The New Era of B2B Marketing: Why It’s About to Get Weird (In the Best Way Possible)
Marketing isn’t what it used to be—and that’s exactly why it’s working better for those willing to adapt. In the latest episode of the Scale Smart, Grow Fast podcast, Harley Green sat down with Brad Schlachter, Fractional CMO at The Growth Syndicate, to talk about what B2B companies must do to build predictable, scalable, and sustainable growth.
If you’re still thinking growth is all about performance ads and lead volume, you’re already behind.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
🎯 Key Takeaways from Brad Schlachter:
1. Retention > Acquisition
Acquiring leads is expensive. But retaining existing customers? That’s where the real ROI lies. Brad emphasizes that reducing churn—especially for SaaS and subscription-based businesses—should be a core growth lever, not an afterthought.
2. Align Brand and Performance
Performance marketing gets clicks. But if your messaging doesn’t align with your brand’s promise, your conversions (and customer trust) will tank. One of Brad’s best examples? A Hallmark ad featuring Betty White. It wasn’t the flashiest creative—but it resonated and converted because it fit the brand perfectly.
3. Find Your “Betty White”
Every brand has that one creative, message, or moment that just clicks with their ideal customer. The key is testing, analyzing beyond vanity metrics, and staying consistent with your brand voice.
4. Do Fewer Things, Better
Too many teams are spread thin across a dozen disconnected campaigns. Brad suggests focusing on 2–3 strategic “marketing pillars” a year—aligning product launches, content drops, PR, and offers into unified, cross-functional campaigns.
5. AI Is a Co-Pilot, Not a Replacement
AI tools (like ChatGPT and marketing agents) are changing how we work—but strategy still needs a human mind. Brad recommends using AI for insights, content drafts, and automation—but keeping high-level customer and growth strategy human-led.
📈 Ready to Rethink Your Growth Strategy?
B2B marketing is evolving fast—and getting a little weird (in the best way). The brands winning today are those who lead with customer understanding, invest in retention, and align every touchpoint with a consistent brand message.
“If you’re only focused on acquisition, you’re leaving serious growth on the table.” — Brad Schlachter
Ready to implement smarter marketing strategies without burning out your team?
Book a discovery call with Workergenix and learn how an Ultimate Executive Assistant can help you execute, optimize, and scale faster.
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Transcript:
Harley Green:
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Now growth doesn’t happen by accident. It’s engineered through strategy, execution and data. In this episode, Brad Schlachter, Fractional CMO with the Growth Syndicate and full funnel growth strategist shares how B2B and tech companies can align acquisition, analytics and retention to achieve measurable, sustainable results. With experience scaling global brands like Microsoft, Intel and Qualcomm, as well as high growth startups, Brad reveals how to build go-to-market systems that fuel predictable growth. Brad, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?
Brad Schlachter:
Good, thanks for having me.
Harley Green:
Brad, maybe you can share a little bit more about your background, what brought you to helping business leaders achieve great success with their marketing now.
Brad Schlachter:
Yeah, you know, it really starts with always being a marketer started with me being very curious about behavior. I was a psych major in college, and marketing is really about consumer behavior. And so it was always an area of interest for me. Also, at the end of the day, marketing is really about solving problems. How do you grow this brand? How do you pivot something when it clearly needs a change in direction? Solving problems and understanding human behavior has led me to have a career in marketing. As you said, I’ve worked for some bigger companies, mostly earlier in my career. More recently, I’ve worked for more small and medium-sized businesses as a fractional CMO.
Harley Green:
I love what you said about the psychology part. We recently saw this in our own business with our recruiting. We deployed a chatbot to help with the first stage of interviews and we saw the submission process and rate drop. We brought back the old form but simplified it and then just gave an automatic email saying, “Please apply here. We like your resume.” And the rates jumped up again. So I’m sure you’ve seen some similar maybe less than intuitive results with marketing that you could share with us, that give people an example of what that means about human psychology and marketing.
Brad Schlachter:
Yeah, it’s definitely very true. It’s not just what you say, but it’s how you make your customers feel. That’s the brand side of marketing. It’s not just about the rational benefits. Does the brand resonate with someone on an emotional level? That whole psychology aspect is really important and sometimes people don’t pay enough attention to that.
Harley Green:
Now, a lot of people think that marketing success is really about just generating more leads, having a bigger ad budget. How do you define sustainable growth from a marketing perspective?
Brad Schlachter:
Marketing is always different. Every company, the first thing I always try to understand when I start as a fractional CMO is getting alignment on what the business goals are. What does success equal? Because what’s success for one company may be different than for another, depending on the business model, what stage the company is in. Defining success is the first important thing. Then building a marketing plan around: this is where we are now, this is where we want to be, and this is how we’re going to get there. Ultimately, it’s also about having a sustainable model so that you know at the end of the day, you can build something replicable. If you’re going to spend $1, you’re going to get back $2 or $3 of revenue. Building that model that’s consistent.
Harley Green:
When you’re talking to these companies and helping them build out these growth strategies, what are some of the most common gaps that you tend to find, whether it’s in the strategy itself or maybe in the mindset of the leadership team?
Brad Schlachter:
One gap is performance marketing and brand. A lot of startups are very focused on leads, and rightly so. But they sometimes put too much emphasis on acquiring leads and the performance marketing aspect, and they don’t take the time and energy to make sure there’s a true product-market fit. Does the product or service resonate with the target audience or their ideal customer profile? Understanding what’s different and better or special about their product or service. These are short-term, but if you have performance marketing and brand alignment, your customer acquisition cost is going to go down, retention is going to go up, and you’re setting yourself up for long-term success.
Harley Green:
You mentioned connecting customer acquisition with analytics and increasing retention. Why is having that alignment so critical to long-term success?
Brad Schlachter:
Another common thing I see is companies are very focused on leads and performance marketing. Yes, that’s a big aspect of what marketing needs to do. But they don’t spend as much time or energy on the retention aspect. On average, it costs five or six times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. Especially for SaaS services or subscription-based services, reducing churn or increasing retention is really critical in driving long-term growth and doing it profitably. If you’re driving acquisition and getting leads, but you have a high churn rate, then you have a very leaky funnel, and it’s not sustainable. A common mistake for many companies I’ve worked with is not putting equal attention on retention versus acquisition. Retention is about understanding your customer, keeping them engaged, making sure there’s strong product-market fit, solving problems, and keeping them happy.
Harley Green:
It sounds like there’s a lot of overlap in the considerations that go into outreach from both acquisition and retention. Are there any other tips, strategies, or tools that you recommend or enjoy working with for helping on the retention side?
Brad Schlachter:
It’s really about understanding your customer and having that customer-first mentality. If you have a subscription service or really any service, you need to be doing market research. Talk to your customers. If someone cancels, have an exit survey. Understand why people are signing up and, just as importantly, why they’re leaving. There’s active churn, where people cancel and give a reason—maybe your product doesn’t meet their needs. But there’s also passive churn—people fall off because their credit card was declined or some payment issue. There are things you can do to mitigate that. Have a comprehensive plan where acquiring a customer is just the start. Then it’s about keeping them engaged. If they drop off, understand why and how to potentially get them back.
Harley Green:
Those are awesome ideas. One thing we’ve noticed from the Workergenics side—many of our clients employ executive assistants through our service to be that client care point of contact. They can lead those initiatives because often people don’t think of them as revenue-generating activities. It’s a great opportunity to bring in an affordable executive assistant to lower turnover so your marketing dollars have a higher ROI. I have another question. You’ve worked with major brands and led growth initiatives that achieved major turnarounds and exits. What’s one campaign or pivot that really changed the trajectory of a business you worked with?
Brad Schlachter:
I think it’s partly a mindset. When I was at Hallmark, we had a partnership with Roku. I helped launch Hallmark Streaming Service, now called Hallmark Plus. In the early days, we hadn’t found our best platforms. Roku turned out to be the first where we saw a lot of success. It was easier to use, the audience was older and more female, which aligned with Hallmark’s demographics. Roku’s demographics matched well. We ran an ad for a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie with Betty White. She touched all demographics—young and old loved her. She was our magic creative. Everyone needs to find their Betty White—the content and image that resonates and appeals across quadrants. It helped Roku drive early success for Hallmark Streaming. But also, it’s important for marketing teams to focus on doing two or three big things instead of 100 disconnected ones. For example, do a big push around a Betty White movie launch, a product update, a trade show, or a holiday. Pull multiple levers at once—you get more bang for your buck than doing 100 small things.
Harley Green:
What advice would you give to someone who’s doing all these marketing initiatives but everything feels scattered? How do you guide them to focus on the most impactful activities?
Brad Schlachter:
It starts with realizing that marketing can’t be done in a silo. You have to align with product, content, dev teams. I call them marketing pillars—the two or three big things you’re going to do throughout the year. Sit down cross-functionally and plan: is there a product update, a new UX, new content drop, a trade show, a seasonal event like Mother’s Day? Then, align the marketing campaign around those events. Tie it all together with PR, product updates, offers. Work cross-functionally to pull those levers together.
Harley Green:
Going back to the Betty White example, I’m sure there was a lot of studying and analysis. For business owners who won’t bring in famous actors, what are some strategies they can use to find their “Betty White” in relation to their ideal clients?
Brad Schlachter:
Betty White worked because her ads had a solid click-through rate and represented the Hallmark brand. Other ads had higher click-throughs, more provocative imagery, but lower conversions. Betty White personified the brand, which led to better conversions. When someone clicked on her ad and went to Hallmark’s service, it made sense—there was alignment. It’s not just attention, but delivering on the brand promise. It starts with understanding your customer and testing a lot. Before the Betty White ad, we had many creatives running. Some had higher click-throughs but lower conversions. Finding the right mix takes time.
Harley Green:
You bring up a good point about data. There’s so much marketing data. If someone only looks at click-through rate, they might double down on the wrong ads. How do you help people focus on the most important metrics?
Brad Schlachter:
Click-through rate matters—you can’t scale without standing out. But don’t let vanity metrics drive strategy. A high click-through with a low conversion rate is a waste. You need to look at the whole lifecycle. At Hallmark, it was a subscription service with a free trial. So we looked at click-through rate, then free trial sign-ups, and then conversion to paid customer. Follow the journey to see if the ad really worked. Optimize for metrics aligned with revenue and growth, not just top of funnel.
Harley Green:
One topic I always like to hit on is AI and automation. How do you see these tools reshaping how teams execute and measure growth?
Brad Schlachter:
It’s changing every day. Everyone’s using AI—it saves time and energy. AI is great for analyzing data, helping with content, but you still need a human to drive overall strategy and understand the customer. AI is a co-pilot. It keeps getting better, but right now it’s a tool. We’re also seeing AI agents being set up to automate tasks, especially those that are repetitive or data-heavy. Marketers have used AI for years—machine learning in paid media is AI. Now, all tools have AI assistants to help with processes.
Harley Green:
For leaders listening who want to take action this quarter to have more predictable growth, what’s one thing they can do to turn things around?
Brad Schlachter:
It’s about going back to the basics. Some marketers use the same playbook over and over without focusing on the customer. Know your customer, understand their pain points and journey. Where are people dropping off? Why? Don’t just focus on acquisition. Have a holistic view. Focus on retention. Make sure your brand aligns with your performance marketing. Pay attention to engagement. And lastly, do two or three big things instead of 100 small things. Follow that basic template and you’ll position yourself for sustainable growth.
Harley Green:
Absolutely. Understanding your customer and having real clear focus is definitely great advice for everyone listening. Brad, for those who want to learn more and connect with you, what’s the best way?
Brad Schlachter:
I’m on LinkedIn—Brad Schlachter—and I’m with The Growth Syndicate. Feel free to connect.
Harley Green:
Awesome, thank you so much, Brad. For those of you watching, if you got value today, hit the follow or subscribe button and leave a like. Every rating helps us reach more business leaders who want to grow the smart way. And maybe you know a business owner or colleague who could use this—share the episode with them. It could be exactly what they need. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you on the next one.
Your Team Is Broken Without This One Leadership System
Most leadership breakdowns don’t stem from strategy, skill, or software—they happen because of one missing element: a system for human connection.
In the latest episode of Scale Smart, Grow Fast, executive coach Nir Megnazi, former engineering leader at Intel and founder of Nir Megnazi Coaching, reveals the overlooked framework that drives real ROI, retention, and trust within high-performing teams.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
🧠 Why Smart Teams Still Struggle
Many leaders assume that hiring smart people and using great tools guarantees results. But as Nir explains, high-performing teams thrive not just on intelligence or efficiency—but on trust, presence, and communication.
Without this human system:
Projects stall from hidden conflict.
Leaders get surface-level compliance, not commitment.
Talented team members disengage quietly.
🛠️ The One System That Changes Everything
This system isn’t complicated—but it requires intention. Nir outlines three key pillars:
Empathy & Trust Trust isn’t built—it’s earned. And it starts by understanding what trust looks like to each person on your team. Leaders need to ask: “What do you need from me to trust me?”
Curiosity Over Control Great leaders stop trying to “solve” people and instead start asking better questions. Curiosity invites clarity, connection, and buy-in.
Leadership Presence A 30-second mindset reset before each meeting—choosing to be present and to listen—can transform how your team perceives your leadership.
“If you want to influence, you must first be open to be influenced.” – Nir Megnazi
🚨 Red Flags You Might Be Missing
If your team:
Agrees in meetings but acts differently afterward
Delivers inconsistent performance
Pushes back on every new direction
…it’s likely a trust issue, not a competence one. And trust is a leadership responsibility.
💬 Practical Takeaways You Can Apply This Week
Pause before meetings. Set an intention to be curious and present.
Ask your team: “What would make this a great collaboration for you?”
Lead tough conversations by stating your intent clearly—before giving feedback.
These small shifts lead to massive returns—Nir has helped leaders drive 76% reported improvement in leadership behaviors and generate millions in ROI per leader.
Ready to build a team that runs on trust, not tension?
Book a discovery call with Workergenix to find your Ultimate Executive Assistant—the right-hand partner who helps you lead with clarity, connection, and calm.
Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Transcript:
Harley Green: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Scale Smart, Grow Fast podcast. Now, strategy alone won’t take your team to the top. Human connection will. In this episode, Nir Megnazi, executive coach and leadership expert, explains how emotions and relationships are the real pillars of leadership success. With measurable results, including 76% employee-reported improvement in leadership behaviors and millions in ROI per leader. Nir is going to show how to turn empathy, trust, and presence into your most valuable leadership tools.
Nir, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Nir Megnazi: Thank you. I’m doing fabulous. Thank you for having me on your show.
Harley Green: Our pleasure. Maybe you could share a little bit more of your background. What brought you to doing what you’re doing today?
Nir Megnazi: So, originally, my core education is engineering. I’m a computer engineer and I worked for Intel for 23 years. Most of my career, I’ve been an engineer, an engineering manager. At one point during my career, I just got tired of focusing on improving technology. Let’s get more speed. Let’s get more performance out of it. The innovation was great, and don’t get me wrong, I love technology. I’m a geek. Every new piece of technology that comes out, I’m like, wow, this is so cool. I want to get my hands on it. But at one point, the technology that really got me interested was people—the technology of human beings.
As a leader, this challenge of how do I get more with the team that I have? How do we over-deliver on what we promised and truly make our clients, whether they’re internal or external, much more successful? I got more intrigued by that than by increasing the performance of one part. So I started to take these small courses that were offered at Intel for coaching. The first time I met coaching, I was really intrigued. What is this? This is different than the regular conversations that we’re having day-to-day at work. It feels different. It goes more to the root, into the bottom of things, to the source of why we have challenges. And they focus on the human challenge and the human aspect of the challenges that we’re facing.
That opened me to a completely different and new world of, wow, many of the challenges that we have are not technical. They’re human connection challenges. If we can tap into that and go to the bottom of what makes this a problem for us as leaders or as employees, there’s much more potential there. That took me on a parallel path of leadership coaching. I went and studied coaching. What I observed is, after graduating from coaching school, I became a much more efficient leader and manager for my teams.
My team started to outperform very quickly. Our internal clients were raving about the performance of my team. Let me get this straight. Although I’m an engineer, I was almost always the least smartest person in the room when my team was there. I had the privilege of managing great people—super smart, much smarter than me. The results that we received because of that were amazing. My managers would remove me from one team to another, even if I didn’t know anything about what that team does and I couldn’t even help them on the technical path. But I knew how to manage my clients really well. I knew how to have great conversations with the teams that I was working with. So I could sit with them and learn really quickly what success looks like for them and what the challenges are that they’re facing, and then navigate and direct my team through a strategy that would help our team serve that team very well. The outcome was raving results.
Harley Green: That’s really powerful. I can relate to that. My background is also in computer engineering, and I’ve had similar experiences where you might have the brightest technical person, but if they are in charge of working with the customer and they don’t have that human emotion and human touch to communicate well, the project’s not going to do well. And I’m sure you experienced that too and saw those moments.
Nir Megnazi: Many times. Sometimes I would go into a room and as an observer from the side, I would see two people just shout at one another. They were shouting and shouting, and as an observer, you’d notice that they’re not talking about the same thing. Each person has their own needs and they’re shouting their needs, trying to get them met, but the other person doesn’t listen. So they can’t get the other person’s needs met. That’s how conflict is created. It’s unmet needs that collide in the same moment.
Because I’m a coach, I’m really known to sit on the sidelines for a while. Then at one point, I just say, hey, time out, everyone. Here’s what I’ve heard. Group A, what I heard is that you need A, B, and C. Is that correct? Yes. Okay, hold on. Group B, what I heard you need is D, E, and F. Is that correct? Yes. So you see, you’re talking about two different things. Now Group A, can you satisfy the needs of Group B? Yes. Great. Conflict resolved.
Especially in engineering, people are taught from a very young age—school, what do we do? We solve problems. That takes us away from what I call possibility conversations. To stop for a second, listen to the other person, and get to the root of what they’re asking, what they need, and have a deep conversation. Instead, we get too emotional or hijacked by our own emotions. Then the conversation goes sideways and we waste time, resources, follow-up meetings, escalations.
Now the VPs are involved and they need to call one another to understand what happened. Why is this big conflict and drama? So we see so much drama because we think we’re talking about the details of whatever we’re trying to develop, but really it’s a conflict of needs and lack of better communication.
Harley Green: Now, for people that don’t have the blessing of having you in the room as an independent coach helping facilitate their conversation, what are some indicators they can keep an eye out for or strategies or mindsets that they might keep in mind to really be able to have those possibility conversations and de-escalate these situations to have the ideal outcome?
Nir Megnazi: The first mindset shift that I would offer is: how do you apply curiosity in your day-to-day? Here’s the atmosphere that I’m used to, and I see this with my clients, with other companies. Everyone is always stressed. Everyone is always late—to the next milestone, to the next release, to the next thing they need to achieve. When you’re stressed, you just want to get your needs met. So the level of curiosity you have is very low. You cannot have a conversation with someone else if you’re not curious. If you’re just there to bulldoze your needs onto others, you might get your needs met, but the entire project could fail.
So leaders need curiosity. To apply curiosity, they need to learn how to listen well. We hear a lot of people talking, but we’re not actually listening—to what they say, what they don’t say, to their energy. And we’re missing so much information that’s right there in the conversation.
So the mindset shift is curiosity. Leaders can do that by setting their intention before going into a conversation. Ask yourself, “My goal in the first 10 minutes is to understand the perspective of the other party.” That is applied curiosity, and it requires intention.
Second, I encourage every leader to become a master of human communication and connection. Why? Because the higher we climb the ladder of leadership, the less we are involved in the actual work. The work of leadership is done through conversations. At one point, it’s 100% conversations. So if the leader’s number one skill is to have conversations, how can you afford not being a master of human connection and communication?
Harley Green: That’s powerful. Now, one thing you’ve also talked about is the ROI that people can get from mastering these skills, mastering communication. What are some of the shifts in behavior that have the biggest impact on team performance that you’ve seen?
Nir Megnazi: That’s a great question, and it’s different from leader to leader because every leader has their own superpowers and areas for improvement. But overall, the ideal state is a leader who sets high-quality goals that align with success for them, the team, and the organization. The team needs to clearly understand what success looks like, their role in achieving it, and how they must cooperate with others.
