Blog

IVOA Is Now Available as a ChatGPT Plugin

By Peter DiGiammarino

OpenAI has approved IntelliVen Operations Advisor (IVOA) for public availability as a ChatGPT plugin. Learn how to install and use IVOA to apply Manage to Lead methods, templates, tutorials, and rubrics directly in everyday leadership work.

Help Young People Choose Where to Grow

By Peter DiGiammarino

A simple visual exercise helps young people choose which skills to develop and gives parents, grandparents, mentors, and coaches a window into their thinking.

How Leadership Teams Build and Maintain Shared Clarity

By Peter DiGiammarino

Leadership teams perform better when they make individual thinking visible, work through different views, and develop shared clarity they can use.

Learning to Think Together

By Peter DiGiammarino

Leadership teams develop shared understanding by learning to think through important questions together. The progression is simple: What I think. What you think. What we think. What more we can discern. What we say. This progression describes a discipline that leadership teams can apply to virtually any consequential issue. Practiced repeatedly, the discipline becomes part … Continue reading Learning to Think Together →

Conversations Every Fast-Growing Leadership Team Needs

By Peter DiGiammarino

The people who work closely with leaders often know things about their strengths, contributions, and opportunities to grow that the leaders themselves cannot see. A simple, facilitated reflection process can turn that collective knowledge into meaningful leadership development.

Talk to Anyone. Direct No One.

By Peter DiGiammarino

Leaders need direct communication across organization levels to understand what is happening and test whether their messages are getting through. The key is to communicate freely without creating competing lines of authority.

How Manage to Lead Fits Together

By Peter DiGiammarino

Manage to Lead is an integrated leadership operating system that helps leadership teams develop shared understanding, improve organization performance, and create the conditions under which others can successfully lead.

The Meaning of Manage to Lead

By Peter DiGiammarino

Why Manage to Lead? The name reflects three complementary ideas: people manage in order to lead, the work of leadership must itself be managed, and leadership excellence requires the discipline to “manage” to lead. Together they form the philosophy behind the Manage to Lead leadership operating system.

Developing Shared Ways of Thinking and Working

By Peter DiGiammarino

Leadership teams develop shared ways of thinking and working by making thinking visible, strengthening it together, and cultivating leadership disciplines that shape organizational culture.

Making Thinking Visible

By Peter DiGiammarino

Leadership teams can only examine, improve, and build upon thinking that becomes visible. This essay explores why revealing observations, assumptions, reasoning, and questions enables leadership teams to develop stronger shared understanding, make better decisions, and improve organization performance.

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 →

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.

PowerTips Unscripted: Peter DiGiammarino — Get Clear. Align. Grow.

By Peter DiGiammarino | November 30, 2019

Episode blurb IntelliVen Principal Peter DiGiammarino joins hosts Mark and Victoria to unpack core ideas from “Manage to Lead: Seven Truths”—how leaders get clear, get aligned, and turn strategy into results. Peter also shares the education and career milestones that shaped the MtL approach and today’s Strategic Leadership Immersion Program. What listeners will learn The … Continue reading PowerTips Unscripted: Peter DiGiammarino — Get Clear. Align. Grow. →

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

By Peter DiGiammarino | September 19, 2019

Most acquisitions and alliances fall well short of their original expectations. However strong they look on paper, execution is far harder than it first appears. The good news is that practical experience shows there are concrete steps that can materially improve the odds of success. Why Acquire or Ally The reason for one organization to … Continue reading How to increase the odds of success with a strategic acquisition or alliance →

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

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 →

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. Ten years into my career, I was running a fast-growing practice when the EVP of Consumer Lending at the Bank of America, our … Continue reading How to Prepare for High-Stakes Events →

Characteristics and Concerns of Five Organization Evolution Stages

By Peter DiGiammarino | November 6, 2018

Organizations almost always progress through five more-or-less well-defined evolutionary growth stages: Concept Startup Credible Sustainable Mature. The Five Stages of Organization Maturity The five stages of organization evolution are defined by key characteristics, operating agenda, economics, and key concerns as summarized below. Concept Stage A new organization starts out as an idea, or Concept. A … Continue reading Characteristics and Concerns of Five Organization Evolution Stages →

Get Clear

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 18, 2018

The purpose of a business is to solve a problem for a customer…which begs this question: WHAT solution does your organization provide to WHO and WHY do they pay for it? A way to think about it is that there are three dimensions to any business: WHAT, WHO, and WHY or in terms of Market … Continue reading Get Clear →

Don’t Just Change: Perform Better and Grow Faster

By Peter DiGiammarino | July 26, 2018

Strategic Leadership is to change your organization the way you want. You don’t just want change, though, because change means different, not necessarily better. We could say develop, which implies better, but towards what end? More specifically we want to improve, but in what ways? What we want is to improve how well we do what we do, … Continue reading Don’t Just Change: Perform Better and Grow Faster →

Your Case is the Course

By Peter DiGiammarino | June 12, 2018

Any organization is more likely to reach its potential to perform and grow when its leaders are clear about their organization today, where it is headed next and why, and when they know how it will get there. Strategic Leadership: Manage to Lead Using the Seven Truths introduces a straightforward yet rigorous way to describe and assess any organization as it exists and as its … Continue reading Your Case is the Course →

Manage to Lead Immersion Program: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 16, 2018

The Manage to Lead Immersion Program: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World from IntelliVen-U is available to executive leadership teams for the first time ever this summer. The program was originally developed for masters students at American University and subsequently also offered at the University of San Francisco and Golden Gate University. Executives have been … Continue reading Manage to Lead Immersion Program: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World →