C-Level Lessons Learned

Once the vision is set, the next step is less glamorous—but absolutely critical: Face the truth about where you are. Step 2 in our transformation model is to analyze the current situation and systems. Without this, vision becomes fantasy. You need to understand your reality to chart a course forward. Let’s look at how this step played […]

Every transformation starts with a question: Where are we going—and why should anyone want to follow? Step 1 in the transformation model I’ve used across three successful turnarounds is to create a compelling vision of the future. In this post, I’ll explore how we approached this step in three very different organizations, and what made the

Technology, economics, geopolitics, generational thought processes, your customer’s needs, and your competitors’ offerings are all evolving faster than ever: The At C-Level blog series is designed to help you think through how you can develop the leadership and organizational capacity required to keep your company evolving and thriving well into the future. In At C-Level #1–8, I shared

If you’ve ever led through a transformation, you know: the plan always looks clearer on the whiteboard than it does in real life. In our case, we didn’t move fast enough. We knew we had to shift from low-margin, commodity work to higher-value, engineered solutions. We knew we had to right-size the business. We had

Before becoming CEO, I had contributed to strategy from a functional seat. But now the responsibility was mine: not just to shape the strategy, but to lead it, sell it, and ensure it got executed. I quickly learned that strategy isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a cycle: imagine, align, act, adapt. Over and over. From

While tackling our sales challenges, we also needed to work on another hot fire: operations. We had just acquired a competitor on the other side of the country. On paper, it was a strategic move—more engineering talent, expanded capacity, potential cost savings. In reality, it was chaos. The integration had been rushed. Both our operations

When I became CEO, I had no experience running a sales organization. But I quickly realized we had a serious problem: we were growing fast and losing money even faster. Sales had quadrupled in just a few years. Impressive on paper. But most of that growth came from high-volume, low-margin work—domestic commodity services that barely

Values are easy to talk about. Harder to live. When I stepped into the CEO role, I knew we needed more than a mission and vision. We needed to define how we would behave—especially when things got hard. We needed operating guidelines. From Abstract to Actionable At first, I leaned on familiar principles like the

When I first sat down to write our company’s mission and vision, I realized something uncomfortable: I didn’t actually know the difference. Everyone seemed to have a different definition. Some used the terms interchangeably. Others made them sound overly academic. So I made a decision: I’d define them in a way that was useful to

When I became CEO, I knew I would report to the board. What I didn’t realize was how many more “bosses” I was about to inherit. There were the obvious ones: customers, employees, suppliers. But then there were shareholders. Bankers. Community leaders. Partners. Regulators. Each had different needs, expectations, and definitions of success. And somehow,