It also taps into their uniqueness as a team and as individuals. When people know their unique value and how it contributes to the outcome, they feel needed, appreciated, and motivated. That’s what people want: to be acknowledged, to feel fulfilled.
Creating a cohesive, synergistic team is like a sports team. You don’t need all superstars; you need a team that works together efficiently and elevates each other’s game. That cohesion often lies beneath the surface—beyond goals, tasks, and milestones. It lives in our humanity: our emotions, creativity, and direction. Leaders who don’t address this miss a huge part of the potential they can unlock.
Let’s talk about two major emotions: trust and motivation. When I coach leaders and start talking about emotions—especially engineers—they ask why we need to talk about emotions. Well, is trust important to your work? Yes? What happens when there’s no trust? Long conversations, wasted time, more meetings. So yes, trust is a feeling, and it’s critical to business success.
Harley Green: That’s powerful. Now, one thing you’ve also talked about is the ROI that people can get from mastering these skills, mastering communication. What are some of the shifts in behavior that have the biggest impact on team performance that you’ve seen?
Nir Megnazi: That’s a great question, and it’s different from leader to leader because every leader has their own superpowers and areas for improvement. But overall, the ideal state is a leader who sets high-quality goals that align with success for them, the team, and the organization. The team needs to clearly understand what success looks like, their role in achieving it, and how they must cooperate with others.
It also taps into their uniqueness as a team and as individuals. When people know their unique value and how it contributes to the outcome, they feel needed, appreciated, and motivated. That’s what people want: to be acknowledged, to feel fulfilled.
Creating a cohesive, synergistic team is like a sports team. You don’t need all superstars; you need a team that works together efficiently and elevates each other’s game. That cohesion often lies beneath the surface—beyond goals, tasks, and milestones. It lives in our humanity: our emotions, creativity, and direction. Leaders who don’t address this miss a huge part of the potential they can unlock.
Let’s talk about two major emotions: trust and motivation. When I coach leaders and start talking about emotions—especially engineers—they ask why we need to talk about emotions. Well, is trust important to your work? Yes? What happens when there’s no trust? Long conversations, wasted time, more meetings. So yes, trust is a feeling, and it’s critical to business success.
The feeling of trust is critical for eliminating waste and achieving execution velocity. Same with motivation. Motivation is an emotion. We feel motivated, and it’s very personal to each person.
Harley Green: I got a question real quick on the trust. Especially in technical fields—or honestly, any business leader coming into this—what are some strategies or advice you can share with them to help build that trust without it feeling forced? Everyone’s been on the team-building events with the trust falls. What’s your advice to build genuine, deep connection and trust?
Nir Megnazi: One of the key moments when I dug into trust—and trust, by the way, is the most researched factor in human emotions in literature. There are so many studies about it because it’s elusive. I would start by saying that trust is earned. You don’t build trust; you earn it. I first heard that in a podcast with Esther Perel and Adam Grant. That idea really shifted my perspective.
There is a choice, whether conscious or unconscious, by one person to trust someone else—to some extent and in some domain. So, how do I become trustworthy? It depends on the other party. What behaviors are they expecting to see that allow them to assess whether I’m trustworthy? There’s a conversation that can happen, especially when a team is coming together for the first time.
That’s the expectations conversation. “What do you expect from us? What’s important for you to see so we earn your trust?” And vice versa—“Here’s what we need to see to trust you.”
Trust is very context-specific. For example, Harley, I trust you as a great podcaster, former software engineer, and entrepreneur. So if I need advice about those things, I’ll ask you. But I wouldn’t trust you to perform eye surgery—because that’s not your area of competence. That’s the visible layer: results and behavior.
Beneath that is the character part—intent and integrity. I recommend reading The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey. He breaks it down beautifully. One of the quickest ways to earn trust is to call out your intent.
This works especially well in tough situations—like performance management. You have an underperforming employee. You can go in with judgment and metrics. Or, you can start the conversation by saying:
“Hey, the goal of this conversation is to help you overcome some recent performance issues and invest in your growth. I want to see you succeed, outperform, and get promoted. Let’s figure out how to get there together.”
Now it’s a totally different conversation. You’ve shifted from judgment to support.
Harley Green: Yeah, totally shifts the mindset there.
Nir Megnazi: Right? And you can still be honest and direct. “If you don’t meet these goals, it might mean this role isn’t the best fit. And as your leader, I need to care for both the team and you.” But the conversation starts with intent, with care.
Most low performers already know they’re struggling. They feel the stress. So when I show up to help them—not judge them—it changes everything.
Harley Green: Makes a ton of sense. On the flip side, looking at the leadership part of the equation, when they are having that disconnect from their team and there isn’t trust there, what are some of the red flags or warning signs they might keep an eye out for and be like, hey, trust might be an issue here. We need to really focus on earning that.
Nir Megnazi: One of the first signs is when people agree—but then disengage. You’ll be the only one talking in meetings. Everyone nods but later does something different. You won’t see alignment in execution. That’s a massive red flag.
Sometimes it’s the opposite. If it’s a tight-knit team and they don’t trust you, you’ll get lots of pushback. They resist every direction. Why? Because they don’t trust your leadership or intentions. And that’s the difference between being a manager and being a leader.
I can say I’m a manager. But I can’t say I’m a leader. That’s something others decide—when they choose to follow you. That’s what makes you a leader.
When these signs show up, high-performance communication becomes essential. Say: “I asked you to do A, and you did B. I’m curious—what made you choose B over A?”
Harley Green: It’s powerful.
Nir Megnazi: It’s amazing what happens when we ask better questions and drop the judgment. We often judge based on our values and needs—not theirs. And if I want to transform the relationship, I need to first understand them. What do they need? What’s their perspective?
Through deep, curious communication, we shift perspectives together. And sometimes, their insights will reshape the actual goal. I’ve seen this happen many times.
Harley Green: It’s powerful.
Nir Megnazi: It’s amazing what happens when we ask better questions and drop the judgment. We often judge based on our values and needs—not theirs. And if I want to transform the relationship, I need to first understand them. What do they need? What’s their perspective?
Through deep, curious communication, we shift perspectives together. And sometimes, their insights will reshape the actual goal. I’ve seen this happen many times.
I’ll share a story. I was placed as a leader over a team where I had no technical background in their specific work. I understood the overall process but couldn’t support them technically. One day, we had to replace an old tool with a new one. My idea was to switch it piece by piece to avoid disrupting the client.
Everyone nodded in agreement during the meeting. But later, the tech lead pulled me aside. We walked around the building, something I enjoy doing during one-on-ones. And he said, “You made the wrong decision today.”
So I asked, “Tell me more. What did I miss?”
He explained, “We can’t decouple and replace blocks cleanly. Doing it your way would create massive overhead. Let us develop the full envelope for the new tool and launch it all at once. It’ll take a month longer, but the quality and outcome will be better.”
I asked, “Does the team agree with you?” He said yes. They’d discussed it already.
So the next day, I brought the team together and said, “I’m sorry. I may not have given you enough space to speak up and share possibilities. But now I hear you. You want to launch the new tool as a single unit.” They all confirmed.
I said, “I trust you. Show me a plan, and let’s go.” And that launch was a huge success.
Again, it came down to employee courage to speak up, and my willingness to be curious.
Harley Green: I love that. Now, as we wrap up, if there are leaders listening today and they want to begin leading with more trust and empathy with their team and having that strong connection, what is the very first step they should start taking this week?
Nir Megnazi: That’s a tough question. Let me think for a second.
The first step they should take this week is this: Before each meeting, take 30 seconds to pause and center yourself. Ask, “How do I want to show up in this meeting?”
Choose to be present. Choose to listen. Choose to be curious. Those 30 seconds will have two powerful effects.
First, your team will feel that you are truly there with them—not distracted by a hundred other things. That presence will translate as leadership presence. And that earns trust.
Second, you will learn so much more—because you set your intention to be curious.
Be open to having your perspective influenced. Because if you want to influence, you must be willing to be influenced. That’s the shift.
Harley Green: Yeah.
Nir Megnazi: That’s part of the mindset. When you’re curious, be open to being influenced. The goal isn’t to be right—the goal is to achieve results.
Harley Green: Right. Awesome. That was powerful advice. Nir, thank you so much for sharing your stories, your wisdom, these practical tips for our audience today. If people want to continue the conversation with you, talk more about how they can build this connection with their teams and get that ROI with their people, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?
Nir Megnazi: You can visit my website, nirmegnazi.com. There’s also a free ebook you can sign up for on how to build trust while going through major changes—how to lead through chaos and earn trust. Also, connect with me on LinkedIn. I read all my messages and love connecting with new people. So feel free to DM me.
Harley Green: Awesome. We’ll make sure we have those links in the show notes. And for those of you listening, if you got value today, hit that like, follow, or subscribe button at the top. These ratings really help us equip more businesses and leaders who want to grow the smart way.
And maybe you know a business owner or colleague who could use this information—share this episode with them. It could be exactly what they need right now.
Thank you everyone for tuning in to Scale Smart, Grow Fast. Here’s to building businesses that give you more freedom, stronger teams, and lasting growth.
Burnout Isn’t a Workload Problem — It’s a Thinking Problem
Leadership burnout is at an all-time high. But according to Dr. Andre Walton, organizational psychologist, innovation expert, and founder of Plan4Change, the root cause isn’t long hours or too much responsibility.
It’s the way leaders are thinking.
In a recent episode of the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, host Harley Green sits down with Dr. Walton to unpack why traditional, analytical problem-solving is draining leaders — and how a different approach, calledspherical thinking, helps leaders regain creativity, resilience, and clarity.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Why Smart Leaders Are Burning Out
Most leaders have been trained to rely almost exclusively on analytical, deductive thinking — drilling down, narrowing focus, and optimizing for efficiency. While this approach is useful, Dr. Walton explains that overusing it creates mental “blinders.”
Under pressure, leaders:
See fewer options
Feel trapped or reactive
Lose perspective
Experience chronic stress and burnout
Burnout, Dr. Walton argues, isn’t simply about workload. It’s about a lack of perceived resources and options. When leaders can’t see alternative paths forward, stress compounds — even if the workload hasn’t changed.
The Two Thinking Systems in the Brain
Neuroscience research using functional MRI (fMRI) shows that creative thinking and analytical thinking activate different neural pathways.
Analytical thinking is convergent and narrowing
Creative thinking is divergent and expansive
Modern leaders are heavily conditioned to suppress creativity in favor of logic and efficiency. Over time, this imbalance doesn’t just reduce innovation — it weakens emotional intelligence and resilience.
What Is Spherical Thinking?
Spherical thinking is the ability to balance and switch between creative and analytical thinking depending on the situation.
Dr. Walton compares it to a jazz musician:
Structure and discipline provide the foundation
Creativity and improvisation create breakthroughs
Effective leaders know when to analyze — and when to step back, explore options, and think creatively. This balance allows leaders to:
Make better decisions under pressure
Adapt to complexity and uncertainty
Recover faster from setbacks
The Hidden Risk of AI for Leaders
The episode also explores the growing reliance on AI tools in leadership and decision-making.
Emerging research suggests that executives who over-rely on AI may experience declines in critical and creative thinking. When leaders outsource too much cognitive effort, those mental “muscles” weaken.
The solution isn’t avoiding AI — it’s using it intentionally.
Dr. Walton recommends using AI as a thought partner, not a replacement:
Ask AI to generate ideas, not just answers
Use it to brainstorm, challenge assumptions, and expand perspective
Stay actively engaged in the thinking process
Leaders who use AI this way often increase their cognitive capacity rather than diminish it.
Practical Ways to Rebuild Creativity and Resilience
Dr. Walton shares simple, practical ways leaders can re-engage creative thinking daily:
Break routines with small, intentional changes
Make novel choices instead of default ones
Visualize future scenarios creatively, not just logically
“Shake the snow globe” to disrupt automatic thinking patterns
These small shifts reopen neural pathways connected to creativity, emotional intelligence, and resilience.
The Bottom Line for Leaders
Burnout doesn’t mean you’re failing as a leader. It means the challenges you’re facing require a different way of thinking.
Leaders who develop spherical thinking don’t just survive pressure — they perform better because of it.
📚 Connect With Dr. Andre Walton
If you want to go deeper into spherical thinking, creativity, and leadership resilience, here are the best ways to connect with Dr. Walton:
📘 Book:Creative Thinking: A Coach’s Perspective (International Bestseller, available on Amazon)
If burnout is a thinking problem, the solution starts with better support.
Book a discovery call with Workergenix to learn how an Ultimate Executive Assistant can help you reclaim focus, expand your options, and lead with clarity instead of constant pressure.
Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Transcript:
Harley Green: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Leaders often get stuck in reactive patterns that drain their teams and themselves. Dr. Andre Walton is going to be sharing a game-changing framework for how leaders can shift from burnout to brilliance using spherical thinking, a proven neural strategy for innovation and resilience. Drawing from his multicultural leadership experience and work with top organizations like Virgin Group and the Smithsonian, Dr. Walton is going to unpack how creativity is not a luxury, but a leadership imperative. Dr. Walton, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Andre Walton: Thank you very much, Harley. I’m doing great, and it’s nice to see you again.
Harley Green: Well, could you maybe share a little bit more about your background and what brought you to doing what you’re doing today?
Andre Walton: Sure. I’ve always had a very close link to creativity. Both my parents were artists of very high quality. My dad was actually a world-renowned artist. I did a lot of sciences and math at high school and promptly left school to get a job as a graphic artist for a publishing company. Somehow or other, I’ve always been attracted to things related to creativity.
In my twenties, I started inventing and patenting things. Over the next fifteen years, I took two of those inventions to become world leaders in their fields. One strand of my DNA is creativity. Another strand is business. And the third one really is education and coaching.
After my entrepreneurial time of life, I decided to go back to school and get my PhD as a mature student, although my friends wouldn’t necessarily agree with that description. My focus was organizational-level creativity.
Since that time, I’ve been helping organizations—you mentioned a couple of them—Virgin Group and the Smithsonian, as well as NASA, Lloyds Bank, and a few others, to become more innovative and to generate spaces that are more conducive to being innovative.
More recently, I’ve been working on this concept of there being two different ways of thinking. This was kind of a theory in the back of my mind twenty years ago. More recently, with functional MRI technology being available, those theories suddenly came to life.
For anyone not familiar with functional MRI, we all know what an MRI is. If you fall down and hit your head, you might get an MRI to check for damage. Functional MRI is exciting because you can actually look at neural pathways lighting up as people think different thoughts.
Those bath-time theories I came up with in the early 2000s were validated when people discovered that there are physically different neural pathways when you’re thinking creatively versus analytically.
That led me to the idea that we have these two neural pathways. When I studied that further, I realized that in the contemporary world we live in, surrounded by enormous levels of complexity compared to what our brains evolved for, we’ve been socialized into thinking in a very deductive and analytical way.
There’s an imbalance. The side of our brain that relates to creative thinking tends to have been suppressed. If you look at how our world has evolved, it’s far more technological than artistic. That imbalance, I believe, has negative consequences.
One of those negative consequences shows up in the rapid increase in burnout, anxiety, and stress disorders. The prevalence of these conditions has gone up and up over the past few years.
One important factor about creative thinking is that it is inherently divergent. Divergent thinking tests are used by social psychologists to measure creativity as a proxy. By divergent, I mean openness.
Imagine being teleported into a completely unfamiliar country. Your mindset would have to be very open. You’d be seeing strange things. When I first went to India, I was sitting in a little three-wheeler taxi driving in and out between huge elephants. It felt surreal. If you dreamed it, you’d think it was strange, but there it was in real life.
You have to accept that things are strange but functional. When you get into analytical thinking, it’s the opposite. People use phrases like “drill down.” Deductive analytical processes encourage you to focus more and more narrowly.
Under stress, that leads to what I call the hamster-wheel effect. It’s like a racehorse wearing blinders. You see the world through an ever-decreasing window.
The brilliance of using creative thinking with people experiencing burnout is that it removes those blinders. People under severe stress or anxiety don’t see options clearly. Their brain becomes so focused on stress that their available options disappear.
Harley Green: There’s a lot to unpack there. I’ve got a lot of questions, and I’m going to try to combine a couple that are related and something we talked about before we started recording. You mentioned that there have been studies recently showing that people who use AI tools a lot tend to have decreased creativity in their thinking. You also mentioned this idea that when we’re trying to solve problems, we’re trained to drill down and get very analytical, which creates blinders. I’ve seen that when trying to use AI to help with challenges, it can feel like the AI itself gets those blinders too. I wonder if that’s connected, that the way we’re thinking gets translated into how we use AI. Can you address the connection between creativity and AI in modern leadership?
Andre Walton: Absolutely. There was a very interesting piece of research uncovered a few weeks ago and reported in Harvard Business Review. The researchers compared two groups: a group of executives who used AI regularly and a group who did not.
They found that the group using AI tended to have poorer results when it came to measuring critical thinking. That got me thinking about why that might be.
The human brain is intrinsically always looking for ways to be efficient, even lazy. We see this across many areas of psychology. If you imagine you’ve employed the most brilliant person in the world, someone with infinite knowledge who can answer any question, you really have two choices.
You can sit back and let them do all the work, or you can say, this is someone I can learn from. The natural inclination for most people is to let the tool do the work.
AI can alleviate the requirement to think creatively or critically. You see this even in casual use. For example, with career clients who need to generate a resume, they can either sit and actively think about what matters in their life, or they can give all the data to AI and let it generate a polished document.
They often think the result looks amazing and stop thinking about it entirely. The cognitive work has been dramatically reduced.
Critical thinking, which is closely related to creative thinking, is a muscle. If you don’t use it, that neural pathway weakens. This is visible neurologically.
Creative thinking will become the differentiator between people who use AI to increase their cognitive capacity and those whose cognitive capacity decreases as a result of using AI.
Harley Green: Can you share examples of how leaders can use AI to help increase cognitive ability and creativity? We talked about resumes as an example of shutting off thinking, but what are some ways leaders can leverage AI to increase creativity and analytical thinking?
Andre Walton: That’s a great question, and this thought process is still developing. But if you put a prompt into AI asking it to solve a problem, you’ll get one type of output. If you instead ask it to generate ideas related to solving the problem, you get a very different outcome.
One gives you an answer that may or may not be optimal. The other gives you a range of ideas you can engage with, react to, and build upon.
Eventually, you might say, now that we’ve explored these ideas, help me refine a solution. The key point is that you’ve participated in the cognitive route to the outcome.
It’s like the difference between asking for an answer versus running a brainstorming session. In brainstorming, people challenge ideas, discard some, keep others, and work within constraints. There’s interaction.
There’s a strong parallel with how AI should be used.
Harley Green: One thing we’ve implemented with our executive assistants this year is training them to use AI as a thought partner. Before asking it to rewrite something, we have them give it a persona and ask it to interview them to gather context and brainstorm solutions instead of producing an answer. The quality of output and client support has increased dramatically.
Andre Walton: That’s a very enlightened approach, and I’m glad it’s produced great results. AI can hallucinate or get things wrong, and if people become overly reliant, they may not notice those inaccuracies.
It reminds me of autonomous cars. If people get too used to them, they forget how to drive manually. If they suddenly rent a car without automation, they can find themselves making dangerous mistakes.
The same applies to AI. Your process keeps people engaged and aware.
Harley Green: I’ve experienced this with driver-assist technology. Sometimes I forget it’s not enabled and assume the car will slow down for me.
Andre Walton: Exactly.
Harley Green: I want to shift to burnout. You’ve spent years studying it. How do you define burnout, and what misconceptions do leaders have?
Andre Walton: Burnout is often not recognized as a distinct condition. It’s usually lumped under work-related stress. Stress is often defined as an external force crushing your ability to cope.
I define stress differently. I define it as a lack of resources to deal with a challenge.
People often ask why burnout happens now and not six months ago, even when circumstances haven’t changed. The difference is internal resources.
Burnout happens when the internal capacity to cope no longer matches the external demands.
This is important because many people believe a vacation will fix burnout. They return feeling slightly better, but quickly fall back into burnout because the underlying issue wasn’t addressed.
