Challenge: The two founders had been together for over 5 years, growing through various investment rounds to over $100 million ARR. They were clearly effective as individuals and as cofounders. However we were contacted when they were preparing to move into litigation to break up the organization, risking immense loss of value for all involved. While founders often, and for good reasons, focus on what they and the team need to achieve to be successful, and also know how important how the work gets done is, they for a number of rational reasons deprioritize proactively managing the cofounder relationship.

Solution: We started by gathering in-depth stakeholder feedback. We coached each founder separately for 6 months, with intentional design around the parallel engagement including multiple joint sessions throughout to stay aligned on progress against goals and how best to support each other’s development, as well as explicit mediation around particular points of friction that had grown over time. We helped them examine their mindsets and actions that led the relationship to sour, identified corrective communication and collaboration experiments, and supported their implementation and iteration into a framework of individual and shared practices tailored to their needs and context to ensure it was maximally effective and sustainable. In 6 months, they were back to sprinting in lockstep like in the early days of the startup.

Challenge: Fortune 50 pharmaceutical company, ranked among the top three worldwide and recognized as a top five Fortune 500 company for workplace culture, had a 4-year old global team with strong early wins. Over time, however, the team’s rate of impact slowed, while friction within and across geographies and workstreams was rising.

Solution: We conducted stakeholder interviews with half of the 30-person team, along with senior leadership, to gain a broad and balanced perspective on where and why the team was not functioning at its full potential. We took those inputs to customize the facilitation of a full day of their first 3-day annual in-person gathering focused both on team dynamics and individual patterns of behavior that were slowing innovation and impact. This was followed by two virtual sessions, 6 and 16 weeks after the initial event to ensure that inspiration and insight were translating into sustainable change. The team emerged with a written charter of five key areas of improvement along with plans to operationalize change via new approaches to: meeting structures and norms, continuous feedback, resourcing and documentation, and decision-making frameworks. Furthermore, each team member created a clear individual growth action plan, and evaluated a quantitative baseline and measurable targets from the initial workshop through the final remote session.

Challenge: CEO and CTO at a Series A fintech startup focused on Africa with $30m ARR was preparing for their Series B and targeting hypergrowth toward $100m ARR and an IPO in 3 years. While the external metrics were strong, the board and other investors were concerned that the founders and team were at an inflection point: begin to evolve or fall victim to (well-intentioned) founder’s syndrome and potentially risk losing their market advantage and momentum. The only way to do this was to scale themselves, upskill the existing team, and bring in new experienced talent while also mitigating early employee concerns about losing influence.

Solution: In order to diagnose the root causes we assessed leadership team effectiveness through two rounds of customized stakeholder interviews (one at inception and then again 6 months later) for the executive leadership team, collating findings into a report on both individual founder efficacy and potential growth areas, as well as the same on the founders as a cofounding pair, and on the leadership team as whole. We then supported founders and the team to document a detailed action plan based on learnings, followed by a coaching engagement with one of the founders over the next six months to help drive progress. This feedback process immediately began to clarify for everyone the most critical friction points, communication gaps, and strategic decisions that would unlock rapid growth. After the second round of feedback and engagement evaluation 6 months later, the individual coaching had accelerated founder development, resulting in a topline efficacy increase of 36% for the founder we coached, 8% for the founder who wanted to try and see how far they could go without that additional support, and 30% for the leadership team as a whole, much of which was attributed to the feedback processes and significant shifts in the founder who received coaching. The client and their board were so pleased with the results they have committed to a subsequent round of this process and coaching for the entire leadership team.

Challenge: How can you speed up iteration cycles and integrate diverse perspectives in a team of 600 already highly-skilled software engineers?

Solution: A hands-on, collaborative Innovation Accelerator workshop utilizing the Tinkering Labs Electric Motors Catalyst STEAM kit. The experience focused on taking engineers out of their habitual patterns to uncover and strengthen new modes of creativity. Resulted in new linkages between departments and a new shared language of collaboration and innovation that accelerated creativity across the technical team.

Challenge: How to enhance the capacity for creativity and innovation at the third largest credit union bank in the United States to support continued growth during rapid sector re-alignment.

Solution: A series of intensive retreats deepened cross-team capacity for creative problem solving and innovative product generation while making progress on real company challenges. Resulted in multiple product and service prototypes generated and funded to support a newly-announced strategic goal of $100 million in new deposits, as well as increased team cohesion and communication which proved critical to maintaining creative output and team cohesion during Covid disruptions.

The Co-Creation Initiative, our research-based community of practice, teamed up with the Brains on the Beach consulting network on a social enterprise project, partnering to empower marginalized communities. We travelled to Laos to help a group of local nonprofits, from sustainable farming to preschools and renewable energy. We co-created an informal social network and asset exchange, encouraging higher levels of trust and collaboration so that the NGOs could better leverage different and shared experiences for the benefit of all.

The Colorado Rockies have a pioneering education program focused on supporting new players who do not speak English as their primary language. We worked with the Rockies in expanding the program to build a culture of inclusion among players from all backgrounds, fostering open communication and authentic connection, resulting in greater team cohesion and trust.

A Purpose Quest with a small group of leaders to Kumano, Japan; a modern journey of transformation that helps each person to enrich and deepen their capacities as leaders and human beings. We create the optimum conditions to reconnect with each person’s unique purpose, which provides a source of energy and inspiration that aligns and empowers both ourselves and those around us. The Kumano Quest is an evolution of the vision quest, supported with coaching on how to integrate the insights gained into daily life and work.