Leadership: Teams, Change and Coaching as a Leader
Leadership as it is practiced in the seat: the leadership team that worked at the last size, accountability that does not backfire, team alignment, change leadership that holds, succession planning, delegation, and the executive offsite that has to end in decisions. Each article gives you the questions to ask, the evidence, and a way to run it with your own team.
Leadership as it is practiced, by email: the team, accountability, alignment and the offsite, with a way to run each.
Coaching as a Leader: How to Coach Your Team and When Not To
Ask before you tell, then know when to decide. A four-step conversation, 21 questions and when coaching backfires, from a CEO who took a company public.
Read the article →When Leadership Development Programs Fail Back at Work
Your leadership program taught fifty hours. Your environment teaches two thousand hours of the opposite lesson every year, and here is how to audit it.
Change Leadership: How CEOs Make Organizational Change Hold
Most organizational change fails after the launch, not at it. What the CEO has to do, what middle managers need, and when to bring in a change consultant.
How High-Performing Teams Actually Work
What makes high-performing teams work? The structure, trust, and leadership behaviors that unlock sustained team performance, and how to build them.
How to Run an Executive Offsite That Produces Decisions
The Decision Contract method for executive offsites, leadership retreats and alignment workshops: prep, the room, the decision log, and the 30 days after.
How to Choose an Offsite or Strategic Planning Facilitator: Seven Tests
Seven questions to ask an offsite or strategic planning facilitator, what strong and weak answers sound like, and what sponsors get wrong. From a former CEO.
Own the Tradeoff When Adding Work and Keep Teams Aligned
When you add work between plans, someone below you can be left to choose what has to give. Learn how to own the tradeoff and keep teams aligned.
Leadership Team Alignment: Why Silence Is Not Agreement
Silence in a decision meeting is not consent. A 72-hour agreement check tells a CEO whether the team agreed, aligned or only nodded, and what to fix first.
Who Did the Thinking? Two Questions Before You Approve
AI made polished recommendations cheap, so you can no longer see who did the thinking. Two questions before you approve give a tell, not a verdict.
Your Team Stopped Asking Questions. Here Is Where They Went
Your team's questions didn't stop. They moved to AI agents, and you lost the early warnings riding inside them, so watch which questions stopped coming.
Teams Hit Plan, Customers Wait: Run a Coherence Check
Teams can hit the plan while customers wait. A measure may reward passing delays along, so run a coherence check before the next productivity investment.
Managing a High Performer Your Standards Don't Reach
How you judge a concern about a top performer shouldn't depend on how much you need them. Examine it fairly, and plan for business continuity separately.
Leadership Transition: Did You Hand Over the Seat?
Before replacing a successor who seems hesitant, check whether you actually handed over the decisions. Then finish your half and judge what they own.
Hard-to-Fill Role? Ask Whether It Needs to Be One Job
When a specialist role stays open, ask whether it needs to be one job. This article shows how to read the evidence, weigh a split and decide with purpose.
Decision Rights: Name the Decider Before the Next Analysis
Repeated analysis can mean a decision has no owner. Name the decider, set criteria, limits and a date, and ask what the next analysis would change.
Executive Team Coaching: When Your Leadership Team Needs It
Executive team coaching works on how a leadership team decides, disagrees and follows through. The signs, how it works, and when it is not the answer.
Executive Presence and Stakeholder Management: Product Leaders
Stakeholder management and executive presence for product leaders: map who decides, pre-wire the room, lead with the point. From a former CPO.
How to Find the Best Chief Product Officer Coach: 7 Tests
A roadmap the market wants, and engineering, sales and marketing pulling toward it. Seven tests for any CPO coach, from a former CPO who held the CEO seat.
How to Find the Best COO Coach: Seven Tests for One Call
How to find the best COO coach: what the seat does to a COO, what the research says coaching can change, and seven tests for one call. From a former COO.
How to Find the Best Executive Coach for General Managers
How to find the best executive coach for general managers: what the P&L seat demands, what coaching can do, and seven tests to run in one call.
How to Find the Best IT Director Coach: Seven Tests
How to find the best IT director coach: what the seat does to technology leaders, what coaching can do, and seven tests. From a former CTO and COO.