Stress doesn’t switch on and off between work and home. It carries across contexts. Burnout is often about whether someone feels they have options.
If people feel stuck in their job and stuck in their personal life, burnout becomes much more likely.
With burnout clients, I focus on the three Rs: recreation, responsibilities, and relationships. These areas must be addressed in both work and personal life.
Harley Green: You talk a lot about spherical thinking. What is it, and how does it contrast with linear or reactive thinking?
Andre Walton: Spherical thinking is about balancing the two thinking styles and being able to switch between them.
Think about a jazz musician. There’s structure, coordination, and discipline. Then there’s improvisation. Knowing when to move between those modes is critical.
Leaders need analytical thinking to run a business, but they also need creative thinking to solve novel problems. Spherical thinking is the ability to choose the right mode at the right time.
Harley Green: How does spherical thinking help increase resilience in the workplace?
Andre Walton: Spherical thinking leads to higher emotional intelligence. fMRI studies show that the neural pathways associated with creativity overlap with those tied to emotional intelligence.
Resilience fails when people feel they lacked the resources to meet a challenge. When leaders use both structure and creativity, they maximize their chances of success.
Even if things don’t go perfectly, knowing you explored all options strengthens resilience.
Harley Green: What simple, practical changes can leaders make to rewire their brain for creativity and innovation?
Andre Walton: The easiest approach is disrupting routines. Small changes matter. Drink a different beverage in the morning. Choose a different meal. Try a new experience.
Another example is visualizing the future creatively. Create vision boards for trips or projects. This allows you to live in the future and see potential problems early.
Creative visualization both engages creativity and improves planning.
Harley Green: Where can people learn more about you?
Andre Walton: They can email me at .
Harley Green: You recently published a book. Can you share a bit about it?
Andre Walton: Yes. Creative Thinking: A Coach’s Perspective became an international bestseller. It explores creativity from early human history to modern leadership and explains how creative thinking is innate and recoverable.
Harley Green: We’ll link to that in the show notes. If you got value from this episode, hit like, follow, or subscribe. Share it with a leader who needs it. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.
How EOS Can Help You Scale Without Burning Out — Insights from Harvey Yergin
Growing a business without a clear operating system often leads to misalignment, frustration, and stalled progress. If you’ve ever felt like your business is running you instead of the other way around, you’re not alone.
In a recent episode of the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, host Harley Green sat down with Harvey Yergin, a certified EOS Implementer, Army veteran, and former D1 athlete, to break down how the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) brings order, clarity, and growth to leadership teams across industries.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
🚨 The Problem: Chaotic Growth Without Structure
Harvey shared his own experience running a real estate business that was scaling—but painfully. The team struggled with communication, profitability, and accountability. Like many business owners, he was pouring in time and energy without seeing sustainable results.
That’s when he discovered Traction—the foundational book for EOS. Within a few pages, everything clicked.
✅ What is EOS?
EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) is a proven framework for helping leadership teams align on a shared vision, build healthy team dynamics, and gain traction through disciplined execution.
According to Harvey, EOS helps businesses master three pillars:
Vision – Get everyone 100% on the same page with where you’re going and how to get there.
Traction – Instill accountability and discipline to actually execute on your vision.
Healthy – Build a cohesive, open, and trusting leadership team.
🔧 EOS Tools That Transform Teams
Here are two powerful tools Harvey recommends for any team implementing EOS:
The Accountability Chart – Not your traditional org chart. It’s about defining functions first, people second. This tool helps ensure everyone is in the right seat doing the right things.
Core Values – These guide hiring, firing, and daily decision-making. They ensure cultural alignment across your team.
Harvey also emphasized the Level 10 Meeting, a structured weekly meeting agenda that drastically improves team communication, problem-solving, and focus. If your meetings are painful or pointless, this is a game changer.
💥 Why Most Teams Struggle (and How EOS Helps)
According to Harvey, most leadership teams fail not because they lack strategy, but because they ignore the human side—team health. Trust, vulnerability, and openness are often overlooked, yet they’re essential for growth.
He also stressed the importance of consistency and rhythm. Even self-implementing teams lose steam over time, which is why EOS emphasizes a 90-day reset cadence to re-align and re-energize leadership.
🧠 Is EOS Right for You?
EOS is industry-agnostic. Whether you’re running a landscaping company, law firm, nonprofit, or tech startup—if you’re working with people and want to grow, EOS can help.
But it’s not for everyone.
You need to be:
Growth-minded
Willing to change
Open to outside perspective
👊 Final Takeaway
If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure of your next move—you’re not alone. EOS gives you the tools to lead with confidence, align your team, and regain control of your business.
As Harvey puts it: “There’s no shame in needing help. The real strength is in seeking it.”
Book a free discovery call with Workergenix to get the support you need to fully implement EOS and stay focused on growth. Our Ultimate Executive Assistants handle the details so you can lead with clarity and traction.
Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Transcript:
Harley Green:
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Growing a business without a proven operating system often leads to misalignment, burnout, and stalled progress. In this episode, Harvey Yergin, certified EOS implementer, Army veteran, and former D1 athlete, shares how he helps leadership teams gain clarity, traction, and team health using the Entrepreneurial Operating System. With a background spanning real estate investing, military logistics, and entrepreneurial leadership, Harvey’s going to unpack the core EOS tools that help businesses align vision, empower people, and achieve results without the chaos. Harvey, how are you doing?
Harvey Yergin:
I’m good man, thanks for having me.
Harley Green:
Yeah, thanks for being on the show with us today. Now you’ve lived many lives—from being a D1 athlete, a military leader, entrepreneur, and EOS implementer. What drew you to helping leadership teams align and grow through EOS?
Harvey Yergin:
It’s fun. It’s really fulfilling and it seems like I have an innate set of skills that make me naturally good at it, which makes me pretty fortunate to have discovered something that aligns my skills with impact. Most of the business owners and leadership teams I work with are struggling in some capacity. Maybe they’re doing well and want to do better. Maybe they aren’t doing well and want to do a lot better. I empathize with that because as a business owner and team leader, I’ve been a part of successful teams and also know what it’s like to feel lost and in need of help. I know how that feels and how it feels to get clarity and when things start clicking. That’s what I want to do for people—with the help of the EOS tools.
Harley Green:
Tell us a bit more about how you got introduced to EOS. Were you on a team that was struggling?
Harvey Yergin:
I was running a real estate business. We were flipping houses in pretty good volume. It was my first real business with a team, and I wasn’t very good at it. We were struggling to make a profit, struggling to feel like we were making progress without pouring in more time and effort. Team dynamics were lousy. I was lucky enough to be handed the book “Traction,” which EOS is based on. I finally put aside my pride and cracked it open. Within the first nine pages, it felt like the book was speaking directly to me. I started to implement the tools in my business, and the rest is history.
Harley Green:
That’s similar to my experience. I remember being on a cruise where “Traction” was recommended. I used my morning workout time to listen to the audiobook. It was incredibly powerful. I took notes, and when we got back, I immediately started implementing those things. It’s been a game changer. So, I’m excited for you to share some top recommendations from EOS. Maybe people can relate to how you were feeling—stuck in the day-to-day, with teams not performing or being profitable. How does EOS help regain clarity and focus on what really matters?
Harvey Yergin:
Clarity and focus are often second-tier symptoms. The root frustrations are that business leaders aren’t generating the kind of revenue or profit they want, they’re working more in the business than they want to—whether in hours or mental energy. They’ve tried multiple things and none have stuck. They’re frustrated with their team. They might say, “nobody wants to work these days” or “it’s hard to find talent.” If you’re experiencing those things, getting clarity and focus through EOS tools can solve them. At the highest level, EOS is about getting vision, traction, and healthy. Vision means getting your team on the same page with where you’re going and how you plan to get there. Traction is about instilling real accountability and discipline. Healthy means building teams that are open, honest, vulnerable, and enjoy working together. If you don’t have that, your team will fray.
Harley Green:
Of the three pillars—vision, traction, and healthy teams—is there one that’s hardest to get right or most often overlooked?
Harvey Yergin:
Healthy, by far. People tend to focus on the “how” of business—process, strategy, tactics. There’s not enough focus on building and maintaining a healthy, cohesive team. You can do everything else right and still fail if your team isn’t built on trust. Books like “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” start with trust for a reason. Ignoring this is often a team’s downfall.
Harley Green:
What are some recommended tools or starting points in EOS to ensure teams have the right people and accountability?
Harvey Yergin:
Two tools: the Accountability Chart and Core Values. The Accountability Chart is the first tool we use with every team. It’s structure first, people second. Most teams build their structure around who’s already there—which doesn’t work. You need to define the functions and roles your business needs over the next 6–12 months, and then assess if your people are the right fit for those seats. Core Values are on the Vision/Traction Organizer. They define the behaviors your organization values and lives by. Use them to attract the right people and repel the wrong ones. When both tools are in place, you get the right people in the right seats.
Harley Green:
Awesome. As people go through this, what are some of the biggest blind spots leadership teams have when setting up EOS?
Harvey Yergin:
Blind spots are common. The biggest stumbling block is an unwillingness to change. EOS is a new way of doing things, and if you’re resistant to change, it won’t work. EOS is for entrepreneurial teams—growth-minded and open to being honest and vulnerable. That can be scary. But holding on to old habits is often what keeps teams stuck.
Harley Green:
Are there mindset shifts or strategies that help people embrace change when starting EOS?
Harvey Yergin:
Honestly, if you have the tools and still can’t change, you may want to talk to a personal development coach or therapist. There’s often a deeper reason behind that resistance. Having an objective third party like an EOS Implementer helps. They’ll call out when your actions don’t align with your goals. Without that external input, you just get stuck in your own loop.
Harley Green:
Speaking of alignment—what EOS tools help with improving communication and meetings?
Harvey Yergin:
The Level 10 Meeting Agenda. Meetings often suck—unproductive, boring, nothing gets done. The L10 is structured to help teams actually make decisions, move forward, and connect. It’s one of the best tools for communication and results.
Harley Green:
We implemented L10 meetings in our business—it was night and day. We saved 15 minutes off our weekly leadership meetings. Team ratings went from 3s to 8s or 9s. Everyone communicates better now. Huge fan of the L10.
Switching gears—does EOS work better for certain industries?
Harvey Yergin:
EOS is industry agnostic. I’ve worked with construction, landscaping, trucking, attorneys, a baseball team, accountants, doctors, nonprofits—you name it. If you have a team, EOS can work for you. You just need to be willing to grow and change. The tools work for businesses of one, but things click more easily once you have 10+ employees.
Harley Green:
Do companies ever lose momentum after getting started with EOS?
Harvey Yergin:
Definitely. Especially self-implementing teams. You start strong, then life gets busy. That’s why EOS is designed around a 90-day world. Every 90 days, you reconnect, refocus, and re-energize. After the initial setup, I meet with teams quarterly. They always come in frazzled—and always leave fired up.
Harley Green:
That’s a universal truth, even Gino Wickman talked about it. As we wrap up, what’s one piece of advice for leaders who want freedom without losing control?
Harvey Yergin:
I get what you’re feeling—worried you’re messing things up, questioning your decisions, maybe even scared to ask for help. Just know there are thousands of us out there who’ve felt the same. You’re not alone. Whether it’s EOS Implementers, other leaders, or business owners, support is out there. Don’t be afraid to reach for it.
Harley Green:
That’s excellent advice. Harvey, thank you so much for sharing these insights. If people want to connect or learn more about EOS, how can they reach you?
Harvey Yergin:
Go to eosworldwide.com or check out the book “Traction.” If you want to connect directly, email me at .
Harley Green:
Thanks again. If you got value from this episode, hit like and subscribe so you don’t miss future strategies to help you scale smarter. Share it with someone who needs to hear it, and if you’re on a podcast platform, leave a quick rating. It helps us reach more leaders like you. Thanks for tuning in—we’ll see you in the next one.
How to Avoid Hiring Mistakes When Scaling Your Business (with Lynn Talbott)
Hiring during a growth phase can feel like a scramble. You’re stretched thin, juggling sales, operations, and your team — and suddenly you need someone yesterday. But rushing the hiring process can quietly sabotage your company’s momentum.
In a recent episode of the Scale Smart Grow Fastpodcast, host Harley Green sat down with Lynn Talbott, founder of The Bookkeeper’s Coach, to break down how to avoid the most common hiring pitfalls that hurt growing businesses.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Here are the top takeaways every founder needs to hear:
1. Your First 5 Hires Are Make-or-Break
Lynn compares early hires to “cornerstones” of your company. They shape your culture, pace, and scalability. Hiring someone who can’t grow with your business — even if they solve an immediate pain point — will cost you more in the long run.
✅ Tip: Think 3–5 years ahead when hiring. Choose people who can evolve with the company, not just fill a gap today.
2. Don’t Just Delegate—Lead
Founders often struggle with delegation — or worse, fall into abdication (handing something off and walking away). Lynn emphasizes the need to develop leadership in your team. Your hires should lighten your load, not add to it.
✅ Tip: Hire with leadership potential in mind. Can they take ownership, or will you be babysitting?
3. Culture Fit > Technical Fit
Many entrepreneurs rush into hiring someone with the right skills — but overlook cultural alignment. That’s a fast track to team dysfunction.
✅ Tip: Define your mission, values, and team vibe. Then hire people who live them, not just talk the talk.
4. Watch Out for the “Halo Effect”
One of the biggest mistakes? Letting your gut override structure. Entrepreneurs often make a snap judgment and then spend the rest of the interview convincing themselves the candidate is “the one.”
✅ Tip: Use structured interviews with behavioral questions. Stick to a checklist. Don’t wing it.
5. Don’t Hire Just Because You “Trust” Someone
Hiring a friend, family member, or neighbor because you “trust” them — not because they’re qualified — is a common trap Lynn warns against.
✅ Tip: Trust is great, but competency and fit are non-negotiable. Hire based on merit, not convenience.
6. Hire Slow, Fire Fast
If you realize you’ve hired the wrong person, act quickly. Avoid dragging out the pain — it affects your team, your culture, and your momentum.
✅ Tip: Have open conversations early. If it’s not working, make the call and move forward.
Final Thought: Structure Doesn’t Have to Feel “Corporate”
Many founders resist structure, thinking it will kill their creative edge. But according to Lynn, a bit of structure — especially around hiring — actually frees you up to lead and grow.
💼 Tired of hiring in panic mode or doing everything yourself?
Book your free discovery call with Workergenix and discover how an Ultimate Executive Assistant can help you escape hiring chaos, delegate smarter, and scale your business with less stress.
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Transcript
Harley Green: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Growing your business doesn’t have to come at the cost of burnout or chaos. In this episode, Lynn Talbott, a successful founder who scaled and sold her seven-figure bookkeeping firm, shares the most common pitfalls leaders make when scaling and how to avoid them. From hiring too quickly to holding on to work that should be delegated, Lynn offers clear, hard-earned insights to help business owners grow sustainably and build a company they actually enjoy running. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Lynn Talbott: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me, Harley.
Harley Green: That’s our pleasure. So Lynn, tell us a little bit more about your background. Tell us about your bookkeeping firm that you started and how you got through that and what brought you to what you’re doing today.
Lynn Talbott: Yes, so I’m sort of a serial entrepreneur. I got a human resources degree and went out and did the corporate world like most people do when they graduate from college. I was in HR. I really liked it, but I knew I always wanted to own my own business. So when I started my business, I called it HR Business Solutions, because I was going to help people with their back-end office doing human resources and maybe some bookkeeping. I started doing HR and found out quickly that entrepreneurs and startups don’t really want to talk to people about HR. They have their own way of doing things and they like to feel like they can make those HR decisions. I don’t need somebody telling me what to do. So quickly my HR Business Solutions company became more of a bookkeeping company simply because that was the need. And that’s what we do as startups—we shift when we have to, right?
Harley Green: I got that. Good pivot there.
Lynn Talbott: Yes. Over the years, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs at the startup level with their messy HR and bookkeeping—anything in the back office—helping them hire, figure out job descriptions, create handbooks, just creating some structure around when they’re ready to scale. Because when you start to scale, you get pulled in a lot of directions. I find the entrepreneur can get a little bit caught up in “I can do everything. I wear all the hats. I make all the decisions.” There’s something about being an entrepreneur that makes you feel like you can do everything, that you’re just Superman and you have all the answers. But what happens is a couple of years down the road, they find, “Wow, I didn’t do the right hire or I didn’t set up my back office right and now I’m scaling and trying to do a thousand things, but I might not have the right people in place.”
Harley Green: Yeah, I think we’ve all seen and experienced that. One thing you’ve mentioned before is how the first few hires—maybe the first five—can really make or break a business. What makes those early decisions so high-stakes?
Lynn Talbott: Your early hires set the tone for the culture, the pace, and how your business is going to go. I always say your first four hires are like your cornerstones—your building blocks. What does your company need so that you can delegate, be successful, and scale? That involves thinking three years, five years, or ten hires down the road. We all scale at different times. But if you don’t hire the right people at the right time, it can really cost you. You’re too busy growing and you can’t afford to hire the wrong people—those who need to be babysat, or who are constantly battling with you, or aren’t helping you build your dream. One of the top issues I see entrepreneurs make is not taking those first hires seriously. They might hire quickly to fill a need—data entry, marketing, etc.—and while the person might have the skills in the moment, they may not be able to grow with your company long-term.
Harley Green: That’s really impactful. And you mentioned rushing into that first hire because you’ve got this pain point—let’s say marketing, right? You get the marketing person. What are some tips or strategies you’d share with leaders to slow it down a little and make sure that hire is strategic and the right one?
Lynn Talbott: One of the mottos I use is “Hire slow, fire fast.” I remember when I moved from corporate HR to owning my own business, I thought I knew everything and I could hire whoever I wanted. Even with my skills, background, and a degree in HR, I still didn’t heed that advice. I’d find somebody outgoing with great skills, do a quick interview, and off they go. Later, I’d find out they weren’t a culture fit. They were battling things internally. Every startup has a culture—and that culture is you, the entrepreneur. It’s everything you stand for and what you want your company to be. You have to ask, “Is this person going to fit my culture, or am I going to battle with them forever?” Toxic hires can poison your company and bring it down quickly. Entrepreneurs often realize it too late.
Harley Green: What are some tools or interview strategies you recommend to ensure a good culture match? We know how to evaluate technical skills. Are there particular methods for culture?
Lynn Talbott: That’s a great question. It’s hard to discern if you haven’t defined your culture, mission, and vision. I’m assuming your listeners have done that before hiring. They need to remember those during interviews—”Is this person able to meet those goals? Can they fit into this culture?” What I often see is entrepreneurs winging it. They trust their gut. They get on Zoom or a phone call and just start talking. That leads to what we call in HR the “halo effect.” Maybe you liked their resume or talked to them previously. You already decided you want to hire them. So instead of vetting them, you’re convincing them to work for you. You’ve put a little halo on them. No matter what they say, you pivot around it. They may not have the soft skills, the culture fit, or the ability to grow with you. That halo effect is real. It’s happened to me, and it can happen to anybody.
Harley Green: This goes back to how entrepreneurs often think they can do everything—including hiring. Is there a time or situation when it’s better to delegate the hiring to someone else like a professional recruiter?
Lynn Talbott: It depends on who you’re hiring. If you need an operations manager to run everything, yes, you might want to go outside. If it’s a marketing person or virtual assistant, you can probably do that yourself. But even then, you need some guidelines. Before hiring, define the job. What exactly are you hiring for? Is it just marketing, or do you also need someone to manage your CRM, do backend office work, or maybe even sales? When I say things like “job description” to entrepreneurs, they often say, “I left corporate to get away from people like you telling me I need an HR department.” I get it. HR has changed, and structure can feel stifling. But even a quick task list—something simple—can help you focus on who you’re hiring for. Tools like ChatGPT can help with that. And you’ll often think of more tasks while creating that list. Hire someone who can do that job or grow into it. Not everyone will come in ready to do the perfect job.
Harley Green: You’ve worked with teams that skipped defining roles. What problems show up when expectations aren’t clear from the start?
