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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

4 Steps to Engaging Communities to Build Better Products

By Breanna DiGiammarino | June 27, 2023

Tech companies constantly need to decide which products and features they should develop next to drive the most value for users. Listening to and elevating the Voice of the Customer through a community-based approach is an ideal way to inform their decision-making, especially when better meeting current user needs accelerates value. As David Spinks shares … Continue reading 4 Steps to Engaging Communities to Build Better Products

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

Achieve Influence Beyond Your Station: A High Impact Strategy for Emerging Executives

By Peter DiGiammarino | May 4, 2023

Emerging executives often find themselves in situations where they must engage with senior sales prospects, clients, suppliers, partners, or colleagues. Typically, their level of comfort determines how they interact, and when facing someone more senior, feelings of anxiety and insecurity can arise. This often results in holding back, saying less, and ultimately achieving less impact … Continue reading Achieve Influence Beyond Your Station: A High Impact Strategy for Emerging Executives

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

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

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 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