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Conversations Every Fast-Growing Leadership Team Needs

By Peter DiGiammarino

As organizations grow, leadership conversations naturally focus on strategy, fundraising, sales, product, and operations. Those conversations are essential. Yet one conversation often receives far less attention than it deserves, even though it may have the greatest impact on the organization’s future: What do the people around me know about my leadership that I don’t? Every … Continue reading Conversations Every Fast-Growing Leadership Team Needs

If executive offsites are so valuable, why do we only have one or two a year?

By Peter DiGiammarino

Executive offsites have been part of running a business for decades because they work. Leaders wouldn’t continue investing the time, money, and energy it takes to step away from the day-to-day business if they didn’t. Organizations have become increasingly distributed, while AI has dramatically expanded what leadership teams can accomplish together between meetings. Together, those … Continue reading If executive offsites are so valuable, why do we only have one or two a year?

MtL Alumni: Strategy Offsites Start Before You Go

By Peter DiGiammarino

Great strategy discussions start before people walk into the room. As planning season approaches, remember that the best discussions never begin when leadership gathers for an offsite. They begin weeks earlier. Strong teams clarify and share their thinking before they meet. They compare perspectives, challenge assumptions, sharpen priorities, and work together toward a shared understanding of … Continue reading MtL Alumni: Strategy Offsites Start Before You Go

Your Team’s Leadership Workspace is Now Available

By Peter DiGiammarino

For years, IntelliVen has helped leaders: Get Clear. Align. Grow. Together. Effective leadership requires clear thinking, disciplined execution, and alignment across decisions and actions. With this post, we announce the availability of the IntelliVen Leadership Workspace, a collaborative environment that brings together the Manage to Lead tools with AI-guided support to help leadership teams draw … Continue reading Your Team’s Leadership Workspace is Now Available

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

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

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.

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.

Ten Steps to Drive Change from the Inside

By Peter DiGiammarino | August 8, 2020

If you are frustrated by an organization resistant to embracing a change you believe is right, consider using the following steps as a road map to seeing your ideas through to reality.

Private Equity investors leverage intelligence as well as Dollars

By Peter DiGiammarino | August 4, 2020

Private equity (PE) investors have come a long way since they first appeared shortly after World War II. Their initial edge was their ability to do financial engineering where debt was used to make every dollar invested (note, invested dollars are called equity) generate a return multiple times what was originally invested (a.k.a.: multiple of … Continue reading Private Equity investors leverage intelligence as well as Dollars

How Leaders Learn From Those With a Stake in Their Success

By Peter DiGiammarino | July 24, 2020

There is now even more change in how leaders and followers relate. Specifically, we see more emphasis on a leader’s capacity to build and sustain an inclusive and high-trust relationship with a loyal, capable, and motivated followership.

How to Make Meetings Powerful Using a Pen

By Peter DiGiammarino | July 22, 2020

There really is “power in the pen”.  The person who takes notes on meeting and then drafts and distributes the Meeting Record is demonstrating leadership.

3 Levels of Human Identity Can Be Used to Build Relationships Across Difference

By Peter DiGiammarino | July 19, 2020

To start, it helps to have common language and frameworks that make it possible to understand the complexities of communication dynamics posed by working across social group identities such as age, ability, gender, culture, class, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status.

A Practical Guide to Building and Running a High-Performing Board

By Peter DiGiammarino | June 28, 2020

There is a lot more value that can be derived from working with the board but it takes a lot of work in building, cultivating, and working with boards.