Lynn Talbott: I often get called in as a fractional HR person to talk to employees or departments who are disgruntled. Why? Usually because they don’t have clear roles. They have “free flow”—which entrepreneurs love—but once your company grows beyond 10 people, that starts to cause conflict between departments. People compete for the owner’s attention. If you don’t have the right leadership in place, you’ll be pulled in every direction. If you hire too fast, you might miss hiring people with the leadership skills you’ll need a year from now. If no one owns their tasks or department, you end up spread too thin. Those early hires need to take control and truly manage their areas.
Harley Green: That makes sense. And it leads into the next question. Entrepreneurs often hear “HR” and cringe—it’s not what they got into business for. So how should they think about culture while building a team without becoming too corporate?
Lynn Talbott: Everyone will have their own opinion and culture style. There’s no one-size-fits-all. But the owner sets the tone. What do you stand for as an entrepreneur, and how do you share that with your team? One company I worked with gave their team books that reflected their culture. They’d have lunch meetings to discuss them and give PTO for finishing the book. It was well received. It created open conversations and stronger communication. Not everyone will love that, but it worked for them. The key is to be intentional.
Harley Green: That’s a great example of strong culture. If someone has their culture in place and their team aligned, what’s the next step to build a strong interview process? How do they grow the business fast without hiring mistakes?
Lynn Talbott: Don’t wing it. Use an interview sheet with specific questions. In HR, we use behavioral questions—past behavior predicts future behavior. Ask how they handled certain situations, or how they performed under pressure. If you ask about a past role and they start with, “My boss was terrible,” believe them—that’s how they’ll treat you too. Their answers reveal how they behave, not just what skills they have.
Harley Green: Great segue into red flags. What are some red flags founders shouldn’t ignore, especially when desperate for help?
Lynn Talbott: One big red flag is hiring people close to you. It’s common—your spouse, child, mother, or sister-in-law doing your marketing because she’s a stay-at-home mom. Founders often say, “I can trust her, I’ll teach her.” That usually turns into chaos. Just because someone is trustworthy or nice doesn’t mean they’re qualified. I’ve had to “rescue” many startups because a family member was doing the books but didn’t know what they were doing. Avoid hiring just based on trust or familiarity.
Harley Green: Let’s move to another area—handing off tasks. At what point should a founder bring in a right-hand person, like an executive assistant or COO?
Lynn Talbott: As soon as possible. You’re already working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. You need to lead, sell, and drive vision—not clean up CRMs on weekends. The biggest mistake is not delegating. We tell ourselves, “I can do it in 10 minutes,” and push things to Saturday. But by Monday, you’re too busy again. If you want someone to be your operations manager, CFO, or take over finances, develop leadership early. Hire people who own tasks, not those who push them back to you. Delegate soon and develop leadership beneath you.
Harley Green: Great advice. As we wrap up, what’s your top advice for a founder who realizes they’ve hired the wrong person? How can they recover without losing momentum?
Lynn Talbott: Be honest. Sit down and talk to them. If you’ve had open conversations before, this will be easier. If you hate confrontation and want them gone, it’s tougher. But don’t let someone stay if they’re not pulling their weight, fitting your culture, or helping you grow. Hire slow, fire fast. Say, “This isn’t working, I’m going in a different direction.” And make it clean. Have someone else cut off access to systems. Laws vary by state, but act quickly before things escalate.
Harley Green: Lynn, you’ve shared incredible strategies today. If people want to connect with you, what’s the best way?
Lynn Talbott: You can find me at coachingbookkeepers.com. We have a training circle where we coach bookkeepers to scale and sell their bookkeeping firms.
Harley Green: If you got value from this episode, hit like and subscribe so you don’t miss future strategies to help you scale smarter. Share this with a business owner or colleague—it could be just what they need right now. Thanks for tuning in. See you on the next one.
How to Scale Your Business Without Burning Out: Lessons from the Executive Edge Live Panel
Fast growth is exciting—until it starts to cost you your health, your team, or your culture. If you’re a founder or executive scaling quickly, this blog is your wake-up call and roadmap rolled into one.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Harley Green hosted a powerhouse session on the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast: 🎙️ Executive Edge Live Panel, featuring:
Bethany LaFlam – Author of The Power of OPE, Investor, & Attorney
Christopher Filipiak – Sales Strategist & CEO Coach
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem – VP of People & Systems, Found Search Marketing
Saima Geelani – Core Energy Coach, Founder of Talent Edge World
🔥 The Core Takeaways for High-Growth Leaders
1. Growth Without Alignment = Guaranteed Burnout
Bethany LaFlam emphasizes that scaling without clearly defined goals, values, and personal alignment results in setbacks, misdirection, and emotional drain. “If it feels misaligned, it probably is.”
2. Your Energy Is Your Biggest Asset
Saima Geelani explains how invisible drains like unclear boundaries and internal “gremlins” (self-limiting beliefs) lead to burnout. She recommends core energy leadership and micro-recovery practices to maintain momentum.
3. Letting Go Is a Leadership Superpower
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem shares real-life experience from scaling agency teams. The difference between heroic contributors and sustainable systems? Documentation, delegation, and trusting your team before you hit crisis mode.
4. Sales Starts with the CEO—But Shouldn’t End There
Christopher Filipiak reframes sales as a leadership responsibility rooted in mindset, not just tactics. When CEOs align with sales emotionally and operationally, they stop being bottlenecks—and start leading scalable systems.
5. Protect Team Morale with Transparency
Your team isn’t just watching what you say—they’re filling in the blanks when you don’t say anything. Clear, consistent communication protects morale and builds buy-in.
💡 Real Growth Feels Energizing—Not Exhausting
Whether you’re a solopreneur adding your first team member or a CEO managing multiple departments, these insights are a must-know.
This isn’t just about growth—it’s about building something that lasts without losing yourself or your people along the way.
If you’re serious about scaling smart—not just fast—your next move isn’t another 12-hour workday. It’s getting the right support system behind you.
Book a free discovery call with Workergenix to get matched with your Ultimate Executive Assistant—so you can scale faster without burning out.
Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Transcript
Harley Green: All right, everybody, welcome to the Executive Edge live panel. I’m Harley Green, founder and CEO of Workergenix, where we help business leaders scale faster and smarter with the very best AI-leveraged executive assistants. This month’s panel is all about one of the biggest challenges business leaders face, growing fast without sacrificing your health, your team, and your culture. Sustainable growth, it’s not just a strategy, it’s really a leadership test. And today we’re gonna dive deep into the real mechanics of scale.
You’ll hear strategies, honest stories, and tangible frameworks from leaders who have been there and done that without the burnout. And a quick heads up, today’s session is also going to be featured on our podcast, Scale Smart Grow Fast. So if you hear something that hits home, you’ll be able to replay it later on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. So today, let’s go ahead and dive in and meet today’s incredible panel.
First, we’ve got Bethany LaFlam, an attorney, investor, and bestselling author. Bethany helps entrepreneurs scale their wealth and freedom through strategic leverage, not burnout. She’s the author of The Power of OPE and leads a global movement to build aligned extraordinary lives.
Christopher Filipiak, sales consultant and coach. He works with CEOs of expert-based businesses to 12x growth through mindset and sales alignment. His integrated approach helps leaders add over a million dollars in revenue without losing control or energy.
We also have Alyshia Madlem, the VP of People and Systems, Found Search Marketing. With over 20 years in marketing agency leadership, Alyshia has scaled teams through acquisition and built operational systems that protect culture while driving performance.
And finally, last but not least, we’ve got Saima Geelani, founder of Talent Edge World. Saima is a globally experienced coach and HR leader who helps executives lead with clarity, energy, and purpose. Her core energy coaching framework builds leadership that sustains both performance and well-being. Welcome, everyone, to the panel.
Let’s start here. What does sustainable scale mean to you? And why do so many leaders get it wrong?
Saima Geelani: For me, sustainable scale is really like increasing the productivity of the organization while not losing focus on the energy, on the clarity and above all, the well-being of the people. What happens mostly when leaders get it wrong is when they primarily focus on the productivity, they focus on the numbers, they focus on the metrics. That’s absolutely fine, there is nothing wrong about it. But the problem is while doing so, they lose focus primarily on the well-being of the people.
Recently, I had gone through this book, Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, where he says that when we ask the CEO what is your priority, they usually say customers. That might be true for small companies, but as the companies scale up, they grow bigger and that connection becomes smaller and eventually it becomes zero. So what is the truth here? The truth is CEOs or the leaders are responsible for the people and people eventually take care of your customers. So you really have to start backwards. That is where leaders really get it wrong.
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem: I think to build on that, often the focus is on numbers where people say, “I want to grow margin to something,” or “I want to grow year over year.” They lose the purpose. They lose who they are. They lose the connection to mission, vision and values. That’s what drives purpose and why. That’s what gets people to put in the time it takes to achieve those new margins and growth.
It starts to be this focus on hitting a numerical value instead of looking at the full growth journey—growing people or growing services or whatever it is you provide. You lose the connection to why you started or what you’re doing. People get disengaged and you start to see that downtrend very quickly.
Bethany LaFlam: I love that we’re having this conversation because I think too often we focus on the numbers and not on the people who get us there. The biggest thing for scaling, of course, is to leverage other people. I wrote a whole book on it. I specifically say leverage and not use because we want to make sure that we’re building up those people. It’s only sustainable if it’s a win for everybody. Everyone that’s helping you get to your vision and your dream—it has to help them get to theirs. It’s got to work for everybody. We lose sight of that when we focus just on the numerical metrics.
Christopher Filipiak: When you’re thinking about doing something sustainably, it means you can do it for a long time and it doesn’t eat away at your base-level resources. As you grow your company, or grow anything or grow yourself, you have more of something, not less. That’s the kind of growth we want.
It’s about developing the skill sets in your organization around change and growth. How can you build a culture that embraces and has the skills required to continually change and grow? When you develop that as a competency, that’s going to create sustainability in the people and in the organization as a whole.
Harley Green: Great insights there. I’m excited to dive into some of the things you all said. Bethany, you write about Aligned Living. What’s the cost when founders scale misaligned and how can they catch that early?
Bethany LaFlam: I think the biggest cost is misalignment in your business, which could mean a number of things. If it’s not driving toward a stated goal or big vision, that’s a problem. People get this wrong a lot. They don’t state the goal. They’re busy running a business and they’ll figure it out later. But if you’re just working to work and you don’t really know where you’re headed, that’s going to lead to misalignment.
You end up growing for the sake of growth, but it’s not scalable or sustainable. Then you find yourself being pulled back—one step forward, two steps back. If you’re not aligned, you are going to backslide. It’ll take longer to get to your goal. Either you haven’t identified it, or you have people outside their lanes. Entrepreneurs are notorious for trying to do all the things.
How can you catch it early? Stop quieting that voice, that inner knowing. I know it doesn’t seem logical, and it seems really soft. But especially as women, we’ve been conditioned to quiet that voice down. If it feels misaligned, it probably is. Trust that. Recalibrate. That feeling is just as important as the data. If something is painful, your job is to figure out how to make it not painful. Anyone who says it just has to suck for a really long time—don’t listen to that. It doesn’t. Your job is to get through the suck as fast as possible and actually enjoy your life.
Christopher Filipiak: That’s a really interesting awareness. As you grow your business and yourself, there’s good and bad in everything. One person’s “suck” could be another person’s passion. Alignment comes from being aware of that and choosing where to put your focus. If you’re not in love with your work or your business, you’re going to self-sabotage. You’ll spend more time in the suck than in the love.
Bethany LaFlam: The biggest obstacle is our mindset. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands on coaching just to shift my mindset and remind myself—I get to do the things I love because I said so.
Saima Geelani: I agree. From a coaching perspective, it’s about listening to your inner self—your inner “who.” That’s where the magic happens. That’s where you find your passion and energy.
Harley Green: Christopher, you coach CEOs through high-stakes sales growth. How do you help them expand revenue without becoming the bottleneck?
Christopher Filipiak: It’s about understanding what sales really is. You started a business, and sales is a part of that. But sales is also an expression of love and service. There’s a mindset component to it: mastering your own sales work as the CEO. No resistance to strangers, no resistance to sales, no limiting beliefs around money. You need awareness around those things so they don’t stop you.
Once you’re aligned with sales and money, you start selecting strategies, behaviors, and teammates based on cause and effect—not fear, worry, or doubt. That creates flow. And that frees you up from being the bottleneck.
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem: I’d add to that. As operators, we help visionary CEOs get what’s in their head out into the world. Once you start selling, you need others to understand what you do so you’re not the only person who can do the job. At some point, someone else has to get it too. CEOs need to figure out what only they can do, what they can train others to do, and what they can let go of.
Sometimes, it’s about having trusted people around you—employees or advisors—who can say, “You can’t keep doing it all.” Let go. Build trust. Surround yourself with people who can scale the mission without making it all about you.
Christopher Filipiak: Exactly. Build the skills and strategies into the business, not just into one person. As you do that, the CEO is free to do what they love most. Every CEO is different, so the goal is to build a system that doesn’t rely on one personality.
Saima Geelani: I love that Alicia mentioned letting go. It’s like parenting. You let your kids do things on their own, trusting them even if they fail at first. That’s how they learn. Same with teams. Trust them. Be there to support them. That’s how trust grows, and so does your business.
Harley Green: Great answers. Alyshia, you’ve led teams through growth and acquisition. What were some breaking points you had to solve, and what did you learn about scaling people—not just processes?
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem: The biggest thing I’ve seen is the difference between heroic contributors and operationalization. Small companies often start with one or two heroic contributors—they do everything. But you can’t scale if you’re dependent on a few people. You have to get the information out of their heads and operationalize it.
If you don’t, you create single points of failure and even “unfireable” people. Maybe they don’t fit anymore, but you’re shackled to them because no one else knows what they know. You need to build training, documentation, and backups early on. If not, you get stuck in a cycle: grow, lose something, grow again, lose again. You never really get ahead.
Bethany LaFlam: That still comes back to letting go. If the CEO can’t let go, you can’t put systems in place. And that’s often a mindset issue—feeling like you have to prove your worth. But your team wants you out of the weeds. They want to run in their lane while you stay in yours.
Saima Geelani: Exactly. It’s about trusting yourself and the team. Clear vision, clear direction. Otherwise, your team is just doing tasks, not driving toward a shared destination.
Harley Green: Saima, your work focuses on leadership energy. What are the invisible drains leaders often overlook, and how can they recover momentum before burnout?
Saima Geelani: The invisible drains are your internal narratives. In coaching, we call them gremlins. They’re meant to keep you safe, but really they make you smaller. One example: “I can’t stop. I have to keep going.” Even on vacation, some leaders keep checking in. That sends the wrong message—it says you don’t trust your team.
There’s a book, Taming Your Gremlins by Rick Carson, that helps with this. It starts with self-awareness. Then you embrace the gremlin, and start to overcome it. Also, you need clear boundaries. When roles aren’t clear, leaders end up doing everything—strategy, ops, admin—and burn out. Good leadership requires boundaries, trust, and space to breathe.
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem: I love that energy came up. Energy is a finite resource, just like time or money. You need to track what tasks give or drain your energy. That can shape how you design your day, price your services, and build your team. It’s not fluff—it’s vital.
Bethany LaFlam: We use something from Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time—a time and energy audit. Not just what takes time, but what drains bandwidth. If someone’s dragging, we ask: Are you working outside your lane? Are you stuck in tasks that drain you? Maybe someone else loves that work. It’s all about fit.
Harley Green: Let’s talk about trade-offs. What’s one hard decision you made to protect your energy or your team’s, and how did you make peace with it?
Saima Geelani: Maybe I can speak to that. Two years ago, I moved from France to the United States. I was fortunate to get a leadership role within a month. My background is in talent development—the soft side of HR. Over time, I realized my work wasn’t aligned with my values. My role was meant to support well-being programs, but the leadership was only focused on productivity and metrics. Both approaches have merit, but we weren’t aligned.
Eventually, I decided to resign. That was tough. I still remember how hard it was to press that send button on my resignation email. But I listened to my inner voice. I paused, reflected, and discovered coaching. That was my passion all along. Now, I get to work with anyone I want. I’m free to do the work that lights me up. I believe life is not a game to win or lose—it’s meant to be played. So enjoy the journey.
Bethany LaFlam: I want to add to that. At one point, we had a high-paying client who had the power to refer us—or not. But they were abusive to my team. I made the hard call to fire them. I wanted my team to know that I’d protect them over the money. Sure, it was risky—they could’ve trashed our reputation. But I did it respectfully. That move told my team: I’ve got your back, and your well-being matters more than any client.
Harley Green: That ties into a live question from our audience. Kedra asked: Can you talk about the importance of team morale and what leaders can do to inspire and encourage their teams?
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem: Great question. As leaders, we have a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations. And we don’t always share those with the team. But your team craves information—they want to know what’s going on. You have to define what transparency looks like in your company, and then commit to it. Let people in. Show them that you’re in this too—not just barking orders from the top.
Whether things are going well or you’re facing challenges, acknowledge it. Let them know what’s changing and why. That level of communication and buy-in directly impacts morale. Especially in tough times, the message should be: We see it, we’re working on it, and we’re in this together.
Saima Geelani: I couldn’t agree more. Lack of clear communication causes chaos. In energy leadership, we talk about seven levels of energy. When communication is unclear, people drop into Level 2—frustration and anger. Even your best people start to burn out.
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem: And you can’t stop DMs—whether on Slack, Teams, whatever. If you’re not communicating, people will fill in the blanks. They’ll start creating their own narratives, and those usually aren’t friendly to leadership. You need to get ahead of it. Share information openly and often to control the story.
Bethany LaFlam: Yes.
Saima Geelani: Absolutely.
Christopher Filipiak: As leaders, we have to model the attitude and culture we want to see. Everything in business has cycles—ups and downs. If your emotions are controlled by the circumstances, the whole organization becomes reactive. Instead, model emotional stability. Teach it as a skill. Hire people who want to participate in that kind of culture.
Morale, culture, and mindset are choices we get to make every day. And it’s easier to choose a better attitude when you’re aligned with your purpose. If you’re just chasing numbers, you burn out. But if you love what you do, you expand your energy and see more opportunities.
Harley Green: Excellent. Now, to wrap things up, I’ve got a lightning round question for everyone. What’s your best advice for a business leader who wants to scale without burnout? And as you answer, please share the best way for our audience to connect with you.
Christopher Filipiak: Think of scaling without burnout as a skill set. Ask yourself: What’s the skill set I need to develop around burnout? That starts with learning to feel your emotions and move through them to gain clarity. Also, have someone in your corner—a coach or mentor—who can help you see blind spots like overworking or poor hiring choices. Best way to connect:christopherfilipiak.com or LinkedIn.
Bethany LaFlam: Know your lane and stay in it. Your lane is where three things overlap: what you’re amazing at, what lights you up, and what moves you toward your life goals. Do only what lives in that lane and build a team to handle the rest. You get to do that. Find support to make it happen. Best way to reach me is on Instagram:@bethany_laflam.
Saima Geelani: Lead with your anabolic energy—that’s high-vibration, trust-based leadership. Energy is contagious. If you show up with purpose and positivity, your team will reflect that. It’s the best path to scale without stress. Connect with me at talentedgeworld.com or LinkedIn: Saima Geelani.
Alyshia Kisor-Madlem: Be solid in your mission, vision, values, and purpose. Build from that foundation. It’s what keeps people aligned and energized, especially when things get hard. Connect with me on LinkedIn: Alyshia Kisor-Madlem.
Harley Green: Thank you to all of our panelists for sharing real strategies, honest insights, and leadership wisdom. And thank you to everyone who joined us live. Remember—scaling isn’t just about growth. It’s about protecting what makes that growth worth it. If you’re ready to scale with the right support, check out our free masterclass atworkergenix.com/bonus-masterclass. We’ll see you at the next Executive Edge Live.
How to Turn Your Team into a High-Performing Asset (Without Burnout)
If your team is your biggest investment, why aren’t they delivering your biggest return?
