# Ken Gavranovic > A thinking and execution partner who has held the seat: executive coach, offsite and strategic planning facilitator, and strategy and AI consultant for the people who lead companies and teams. Nasdaq IPO founder and full-stack operator (CEO, COO, CPO, CTO, GM). ICF and CEC certified. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; in person across the Atlanta metro, remote with leaders everywhere. Ken Gavranovic is an executive coach, facilitator, and strategy advisor based in Alpharetta, Georgia, in the Atlanta metro. He founded Interland (now Web.com), growing it from $0 to $200M+ ARR and 650+ people and leading its Nasdaq IPO. As EVP & GM at New Relic he grew revenue from $300M to $500M leading a 450-person organization; as VP at Cox Automotive he led a multi-brand cloud and DevOps transformation with a $250M budget across a multi-billion-dollar platform; and as COO of Blameless he cut burn roughly in half and guided the company to a merger with FireHydrant. He has been part of 35+ M&A transactions and 18 exits. He is an ICF Certified Coach and a Certified Executive Coach (Center for Executive Coaching), a former Forbes Coaches Council member, a Thinkers50 contributor, and the co-author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3.0. He holds a BS in Psychology, Summa Cum Laude, from Liberty University, and studied computer science at Texas A&M. He works with leaders in three ways: executive coaching for senior operators, offsite and strategic planning facilitation, and strategy consulting and advisory. He also works directly with private equity firms and family offices on their portfolio companies, especially technology and tech-enabled businesses: operational troubleshooting, leadership transitions, and exit readiness. He turns AI into EBITDA for portfolio companies: workload by workload, starting with the boring wins. His AI consulting practice serves private equity portfolio companies and CEOs: workload-by-workload AI roadmaps, adoption sprints, and fractional Chief AI Officer engagements, from an operator who built and launched AI products as a CEO. He works in person across the Atlanta metro, on-site anywhere in the country, and remotely with leaders everywhere. ## Executive coaching: the six questions buyers ask, answered - Approach and specialization: a practical, candid thought partner for senior operators on executive leadership, organizational effectiveness, stakeholder management, executive presence, and strategic product and business challenges. Method: the Three Rs (right formula, right tactics, repeatable actions). His only objective is the goal the client named in calibration. - Operating experience and typical clients: founder and CEO of Interland through a Nasdaq IPO ($200M revenue, 650 people); EVP at New Relic ($300M to $500M, 450 people); $250M budget at Cox Automotive; COO in a VC-backed turnaround (burn cut in half, runway extended 18 months, win rate from 0 to 80%, merged with FireHydrant). 35 M&A transactions, 18 exits. Clients: CEOs, COOs, CPOs, CTOs and GMs at companies in significant growth, founders scaling past their first team, executives at VC-backed companies. - Engagement structure and duration: discovery call, calibration (success defined before work starts), standing coaching calls weekly to monthly on video or in person, ad hoc access between calls. Engagements run in months, not weeks. - In-person availability: based in Alpharetta, Georgia; in person across Atlanta metro; New York, San Francisco and elsewhere by flying in when the engagement books time for it; video for the standing cadence everywhere. - Pricing: no published figure; engagements are scoped to the leader and the mandate on a monthly retainer, month to month with 30 days' notice; market ranges by level and structure, who pays, and the five factors are in https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/. Price is set by who is coached (executive or team), cadence and access, length, remote vs in person, and who pays (most engagements are company-funded). A scope and a number come at the end of the discovery call. - Discovery session: yes, 45 minutes on video, free, no pitch. https://kengavranovic.com/booking Guide: https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/ ## Home https://kengavranovic.com/ Nasdaq IPO Founder · Full-Stack Operator · Investor ### A thinking and execution partner who has held the seat. Executive coaching, offsite facilitation, and strategy and AI consulting from an operator who has lived it and advised it from the outside: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, VP at Cox Automotive, a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits. Most executive coaches have been near the room. I was in the room, driving: a startup from $0 to a Nasdaq IPO, transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise, growth at a public unicorn, 35 M&A transactions and 18 exits. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. That is the perspective I bring, with the data, to challenge your assumptions. Having done that work, I chose this one: a practical, candid thought partner to the people who lead companies and teams, shortening the learning curve I paid full price for. CEC and ICF certified, a BS in Psychology, a master's in CMHC underway. I work with CEOs, founders, COOs, CPOs, CTOs, GMs, and their leadership teams at inflection points: clarity on what actually needs to change, and change that holds. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) See how I work You know the seat: the number is public, the board is watching, and the people who got you here are the ones now struggling. I have sat in it. I made the money and got the scars, and I chose this second chapter on purpose. That choice buys you the one thing leaders rarely get from an advisor: the truth, first person, fast. I work with leaders in three ways: [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) for senior operators, [offsite and strategic planning facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation), and [strategy consulting and advisory](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). Based in Alpharetta, Georgia: remote with leaders everywhere, on-site anywhere the work calls for it. I also work directly with private equity and venture firms and family offices on their portfolio companies, especially technology and tech-enabled businesses: operational troubleshooting, leadership transitions, [AI value creation](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), and [exit readiness](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). Built & led at New Relic Cox Automotive Interland → Web.com Blameless Unqork First Data Nasdaq IPO Founder-led (Interland → Web.com) $300→500M New Relic revenue growth (EVP/GM) $250M Budget managed at Cox Automotive 650+ Global team built & scaled The work #### The hardest problems in a company are rarely the technical ones. Growth, transformation, transition: the work stalls where the people issues live. The team that worked at the last size. The leader stepping into a seat that needs a different version of them. The plan everyone politely agreed to and nobody believes. I've been in those rooms, in the seat, with the number public and the board watching. The work I do now is clarity on what actually needs to change, and the candour to name it. If that sounds like your company, you are who I work with. CEO · COO · CPO · CTO · GM Full-stack executive roles 15+ leaders → C-level Bench developed under him [Read the full story →](https://kengavranovic.com/about-ken) Track record #### Value created at every stage: startup to public. New Relic EVP & General Manager $300M → $500M Drove product-led growth to $500M in revenue and $50M+ incremental ARR from new products, leading 450+ across the US, Spain, Israel, and Portugal. Interland → Web.com Founder & CEO $0 → $200M ARR Built from the ground up to 650+ employees and a successful Nasdaq IPO; merged with MicronPC to form Web.com. Cox Automotive Vice President 99.9% uptime Managed a $250M+ budget for a multi-brand cloud transformation, kicked off with AWS's Andy Jassy, and built an SRE/DevOps practice that cut recovery time 70%. Blameless Chief Operating Officer −50% burn, win rate 0 to 80% Turned the business around, extending runway 18 months and lifting win rate from 0 to 80%, and merged it with FireHydrant. How I help #### Three ways in. 01 ##### Executive coaching A practical, candid thought partner for senior operators: a new seat, a team that stopped scaling, stakeholder management and executive presence, alignment across your leadership team. CEC and ICF certified. See how it works → 02 ##### Strategy consulting & advisory Advice when you need judgment, ownership when you need the outcome delivered: board counsel, scoped projects, transformation leadership, and work with private equity firms on portfolio companies. Explore advisory → 03 ##### Offsites & facilitation Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a neutral moderator. Decisions leave the room with owners and dates. See the room → The thread through all three ##### The human side of change The org chart is almost never the real problem. Helping leaders see the patterns that built the company and now limit it, in the team and in themselves, so change actually holds. The Operator’s Playbook #### Free, twice a month, for CEOs and the leaders one level below. How to do the thing, the data, where it goes wrong and how to make it go right. Stabilize before a sale. The first ninety days after the sponsor replaces your CEO. Restart a stalled transformation. A real AI answer for the board. ✓ Thanks. Check your inbox to confirm, the first issue is on its way. First issue today: [the five questions I ask in the first thirty days of a stalled transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Unsubscribe in one click. Writing, speaking & recognition #### A recognized voice on transformation and operational excellence. Author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3.0, with 100+ published articles and a decade of international keynotes on leadership, AI, and enterprise transformation. Forbes Wall Street Journal TechCrunch CEOWORLD BusinessWeek DevOps.com ● Inc. Fastest-Growing Startups ● FedRAMP-Certified Leader ● Forbes America's Best Startups ● Forbes Coaches Council, former member ● International Keynote Speaker ● 2 U.S. Patents What leaders & investors say #### Trusted by the people he's led, advised, and built with. Selected from 50+ recommendations “ > Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio — aligning tech, product, and operations with precision. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative. Zakaria Siddiqui Chief Data Officer · Cox Automotive “ > Ken brought a rare mix of focused execution, operational rigor, and infectious positivity. He drove alignment and morale even as we reduced burn by 50%. His leadership during our acquisition was steady, thoughtful, and deeply collaborative. Travis Kaufman GTM @ Fin · reported to Ken at Blameless “ > As COO, Ken led with clarity and focus — revamping our GTM motion, cutting burn significantly, and driving cross-functional alignment across Product, Sales, and Operations. He was instrumental in positioning the company for its acquisition. JJ Liongson, SHRM-CP HR & People Leader · Blameless “ > I led the first institutional round of investment in Interland, which Ken founded. His talent is evident in the meteoric growth path he guided it to. Ken is wise beyond his years — I would gladly work with and invest in him again. Andy Jones Sr. Managing Director · StepStone Group “ > Ken came into a very broken business and guided the team to a path that led to our acquisition with FireHydrant. He clearly steered the ship during times of uncertainty. Nicholas Mason Sr. Solutions Architect · Gremlin “ > Ken is a very talented and creative entrepreneur. He has a great eye for business opportunities and knows how to capitalize on them. Fabrice Klein Principal Advisor, Private Equity · AWS “ > We worked together over 4 years across 2 companies. I've watched Ken boost the output of software teams, raise hiring standards, and transform behavior by example. Every conversation with Ken leaves you inspired. Dru Riley Founder · Trends.vc “ > Ken is one of the most effective technology leaders I've worked with. He sees the whole business and what needs to be done at the broadest level — and can execute with speed and inspiring conviction. Misha Sulpovar Chief AI Officer & Author “ > I've known Ken for 20 years, having invested in Interland prior to it going public. He's an excellent judge of talent, a natural entrepreneur, and a man of integrity who always chooses the high road. Daniel Keoppel Innovation & Investment Executive Let's set up some time #### Start with a conversation. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Tell me what is in front of you, and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) ken@kengavranovic.com (629) 304-8755 Insights #### Latest thinking. View all insights →](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) [ October 11, 2026 ##### First 90 Days as a New Executive: What to Do and What Not To Four moves that worked, five mistakes I watch new leaders make, what changes when a sponsor owns the company, and the questions people ask in their first week. Read → September 6, 2026 ##### Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For. The pattern behind most stalled transformations, one that failed three times before one leader fixed it, and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days. Read → September 6, 2026 ##### How to Run an Executive Offsite That Actually Produces Decisions The Decision Contract: three to five decisions agreed in writing before the agenda exists, a decision log read back before the room empties, and thirty days of follow-through. Read → Coaching by seat #### Coaching for the seat you hold. I have held the CEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats at different companies, so I know the dynamics of each role around yours from the inside. - [Startup CEO coach](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach) · [How to pick the best startup CEO coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-pick-the-best-startup-ceo-coach/) - [COO coach](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) · [How to find the best COO coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-chief-operating-officer-coach/) - [Chief Product Officer coach](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach) · [How to find the best Chief Product Officer coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-chief-product-officer-coach/) - [Director of Engineering coach](https://kengavranovic.com/director-of-engineering-coach) · [How to find the best engineering leadership coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-engineering-leadership-coach/) - [B2B SaaS coach](https://kengavranovic.com/b2b-saas-coach) · [How to find the best B2B SaaS coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-b2b-saas-coach/) - [VP of Engineering coach](https://kengavranovic.com/vp-of-engineering-coach) · [How to find the best VP of Engineering coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-vp-of-engineering-coach/) - [IT director coach](https://kengavranovic.com/it-director-coach) · [How to find the best IT director coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-it-director-coach/) - [Executive coach for general managers](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coach-for-general-managers) · [How to find the best executive coach for general managers](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-executive-coach-for-general-managers/) Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## About Ken https://kengavranovic.com/about-ken About Ken ### A career spent at the intersection of leadership, complexity, and change. Executive coaching, offsite facilitation and strategy consulting for CEOs, founders and senior leaders, from an operator who has held the seat. I am Ken Gavranovic: founder and CEO of Interland, now Web.com, from $0 to $200M+ ARR and a Nasdaq IPO; EVP and GM at New Relic, growing revenue from $300M to $500M; operator at Cox Automotive; COO in a VC-backed turnaround; 35+ M&A transactions and 18 exits. A thinking and execution partner who has held the seat: I coach and advise CEOs, founders, and leadership teams from Alpharetta, Georgia, remote with leaders everywhere, in person across the Atlanta metro, and on-site anywhere the work calls for it. I made the money and I got the scars: the IPO, the mergers, the quarters that went wrong and the ones we turned. My first half was on purpose. So is this one. I did not move into coaching because operating ended; I finished that chapter and chose this work: shortening the learning curve for the people now sitting where I sat. Who I work with #### An operator who has held the seat, not a career coach. ##### The seats - CEOs and founders - COOs, CPOs, CTOs and GMs - Leadership teams at companies backed by venture capital, private equity or a family office, and at founder-led and family-owned companies - The leader one level below being built for one of those seats ##### The situations - A new seat, and the first quarter in it - A team that worked at one size and does not at the next - A transition, a turnaround, or new ownership - Stakeholder management and executive presence at the next level - An offsite or strategic plan that has to leave the room with owners and dates ##### This is a fit if - You own an outcome: a number, a team, a transition. - You want candid, not comfortable. - You will do the work between sessions. - You want someone who has sat where you sit, not someone who has read about it. ##### This is not a fit if - You want life coaching. This is executive execution. - You want a consultant to build the plan and own it for you, unless that is the engagement we scope. - You are sending a deputy to be coached in your place. - You want a peer group rather than one-to-one. Ken Gavranovic, AGS, LLC A practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat. ✓ Been there, done that. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO. EVP at New Relic, VP at Cox Automotive, COO in a VC-backed turnaround. 35+ M&A transactions, 18 exits. ✓ Experienced in business and in coaching. ICF Certified Coach and Certified Executive Coach (CEC). In practice since 2021. ✓ Trained on the human side, and lived it. BS in Psychology, Summa Cum Laude. MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in progress. Member, APA, ACA and LPCA. Read the full credentials, memberships and record → Been there #### I know what the room feels like. Presenting to the New Relic board, with Benchmark at the table. Sitting across from Andy Jassy at Cox Automotive in the meeting that started its move to AWS. Three in the morning, the night before Micron Electronics and Interland merged into what became Web.com, working through the legal issues with CNBC waiting at nine. ##### Rooms I have been in - Raise the next round, or take the sale? Made that call more than once. - The board presentation. New Relic’s board, with Benchmark at the table. - The meeting that moves a company to the cloud. Across the table from Andy Jassy, at Cox Automotive. - 3 a.m. before two public companies merge. Micron Electronics and Interland, legal issues to clear, CNBC at nine. - The keynote. Flown around the world to stand in front of rooms of hundreds, and deliver. - Taking over after the executive before you was fired. Had the playbook, ran it. - Driving change at a unicorn, and inside an 80-year-old corporate. Done both. ##### Situations I have coached through - PE-backed portfolio company. A new leadership team that has not operated at this scale: I coach the leaders, or the team as a unit. The ninety days that have to stabilize before the sale. The sponsor just replaced your CEO and you are still here. Next round, or the exit. - Venture-backed founder. All the drive and energy in the world, and a company that now needs focus, priorities, and a way to pair gut with data. The first real leadership team, hired faster than it gelled. Raise the next round, or take the sale. - The leader taking the seat. First quarter in the job, with a team that was not yours yesterday. Taking over after the executive before you was fired. The big presentation: board, investors, all-hands. The transformation that stalled six months in. In the rooms that matter #### From the trading floor to the main stage. Nasdaq Ringing the bell: taking the company he founded public. Cox Auto Launching the cloud move with AWS's Andy Jassy. New Relic Keynoting FutureStack. Gartner On stage at the IT Symposium. Workshop Leading a leadership & growth session. #### Responsibility and scale, from startup to public. Ken has served as CEO of a Nasdaq-listed company, led product and technology organizations at multi-billion-dollar scale, and stepped into some of the most demanding executive roles organizations face during pivotal transitions. As Founder and CEO of Interland, which became Web.com, he built the company from the ground up, scaling it past $200M in revenue and 650+ employees, and leading it through a successful public offering on Nasdaq. He later guided platform strategy at New Relic as EVP & GM, growing revenue from $300M to $500M. At Cox Automotive, he led a major cloud and DevOps transformation with a $250M budget. More recently, as COO of Blameless, he turned around a Series B business, cutting burn roughly in half while growing sales, and guided it to a merger with FireHydrant. Across all of it, Ken was consistently called into situations where momentum mattered, complexity was rising, and leadership needed to be both decisive and steady. How Ken thinks about leadership #### Practical, human-centered, and grounded in experience. Rather than adding noise or urgency, Ken focuses on simplifying complexity: helping leaders and teams see what matters most and move forward with confidence. 01 Leaders are aligned around what truly matters. 02 Teams understand the purpose behind the work, not just the tasks. 03 Strategy is translated into clear priorities and sustainable operating rhythms. 04 Technology, product, and go-to-market operate as a cohesive system. 05 Leaders create environments that support accountability, learning, and trust. What distinguishes the work A rare combination of vantage points: founder, public-company CEO, product and technology leader, growth-stage builder, enterprise transformer, investor, and advisor, and an understanding of how every one of those intersects. Clear judgment Thoughtful leadership Meaningful progress What it was like #### Three people who were in those rooms. I led the first institutional round of investment in Interland, which Ken founded. His talent is evident in the meteoric growth path he guided it to. Ken is wise beyond his years. I would gladly work with and invest in him again. Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative. He brought a rare mix of focused execution, operational rigor, and infectious positivity. He drove alignment and morale even as we reduced burn by 50%. His leadership during our acquisition was steady, thoughtful, and deeply collaborative. Recognition & voice #### A trusted perspective, in the boardroom and the press. Author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3.0, with 100+ published articles, international keynotes, and features across leading outlets. Forbes CNN CNBC Wired WSJ TechCrunch [See me in the press: interviews, podcasts and writing →](https://kengavranovic.com/media) The operator’s arc #### Built, scaled, taken public, turned around. I founded Interland in my twenties and rode it from zero to $200 million in revenue, 650 people, and a Nasdaq IPO, then through the merger that made it Web.com. Everything I teach about scaling I learned the expensive way first. At New Relic I helped grow revenue from $300 million to $500 million as EVP and GM, leading 450 people across four countries. At Cox Automotive I ran a $250 million multi-brand cloud transformation: 99.9 percent uptime, recovery times cut 70 percent. As COO of Blameless I cut burn roughly in half, stabilized revenue, took the win rate from near zero to eighty percent by rebuilding how we sold, and guided the company to its merger with FireHydrant. Along the way: 35 M&A transactions and 18 exits, three as an operator. The other half of the story is the human one. I am an ICF Certified Coach and a Certified Executive Coach, with a BS in Psychology, Summa Cum Laude, and a master’s in clinical mental health counseling underway. The tech side started with computer science in 1990. I sat on the Forbes Coaches Council, contribute to Thinkers50, and co-authored [Business Breakthrough 3.0](https://kengavranovic.com/2023/06/02/business-breakthrough-3/). That pairing, the operating seat and the trained human side, is the whole point of [how I coach senior operators](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). If you are weighing coaches, I wrote up [the six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/), including me. Home is Alpharetta, Georgia, in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, with my wife Heather and our two daughters. I work remotely with leaders everywhere and on-site anywhere the work calls for it. ##### Operator experience - Founder and CEO, Interland (Web.com): Nasdaq IPO, $200M revenue, 650 people. - Executive Vice President and GM, New Relic: revenue $300M to $500M. - Vice President, Cox Automotive: $250M cloud transformation. - Chief Operating Officer, Blameless: turnaround to strategic merger. - Across the career: 35+ M&A transactions, 18 exits, three as an operator. [Full career on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavranovic/) ##### Certifications - ICF Certified Coach, International Coaching Federation. - Certified Executive Coach (CEC), Center for Executive Coaching, ICF-accredited program. ##### Education - Bachelor of Science, Psychology, Summa Cum Laude, 2026. - Master of Science, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, in progress. ##### Memberships - International Coaching Federation (ICF), member 009666050I. - American Psychological Association (APA), member C2505590611. - American Counseling Association (ACA), member 6768630. - Licensed Professional Counselors Association of Georgia (LPCA), member. ##### Recognition - Forbes Coaches Council, former member. [Profile](https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/people/kengavranovic/) - Better Business Bureau, Accredited Business, A+ rating. [BBB profile](https://www.bbb.org/us/ga/alpharetta/profile/executive-coaching/actionable-growth-strategies-llc-0443-91849997) - Thinkers50, contributor. - Business Breakthrough 3.0, co-author, Amazon best seller. - In the press: Forbes, CNN, CNBC, Wired, WSJ, TechCrunch. [Media page](https://kengavranovic.com/media) Questions leaders ask before they call #### Four questions, answered straight. If you are weighing coaches, I wrote up [the six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/), including me. These are the four that come up most. ##### Have you operated at my level? Yes. Founder and CEO of a company I took public, then EVP, VP and COO seats at companies larger and smaller than yours. The record is above, seat by seat, so you can check it. ##### How does an engagement run? A 45-minute discovery call first, to see whether this is the right fit. If it is, calibration meetings agree what success looks like and how we will measure it. Then standing coaching calls, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, with ad hoc access between them. The full process is on the [executive coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching), and what it costs is in [the cost guide](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). ##### Are you certified, and can I check? Yes, and so are a lot of coaches. Fewer bring the rest of it: the operating seat, a psychology degree and a counseling master’s underway, a published book, and a BBB-accredited A+ business behind the practice. All of it is checkable: the member numbers are listed above, the BBB profile is linked, and the record on this page is seat by seat. ##### Where are you? Alpharetta, Georgia, in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. In person across metro Atlanta, remote with leaders everywhere, and on-site anywhere the engagement calls for it. The Operator’s Playbook #### Free, twice a month, for CEOs and the leaders one level below. How to do the thing, the data, where it goes wrong and how to make it go right. Stabilize before a sale. The first ninety days after the sponsor replaces your CEO. Restart a stalled transformation. A real AI answer for the board. ✓ Thanks. Check your inbox to confirm, the first issue is on its way. First issue today: [the five questions I ask in the first thirty days of a stalled transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Unsubscribe in one click. #### If your organization is navigating a pivotal moment, let's talk. A focused, no-pressure conversation to help you move forward with clarity, and fewer unnecessary missteps. [Book a consultation](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) ken@kengavranovic.com (629) 304-8755 Not ready for a call? Start with the Playbook: free, twice a month, how to do the thing, the data, where it goes wrong and how to make it go right. You will know how I think before we ever talk. ✓ Thanks. Check your inbox to confirm, the first issue is on its way. ## Executive Coaching https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching Executive coaching ### Executive coaching for CEOs and senior leaders, from an operator who has held the seat. Scale without losing the team you built. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I work with leaders and companies at inflection points: [executives stepping into bigger seats](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/first-90-days-as-a-new-executive/), teams that stopped scaling, and CEOs who know the next chapter needs different moves than the last one. Coaching from someone who has held the seat: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, a $250M budget at Cox Automotive, and New Relic from $300M to $500M. ICF and CEC certified. A practical, candid thought partner: on the business, and on the person running it. Why me #### Most executive coaches have studied the job. I have done it. There is a kind of pressure that only shows up at the top: when the number is public, the board is watching, and the people who got you here are the ones now struggling. I have been in that chair. I founded Interland, scaled it to $200M ARR and took it public on Nasdaq. I ran a $250M budget across a multi-brand cloud transformation at Cox Automotive. I grew New Relic from $300M to $500M leading 450 people across four countries. I worked through 35 mergers and 18 exits. Everyone around a CEO has an objective. The board, the investors, the banker, the CFO, the peer who wanted your seat: most of them are good people, but each has a filter shaped by their own goals and worldview. I have sat in the seat and sometimes forgot that, and often those very same people, the company, and I paid for it. That is the pattern I now watch for on your behalf. What I bring that nobody else in the room can is a single objective: the goal you named in calibration. The company may pay for the engagement; the agenda is yours, and what you say in the room stays in the room. I am also a certified coach: ICF and CEC. The training is current, not just credentialed: a BS in Psychology, and graduate work in CMHC underway right now. That pairing is the point. We can talk about the operating model and the person running it in the same conversation, without translating between the two. Across 25+ years I have founded and taken a company public on Nasdaq, run budgets and P&Ls from $50M to $250M, and been part of 35+ M&A transactions, with exits returning up to 90x. I have sat in every seat my clients sit in. As COO I cut burn in half without gutting morale, revamped the go-to-market motion, and merged it with FireHydrant. The board’s alternative was a down round or a fire sale. Nasdaq IPO Founder-led, Interland to Web.com $300→500M New Relic revenue growth 35 M&As and 18 exits ICF & CEC Certified executive coach First person #### First person, not near it. You are not looking for someone who has read about your job. Executive presence: I have presented to top VCs, taken a company through an IPO roadshow, been interviewed on CNN and CNBC, and keynoted customer events around the globe. Stakeholder management: boards, PE operating partners, and the other side of the table across 35 M&A transactions. Organizational effectiveness: transformations driven at four companies in a row. Strategic product and business calls: made from the CPO, CTO, GM, and CEO seats, with my name on the result. Whatever is on your list, I have done it first, which is how your learning curve gets shorter. Leaders coached from IBMMicrosoftGoogleDisneyHuluCapital OneLincolnANZRiot GamesHumanaCVSGartner What we work on #### The problems that do not fit on a slide. ##### [Leading through transition](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/) A new seat, a new mandate, or an organisation that has changed underneath you. The work is getting to clarity fast enough to act, without pretending to a certainty you do not have. That includes first-time CEOs, new mandates, and leaders stepping up from GM or COO into a bigger seat. ##### The team that worked at the last size The people who got you here are often the ones struggling now. That is rarely a talent problem and almost always a structure and expectation problem, and it is fixable. ##### Stakeholder management and executive presence The board, the investors, the peers who wanted your seat: managing up and across is its own discipline, and it decides more careers than operating skill does. Presence is not performance. It is being the clearest person in a room that needs a decision. ##### Accountability that does not backfire Held wrong, [accountability makes decisions worse](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/). Held right (on reasoning rather than outcome, agreed before the decision, on a team where it is safe to tell the truth), it sharpens everything. ##### Alignment across the leadership team When product, engineering and go-to-market each have a defensible version of the plan and none of them match. Translating strategy into an operating rhythm people can actually run. ##### The human side of change The org chart is almost never the real problem. Seeing the patterns that built the company and now limit it, in the team and in yourself, so the change actually holds. ##### Leadership team coaching Working with the whole leadership team: alignment on the plan, an operating rhythm that holds, decision rights that are clear, and a room where it is safe to tell the truth. When what the team needs is a single facilitated room, that is [a session I run separately](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### Balance, when you want it in scope If you want to stay focused on executive execution, that is the work, and I have it. Some clients also want to think about the balance around the job: family, health, the hobbies that make the effort worth it. Not as a separate project, but because they know a leader with those in order shows up as their best self, in the room and at home. When you want that in scope, we put it in scope. When you do not, we stay on the business. Founder to CEO #### Coaching for founders and startup CEOs. I did not start with money. There was a stretch in my twenties when the car was close to being repossessed and the rent was behind. Three years later the company I founded, Interland, was on its way to $200 million in revenue, 650 people, and a Nasdaq IPO. So when I coach founders, this is not theory. I have lived the first hires, the first board, the quarter the model broke, and the merger that turned Interland into Web.com. I know what it feels like when the company starts to outgrow the way you have always done it, and the next version of you is running late. That is the work: growing the founder as fast as the company. Naming what only you can do, hiring for the rest, and building the operating rhythm that lets you lead instead of firefight. If you are a founder, a startup CEO, or scaling past the team you started with, this is coaching from someone who has stood where you are standing. The method #### The Three Rs of Lasting Change Most coaching produces insight. Insight does not survive contact with a real quarter. What makes change hold is a repeatable structure, and after twenty-five years of running transformations I have only ever seen three things matter. ##### Right Formula What actually needs to change, named precisely. Most transformations fail here, solving for the thing that is easiest to describe rather than the thing that is true. ##### Right Tactics How it gets done, in this organisation, with these people. The same formula executed two ways produces two different companies. ##### Repeatable Actions The rhythm that keeps the machine humming long after the transformation is finished, and long after I am gone. This is the one everybody skips. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. 01 ##### Discovery call A straight conversation about what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. No pitch. 02 ##### Calibration We agree what success looks like and how we will know we got there: before the work starts, not after. 03 ##### Standing coaching calls Weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, on video or in person: the cadence and the mix are set in calibration. Real decisions in front of you, not hypotheticals from a workbook. 04 ##### Ad hoc access The hard things do not wait for the calendar. When something lands, you can reach me. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Where I work #### Based in Alpharetta. In person across Atlanta metro. Remote everywhere. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. I work remotely with leaders everywhere, and on-site when the work calls for it: offsites, working sessions, and engagements anywhere in the country. Atlanta metro in person is easy: see [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta). Leaders in Nashville: see [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/). In Dallas: see [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas). In Austin: see [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin). In Charlotte: see [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/). In New York City: see [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/). In San Francisco: see [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/). In Miami: see [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/). In Chicago: see [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/). In Boston: see [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/). In Washington, DC: see [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/). At home in Alpharetta: see [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta). (629) 304-8755 · ken@kengavranovic.com What it costs #### Most of my clients are company-funded. Organisations invest in the leaders they intend to keep, and coaching at this level is normally a line item rather than a personal expense. I have sat on the other side of that request, as the executive deciding whether to approve it. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Engagements are scoped to the leader and the mandate, not a rate card. I work on a monthly retainer, not a per-session fee. Five things set the number: who is being coached, the cadence and the access between calls, the length, remote or in person, and who is paying. Month to month; cancel with 30 days’ notice; no annual contract. If you would be paying yourself, say so on the call. Depending on the situation and the fit I take some of those engagements, and we shape the scope around it. It is how I give back to the next generation of leaders. By the end of the discovery call you will have a scope and a number. What the market charges, and what sets it: [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost in 2026?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) What changes #### Five leaders, five inflection points. Names and companies withheld. The situations are real. ##### The PE reboot Transition · performance A VP of Technology at a PE-backed company watched his CTO get replaced and was left holding the transformation. High-risk moment. Most people in that seat either flame out or get flattened by the new sponsor’s playbook. We worked on how he showed up with the PE operating partners, and instead of surviving the reboot he ran it. He launched the company’s AI transformation, and when the dust settled he wasn’t just still standing; he’d cemented his value with a bigger mandate than he had before the reboot. ##### The GM who became CEO Career advancement A GM at a public unicorn wanted the CEO seat but had never truly owned a P&L. We built a plan to get him real P&L scar tissue inside his current role instead of waiting for a title change. When the next opportunity came, he wasn’t interviewing on potential. He landed the CEO role. ##### The CPTO cleanup Performance · retention A CPTO walked into a company that had just fired both its CTO and CPO for non-performance. That is usually a 12-month crater: attrition spikes, roadmap freezes, sales loses air cover. His first move was retention. We identified the must-keep people, and instead of reassuring them with platitudes he laid out the plan forward and gave them a real hand in shaping it. They didn’t just stay, they bought in. Every must-keep person held, and his teams shipped more valuable features in his first six months than the prior three years combined. ##### The $10B innovation restart Team · enterprise scale A private $10 billion company had scale, brand, and cash, and couldn’t ship anything new. The team that got them to $10B wasn’t the team that could take them further. The leader landed in October. By January the right team was in place. By May they were hitting the company’s new accelerated timeline. Seven months from standing start to delivering at a pace the company had never asked of anyone before. ##### The AI-anxious CEO AI · productivity A mid-market CEO knew AI was going to either help his business or hurt it, and he did not want to find out which by waiting. He did not need a conference talk. He needed someone who had actually built this stuff. We built the plan together, automated the repetitive work first, and executed. Productivity went up, and for the first time the company could respond to market shifts as fast as they happened instead of chasing them. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) What leaders say #### From the people who worked with him. He brought a rare mix of focused execution, operational rigor, and infectious positivity. He drove alignment and morale even as we reduced burn by 50%. His leadership during our acquisition was steady, thoughtful, and deeply collaborative. I have watched Ken boost the output of software teams, raise hiring standards, and transform behavior by example. Every conversation with Ken leaves you inspired. Ken came into a very broken business and guided the team to a path that led to our acquisition with FireHydrant. He clearly steered the ship during times of uncertainty. As COO, Ken led with clarity and focus, revamping our GTM motion, cutting burn significantly, and driving cross-functional alignment across Product, Sales, and Operations. Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative. Ken is one of the most effective technology leaders I have worked with. He sees the whole business and what needs to be done at the broadest level. Questions #### The ones people actually ask. ##### How does executive coaching actually work? We start with a discovery call to see whether this is the right fit. If it is, we run calibration meetings to agree what success looks like and how we will measure it. From there it is bi-weekly coaching calls, plus ad hoc access when something urgent lands between sessions. ##### Who do you work with? Senior operators: CEOs, COOs, CPOs, CTOs and GMs, and the leaders one level below being built for those seats. The common thread is scale and pressure: growth outrunning the operating model, a transition, a turnaround, stakeholder management and executive presence in a bigger seat, or a team that worked at one size and does not at the next. ##### What makes your coaching different? Most executive coaches have studied leadership. I have done the job. I founded a company and took it public on Nasdaq, ran a $250M budget at Cox Automotive, grew New Relic from $300M to $500M, and worked through 35 M&As and 18 exits. I am also an ICF and CEC certified coach. That combination means we can talk about the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### How much does an executive coach cost, and what determines it? Published market rates run from the low hundreds an hour to $10,000 a month on retainer and $5,000 to $60,000 for a full engagement; the ranges and their sources are in [the cost guide](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). Mine is scoped to the leader and the mandate: who is coached, cadence and access, length, remote or in person, and who pays. Most of my clients are funded by their organisation, and I help build that case; I have approved these requests as the executive on the other side. ##### Are executive coaches worth it? Worth it when the measure is agreed before the work starts, and that is how I run it. We set what success looks like in the calibration meetings, then hold the work against it. The value shows up in the decisions you make between sessions. And if we cannot name a change worth the fee, I will tell you that on the discovery call. ##### How long is a typical engagement? Long enough for the change to hold. Coaching that stops at insight does not survive contact with a real quarter, so engagements run in months rather than weeks, and the work is built around repeatable actions you keep after we finish. ##### What is the time commitment? Calls of about an hour, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, on video or in person: we set the cadence and the mix in calibration. Beyond the calls, whatever preparation the work in front of you deserves. It is designed to fit around an operating role, not compete with it. ##### How do you measure whether it worked? We agree that in the calibration meetings, before the work starts. Sometimes it is a business number. More often it is something like whether the leadership team can now disagree in the room instead of afterwards in the corridor. ##### How confidential is it? Completely. If your organisation is funding the engagement they will know it is happening and may want to agree the goals up front, but what is said in a session stays in the session. ##### What about balance? I am not a life coach, and this is not life coaching. The work is executive execution. Some clients also want to think about the balance around it: family, health, the hobbies that keep them whole. I am trained for that conversation, and I have lived the version where the company got everything and the family got what was left. Proper balance is how you show up as your best self, in the boardroom and at the dinner table. You set the scope, and either way it stays confidential. ##### What does an executive coach actually do? Good coaching is structured thinking with consequences. We name the real problem, decide what you will do about it, and hold the follow-through against outcomes, not activity. The value shows up in the decisions you make between sessions. ##### How do I choose an executive coach? Ask three things. Has this person operated at the level you are playing at? Are they certified and actually trained, not just experienced? And after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet? Chemistry matters; proof matters more. All six questions, with my answers, are in [How to Choose an Executive Coach: The Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/). ##### Coach, mentor, or consultant: which do I need? A mentor shares their path. A consultant hands you an answer. A coach builds your own judgment until the answers are yours. My background lets us move between all three in one conversation, but the default is coaching: you own the outcome. And when it is consulting you need, [that practice lives here](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). ##### Where are you based, and do you work in person? Alpharetta, Georgia. I work remotely with leaders everywhere, and on-site anywhere when the work calls for it. Atlanta metro in person is easy. For leaders elsewhere, New York and San Francisco included, sessions mix and match: standing calls on video, and I fly in when the engagement books time for it. On-site and remote in whatever blend the work needs, with travel scoped into the engagement. ##### Do you coach executives near Alpharetta, or in Atlanta? Yes. I am based in Alpharetta, and in-person coaching across the Atlanta metro is easy. Leaders everywhere else work with me remotely, and in-person time gets scoped in when the engagement calls for it. Further reading [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost in 2026? Rates by Level, Who Pays, and How I Price](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) [How to Choose an Executive Coach: The Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) [Does Accountability Improve Performance? What the Research Says](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) [Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/11/19/why-leadership-teams-fail-and-how-to-fix-it/) [How High-Performing Teams Actually Work](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/how-high-performing-teams-work-unlocking-the-secrets-of-success/) The Operator’s Playbook #### Free, twice a month, for CEOs and the leaders one level below. How to do the thing, the data, where it goes wrong and how to make it go right. Stabilize before a sale. The first ninety days after the sponsor replaces your CEO. Restart a stalled transformation. A real AI answer for the board. ✓ Thanks. Check your inbox to confirm, the first issue is on its way. First issue today: [the five questions I ask in the first thirty days of a stalled transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Unsubscribe in one click. Start here #### Start with a conversation. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. We work out whether there is something here worth doing, and if there is not I will tell you. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. ## COO Coach https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach Coaching for Chief Operating Officers ### A COO coach who has held the COO seat, and the CEO seat it answers to. Tell me about your seat [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I coach Chief Operating Officers and second-in-command executives, and the leaders stepping into the COO seat. I was COO of Blameless, a VC-backed company in a turnaround. We cut burn in half, extended runway 18 months, took the win rate from near zero to 80% by rebuilding go-to-market, and took the company to a merger with FireHydrant. Before that I was the CEO a COO reports to: I founded Interland, grew it to $200M and took it public on Nasdaq. So I coach from both sides of the relationship that decides the seat. A seat I held #### The turnaround COO seat, from the inside. I joined Blameless, a Series B venture-backed company, as COO for a turnaround. The job was to make the company work on the money it had, without losing the people who had to do the work. We cut burn in half without gutting morale, and that bought 18 months of runway. We rebuilt go-to-market: the win rate went from near zero to 80%, and the sales cycle came down 40%. We shipped a generative AI incident-response product used by Fortune 500 reliability teams. And I guided the company to its merger with FireHydrant. Harvard Business Review lists leading one hard initiative, such as a turnaround, as one of the seven reasons companies create the COO role.1 It is the version of the seat where the clock is loudest, and the one I have held. The operating system #### The operating rhythm I install, in four moves. A council with real decision rights. Cross-functional, with P&L authority, meeting weekly with one job: find the constraint before it shows up in the financials. A dashboard that pairs every growth metric with its capability metric. Sales growth against onboarding capacity, new markets against support, feature releases against quality. The gap between the pair is the early warning. Rate, direction and method, decided together. The CFO, the COO and the revenue leader in one room: if we succeed at this, can we deliver it, and how will we pay for it? A quarterly recalibration with one question. What capability do we need to build before we accelerate? I wrote up the method in [the perils of an unintegrated growth strategy](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/). At New Relic the same instinct took three moves: a general manager holding product and engineering to business metrics, a quarterly plan with a set share of engineering for roadmap, bugs and new sales, and a cross-company meeting for any roadmap change. The seat #### Why the COO seat is hard to learn on the job. The job is whatever the CEO needs. Harvard Business Review found seven different reasons companies create the role, from executing the CEO's strategy to leading a turnaround to testing a successor.1 Two COOs can hold the same title and do different jobs. Almost everyone in it is new to it. More than 85% of the COOs appointed worldwide in 2025 were first-time COOs, and 82% were promoted from inside:2 into a job the old peers now report to. Many companies have never had one. Only about a third of large US companies had a COO in 2025 (38.1%),3 so the seat often arrives without a predecessor or a job description. The clock is short. Average COO tenure since 2019 is about 3.2 years; COOs tend to last as long as the transformation they were hired to run.4 Everyone knows it leads to CEO. COOs and presidents were 48% of new S&P 1500 CEOs in 2025, the largest single route to the top.5 The hard part is rarely operations. It is the mandate, the relationship with the CEO, and knowing which of the seven jobs you were actually hired to do. What we work on #### What coaching for a Chief Operating Officer works on. ##### Your first 90 days as COO Find out where the cash goes and which job you were hired to do, agree decision rights with the CEO in writing, and fix one visible operating problem before you redesign anything. The CEO relationship is set in the first quarter, not the first year. [The first 90 days in a bigger seat, in full.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/first-90-days-as-a-new-executive/) ##### The CEO relationship Trust, decision rights, and how you disagree in private and align in public. I have been the CEO in that relationship and the COO in it. ##### Leading a turnaround Cutting cost without cutting the heart out of the company. At Blameless we cut burn in half without gutting morale and bought 18 months of runway. ##### Go-to-market and alignment Rebuilding how the company sells, and getting product, sales and operations pulling the same way. At Blameless the win rate went from near zero to 80%. ##### The operating rhythm The meetings, metrics and cadence that get you out of the daily sprint long enough to think, and let the CEO stop running the company day to day. ##### From COO to CEO If the seat is a runway, prepare for the next one on purpose: the board, the capital, and the calls only a CEO makes. I have made them. Situations I have coached #### Two seats I helped someone hold. ##### The interim who stayed ahead of it A private equity firm removed his boss and asked him to hold the seat. We treated interim as the job interview it really was: run the operating rhythm like an owner, make the two decisions the firm was watching, and give the board a reason to stop looking. ##### The relaunch A public company under stock pressure, the old team gone, a new executive team that had to land fast and be seen landing. The work was sequencing: early wins, an honest internal narrative, and an operating rhythm the street could feel. From the team #### What it looked like from inside. > “He brought a rare mix of focused execution, operational rigor, and infectious positivity. He drove alignment and morale even as we reduced burn by 50%. His leadership during our acquisition was steady, thoughtful, and deeply collaborative.” Travis Kaufman · GTM @ Fin, reported to Ken at Blameless Every side of the table #### Why a coach who has held the seats around yours. A COO sits in the middle of everything: under the CEO, beside the product and sales leaders, in front of a board that wants the plan delivered, and sometimes across the table from an acquirer. The hardest problems in the seat live in those relationships, not in the operating plan. I have held each of those chairs: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, COO in a VC-backed turnaround, Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the operating plan and the person carrying it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Questions #### The ones people actually ask. ##### What does a COO coach do? A COO coach works one on one with a chief operating officer on the parts of the seat an operating playbook does not cover: the mandate, the CEO relationship, the leadership team and the road beyond the seat. The best ones have held it. I was COO of a VC-backed turnaround through its merger with FireHydrant. ##### Why would a COO need an executive coach? Because most COOs are new to the seat and the clock is short. More than 85% of COOs appointed in 2025 were first-time COOs, and average COO tenure since 2019 is about 3.2 years. A coach who has held the seat shortens the learning curve. ##### What should a new COO do in the first 90 days? Find out where the cash goes and which job you were actually hired to do, because the COO role has at least seven versions. Agree decision rights and success measures with the CEO in writing, learn the business from the front line, and fix one visible operating problem before you redesign anything. ##### How do you build a strong CEO and COO relationship? On trust and explicit decision rights: which calls are yours, which stay with the CEO, and how you disagree in private and align in public. Research on the role puts that relationship at the center of whether a COO succeeds. I have been on both sides of it. ##### What is the difference between a CEO and a COO? The CEO owns direction, capital, the board and the final call. The COO owns turning that direction into results across the company, and in practice the job is whatever the CEO needs most, which is why the role looks different in every company. ##### Is the COO job stressful? It can be, for a structural reason: the COO carries the execution of a strategy set by the CEO, usually through a transformation, on a short clock. Average COO tenure since 2019 is about 3.2 years. The stress drops when the mandate and decision rights are explicit, which is most of what the first 90 days are for. ##### Can a COO be promoted to CEO? Yes, and it is the most common route: COOs and presidents were 48% of new S&P 1500 CEOs in 2025. The move goes best when it is prepared on purpose, with P&L ownership, time in front of the board and investors, and practice at the decisions only a CEO makes. ##### Who is the best COO coach? The one who has held the version of the COO seat you hold, and can prove it with the company, the mandate and the numbers. Google's own answer to how to choose one and the guides that rank on it use the same test: executive experience scaling operations, a clear method with a way to measure progress, an ICF credential as table stakes, and a first call where they challenge you. For a COO in a turnaround, that is the seat I held at Blameless, with the CEO seat above it at Interland, and I am ICF and CEC certified. The seven tests, with what to ask and what to listen for, are in my guide to [how to find the best COO coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-chief-operating-officer-coach/). ##### Who pays for COO coaching, and what does it cost? At this level the company usually pays, because it is investing in a leader it intends to keep. The price depends on cadence, length and whether the work is in person; the market ranges are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost), and you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. ##### Why do new COOs struggle? Usually because the role was never defined. The COO seat has at least seven versions, and most COOs are doing it for the first time, promoted from inside. When the mandate, the decision rights and the measures are unwritten, a strong operator becomes reactive instead of strategic. ##### Do you coach EOS Integrators? Yes. An Integrator working with a Visionary founder holds the same seat as a COO under a different name: turning the founder's vision into an operating rhythm and holding the leadership team to it. The relationship with the founder is the job. ##### Is COO coaching the same as hiring a fractional COO? No. Coaching develops the COO you have, or the one you are becoming. If what you need is someone to own the outcome for a period, that is a different engagement, and it is the Drive level of my strategy consulting. ##### I am a CEO. Should I get my COO a coach? Yes, if your COO is new to the seat or the decision rights between you are still unwritten. That is why most COO coaching is paid for by the company. I have been the CEO in that relationship, so the coaching keeps your side of it in view. ##### Do you coach COOs remotely? Yes. Standing calls run on video with COOs anywhere, and I work in person when the engagement calls for it. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Start here #### Tell me about your seat. A short note is enough: where you sit, and what is on your desk. The CEO, the mandate, the turnaround. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles, "Second in Command: The Misunderstood Role of the Chief Operating Officer", Harvard Business Review, May 2006](https://hbr.org/2006/05/second-in-command-the-misunderstood-role-of-the-chief-operating-officer) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, Global COO Turnover Index (2025 data)](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/reports-surveys/global-coo-turnover-index) - [Crist|Kolder Associates, Volatility Report 2025 (Fortune 500 and S&P 500)](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62164a05607c3e5978f251ec/t/697a5e8270557e4f749688f4/1769627266651/2025+CKA+Volatility+Report+Final.pdf) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, press release, June 25, 2025](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/about/newsroom/ftse-100-coo-tenure-plummets) - [Spencer Stuart, 2025 S&P 1500 CEO Transitions: Behind the CEO Moment, February 2026](https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/2025-sp-1500-ceo-transitions-behind-the-ceo-moment) ## Chief Product Officer Coach https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach Coaching for Chief Product Officers ### A Chief Product Officer coach who has held the seat, and the CEO seat above it. Tell me about your seat [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I coach Chief Product Officers, and the VPs and heads of product stepping into the seat. At New Relic, as EVP, I took over product after the previous leader was let go, and led product and go-to-market for a $500M+ ARR public company: 450 people across four countries, new products worth $50M+ in incremental ARR, and the product story in front of the board and on the keynote stage. Later I was Chief Product Officer at Coursedog, where we rebuilt product and engineering in nine months and the company was acquired by JMI Equity for $80M. I was also the CEO a product leader reports to: I founded Interland, grew it to $200M and took it public on Nasdaq. So I coach the most senior product leader in the company from both chairs, at every stage I have worked in: founder-led, venture-backed growth, and a public company at $500M. A seat I took over #### Taking the product seat after the last leader was let go. I joined New Relic as EVP right after the CEO let go of the previous leader of product. Our largest customers told us there had been little innovation in nearly three years. Sales had no confidence that product and engineering could deliver, and customers were looking at competitors. We changed three things. A general manager to hold product and engineering to business metrics and end the finger-pointing. A quarterly planning session that set a specific share of engineering for the roadmap, for bugs and for new sales. And a cross-company escalation meeting, so no roadmap change happened without the company's leaders agreeing to it. At the next Customer Advisory Board, the CTO of Disney and an SVP of Capital One said: “You have delivered more of the functionality we wanted in the last six months than in the last three years.” The new products from that work added $50M+ in incremental ARR. If you are taking over after someone was fired, you have one quarter to show the company the seat works now. I have done it, and I can help you do it. In the room #### Executive presence is half the job. A Chief Product Officer is judged in rooms: the board meeting, the customer keynote, the advisory board, the all-hands after a missed date. At New Relic I presented product strategy to a board with partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona, and former executives of Twitter, Informatica and SAP. I was the global keynote speaker at FutureStack, our customer conference, and I led our customer advisory boards, where the largest customers tell you whether the roadmap is working. I have keynoted and spoken at 50+ other events, from AWS re:Invent to the Gartner IT Symposium. Executive presence is coachable. We work on the board narrative that leads with revenue, retention and risk before features; the keynote; the advisory board that turns customers into co-owners of the roadmap; and the one-to-one with a CEO who is running out of patience. The seat #### Why the CPO seat is hard to learn on the job. The seat is new. In 2023, 30% of Fortune 1000 companies had a Chief Product Officer, up from about 15% a year earlier.1 Most of the people around you have never worked with one. Almost everyone in it is doing it for the first time. Of the high-growth technology companies that went public between 2017 and 2021, almost all had a CPO in the role for the first time.2 It is scored on the wrong thing. In a survey of 300 product leaders, 77% said their teams were measured on features shipped, not revenue or customer outcomes.3 The CEO and the board are measuring something else. The founder rarely lets go completely. Hiring a CPO seldom means the founder steps away from product, as one executive search firm tells founders.4 Somebody has to draw the line, and it is usually you. None of that is a product management problem. It is a seat problem, and it is the part a product framework does not teach. What we work on #### What coaching for a Chief Product Officer works on. ##### Your first 90 days as CPO What to learn, what to change first, and what to leave alone. Most new CPOs inherit a team they did not build, a strategy somebody else wrote, and a promise somebody else made to the board. [What to do, and what not to, in the first 90 days.