As the excitement of landing a new executive role sinks in, the pressure begins. How will you come in and demonstrate visible leadership in your first 100 days? How will you make a significant enough contribution early on to validate the company’s choice in hiring you? How will you build the necessary ‘street cred’ to…

Build Organizational Resilience By Stopping Inequality

“The more you understand the human condition, the better you are as a business person. Human depth makes business sense.” – Peter Koestenbaum It has been a rough couple of months. Tough enough that we are finally starting conversations about how to build resilience. Tough enough to warrant organizations asking that question, and individuals…

A Foundation For Resilience This is the Spit Bank Lighthouse. It doesn’t look like much, but this structure has stood in the middle of Ireland’s Cork Harbour since 1853 and there is an awful lot we can learn from it as we recover from a pandemic. In 1833, the lighthouse was but a dream in…

This season of uncertain times with no clear end in sight has reinforced my belief that resilience is the single most important character of a leader. Now more than ever, we all need resilience. As we drift farther and farther from what we knew as normal, it seems increasingly unlikely that whatever ‘normal’ was, will…

As the debate on when to ease restrictions wages on and we all get tired of hearing about this ‘new normal’ we can’t seem to define, many leaders are struggling with a lack of things they can control about their organization and team’s future. I hear, ‘we just don’t know’ from clients multiple times a…

There’s no question, for most of us, these have been some tough weeks. For some, the impact has been minimal. Maybe you’re adjusting to working from home and dealing with the challenge of moving meetings around and trying to do things virtually. For others, the stress of quarantine, impacts on family members, and economic hits…

Leading through disruption is tough. If you’re currently in that situation, there’s no easy way to get through it. It’s even more difficult if people are not on the same page, working in different spaces, dealing with their own family challenges related to the crisis, and you’ve got to ‘herd the cats’ to make something…

Have you ever been driving a car headed towards your new home, having recently moved, only to find yourself suddenly turning down the familiar street towards your old home? How did that happen? I’ll tell you how. You were so busy thinking about something else – your conscious mind was so “off-line” – that your…

Have you had that moment when you have to tell someone they aren’t performing well? When they pride themselves on being good at the very thing you’re about to tell them they aren’t? It’s that moment when you swallow hard, your mouth goes dry, and secretly you pray that they’ll listen and won’t come up…

It is no longer enough to do things better, faster, and cheaper. The challenges leaders face today are more complex and don’t have a simple solution.

Predictions tell us that 2020 will be the year of disruption. Is your team prepared? If your confidence is a bit shaky, now is the time to get ready.

Do You Really Need A Competency Model? I’ve had a lot of conversations about competency models and I’ve built a lot of them but frankly, I’m not sure I have seen the value-add. When I asked our clients why they are considering investing the time to build a competency model, here are the responses I…

Food: The Secret Barrier to Organizational Resilience

Inclusion is About Food (and other things) There has been a lot of talk lately about inclusion. What is it? Do we need it? Do we have it? Well, if you’re trying to increase the resilience of your team, there is no time for debate. Building a resilient organization cannot happen without inclusion. When we…

Creating An Inclusive Culture We don’t know what is going to happen in the market in the coming years, but we do know this: it will be disruptive. Whatever happens in 2020 with the election, tariffs, and the global economy, there is a good chance it will require extra effort on everyone’s part to adapt.…

Today’s landscape is one of unprecedented, rapid, disruptive change. With little margin for error, leaders and teams are expected to adapt to change and react to setbacks quickly. In our experience, the only way to tackle these challenges and come back stronger is by building resilience yet very few people are actively preparing to do…

Defining Resilience Chances are when discussing the topic of resilience you have heard various definitions that paint a picture of “bouncing back” from stress, crisis, setbacks, etc. To test this concept, I tried bouncing a ball and realized something significant: After it hit the ground it rarely came back higher than where it had started.…

“An organization without purpose manages human resources, whereas an organization with purpose mobilizes people.” – Juan Carlos Eichholz Resilience Starts With Alignment Any healthy organization is formed with a specific purpose in mind. That purpose is usually defined by the organizational mission, vision, and values. However, over time an organization’s purpose can get clouded by…