In a recent episode of the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast, host Harley Green sat down with Katie Close, transformational leadership coach and founder of Self Mastery, Entrepreneur Evolution. Katie shared a powerful 6-part framework that helps leaders transform their teams into aligned, efficient, and high-ROI assets—without burnout or bloated headcounts.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Here’s what growth-minded founders and executives need to know:
1. Strategic Clarity Drives Everything
Vision isn’t just a poster on the wall. According to Katie, strategic clarity must be embedded into daily operations and decisions. Without it, you risk hiring misaligned team members and wasting energy on low-ROI activities.
2. People Need Defined Roles and Accountability
Too many leaders expect new hires to “figure it out.” Katie emphasizes clear role definitions, consistent processes, and aligned expectations as key drivers of performance and satisfaction.
3. Process Before People
Before hiring, first fix your systems. Throwing more people at unclear workflows only creates expensive inefficiencies. Align structure and operations before expanding the team.
4. Hire Support for the Visionary
Visionary leaders often live on the edge of growth and chaos. Hiring an executive assistant or integrator helps bring structure to vision, translating ideas into execution and freeing the visionary to focus on innovation.
5. Emotional Intelligence is Non-Negotiable
Leadership isn’t just strategy—it’s psychology. Katie highlights how subconscious beliefs and unprocessed emotions can sabotage leadership. Emotional intelligence helps leaders stay grounded, navigate setbacks, and maintain the energy needed to inspire others.
6. Start With Honest Conversations
Want to improve your team’s performance? Start by asking: “What’s working, what’s not, and what should we change?” Katie calls this the “1% conversation”—a simple practice that catches small issues before they become big problems.
“Scale smart before you grow fast.”
Katie’s final advice? Optimize the human side of your business. Emotional patterns, clarity gaps, and poor delegation habits are the silent killers of growth. Get intentional, get honest, and start leading smarter.
Workergenix pairs you with an Ultimate Executive Assistant to bring clarity, systems, and execution to your vision—book a free discovery call today.
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Transcript:
Harley Green: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. Now, if your people are your greatest investment, why aren’t they delivering the strongest ROI? In this episode, Katie Close, Transformational Leadership Coach and founder of Self Mastery, Entrepreneur Evolution, shares how business leaders can align strategy, structure, and emotional intelligence to unlock their team’s true potential. Drawing from over two decades of experience, Katie reveals six key framework items that help transform expensive overhead into consistent high performance enabling growth without burnout. Katie, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Katie: Hi Harley, thank you. Yes, well.
Harley Green: Great, now Katie, maybe you can share a little bit more about your background. What brought you to helping others with their people now?
Katie: Well, my husband and I, when we got married, we had these master degrees and we had envisioned ourselves in the workplace to some degree, but he had this stirring for entrepreneurship. So very quickly we are building a moving company from scratch. We got a truck and now we’re building a company. I was a little bit surprised about how emotional that journey was because if I’m getting straight A’s through a master’s program, why am I not figuring out business? It actually required something distinct from us. We went through some highs and lows that we weren’t expecting.
We then got into the transformational work of people in nonprofits, because I was very inspired by that. Organizational leadership, yes, but really keying in on the individual. I often say that team is made up of I’s. They just all get together and figure out how to harmonize and become an efficient organization for the intended purpose or mission.
When I really started to take my time with individuals and actually individuals that were on the brink of severe challenges—and through a nonprofit, it was a lot of drug and alcohol addiction—and those people, they need to change. You don’t have the convenience of when or how or if. It’s now. It’s essential.
Watching that transformation, I saw how much of it occurred at a subconscious and emotional level. Then I started to apply a lot of that for business. We draw out our patterns. Especially if we have margins, we just allow them to be eaten up by overhead. I know you guys just recently had a podcast about increasing head count, just more people as if that’s going to solve what people. What are they going to have to feel, think and exchange in the organization?
I started doing that for us. We opened up another business—we had sold our moving one—but we opened up a lawn and landscaping one. People saw the transformations that were occurring and started asking me to coach. Again, I love people. So I was happy to do that. And I’ve continued to do that as we’ve had a number of other businesses. We’ve sold some, building other ones, looking to buy one again recently.
I go in and help other businesses with those underlying dynamics that often get lost. We know ourselves, right? I don’t know, Harley, if you’ve ever experienced this, but you’re like, I’m doing a new workout program, or I’m going to get up at the same time every day, or I’m going to do my work blocks. The idea of it’s good, but our emotional patterns sometimes overtake all of that.
Imagine wanting to change the entire patterns and habits of a whole organization—not just yourself, but the whole thing. That’s, I think, where there’s so much underlying potential, but there’s so much work to be done.
Harley Green: Absolutely. I love what you said about the challenge of changing this whole organization when we struggle just to keep consistent ourselves. One of the things you say is that people are both your greatest expense and greatest return. What makes that alignment so critical for leaders who want real ROI from their team?
Katie: Well, if we bring it back to yourself, we watch a lot of our own internal patterns play out. We’re sometimes very hard on ourselves, on our mistakes, on our patterns. But we have to realize we are—especially if you’re a visionary or one of the key elements—you are one of the greatest assets to your business: your energy, your clarity, your patterns. As you start to believe that, you can start to believe that in your people. But it doesn’t mean it’s just automatic.
There are a number of elements going on. A lot of time people just say, I’ll put in a new person. This person’s driving me nuts. I loved them at first, get them out of here. It’s like dating. You ever see somebody fall in love and the person could do no wrong? They hire them on the first meeting. No real plan or strategy. Just a good feeling. And then they’re out. They’re not doing what I said. I can’t stand it anymore. Get out. Hiring somebody else. Then that person looks like the last. Bob looks a lot like Billy who looks a lot like Luke.
We actually have a way of being that can either make people very expensive for us or make people really optimized and beneficial for us.
Harley Green: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about your framework, the six key elements in your framework. What do those consist of?
Katie: We have to be clear on where we’re going. Vision, mission, strategic clarity—if you write it down and put it in a drawer, it’s a start, but often gives a false sense of engagement. There’s a decision every day to live out that clarity. Am I going in the direction I intend? What is or isn’t moving me there? I love quarters because every quarter you can reassess. Every day might be too much, but strategic check-ins help.
Then we have our people, but we’re really choosing them in light of the strategic clarity. A lot of times we think someone will just come in and fix something, but people appreciate clarity and a bit of structure. Visionaries often don’t like being told what to do, but others want direction and structure. That makes for a great organization.
Transparency is another one. We need to be okay with micro mistakes. With good measurables, we facilitate clarity and quick responses to breakdowns. Then we solve root problems—this is where emotional intelligence is key. It takes intentionality, not just fire-fighting. We need process and execution with consistency, building new habits. Otherwise, you’re just adding more people without clear direction or impact.
Harley Green: Yeah. One thing we found in our business was going from chaos to having clear job descriptions, responsibilities, and procedures. There was less chaos, more done, and everyone was happier.
Katie: Exactly.
Harley Green: Of the elements you just talked about, is there any one in particular that has the most impact when not in place? What red flags can people watch for?
Katie: They’re all important, but strategic clarity and the ability to execute it regularly stand out. You can’t just write it and put it away—even putting it on the wall isn’t enough. It must be in the habits of your people. If you can integrate it daily, people start to figure it out and embody it.
It’s hard to scale if people have to read you all the time. That’s why having an operational person or executive assistant to bridge the gap is essential. Visionaries iterate a lot. Not everyone wants to live on the edge with them. An assistant can stabilize execution, allowing the visionary to keep creating.
Harley Green: What would you say to that visionary who doesn’t have an assistant yet? How do you communicate the benefits?
Katie: This year I’ve had a true executive assistant. My day is full of creativity and new decisions. I’m less bogged down, and I didn’t realize how much the little stuff was wearing me out. Yes, it’s a bit of a risk, but I’d talk to a visionary using words like “risk,” “return,” “creativity,” and “freedom.” That’s what they want.
I also host twice-monthly workshop calls for a visionary and their assistant or integrator. They both need to be there. Visionaries are bigger-than-life people—they often undervalue that stabilizing role. We’re often in survival mode, thinking we have to bring in the money, make stuff happen. But we need structure and people who can create that calm.
Harley Green: You mentioned freedom and time. Sometimes visionaries feel guilty when their assistant is working and they’re at their kid’s ballgame. What would you say to that?
Katie: Great question. Guilt is often systemic—it’s not always just your feeling. It could come from cultural or family conditioning. Maybe you were told you’re lazy if not busy. We need to recognize that conditioning.
Visionaries need to focus on their energy. That’s the most valuable thing. If going to the ballgame re-energizes you and you come back with more clarity and drive, that’s invaluable. But if you check out and don’t come back energized, then yeah, maybe it’s an issue. Your job is to
Harley Green: That leads into another question. How does emotional intelligence factor into team optimization?
Katie: We have this prefrontal cortex where we set goals and get strategic, but a big driver in our brain is the limbic system—our emotions. We are moved by how we feel: respected, powerful, free. Tools like the Predictive Index and Culture Index help uncover work motivators.
Money can only motivate so much. Emotional intelligence allows leaders to notice and work through things like burnout, stress, disappointment, regret—all of which affect creativity and leadership. Ray Dalio said, “Pain plus reflection equals progress.” We need to reflect to grow.
Harley Green: So when aligning people, strategy, and systems, what mindset shifts do leaders need?
Katie: Let’s play with this. When you take on more systems, part of you probably goes, “Woohoo,” especially if you don’t have to build them. But is there a part of you that resists?
Harley Green: Definitely. Sunk cost fallacy comes to mind. “It’s worked this far, why change it?”
Katie: Okay, so why change what’s working?
Harley Green: If the ROI is better—if it helps us or our clients more—then it’s worth it.
Katie: Have you had it work out?
Harley Green: Yes, in our lending business we switched platforms, and it’s been great.
Katie: If it hasn’t worked out, there’s still something to learn. Sometimes we don’t reflect on what went wrong. That’s where expensive entrepreneurial education becomes valuable if we show up for it. Reflect and evolve.
Harley Green: What are some examples of subconscious issues holding leaders back?
Katie: I had a client who loved freedom and thought everyone wanted the same. They hired salespeople with no structure, thinking autonomy equals performance. But it was abdication, not delegation. The hires weren’t held accountable, and it blew up. One hire even reminded the client of his father. It was subconscious patterning playing out.
Harley Green: Wow.
Katie: We all have those patterns. The subconscious says, “I got you,” whether that’s brushing your teeth or repeating emotional cycles. We have to examine which patterns serve us and which don’t.
Harley Green: What’s one practical step leaders can take this week to start that shift?
Katie: Have a safe, honest conversation with each person on your team. Ask: What’s working? What’s not? What would you change? You don’t have to implement it all, but it gives you awareness. We call it the “1% conversation.” Catch the issue at 1% before it becomes a 50% problem.
Harley Green: Katie, thank you so much for sharing these actionable strategies. Where can people connect with you?
Katie: Visit katieclose.com. I offer coaching for both the executive and their organization. We do group work every quarter around the six elements. Harvard Business Review says a $10M business can lose $2M yearly in operational inefficiencies. If $2M motivates you, come check it out.
Harley Green: If you got value from this episode, hit like and subscribe so you don’t miss future strategies to help you scale smarter. Share this with someone who needs it. Thanks for tuning in!
Marketing Without Strategy Is Costing You More Than You Think
If you’re a small business leader juggling roles and drowning in “random acts of marketing,” this one’s for you. In our latest episode of Scale Smart, Grow Fast, Harley Green sat down with Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, to talk about why marketing strategy must come before tactics and technology—especially AI.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
🎯 Why Most Marketing Fails Small Business Owners
Many founders approach marketing with a to-do list: “We need a new website, some paid ads, maybe some SEO.” But as Sara shares, without a clear strategy, you risk spending thousands with little return—and a lot of frustration.
Her team often steps into companies spending $10K+ monthly on marketing with no idea what’s working. Sound familiar?
🧭 What Strategic Marketing Actually Looks Like
Sara breaks down a proven process that includes:
A marketing and brand audit
Ideal client interviews
Competitive research
Messaging development
Customer journey mapping
A focused execution calendar
This foundational work brings clarity, confidence, and control—and often helps businesses do less with better results.
🤖 Don’t Just “Do AI” — Train It on Strategy
With AI tools like ChatGPT trending, Sara warns against adopting them without intention. Instead:
Align business and marketing goals.
Identify your team’s gaps.
Choose AI tools based on specific objectives.
Train AI with your brand voice, values, and strategy.
Smart AI integration enhances your marketing—it doesn’t replace strategy.
🧠 From Doers to Managers: Elevating Your Marketing Team
Sara also emphasizes helping teams evolve by:
Auditing their roles
Identifying tasks AI can support
Upskilling them into strategy-focused roles
Bringing in a fractional CMO (like Duct Tape Marketing offers) can help founders stay in their zone of genius while giving their team the guidance and structure to succeed.
🚀 Take Action: Start with Strategy
If you’re scaling a business and overwhelmed with marketing decisions, here’s Sara’s advice:
“Don’t rush into AI or shiny tools. Start with your business goals, then build a marketing strategy that supports them. Everything else should flow from there.”
Schedule a free discovery call to see how an ultimate executive assistant from Workergenix can free up your time to focus on what really drives growth.
Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Transcript
Harley Green: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Scale Smart, Grow Fast podcast. Now in today’s fast-paced business world, growth without intention leads to exhaustion and missed opportunities. In this episode, Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, shares how leaders can scale strategically by aligning their marketing efforts, leveraging AI, and building a team that thrives. With over a decade of experience advising thousands of business owners, Sara offers a grounded, actionable approach to sustainable growth that protects your energy and maximizes your impact.
So thank you for being on the podcast today. How are you doing?
Sara Nay: I’m doing well. Thank you for having me on. Excited to be here.
Harley Green: Tell us a little bit more about your background. What brought you to Duct Tape Marketing in this role of helping other people with their marketing?
Sara Nay: Duct Tape Marketing as a business has been around for about 30 years. I actually joined the team back in December 2010 as an intern. I had graduated college, done some traveling, was a ski bum and went to South America for a while, four months or so, and came back and didn’t really know what I was going to pursue. So I started honestly as an intern saying, “Marketing sounds interesting. Let’s see where this goes.” Obviously, it stuck. I’ve been around for about 15 years now in the company. Even though I started as an intern back in the day, I’ve moved throughout the company through multiple different roles. I was community manager for a while, account manager. I served as fractional CMO to our clients for a while, COO, sales. Most recently, last year, I moved into the seat as CEO. I’ve been involved in all the different areas of a marketing agency at this point and have learned a lot along the way.
Harley Green: I can imagine. That is quite the journey and I think it speaks to a great business if it’s able to keep someone as talented as you there that long and have all this experience. That’s really impressive.
Sara Nay: Thank you. I caught the bug. Our founder, John Jantsch, is really passionate about serving small businesses. So back when he started Duct Tape Marketing, he saw that marketing was really complicated and confusing for small businesses to buy because they just really didn’t even know what they were buying in a lot of cases. So he set out on a mission to make marketing as simple and practical to the small business space as possible. I’ve really been passionate about that myself now over the years. As I said, I’ve been in the sales role for a while and I’ve seen so many small businesses come to us frustrated that marketing doesn’t work. They’ve tried to hire different agencies. They’re spending all this money. They’re getting complicated reports with no actual customers and all that stuff. So I’ve heard all of these stories myself. I’ve also then walked through taking someone from frustrated with marketing to then creating a strategy, to them understanding the what and the why behind the things they’re doing. I’ve seen that transformation. So that’s caused me to become very driven and passionate to help those small businesses as well.
Harley Green: I think you really are speaking to a lot of the pain points people feel with marketing there. What are some of the examples of strategies that you employ that help marketing stay simple and still impactful?
Sara Nay: A lot of times people will come to marketing companies and they’ll say something like, “I need a new website” or “I need to launch paid ads” or “I need tactics,” essentially. What we’ve always said is strategy needs to come before any tactics. Now we’re even shifting to say strategy needs to come before tactics and technology, because now people are diving into AI without the proper strategy in place. Marketing strategy has so many definitions. We usually work with clients in an initial 30 to 45-day engagement where we are doing things like a marketing and brand audit to get a baseline of their marketing and brand today. We’re interviewing some of their best clients. We are doing competitive research to ultimately develop ideal client profiles or personas and then core messaging. Step one and two of marketing is you need to understand who you’re talking to and what message resonates with them. Then we move more into the planning phase of strategy, which is mapping out the customer journey, mapping out a content strategy, identifying the four to six biggest growth priorities over the next quarter, and putting that all into an execution calendar. A lot of times when I talk to businesses, they’re like, “Yeah, I have a marketing strategy,” and they have a list of tactics. Like, “We’re going to do this, this and this.” That’s a piece of marketing strategy. It’s an important piece, but you need all of the stuff that goes on the front end. If you’re telling me you need to be focused on Meta ads, but your clients aren’t on Facebook, it probably doesn’t make sense. Also, you need to understand what messaging actually resonates with them as well. That’s where I see a lot of people waste money on marketing. They’re just on these channels spending. They don’t have any idea if it’s working or not, but they haven’t put the work in on the front end. A lot of times when you go through creating a marketing strategy, you can actually simplify what you’re doing from a marketing perspective and focus on the right channels with the right message at the right time to your ideal clients.
Harley Green: What are some of the biggest surprises people you’ve worked with have had as they’re going through this process and having this strategy developed, whether it’s finding details about that ideal client or what technologies or platforms they should be using? I’m curious, what are some of those aha moments they’ve had when working with you?
Sara Nay: It’s maybe less “aha moments” and more so clarity is what they’re getting. A lot of small businesses out there are just spending money on marketing. Then I ask them, “Are these channels working for you? Are you hitting specific goals? What are you tracking? Should you keep doing these things?” A lot of times they don’t know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started working with a small business when we back up and do strategy, and maybe they’re spending $10,000–$15,000 a month across all of these different channels. When I ask them why, they say, “Because we’ve always done it and we don’t know what’s working and we need to be on these things.” It’s not always ah-has, it’s more about putting clarity behind the why. Analyzing and actually getting metrics and tracking set up. Then understanding what’s working and shifting the budget towards that versus being spread thin across all the channels. So it’s really more of a clarity, confidence, and control thing than anything.
Harley Green: One thing you mentioned is having that strategy before technology, especially with AI coming in and everyone being like, someone said I should use AI in marketing. What kind of advice do you have for people when it comes to making those marketing decisions and staying focused when there are shiny tools everywhere?
Sara Nay: We have a process that I think makes sense for that. A lot of small businesses right now are bringing in AI solutions like ChatGPT. Everyone on their team is doing it differently. There’s no consistency, there’s no proper training for the AI or for the team on how to use it effectively. There are no systems and processes in place. All of a sudden, these teams are confused and creating noise. It’s really important to take a step back. Just like bringing in technology and tools without a reason complicates things. We often say: take a step back, understand the business strategy. What’s the business trying to accomplish? Then map the marketing strategy from there, then analyze your team strategy. Then you can start to say, okay, if these are our specific goals and priorities for the next quarter, here’s who we have in place already as humans. What AI systems can we layer below them? Then you’re bringing in AI to accomplish a specific goal versus just bringing in AI for the sake of it. Once you’ve identified the right tool, say ChatGPT for content repurposing, then you need to train AI on your business—your vision, mission, values, ideal clients, your messaging, how you want to be seen in the world. You give AI that context so when it starts creating or helping with repurposing, it’s on-brand. Your tone of voice matches. You create the strategy, train AI on it, and then have systems in place so your team uses AI consistently rather than everyone doing their own thing.
Harley Green: So having that strategy upfront actually makes it easier to leverage these tools then, because you’re able to take that information that you’ve already developed, feed it into tools like AI, and get much better outputs.
Sara Nay: Yes, and you can even use something like ChatGPT to help with strategy creation on the front end. The important thing is that you’re giving AI the context on your business. I see a lot of stuff on LinkedIn or different platforms where it’s clearly AI-created and generic. That’s a problem when businesses use AI without direction. But if you give AI the context of your business, your viewpoints, values, stories—then it can help you create content that still tells your story. One of our favorite uses of AI is to create a video on a topic you want to be known for, then feed that into AI to repurpose it into different formats. It’s still coming from you. AI just helps you turn that video into emails, blog posts, social posts, and all the things. You’re getting more bang for your time spent, but the core is still you, not generic AI filler.
