Blog

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

Federal Sales

By Peter DiGiammarino | November 8, 2017

The best federal sales executives find that just three things lead to more wins than losses: Excellent client relationship. A number one or two ranked technical proposal. A price within 2-3% of the lowest bidder. A well thought out, implementable selling system should assure these three tenets are in place. That is what it takes … Continue reading Federal Sales

CEO Role

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 9, 2017

Every organization has, or needs, a leader. And it is true that the power of one committed, clear person can make all the difference in the world. But no one individual, even the greatest leader, does anything of much significance alone. The best leaders know that it is not all about them. It is about … Continue reading CEO Role

Leader Exit

By Peter DiGiammarino | September 16, 2017

At an as yet unspecified time in the near future, the revered leader of a high-functioning team must exit, due to age, health, opportunity, or some other compelling reason. The way the team sees it, the exiting leader must bring in a new leader or anoint someone from within, though no team member is clearly the … Continue reading Leader Exit

Quitting Benefits

By Peter DiGiammarino | July 9, 2017

Most people have no idea to what they are entitled when and if they quit their job. AboutUnemployment.org demystifies the rules relating to benefit entitlement upon employee-initiated termination in their article: Can You Collect Unemployment If You Quit?.   Good cause If you are laid off or made redundant, you are eligible for unemployment benefits. In the … Continue reading Quitting Benefits

At Your Service

By Peter DiGiammarino | June 3, 2017

Service business ideas are a dime-a-dozen. The question is: Which ones will be successful?” One way to find out is to implement the idea. Another is to do the math before taking even the first step. Watch this comic scene from Opportunity Knocks in which a businessman uses careful logic as he stumbles into a … Continue reading At Your Service

Equity Rules

By Peter DiGiammarino | April 6, 2017

One of the hardest things for an owner/founder/operator to do is motivate others to perform and grow to their full potential. Watch how the  pride and endurance of a race horse transforms a struggling team into winners in this inspiring scene from Seabiscuit. Equity models are strategic because: “Who gets What” defines “Who You Are!”  That is, the … Continue reading Equity Rules

Profits Interest vs Options

By Peter DiGiammarino | November 30, 2016

Do you wonder what is the easiest, least expensive, and most flexible approach an owner/founder/operator can use to attract and motivate top talent? This post introduces Mark C Bronfman’s article on using Profits Interests vs Options to install simple, flexible, and highly effective executive incentive plans. Profits Interest and why we need it Founders who still … Continue reading Profits Interest vs Options

How a new skill becomes core to leadership.

By Peter DiGiammarino | October 22, 2016

A new competence integrates into a leader’s skill set in a three-stage sequence. It was true for Information Technology (IT) competence over the past 60 years. It is proving true again for Organization Development (OD) competence. It will be true again for DEI competence. (Excerpted from the Get Loose Chapter of “Manage to Lead: Seven … Continue reading How a new skill becomes core to leadership.

How to develop leaders, teams, and organizations that perform to their potential.

By Peter DiGiammarino | September 19, 2016

If you’ve been in charge for a while and it feels like performance and growth are not where you want them to be, you probably know that you are likely headed in the wrong direction. Every leader, team, and organization eventually hits an inflection point. There IS a solution. The first step is to take … Continue reading How to develop leaders, teams, and organizations that perform to their potential.

How leaders can save civilization.

By Peter DiGiammarino | August 23, 2016

Introducing Co-Leadership Co-operative leadership, or co-leadership, is when two or more leaders deploy their individual great strengths as a collective whole in pursuit of a common goal. Co-leadership can cause an organization to experience extraordinary results, in a short time, and at low cost. The Next Evolutionary Leadership Stage that Could Save Our Planet This IntelliVen insight … Continue reading How leaders can save civilization.

Four Kinds of Help

By Peter DiGiammarino | July 11, 2016

When it is time to start planning but the top team is maxed-out just keeping up with operations, outside help may be just the thing. But what kind of help is best to get?

Do we ask a potential hire what their parents told them when they spilled milk?

By Peter DiGiammarino | May 25, 2016

It wasn’t Sigmund Freud, but the 19th century poet William Wordsworth who said, “The child is the father of man.“ But Freud, of course, would have agreed in that he argued that most, if not all, of the foundation for who we are as adults is cast in the first five years. So, what are we to make of this? … Continue reading Do we ask a potential hire what their parents told them when they spilled milk?