Using Corporate Politics To Drive Change

Change Starts With Alignment The need to have people on the same page is huge when implementing a major change. This is particularly true when the change involves thinking differently to solve a problem that can’t be solved by doing things better, faster, or cheaper. Enabling leaders to get people aligned is always necessary, but…

Resilience Begins With A Choice How many times have you made a choice that did not result in the outcome you intended? Did you even know you were making a choice? Often we unconsciously choose the path of least resistance. We default to what is comfortable and requires the least amount of change. Improving our…

Guilt & Resentment Are you tired of corporate politics and drama? Some of us are better or more strategic in dealing with it and some organizations are more ‘political’ than others, but it’s not uncommon for there to be an unspoken or hidden layer of politics just close enough to the surface to keep us…

When To Rethink Your Organizational Structure “Is it time for a new organizational structure?” This question does not always have an obvious answer. Organizational restructuring, by definition, can be disruptive, even when handled as smoothly as possible, and even with the best of intentions. There is always a risk that the new structure will bring…

“Authentic leadership is revealed in the alignment of what you think, what you say, and what you do.” – Michael Holland Resilience Takes Authenticity When life is hard or any sort of disruption hits, we have a finite amount of energy with which to deal with it. Think of this as a gas tank in…

Corporate Restructuring That Works Starting a business, whether a lemonade stand or a consulting firm with a new approach to corporate restructuring, begins with a realization that something is missing in the market. Often, an entrepreneur feels so strongly about the missing piece that they are willing to drive a stake in the ground. A stake…

The Case For Adaptive Leadership Do the challenges you face today seem more complex than they did, say, five years ago? Does it seem like they involve more people or that it takes more involvement from stakeholders to build a solution that works? Is it starting to feel like managing stakeholders is as complex as…

Why Resilience? Most athletes spend about 90% of their time training to be able to perform at peak levels 10% of the time. For example, professional football players train six days a week to play one game on Sunday. Business leaders are a different story. They are expected to perform 90% of the time with…

Adaptive Challenges Have you ever wondered why things are a bit more difficult at work recently? Do the types of challenges your team faces every day somehow just seem harder and more complex? Ever feel like it’s taking longer to get things done because you just can’t get people’s attention on the real issue? Well,…

“Before anything great is really achieved, your comfort zone must be disturbed.” – Ray Lewis Comfort Zones Have you ever struggled to get out of your comfort zone? At one point or another, we are all acutely aware of our comfort zone – usually when we’re bumping up against it head first. We know we…

“The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, making a system’s weaknesses irrelevant.” – Peter Drucker Imagine a company where everyone – from the CEO to the newest intern – shows up knowing EXACTLY what they need to do every single day, even on those days where plans fail and…

What Alignment Looks Like Is your team 100% aligned around your organization’s goals for 2019? Are you absolutely certain that you are making the right or “bests” projects to drive change and build organizational muscle? Can you deliver with what you have been budgeted, or less? If you are not 110% aligned and committed, 2019…

How Personal Fulfillment Drives Your Business Strategy

“Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” – Anne Sweeney The Path To Fulfillment If you plan to take a long journey, you need a compass or a map (or at least a GPS). The journey from overweight to healthy and fit…

“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” – John F. Kennedy Your Purpose As an avid outdoor kid, one of the first things I remember asking for at Christmas was a good multi-purpose tool. Back then it was a Swiss Army knife called the Huntsman. It had two knives, a little saw,…

Defining Business Architecture Today, many organizations still struggle to define what the role of a Business Architect should be and how to clearly articulate the value of Business Architecture to leadership. So let’s start by dispelling some popular myths about Business Architecture. Business Architects are NOT: assigned the next ‘hot potato’ project that has been…

“A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” -William Shedd Our comfort zones are protective boundaries we construct over time. Most of our boundaries were imposed long ago for self-protection and have become coping strategies. We all use the coping strategies we have personally designed to keep us…

“Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you’re supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a mask on to please those around you.” – Dr. Phil Authenticity Can’t Be Copied Everyone likes…

“In the power to change yourself lies the power to change the world around you.” -Anwar Sadat Choices & Resilience How many times have you made a choice that did not result in the outcome you intended? Our choices define us. Improving our ability to make tough choices in the moment shapes our ability to be…

