditions for … Continue reading WORK FROM HOME PRACTICES THAT WORK

The importance of executive leadership team meetings and how to run them

By Eric Palmer | March 3, 2020

Executive Leadership Team meetings are critical to a business achieving scale. Even with infinite grit, determination, drive, and brilliance, leadership responsibilities must eventually be assigned such that a system to keep things coming together for collective leadership attention is required.

WHAT WHO WHY

Tips to consultants helping organization leaders create THEIR WHAT-WHO-WHY

By Eric Palmer | February 23, 2020

Before leaders set out to change their organization, it helps to be ready to change. To get ready to change, leaders should be clear about their organization as it currently exists. A good place for them to start is with their organization’s purpose. The purpose of an organization is to solve a problem for a … Continue reading Tips to consultants helping organization leaders create THEIR WHAT-WHO-WHY

leadership ideas to organization benefits

Long-time IntelliVen Client Enrolls Five Teams in Exclusive Manage to Lead Immersion Program Cohort

By Peter DiGiammarino | February 14, 2020

A Washington DC based management consulting firm that helps organizations experiencing disruption to set their strategy and then align their culture with that strategy to achieve breakthrough performance improvement has chosen Manage to Lead as a foundational component of their leadership development and client delivery methodology.

pete

Former student named one of 100 fastest growing inner-city businesses

By Peter DiGiammarino | February 3, 2020

We are humbled and honored to be a part of Pete Merzbacher’s journey and for his kind words towards me and the IntelliVen team.

How to get a rogue team member back on board without drama or disruption

By Peter DiGiammarino | January 7, 2020

Every leader eventually finds they have a toxic executive team member who behaves poorly, spreads discontent, or otherwise goes off track and holds the core leadership team, and the organization, hostage indefinitely.  As the leader, it is up to you to do something, but you avoid confronting the offender perhaps because you are averse to … Continue reading How to get a rogue team member back on board without drama or disruption

cracking the execution code at compusearch software systems (1)

Case Study: Cracking the Execution Code at Compusearch Software Systems

By Peter DiGiammarino | December 3, 2019

Compusearch had always been an innovative company but operations needed to mature. Here’s the story behind how the management team, working with The Carlyle Group and IntelliVen, got clear, aligned, and grew to be sold for ~4X invested capital in 5 years.

STRATEGIC ACQUISITION OR ALLIANCE

How to increase the odds of success with a strategic acquisition or alliance

By Peter DiGiammarino | September 19, 2019

Posted 6/10/2012, Updated 9/19/2019 Most acquisitions and alliances severely underperform relative to expectations set at the time of their inception. No matter how great they look on paper, it is always a lot harder to make things come out anywhere near where they were meant to be than it seemed at the start.  Fortunately, based … Continue reading How to increase the odds of success with a strategic acquisition or alliance

make a graceful exit - transition plan for ceos

Transition Plan for CEOs

By Peter DiGiammarino | August 29, 2019

What To Do Between Your Exit and Next Position We wrote a post about how to make a graceful exit (especially when it’s involuntary) that explored what steps to take when leaving your position. This post is the follow-up that dives into how to identify, assess, and consolidate lessons learned to find the right next … Continue reading Transition Plan for CEOs

How Top CEOs Manage Their Time

How Top CEOs Manage Their Time

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 22, 2019

Time Management for Leaders and Aspiring Leaders After reviewing the draft news release announcing my latest promotion (many years back) and offering her congratulations, our press agent exclaimed with some dismay that: “…now you’ll have even LESS time than ever!” I remember remarking smartly in reply that she was wrong, and that I still had … Continue reading How Top CEOs Manage Their Time

Businessman in a video conference

How to Prepare for High-Stakes Events

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 8, 2019

Success favors the prepared! When the stakes are high, there is no substitute for getting so ready that your odds of success go way up, even if what was planned never happens.