Harley Green: Great advice. You talked earlier about the business goals and strategy and aligning those things. Where do you see most businesses getting stuck when trying to align marketing with business goals?
Sara Nay: Unfortunately, too many businesses think of them as separate things. They think, we have business objectives and goals over here, and marketing is over there. It’s all siloed. We have a marketing strategy pyramid and the bottom layer is the business strategy. We can’t think about marketing until we understand what the business is trying to accomplish. One example: in sales and onboarding with new clients, I’m always asking things like, what’s your current revenue? Your one-year goal? Your three-year goal? Hopefully, they know the answer. If not, they need to figure that out before we move forward. If I don’t know how aggressive their growth goals are, I don’t know how aggressive we need to be in marketing. If they’re aiming for fast growth, we need a bold marketing push. If they want to streamline and grow steadily, we can be less aggressive but more focused on systems and stability. We also factor in their mission, vision, and values—those need to be part of the marketing strategy and content production because we should represent the brand how they want to be seen. So again, I don’t think of them as separate. It’s business strategy first, then layer marketing strategy on top.
Harley Green: That’s absolutely right. They’re totally connected. Now, many of our listeners are probably wearing multiple hats in their business. What is your approach to building these systems and helping marketing teams that actually support that visionary at the top?
Sara Nay: One of my favorite exercises is having everyone on the team—including the business leader—do a time audit. People don’t love it, but it’s important. Write down everything you’re doing consistently: tasks, priorities, skills. Then analyze: are these things increasing in value because of AI, staying stable, or decreasing? From there, focus your time on the increasing-value work. Bring in AI to support the stable or decreasing tasks. It’s a great way to assess how AI fits in your business. It’s also powerful for your team. There’s a lot of uncertainty when AI enters: “Am I being replaced?” “Will I have to work harder?” If you walk them through this, they’ll see you’re using AI to elevate their role, not erase it. You’re helping them focus on strengths and future-proof their careers. When you identify skill gaps, you know where to invest in training. Marketing teams especially are going from doers to managers. They used to write everything, run SEO, manage ads themselves. Now they manage AI platforms. They’re not managing people, but they are managing systems—which is a different skillset. We’ve invested in helping our team become better communicators, strategic thinkers, and leaders.
Harley Green: I love that. That’s something we always recommend with our clients as well. It’s the exact same process—where can you leverage AI, and maybe there are some things that AI can’t do just yet. That’s where an executive assistant can come in, and maybe they can be the one who helps manage the AI tools as well to help those visionaries stay in that strategic space.
Sara Nay: Yes, exactly. And one thing that I think helps tremendously is bringing in a fractional CMO. That’s something we offer. A fractional CMO creates the strategy, oversees execution, and owns the budget and metrics. Often, in small businesses, the CEO becomes the default CMO because they can’t afford a full-time one. They may not have marketing experience, but they’ve learned enough to get by. Maybe they have one marketer under them who they’re trying to manage. When we come in, we work alongside the CEO so they can stay in the CEO seat. We run the marketing department with them. We spend the first 30 to 45 days mapping out the business strategy, marketing strategy, and team strategy. Then we move into a long-term retainer where we’re really running the department, ensuring execution, and up-leveling any internal marketers who are doing the hands-on work.
Harley Green: Do you work with companies who already have in-house marketers? Do you help manage and guide them as that fractional CMO, or does it have to be your team doing the work?
Sara Nay: We provide a lot of flexibility because every team structure is different. In some cases, we’re the fractional CMO and we have a full execution team—so we’re acting as a fractional marketing department. In other cases, the client has one or two marketers already. We stay in the fractional CMO role and up-level those internal marketers by layering AI systems below them and plugging any gaps. Maybe they don’t have a technical developer—we can fill that need with project-based support. We’re flexible and adapt to the team’s needs.
Harley Green: Very nice. I imagine that’s a huge relief for a lot of those leaders who are wearing all those hats. Maybe you could share some examples of the positive changes those leaders have experienced working with you—when they no longer have to wear that CMO hat themselves.
Sara Nay: I’m really big on the idea of staying in your zone of genius. A lot of people start businesses not because they want to be marketers, but because they’re passionate about something else. Yet they end up becoming the marketer by default. When we come in, we ask strategic questions—what lights you up? What does success look like a year from now in your role? If we can get clarity on that, then we do everything we can to take marketing off their plate. They still need to be involved in key decisions, understand the metrics, and do quarterly planning. But we handle the daily grind so they can focus on what they do best.
One recent example: we worked with a home service company. The CEO had one marketer on staff, but it was a friend with little marketing experience—eager and growth-minded, which was great. They hired us to create the strategy and partner with the CEO while taking over managing the marketer. We helped upskill her and built an AI system underneath her to support content production—landing pages, ad copy, email campaigns, eBooks. She went from doing things manually without guidance to having a fractional CMO mentor above her and an AI content system below. Now she can grow her skills and work at a higher capacity.
Harley Green: Speaking of building those skills, it sounds like you’ve got a great program for helping people level up. How do you help teams adopt a growth mindset, especially when they’re navigating all the change and uncertainty with marketing, tech, and AI?
Sara Nay: I think growth mindset is something people usually either have or don’t. But you can create an environment that encourages it. That’s one of our company values, and we hire for it. We design our interviews to determine whether someone is growth-minded. That’s crucial in marketing—it changes so fast. Once they’re on the team, we support that mindset through things like our bi-weekly “Lead and Learn” meetings where we present new topics on AI and discuss how we can apply them. We also do a monthly book club, reading books on various topics and talking about implementation. So it starts with hiring the right people and then giving them space and tools to grow continuously.
Harley Green: Nice. What is one leadership habit that’s helped you scale with clarity and calm, and how might our listeners apply it to their own businesses?
Sara Nay: Communication. I started as an intern, so I’ve been in a lot of roles. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in leadership is the power of communication. When assigning a task, don’t just say, “I need this done.” Explain why it matters. How does it connect to other goals? How does it impact the team or client? Also, meet with your team regularly. Be available. Do thoughtful quarterly reviews. Really invest in those conversations. Listen. That kind of open, consistent communication is what’s made our company culture strong. We support each other, and that starts with how we communicate.
Harley Green: I love that. That’s something we’ve observed too. Leaders who have regular check-ins and clear communication get the best results. The ones who don’t delegate, just dump tasks with no context, tend to get frustrated with poor outcomes.
Sara Nay: Exactly. And there’s a saying: “Don’t throw good people at bad systems.” That’s why, in our onboarding process, we start with daily meetings no matter the role—even part-time contractors. We do daily check-ins during onboarding, then move to every other day, then twice a week, and eventually once a week. The more time and attention you give someone in their first 30 days, the better set up they are for long-term success.
Harley Green: That’s so smart. I’m a huge fan of a 30-60-90 day onboarding plan. It’s been a game-changer in our business. It helps leaders stay clear on what they’re handing off and helps team members know what’s coming. It’s super powerful.
Sara Nay: Absolutely.
Harley Green: As we wrap up, what’s one thing you’d like to share with leaders today—something they could take action on this week to make a big impact on their marketing?
Sara Nay: What we talked about earlier. AI is here. You should be using it in your business, no matter your industry—but don’t rush in. Take a step back. What are your four to six biggest business priorities for the next quarter? Hopefully, you’re doing quarterly planning. Look at your team, then decide which AI tools make sense. Don’t just sign up for everything. Breathe, analyze, and bring it in strategically.
Harley Green: Love it. Sara, if people want to continue the conversation or learn more about your business offerings, what’s the best way to connect?
Sara Nay: We have a page on our website: https://dtm.world/growth. There are a bunch of free resources there. I’m also very active on LinkedIn—just search for my name, Sara Nay.
Harley Green: Awesome. Thank you so much, Sara. And for those of you listening, if you got value from this episode, do one quick thing—hit like and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes to help you scale smarter. And if you know a business owner who could use this information, share this episode with them. It might be exactly what they need. And if you’re listening on a podcast platform, leave us a quick rating. It helps us reach more leaders just like you. Thanks again, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
Surviving the Scale-Up: Leadership & Culture Lessons from Vidya Murali
Scaling a business isn’t just about growth metrics — it’s about surviving the emotional, cultural, and leadership chaos that comes with it. In a recent episode of Scale Smart Grow Fast, host Harley Green sat down with Vidya Murali, executive coach, former Amazon leader, and author of How to Survive in a Scale-Up Business, to unpack the real skills needed to thrive in high-growth environments.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Why Most Scale-Ups Struggle
According to Vidya, many startups fail to survive their scale-up phase because:
The business model isn’t truly proven, just funded.
Leadership hires are made based on brand names, not fit.
Founders resist adapting their own roles and team structures.
Toxic loyalty prevents necessary transitions.
Her insight? “What got you here won’t get you there. Scale-ups need a different kind of leadership mindset.”
The Emotional Skills That Matter
Vidya emphasizes that logic and strategy alone don’t cut it in the chaos of scale-ups. Leaders need:
Emotional resilience to stay grounded under pressure.
Self-awareness to let go of micromanagement.
Psychological safety to drive true performance and innovation.
Cultural clarity to scale values alongside business goals.
Creating Resilient, High-Performance Teams
Vidya urges leaders to:
Build teams with a healthy skills mix (not just fresh talent).
Regularly reevaluate roles based on evolving strategy.
Invest in mentoring and coaching, not just performance metrics.
Recognize burnout indicators early and reset expectations before it’s too late.
A strong culture doesn’t happen by accident — it’s shaped by intentional behavior, communication, and trust at the top.
Practical Leadership Habits
If you’re scaling fast, Vidya recommends two weekly rituals:
Set clear intentions on Monday. What kind of leader do you want to be this week?
Reflect on Friday. What worked? What didn’t? How did you show up for your team?
And always pause before reacting: “The space between a trigger and your response is where leadership lives.”
💡 Final Thought
Scale-ups aren’t for the faint of heart. But with the right mindset, emotional tools, and cultural focus, you can grow without burning out.
At Workergenix, we help founders and execs streamline operations, empower leadership teams, and build sustainable, high-performance cultures — without the burnout.
👉 Book a free discovery call to see how our executive support solutions can help you scale smarter.
Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
Transcript
Harley Green: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Scale Smart Grow Fast podcast. What does it really take to thrive in a scale-up environment? In this episode, Vidya Murali, author of How to Survive in a Scale-Up Business and former senior leader at Amazon, Deliveroo and Skyscanner shares hard earned insights on the leadership mindset, cultural pitfalls and team dynamics that define high growth companies. With over two decades of experience scaling performance and resilience in tech, Vidya is going to offer practical advice for executives managing rapid change without losing their people or their sanity. Vidya, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Vidya Murali: Thanks Harley, thanks for the intro. I’m doing well.
Harley Green: Awesome Vidya. Can you share a little bit more about your background? You’ve got incredible professional background, these amazing businesses. You know, what has prompted you to write this book and share your experience?
Vidya Murali: Sure. So I grew up in India. I did my engineering and I joined the IT sector, which was very booming at that time. And then I took that as an opportunity to come to the UK as well. I did my MBA in Cambridge and my first job after MBA was Amazon. So Amazon, worked for more than six and a half years and I got really interested in the growing categories in Amazon. And at the end of six and a half years, I thought, okay, let me go join these scale-ups, these high growth young companies and the small fish, big pond, big fish, small pond type analogy. So I entered scale-ups almost blind. And when I entered the scale-ups and with my experience in Amazon, everything was new. No one prepared me for how chaotic it’s going to be. It was exciting. We had really big opportunities to lead the team, to grow, do something new. I enjoyed all of that.
However, it also came with some challenges because if you think about scale-ups, young founders, there’s a lot of tension around fundraising. There’s a need to prove value, the requirement for the role and teams change constantly. So I felt even with that Amazon experience and MBA and all that stuff, I was not prepared. No one prepared me for this. What I needed was emotional skills, like emotional superpower skills to navigate this environment because logic just didn’t cut it. It didn’t make a cut in the environment like Amazon, but not in the scale-ups. So I changed quite a few jobs. I learned a lot in this process. However, I was constantly questioning myself, what’s wrong with me? Why am I changing these jobs? What’s not working? And then during COVID, like everybody else, I had some time to reflect. And I realized like, okay, this is not a problem with me. It’s the nature of the environment.
And when I connected with other people who made this transition from mature corporates or well-organized businesses to scale-ups, I had similar stories. There’s a lot of war stories. There are people thriving, there are people struggling. So I thought how wonderful it would be to take all these experiences, very challenging experiences sometimes, and also like good experiences, and write a book that will help people to navigate this environment.
Whether they are grads looking for a dynamic space to work or working in corporate environment and are really tired of meeting after meetings and documents and stuff. They want to do something big, manage big teams. When they make this transition, I thought this will be an incredible resource, something that I wish I had before. So I wouldn’t be questioning myself rather working on developing the skills to navigate this environment. So yeah, that’s the background behind the book.
And I personally enjoy writing. I like the process of writing. It gets me into the state of flow. I love talking to individuals, hearing their stories. So all of this put together, I was able to reach out to a lot of veterans, experienced people, get their stories, convert them into practical insights, also use some frameworks. I am an experienced coach as well. So I brought coaching questions into the book. So it’s very much a practical toolkit that people can take and go, okay, now I’m the first 90 days or I’m interviewing, what should I be looking out for? What can I do? Or I’m facing this pattern. There is some toxic loyalty going on here. What can I do about it? So that’s kind of the idea.
Harley Green: Very nice. Now you’ve led some high growth teams when at these different companies you’ve been with. What would you say separates companies that survive scale-up from those that crumble?
Vidya Murali: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think obviously there’s a few things that come together, needs to come together. First of all, the business idea. When you move from a startup to a scale-up phase, the business idea shouldn’t just be an idea. It should be a model that’s worked out and that’s fully proven. Unfortunately, in many cases, it seemed to be an idea and somehow they convinced the funding, investors to invest into the business and that’s not quite it. So the proof of the business that it works, it can scale, needs to be established fully. And then it’s about the team really, leadership and team. The CEO and the founding teams are super useful and super important for the success of the business. Because of the small nature of the team, they are the culture. In big companies, yeah, you have all these cultures, you write these things and it is more organic. But in scale-ups, it is the CEO and founders that make the culture. So if they are able to create the environment of psychological safety, people can fail, people can move on, people can take risks and grow. And, you know, they are embedded within the business. There’s a good chance that the scale-ups will make it. On the other hand, you also have scale-ups that are kind of super hyped. The business model is not proved. They also hire people based on like brands and I come from Amazon myself, but just because I have an Amazon brand doesn’t make me the right fit for the roles and the scale-ups. Might be in some case, might not be in some case. So the founders and leadership need to be very honest about who are they looking for, at what level of maturity the org is, and they need to bring people that are right for that kind of stage. Also let go of people who are not serving them because somebody who’s done well in one to hundred might not be the right person from hundred to thousand or beyond, which is very hard. If you think about the founders, they have a lot of loyalty, which is a great thing because they had people who have been with them for quite a long time. However, including themselves, you need to question, does the business need my skills or it could be better off with somebody else who has the experience of scaling. So yeah, these are very tough conversations to be had, reflections to be had, something that I covered in my book as well, but it’s important when a business has its own identity, it’s becoming a bigger part of the employers and it’s actually making an impact to do justice to it and not be blockers for the business, even though you’re like, be the founder and CEO.
Harley Green: What are some tips you have or strategies that maybe you share in the book to help founders in these leadership teams when they might be at that point where it might be time to reevaluate the roles of some of those long-time loyal employees or even themselves? Is there opportunities to change the role or are there some cases where they just need to completely exit the company and find a new home?
Vidya Murali: Yeah, it’s a mix of both. I think the main thing is you have a strategy, a vision, and then you develop your org structure and skills working backwards from it. And that includes the founder and CEO and the top leadership till the junior most level as well. Every, ever so often every year, if it’s a scale-up or you’re doing it more frequently, the needs keep changing. So you need to think about, okay, this year, this is my goal. For example, your goal could be, I’m going to expand in new markets and I need some scalable systems to do that. And then you think about, okay, do I have the leadership in place in all these areas to drive this? Have these people got the experience and then work downwards, like top down from it. In terms of the question of, could we coach people and upskill them? Or should some people have to exit, I think it’s again a combination of both. At some level, some scenarios, people are coachable, especially if they’re early, like, they’re junior employees and in the mid-level employees, still possible to coach them, as long as they have role models in their team. So I have worked in businesses where everybody is like pretty new and then they don’t have these leadership and role models to coach them and grow them. But in some cases, people are just suited for that stage of the business. So again, I have the suitability test as well in my book, and I’m going to share that in some form. We need to understand what drives people, where do they thrive? So somebody who has a very high risk appetite and has alleged reaction to processes, they’re not going to thrive in bigger companies or even the scaling companies. Or somebody who has very low risk appetite and they like to analyze and think about things before they do, they’re not going to thrive in the early stage. We got to kind of be real about where people thrive in the environment and have that conversation with them. And rather than seeing this as a negative, it’s probably a good thing for this person because they’re no longer in the environment, they’re able to thrive. So give them an opportunity to also move on to somewhere they can do well.
Harley Green: You mentioned that it’s the responsibility of the leadership team to set the culture in these businesses. What would you say are some of the most common cultural setting challenges that leaders face as they shift from startup to that scale-up mode?
Vidya Murali: Yeah, there’s quite a few. With the scale-up comes a lot of pressure. So startup, if you think about it, this idea, they’re approving, they’re like a small team. They don’t really have to have meetings. They can talk to each other. When you go to a scale-up stage, it becomes like an organization. It’s like the Dunbar number, like 150 people. You don’t have to organize anything. You just can’t get to know. But beyond that, then you need to have some internal communication set up. You need to communicate in a way that motivates people and challenges them, but also balances the reality of the situation. So many founders and leaders are not ready for this because when they started the company, many of them started it because they didn’t want to be an employee. They didn’t want to follow all these rules. And then they go into the scale-up stage and now they have to create them. And that’s quite challenging.
It can be done with a great team in place. So I think one of the things that founders can do is not to think about it as their own sole ownership. They can also bring in people who can help them and complement them in this area. They can still be the visionary, but you have a good CEO who’s able to kind of communicate, for instance, and bring the people, the team together. That is probably the most important thing and challenge that founders face in terms of engaging the employees and the team and bring them together. But yeah, apart from that, obviously, as it scales, they need to make profit, the pressures and the rigor, execution rigor also becomes more important than in a startup stage.
The leaders might not have experience or skills. Again, this is where the hiring comes in place and bringing in people who have done that. And also creating them space when you bring in new people, you got to give them the liberty and freedom to operate. If they are operating under a restricted environment, as in they need to kind of listen to what the CEO says and not able to challenge CEO, and they have to maintain the team that’s been there for ages and don’t have the skills, you bring a fantastic person, put them in the middle, they can’t deliver. So those kinds of things are very common with all good intentions, you know, bring in new people, but make sure that’s set up for success and change.
Harley Green: Yeah, let’s talk a little bit more about getting them set up for success and how can these leaders build these resilient cultures while still supporting the performance and not sacrificing their people? We’re in that stressful stage where you want to start getting profits. You want everyone at their peak performance, but you still want to have that resilient culture and it’s a fine balance. What are some tips and strategies that you might offer people to consider?
Vidya Murali: Yeah. So there is a very common myth that when you push people to drive performance, it kind of affects the culture in a negative way. You can only do it in a negative way, but it’s not the case. In many of the scale-ups I’ve worked, I saw a lot of busy work where people are constantly on Slack messages. People are constantly changing their decisions. Kind of like, you know, being micromanaged by C-level people.
And all of this is actually counter effective on performance. So really thinking about how to build a sustainable team and how to drive them for performance. Some of the common ways you can do that is ensure there’s a good mix of people. When you have a team, if you’re kind of bringing all of these people like, you know, very fresh and you don’t have experience there, there’s going to be a problem. These people are going to be waiting for instructions and that creates this micromanagement environment.