Resilience. It is the single most important characteristic of leaders today and almost no one is talking about it. We are. The journey to becoming a resilient person or organization begins with our window to the world, the way we see, sift through and interpret events, and our ability to extract meaning from it. We…

Do you have a great team that needs development but lack a budget for training and access to an internal world-class learning team? Perhaps you’ve been limping along sending people to local conferences when you can to try to develop them. But while that may appease your team for a while, you know it’s not…

Resilience Isn’t About Bouncing Back Today’s landscape is one of unprecedented, rapid, disruptive change. With little margin for error, leaders are expected to adapt to change and react to setbacks quickly. Unfortunately, the skills required to tackle these challenges, process quickly, and come back stronger require thinking differently in ways that are rarely mentioned in…

I want to tell you about a pet peeve of mine…binders. For me, this realization struck hard before LeaderShift® was a twinkle of a business plan and carried through most of the executive roles I played throughout my career. Maybe you’ve been there. For me, it started at the mercy of those shiny tie consultants.…

Remember when your organizational structure used to be something we hardly thought about. They were clear. We reported to someone (my boss) and often someone reported to us (my team). But things change. Now we have matrix structures, project teams that pull people into hidden conference rooms (that suck life and time from our schedules),…

One of my favorite business partners!

LeaderShift Insights has become one of my favorite business partners to work with. Most consultants are technically competent, but LeaderShift’s ability to diagnose needs and spot significant cultural nuances--and adjust their approach and solutions accordingly--is exceptional. The org design work they did for us was fantastic, leaving a lasting impact on how we think and

Jimmy Parker Executive Development, The Home Depot

Better understanding our strategic intent

By better understanding our strategic intent, we were able prioritize our investments along with a long list of in-flight projects to drive the ones which supported our most strategic capabilities.

Brian Kelley Chief Strategy Officer, Mayo Medical Labs

Got us to a new and aligned structure fast

Once we established a shared/common capability model, it was a simple leap to recognizing that our organization just wasn’t designed to deliver our strategy. The new process got us to a new and aligned structure fast.

Kay Ayers CHRO, AvMed Health

Focus on organizing to drive capabilities

Our capability model allowed my leadership team to focus on organizing around the work required to drive the capabilities that deliver our strategy.

Mike Gallagher Chairman and CEO, Santa Fe Healthcare

Better align your most valued resources with your organizational strategy, and most importantly, your customers

LeaderShift’s collaborative approach was very effective in helping our leadership team to better understand how an organizational structure that is fully aligned with its strategy enables the organization to more effectively achieve its goals. Through their strong leadership, our associates now have a clearer understanding of their roles, responsibilities and most importantly, their accountabilities; which

Randy Stuart CFO, SantaFe Healthcare

Absolutely a great resource that any leader can learn from

Jennifer was an outstanding resource for me as I transitioned into an officer role at The Home Depot. She used a mixture of proven, structured techniques combined with nimble coaching methods tailored to my personality and learning style. Absolutely a great resource that any leader can learn from. One that I would definitely use again

Wes Neece Vice President, Merchandising, The Home Depot

Propel you into the next steps of your career

Jennifer has a talent for bringing out the best in people even when she is pushing them out of their comfort zone. She is honest, very genuine and truly wants to propel you into the next steps of your career. If you are interested in improving your connectivity, strategy, presentation skills or overall leadership footprint,

Camille May Director of Associate Relations, The Home Depot

She got everyone excited and involved

Jennifer gave a wonderful presentation at our Women’s Retreat. She perfectly catered the content of her speech to match the needs of our group. She reached out to the attendees prior to the event, which was an excellent way to get everyone excited and involved. She found a great way to connect to everyone in

Kelli Holloway Customer Relations Manager, American Junior Golf Association

Really hit home on how to shift into true leadership

Jennifer’s talk was outstanding and really hit home on how to shift into true leadership. We all know that things are easier said than done, especially as a woman running her own business with all the other stressors of life. Jennifer took away some of that challenge by sending a tool kit to all who

Julie Marino Executive Director, NAWBO Atlanta