How to Find the Best VP of Engineering Coach: Seven Tests
Being right in the architecture review is not enough at the executive table. Seven tests for any VP of Engineering coach, from a VP over 1,000 engineers.
Leadership Coaching for Engineering Managers: Seven Tests
You got here on the engineering. Now the job is people, the managers you pick and grow. Seven tests for any coach, from a VP who led 1,000 engineers.
Strategic Planning Facilitator Cost 2026: Rates and Who Pays
What strategic planning facilitators and consultants charge in 2026: hourly, day and project ranges, what sets the fee, who pays, and how I price.
Offsite Agenda Template for a Strategic Planning Offsite
A two-day offsite meeting agenda for a leadership team: the pre-work, three to five decisions agreed first, who is in the room, and a template to download.
Executive Coaching Cost 2026: Rates, Who Pays, How I Price
Executive coaching costs $150 to $3,500 an hour, $1,000 to $10,000 a month on retainer, or $5,000 to $60,000 an engagement in 2026. Who pays, how I price.
Stalled Digital Transformation: What I Look For First
Your transformation stalled. The six causes, what I look for in the first thirty days, and the change that fixed a migration after three failed tries.
How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask
Six questions to ask an executive coach, when coaching is not worth it, and what good answers sound like. From a Nasdaq IPO CEO coaching CPOs and CTOs.
Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty: How Operators Decide
How to decide when you cannot know. The Reversibility Ledger weighs what you can't take back against what you'll know by a date you name.
Does Accountability Improve Performance? What Research Says
Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires and the three conditions that make it work.
Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It
Why leadership teams fail: no shared picture of what success looks like and no agreed why. Settle those first and the how follows. From a CEO and COO.
Why “We’re a Family” Backfires at Work
Treating your company as a family sounds caring, but it backfires. Lessons from Airbnb, Netflix, and beyond on building a high-performing team culture.
Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance
Why product and engineering teams stall, and how to transform them into high performers: field-tested fixes from a leader who has run both sides.
Are You a Manager or a Leader?
Are you managing or leading? Managers get people to do what is needed. Leaders get them to want to. Where the difference showed up, from a former CEO.
Leadership Lessons from Thinkers50
Leadership lessons from Thinkers50 with Marshall Goldsmith and Subir Chowdhury: embrace failure, take extreme ownership, address triggers, keep the fire.
Business Breakthrough 3.0 Out Now! Don't Wait, Buy Now
Business Breakthrough 3.0, the book by Ken Gavranovic and Lee Atchison: mission and values, OKRs, measuring what matters, structure and the growth motion.
Leaders vs Managers: What Actually Separates Them
Leadership and management aren't the same thing. What truly separates a leader from a manager, and why the difference shapes how your teams perform.
7 Questions That Boost Employee Engagement 30%
More than two-thirds of US employees aren't actively engaged at work. Seven powerful questions leaders can use to boost engagement by 30% and keep talent.
Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Three Rs
Enterprise agility comes down to three Rs. A practical operating framework for moving faster, adapting sooner, and truly running like a digital business.
Digital Transformation, Part 2: People, Process, Tech
When the numbers turn scary, the instinct is to play defense. How to operate like a true digital business and build durable enterprise agility instead.
Digital Transformation, Part 1: Why It Fails
Every company calls itself digital. Few truly operate that way. The dangerous gap between claiming to be a digital business and actually running like one.
OKRs: Measure Outcomes, Not Activity
Most companies measure activity completed, not outcomes achieved. Why that distinction decides success, and how to shift your teams toward outcomes.
How to Build a Risk Matrix That Cuts Downtime
How to build a risk matrix that reduces downtime, security vulnerabilities and costly surprises: a practical routine from a former CTO and COO.
Code Story Podcast Interview
Ken Gavranovic on Noah Labhart's Code Story podcast: learning assembly at ten, building what became web.com, and running product at New Relic.
No-Code Doesn’t Mean No Software Engineers
No-code platforms have real potential and real limits. Why they do not remove the need for software engineers, from a platform leader who shipped both.
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