So every year, every six months, make sure your teams have a good mix of skills so they can learn from each other rather than having to have this kind of, for the leadership team and the rest of the company, that kind of having those layers is a good way for driving performance. Another kind of misunderstood thing is the psychological safety. It’s seen as something very soft, that’s not driving performance, seen as a cushion, but actually it drives performance. So Amy Edmondson, she’s done a lot of research on that in Google. And the one thing that differentiated the teams that drive performance versus others is the psychological safety. It simply means when things are going wrong, the team is open and safe to raise it as soon as possible without feeling that they’ll have some repercussions. That’s going to save a lot of time. So if that culture is encouraged where the failures are celebrated and somebody saying something that’s negative is encouraged rather than something pushed down, then that’s going to save a lot of time.
And also the micromanagement. So when you are a small company, the CEOs, the founders, CEOs, they’re all involved in all kinds of decisions. But as you scale, you need to step back and question, is my time well spent in this particular decision or is it well spent being involved in all the tactical things that I’m doing? And this is also actually creating a lot of pressure for the team. If the leaders are involved in every single decision, then they are probably going to be more prepared. They’re both going to be under the stress. So actually empowering the team to say, okay, you know, within the remits of your role, you can decide. And there are some things that need to come to my attention and like stop micromanaging and letting go. All of these can really help build more scalable culture rather than a culture that is based on control and busy work, which actually could be quite counter-effective.
Harley Green: You really nailed it when talking about executives being kind of micromanaging or being involved in decisions, they need to start questioning. And, you know, they oftentimes get to a point where they are drowning in these details when they start scaling up. And when does it make sense to start handing off some tasks from an executive’s plate to someone like an executive assistant, you know, coordinating reporting, admin work, calendar management, research, things like that, so they can really be freed up to be in that strategic mindset zone?
Vidya Murali: Yeah, as soon as possible, really. An executive’s time is not well spent doing admin. And there are various solutions — executive assistants, one of the solutions. We also have several AI tools now. Some roles like Chief of Staff would be quite useful as well if you’re looking at a little bit more higher driving strategic projects and connecting the dots, all of which can help.
The only caveat I would say is, again, creating the space for these people to do their job. And that requires the executives to let go and trust.
Harley Green: Right. A little bit earlier, we talked about how sometimes communication can actually slow things down. Like everyone’s responding to Slack messages all day. You know, as these companies are scaling, that communication can sometimes be something that breaks down, not just like in terms of not having communication, but maybe having too much communication or too much ease of communication. What are some practical methods to help maintain clarity and trust during that change regarding communication with the team?
Vidya Murali: Yeah. So, if one extreme is not communicating, people are going to assume things and people are going to have the feeling of uncertainty as well. It’s not good. On the other extreme, if everything needs to be communicated, that’s going to be really overwhelming. I worked in a company where everybody was constantly on Slack to the point that people had to do Slack work the whole day. And at the end of the day, they start doing their individual work.
That is an example of really, really extreme over-communication. I think it’s not the intent to communicate that overwhelms the team, it’s more the intent to control. So when the leadership team is very nervous about the team, they feel they have to be part of every single thing. They want to know everything. They want to be part of the decision-making. And that creates a cycle — they want to know, they ask questions. The team then goes, “I need to answer because my leader is asking this,” and they spend time on that. Then the team also prepares thinking, “I don’t have to think beyond what the leaders ask me for.”
So it goes into this whole busy work, micromanagement cycle. If you reverse it and go like, “I’m hiring this team that I can trust and I’m going to let them bring issues to me,” and have some controls in place — weekly business reviews, monthly reviews, KPIs — these give me both leading and lagging indicators, what Amazon calls inputs and outputs. I have those in place, but I’m going to trust my team to come up with these decisions and problems, and create the psychological safety and trust.
That requires a cultural change. That requires change management. If you’re stuck in that busyness wheel, it requires leaders to step back and really be honest about how their behavior is impacting the team and the performance and how that can be changed to become something more scalable.
Harley Green: Yeah. Well, speaking of maintaining the performance, when these businesses are scaling quickly, teams can often hit performance stress. What are some indicators that signal it’s time to reset the norms or reorient values?
Vidya Murali: Yeah, so I talk about burnout, for instance. It’s seen as unfortunately a badge of honor, but actually burnout is a very difficult experience. If you think about clinically someone affected by burnout, it takes a long time to reverse that. Anything to do with the brain takes a long time to reverse. So you really don’t want teams to go through that. You want to prevent those situations as soon as possible.
The indicators would be fatigue. If you think about having a team day or something, and the reaction is not excitement but “Ugh, another thing,” that’s a good indicator. It shows that they are not well. There’s no appetite for doing anything new, exciting, or change. So those reactions — which is why checking in is very important.
The practice of starting a meeting with a check-in, once a week asking your team how they’re feeling, how was their weekend — all these things which might sound trivial actually give a sense of how they are doing emotionally as well as in terms of well-being. There are various ways to check in. One method is “Rose, Bud, Thorn” — Rose is something positive, Bud is something they’re hoping for, and Thorn is something they are worried about. Ask them to share that. It brings all sorts of things they probably wouldn’t open up normally.
Creating those avenues is a great way to catch these early indicators. So once you sense that, what do you do about it? That’s where leaders need to step in and think about prioritization. Do you need the team to do everything, and do you need them to do it right now?
That’s one of the patterns — it’s a strength of founders and leaders to have a bias for action and want to do everything right away. That probably got them that far, but in a scaling business, everything cannot be done right now. That’s why you have to have priorities and accept that things take time to build properly. People have to schedule their work, and you need systems in place for milestones and delivery planning.
Harley Green: That’s so important. We are working with people, not machines. So there are those other aspects you have to be aware of to get the most out of them and make sure they’re happy. Speaking of that, we’ve kind of touched on this previously a little bit about bringing in people who maybe are going to help with coaching or mentoring at certain points in scaling. What role would you say the coaching and mentoring plays in helping scale-up leaders guide their teams through these difficult times?
Vidya Murali: I think it’s very important. I personally feel coaching is a gift, so is mentoring. Because when someone is stressed, as human beings, our logical part of the brain just switches off. We all go into this flight or fight mode. And that is not a good thinking machine. This is where using someone else to reflect really is powerful. So they’re able to bring this third-party perspective or even create the space for you and then you come up with your own answer. So coaching can be a powerful gift for everyone, including the leaders and the early employees.
Mentoring in particular, especially for the new joiners and people who want to move up but they haven’t done it before and then somebody else has done it before — that could be again a very powerful tool as well. And mentors not only help them with the skills, but they can also create opportunities for them because they are in the leadership team, they can be the sponsors as well. So I don’t think there’s any point in which you bring all these people. You just inherently hire people who have the opportunity and the willingness to coach and grow people and mentor people. So if you have a leadership team that’s willingly giving and bringing people up, that’s a gift. I think this Adam Grant’s new book, Give and Take, talks a lot about givers and bringing people into your team as well. So yeah, that is a great way to build scalable teams.
Harley Green: That’s great. Some people listening might have feared, “Okay, she’s going to say bring in the consultants,” right? But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can have your organic hires have these traits that foster that environment, it sounds like.
Vidya Murali: Yeah, you can bring the coaches as well. You obviously can use professional coaches, but you do need people embedded, understanding the context, to really help your employees.
Harley Green: Yeah, that’s perfect. Well, as we wrap up, for people who are feeling a little bit overwhelmed by growth in their business, what’s one actionable step they can take this week to strengthen their culture and regain control?
Vidya Murali: Yeah, so I would say the growth begins from inside. And if you’re a leader who’s overwhelmed and you’re like, “Oh my God, what’s going on in my business? Am I taking the right steps? What should I change?” I would suggest having an intention setting at the start of the week — saying, “This week, this is what I’m going to do — three things.”
And on a Friday afternoon, block your calendar and reflect, either with yourself or with a coach or with a mentor. How have you done? Not just from a performance point of view — what could you have done better from a behavioral point of view? What are the things that went well? What are the things you’re grateful for? And what are the things that you want to change?
So having that reflection practice really creates that clarity. And then you are a better person when you show up for your team, and the team sees that. And then it kind of creates this great culture. That would be my one tip. If I had to sneak in another tip, one extra tip would be —
Harley Green: Let’s do it. Yep.
Vidya Murali: Control your reactions, right? As leaders, you’re under pressure. There are lots of things — the board’s going to be putting pressure on you, your team, performance issues. But take that small pause between the trigger and your response and really intentionally communicate or respond. I’m not saying just always smile and be nice. Even if you’re going to communicate a bad message, if you’re going to communicate a challenging message, make sure you take some time to plan and communicate in a way that’s going to be productive. Because a lot of things when leaders react can actually have like 10x, 100x negative impact than anybody in a team reacting. So I would suggest these two things for the leaders.
Harley Green: That’s perfect. Thank you for sharing those tips with us. Now if people want to continue the conversation with you, Vidya, what’s the best way for them to connect?
Vidya Murali: So they can reach me. I do post a lot on LinkedIn, so they can follow me on LinkedIn and DM me or through my website — it’s vidyamurali.com. I have opportunities for scale-ups, networks, also for even grad universities to organize a career talk or a scale-up, thriving in scale-ups type of talk. They can reach me as well.
Harley Green: So as you’re listening, if you got value from this episode, do one quick thing. Hit like and subscribe so you don’t miss future strategies to help you scale smarter. And maybe you know a business owner or a colleague who could use this information. Share this episode with them. It could be exactly what they need right now. And if you’re listening on a podcast platform, leave us a quick star rating. It helps us reach more leaders just like you. And again, thanks for tuning in everybody. We will see you on the next one.
How to Build a Self-Managing Team That Scales With You
If you’re still the one making every key decision, giving every approval, or tracking every task—you’re not leading, you’re bottlenecking.
In our latest Executive Edge Live panel, Harley Green (CEO of Workergenix) brings together four powerhouse leaders to tackle a challenge nearly every business owner faces: how to build a self-managing team that thinks, acts, and leads like owners.
Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Why Self-Managing Teams Matter
A self-managing team isn’t just about delegation. It’s about creating a culture of trust, clarity, and ownership. These teams drive results without waiting for direction, making them essential for sustainable business growth.
Meet the Experts
This episode features real-world wisdom from:
Kristina Karcic-Ehret – Founder of Karcic Partners, helping startups grow with sustainable org design and operational clarity
Alex Otero – Director of HR, The Academy, focused on aligning HR systems with meaningful, measurable outcomes
Dr. Lori Marie Huertas – Assistant Director, MSU Denver, emphasizing emotional intelligence, team belonging, and authentic leadership
Joanna Hernandez – Founder of Elavanti HR, author of Present Leadership, and advocate for clear authority, accountability, and culture-driven HR systems
Key Insights From the Panel
1. Shift from Control to Clarity
Great teams don’t wait—they move. But they only move confidently when roles, goals, and boundaries are clear. Joanna stressed the power of decision rights embedded in job descriptions, which empower people to act without constant supervision.
2. Use the Right Frameworks
Alex recommended combining OKRs with systems like RACI or DACI to establish role clarity and project ownership. These tools support accountability without bottlenecking workflows.
3. Model Emotional Intelligence
Dr. Lori emphasized the value of psychological safety. When team members feel seen, heard, and valued, they naturally lead from within. Tools like personality assessments and empathy-building exercises deepen self-awareness and trust.
4. Design With Intent
Kristina highlighted the importance of org design. Without a well-structured foundation, you’ll always be reactive. Your team can’t self-manage if the strategy, structure, and expectations are fuzzy.
5. Failing Forward Builds Ownership
Failure is a feature, not a flaw. As Alex and Lori pointed out, innovation often comes from the courage to try, misstep, and learn. Teams need environments where failing forward is encouraged—not punished.
How to Know If You’re Disempowering Your Team
A few red flags:
You’re the only decision-maker
Your team is quiet in meetings
Team members seek constant approval
Tasks stall without your input
Joanna offered a simple fix: speak less, ask more. Create space for contribution. Encourage your team to think critically and act boldly.
Starting From Scratch? Here’s Where to Begin
If you’re a founder or early-stage executive, start with:
A clear, actionable strategy
Well-defined job roles and decision rights
A focus on culture as part of your foundation
Hiring for alignment and initiative, not just skills
Alex likened it to team sports: “Everyone on a winning team knows the goal, understands their role, and executes with purpose.”
As Harley shared, “Your next level of growth doesn’t come from working harder. It comes from empowering smarter.”
Whether you’re scaling your startup or redefining team culture in an established org, this episode is packed with practical frameworks and mindset shifts you can implement today.
🚀 Ready to delegate smarter and scale faster? Book your free discovery call with Workergenix and learn how our AI-powered executive support can help you build a self-managing team, so you can focus on what truly moves the needle.
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Transcript
Harley Green All right. Welcome everyone to the Executive Edge Live panel. I’m Harley Green, the founder and CEO of Workergenix, where we help executives and leadership teams stay focused on high-impact activities by delegating the rest to highly skilled AI-leveraged ultimate executive assistants. Today’s conversation is going to tackle one of the biggest challenges in leadership: how to build a self-managing team that truly thinks and acts like owners. In your business, you’ve hired some great people, but you still seem to be the bottleneck for decisions, approvals, or accountability. Your business is just not scalable yet. So this session with these expert panelists is going to cover that. We’re going to talk about shifting from managing tasks to empowering ownership. Our incredible panelists today are going to share proven ways to build trust, accountability, and initiative inside your team so you can focus on strategy, growth, and innovation.
I’d like to welcome our panelists to the Executive Edge Live. We’re going to go around and give everyone a chance to introduce themselves, starting with Kristina.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret It’s great to be here. My name is Kristina and I am the founder of Karcic Partners. We’re your HR on demand. The sooner you bring us in, the better, because we help you grow and scale sustainably. Typically I work in the tech sector, making sure that founders aren’t just around for a phase or two, but they’re set up for long-term success.
Harley Green Awesome, thank you, Kristina. All right, Alex, how about you?
Alex Otero Hi everyone, I’m Alex Otero, the Director of Human Resources for the Academy, Community-Based Services. Just like Kristina, I’ve spent the majority of my career in the tech sector, but I pivoted to focus on helping local youth here in Southeastern Pennsylvania get where they need to be. Very excited to be here.
Harley Green All right, thank you, Alex. Next, we’ll jump over to Dr. Lori.
Dr. Lori Marie Huertas Hi, I’m the Assistant Director of Industry Partnerships at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I have a mentorship program where I connect students with industry professionals to gain essential skills. I’m also a professor of psychology, an advisor with different programs, and I collaborate with student veterans. Grateful to be here.
Harley Green Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Lori. And last but certainly not least, Joanna.
Joanna Hernandez Hi everyone, I’m glad to be here. I’m with Elavanti HR, the owner and founder. We’re a boutique HR firm. Our core competency is providing compliance and efficiency audits and assessments for companies and offering fractional HR leadership to support businesses in making the changes necessary to be sustainable and successful with purpose, systems, and a level of experience that gets you there quickly.
Harley Green Awesome, thank you, Joanna. I’m really excited for the conversation today. We’ve got a panel with rich knowledge in managing people and leadership. Let’s dive right in. This is going to be an open question to everyone on the panel. What does a self-managing team mean to you? And why is it so critical for scaling a business today?
Joanna Hernandez I’m happy to jump in there, Harley. I believe a self-managing team is one that operates with shared trust, clarity, and accountability. And what I mean by that is that every member knows the mission, the measures, the authority that they hold to make decisions. And I believe that really the true scalability doesn’t depend on how many people report up. It depends on how many people can think forward.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret Well said. I can jump in there too because I agree with everything you said. In addition, agility and innovation are absolutely non-negotiable in this as well. Therefore, self-managing teams are critical because they decentralize decision-making. They also provide the opportunity to push ownership closer to the work and the customer. So to me, the structure allows teams to respond faster to client needs, iterate on solutions in real time, and innovate most importantly without waiting for top-down direction.
Alex Otero I’d agree with that actually. I mean, both fantastic answers. The one thing that I would add to that is that, you know, self-managing teams in particular, they need to connect with their vision and the results of what they’re doing. All the self-managing teams that I’ve seen, and I’m sure we’ll talk about here in a little bit, they understand and connect their work and their team’s work with the results and the vision that they’re trying to attain from a company standpoint, which ultimately differentiates them from teams that have not connected with that.
Harley Green Lori, do want to give you a chance or you’re good on this one?
Dr. Lori Marie Huertas I don’t know, everybody said all the answers have been so good. I’m like, how do I add to that? I guess the only thing that I’ll add is that I just feel that when you have a self-managing team, everyone needs to be seen, heard, and valued. And if you do those three things, I think it just allows everything to work smoother. But I agree with all my colleagues.
Harley Green Excellent insights and just from my personal experience in business, it’s so true. Everything that’s been shared here, getting clear on your mission, vision and values is so helpful because it just makes sure everyone’s rowing in the same direction and it makes that decision-making process for everybody so much easier. Kristina, going back to you, you’ve helped leaders build organizations that run on trust and alignment. What would you say is the first mindset shift that a founder or executive needs to make to stop being that bottleneck we’ve talked about?
Kristina Karcic-Ehret To shift is important, but I do want to emphasize before you get there that you first have to make the investment in operational model and org design and then you can shift over. Without that clarity, you won’t be able to be proactive, you will be reactive. And then for me, in particular, you have to focus on shifting if necessary from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. And the truth is most of us start with a fixed mindset because you’re constantly reacting to the chaos, right? But that’s why I say the organizational design and the operating model help alleviate that chaos and then you can jump right into ensuring that they have that growth mindset. Because if they don’t have that growth mindset, forget about it. Nothing else is going to stick, right?
Harley Green Alex, you’ve built HR structures through high growth phases. What are some systems and frameworks that help teams take ownership without losing accountability?
Alex Otero I love systems and frameworks questions. Kristina, we’re kind of in sync on a lot of what we’re saying, because I think that these two questions that came first, they can happen, but they can’t happen in a vacuum. And the reason I say that is when you ask about systems and frameworks, my mind immediately goes to OKRs. That’s the first one that most leaders, you know, most managers would think of. They’re the ones that they’re most familiar with. I have OKRs, I have a hand in creating them. And to a certain extent, they really annoy me sometimes. Everybody has mixed feelings about those OKRs. And then within those, you can break down into like the project management frameworks of like RACI and DACI and making sure that you’re assigning the right roles to the right people. But at the end of the day, none of that really ultimately matters if you can’t figure out what you’re working towards. And so specifically jumping back to OKRs, again, it’s a deceptively simple system for figuring out what your, of course, objectives and key results are. But it’s something that people tend to often throw off to the side. So spending a lot of time on figuring out what your goal as a company is, what your goals are aligning with your vision. And then as a manager or even as an individual contributor, what am I doing and can I connect that back to that vision through these frameworks is the key. You know, oftentimes people tend to just get bogged down in like hitting an OKR so that they can get a bonus. Somebody gets a little bit too bogged down and being part of say like the responsible party or the contributor in one of these frameworks that they forget what the overall purpose of it is. And so, you know, it’s as simple as having a candid conversation with a leadership group or an entire company, depending on its size, to figure out exactly what we’re working towards. Like what’s our common goal and how are we going to get there?
Harley Green There’s a lot of great insights there. Anybody else have anything to add? I know Alex covered a lot of ground there.
Dr. Lori Marie Huertas That’s a great question. I feel like lately, a lot of organizations that I’ve been seeking out my services as a consultant and to do trainings have really embraced different concepts like the five love languages of appreciation in the workplace and looking at the unique ways like I had said earlier, people feel valued and really in thinking of teams and the uniqueness, even when they’re self-managed, just embrace everyone’s unique personality. So like for example, I give sometimes the Myers-Briggs Assessment Personality Test and separate everyone in the group depending on their personality. And I tell them what their Star Wars character is based on their personality. And then we watch a clip from the movie and I’m like, great, how did your characters critically solve that problem? How did they use critical thinking skills to solve that problem? So like, for example, if Yoda solves it different than C3PO, but we need everybody. So we need processors on the team. And then I use superheroes with the Clifton strength assessment. And I’m like, I’m an executor. Like, I’m like, all right, let’s just do it. Right away I want to go and the DISC, I’m a D. I’m like, but I need people to say, Lori, calm down. We need to think about the whole situation. I know you want to do it yesterday, but we need to reflect on it. So just getting teams and organizations to understand that we need a little bit of everyone on the team. Can’t just be one or the other.
Harley Green Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. I especially love the Star Wars character reference. That really helps people kind of drive it home and relate, especially to maybe some of those other personalities that they’re not as familiar with or wouldn’t necessarily be able to define as well. But when they see it in their favorite Star Wars character, then it really becomes clear. It’s a great idea.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret And I’ll just add, oh, I’m so sorry, I just want to add that I love, love, love that. And to me, what I think is so beautiful about it is you’re really allowing people to embrace who they are and bring their authentic self, but also while recognizing that everyone should not be the same. You need the balance. At the end of the day, that’s true diversity, right? That’s really going to drive the innovation. So I absolutely love that. I had to just let you know.
Joanna Hernandez Yeah, I love that as well. And I just want to add that I think it also creates psychological safety and modeling empathy in action, which is so important because when your team feels seen and they feel valued and trusted, they’re naturally going to begin leading from within, which is that ownership mindset. And I think that’s where that true self-management begins. I love what you’re doing. That’s amazing.
Harley Green Well, Joanna, I think that segues perfectly into the next question that I had for you. You specialize in aligning HR systems and operational excellence. What are the practical steps that leaders can take to embed ownership into that team culture?
Joanna Hernandez It’s a great question. For me, embedding ownership starts with the principles of present leadership. And what that means is showing up whole and building the bridge of trust and stewarding the assignment with excellence. Leaders have to start with clarity. They have to define expectations. And one of my favorites is giving them decision rights. When people know what their authorities are, they understand their boundaries and they can act. And also when people see how their work ties to something meaningful, they begin to take ownership naturally. And the final step is modeling it. When leaders are consistent, when they’re present, when they’re transparent, they set a culture where accountability feels shared, not enforced.
Harley Green Could you talk a little bit more about the decision rights? I’m really curious about that. Are there some practical tips for kind of helping a leader define how to even get started there? Because there are so many areas where you could possibly define and it could be overwhelming. I’d love to hear your tips on that.
Joanna Hernandez Absolutely. Yes, and the simple answer is it starts with job descriptions. And the job descriptions we normally see KSAs or KSEs, which is knowledge, skills, experience, or knowledge, skills, and abilities. But if we could put inside that job description, here are the things that we expect you to do. And here are the authorities that we’re giving you. It could be as simple as you can spend up to $10,000 without taking anything in front of your project committee. If you feel like that $10,000 is going to achieve the result that comes from our strategic plan as an organization and you play a role in that and it falls within your accountability, you have the authority. For example, Kristina and I work together. In that job description, it would tell me that I have the authority to work with her in collaboration. And so that tells me I don’t have to go through a hierarchical process. I can go straight to Kristina with the problem that I have that aligns with her job description and we can solve that together. And the second part of that is a RACI, and Alex made mention of that earlier. That is a very effective tool and it allows people to collaborate safely and not feel like they’re stepping on each other’s toes, understanding where their responsibilities are and when they are simply someone who needs to be informed, as an example. But that is the most simple way that everyone can start today is just adding that one section of here are your responsibilities. Now here’s the authority that I’m offering you. And then that allows me as a leader to not bark instructions at you all day, but to rather manage the results and ensure that you’re utilizing and applying that authority in the way that’s going to achieve the outcomes that we want as an organization.
Harley Green I love that. It’s just one simple thing you can add. Go ahead, Alex.
Alex Otero Just to piggyback off of that real quick. Sorry, Harley.
Harley Green Yeah, no, go ahead.
Alex Otero So, okay, sorry. The one thing—and that was a fantastic description of how we can empower managers with decision rights that, let’s face it, aren’t going to make or break the business. And that’s the big issue, especially when you’re dealing with, say, founder CEOs who are used to having a lot of the authority and you’re taking something that they’ve brought up from inception. But a big, like, major sticking point for a lot of individuals to say, you know, new managers or people who maybe have been managers for a long time and haven’t had those decision rights that Joanna was talking about is understanding what the outcomes of accountability actually are. So oftentimes people will think, “Hey, if I mess up, well, then I lose my job.” You know, that’s the unfortunate, some of the unfortunate realities that we’re dealing with in this market. And that’s a different conversation for a different day, but you can create an environment as a leader where people can feel comfortable with working on something, making a decision, and potentially failing while knowing that you may look to somebody else to potentially help them to take on that project without them affecting their long-term outlook in that role. A lot of people love ownership. They’re really scared of accountability because they think because nobody’s taking the time to explain to them that accountability doesn’t always mean you fail and you’re no longer in that job. And that’s an unfortunate issue that is oftentimes not confronted in most businesses.
Dr. Lori Marie Huertas I’ll just add, just to piggyback on what Alex said. I love what you said about the failure part. There’s a book by John Maxwell called Failing Forward. And the main thing of the book is that in life, the most successful people are not necessarily the richest people, the smartest people, the most good-looking people. They’re the people that when they fail, they don’t focus on that. They move forward. And I think us talking about that can really help our teams feel more comfortable in embracing the fact that we’re not looking for perfection, we’re looking for direction.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret I love what you all have said. And just to quickly sum it up, at the end of the day, a lot of innovation comes from failure. So not giving that space, you’re losing out on creativity and innovation.
Harley Green And as your excellent point says, founders or leaders in business, you’re allowed to fail and you fail a lot. And it’s encouraged. It’s like the book Dr. Lori was referencing. So it’s excellent to think about that from a context of the employees. And if they want to think like leaders too, they need to have that space. So appreciate you pointing that out, Alex, as well.
Harley Green Next question for the group. Many executives struggle to let go of control. How can they build trust without losing visibility or quality? Anyone’s welcome to jump in.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret I think Joanna, you answered a lot of this in your prior question. I feel like you addressed it. And honestly, Alex, your follow-up was perfect. I think really when you’re talking about this, one of the really important things is, believe it or not, taking a step back and ensuring that you have the right IT and security infrastructure, which sometimes if you’re an early-stage startup, this goes as like, “Hey, you know what, we can deal with this later,” never mind the actual cost that that adds up to. But the reason why that becomes so critical in this situation is that you allow leaders to have the insight and the data to monitor things because it is critical when building to be able to stop when things don’t look right and go deep as an executive, as a leader. And you’re able to do that with the right infrastructure. How many of us have been part of an organization and trying to get that information is like, it’s painful. So we can’t expect leaders not to be able to go deep unless they have that. And secondly, I’ll just say going back, I’m going to sound like a broken record—that org design—and going exactly back to what Joanna says, if you don’t define the rules and responsibilities, don’t forget about it. Your org design goes out the window. But understanding who the founders are and building around it. And I’ll use the example like, oftentimes you have a founder that’s a visionary, then you need an integrator, right? And just thinking through that. But combined with everything you all three have said, I think collectively, that’s how you answer that.
Joanna Hernandez That’s so good.
Harley Green Well answered. And I agree, I think the previous answers have covered a lot of this as well. Next question I have for the group.
Joanna Hernandez I will add one more thing. I’m sorry, Harley. I just had a thought. Executives can also create visibility through dashboards and milestone reviews. And that’s one way that they can let go of that control. They don’t always need to be right next to the task, but they can have, I often call them toll gates, as often as they want. That could be once a week or once a month. Alex mentioned new managers, maybe they need to be checked in with more often. But there could be a rhythm to each project that is assigned. That’s another way to gain control—is to create an actual task where you state just like what it sounds like. You state what the task is, what that statement of work is, what their boundaries are, what their authorities, their budget, all of those things. But then you also build into that a check-in, a toll gate, so that you can sit with that employee and you feel then they have the power to course correct and or add value while still encouraging them to have the team member to have creativity and be innovative.
Alex Otero Let’s not forget that there’s also a—again, we can talk 10,000 feet, 100,000 feet—it doesn’t really matter. These are still people we’re talking about. And oftentimes, you know, there are not necessarily personal matters, but you know, everybody’s personality is different. Dr. Lori was saying about it earlier. So people are going to clash. People are going to think differently about how to approach a task. And sometimes it’s truly as easy, especially with executives or maybe senior-level managers who have been in a role for a long time, for them to go through an exercise of writing down why a specific thing is bothering them or why they feel they need to have a piece of information. If they can’t answer that in 10 seconds, it requires them to dig a little bit deeper and understand, “Hey, maybe I don’t need to be attached to this.” And then it could be as simple as what Joanna was saying with a dashboard. Dashboards fix a lot. They fix a lot because more often than not, people don’t want a dissertation on the information that they’re seeking. They just want a quick snapshot. But it’s incumbent upon them or whoever is enabling that behavior or trying to fix it to help them say, “Hey, why is this a roadblock for you? Why is it an issue? Why are you angry about it?” There’s a lot of why behind it.
Harley Green I really appreciate what you brought up there, Alex, with like the information access. I think that’s something a lot of times people don’t think about in the time to like cut things. And I experienced that just this week. There is an email group we use internally that’s related to marketing. And I was like, “You know what? I actually don’t ever take action on any of these emails. I don’t need to. I’ve got my team handling them. So I’ll just remove myself from that group.” And now my inbox is that much more clear so I can really stay focused on the things that I do need to focus on and respond to.
Harley Green So one other question I wanted to follow up because the next one was about communication. We’ve been talking about that. Do you all have any advice or specific frameworks that you particularly like for enabling that communication and feedback? We talked about having the tasks and setting outlines. Are there any frameworks that you swear by or recommend that people use to really enable that strong communication to have the self-managing team?
Dr. Lori Marie Huertas I guess I’ll say something real quick. I think trust is so important. I think visibility is really important as well. And I know that it’s a challenge at so many companies now because there’s people working remote, there’s people working in person, there’s the whole AI situation. And so I think we have to be intentional about continuing to develop those relationships with those people on our team so that that trust is there because without trust, it’s really hard to have communication. And I’ll use a quick example of myself. So my parents passed away. They were diagnosed with cancer. First, my mom and then my dad. And at the time when my mom was diagnosed, I was at another university and I was quickly moving up. My dad called me up and he was like, “Hey, what’s it gonna take for you to come home and help me with your mom?” This is before he got cancer. He’s like, “This is too much.” So I had to take FMLA. So I had to meet with HR people like my colleagues here. And really, because I trusted HR, I was able to be honest. And I was like, “What’s the best thing? Do I quit? Should I just quit? Should I do FMLA?” I ended up doing FMLA. I honestly did end up quitting because when my dad got diagnosed after my mom passed away, it was too much. But I just say that if it had not been for the trust that was developed, I would have probably not even told them. I would have just quit and not given a reason. And they would have had no idea what was going on.
Harley Green I think we see that a lot of times if employees are not thinking the same way as business leaders in most circumstances. So things that business leaders might take for granted, like, of course you come and talk to HR if you’ve got a problem. It’s not necessarily what employees think by default when they are in that stressful situation. And of course, the stress doesn’t help in making wise decisions either.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret So agree. I think the other piece to it as well is learning and development, right? I would love to say that everybody knows how to do these things, but truth is we don’t. Even if you think of active listening, which is a key part of this, right? For leaders, but other team members, we’re taught to listen to respond, listen to defend. We’re not taught to listen to actually listen. So I think just developing those key competencies, feedback and so forth. And then again, I know I always go back to that operating model, but what’s the expectation for communication? Who are my key stakeholders? Exactly what you three have said, so I don’t want to take credit for it. Who’s the owner? Who do I need to work with? Defining all of that enables communication and feedback, which is critical because self-managing teams cannot function without those two effectively. But it goes back to your leadership development, your overall development plan for your employees and providing that training.
Harley Green This next question is kind of going the opposite direction. I’m curious to hear if you all have examples of this that you can share and speak to. And the question is, how can leaders identify when they’re accidentally disempowering their team and what can they do to reverse that pattern?
Joanna Hernandez I absolutely love this question because I think that leaders disempower their teams without realizing it. And they do that by usually, first of all, really tight agendas, not creating enough space for people to share their thoughts, answer questions. Most leaders forget to go into inquiry mode when they’re inside a meeting and they’re just speaking, which we can do by recording a video or we can do through an email, right? But mostly from my perspective, I’ve been in HR for 28 years. The root cause is usually over-directing, over-correcting and withholding context. That’s been my experience. And you’ll see it the way you notice that is when teams become hesitant. We kind of talked about that a little bit. They get quiet. But the one that’s not so obvious, Alex, you were talking about newer managers. It took me a really long time to learn this, is they become dependent on you for every decision. I used to see that as a compliment, that my employees would come to me and ask me so many questions. I felt so useful, but I realized it was not exactly a good thing. To answer your question though, to reverse that, I think you need to create the space for contribution.
Joanna Hernandez Ask questions instead of giving answers. One trick that I use for that, you know, all of us on this panel are very experienced. We have a lot of answers. As I will limit myself to—I will try to limit myself to giving two answers. Everything else I will write down in my notebook and I will hold them for a different conversation so that I can create that space for what I just referred to—them asking questions and contributing.
Alex Otero Joanna, you said something in there that really just light bulbs started going off above my head. Context and lack of context is huge. And I think that, going back to pretty much what everybody said, Kristina, you’ve touched on it a few times just in terms of like how an organization is set up, how people feel like they can communicate. There needs to be somebody in that room who feels comfortable saying, “Is this what you want? Or is this what you think is best for the organization accomplishing its vision?” And I’ve been in rooms where that has been answered. And there is somebody who does that. I’ve been in rooms where there hasn’t. The ones where it hasn’t is where people feel disempowered. They feel disenfranchised because in that situation, they’re just doing work. They’re doing work because somebody wants something but has failed to provide them the context for what it is that they want. I myself, without specifics, have done tons of work on a specific project and walked into a room thinking that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And somebody’s like, “That’s not what I want.” It’s like, “Well, you didn’t tell me what you wanted.” So which one is it? Do you want me to do the work that I think is best for us to accomplish our vision and mission? Or do you want something specific that you had in mind and I’ll just execute that? And those—it’s a vague real life example, but it’s specific to what Joanna said about context because so much context is lacking in a lot of what is handed from the top down.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret I absolutely love that. And actually, I think also the thing I would like to add—I’m going to actually steal this from Alex and go back to you. The thing you said before, which I think is critical here too, is a sense of accountability, right? And ensuring that self-managed teams—those are brought into your values and most importantly, your leadership values, right? Your leadership tenants, your leadership principles, because that then forms your performance management and it then becomes accountability. But like everything, it’s dependent on other things. So again, I go back to your leadership development, making sure that your people and your leaders know what to expect from them and then building that in, as well as honestly, even your hiring practices. It goes beyond that, right? Making sure that you’re hiring the right people that are going to be able to thrive in this environment and so forth. So I love that you brought it back to accountability earlier, and I would say that here too, to reinforce that.
Joanna Hernandez Also, Harley, I’m sorry, I just had a thought as Kristina was speaking and Alex—that people need those moments to really absorb, those moments of context to absorb and then translate ideas into action. And Alex said that so perfectly because when you make room for that, that’s when you transform partnership into an ownership mindset.
Harley Green That’s so powerful. Now stepping into early-stage companies, maybe just a few employees, what is the best place for them to start building that culture of ownership?
Kristina Karcic-Ehret I can jump in. I’ll say right from the start, right? How often when you build organizations, culture is secondary. Culture is not secondary. It can mean very, very intentionally designed. But first and foremost, you have to have a clear and actionable strategy. You can’t build without that, right? And then being able to build, like we were talking about, everybody’s mentioned those pieces about whether it’s designing for the org, whether it’s designing your operating model—all these pieces come into play. But it’s never too early. But remember, culture does not sit by itself. It works collectively with other pieces of your structure and your foundation. And if the thought is earlier, then you can really embed it into your DNA and build that. But I think that’s critical for self-managing teams because that’s setting them up for success.
Alex Otero You’ll hear a lot of leaders pretty much everywhere, at least in my career—and I’ve done this a little bit short of 20 years—I’ve always had somebody say, “We’re recruiting for this role. I really love the idea of potentially bringing in somebody who has played division one sports or something like that.” Again, with no context, Joanna, so they kind of just say it. They don’t really say why. But the reason that individuals look for people who play organized sports often is because they understand singular focus and what their participation means to the success of a team. And so that is super paramount when it comes to smaller teams, because if you were to walk into a room right now of a startup with 10 people, you should be able to ask each of those 10 people, including the leaders, “What is your purpose here and what’s our vision?” And if they can’t answer that, then you’re having trouble building that culture of accountability. If you walked into any sports organization right now, any sports team and asked them the same question, they’d say, “We need to do what I need to do. What helps my team win this next game or win this championship?” Companies, individuals, and companies that have that same mindset are the ones that are the most successful.
Harley Green It’s an excellent observation. So does anybody have anything else to add on that before I go to the final lightning round question?
Harley Green All right, guys. So this one—after you answer, I’d love to have everyone give the opportunity to share briefly the best way for the audience to connect with you after the show, whether it’s connecting with you online or if you’ve got an item of value you want to share. Please feel free to share that after you answer this quick question: For everyone out there who’s in business leadership, what is your number one piece of advice for them to take action now to help their team think like owners and not task doers? And Kristina, we’ll start with you.
Kristina Karcic-Ehret To answer that, I think if you want a team that thinks like owners, start by hiring an HR leader who thinks like a business partner to help you develop, to create that.
Harley Green And how can people connect with you, Kristina?
Kristina Karcic-Ehret I apologize. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. Thankfully, I am the only Kristina Karcic. Never mind when you add my secondary last name, Ehret. So I’m easy to find.
Harley Green Awesome. Thank you. All right. Up to you, Alex.
Alex Otero So I think that—yeah, I’m definitely not going to say hire a good HR leader. It’s just self-aggrandizing. But I will say that—have a conversation with all of your leaders that you want to empower and ask them straight up, “Am I giving you enough leeway? Am I putting you in the position that you feel like you are owning your role, that you feel like you understand the accountability of your role?” And if either of those answers is no, immediately ask, “How can I do that for you?” Or “Let’s start planning that. Let’s start mapping it out. Heck, if we need to get a whiteboard session for the next hour, let’s figure out what we can do together to understand what our purpose here actually is.” And yeah, the best way to find me is definitely on LinkedIn. Yeah, that’s probably the best way.
Harley Green All right. Awesome. Thank you, Alex. And Joanna.
Joanna Hernandez I would say trust before task and just show up whole, show up present. It’s so important to lead with presence before policy and clarity before control and trust before task. Because when you show up whole, your team learns how to lead from within and they have that ownership mindset. How you would connect with me—obviously I am on LinkedIn. However, connect with me on my website, which is www.elavantihr.com. Because there I do have access to a book that I just published called Present Leadership, which has a lot of content that we’ve reviewed today. And I also have a podcast that you can connect to through that website. So that has all my contact information and a link to my LinkedIn if you’d like to connect with me there as well. And thank you for that opportunity.
Harley Green Thank you, Joanna. All right, Dr. Lori.
Dr. Lori Marie Huertas So I think that meetings should be held on Tuesdays because of Taco Tuesdays. I think when you have food at meetings, people participate more. But on a serious note, even though that’s kind of true and I’m a foodie, I will say that—and I love everyone on this call. Thank you so much for inviting me. I feel like I’ve learned so much from everyone. I think being authentic is really important and just giving people room to tell their story. Because I think as people tell their stories, you get to know if they understand the company mission, like Alex was talking about, where they are. So yeah, letting people be authentic and telling their story and modeling that as a leader, I think is really important. And I could be reached on LinkedIn.
Harley Green All right. Thank you all to our amazing panelists for such powerful insights and practical strategies today. I know I’ve taken many notes and have some great things I’m going to start implementing from our conversations today. And to everyone joining us, thank you for investing your time today. Remember, your next level of growth doesn’t come from working harder. It comes from empowering smarter. And if you’re ready to free yourself from being the bottleneck and build the kind of strategic support systems that scales with you, I’d love to invite our audience to our free masterclass called Delegate to Dominate. You can watch it and unlock a special bonus offer just for our panel viewers at workergenix.com/bonus-masterclass. And we will see you all on the next Executive Edge Live. Thank you everyone.