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/first-90-days-as-a-new-executive/) ##### The CEO relationship Where the founder still owns product, where you do, and how to say it out loud before it becomes a trust problem. I have sat on the CEO side of that conversation. ##### From roadmap to business outcome Moving the product organization from features shipped to revenue, retention and enterprise value. At New Relic I led a new-product push worth $50M+ in incremental ARR; at Coursedog the product work was part of an $80M exit. ##### Product, engineering and go-to-market The friction between the teams that build it and the teams that sell it. As COO at Blameless I rebuilt go-to-market and took the win rate from near zero to 80%, so I have been on the receiving end of the roadmap too. ##### Building the product organization Who to hire, who to move, and how to rebuild product and engineering without stopping delivery. At Coursedog we did it in nine months. ##### The board and the investors Talking about product as capital allocation and return on investment, to people who think in quarters. I spent a decade on the investor side as a managing partner at a venture firm, so I know how that side of the table reads a roadmap. ##### The CPO and CTO partnership Who owns what between product and engineering, and how the two seats decide together. I have held both: VP of Engineering at Cox Automotive, and Chief Product Officer at Coursedog. ##### The AI question The CEO wants an AI strategy by next quarter. What is real, what is hype, and what actually reaches production. I also do this work as an [AI consultant](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). Every side of the table #### Why a coach who has held the seats around yours. A good product coach knows the product seat. That matters, and it is half the picture. The hardest problems in the CPO seat sit between seats: the CEO who hired you, the COO and sales leader who live with your roadmap, the board that funds it, and the acquirer who eventually prices it. I have held each of those chairs: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, COO in a VC-backed turnaround, Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Questions #### The ones people actually ask. ##### What is a Chief Product Officer coach? A coach who works one on one with the most senior product leader on the parts of the job a product framework does not cover: the CEO relationship, the board, the leadership team and the product organization. The best ones have held the seat. I led product at New Relic, a $500M+ public company, and was Chief Product Officer at Coursedog through its $80M acquisition by JMI Equity. ##### How is coaching a CPO different from general executive coaching? It is not career coaching, and it is not a product framework. The CPO seat carries problems other C-suite seats do not: a roadmap everyone has an opinion about, a founder who often still wants to own product, and a scorecard built on features. In one survey, 77% of product teams were measured on features shipped rather than revenue or customer outcomes. A coach needs to know that ground firsthand. ##### How high up is a Chief Product Officer, and how is it different from a VP of Product? A VP of Product usually runs product management. A Chief Product Officer owns product strategy at the executive table, often across product, design and sometimes engineering, and increasingly a P&L: in 2023, 31% of CPOs owned one. Head of product and VP of Product are usually a level below, and titles vary by company size. The CPO seat changes who you answer to: the CEO and the board. ##### What should a new Chief Product Officer do in the first 90 days? Learn before you change: customers, the sales team, every engineering lead, and what the CEO and the board believe product promised them. Then agree with the CEO, in writing, what product owns, how success is measured, and the one or two changes you will make first. ##### How do I work with a founder or CEO who still wants to own the product? Name it early and split it explicitly: which decisions stay with the founder, which are yours, and how the two of you will disagree. Hiring a CPO rarely means the founder steps away from product entirely. I have been the founder in that conversation, which is why I coach it from both sides. ##### How does a Chief Product Officer build executive presence? In the rooms that judge the seat: the board meeting, the customer keynote and the customer advisory board. Tell the product story in business terms first, revenue, retention and risk, and features second. I have done all three at New Relic, including the global keynote at its customer conference, and I coach them directly. ##### I am taking over after the last head of product was fired. Where do I start? With the customers and the sales team, because they will tell you what broke faster than anyone inside product. Then make the trade-offs visible: a set share of engineering for roadmap, bugs and new sales, and one meeting where roadmap changes need the leadership team to agree. I took over product at New Relic in exactly that situation. ##### Is coaching worth it for a Chief Product Officer? It is worth it if you are new to the seat, your scope just grew, or the CEO relationship is carrying tension. It is not worth it if the gap is a product management skill a course would close faster. Ask any coach which product seat they held and what happened to the company. ##### Who is the best Chief Product Officer coach? The one who has held a product executive seat and seen it from the CEO's chair, and can show it with a product, a number and a board. Google's own answer to how to choose one and the guides that rank on it use the same test: real product executive experience, coaching skill as well as product background, and a first call that tests fit with your stage. That is the product seat I held at New Relic and Coursedog, with the CEO seat above it at Interland, and I am ICF and CEC certified. The seven tests, with what to ask and what a strong answer sounds like, are in my guide to [how to find the best Chief Product Officer coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-chief-product-officer-coach/). ##### Who pays for CPO coaching, and what does it cost? At this level the company usually pays, because it is investing in a leader it intends to keep. The price depends on cadence, length and whether the work is in person; the market ranges are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost), and you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. ##### Do you only coach CPOs, or VPs and heads of product too? Both. I work with sitting Chief Product Officers, and with VPs and heads of product stepping into the most senior product seat for the first time. The second group is often where coaching pays back fastest, because the habits of the new seat get set in the first year. ##### Do you coach Chief Product Officers remotely? Yes. Standing calls run on video with product leaders anywhere, and I work in person when the engagement calls for it. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Start here #### Tell me about your seat. A short note is enough: where you sit, and what is on your desk. The CEO, the board, the team you inherited. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [Products That Count and Capgemini, 2023 CPO Insights Report, as reported by TechCrunch, "The rise of the chief product officer", May 6, 2023](https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/06/rise-chief-product-officers/) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, "Beyond the Founding Team: Product" (40 high-growth tech IPOs, 2017 to 2021)](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/technology-growth-company-leadership/product) - [Pendo and Product Collective, State of Product Leadership 2019 (n=300 North American product leaders), press release, February 11, 2019](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pendo-releases-2nd-annual-state-of-product-leadership-survey-revealing-significant-shifts-in-traditional-product-management-roles-and-focus-300792759.html) - [Egon Zehnder, "Hiring the right Chief Product Officer: a founder's guide", November 2024](https://www.egonzehnder.com/functions/technology-officers/chief-product-officers/insights/hiring-the-right-chief-product-officer-a-founders-guide) ## Startup CEO Coach https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach Coaching for startup CEOs and founders ### A startup CEO coach who has held the seat through hypergrowth: startup to Nasdaq IPO in three years. I coach startup CEOs and venture-backed founders through hypergrowth: the move from builder to leader, the executive team, the board, and the next round. I founded the company that became Web.com and took it from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO in three years, on its way to $200M in revenue and 650 people. Since then I have held executive seats inside venture-backed startups at three different stages, run a $300M to $500M leg at New Relic inside a public company, and spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. So I coach from both sides of the table that decides your seat: the CEO's, and the board's. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Founder and CEO, Web.com, Nasdaq IPOEVP, New RelicVP, Cox AutomotiveCOO, VC-backed turnaroundVenture managing partner, 35 deals, 18 exits Seats I held #### Startup to Nasdaq IPO in three years, then three more startups. I founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, in 1997, and ran it as CEO through hypergrowth: from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO in three years, on its way to $200M in revenue and 650 people, with more than 200,000 small-business customers at 90%-plus retention and $50M-plus raised from Microsoft and Verizon along the way. It was my second company; the first, WIPC.NET, was acquired in 2001. Since then I have held executive seats inside three more venture-backed startups at three different stages: Unqork, from $20M toward $100M ARR with a 100-plus-person organization; Coursedog, where I rebuilt the product and engineering organization and took ARR from $4M to $10M in nine months; and Blameless, as COO through a turnaround to its merger with FireHydrant. At every one of those sizes the same thing happened: the executive team, the operating rhythm and the plan the board was funding all had to be rethought for the next stage. Bain's five-year study of 8,000 companies found that 85% of the barriers to profitable growth are internal, not market conditions, and that only one company in nine sustains profitable growth over a decade.1 I have felt those barriers from the founder's chair and the CEO's, and later from the investor's: a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits. What an investor and a founder say #### What it looked like from the investor's chair, and a founder's. > “I led the first institutional round of investment in Interland, which Ken founded. His talent is evident in the meteoric growth path he guided it to. Ken is wise beyond his years. I would gladly work with and invest in him again.” Andy Jones · Sr. Managing Director, StepStone Group; led the first institutional round in Interland > “We worked together over 4 years across 2 companies. I've watched Ken boost the output of software teams, raise hiring standards, and transform behavior by example. Every conversation with Ken leaves you inspired.” Dru Riley · Founder, Trends.vc Who this is for #### Founders past product-market fit, whose company is growing faster than they are. Venture-backed founders and startup CEOs, usually between a Series A and a Series C: a product in market, revenue, a team past the first dozen people, and product-market fit in hand or close. At Series A the job is the founder-led sales engine and the first real hires; from Series B on it is the move from builder to a leader with a team that runs without you. Yesterday you built the product. Today you build the organization that builds it, and the job changed under you. If any of these are on your desk, this is the work: you just closed a round and the leadership team has to level up; you have to hire and lead people more experienced than you; everything still routes through you; the board wants a plan you do not have yet; and you cannot say any of that out loud to your team. The seat #### Why the hypergrowth CEO seat is hard to learn on the job. Almost everyone in it is doing it for the first time. 75% of the CEOs who took 40 of the fastest-growing tech companies of the last decade to IPO were first-time chief executives, and when a founding CEO was replaced, it happened around a major funding round.2 Growing faster than the company can absorb is the most common way to die. Of 3,200 high-growth startups, 70% scaled prematurely; those that did had teams three times larger, and 93% never passed $100,000 in monthly revenue.3 The barriers are inside the building. 85% of the obstacles to sustained, profitable growth are internal, and only one company in nine sustains it over a decade.1 Nobody says so out loud. 72% of founders report an impact on their mental health, 81% do not share the stress, and 77% get no professional help with it.4 The hard part is rarely the product. It is the executive team, the board, the round, and the version of the founder the company needs next. What we work on #### What coaching for a startup CEO in hypergrowth works on. The work is growing the founder as fast as the company. ##### The board and the next round What the board is really asking, how to run the meeting so it works for you, and how to walk into the next raise with a plan the investors already believe. I raised from Microsoft and Verizon, presented to the New Relic board, and sat on the investor's side of the table for a decade. ##### An executive team that runs without you The systems that let execution scale without you doing it all: the first executive hires a founder makes, hiring people more experienced than you, and developing or, when needed, replacing with confidence once the team that got you here is not the team for the next stage. I built that team to 650 people, and led a 450-person organization through the same change at New Relic. ##### Out of the founder bottleneck Delegate and elevate instead of over-functioning. Naming what only the CEO can do, handing over the rest, and dismantling the bottleneck the company has quietly routed through you. The move from builder to leader, made on purpose instead of by exhaustion. ##### Better decisions under pressure Most calls a founder makes in this seat are made before the data exists. We work on the quality and speed of your decisions, on which ones are reversible, and on the ones only the CEO can make: an agenda-free room to pressure-test the high-stakes ones, with no board seat and no investor bias, and the blind spots named out loud. ##### Keeping speed and culture through 5x and 10x Growth without integration creates organizational debt: retention slips, productivity drops, every new initiative takes longer. The operating rhythm below is how you see it before the financials do. ##### Surfacing and resolving conflict early The co-founder conversation you have been avoiding, the executive who was right for the last stage, the board meeting that went sideways. Handled early, in private, with the decision rights written down. ##### Burnout, resilience and the loneliness of the seat Most founders hide the stress and the burnout, and get no help with either. This is the confidential room for it: emotional regulation under sustained pressure, with someone who has sat where you sit and knows which parts of the weight are the job and which are you. ##### Selling into the next segment: SMB, mid-market, enterprise Hypergrowth usually means selling to a buyer you have never sold to. I served 200,000-plus small businesses at Web.com, sold to 15,000-plus enterprise customers at New Relic, put a no-code platform into Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street at Unqork, and was the enterprise buyer myself inside Cox Automotive. I know what each of them needs to hear, and what your sales motion has to become. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) The operating system #### When growth outruns the operating model: four moves. At Web.com, and again at New Relic pushing 40% growth, I learned that growth without integration creates organizational debt: customer retention slips, productivity drops, and every new initiative takes two or three times longer. I wrote the method up in [why integration beats growth speed](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/). For a founder running a company in hypergrowth it comes down to four moves. A growth council you chair, with real decision rights. Cross-functional, with P&L authority, meeting weekly with one job: find the constraint before it shows up in the board deck. Most founders run growth through the sales meeting and hear about the constraint from the CFO a quarter late. A dashboard that pairs every growth number with the capability it depends on. Pipeline against onboarding capacity, new logos against support, releases against quality. The gap between each pair is the early warning, and reading it is the CEO's job, not a report you get. Rate, direction and method, decided in one room. You, your CFO and your revenue leader on one question: if we hit the number, can we deliver it, and how will we pay for it? One meeting, not three, and the answer goes to the board as one plan. A quarterly recalibration with one question. What capability do we need to build before we accelerate? It is the question the board should hear from you before it has to ask. Under all four sits the frame I have used since my first company: the right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions. Every side of the table #### Why a coach who has held the seats around yours. A founder in the CEO seat sits above an executive team that is learning its jobs as fast as you are learning yours, in front of a board that funded the growth and now wants it delivered, and across the table from the next investor. The hardest problems in the seat live in those relationships, not in the product. Most executive coaches have been near the room. I was in the room, driving, at every scale your company is heading for: a startup from zero to a Nasdaq IPO, growth at a public unicorn, New Relic from $300M to $500M, and transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive, a $3B platform with more than 1,000 engineers. I have held the CEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats at different companies, so I know the dynamics of each role around yours from the inside, and a decade as an investor and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits means I know how the board sees it. And because hypergrowth usually means selling to a buyer you have never sold to, it matters that I have sold to all three: small business, mid-market and enterprise, and sat on the enterprise buyer's side of the table too. I have held each of those chairs: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, COO in a VC-backed turnaround, Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the operating plan and the person carrying it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Frequently asked questions #### The ones people actually ask. ##### What does a startup CEO coach do? It is not therapy and it is not consulting. A startup coach for the CEO seat, a startup CEO coach, is a confidential, structured partnership that helps a founder scale their leadership capacity, clear the strategic bottlenecks, and make high-pressure decisions well: the board, the executive team and team alignment, the role evolution from hands-on operator to executive leader, and the version of you the next stage needs. The best ones have held the seat. I took the company that became Web.com from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO in three years. ##### Have you been a founder yourself? Yes, twice. The first company was acquired in 2001. The second, Interland, became Web.com: from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO in three years, on its way to $200M in revenue and 650 people, with $50M-plus raised from Microsoft and Verizon along the way. Most coaches have studied startups. I have run one from the first hire to the IPO, and held executive seats inside three more since. ##### What stage founders do you coach? Usually venture-backed, usually between a Series A and a Series C: a product in market, revenue, a team past the first dozen people, and product-market fit in hand or close. Earlier than that, a coach is mostly a sounding board. Later, the work shifts toward the executive team, the board and the next round. ##### I am the founder. Do I need a founder coach or a CEO coach? The same person, if you are running the company. Founder coaching, or executive coaching for startup founders, tends to mean the person: identity, co-founders, the stress. CEO coaching tends to mean the job: the board, the team, the round. In hypergrowth they arrive together, and I coach both in the same hour. ##### How is a startup CEO coach different from an advisor, a mentor, a board member or a therapist? An advisor gives you answers. A mentor has been there and shares it when asked. A board member has a duty to the company and a vote. A therapist works on the past and how you feel about it. A coach is confidential, has no stake in the outcome, and works on how you decide and lead now, with enough experience to know what the decision feels like. I have been the board member and the advisor as well as the coach. ##### When does a scaling CEO need a coach, and when is it too early? The useful moment is when the company starts growing faster than the operating model, the executive team or your own role: usually just after product-market fit, or the Series A or B that follows it. Before that a coach is mostly a sounding board. After it, the cost of learning on the job is measured in months of runway. ##### My board suggested a coach. Do investors actually support that? The good ones pay for it. Several venture firms give portfolio founders a coaching stipend outright, and boards that lose faith in a founding CEO tend to replace them around a major round, not send a coach. A board that offers one is investing in keeping you in the seat. Take it, and choose the coach yourself. ##### What kinds of challenges do you help founders with? The board and the next round; an executive team that runs without you; getting out of the founder bottleneck; better decisions under pressure; keeping speed and culture through 5x and 10x growth; surfacing and resolving co-founder and executive conflict early; burnout, resilience and the loneliness of the seat; and selling into the next segment, whether that is SMB, mid-market or enterprise. Each one is a section on this page, with the seat I held it from. ##### What should a first-time CEO fix first when the company is growing faster than the team? Decision rights and the executive team, in that order. Write down which decisions are yours as the founder and CEO, which belong to your executives, and which go to the board. Then look hard at whether the team that got you here can run the company at the next size. Premature scaling shows up first as a team three times bigger than the revenue supports. ##### How often do we meet, and how do I know it is working? Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person, with access between them when the hard thing does not wait. We agree what success looks like before the work starts, in writing, so both of us can tell. The early signs are faster decisions, an executive team that needs you less, and a board meeting that goes the way you planned it. ##### What if we scaled too early or the market turned? Then the seat changes, and the job is to change with it. I ran a VC-backed turnaround as COO at Blameless: burn cut in half, runway extended 18 months, the win rate rebuilt from near zero to 80%, and a merger with FireHydrant at the end of it. Cutting cost without cutting the heart out of the company is a skill, and it can be coached. ##### Is coaching worth it for a startup CEO, and what does it cost? Worth it when the decisions in front of you are worth more than the fee, which in hypergrowth is most quarters. Published US ranges run $1,000 to $10,000 a month on retainer, and $800 to $3,500 an hour at CEO level; the full breakdown, who pays, and how I price are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). You get a scope and a number on the discovery call. ##### Who is the best startup CEO coach? The one who has held your seat at your stage, and can prove it. The guides that rank on this question and the AI engines that answer it use the same test: someone who has done the job rather than studied it, operator credibility through 10x team or revenue growth, references from CEO clients, an ICF credential as table stakes, and a first call where they push back instead of agreeing. For a venture-backed founder past product-market fit, that is the seat I held, from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO in three years, and I am ICF and CEC certified. The full seven tests, from the board room to the round to the executive team, are in my guide to [how to pick the best startup CEO coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-pick-the-best-startup-ceo-coach/). ##### Do you only work with venture-backed startups, and do you work outside Atlanta? Mostly venture-backed, because that is the seat I held; a bootstrapped company growing at the same pace has the same problems, and we can talk. Standing calls run on video with founders and CEOs anywhere, and I work in person when the engagement calls for it. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia, and for years commuted weekly to the West Coast while running national roles from here. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Start here #### Start with a short note. A short note is enough: where you sit, and what is on your desk. The round, the executive team, the board, the co-founder. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [Bain & Company, press release on The Founder's Mentality (Chris Zook and James Allen; 8,000 companies, 40 countries), 2016](https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2016/internal-breakdowns-cause-85-percent-of-company-shortfalls-in-achieving-profitable-growth/) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, Beyond the Founding Team: A Leadership Playbook for Growth, CEOs (40 high-growth tech companies)](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/technology-growth-company-leadership/ceo) - [Startup Genome, Premature Scaling: A Deep Dive (3,200 high-growth startups), 2011](https://startupgenome.com/insights/premature-scaling-a-deep-dive) - [Startup Snapshot, The Untold Toll: The Impact of Stress on the Well-Being of Startup Founders and CEOs (400+ founders), April 2023](https://www.startupsnapshot.com/research/the-untold-toll-the-impact-of-stress-on-the-well-being-of-startup-founders-and-ceos/) ## Director of Engineering Coach https://kengavranovic.com/director-of-engineering-coach Coaching for directors of engineering and engineering leaders ### A director of engineering coach who has held the seat above yours, and the CEO seat it answers to. I coach directors of engineering and engineering leaders through the step from managing engineers to leading through managers: the operating rhythm, the executive room, delivery without heroics, and the version of you the VP seat needs. I have held the seat above yours: VP of Engineering at Cox Automotive across more than 1,000 engineers, EVP over a 450-person product and engineering organization at New Relic, and the CTO, COO and CEO seats before and after, including the company that became Web.com, which I took from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO. So I coach from both sides of the conversation that decides your seat: the director's, and the executive's who is deciding whether you are ready for the next one. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) VP of Engineering, Cox Automotive, 1,000+ engineersEVP, New RelicCPO, CoursedogCOO, VC-backed turnaroundFounder and CEO, Web.com, Nasdaq IPO The seat I held #### VP of Engineering across 1,000 engineers, and the seats above it. I wrote my first code at ten, in Galveston, learning assembly from library books after WarGames showed me that a kid at a keyboard could build anything. My first job was a fax system on the Pick operating system that became a $2 million business the following year. The tech geek never left: I run two inference servers at home, and when I walk into a room the house senses I am there and keeps the lights on. Everything since, I learned one seat at a time, which is the point for a director: the path from the code to the executive room can be learned, and it can be coached. At Cox Automotive I was VP of Engineering inside an 80-year-old enterprise: a $250M budget, DevOps across more than 1,000 engineers, and 10,000-plus servers moved to the cloud at 99.9% uptime, with the AWS partnership that made it possible. Every director in that organization had the same three problems I had one level up: an executive room that wanted business outcomes rather than architecture, managers who had to become leaders, and a delivery calendar that did not care about either. At New Relic I took over a 450-person product and engineering organization as EVP after the previous leader was let go, with the largest customers saying there had been no meaningful innovation in nearly three years. The method we used, one owner for the business metrics across product and engineering, a quarterly allocation of engineering capacity, one escalation path for roadmap change and a customer advisory board, is written up below; it produced $50M-plus in incremental ARR from new products. Later, as CPO at Coursedog, I rebuilt the product and engineering organization in nine months on the way to an $80M acquisition. And I have sat in the seats a director reports into: CTO, COO, and CEO of the company that became Web.com, which I took from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO. Gallup's study of 27 million employees found that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement.2 A director of engineering is where that variance gets decided for a whole organization: you no longer manage the engineers, you choose and grow the people who do. What the people I worked with say #### From two engineering leaders who reported to me, and a founder. > “Ken changed the culture of the team from a support role to a valued partner of organization. His open and honest communication always resonated with the team. I would not hesitate to work for him again.” Ken Franco · Cybersecurity Director, Cox Automotive; reported to Ken > “I enjoyed my opportunity to report directly to Ken. During this time, his natural ability to establish relationships and operational consistency at an enterprise level, had a significant positive impact on myself and the teams I manage.” Kevin Murdock · Principal Engineer, DealerTrack; reported to Ken > “I have watched Ken boost the output of software teams, raise hiring standards, and transform behavior by example. Every conversation with Ken leaves you inspired.” Dru Riley · Founder, Trends.vc Who this is for #### Engineering leaders whose organization has outgrown one team, and one manager. Directors of engineering, heads of engineering and senior engineering managers: two to six teams, somewhere between 20 and 200 engineers, a manager layer under you for the first time, and a VP, CTO or CEO above you who wants outcomes in business terms. Whether the title says Director of Engineering, Head of Engineering or VP of Engineering, the job is the same step: from managing engineers to leading through managers, and from the roadmap to the strategy behind it. If any of these are on your desk, this is the work: you were promoted from engineering manager and the job changed under you; you are navigating a current director role, or transitioning into the VP seat; you are still close to the code because it is familiar and you can control it; delivery is fine and the executives still cannot see it; the AI mandate arrived without a plan; and the scope grew this year while the headcount did not. The seat #### Why the director of engineering seat is hard to learn on the job. The scope grew and the support did not. 65% of engineering leaders took on wider scope in the last year and 40% took on more direct reports; 38% work longer hours than before, and 22% report critical burnout.1 The layer you now sit in is the one being cut. Where companies reduced managers, 67% cut line managers and 56% cut middle managers, the directors and other managers of managers; 40% of engineering leaders say their team is less motivated than a year ago.1 Most of the variance is you. Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement, and only about one person in ten has the talent to manage; another two in ten can, with coaching.2 AI landed on your desk. 77% of software engineering leaders call building AI into their applications a significant or moderate pain point, and 71% say the same of AI tools inside the engineering workflow.3 The seat turns over every three years, and mostly from outside. Engineering executives change roles roughly every three years, and 68% of the appointments go to external hires rather than to the director in the building, 77% in North America.4 The hard part is rarely the technology. It is leading through managers, making the work visible upward, and keeping delivery moving while you learn a job nobody trained you for. What we work on #### What coaching for a director of engineering works on. The work is growing the leader as fast as the organization under them. ##### Leading through your managers Once you manage managers, your impact is whatever happens in the rooms you are not in. Delegating outcomes instead of tasks, the operating rhythm that lets execution scale without you as the bottleneck, and turning your managers into leaders, which is the whole job at this level. I did it across more than 1,000 engineers at Cox Automotive, through the directors and managers between us. ##### From firefighting to strategy, without slowing delivery Firefighting pays in speed and heroics and keeps you in reactive mode. We build the systems, decision paths and escalation rules that take the chaos out while the teams keep shipping: operating at the right altitude, and making room to think while you still carry delivery, people and stakeholder pressure. ##### Making the work visible to executives Strong results do not travel upward on their own. Framing architecture, reliability and platform decisions in the terms an executive decides on, outcomes, risk, leverage, and the trade-off you are asking them to make, so mission-critical work stops being invisible. I presented to the New Relic board and ran its customer advisory boards; I know what that room hears. ##### Product and engineering on one roadmap Product and engineering is the most strained pairing in a growth company. One owner for the business metrics, a quarterly allocation of engineering capacity across roadmap, reliability and sales asks, and one escalation path for changes. It is the method below, and it is how a director stops being the referee. ##### Technical debt and rewrites that do not stop the business The trade-off between slowing down to fix quality and the pressure to sprint toward the deadline, decided on purpose, and incremental delivery instead of initiatives stuck behind feature flags for months. At Cox we moved 10,000-plus servers to the cloud at 99.9% uptime; the business did not stop for it. ##### Hiring, manager quality and the hard conversations Promotions, feedback culture, performance conversations, and the first hiring process you run through other people. Raising the hiring bar and building the manager bench so the next reorg does not route through you. I rebuilt a product and engineering organization in nine months at Coursedog. ##### AI pressure, from above and below AI pressure comes from executives, from the teams and from the product roadmap at once. Choosing the bets worth making, rolling adoption out without the chaos, and reading developer productivity honestly: the difference between the teams that resist it and the teams that embrace it shows up in productivity, not in tools. ##### The VP seat, or the CTO question Is VP of Engineering higher than director, and is it the job you want? What the seat above yours actually decides, the visibility and career ambiguity the middle layer carries, and how to prepare for a job you have never done: influence without authority, board-level accountability, and the translation work between engineering and the executive team. I have held the VP, CTO, COO and CEO seats, so we can decide it on purpose. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) The operating system #### When the roadmap outruns the organization: four moves. At New Relic I inherited a 450-person product and engineering organization whose largest customers said it had not shipped meaningful innovation in nearly three years, and whose sales team had stopped believing engineering could deliver. I wrote up what we did in [aligning product and engineering for performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/). For a director running two to six teams it comes down to four moves. One owner for the business metrics across product and engineering. At New Relic that was a general manager; at your level it is you and your product counterpart agreeing on the numbers you are both measured on. Finger-pointing ends when the scoreboard is shared. A quarterly allocation of engineering capacity, written down. A specific target for roadmap, for reliability and bugs, and for the new sales asks, decided once a quarter. Every request after that is a trade against a number, not a negotiation with you. One escalation path for roadmap change. Any change that moves the roadmap goes to one meeting where the leaders who own the trade-off decide it together. It ends the quiet bad trades made under the hood, and it ends you being the referee. A customer loop the teams can hear. At New Relic it was the customer advisory board, and six months into the method the CTO of Disney and an SVP at Capital One told us we had delivered more of what they wanted in six months than in the prior three years. It became $50M-plus in incremental ARR from new products. Under all four sits the frame I have used since my first company: the right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions. And under that, the older one: people, process, technology, in that order. Every side of the table #### Why a coach who has held the seats above yours. A director of engineering sits between the engineers who used to be peers and an executive team that measures the organization in business outcomes, with a manager layer that is learning its job as fast as you are learning yours. The hardest problems in the seat live in those relationships, not in the codebase. Most executive coaches have been near the room. I was in the room, driving, at every scale your organization is heading for: a startup from zero to a Nasdaq IPO, growth at a public unicorn, New Relic from $300M to $500M, and transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive with more than 1,000 engineers. I have held the VP of Engineering, CTO, CPO, COO and CEO seats at different companies, so I know the dynamics of each role above yours from the inside, and a decade as an investor and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits means I know how a board reads an engineering plan. I have held each of those chairs: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, COO in a VC-backed turnaround, Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the operating plan and the person carrying it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Frequently asked questions #### The ones engineering leaders actually ask. ##### What does a director of engineering coach do? A director of engineering coach is an experienced technology leader who works with engineering directors and senior managers on the job that changes completely at this level: leading through other managers instead of managing engineers, scaling the team with clear organizational structures, leveling plans and hiring pipelines, org design past one team, setting technical strategy, and executive communication, which means reporting risk, presenting the plan and managing up. It is executive coaching with engineering context from someone who has held the seats above yours, not generic leadership coaching with the nouns swapped, and the sessions are about the decisions in front of you this quarter. ##### Who hires an engineering coach? Directors of engineering and heads of engineering stepping into multi-team scope; senior engineering managers about to manage managers for the first time; VPs of Engineering who share the roadmap with a product leader; and technical founders who still own the architecture and the hiring. Usually the company pays. If you already hold the CTO seat, with the board in scope, the same coaching applies, with the board in the room. ##### Have you held the seat yourself? Yes, and the seats above it. I was VP of Engineering at Cox Automotive across more than 1,000 engineers, EVP over a 450-person product and engineering organization at New Relic, CPO at Coursedog, COO at Blameless through a VC-backed turnaround, and founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, through a Nasdaq IPO. Most coaches have read about org charts. I have drawn them, and I have been the executive a director had to convince. ##### How is this different from CTO coaching, or from engineering manager coaching? Engineering manager coaching is the fundamentals: 1:1s, feedback, the move from individual contributor to manager. CTO coaching is technology strategy with board-level accountability. An engineering leadership coach covers the whole ladder; director of engineering coaching is the layer between: leading through managers for the first time, running the operating rhythm across teams, translating engineering work into business impact upward, and preparing for the VP seat. I coach [the COO seat](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [the chief product officer seat](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach) too, and it helps to know where each one ends. ##### Is VP of Engineering higher than director, and how do I get there? Usually, yes. A VP of Engineering owns engineering execution for the company and sits on the executive team; a director owns a group of teams inside it; a head of engineering can mean either, depending on company size. The step is less about scope than about the room: the VP is evaluated on strategy, on hiring the leaders, and on the plan the CEO and board can believe. We work on being that person before the title arrives, which is how most people get it. ##### I was just promoted from engineering manager to director. What changes? Three things. You stop managing engineers and start managing managers, so your impact becomes what happens when you are not in the room. You stop being measured on delivery alone and start being judged by executives on the clarity of your thinking and your communication. And your scope keeps growing while your hours do not: 65% of engineering leaders reported wider scope in the last year and 40% more direct reports. The first 90 days are about decision rights, the operating rhythm, and which conversations are now yours. ##### Can my company pay for this, and how do I ask? Most engagements are company-funded, through a leadership development or learning budget. Ask for it as a development plan with two goals, one the company cares about, a delivery or organizational outcome, and one you care about, with a review point at six months. I can send a one-page scope your manager can approve. ##### How much does a director of engineering coach cost? Published US ranges run $1,000 to $10,000 a month on retainer, and rates rise with the seniority of the seat; the full breakdown, who pays, and how I price are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). You get a scope and a number on the discovery call. ##### Do you coach leaders at early-stage startups or at larger scale-ups? Both, because I have run engineering at both ends: a startup from the first hire to a Nasdaq IPO, venture-backed companies at Series B and C, a public unicorn at New Relic, and an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive with more than 1,000 engineers. The director's problems rhyme at every size. What changes is how much process the organization can carry, and that is a judgment I have made at each scale. ##### How do I handle the AI pressure on my teams? Treat it as a people problem before a tooling problem. The teams that resist AI and the teams that embrace it end up with very different productivity, and the difference is leadership, not licences. We work on the bets worth making, an adoption plan that does not stall delivery, and an honest read of developer productivity you can defend upstairs. 77% of engineering leaders call building AI into their products a significant or moderate pain point; you are not behind, you are in the majority. ##### How often do we meet, and how do I know it is working? Standing calls weekly or every other week, on video or in person, with access between them when the hard thing does not wait. We set two or three goals in writing before the work starts, one from the company's roadmap and one from your own development, so both of us can tell. The early signs: fewer escalations reaching you, a roadmap conversation with product that ends in a decision, and an executive who asks your opinion before the meeting instead of after it. ##### Is engineering management really that stressful, and does coaching help with burnout? The numbers say yes: 22% of engineering leaders report critical burnout and another 24% moderate, 38% work longer hours than a year ago, and nearly half of first-line engineering managers have considered going back to an individual-contributor role. Coaching helps with the part that is the job, decision rights, delegation and the operating rhythm, and with the part that is you, in a confidential room with someone who has carried the same weight. ##### Where are sessions held, and do you work outside Atlanta? Standing calls run on video with engineering leaders anywhere, and I work in person when the engagement calls for it. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia; for years I commuted weekly to the West Coast while running national engineering roles from here. ##### Who is the best director of engineering coach? The one with real operating experience in engineering leadership at a scale beyond yours, who asks more than they tell, and who will say the thing your team and your peers will not. That is the field's own test, and the AI engines apply the same one: someone who has done the job rather than studied it. For a director leading through managers for the first time, that is the VP of Engineering seat across 1,000-plus engineers and the CTO, COO and CEO seats above it; I am ICF and CEC certified. The seven tests, with what to ask and what a good answer sounds like, are in my guide to [how to find the best engineering leadership coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-engineering-leadership-coach/). Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Start here #### Start with a short note. A short note is enough: where you sit, and what is on your desk. The teams, the roadmap, the executive who wants a plan, the VP question. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [LeadDev, The Engineering Leadership Report 2025 (617 engineering leaders surveyed 14 to 27 March 2025)](https://leaddev.com/the-engineering-leadership-report-2025) - [Gallup, State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders; Randall Beck and Jim Harter, Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement, 21 April 2015 (27 million employees, 2.5 million work units)](https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx) - [Gartner press release, 22 May 2025 (survey of 400 software engineering leaders in the US and UK, October to December 2024)](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-22-gartner-survey-finds-77-percent-of-engineering-leaders-identify-ai-integration-in-apps-as-a-major-challenge) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, Attracting and Retaining Engineering Talent in a Hyper Competitive Talent Landscape (138 CTOs and senior engineering executives, Europe and North America), 15 November 2021](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/articles/attracting-and-retaining-engineering-talent-in-a-hyper-competitive-talent-landscape) ## VP of Engineering Coach https://kengavranovic.com/vp-of-engineering-coach Coaching for VPs of Engineering, CTOs and engineering leaders ### A VP of Engineering coach who has held the seat, and the CEO seat it reports to. I coach VPs of Engineering and CTOs through the move from managing teams to operating at the executive level: scaling the team through your managers, being read by the CEO, the CPO and the board, and the delivery you still own. I was the VP of Engineering at Cox Automotive through a cloud and DevOps transformation across more than 1,000 engineers. Before that I ran product and engineering as EVP and GM at New Relic, growing a $300M business to $500M, and before that I founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, and took it to a Nasdaq IPO as CEO. So I coach from both sides of the conversation you are in: the engineering leader's, and the CEO's. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) VP of Engineering, Cox Automotive, 1,000+ engineersEVP and GM, New RelicFounder and CEO, Web.com, Nasdaq IPOCOO, VC-backed turnaroundCPO, CoursedogVenture managing partner, 35 deals, 18 exits Seats I held #### From writing code at 10 to leading 1,000 engineers, then the chairs they report to. I started as an engineer. I was 10, in Galveston, Texas, reading books and teaching myself assembly because a kid in a movie had sat in front of a computer and built something with his mind. My first computer job was on the Pick operating system, where I built a way for people to send faxes from their desk; the year after, it was a $2 million business. I still build: I run two inference servers and an AI-powered house. If you started from code, the rest of this page is the path from there. At Cox Automotive I was the VP of Engineering inside an 80-year-old enterprise, leading a cloud and DevOps transformation across more than 1,000 engineers: 10,000-plus servers moved to the cloud at 99.9% uptime, and the meeting with AWS that started the move. The job was not the technology. It was getting a thousand engineers, their managers and a business that had run one way for decades to change how they worked without stopping the business while they did it. Before that I ran product and engineering together as EVP and GM at New Relic, growing a $300M business to $500M. I arrived after the previous leader was let go, when our largest customers said there had been no real innovation in nearly three years and the sales team had stopped believing engineering could deliver. We put one general manager over product and engineering with business metrics, set a quarterly plan with a named share of engineering capacity for roadmap, bugs and sales commitments, and ran a cross-company escalation meeting where any roadmap change had to be agreed by the leaders in the room. At the next customer advisory board the CTO of Disney and an SVP of Capital One told us we had delivered more in six months than in the three years before, and new products added $50M-plus in incremental ARR. I have written that operating rhythm up in [aligning product and engineering for performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/). And before that I sat in the seat a VP of Engineering reports to: I founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, and took it from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO as CEO, with 650 people by the time we got there. Since then I have been COO of Blameless, which built a GenAI incident-response product used by Fortune 500 SRE teams, and Chief Product Officer at Coursedog, where we rebuilt the product and engineering organization in nine months on the way to an $80M acquisition. Every one of those rooms was an engineering leader being read by a CEO, a CPO and a board. I have sat on every side of that table. What the people in those rooms say #### From the enterprise I transformed, and a founder who watched the teams change. > “Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative.” Zakaria Siddiqui · Chief Data Officer, Cox Automotive > “We worked together over 4 years across 2 companies. I've watched Ken boost the output of software teams, raise hiring standards, and transform behavior by example. Every conversation with Ken leaves you inspired.” Dru Riley · Founder, Trends.vc Who this is for #### Engineering leaders whose scope grew faster than their authority. VPs of Engineering, CTOs and the engineering leaders about to become one, usually in one of five places: the first VP of Engineering a company has ever had, hired or promoted into a seat nobody has defined; the director who is expanding the team beyond 20, then 50, then 150 engineers and has just added a layer of managers between themselves and the code; the VPE doing the CTO's work without the title, or the CTO deciding whether to hand the organization to a VPE; the technical founder handing engineering to its first real leader; and the enterprise VP of Engineering carrying a transformation through an organization that has run one way for decades. If any of these are on your desk, this is the work: your scope doubled and the hours did not; you manage managers now and the team is slower than when you managed it yourself; the CEO expects AI to double your output and you cannot yet show what it did; you are still the person the incident pages; the CPO and you present two roadmaps to one board; and you are not sure whether the next seat is CTO, or whether you want it. The seat #### Why the VP of Engineering seat is hard to learn on the job. The seat got wider without getting any more hours. In a 2025 survey of 617 engineering leaders, 65% reported an increase in scope and 40% took on more direct reports; 38% worked longer hours than the year before, 22% were at critical levels of burnout, and 40% said their team was less motivated than twelve months earlier.1 AI is in every conversation, and it amplifies whatever is already there. Across nearly 5,000 technology professionals, 90% use AI at work and more than 80% say it has raised their productivity, yet 30% report little or no trust in the code it writes, and adoption still correlates with lower delivery stability. The report's own line: AI does not fix a team; it amplifies what is already there.2 The business is watching engineering more closely than ever. In a 2026 survey of 636 engineering professionals, 84% said engineering productivity is a top management concern and 87% said engineering directly drives business growth.3 The VP of Engineering is the person expected to make both true at once. The clock is shorter than it looks. Across the top 1,000 US companies by revenue, the average technology chief lasts 4.6 years in the seat, against 6.9 for the CEO.4 The habits that got you the job are not the ones that keep it. The hard part is rarely the architecture. It is the managers between you and the code, the executives who read engineering through you, and the version of you the next size of the organization needs. What we work on #### What coaching for a VP of Engineering works on. The work is growing the leader as fast as the engineering organization. ##### Scaling the team through your managers The move from managing engineers to leading through managers: choosing the first layer, delegating without losing the signal, and building the operating rhythm that lets delivery scale without you in every room. I led more than 1,000 engineers through their managers at Cox Automotive and a 450-person product and engineering organization at New Relic. ##### Being read by the CEO, the CPO and the board Managing up and across: making the work visible to executives and learning to translate technical work into business impact: the roadmap the CEO can defend, the budget the CFO can read, the board slide that says what engineering bought. I presented to the New Relic board, ran its customer advisory board, and have sat in the CEO seat you report to. ##### Delivery without becoming the firefighter Reducing firefighting without slowing delivery: incident load, the roadmap-versus-bugs-versus-sales allocation decided once a quarter instead of every Tuesday, and the escalation path that stops the business trading under the hood. 99.9% uptime across 10,000-plus servers at Cox; as COO of Blameless I ran a company whose product was incident response for Fortune 500 SRE teams. ##### A technology strategy the business can read Cloud, platform, technical debt and the re-platform, written as an investment case with a payback rather than a list of engineering wants. I moved 10,000-plus servers to the cloud inside an enterprise and carried FedRAMP through at New Relic and Unqork, each of them argued to a CFO first. ##### AI pressure, measured What to say when the CEO expects AI to double output: 90% of engineers already use it, 30% do not trust what it writes, and adoption is raising throughput while lowering stability. The work is the platform quality, workflow clarity and team alignment that make AI an amplifier of strengths instead of weaknesses, and a number you can stand behind. I have built and shipped AI products as a CEO and written about why AI transformation is a people problem, not a tech one. ##### VPE or CTO: the next seat, decided on purpose The builder-to-executive gap, the VPE-versus-CTO question, and whether you want the seat above you or a bigger version of the one you hold. I have held VP of Engineering, CTO, CPO, COO and CEO seats, so we can talk about what each one actually asks of you before you find out the hard way. ##### Org design, restructuring and the acquisition Redesigning the organization for the next size, restructuring without losing the people who hold it together, and engineering's part in a merger or an acquisition on either side. I rebuilt the product and engineering organization at Coursedog in nine months on the way to an $80M acquisition, and have been through 35 transactions and 18 exits. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) The operating rhythm #### How product and engineering stop pointing fingers: four moves. At New Relic the problem was not talent. Sales, product and engineering each had their own view of what mattered, so major initiatives sat behind feature flags for months and the customers noticed before we did. The fix was an operating rhythm, and I wrote it up in [aligning product and engineering for performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/). For a VP of Engineering it comes down to four moves. One owner over product and engineering, measured on business metrics. A general manager, or you and the CPO operating as one, accountable for outcomes rather than output, so the finger-pointing has nowhere to go. A quarterly plan with a named share of capacity. Roadmap, bugs and sales commitments each get a percentage of engineering before the quarter starts. The argument happens once, in daylight, instead of every week in the backlog. One escalation meeting for every roadmap change. Any change that moves a commitment is agreed by the leaders of the company in one room, so nobody trades the roadmap under the hood and everybody knows why it moved. The customer as the scoreboard. A customer advisory board that tells you whether the last six months landed, and outcomes rather than activity on every OKR. At New Relic that scoreboard said we had delivered more in six months than in the three years before. Under all four sits the frame I have used since my first company: the right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions. Every side of the table #### Why a coach who has held the seats around yours. A VP of Engineering sits between the managers who now hold the code, the CEO and CPO who read engineering through you, and a board that hears about engineering twice a year and remembers the outage. The hardest problems in the seat live in those relationships, not in the architecture. Most executive coaches have been near the room. I was in the room, driving, at every scale your organization is heading for: a startup from zero to a Nasdaq IPO, growth at a public unicorn, New Relic from $300M to $500M, and transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive with more than 1,000 engineers. I have held the CEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats at different companies, so I know the dynamics of each role around yours from the inside, and a decade as an investor and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits means I know how the board sees it. For an engineering leader, that is the point: you have to be read correctly by a CEO, a CPO and a board, and I have been all three. I have held each of those chairs: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, COO in a VC-backed turnaround, Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the operating plan and the person carrying it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Frequently asked questions #### The ones VPs of Engineering and CTOs actually ask. ##### What does a VP of Engineering coach do? A VP of Engineering coach helps an engineering leader make the move from managing teams to operating at the executive level: organizational scale, business strategy and cross-functional influence. In practice that is four things. Executive alignment, translating technical reality into business outcomes for the CEO, the product leaders and the board. Organizational design, structuring the department, the leadership layers and multi-team delivery. Influence across peers in sales, finance and product where you have no authority. And operational scale: budgets, compensation, hiring and retention. It is not therapy and it is not consulting. The best ones have held the seat; I held it across more than 1,000 engineers. ##### Who is coaching for a VP of Engineering for, and who is it not for? It is for the person accountable for an engineering organization at the executive level: a VP of Engineering, a CTO who runs the organization rather than the architecture, a head of engineering about to take the VP title, or a technical founder handing engineering to its first real leader. Usually the team has passed 20 engineers and has, or needs, a layer of managers. It is not for an engineering manager choosing between staying technical and managing; that is a different conversation, and I will tell you so on the first call. ##### VP of Engineering or CTO: what is the real difference, and should I become a CTO? In most companies the CTO owns the technology direction and the outside story, and the VP of Engineering owns the organization and the delivery. In smaller companies one person does both, and many VPs of Engineering are doing the CTO's work without the title. The question worth coaching is not which title ranks higher but which job you want: the technology and the market, or the people and the machine that ships. I have held both seats, and the seats above them, so we can look at each from the inside before you decide. ##### What does a VP of Engineering do, and is it higher than Head of Engineering or Director? A VP of Engineering leads the engineering function: the organization, the managers, delivery, hiring and the budget, and represents engineering on the executive team. It usually outranks a director, but the titles are not standard. A director of engineering typically leads several teams through managers; a VP of Engineering leads the function and sits on the executive team; head of engineering is used for either, most often at smaller companies where it is the top engineering job. What matters for coaching is the seat, not the word: if you are the person the CEO holds accountable for engineering, you are in the seat this page is about. ##### I am the first VP of Engineering my company has had. Where do I start? With the definition of the job, because nobody has written it. Agree with the CEO what you own, what the CTO or CPO owns, and how engineering will be measured, in writing, in the first month. Then look at the layer between you and the code: which managers you have, which you need, and which decisions move from you to them. Most first-time VPs of Engineering try to keep doing the old job while learning the new one, and burn a year finding out that does not work. ##### How do I scale past the team I can manage myself? By leading through managers, on purpose. That means choosing the first layer of managers for judgment rather than seniority, handing them real decisions and a real operating rhythm, and changing what you spend your time on: from the work to the system that produces the work. At Cox Automotive there were more than 1,000 engineers between me and the code; the only way that works is a rhythm the managers run and you inspect. We build that rhythm for your size. ##### How do I get the CEO and the board to read engineering correctly? Speak in their units. Delivery becomes revenue protected or enabled, technical debt becomes an investment with a payback, an outage becomes a risk with a cost, headcount becomes capacity against commitments. Then give them one artifact they can trust: a quarterly plan with a named share of capacity, and a scoreboard that says whether it landed. I have been the CEO reading those slides and the executive presenting them, and the gap between the two is most of what we work on. ##### My CEO expects AI to double our output. What do I tell them? The truth, with numbers. Nearly every engineer already uses AI, most say it helps, a third do not trust what it writes, and across thousands of teams adoption has raised throughput while lowering stability. AI amplifies the organization it lands in. So the honest plan is the platform quality, the workflow clarity and the review discipline that let the gain survive contact with production, and a measured number you can report a quarter later. That is a better conversation with a CEO than a promise, and I have been on both sides of it. ##### Coaching, mentoring or a peer community: which does a VP of Engineering need? A peer community gives you people in the same seat and the comfort of shared problems. A mentor has held your job and describes what worked for them. Coaching is about the way you decide and lead today: private, with no stake in the result, and willing to push back where a mentor would nod. At the VP level most people need the hybrid: someone who has held the seat and will still make you do the thinking. That is how I work, and you can tell on the first call whether it fits. ##### Who is the best coach for a VP of Engineering? The one who has actually operated at the executive level in engineering, at or above the scale you are managing, and who balances the business alignment with the people side. Google's own answer to that question says the same: prioritise former VPs of Engineering or CTOs over generic career coaches, match the scale, and look for the hybrid of coaching and hard-won advice. The AI engines add: someone who has held a senior technology or CEO seat, not just general coaching experience. Then a first call where they push back instead of agreeing, references from leaders in your seat, and a coaching credential as table stakes. I have held the seat across more than 1,000 engineers and the CEO seat above it, and I am ICF and CEC certified. The seven tests, with what to ask and what a good answer sounds like, are in my guide to [how to find the best VP of Engineering coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-vp-of-engineering-coach/). ##### What does coaching for a VP of Engineering cost, and who pays? Most companies pay for it as leadership development, and a VP of Engineering is exactly the seat they pay it for; a peer community or a platform course costs less and does a different job. Published US ranges run $1,000 to $10,000 a month on retainer, and $800 to $3,500 an hour at the executive level; my cost guide breaks it down by level, with who usually pays and how I set fees: [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). You get a scope and a number on the discovery call. ##### Do you work with engineering leaders outside Atlanta, and how often do we meet? Yes. Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, on video with engineering leaders anywhere, with access between them when the incident does not wait, and in person when the engagement calls for it. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia, and for years ran national roles from here while commuting weekly to the West Coast. We agree what success looks like before the work starts, in writing, so both of us can tell. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Start here #### Start with a short note. A short note is enough: where you sit, and what is on your desk. The team, the CEO, the roadmap, the next seat. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [LeadDev, The Engineering Leadership Report 2025 (617 engineering leaders and developers surveyed 14 to 27 March 2025)](https://leaddev.com/the-engineering-leadership-report-2025) - [Google Cloud, DORA: State of AI-assisted Software Development 2025 (nearly 5,000 technology professionals), announced 23 September 2025](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-the-2025-dora-report) - [Jellyfish, 2026 State of Engineering Management Report (636 engineering professionals, March 2026)](https://jellyfish.co/2026-state-of-engineering-management/) - [Korn Ferry, Age and Tenure in the C-Suite (top 1,000 US companies by revenue), 21 January 2020](https://ir.kornferry.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/34/age-and-tenure-in-the-c-suite-korn-ferry-study-reveals-trends-by-title-and-industry) ## B2B SaaS Coach https://kengavranovic.com/b2b-saas-coach Coaching for B2B SaaS founders, CEOs and executives ### A B2B SaaS coach who has held the seat: founder and CEO to a Nasdaq IPO, then EVP at New Relic from $300M to $500M. I coach B2B SaaS founders, CEOs and executives on the problems that are specific to recurring revenue: retention and churn, pricing and packaging, the go-to-market motion, the executive team, the board and investors, and the move from doing the work to running the company. If you run a B2B SaaS company past product-market fit, you already know the uncomfortable part: the pricing, the sales motion and the team that got you to this ARR are usually what stalls the next stage, and it shows up in net revenue retention before it shows up in the plan. I have held that seat: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO with 200,000 small businesses on subscription at 90%-plus retention, then EVP at New Relic as it grew from $300M to $500M inside a public company, and a decade on the investor's side of the table. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Founder and CEO, Web.com, Nasdaq IPOEVP, New Relic, $300M to $500MCPO, Coursedog, $4M to $10M ARRCOO, VC-backed turnaroundVenture managing partner, 35 deals, 18 exits Who this is for #### What worked at your last ARR stage is what breaks at the next one. You are the founder or CEO of a B2B SaaS company, or sit on its executive team, somewhere between about $1M ARR and a few hundred million, bootstrapped or venture-backed. Wherever you are on that curve, the constraint moves, and it usually moves before the plan does. $1M to $10M ARR. The founder is still the best salesperson, there is no head of sales yet, the price was set once and never revisited, and the first executive hires are about to be made. The job is turning founder-led selling into a repeatable sales process without losing the customers who bought because of you. $10M to $100M ARR. Growth now depends on the customers you already have, not on the founder's network. Net revenue retention, the next segment up, the motion that fits it, and an executive team that runs without you decide whether the company keeps compounding or flattens. Past $100M ARR. The core product approaches the top of its first S-curve. The second act, the board's Rule of 40 conversation, and the next round or the exit become the job. If your biggest bottleneck right now is churn, acquisition, pricing, team scaling or strategy, the rest of this page is written for you: what the data says about your stage, six questions that find the constraint, and what to do first. And if you have been offered a community, a marketplace or a franchise program when what you actually want is one operator who has run a SaaS company through your stage, sitting across from you, that is what this is. What a colleague and an investor say #### What it looked like from inside the turnaround, and from the investor's chair. > “As COO, Ken led with clarity and focus, revamping our GTM motion, cutting burn significantly, and driving cross-functional alignment across Product, Sales, and Operations.” JJ Liongson, SHRM-CP · HR & People Leader, Blameless > “I led the first institutional round of investment in Interland, which Ken founded. His talent is evident in the meteoric growth path he guided it to. Ken is wise beyond his years. I would gladly work with and invest in him again.” Andy Jones · Sr. Managing Director, StepStone Group; led the first institutional round in Interland The numbers #### Where B2B SaaS companies stall, and what the data says about yours. A growth rate that looks healthy may not be. Of about 3,000 software and online-services companies McKinsey followed, 28% ever reached $100 million in revenue and 3% reached $1 billion. A software company growing 20% a year has a 92% chance of ceasing to exist within a few years, and 85% of the fastest growers could not hold their rate once they had it.1 What it means for a founder: at 20% you are not safe, you are slowly losing ground, and the useful question is what would have to be true to add ten points. Your retention band predicts your growth rate. Across more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies, the median company grew 15% with net revenue retention below 90%, 16% at 90% to 100%, 21% at 100% to 110%, 30% at 110% to 120%, 38% at 120% to 130%, and 50% above 130%.3 The median company grew 22% last year, 25% if equity-backed.4 What it means for you: find your band. At 95% net retention, the first 5% of your base you sell each year only replaces what walked out. Your board is asking about the Rule of 40 for a reason. Across 200 software companies over a decade, growth plus free cash flow cleared 40% only 16% of the time, the median public SaaS company above $100 million grew 22%, and the leaders earned back what they spent to acquire a customer in under 16 months against nearly four years for the bottom quartile. At least one large SaaS company has tied executive incentives to it.2 What it means for you: as growth matures, decide which half of the 40 you are buying this year, and say so before the board asks. In every one of those studies, the distance between the median company and the leaders is retention, pricing, the motion, and the decisions the CEO makes about them. Find your bottleneck #### Six questions a SaaS founder or CEO can answer this week. 1. What is your net revenue retention by cohort, and which cohort is dragging it? Below 100%, you have a leak before you have an acquisition problem, and more pipeline makes it worse. The early signs of a stall show up here first: slowing customer acquisition, falling lifetime value of new customers, and key people leaving sales and engineering.1 First move: sort churned and contracted revenue by the quarter each customer signed and by segment. The worst cohort usually points at a product gap, a pricing mismatch, or a promise sales made that the product never kept. 2. When did you last change pricing or packaging, and who decided? If it has not moved since the company was a third its size, the price is probably funding the wrong customers and the wrong motion. Contract value predicts retention: above $250,000 in ACV the median gross retention is 95%, below it about 91%.3 First move: list what your best-retaining customers use and what they pay, and build the next tier around that. 3. Who closes most of your new revenue today? If the answer is you, the founder, the motion has not become a repeatable sales process yet, and a sales leader hired into it inherits a process that lives in your head. First move: write down the last ten wins, who was in the room, how long each took and why the customer said yes, before you hire anyone. 4. How many months does it take to earn back what you spend to win a customer? The leaders recover it in under 16 months; the bottom quartile takes nearly four years.2 First move: compute it by segment. The segment with the fastest payback is where the next dollar of sales and marketing goes. 5. Once growth starts to slow toward the top of your first curve: does growth plus free cash flow reach 40, and does your board know which half you are working on? Most software companies miss it most years.2 First move: pick the half, write the plan on one page, and take it to the board before the board brings it to you. 6. What did your executive team escalate to you last week? If the answer is decisions they should own, the constraint is the operating model, and the founder at the center of it. First move: write the decision rights down: which decisions are yours, which are theirs, which go to the board. Most founders and CEOs can answer four of the six from memory and find the other two uncomfortable. The uncomfortable two are usually the work. What we work on #### What coaching for a B2B SaaS founder, CEO or executive works on. Each of these starts as a symptom you can already see. The work is finding what is underneath it, and changing it. ##### Net revenue retention slipped under 100% Growth is leaking out of the base faster than sales can pour it in. Underneath it is usually one cohort, one segment, or one promise the product never kept. We find it, then work customer success, pricing and packaging, and expansion in that order. I took New Relic's net revenue retention from 95% to 115%, and cut monthly churn from 3% to 1.5% in a turnaround. ##### Your pricing has not moved since you were a third the size The tier that gives away the upgrade, a per-seat price on a product whose value is usage, an ACV too small for the sales team you are paying for. Pricing and packaging are a product decision and a sales decision at once. At Coursedog ACV rose 40% in nine months alongside ARR from $4M to $10M. ##### The founder is still the best salesperson Founder-led selling works until it becomes the ceiling. Turning it into a repeatable sales process, choosing product-led, sales-led or the hybrid most companies end up with, and hiring the first sales leader into a process instead of a vacuum. At Blameless, rebuilding the go-to-market motion took the win rate from near zero to 80% and the sales cycle down 40%. ##### Enterprise deals stall in procurement Moving up from small business to mid-market or enterprise means a different product, price, contract, security review and sales team, and a buyer you have never sold to. I served 200,000-plus small businesses at Web.com, sold to 15,000-plus enterprise customers at New Relic, put a no-code platform into Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street at Unqork, and was the enterprise buyer myself inside Cox Automotive. ##### The core product is slowing Every SaaS company reaches the top of its first S-curve. The second act, a new line, an adjacent market or a platform play, has to be built before the core slows, not after. At New Relic new products added $50M-plus in incremental ARR, and FedRAMP opened public-sector revenue worth $40M. ##### Growth is breaking the operating model Growth without integration creates organizational debt: retention slips, productivity drops, every initiative takes longer. The operating rhythm below pairs each growth number with the capability it depends on, so you see the constraint before the board deck does. ##### The board wants a Rule of 40 plan What the board is really asking, how to run the meeting so it works for you, and how to walk into the next raise or the exit conversation with a plan the investors already believe. I raised from Microsoft and Verizon, presented to the New Relic board, took two companies to an acquisition, and sat on the investor's side of the table for a decade. ##### Everything still routes through you The move from doing the work to running the company, the one every SaaS founder makes or fails to make: the first executive hires, hiring people more experienced than you, handing off the product or the pipeline you built yourself, and the version of you the next ARR stage needs. I built a team to 650 people and led a 450-person organization through the same change at New Relic. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) The operating rhythm #### When growth outruns the recurring-revenue machine: four moves. At Web.com, and again at New Relic pushing 40% growth, I learned that growth without integration creates organizational debt: customer retention slips, productivity drops, and every new initiative takes two or three times longer. I wrote the method up in [why integration beats growth speed](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/), and the motion decision in [product-led growth: is it right for your company?](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/05/15/product-led-growth/). For a B2B SaaS company it comes down to four moves. Pair every growth metric with the capability it depends on. New ARR against onboarding capacity, pipeline against sales capacity, new logos against support and customer success, releases against reliability. The gap between each pair is the early warning, and reading it is the CEO's job, not a report you receive. Decide the motion on purpose, and re-decide it at each stage. Product-led, sales-led, or the hybrid: a board-level call that changes as the ACV, the segment and the buyer change. Most companies drift into a motion and then wonder why the unit economics stopped working. A growth council you chair, with real decision rights. Cross-functional, with P&L authority, meeting weekly with one job: find the constraint before it shows up in the board deck. Most SaaS CEOs run growth through the sales forecast and hear about the constraint from the CFO a quarter late. Rate, direction and method in one room, once a quarter. You, your CFO and your revenue leader on one question: if we hit the number, can we deliver and retain it, and how will we pay for it? What capability do we need to build before we accelerate? One plan goes to the board, not three. Under all four sits the frame I have used since my first company: the right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions. Seats I held #### Why a SaaS executive coach who has held the seats around yours. Interland sold web hosting to small businesses on a monthly subscription, which was recurring revenue before anyone called it SaaS. I founded it in 1997 and ran it as CEO from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO: more than 200,000 small-business customers at 90%-plus retention, $50M-plus raised from Microsoft and Verizon, 650 people, on its way to $200M in revenue. It became Web.com. At New Relic I was EVP inside a public company as it grew from $300M to $500M, on a platform with 15,000-plus enterprise customers: new products that added $50M-plus in incremental ARR, net revenue retention taken from 95% to 115%, and FedRAMP work that protected $40M of public-sector revenue, while leading a 450-person organization through significant change. Since then I have held the seats around the CEO's in three more software companies at three ARR stages: Unqork, from $20M toward $100M ARR with Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street as customers; Coursedog as CPO, from $4M to $10M ARR in nine months with ACV up 40%, on the way to an $80M acquisition; and Blameless as COO in a VC-backed turnaround, where rebuilding the go-to-market motion took the win rate from near zero to 80%, cut the sales cycle 40% and monthly churn from 3% to 1.5%, and led to the merger with FireHydrant. I hold two US patents on SaaS infrastructure and user provisioning. Most executive coaches have been near the room. I was in the room, driving, at every scale a SaaS company passes through: a subscription business from zero to a Nasdaq IPO, growth at a public unicorn, New Relic from $300M to $500M, and transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive, a $3B platform with more than 1,000 engineers. I have held the CEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats at different companies, so I know the dynamics of each role around yours from the inside, and a decade as an investor and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits means I know how the board sees it. And because scaling SaaS usually means selling to a buyer you have never sold to, it matters that I have sold to all three: small business, mid-market and enterprise, and sat on the enterprise buyer's side of the table too. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the operating plan and the person carrying it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Frequently asked questions #### The ones SaaS founders and CEOs actually ask. ##### What does a B2B SaaS coach do? A B2B SaaS coach brings pattern recognition from running subscription software businesses to the problems a general business coach cannot see: scaling recurring revenue, fixing unit economics, and getting past a growth plateau. In practice the work falls into four buckets: metrics and growth (ARR, churn, net revenue retention, pricing and packaging); the go-to-market motion (product-led, sales-led or hybrid, and the segment); the leadership transition from doing individual tasks to running the company; and operations, the board, investors and the exit. I have held the seat those problems land on, as founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO and as EVP at New Relic as it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Have you run a B2B SaaS company yourself? Yes, from the first hire to the IPO. I founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, and ran it as CEO from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO with more than 200,000 small businesses on a monthly subscription. Since then I have been EVP at New Relic as it grew from $300M to $500M, CPO at Coursedog through $4M to $10M ARR and an $80M acquisition, COO at Blameless through a turnaround to its merger, and VP at Unqork from $20M toward $100M ARR. I also spent a decade as a venture managing partner investing in and operating SaaS businesses. ##### Do you focus on companies at a certain stage? Usually from about $1M ARR, once product-market fit is in hand, to a few hundred million. At $1M to $10M the work is the repeatable sales process, pricing and the first executive hires. At $10M to $100M it is the motion, the segment, net retention and an executive team that runs without you. Past that it is the second act, the board and the exit. Earlier than $1M a coach is mostly a sounding board, and there are good communities for that. ##### Does it matter whether we are bootstrapped or venture-backed? It changes the board and the burn, not the physics. A bootstrapped SaaS company answers to its own cash flow and can choose its growth rate; a venture-backed one has a board that funded a rate and expects it. I have run a venture-funded company through an IPO and a Series B company through a turnaround where the runway was the whole conversation. For a bootstrapped company the retention, pricing and motion problems are the same, and the cash constraint is sharper. ##### What are the bottlenecks you see most in B2B SaaS? Five come up again and again: churn, acquisition, pricing, team scaling and strategy. Underneath them are usually two: a motion that stopped fitting the stage, and a CEO still doing a job that should have been handed off two hires ago. We find which one is yours in the first session and work on it, not on a curriculum. ##### Do you work with SaaS executives who are not the CEO? Yes. The COO, the CPO, the CRO and the CTO each own a piece of the recurring-revenue machine, and I have held three of those seats myself. There are separate pages for the [COO seat](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and the [chief product officer seat](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach); for a revenue or technology leader in a SaaS company, this page is the right place to start. ##### Does my coach need experience in my specific industry? They need experience in your business model more than your vertical. A SaaS company selling to hospitals and one selling to logistics companies share the same economics: recurring revenue, churn, expansion, ACV and a motion that has to fit the buyer. I have sold software to small businesses, to enterprises, to banks, insurers and government agencies, and the pattern that transfers is the model, not the industry. ##### How much does SaaS coaching cost? At this level retainers run $1,000 to $10,000 a month; the ranges, who pays, and how I price are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). You get a scope and a number on the discovery call. For scale, at $10M ARR one point of net revenue retention is worth $100,000 a year. ##### Who is the best SaaS CEO coach? The one who has run a SaaS company through your stage and can prove it with names, numbers and recency. The seven tests to run on any coach, me included, are in my guide to [how to find the best B2B SaaS coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-b2b-saas-coach/). ##### How often do we meet, and how do I know it is working? Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person, with access between them when the hard thing does not wait. We agree what success looks like before the work starts, in writing, in your numbers: net retention, win rate, sales cycle, the executive hires made, the board meeting that went the way you planned it. The early signs are faster decisions and a company that needs you less. ##### What counts as B2B SaaS here? Software sold to businesses on a subscription: per-seat, usage-based or platform licensing, from a $20-a-month small-business tool to a seven-figure enterprise contract. Vertical SaaS, horizontal SaaS, infrastructure and developer tools all count. Consumer subscription businesses share some of the economics but not the buyer, and I say so on the first call if the fit is wrong. ##### Do you work outside Atlanta? Yes. Standing calls run on video with SaaS CEOs and executives anywhere, and I work in person when the engagement calls for it. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia, and for years commuted weekly to the West Coast while running national roles from here. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Start here #### Start with a short note. A short note is enough: your ARR, the motion, and the bottleneck. Churn, pricing, the sales team, the board. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [McKinsey & Company, Grow fast or die slow (Eric Kutcher, Olivia Nottebohm, Kara Sprague; about 3,000 software and online-services companies, 1980 to 2012), April 1, 2014](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/grow-fast-or-die-slow) - [McKinsey & Company, SaaS and the Rule of 40: Keys to the critical value creation metric (Paul Roche, Sid Tandon), August 3, 2021](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/saas-and-the-rule-of-40-keys-to-the-critical-value-creation-metric) - [SaaS Capital, 2025 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (14th annual survey, more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies), September 2025](https://www.saas-capital.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/RB32WS1-2025-B2B-SaaS-Retention-Benchmarks.pdf) - [SaaS Capital, Private B2B SaaS Company Growth Rate Benchmarks (2025 survey), 2026](https://www.saas-capital.com/research/private-saas-company-growth-rate-benchmarks/) ## IT Director Coach https://kengavranovic.com/it-director-coach Coaching for IT directors and technology leaders ### An IT director coach who has held the seats above yours: CTO, VP of Engineering, and the CEO they answer to. I coach IT directors and senior technology leaders through the part of the job nobody trained you for: translating the technology into business outcomes, leading through your managers, the budget conversation, the transformation or AI mandate on your desk, and the step to VP or CIO. I have held the seats your job reports into, as a former CTO, a former vice president of engineering and a former CEO. As Vice President of Engineering at Cox Automotive I ran a $250M budget, moved 10,000-plus servers to the cloud at 99.9 percent uptime, and drove DevOps across more than 1,000 engineers. At New Relic I was EVP and general manager, building for and selling to the IT organizations of 15,000-plus enterprise customers while revenue grew from $300M to $500M. And I founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, an infrastructure business at heart, and took it from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO. So I coach from the chairs that decide an IT director's year: the CTO who sets the mandate, and the CEO who signs the budget. I have sat in both. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) VP Engineering, Cox Automotive, $250M budgetEVP, New RelicFounder and CEO, Web.com, Nasdaq IPOCOO, VC-backed turnaroundCEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats held Seats I held #### The seat IT directors report into: five years as VP of Engineering at Cox Automotive. At Cox Automotive I was the vice president the engineering and technology directors reported into. Inside an 80-year-old enterprise, I ran a $250M budget and more than 1,000 engineers through a five-year cloud transformation that moved 10,000-plus servers at 99.9 percent uptime and cut recovery times 70 percent. It started in a meeting with Andy Jassy, then the CEO of AWS, that launched the company's move to the cloud. Every one of those numbers was delivered by directors. I set their budgets, read their business cases, carried their outages into the executive meeting, and decided who got the next seat. I know what makes a director's case land with the person above them, because I was that person, and I know what it costs a director when it does not. I started where most IT directors start: at the keyboard. I was ten, in Galveston, Texas, teaching myself assembly language from books. My first computer job was on the Pick operating system, where I built a system that let people send faxes from their own desks, and within a year it was a two million dollar business. I wrote software in New York and in Florida before I ran anything. The road from the code to the executive room can be learned, and it can be coached; I walked it, and I know where it gets steep. And the tech geek never left: I still build, with two inference servers at home and a house that runs on AI. Before Cox I built a company whose whole product was infrastructure: Interland, the company that became Web.com, with 200,000-plus small businesses on the platform at 90 percent-plus retention, from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO. After it, at New Relic, I built for and sold to the IT organizations of 15,000-plus enterprise customers, and spoke at the Gartner IT Symposium, the conference where CIOs gather. That is the world an IT director's next step leads into: Foundry's 2026 State of the CIO study finds the CIO now leading digital transformation at 82% of companies, seen as a business leader by 46%, and reporting straight to the CEO at 40%, down from 48% a year earlier.1 What technology leaders say #### From a chief data officer and a chief AI officer. > “Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative.” Zakaria Siddiqui · Chief Data Officer, Cox Automotive > “Ken is one of the most effective technology leaders I have worked with. He sees the whole business and what needs to be done at the broadest level.” Misha Sulpovar · Chief AI Officer & Author Who this is for #### IT directors whose job stopped being technical, and technology leaders one step from VP or CIO. IT directors, directors of infrastructure, applications, security or data, senior IT managers stepping up, and the technology leaders one step from VP or CIO, usually inside a mid-size or enterprise company, reporting to a CIO, CTO or CFO. You were promoted because you were the best technical person in the room. Now the job is the people, the politics and the capital, and learning not to fix it yourself. If any of these are on your desk, this is the work: you are transitioning into a new director role or preparing for a VP or CIO promotion; your biggest challenge is people management, strategy and influence, or burnout; you have to fix a team that is not working, or scale an infrastructure with the budget you have; you inherited a transformation, a cloud migration or an AI mandate; or your CIO or CTO was just replaced and you are the one holding the program. The seat #### Why the IT director seat is hard to learn on the job. The job changes under you when you take it. 71% of leaders report significantly higher stress since stepping into their current role, and of more than 70,000 manager candidates assessed, only 19% showed strong delegation skills, the one habit the seat runs on.2 The workload is the stressor, and most of it is invisible upward. Among 7,726 technology professionals, heavy workloads (54%) and long hours (43%) top the list of work stressors; 83% say a mentor matters and 63% want one, but only 22% have one.3 The seat above you turns over. The average CIO stays 4.6 years, 3.9 in healthcare, so most IT directors will report to a new boss, with a new agenda, at least once before they are promoted.4 The mandate is now AI, and the skills are not there yet. 82% of IT leaders are tasked with evaluating AI additions to the stack.1 Among 2,015 technology leaders in 62 countries, 65% now sit on the executive committee, the share reporting an AI skills shortage jumped from 28% to 51% since the previous report, and only one in three reports a clear return on AI so far.5 The board is watching. 66% of public-company boards discuss technology at every meeting, and among the directors who do, only 34% feel confident their fellow board members understand what transformative technology means for the growth strategy.6 Somebody has to make it understood, and it is usually a director's deck that reaches them. And nobody says so out loud. 15% of IT leaders describe themselves as burned out and another 33% report some burnout in the current role.7 The hard part is rarely the technology. It is the case you make for it, the people who deliver it, the politics around it, and the version of you the next seat needs. What we work on #### What coaching for an IT director works on. The work is growing the leader as fast as the mandate. ##### Translating the technology into the business case Budget credibility under capital scrutiny: aligning the IT roadmap, the infrastructure and the architecture choices with the finance narrative and the board narrative, so the case for the migration, the security spend or the platform lands in the language the CFO and the CEO decide in. I built and defended the technology budget at Cox Automotive for five years; I know what the person across the table is listening for. ##### From the best technical person in the room to the leader of it The identity shift generic coaching misses: you were the best technical person in the room, and that is no longer the job. Stepping back from the detail, and from being the technical hero every time a system goes down. Your value now is the capacity of the people you lead, not your own hands on the keyboard. I made that move myself, from writing assembly as a kid to the CTO and CEO seats, and at Cox every program I ran was delivered by directors who had made it too. ##### Leading through your managers The move from managing tasks to coaching your own management team: delegation, the hard conversations, manager quality, and the 19% problem, which is that almost nobody arrives in the seat good at delegating. At Cox, every engineer I led delivered through directors and their managers; the operating rhythm that made that work is teachable. ##### Executive presence, and board updates that land How to walk into the executive meeting, the steering committee or the board with a technology decision and leave with it approved: what to send three days before, how to run the room, and how to answer the question that is really being asked. I presented to the New Relic board with Benchmark at the table, and spoke at the Gartner IT Symposium. ##### The transformation, the cloud migration or the AI mandate on your desk The program you inherited, six months in and stalling, or the AI mandate that arrived without a budget line. Ownership in the wrong place, accountability for activity instead of outcomes, decision rights never settled: the causes repeat, and the six checks for them are written up below. I ran the cloud migration at Cox and restarted a stalled product organization at New Relic; the method is in [what I look for when a transformation stalls](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). ##### Politics, stakeholders, and the CIO or CTO above you Multi-million-dollar transformation risk, executive-team friction, and the stakeholder dynamics a director lives inside: the CIO with four and a half years in the seat on average, the CFO who reads the line items, the business unit that wants it yesterday. Including the moment the boss above you is replaced and the program is suddenly yours. I have coached a VP of Technology through exactly that reboot; he ran it, and came out with a bigger mandate than he had before. ##### The step to VP or CIO Preparing for the promotion: the scope you need to have owned, the executive relationships that decide it, the interview for the seat, and the first ninety days once you have it. I have made that call from the VP chair and from the CEO chair, and I know what the people making it are looking for. ##### Burnout, isolation, and the on-call life Nearly half of IT leaders report some burnout and most hide it upward. This is the confidential room for it: the workload, the isolation of a seat that carries every outage, emotional regulation under sustained pressure, and the blind spots named out loud by someone who has sat where you sit and knows which parts of the weight are the job and which are you. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) The operating system #### When the transformation stalls: six checks, five questions. Most of what lands on an IT director's desk is a transformation someone else announced. The long form of this list, with the story of a company that attempted the same cloud migration three times, is in [Your digital transformation stalled: here is what I look for](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Written for the director who owns the delivery, it comes down to six checks and five questions. Check who owns it. If your team is running a change that removes part of your own team's work, or depends on a group that reports to a different executive with a different target, the program has a built-in conflict. Say so early, to the person who can move the ownership. Check what you are measured on. Servers migrated, tickets closed and sprints completed are activity. Ask for the business result in writing; without it, every review becomes an argument about whose plan slipped. Check that the goal is a result, not a tactic. Cloud, a new ERP or an AI platform is a method. The program needs one sentence the CFO would sign: what it makes true, measured how, by when. Check what your people have been told. Engineers and administrators whose jobs change will ask what it means for them before they ask anything else. If the answer is hard and unspoken, the work slows quietly and nobody ever says no. Check who decides. Sequencing, what the legacy system gives up, and what counts as finished. Write the names down; two leaders who each think it is theirs produce a busy program that does not move. Check that the executives are still deciding. Programs stall above the director more often than below: when the leadership team stops making the calls on outcome, funding and what gets switched off, and starts reading status reports. Your job is to bring them the decision, framed so they can make it. The five questions for the first thirty days, asked of each executive alone: what is this for and how will we know; who owns it, and does it disrupt them; who decides; do our targets conflict; and would anything bad happen if we stopped. The answers tell you which check is failing before the steering committee does. Under all of it sits the frame I have used since my first company: the right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions. Every side of the table #### Why a coach who has held the seats above yours. An IT director sits between the engineers and administrators who run the systems and the executives who fund them: reporting to a CIO or CTO whose own seat turns over every four to five years, in front of a CFO who reads the budget line by line, and, more and more, in front of a board that discusses technology at every meeting. The hardest problems in the seat live in those relationships, not in the stack. Most executive coaches have been near the room. I was in the room, driving, at every scale your company sits at: transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive, growth at a public unicorn, New Relic from $300M to $500M, and a startup from zero to a Nasdaq IPO. I have held the CEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats at different companies, so I know the dynamics of each role above and around yours from the inside, and a decade as an investor and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits means I know how the board reads a technology decision. And because an IT director's case lives or dies with the person it lands on, it matters that I have been the enterprise technology buyer myself inside Cox Automotive, and the vendor selling into enterprise IT organizations at New Relic. I have held each of those chairs: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, COO in a VC-backed turnaround, Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the operating plan and the person carrying it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Frequently asked questions #### The ones IT leaders actually ask. ##### What does an IT director coach do? An IT director coach is a confidential partner who helps a technology leader move from technical manager to strategic executive: translating the roadmap, the infrastructure and the architecture choices into the business case the CFO and the CEO decide in; navigating the politics, the stakeholders and the executive-team friction around a program; building people leadership so the managers under you run the work; preparing you for the VP or CIO step; and keeping you whole while you do it. The best ones have sat in the seats above yours. I have: CTO, VP of Engineering, and CEO. ##### Have you held the IT director seat yourself? Not that title. I am a former CTO and a former vice president of engineering: I held the seats it reports into and the one it aims at: Vice President of Engineering at Cox Automotive, where the engineering and technology directors reported to me; the CTO seat; EVP at New Relic; and CEO of the infrastructure company I founded. I set directors' budgets, read their business cases and decided their promotions for years, which is the side of the table an IT director most needs to understand. ##### How is this different from general executive coaching? A general executive coach works on presence, communication and career. That is table stakes here. What a technology executive coach adds is context: an IT director's problems arrive as a stalled migration, a security budget the CFO cut, an outage the board heard about, or an AI mandate with no headcount, and a coach who never carried a platform cannot tell the technology problem from the leadership one. I coach the leader, and I can read the roadmap, the debt strategy and the infrastructure plan while I do it. ##### Do I need a coach, a mentor or a consultant? A consultant is hired to deliver an answer. A mentor has walked the road and describes it when asked; 83% of technology professionals say a mentor matters and only 22% have one, so if you can get one, get one. A coach is confidential, has no stake in your decision, and works on how you decide and lead this quarter, with enough operating experience to know what the decision feels like. The useful version for this seat is the hybrid: formal coaching training plus real time in senior technology seats. ##### Should I get a coach when I move into my first director role, or when I am preparing for VP or CIO? Both are the right moment, for different work. In a first director role the work is the identity shift and the managers: 71% of leaders report significantly higher stress once they step into a new role, and the first ninety days set the pattern. Preparing for VP or CIO, the work is scope, executive relationships and the case you can make for the seat. The wrong moment is after visible trouble has started; the coaches who rank on this question say the same. ##### My biggest challenge is people management. Can coaching fix a team that is not working? It can fix the part of it that runs through you, which is usually more than it looks. Manager quality, the hard conversations you have been postponing, unclear decision rights between two teams, and a director still doing the senior engineer's job are the four causes I see most. We work on the team through your management of it, in private, with the decisions written down. ##### How do I make the business case for a budget and get it through the CFO? By starting from the business outcome and the risk of not doing it, not from the architecture. The case that lands names what the spend makes true, in a number, by a date; what breaks, and what it costs, if it is not funded; and the capability the company needs before it can accelerate. I ran the technology budget at Cox Automotive and sat on the approving side of many more. Most IT budget cases fail on the second sentence, and it is a coachable skill. ##### I inherited a transformation, or an AI mandate, that is already stalling. Where do we start? With the six checks above, in that order, and the five questions in the first thirty days. Most stalls are not technical: ownership sits with the team the change disrupts, the outcome was never written down, or decision rights were never settled. An AI mandate is the same program with less budget and more attention; 82% of IT leaders are now tasked with evaluating AI additions to the stack, and the ones who get it funded are the ones who can say what it will make true. ##### My CIO or CTO was just replaced. What now? First, understand that it is normal: the average CIO tenure is 4.6 years, so most directors report to a new boss at least once before they are promoted. Then treat the first ninety days under the new leader as a new job: learn what they were hired to change, show up with the honest state of your programs before they ask, and decide what you want from the reboot. I coached a VP of Technology through exactly this at a PE-backed company; instead of surviving it, he ran the transformation and came out with a bigger mandate. ##### What does a typical engagement look like, and how do I know it is working? Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person, with access between them when the outage or the reorganization does not wait; engagements usually last six months to a year. We agree what success looks like before the work starts, in writing. The early signs are a budget case that got through, managers who need you less, an executive meeting that went the way you planned it, and fewer nights on the keyboard. ##### Is this confidential, and can my company pay for it? Yes, and usually yes. What you say stays between us; when the company pays, it gets attendance and a yes or no on progress, and the content stays yours, agreed in writing before the first session. Companies coach directors and above as a matter of course, and a technology leader inheriting a transformation is exactly the case they fund. If you need help asking, that is the first conversation. ##### How much does an IT director coach cost? Published US ranges put coaching for directors at $300 to $600 an hour and $6,000 to $15,000 for a six-month program, with retainers from $1,000 to $10,000 a month across all levels; the full breakdown by level, who pays, and how I price are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). You get a scope and a number on the discovery call. ##### Who is the best IT director coach? The one who has held the seats above yours, a former CIO, CTO or technology vice president rather than a generalist, who can read your roadmap while coaching you and prove both in one call. Google's own answer to this question and the guides that rank on it use the same test: specific experience in technology management, scaling engineering or IT operations, and the transition from tactical manager to strategic executive; operator experience in a senior technology seat rather than a generic career adviser; a credential from a body such as the ICF as table stakes; and a first call where they push back. The full set of tests is in my guide to [how to find the best IT director coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-it-director-coach/). ##### Do you work with IT leaders outside Atlanta, and in person? Yes to both. Standing calls run on video with technology leaders anywhere in the United States, and I work in person when the engagement calls for it. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia, and for years ran national technology organizations from here while commuting weekly to the West Coast. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Start here #### Start with a short note. A short note is enough: where you sit, and what is on your desk. The budget, the migration, the boss who just changed, the promotion. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [Foundry, 2026 State of the CIO Study (25th annual; 662 heads of IT and 249 line-of-business respondents), 2026](https://resources.foundryco.com/hubfs/CIO_Foundry_%20State%20of%20CIO_%20Study%202026.pdf) - [DDI, Global Leadership Forecast 2025 (10,796 leaders; 70,000-plus assessed manager candidates), April 2025](https://www.ddi.com/about/media/burnout) - [ISACA, Tech Workplace and Culture 2025 (7,726 technology professionals), press release, 5 March 2025](https://www.isaca.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/2025/1-in-3-tech-pros-switched-jobs-leaving-74-of-firms-worried-about-it-talent-retention) - [Korn Ferry, Age and Tenure in the C-Suite (the 1,000 largest U.S. companies by revenue), 21 January 2020](https://ir.kornferry.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/34/age-and-tenure-in-the-c-suite-korn-ferry-study-reveals-trends-by-title-and-industry) - [Nash Squared / Harvey Nash, Digital Leadership Report 2025 (2,015 technology and digital leaders, 62 countries), May 2025](https://www.nashsquared.com/dlr-2025/dlr-2025) - [NACD, 2024 Public Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey: Technology Oversight, 2024](https://www.nacdonline.org/all-governance/governance-resources/governance-surveys/surveys-benchmarking/2024-public-company-board-practices-and-oversight-survey/technology-oversight/) - [CIO.com (Foundry), IT leadership burnout: the hidden cost of executive stress, citing the 2025 State of the CIO, 2025](https://www.cio.com/article/4209332/the-leadership-burnout-no-one-talks-about-it-executives-who-are-afraid-to-ask-for-help.html) ## Executive Coach for General Managers https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coach-for-general-managers Coaching for general managers and P&L leaders ### An executive coach for general managers who has held the GM seat, and the CEO seat it reports to. I am an executive coach for general managers, business unit leaders and P&L owners: the first business you run end to end, the number you are now accountable for, the cross-functional team you used to sit on, and the CEO above you. I was EVP and General Manager at New Relic, running the platform organization of 450 people in four countries as revenue went from $300M to $500M, with $50M-plus of new-product ARR and net revenue retention taken from 95% to 115% along the way. I took that seat after the CEO let the previous leader go. Before it I founded the company that became Web.com and took it to a Nasdaq IPO; after it I was COO of a VC-backed turnaround. So I have been accountable for the number, and I have been the CEO the general manager reports to. I coach from both sides of that seat. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) EVP and General Manager, New Relic, $300M to $500MFounder and CEO, Web.com, Nasdaq IPOVP, Cox AutomotiveCOO, VC-backed turnaroundVenture managing partner, 35 deals, 18 exits The seat I held #### The general manager seat at New Relic, from the inside. I came into New Relic as EVP and General Manager of the platform organization after the CEO let the previous leader go. The largest customers were telling us there had been no real innovation in nearly three years, sales had stopped believing product and engineering could deliver, and the accounts were looking at competitors. That is the GM seat at its most honest: a $300M business, 450 people across four countries, and a number that was mine the day I walked in. Three moves did most of the work, and I wrote them up in [aligning product and engineering for performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/): one general manager holding product and engineering to the same business metrics, so the finger-pointing stopped; a quarterly plan that set a fixed share of engineering for the roadmap, for bugs and for what sales had sold; and a cross-company escalation meeting where any change to the roadmap had to be agreed by the leaders of the company, so trade-offs were made in the open instead of under the hood. At the next customer advisory board the CTO of Disney and an SVP at Capital One told us we had delivered more of what they wanted in six months than in the previous three years. Revenue went from $300M to $500M, with $50M-plus of incremental ARR from the new products. Along the way I gave the global keynote at FutureStack, led the customer advisory boards, and presented to a board that included partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona. What two executives say #### What it looked like from inside the organizations I ran. > “Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative.” Zakaria Siddiqui · Chief Data Officer, Cox Automotive > “Ken is one of the most effective technology leaders I have worked with. He sees the whole business and what needs to be done at the broadest level.” Misha Sulpovar · Chief AI Officer & Author Who this is for #### General managers and P&L leaders in their first business, or their next one. General managers, business unit leaders, division presidents and country managers, at a startup, a mid-sized company or an enterprise corporation. Most were promoted from sales, operations, product or engineering into a first P&L role: a facility, a region, a product line or a business unit, with the revenue and the cost both yours for the first time. A first time general manager and a division president scaling the operation they already run sit in the same seat with different constraints. Last year you were the best in the building at one function. This year every function reports to you, and the work is a different job. The situations general managers bring: a transition into the seat and the first 90 days in it; missed targets or a forecast you do not yet trust; team silos and an execution speed that has dropped; a strategic reset the CEO wants by the offsite; and a leadership team that used to be your peers. The seat #### Why the general manager seat is hard to learn on the job. It is the seat the CEO seat is filled from. Of the 168 new S&P 1500 chief executives named in 2025, 48% came from the COO or president seat and another 30% were promoted divisional CEOs; 84% were first-time CEOs. Boards use the division and the P&L to train the next chief executive.1 Nobody arrives with the whole job. The move from leading a function to leading an enterprise means, for the first time, taking responsibility for a P&L and for executives across every function. The research on that move names seven shifts, from specialist to generalist and from problem solver to agenda setter, and finds that most rising stars trip on several of them.2 The number is the credential. When a search firm surveyed 2,300 senior women leaders, 70% held or had held a P&L, nearly 60% had taken one on within their first decade at work, and 47% of the CEOs among them said that going after P&L roles was what moved their career.3 Taking charge takes longer than anyone budgets for. The classic field study of 14 management successions, including a three-year study of four newly appointed division presidents at companies from $1.2 million to $3 billion in sales, found that taking charge runs through five predictable stages, taking hold, immersion, reshaping, consolidation and refinement, and that the manager's working relationship with the boss was one of the strongest predictors of whether the transition succeeded.4 The hard part is rarely the domain you came from. It is the functions you never ran, the trade-offs between them, the CEO who now judges you on a number, and the version of you the business needs next. What we work on #### What coaching for a general manager works on. The work is growing the general manager as fast as the business he or she now owns. ##### Owning the P&L for the first time P&L ownership is reading the numbers, making the decisions they point to, and being accountable when they miss. We work on the forecast you can defend, the cost structure you inherited, the gross margin nobody explained to you, and the discipline of hitting the number quarter after quarter. I owned a $300M number that had to become $500M, and I have sat on the board side reading other people's. ##### The cross-functional team you used to sit on A general manager balances sales, product, engineering, operations and finance, and used to be one of them. We work on the move from specialist to generalist: how to judge the functions you never ran, how to make the trade-offs between them and explain the rationale, and how to lead peers who wanted your seat. At New Relic I put product and engineering under one set of business metrics and the finger-pointing stopped. ##### The CEO above you and the number between you Your CEO now judges you on a P&L, and the CEO relationship works or fails on decision rights: which calls are yours, which stay with the CEO, and how you disagree in private and align in public. I have been the CEO in that relationship and the GM in it, so the coaching keeps both sides in view. ##### Bridging strategy and execution Translating the corporate plan, and the annual operating plan and budget you now own with finance, into a quarterly operating rhythm the unit can actually run: a plan with fixed shares of capacity, a cross-company meeting for any change to it, and one place where competing priorities get settled in the open. That is what team alignment means in practice. The three moves below are the version I ran; we adapt them to your business. ##### Decisions under pressure, with the blind spots named A general manager decides with the data half in: the forecast, the hire, the price, the customer you cannot afford to lose. We work on which of those calls are reversible and which are not, on the speed of the ones that are, and on the two or three only you can make, in a room with no agenda and no stake in the result, where your blind spots get said out loud before the CEO says them. ##### Executive presence: customers, the board and the room The GM is the face of the business to its biggest customers, to the board and to the rest of the company. I gave the global keynote at FutureStack, led customer advisory boards with Disney and Capital One in the room, and presented to the New Relic board. Presence is not performance; it is being the clearest person in a room that needs a decision. ##### From general manager to CEO Nearly a third of new S&P 1500 CEOs in 2025 were promoted divisional CEOs, and boards treat the division as the training ground. If the CEO seat is where you are going, we build the P&L record, the board exposure and the enterprise judgment on purpose, inside the role you have, instead of waiting for a title. ##### Selling into SMB, mid-market and enterprise The unit you now own sells to someone, and often to a segment you have never sold to yourself. At Web.com the customers were 200,000-plus small businesses; at New Relic they were 15,000-plus enterprise accounts; at Unqork the platform went into Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street; at Cox Automotive I was the enterprise buyer. Each segment buys differently, and your unit's sales motion, pricing and support model have to match the one you are in. A seat I helped someone hold ##### The GM who became CEO Career advancement A GM at a public unicorn wanted the CEO seat but had never truly owned a P&L. We built a plan to get him real P&L scar tissue inside his current role instead of waiting for a title change. When the next opportunity came, he wasn’t interviewing on potential. He landed the CEO role. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) The operating system #### When the functions stop agreeing: three moves and one question. When I took the New Relic seat the problem was not talent. Sales, product and engineering each had a defensible version of the plan and none of them matched, so nothing shipped and everything was somebody else's fault. For a general manager who owns the whole unit, fixing that comes down to three moves and one question. One owner for the number, across the functions. Product and engineering, or sales and operations, held to the same business metrics by the same person, so the trade-offs between them are made by someone who is accountable for the result of both. In a business unit that person is you, and the metrics are the ones your P&L is built from. A quarterly plan with fixed shares of capacity. A set share of the unit's capacity for the roadmap, a set share for the debt and the bugs, and a set share for what sales has already promised, decided once a quarter with the numbers on the table. It ends the weekly renegotiation, and it gives you a forecast you can stand behind. An escalation meeting where changes are made in the open. Any change to the plan comes to one cross-functional meeting and is agreed by the leaders of the business, so the poor trade-offs that used to happen under the hood happen in daylight, and the team that gave something up knows why. One question every quarter. What capability do we have to build before we can grow the number again? Bring the answer to your CEO before the CEO has to come looking for it. Behind all three is the test I have applied to every business I have run, starting with my first company: is the formula right, are the tactics right, and are the actions repeatable enough that the unit can run them without you. Every side of the table #### Why a coach who has held the seats around yours. A general manager sits between a CEO who judges the unit on a number and a team of functional leaders who each know their own domain better than you do, in front of the customers who decide whether the number lands. The hardest problems in the seat live in those relationships, and in the functions you never ran. Most executive coaches have been near the room. I was in the room, driving. A general manager's unit sits inside one of a handful of company shapes, and I have run inside each: a startup that went from nothing to a Nasdaq IPO, a public unicorn where my unit grew from $300M to $500M at New Relic, and an 80-year-old enterprise, Cox Automotive, where the transformation ran through more than 1,000 engineers. Around the GM seat sit the CEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats, and I have held each of them at one company or another; add a decade on the investor side, on boards across 35 deals and 18 exits, and you know why I read a P&L the way your board will. The last piece matters more than it sounds: a business unit lives or dies on who it sells to, and I have sold to small business, mid-market and enterprise buyers and been the enterprise buyer inside Cox as well. I have held each of those chairs: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, COO in a VC-backed turnaround, Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. I am also a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree. We can work on the operating plan and the person carrying it in the same hour. How it works #### Four steps, no mystery. Discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, no pitch: what is actually going on, and whether I am the right person for it. Calibration. We agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts. Standing calls. Weekly, every other week or monthly, on video or in person. Access between calls. The hard things do not wait for the calendar. More on the approach on the [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) page, and on choosing any coach in [six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). Frequently asked questions #### The ones general managers actually ask. ##### What does a general manager coach do? A general manager coach works one on one and in confidence with a GM, a business unit leader or a first-time P&L owner on the parts of the seat a functional career does not prepare you for: P&L ownership, the cross-functional operation, the gap between strategy and execution, team alignment, and a leadership team that used to be your peers. The best ones have held the seat. I was EVP and General Manager at New Relic through the leg from $300M to $500M. ##### Have you been a general manager yourself? Yes. Across my career I have run budgets and P&Ls from $50M to $250M, and I ran the New Relic platform organization as EVP and GM: 450 people in four countries, the product and engineering P&L, the largest customers, the board. I took the seat after the CEO let the previous leader go, when the biggest accounts said there had been no innovation in three years, and left it with revenue at $500M and $50M-plus of new-product ARR. Before that I was the CEO a general manager reports to, at the company that became Web.com. ##### What does P&L leader mean, and is a general manager the same thing? A P&L leader owns both the revenue and the cost of a business, and answers for the profit or loss between them. A general manager is the most common title for that seat; so are business unit leader, division president, managing director and country manager. The title varies by company; the job is the same: the number is yours, and so is every function that produces it. The classic description of the job, written by a former president of PepsiCo, lists six tasks: shaping the work environment, setting strategy, allocating resources, developing managers, building the organization and overseeing operations.5 Coaching for the seat is coaching for those six. ##### What changes when you own a P&L for the first time? Everything you were promoted for gets smaller and everything you never did gets bigger. The research on the move from function head to enterprise leader names seven shifts: specialist to generalist, analyst to integrator, tactician to strategist, bricklayer to architect, problem solver to agenda setter, warrior to diplomat, and supporting cast to lead role. In practice it means judging functions you never ran, making trade-offs between them, and being the one accountable when the forecast misses. ##### I was promoted from sales, operations or engineering to run a business unit. What do I fix first? The number and the decision rights, in that order. Learn the income statement you now own well enough to explain every line, and find out which parts of the forecast are real. Then agree with the CEO, in writing, which decisions are yours and which measures you will be judged on. Only after that do you touch the structure. Most new general managers restructure first and pay for it for a year. ##### What is the 30-60-90 rule for a new general manager? Thirty days to learn the business from the front line and the numbers, not from the deck you were given; sixty days to agree the mandate, the decision rights and the measures with the CEO and to fix one visible operating problem; ninety days to put the operating rhythm in place, the plan, the capacity shares and the escalation meeting, and to know which of your leaders are the team for the next stage. Redesigning the organization comes after that, not before. ##### How is a general manager different from a COO, a division president or a CEO? A CEO owns the whole company, its capital and its board. A COO turns the CEO's direction into results across the company. A general manager or division president owns one business inside it, revenue and cost, with the functions that produce them, and reports to the CEO or a group president. Which is why the GM seat is where boards look for the next CEO: it is the whole job at a smaller scale. ##### Can a general manager become CEO? It is the most common route after the COO seat. Of the 168 new S&P 1500 CEOs appointed in 2025, 30% were promoted divisional CEOs and 48% came from the COO or president seat; 84% were first-time CEOs. The move goes best when it is prepared on purpose: real P&L ownership, time in front of the board and the largest customers, and practice at the decisions only a chief executive makes. I have coached a general manager at a public unicorn through exactly that, and he landed the CEO role. ##### Does it matter whether my unit sits in a startup, a mid-sized company or an enterprise corporation? The seat is the same; the constraints are not. In a startup the GM is often the first person to own a number at all, and the job is building the operating rhythm from nothing. In a mid-sized company it is running a unit inside a system that already has one. In an enterprise it is the matrix: shared services, corporate functions and a group president between you and the CEO. I have run a business inside a public unicorn and driven change inside an 80-year-old enterprise, and the coaching starts from which of those you are in. ##### My company is offering me an executive coach, or training to coach my own managers. Which is this? This is the first: a confidential, one-on-one engagement for you, the general manager, on your seat, your number and your leadership team. Coaching skills for managers is a different and useful thing, and it is not what this page is about. Most GM coaching is paid for by the company, because it is investing in a leader it intends to keep and often to promote; the coaching stays confidential to you, and the coach should hold no other role with the company that could tilt the advice. ##### Who is the best executive coach for general managers? The one who has held the seat you are in and can prove it. Search the question and the ranking guides and the AI answers converge on four checks: real-world leadership, meaning a coach who has actually held the GM seat, the COO seat or another senior operating seat rather than a generic career advisor; a method tied to business outcomes such as revenue, retention and execution speed; a coaching credential such as the ICF's as the minimum; and a first conversation in which the coach disagrees with you at least once. For a general manager, the proof is a P&L someone actually owned. Mine was the New Relic unit from $300M to $500M, and I hold ICF and CEC credentials. The full set of tests is in my guide to [how to find the best executive coach for general managers](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-executive-coach-for-general-managers/). ##### How much does coaching for a general manager cost, and who pays? The company pays in most GM engagements, because it is developing a leader it intends to keep and often to promote, and the cost is small against the P&L that leader owns. For the market ranges by level and format, who pays, and how I price, read my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost); most engagements at this level run six months or longer, and you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. ##### How often do general manager coaching sessions run, and how will I know it is working? A standing call every two to three weeks is what most leaders settle on, weekly when a transition is live, on video or in person, plus access between calls when the hard thing does not wait. Before we start we write down what success looks like for you and for your CEO, so both of us can tell. In a GM engagement the early signs are specific: a forecast you would defend to the board, functional leaders who bring you trade-offs instead of complaints, and a CEO conversation about the next number rather than the last one. ##### Do you coach general managers remotely, and outside Atlanta? Yes. The standing calls run on video with general managers anywhere in the United States, and I come on site when the engagement calls for it, for an operating review or an offsite. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia; I ran the New Relic organization from here, commuting weekly to the West Coast and travelling to the teams in four countries. Send me a note [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Start here #### Start with a short note. A short note is enough: where you sit, and what is on your desk. The number, the CEO, the team you inherited, the seat you want next. I read every note myself. If you would rather talk, book a discovery call. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Sources #### Where the numbers come from. - [Spencer Stuart, 2025 S&P 1500 CEO Transitions: Behind the CEO Moment (168 transitions), February 2026](https://www.spencerstuart.com/-/media/2026/02/ceo-transitions-us/2025-s-p-1500-ceo-transitions-behind-the-ceo-moment.pdf) - [Michael D. Watkins, How Managers Become Leaders: The Seven Seismic Shifts of Perspective and Responsibility, Harvard Business Review, June 2012 (interviews with more than 40 executives)](https://hbr.org/2012/06/how-managers-become-leaders) - [Cassandra Frangos, Spencer Stuart, Balance Sheets to Boardrooms: Accelerating Women Leaders Through P&L Experience (survey of 2,300 senior women leaders), April 2025](https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/balance-sheets-to-boardrooms-accelerating-women-leaders-through-pl-experience) - [John J. Gabarro, When a New Manager Takes Charge, Harvard Business Review (HBR Classic, first published 1985; 14 management successions including a three-year study of four division presidents), January 2007](https://hbr.org/2007/01/when-a-new-manager-takes-charge) - [Andrall E. Pearson, Six Basics for General Managers, Harvard Business Review, July 1989](https://hbr.org/1989/07/six-basics-for-general-managers) ## Facilitation https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation Facilitation ### Offsites and strategic planning sessions, run by an operator. Updated September 2026 [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Not a neutral moderator with a flip chart. I design and run one to two day working sessions and offsites where a leadership team steps back, has its assumptions challenged with an operator’s perspective and the data, and leaves with decisions, or with clearly defined options, owners and next steps. I have sat in the seat these rooms report to: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, senior executive at New Relic and Cox Automotive, and I know which conversation the room is avoiding. The offsite is the most expensive meeting your company runs: ten leaders, two days, a quarter’s momentum riding on the room. Run well, it compresses six months of drift into two days of decisions. Run badly, it is a slide deck nobody opens again. Every room has its own stakes. A team that thinks it is aligned and needs to be sure. A team that knows it is not. A new team that has never made a hard decision together. A PE owner pressing on margin. A milestone the next round depends on. A do-or-die year on the road to an IPO. The agenda is never just the agenda, and a facilitator who has not lived those pressures cannot hear what your room is really negotiating. What I facilitate #### Executive offsites, planning sessions, working sessions, retreats. Different rooms, same discipline: agree the outcome before anyone books a flight, say the true thing while everyone is in the room, and leave with decisions that have owners and dates. When the question is too big to close in two days, you leave with clearly defined alternatives, an owner for each, and the next step dated. ##### Executive offsites Two days out of the building for the leadership team, when alignment needs a reset: after a pivot, a reorganisation, a new leader, or a year that did not go to plan. You leave with a plan the whole room owns and decisions that have owners and dates. ##### Strategic planning sessions Annual or quarterly planning, done properly: the strategy translated into priorities people can actually run. You leave with the year turned into an operating rhythm, not a binder that gets opened once. ##### Leadership team working sessions Half a day to two days on the one problem that will not die in email: decision rights that were never settled, an initiative that stalled, two functions quietly pulling apart. Small scope, real decision, same structure. ##### Strategy reset sessions One to two days to step back from the plan and examine the strategy itself: where product-market fit is strongest, what the business has taught you so far, which new product or market directions deserve a bet, go-to-market, structure, and where to focus. You leave with decisions, or with two or three clearly defined alternatives, each with an owner and a next step. The [two-day agenda for one of these sessions](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-planning-offsite-agenda/) is published in full, block by block, with the pre-work and the template. ##### Executive and leadership retreats The longer arc, where the team itself is the agenda: trust, candour, and how the room handles disagreement. The business problems come along for the ride, but the team is what leaves different. ##### Leadership alignment workshops A half day to a day for a team that thinks it is aligned and needs to find out whether that is true. Same discipline as an offsite: the decisions written down first, disagreement surfaced early, and a log with owners and dates before anyone leaves. If the question is the strategy itself, I facilitate that too: process first, operator opinion when you ask for it. When you need someone to own the answer, that is [Strategy or Consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). Why an operator #### Why an operator in the room changes the outcome. Most facilitators are neutral by design: they keep time, keep the peace, and keep to the agenda. That neutrality has a cost. When the room politely agrees to a plan that cannot work, a moderator writes it on the flip chart. An operator says the quiet part out loud: this plan assumes two things your own numbers say are not true. I have sat in the seat these rooms report to: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, senior executive at New Relic and Cox Automotive, PE-backed operator in startups, unicorns and turnarounds. I know what alignment costs when it is fake, what an operating rhythm looks like when it actually holds, and how decision rights get settled, including in the mess after a merger. Naming the conversation the room is avoiding is the job. My own teams knew me as a player and a coach, and that is how I run a room. I will hold the process, and when you want it I will weigh in with operator judgment, clearly labelled as opinion. You choose the mix. How a session runs #### Before, in the room, after. Before ##### The work before the work One-on-one conversations with every seat in the room before anyone books a flight. Where useful, a short assessment pass on personality, EQ and how the team handles conflict. We agree the outcome in writing: what must be decided by the time the room empties. In the room ##### Operator-led, not moderated A structure that makes it safe to say the true thing, and a facilitator willing to name what the room is avoiding. Working agreements up front, disagreement surfaced early, and decisions that leave with owners and dates. After ##### The 30-day follow-through The offsite has to survive contact with the next quarter, so we follow through on the operating rhythm for thirty days. The point is not a great two days. It is what the company does differently in the ninety after. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) The method #### The method, in three parts. People ask what my method is. It is the before, in the room, after discipline above, and it produces two artefacts you can ask any facilitator to show you: the decision list and the decision log. Before the agenda exists, the CEO and I agree the decision list: a one-page list of the three to five decisions the team must make before the room empties. Each line names the decision, who owns it today, and what "decided" will look like when the room reads it back. It is not a list of topics. "Discuss pricing" is a topic. "Decide whether we raise list price in the first quarter, and by how much" is a decision. Each decision on the list has to be a must, with the where and the why attached, or it comes off the list. Once the list exists I talk with every seat in the room one on one, confidentially, for 45 to 60 minutes each, and the agenda comes out of what I hear, not out of a template. In the room, two rules hold. Decision rights get named before the decision gets made: who decides, who gets a say, who has to live with it. Most alignment problems are unsettled decision rights wearing a disguise. And every decision is captured in the decision log as it happens: what was decided, what was deliberately deferred and until when, what was escalated, who owns it, and the first action with a date. Before the room empties I read the log back against the decision list. If they do not match, we are not done. After, the decision log goes to every attendee within two business days, and the 30-day follow-through checks each owner and date against the operating rhythm the decisions plug into. The measure of an offsite is not the two days. It is the ninety after. Further reading: Frisch and Chandler, ["Off-Sites That Work"](https://hbr.org/2006/06/off-sites-that-work) (HBR, 2006), and Rogers and Blenko, ["Who Has the D?"](https://hbr.org/2006/01/who-has-the-d-how-clear-decision-roles-enhance-organizational-performance) (HBR, 2006). The template #### The Decision Contract, on one page. A Decision Contract is a one-page list of the three to five decisions the leadership team must make before the room empties, agreed in writing by the CEO and the facilitator before the agenda exists. Each line names the decision, who owns it today, what it costs to leave it open another quarter, and what "decided" will look like when the room reads it back. Here is the template I use. Fill it in before you book a room, with me or with anyone. Before, in the room, after: the contract sets what the offsite exists to decide, the decision log records what it decided, and the thirty days make it hold. Decision Contract: the three to five decisions this offsite exists to make # The decision (a choice, not a topic) Who owns it today What it costs to leave it open another quarter What "decided" will look like when read back e.g. Raise list price in Q1, and by how much CRO, with CFO About $1.2M of margin, and a pricing conversation at every board meeting A number, an effective date, an owner for the customer message, and the first action dated 1 2 3 4 5 Topics are not decisions. "Discuss pricing" is a topic. "Decide whether we raise list price in the first quarter, and by how much" is a decision. Each line has to be a must, with the where and the why attached, or it comes off the list. [Download the one-page template (PDF)](https://kengavranovic.com/downloads/decision-contract-template.pdf) [How the method works, in full](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/) Bring a filled-in contract to [the discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) and we start from the decisions, not the agenda. Both sides of the room #### The operator’s side, and the human one. I bring both sides of the room: the operator’s side, as a public-company CEO, senior executive, and PE operator across startups, unicorns, and turnarounds; and the human side, trained, with a BS in Psychology, CMHC graduate work in progress, and ICF and CEC certifications. Where useful, sessions are assessment-informed: personality, EQ, and 360 feedback instruments chosen for the team. That matters because the hardest part of any offsite is not the strategy. It is getting ten smart people to say what they actually think while the boss is in the room. That is a psychology problem, and it responds to structure. The standing version of this work, leader by leader, is my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). What changes #### The first offsite. Names and companies withheld. The situation is real. ##### The new leader’s first offsite Alignment · new leader A new leader inherited a team he did not build and a room full of people deciding what to make of him. We used his first offsite to skip the six months of circling: what the team actually believed about the business, what they needed from him, and what he was asking of them, said out loud with a structure that made it safe to say. He left with a team that had chosen him back. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) What leaders say #### From rooms I have run and teams I have led. Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative. As COO, Ken led with clarity and focus, revamping our GTM motion, cutting burn significantly, and driving cross-functional alignment across Product, Sales, and Operations. He brought a rare mix of focused execution, operational rigor, and infectious positivity. He drove alignment and morale even as we reduced burn by 50%. His leadership during our acquisition was steady, thoughtful, and deeply collaborative. Where I work Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. In-person executive offsites across Alpharetta and the Atlanta metro; on-site by engagement anywhere in the country. I work remotely with leaders everywhere. (629) 304-8755 · ken@kengavranovic.com Questions #### The ones people actually ask. ##### Is there a Decision Contract template I can use? Yes. The one-page Decision Contract template, the executive offsite planning template I use, is on this page and as a PDF: the three to five decisions the offsite exists to make, who owns each today, what it costs to leave it open another quarter, and what "decided" will look like when the room reads it back. Fill it in before you book a room, with me or with anyone, and bring it to the discovery call. ##### What does a strategy facilitator do? Designs and runs the session so the leadership team does its best thinking: the right questions in the right order, a structure that surfaces disagreement early, and a room where the true thing can be said. The facilitator owns the process so the team can own the decisions. I add one more thing: operator judgment about whether the plan the room is converging on can actually work. ##### How do I choose an offsite facilitator? Ask for three things. First, can they actually run a room. Trained, practiced, with the craft to make it safe to say the true thing. My rooms have ranged from Gartner and AWS re:Invent keynotes to customer events around the globe, to presenting to tough boards as the leader in the chair, to sitting on boards judging the plan. Twenty-five years of rooms, from both sides of the table. Second, have they lived your situation: the PE pressure, the funding milestone, the IPO year. I have sat in those seats, not next to them. Third, do they have the training to work the human side: a BS in Psychology, a master's in CMHC underway, and sessions that are assessment-informed when useful. The goal is not a good two days. It is a team that executes better and holds together after. If you are the chief of staff or the executive assistant building the shortlist, ask every candidate the same four questions. What is your method, and can you describe it in one paragraph? Have you held a seat like the ones in our room? Will you interview every attendee before the agenda is set? What do we receive after the room, and for how long? Then give the finalists the same real situation and compare the agendas they propose. Hire the one whose agenda starts with decisions rather than topics. The long version, with the method, is in [How to Run an Executive Offsite That Actually Produces Decisions](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/). ##### How long is an offsite, and what does it cost? Most offsites run one to two days, working sessions half a day to two days. Around the room itself there is preparation the week before and a 30-day follow-through after, and those are where much of the value lives. Fees depend on scope, and we agree them on the discovery call once we both know what the room needs. For what the market charges, the published survey figures and what moves a facilitator’s fee are in [the cost guide](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-a-strategic-planning-facilitator-cost/). ##### Facilitator or consultant: which do I need? A consultant brings you an answer. A facilitator builds the answer with your team, so the team owns it. If your leadership team already has the knowledge but not the alignment, you want facilitation. I can flex between the two in the room, always labelled: process first, operator opinion when you ask for it. When it is a consultant you actually need, [that work lives here](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). ##### Facilitator or team coach: which does your team need? If your team knows what to do and cannot get it decided, you want a facilitator: a structured room, disagreement surfaced early, decisions that leave with owners and dates. If the same problem comes back every quarter, the pattern lives in how your team works, and that is standing work: [leadership team coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching), which I do separately. One honest conversation usually tells you which it is, and I will tell you plainly, including when it is not me. ##### How do you prepare? One-on-one conversations with every seat in the room, so I walk in knowing where the real disagreements live. Where useful, a short assessment pass on personality, EQ and team dynamics. And a written outcome we agree in advance: what must be decided before the room empties. That written outcome is the [Decision Contract, explained here](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/). ##### Do you travel, and where are you based? Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. I run sessions on-site anywhere in the country, and remotely when that fits the work. Atlanta metro in person is easy. ##### What happens after the session? A 30-day follow-through. Decisions leave the room with owners and dates, and we check that the operating rhythm actually holds once the quarter starts pushing back. An offsite that only produces a good memory was a vacation. ##### Who should be in the room? The CEO and the direct reports who own the decisions on the list. Add a board member or an advisor for a specific block if one decision needs them. Do not add people because leaving them out would feel awkward. Every extra seat makes the true thing harder to say. ##### Can the CEO facilitate their own offsite? Rarely well. The CEO is a party to every decision on the list and the person the room is most careful around. Whoever runs the process cannot also be in the argument, and the argument is the point. ##### Offsite, retreat, workshop, or alignment session: what is the difference? The method is the same; the emphasis moves. An executive offsite is the one- or two-day room where a leadership team resets its plan. A leadership retreat or executive retreat puts the team itself on the agenda: trust, candour, how it handles disagreement, with the business decisions along for the ride. A leadership workshop is a half day to a day on one problem that will not die in email. A leadership alignment workshop is for a team that thinks it is aligned and needs to find out whether that is true. All four start with the decisions written down, because a retreat that builds trust and decides nothing does not hold either. Further reading [How to Run an Executive Offsite That Actually Produces Decisions](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/) [Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/) [Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Three Rs](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/28/boost-your-enterprise-agility-by-following-the-three-rs/) [OKRs: Measure Outcomes, Not Activity](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/11/enterprise-agility-okr-outcomes-over-activity/) The Operator’s Playbook #### Free, twice a month, for CEOs and the leaders one level below. How to do the thing, the data, where it goes wrong and how to make it go right. Stabilize before a sale. The first ninety days after the sponsor replaces your CEO. Restart a stalled transformation. A real AI answer for the board. ✓ Thanks. Check your inbox to confirm, the first issue is on its way. First issue today: [the five questions I ask in the first thirty days of a stalled transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Unsubscribe in one click. Start here #### Tell me about the room. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Tell me what the session needs to produce and who will be in the room, and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person to run it. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. ## Strategy Consulting https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting Strategy Consultant & Operator ### Strategy consulting from someone who has actually run the company. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Right now every board, CEO, and business owner is asking the same two questions: where does AI actually pay, and who has actually done this? Most consultants answer with a deck. I answer with the route I’ve driven. Advice when you want counsel. Execution when you want it done. From board strategy to AI adoption that pays for itself, I have driven the route as CEO, COO and CTO, and I will drive it with your team. How we work together #### How I engage: three levels of ownership. The thesis is the same at every level: advice when you need judgment, ownership when you need the outcome delivered, from someone with no stake in which answer you choose. You get the playbooks I paid full price to learn, and the judgment of someone who has run them. We pick the level together on the discovery call. ##### Advise I advise you on how to do the work: standing counsel to the CEO, the board, or the leadership team. You make the calls; I make sure you see them clearly. Retainer or cadence-based. For a single facilitated offsite instead of standing advisory, see [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### Enable I help your team drive the execution: a scoped initiative with a plan, owners, and dates, where your people do the work and I keep it honest and moving. A go-to-market reset, a platform decision, an AI adoption plan. Clear start, clear end, project fee. ##### Drive I take the problem and drive the solution directly, in consultation with you: [transformation leadership](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/), post-merger integration, restarting a stalled transformation, company-wide change too big to advise from the sidelines. I do not just advise the change, I drive it. Priced like the operating commitment it is. Consultant, advisor, or interim executive? #### Hiring the right kind of help. A strategy consultant studies your problem and hands you a recommendation. A business advisor stands beside you over time while you make the calls. An interim executive takes the seat and delivers the outcome. Most firms sell you the first. Most of what companies at inflection points actually need is the second or the third. I work all three ways, and I will tell you plainly which one your situation needs. The test is simple: if the problem is missing evidence, a firm can fix that. If the problem is a decision under uncertainty, or a change your organisation has to live through, you want someone who has run the company. I have held the CEO, COO and CTO seats through a Nasdaq IPO, a $250M transformation at Cox Automotive, growth from $300M to $500M at New Relic, and a VC-backed turnaround, with 35 M&A transactions and 18 exits along the way. And because the goal is your team running without me, everything is built to end. Advice you rent forever is not advice. It is dependency with a logo. And when the work is about the leader rather than the company, that is [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). Nasdaq IPO Founder-led, Interland to Web.com $300→500M New Relic revenue growth $250M Cox Automotive cloud transformation 35 M&As and 18 exits Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative. What changes #### Decisions I have sat in. The product is strategic judgment under uncertainty: the calls with no undo. The method behind those calls is written up in [Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-judgment-under-uncertainty/). Names and companies withheld. The situations are real. ##### The $80M sell-or-die decision M&A · founders Two founders, months of runway, and one question with no undo: sell now or push through. We worked the decision the way it deserved: real numbers, real floor, what each outcome meant for the people. They sold for $80M. Each founder left with $10M and a company that landed intact. ##### The write-off that wasn’t Restructuring · venture A tier-one VC had $50M in and the company was heading to zero. Instead of the funeral, we restructured and merged it into another portfolio company. A 100% loss became a 10% haircut. Nobody frames that deal on a wall, but the LPs know the difference. ##### The registration-desk question IPO · boards Mid-IPO registration, a strategic buyer shows up. Go public or take the exit? There is no generic answer; there is a disciplined way to decide. We built the criteria before the emotion built them for us. They went public. ##### The relaunch Public company · turnaround A public company under stock pressure, the old team gone, a new executive team that had to land fast and be seen landing. The work was sequencing: early wins, honest internal narrative, an operating rhythm the street could feel. Five months in, the verdict came from their Fortune 100 customer advisory board: the most valuable functionality they had delivered. ##### The interim who stayed ahead of it PE · interim leadership A PE firm removed his boss and asked him to hold the seat. Interim is a trap when you play it safe. We treated it as the job interview it really was: run the operating rhythm like an owner, make the two decisions the firm was watching, and give the board a reason to stop looking. He learned to lead a team through transformation, and held it until the new CTO landed. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) For investors #### Private equity firms and family offices. I work directly with PE firms and family offices on their portfolio companies, especially technology and tech-enabled businesses. The work is operational, not slide-deck: troubleshooting a company that is off plan, leadership transitions and cover while you search, post-merger integration that actually captures the deal thesis, and exit readiness. I have sat on your side of the table too: a decade as Managing Partner at Fortress Capital Partners, 15+ exits, an 11x return on Invirtus, and 35+ M&A transactions as an operator. I have written about [why integration beats growth speed](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/) and [how a private equity firm gets AI into its portfolio companies](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/). I turn AI into EBITDA for portfolio companies: workload by workload, starting with the boring wins. That work now has its own page: [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). AI, without the religion #### Where AI actually pays. I build with this technology myself, and I have deployed it inside real companies at real budgets. That changes the advice. No platform worship, no doom, no deck: a workload-by-workload answer to where AI pays in your business, and where it does not yet. For portfolio companies the question is simpler than the conferences make it. I turn AI into EBITDA for portfolio companies: workload by workload, starting with the boring wins. I have written up the playbooks for [AI business transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/16/ai-business-transformation/) and for [PE portfolio companies](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/). ##### The moderate-budget AI win Mid-market · automation A mid-market CEO asked the question I hear most: how do we use AI smartly without an enterprise budget? We skipped the strategy deck and went looking for the boring wins: the phone calls, voice, texts, emails, and browser work his team was re-typing into systems all day. Those flows did not need a platform. They needed AI reasoning in the middle of known inputs and outputs. One $25M company took $250,000 of annual cost out with a one-time $50,000 investment. ##### The tokenomics correction Enterprise · AI spend An enterprise went all in with a frontier model vendor, then noticed the bill: tokens burning with no clear proof of value. Nobody had thought through the tokenomics. We mapped the workloads honestly. Open models were plenty smart for a large share of the tasks, which cut some workload spend by 80 percent. For the speed-critical paths we moved inference to emerging silicon like Cerebras, with responses coming back roughly 18X faster than the frontier setup. Same outcomes, a fraction of the bill. Where I work Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. I work remotely with leaders everywhere, and on-site when the work calls for it: offsites, working sessions, and engagements anywhere in the country. Atlanta metro in person is easy. (629) 304-8755 · ken@kengavranovic.com Questions #### The ones people actually ask. ##### What does a strategy consultant actually do? Helps you make the calls that decide the company: where to play, what to stop, how to organise, when to buy or sell. The difference between consultants is what stands behind the advice. Mine is having made those calls with my own name on the result, as a founder, CEO, COO and CTO. ##### What does strategy consulting cost? It depends on the level of ownership: standing advisory runs on a retainer, scoped projects carry a project fee, and transformation leadership is priced like the operating commitment it is. What moves the number is the scope, the cadence, and how much of the work is on-site. We agree the number on the discovery call, once we both know the shape of the work. For market context before that call, the published ranges for planning consultants and facilitators are in [the cost guide](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-a-strategic-planning-facilitator-cost/). ##### Consultant, advisor, or interim executive: which do I need? A consultant studies your problem and hands you a recommendation. An advisor stands beside you over time while you make the calls. An interim executive takes the seat and delivers the outcome. I work all three ways; the honest answer about which you need is usually clear within one conversation. ##### Our transformation has stalled. Who should we bring in? Someone who has carried a transformation through an actual quarter, not someone who will study yours. Six months in, the problem is rarely the plan. It is that the work was handed to the team it disrupts, the decision rights were never settled, or nobody owns the outcome across functions. Ask a candidate what they would do in the first thirty days, and whether they have personally owned a P&L while a transformation was running. I have written up [what I look for and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). ##### When does an operator beat a consulting firm? When the problem is a decision rather than an analysis. Firms are excellent at producing evidence. They are structurally unable to own an outcome. If what you need is judgment under uncertainty and someone accountable for what happens next, you want a person who has run the company, not a team that has studied it. ##### Do you work with private equity firms? Yes, directly: portfolio-company troubleshooting, leadership transitions, post-merger integration, AI value creation, and exit readiness, especially in technology and tech-enabled businesses. I spent a decade as a Managing Partner investing in and sitting on the boards of early-stage companies, so I have been on both sides of the table. ##### What does a typical engagement look like? A discovery call, then a short calibration: what success looks like and how we will know. Advisory work runs as standing sessions with ad hoc access between them. Project and transformation work carries its own plan with owners and dates. Everything is built to end: the goal is your team running without me. ##### Do you work on-site, and where are you based? Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Advisory sessions run remotely with leaders everywhere; for offsites, board meetings and transformation work I am on-site anywhere in the country. Atlanta metro in person is easy. Further reading [Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty: How Operators Decide When the Data Runs Out](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-judgment-under-uncertainty/) [Why Integration Beats Growth Speed](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/) [Making Acquisitions Work: Lessons from Web.com](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/corporate-development-unlocking-acquisition-success-leveraging-external-expertise-to-achieve-your-strategic-goals/) [M&A Success Is No Longer the Exception: It’s the Rule](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/27/bolt-on-acquisitions-ma-success/) The Operator’s Playbook #### Free, twice a month, for CEOs and the leaders one level below. How to do the thing, the data, where it goes wrong and how to make it go right. Stabilize before a sale. The first ninety days after the sponsor replaces your CEO. Restart a stalled transformation. A real AI answer for the board. ✓ Thanks. Check your inbox to confirm, the first issue is on its way. First issue today: [the five questions I ask in the first thirty days of a stalled transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Unsubscribe in one click. Start here #### Bring me the decision. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the decision that is actually on your desk, and we will work out together whether you need advice, a project, or an operator, and whether I am the right one. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. ## AI Consulting https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting AI Consulting · Operator-Led ### AI consulting from an operator who has built with it. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Every board and every investment committee is asking the same two questions about AI: where does it actually pay, and who has actually done this? I answer the second question with a career, not a slide. I founded and ran an AI company as CEO, shipped a generative AI product that Fortune 500 teams use, and led cloud and DevOps transformation across more than a thousand engineers before that. Then we answer the first question inside your P&L, not in a deck. I turn AI into EBITDA for portfolio companies: workload by workload, starting with the boring wins. If you run a PE portfolio, a company, or a team whose board wants an AI answer, this page is for you. The method #### Where AI pays, workload by workload. No platform worship, no doom, no hundred-page strategy. A ranked answer to where AI pays in your business, proven one workload at a time, so each win funds the next one. ##### Start with the boring wins The fastest returns are rarely the flashy ones. We inventory the work your people re-type, re-key, and re-read all day: calls, emails, documents, browser work. That list, ranked by what each flow costs you, is your first AI roadmap. ##### Prove it before you scale it One workload, one owner, one number to beat. You get a clear roadmap in weeks and proof inside a quarter, so the second workload is funded by the first and nobody is defending a faith-based budget. ##### People and process first AI transformation fails the way digital transformation failed: on adoption, not technology. I wrote the playbook on [the people side of AI transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/16/ai-business-transformation/), and I run it with your team rather than around them. ##### Own the tokenomics AI spend drifts when nobody owns it. Model choice, inference placement, and workload fit decide whether your bill is a rounding error or a budget line. Matching models to tasks has cut workload spend by 80 percent. Why me #### I build with this. I do not just advise on it. As CEO of Product Genius I built and launched an AI engagement platform and took it to national rollout in under six months. As COO of Blameless I shipped a generative AI incident-response product used by Fortune 500 engineering teams. Before that I led the cloud and DevOps transformation inside one of the largest automotive platforms in the country. And I use this technology daily in my own work, so the advice tracks what the tools can do this quarter, not what they could do last year. In my work advising Fortune 500 corporations and private equity firms, the pattern is consistent: the companies that win with AI treat it as an EBITDA program, not an innovation program. That is the program I run. AI platform Built and launched as CEO, Product Genius GenAI product Shipped at Blameless, Fortune 500 users Nasdaq IPO Founder-led, Interland to Web.com 35 M&As and 18 exits Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative. What it looks like #### Outcomes, not pilots. ##### The $250,000 answer Mid-market · automation A $25M-revenue CEO asked how to use AI without an enterprise budget. We skipped the platform conversation and automated the flows his team re-typed all day: calls, texts, emails, browser work into systems. A one-time $50,000 investment took $250,000 of annual cost out. ##### The AI bill nobody owned Enterprise · AI spend An enterprise went all in with a frontier model vendor, and the tokens burned with no proof of value. We mapped the workloads honestly: open models were plenty smart for a large share of the tasks, which cut that spend by 80 percent, and the speed-critical paths moved to faster inference, coming back roughly 18X faster. Same outcomes, a fraction of the bill. ##### The whole company hunts Private equity · operating model A private equity company stood up a whole-of-company AI initiative: every function, not just engineering, charged with finding what in its own work could be modeled and automated, and bringing the idea or the working automation back. That flips AI from an IT project into an operating cadence, and it's where the durable EBITDA comes from, because the people closest to the process find the wins no consultant's sweep would. The evidence #### What the data says. And what I measure. 73 percent of private equity executives expect AI to lift portfolio value in the next year. [8 percent](https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pe-has-yet-to-prove-its-ai-bets-to-investors) say it is materially moving EBITDA today, per [Alvarez and Marsal's 2026 survey of 100 PE executives](https://www.alvarezandmarsal.com/press-release/alvarez-marsal-north-america-value-creation-report-2026). That gap is not a technology problem. It's an execution problem, and it's where I work. My operating rule: any process you can model can be mostly automated, with the exceptions routed to humans. Applied to customer service, customer success, support, and claims processing, that pattern typically takes 30 to 70 percent of the work off human queues. The public record brackets the same range: [Klarna's assistant resolved two thirds of support chats in its first month](https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/), strong deployments run 70 to 75 percent, and honest independent tests of off-the-shelf agents land near 38 percent. The spread is execution. In software teams, output runs 3 to 17x with AI depending on the codebase and the guardrails, based on my own builds, operator surveys, and direct conversations with engineering leaders at Fortune 500 enterprises. The number nobody puts on the slide: when coding stops being the constraint, the bottleneck moves to product and QA. [Google's DORA research](https://www.faros.ai/blog/are-ai-coding-assistants-really-saving) shows the same shape, with throughput up 20 percent and incidents per change up 23.5 percent. Plan for the new bottleneck or the multiplier eats itself. How we work together #### Three shapes of engagement. Same thesis as all my [consulting work](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting): advice when you need judgment, ownership when you need the outcome delivered. We pick the shape together on the discovery call. ##### AI Roadmap A workload-by-workload map of where AI pays in your business, with build, buy, and skip calls and the numbers behind each one. Weeks, not months, and yours to run with. ##### AI Adoption Sprint A scoped implementation with your team: one or two workloads to production, owners and dates, adoption measured. Your people build the muscle; the win funds the next one. The board-facing version of this plan is written up in [The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/the-ai-answer-your-board-wants/). ##### Fractional AI leadership When the mandate needs a seat, I act as a fractional Chief AI Officer: executive-level ownership of the AI agenda across a company or a portfolio, without the full-time hire. For investors #### AI across the ownership cycle. For private equity firms and family offices the work runs the whole cycle: AI diligence on targets, a post-close AI plan that survives contact with the operating team, portfolio-wide workload sweeps that find the same win in six companies, and the AI story your exit will need. I have written up [how a private equity firm gets AI into its portfolio companies](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/). I have sat on your side of the table too: a decade as a Managing Partner, 15+ exits, and 35+ M&A transactions as an operator. For the broader operating work, from post-merger integration to leadership transitions, see [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). Where I work Based in Alpharetta, Georgia. I work remotely with leaders everywhere, and on-site when the work calls for it: workshops, working sessions, and engagements anywhere in the country. Atlanta metro in person is easy. (629) 304-8755 · ken@kengavranovic.com Questions #### The ones people actually ask. ##### What does an AI consultant actually do? Separates where AI pays in your business from where it does not yet. That means mapping real workloads, putting a number on each, and getting the first wins to production. The difference between AI consultants is what stands behind the map. Mine is having built and shipped AI products as an operator, and deployed them at enterprise budgets. ##### What does AI consulting cost? It depends on the shape: a roadmap is a scoped project fee, an adoption sprint carries a project fee with owners and dates, and fractional AI leadership is priced like the operating commitment it is. What moves the number is scope, cadence, and how much of the work is on-site. We agree the number on the discovery call, and the first workload is chosen so the savings are visible against the fee. ##### Do you act as a fractional Chief AI Officer? Yes. For companies and portfolios that need executive-level ownership of the AI agenda without a full-time hire, I hold the seat: strategy, vendor and model choices, the adoption program, and the reporting your board actually wants. ##### How is this different from hiring a big consulting firm? Firms staff AI projects with people who have studied the technology. I have built with it: an AI platform launched as CEO, a generative AI product shipped to Fortune 500 teams, and daily hands-on work with the current tools. If you want a hundred-page strategy, hire the firm. If you want workloads in production and a smaller bill, we should talk. ##### What does the first engagement look like? A discovery call, then a short workload audit: where your people spend repetitive hours, what each flow costs, and which two or three are the boring wins. You get the ranked map and the numbers in weeks. Most clients start the first workload immediately; some take the map and run it themselves. Both are wins. ##### Do you work with private equity firms? Yes, across the ownership cycle: AI diligence on targets, post-close AI plans, portfolio-wide workload sweeps, and exit readiness. I spent a decade as a Managing Partner on the investing side, so the EBITDA lens is native, not adopted. ##### We already bought AI and the bill keeps growing. Can you fix that? Usually, yes. Runaway AI spend is almost always a workload-fit problem: frontier models doing work smaller models handle, and nobody owning the tokenomics. Mapping the workloads honestly has cut spend by 80 percent on some, with the speed-critical paths moved to faster inference. Same outcomes, smaller bill. ##### How much of a process can AI actually automate? My rule: any process you can model can be mostly automated, with exceptions routed to humans. In service, success, support, and claims work that typically means 30 to 70 percent off human queues. In software development, teams I have measured and surveyed run 3 to 17x on output, and the constraint moves to product and QA. The range is wide because execution is the variable, and execution is the work. Further reading [How a PE Firm Gets AI Into Portfolio Companies: The Operator’s Playbook](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/) [AI Transformation Is a People Problem, Not a Tech One](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/16/ai-business-transformation/) [Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/) The Operator’s Playbook #### Free, twice a month, for CEOs and the leaders one level below. How to do the thing, the data, where it goes wrong and how to make it go right. Stabilize before a sale. The first ninety days after the sponsor replaces your CEO. Restart a stalled transformation. A real AI answer for the board. ✓ Thanks. Check your inbox to confirm, the first issue is on its way. First issue today: [the five questions I ask in the first thirty days of a stalled transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Unsubscribe in one click. Start here #### Bring me one workload. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the AI question your board is asking, or the one workload you suspect is burning money, and we will put a number on it together. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. ## Alpharetta https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta In Person · Alpharetta & North Fulton ### Executive and leadership team coach in Alpharetta, in person. Talk with Ken in Alpharetta [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I live and work in Alpharetta. My office is at North Point, and this page is for the work that lands best across a table: executive team coaching, leadership team coaching, executive mentoring, and coaching through a transition, for the people who run companies in Alpharetta and across North Fulton. I have held the seats on the other side of the table: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; VP at Cox Automotive through a cloud and DevOps transformation; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. Sessions run at my office, at yours in Milton, Roswell, Johns Creek, Cumming or Sandy Springs, or on video. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. I keep the in-person side deliberately small: a select few Georgia engagements at a time, so the work gets the attention that being in the room deserves. The work #### Three ways to work in person in Alpharetta. ##### Executive coaching, across a table Some conversations land differently in person. Sessions run at your office or my Alpharetta base, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive mentoring in Alpharetta on a standing cadence, for CEOs, founders and senior executives who want an operator across the table. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. The most requested in-person work. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Leadership team coaching and executive team coaching for Alpharetta companies: the team as the unit, in your room, session by session. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), the on-site version is easiest here at home. Strategy consulting on site across North Fulton: transformation leadership, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Alpharetta executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Alpharetta. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives at Alpharetta’s corporate offices Senior leaders at the offices that anchor the GA-400 corridor: Fiserv, ADP, Verizon, Equifax, Jackson Healthcare and Morgan Stanley are the city’s largest private employers. Transformation inside an established enterprise is the work I led at Cox Automotive. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Executives in transition A bigger seat, a new company, or the quarter after a reorganization: executive transition coaching and leadership transition coaching for the first months in the new role. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a turnaround. Local proof #### Based at North Point. This is home. This is my home market. I live in Alpharetta, my office is at North Point, and the in-person work on this page happens across a real table: at my office, at yours anywhere in North Fulton, or in your room for team sessions. No commute math, no fly-in windows; the standing cadence can simply be in person here. The Alpharetta an executive leads in is a technology town. The city is home to more than 640 technology companies by Tech North Atlanta’s count, it has invested in optical fiber since the 1980s and hosts multiple data centers, and the fintech industry has driven their expansion; I founded and ran a hosting company, the one that became Web.com, so that infrastructure is the world I come from. The city’s largest private employers run corporate offices here: Fiserv, ADP, Verizon, Equifax, Jackson Healthcare, Morgan Stanley and UPS Supply Chain Solutions, the kind of enterprise where I led transformation at Cox Automotive. And around Avalon and Downtown Alpharetta sit the founder-led and PE- and VC-backed companies I have sat inside as a venture managing partner for a decade and as COO in a VC-backed turnaround. [Driving directions](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/?api=1&destination=100%20North%20Point%20Center%20E%20Suite%20125%20Alpharetta%20GA%2030022) 100 North Point Center E, Suite 125, Alpharetta, GA 30022. In person across North Fulton: Alpharetta, Milton, Roswell, Johns Creek, Cumming and Sandy Springs. (629) 304-8755 · ken@kengavranovic.com Questions #### Executive and team coaching in Alpharetta: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Alpharetta? Ask what you would ask anywhere, starting with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then how in person works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### Do you coach leadership teams in Alpharetta, or only individuals? Both, and the team work is what this page is for. Leadership team coaching and executive team coaching treat the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. It often starts with one executive and widens to the team. ##### What is executive mentoring, and how is it different from coaching? Mentoring leans on the operating record: you borrow judgment from someone who has run the play. Coaching builds your own. My engagements are both at once, because I have held the seats and I am a trained, certified coach. You get the question and, when you want it, the answer. ##### Do you coach executives stepping into a new seat? Yes: executive transition coaching for the first months in a bigger role, a new company, or the quarter after a reorganization. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a company in a turnaround. ##### Where do sessions happen in Alpharetta? My office at North Point, 100 North Point Center E, Suite 125, or your office. Team sessions run in your room or a room we choose for the work. ##### Which towns do you cover in person? Alpharetta, Milton, Roswell, Johns Creek, Cumming and Sandy Springs are routine; the wider metro and broader Georgia by engagement; on video, anywhere. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Alpharetta? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is in person; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### What is different about leading a company in Alpharetta? The concentration. More than 640 technology companies in one city, data centers on fiber the city has invested in since the 1980s, corporate offices of Fiserv, ADP, Verizon, Equifax and Morgan Stanley along the GA-400 corridor, and founder-led and investor-backed companies around Avalon and Downtown Alpharetta. The local proof section above walks through which of those worlds I have led inside. ##### Do you run offsites for Alpharetta teams? Yes: executive offsites, strategic planning sessions and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator, in your room. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. If in person is the right fit, we set the first session at North Point or your office. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Same table, same city. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video or across a table in Alpharetta. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - Alpharetta (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Atlanta https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta In Person · Atlanta & Georgia ### Executive coach in Atlanta, in person. Talk with Ken in Atlanta [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I coach CEOs, founders and senior executives across the Atlanta metro, and I did the work here: I founded the company that became Web.com here and took it public on Nasdaq, and I led Cox Automotive’s cloud and DevOps transformation. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. I live and work in Alpharetta, and most of my practice runs nationally: remote coaching and advisory with leaders everywhere, on-site engagements anywhere in the country. If your company is in Georgia, we can do this the old way: across a real table, in your room, on your site, or on Zoom when that is easier. I keep the in-person side deliberately small: a select few Georgia engagements at a time, so the work gets the attention that being in the room deserves. The work #### Three ways to work in person in Atlanta. ##### Executive coaching, across a table Some conversations land differently in person. Sessions run at your office or my Alpharetta base, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Atlanta for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. The most requested in-person work, and the reason this page exists. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Atlanta and across Georgia: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), the on-site version is available at home in Georgia. Strategy consulting in Atlanta, on site: transformation leadership, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Atlanta executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Atlanta. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Atlanta’s large enterprises Transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise, where the org chart and the history both push back. I led one at Cox Automotive; the story is below. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). Local proof #### This metro is where I did the work. I moved to Atlanta from Florida in 1997 because it had the lowest cost of living with the highest density of dark fiber. At 26 I knew the internet was a huge trend, so I invested my entire savings to rent the 14th floor at 34 Peachtree and built a company from the ground up, causing power brownouts in the skyscraper along the way, into one of the largest hosting companies in the country, now Web.com, just a few years later. The enterprise transformation on my record happened here: a $250M budget, thousands of servers to the cloud, inside Cox Automotive, one of Atlanta’s cornerstone companies, kicked off across the table from AWS’s Andy Jassy. I have keynoted here, presented to boards here, and built here. And I have run national roles from here, commuting to the West Coast every week and flying around the world for keynotes. When we talk about your Atlanta company, I know the ground. The Atlanta an executive leads in is a particular mix, and I have led inside most of it. Hartsfield-Jackson has been the world’s busiest airport by passengers since 1998, 106 million of them in 2025, and Delta and UPS run global networks from here, so logistics leaders are judged on execution and uptime: the Cox transformation on my record moved thousands of servers to the cloud at 99.9% uptime. The city holds the nation’s third-largest concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters, and more than three quarters of the Fortune 1000 operate in the metro, where the pressure is political as much as operational; I led that kind of change at Cox and have presented to boards here. Georgia is home to more than 260 fintech companies and 170,000 technology jobs, the reason Atlanta carries the name Transaction Alley; I founded the company that became Web.com in this city and took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq listing. And across the metro sit the PE- and VC-backed companies with a sponsor, a plan and a clock; I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and sat on the operating side as COO in a VC-backed turnaround. [Driving directions](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/?api=1&destination=100%20North%20Point%20Center%20E%20Suite%20125%20Alpharetta%20GA%2030022) With AWS’s Andy Jassy at the start of the Cox Automotive cloud move, Atlanta. > “Ken led our $160M+ cloud, engineering, and DevOps modernization across a $3B+ portfolio. He brought clarity, velocity, and accountability to every initiative.” Zakaria Siddiqui · Chief Data Officer, Cox Automotive > “Ken is a passionate leader and problem solver that I had the pleasure to work with at Cox. He brought expertise and dedication to the organization developing his team and developing trusted relationships with clients and executives across the organization. He was able to establish the appropriate rigor and pragmatic execution focus to drive sustainable improvements in operational quality.” Ed Smith · Founder, Lumen Advisors; worked with Ken at Cox > “Ken is one of the smartest, compassionate and hard working team members I have ever worked with. He is dedicated to solving problems in a timely, methodical and professional manner. He is cool under extreme pressure and handles the political aspects of his responsibilities perfectly.” Mitch Margolis · CTO, Automotive Group; worked with Ken at Cox Automotive > “I led the first institutional round of investment in Interland, which Ken founded. His talent is evident in the meteoric growth path he guided it to. Ken is wise beyond his years. I would gladly work with and invest in him again.” Andy Jones · Sr. Managing Director, StepStone Group; led the first institutional round in Interland Based at North Point in Alpharetta. 100 North Point Center E, Suite 125, Alpharetta, GA 30022. In person across the Atlanta metro, from North Fulton to Buckhead, Midtown, and the Perimeter; broader Georgia by engagement. (629) 304-8755 · ken@kengavranovic.com Questions #### Executive coaching in Atlanta: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Atlanta? Ask what you would ask anywhere, starting with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then how in person works day to day. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### Which Atlanta leaders do you coach? CEOs and founders of technology companies, leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies, executives running transformation inside large Atlanta enterprises, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. Most are in significant growth or a significant change. ##### Do you coach new CEOs and leaders stepping into a bigger seat? Yes, and it is some of the most valuable work: a first-time CEO, a new COO, or a leader promoted into a seat their peers used to hold. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a company in a turnaround. ##### Are executive coaches worth it? It depends on what you need. It is worth it if you are ready to change how you operate and want a thinking partner who has held the seat. It is not worth it if you want someone to hand you the answer, if the gap is a technical skill a course would close faster, or if what you need is therapy. The full test is in [how to choose an executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). ##### Can my company pay for coaching as professional development? Usually, yes. Most of my clients are funded by their company, because coaching at this level is normally a line item in leadership development rather than a personal expense. If you need to make the case internally, I will help you build it. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Atlanta? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is in person; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my guide to [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### What is different about leading a company in Atlanta? The mix. Logistics and transportation companies judged on execution, Fortune 500 headquarters with long memories, a fintech and technology corridor that hires fast, and growth companies with investors on the board. The local proof section above walks through each, and which of them I have led inside. ##### Do you coach leadership teams in Atlanta, or only individuals? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. It often starts with one executive and widens to the team, in person across the metro or on video. ##### Do you only work in Georgia? No. Most of my clients are national: remote coaching and advisory with leaders everywhere, and on-site work anywhere in the country. In person over a table is simply easiest at home, and I keep room for a select few Georgia engagements at a time. ##### Where do in-person sessions happen? Your office, my Alpharetta base at North Point, or a room we choose for the work. Offsites run wherever your team meets best. ##### Do you facilitate executive offsites in Atlanta? Yes, and it is the most requested in-person work: executive offsites, annual and quarterly strategic planning sessions, and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator. See the facilitation page for how the room works. ##### Which parts of the metro do you cover? All of it. Alpharetta and North Fulton are home; Buckhead, Midtown, Sandy Springs, and the Perimeter are routine; anywhere in Georgia by engagement. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. If in person is the right fit, we set the first session somewhere that serves the work. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Same table, same city. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video or across a table in the metro. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - Atlanta (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Nashville https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/ Nashville · Tennessee ### Executive coach in Nashville. Talk with Ken about Nashville [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I coach CEOs, founders and senior executives in Nashville, and I have held the seats they sit in: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; VP at Cox Automotive through a cloud and DevOps transformation; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Nashville companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a Nashville company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Nashville for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Nashville: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Nashville companies: transformation leadership, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Nashville executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Nashville. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Nashville’s large enterprises Transformation inside an established enterprise, where the org chart and the history both push back: the hospital operators, headquarters and manufacturers that anchor Middle Tennessee. I led one inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Healthcare and health-tech leaders Nashville’s largest industry, and a regulated one: hospital systems, outpatient and health IT companies, and the venture-backed businesses built around them. Executive coaching for the seat, not the sector: I built and launched an AI engagement platform that rolled out nationally across retail, healthcare and hospitality in under six months, and I know what a regulated operating environment does to the pace of change. Nashville #### What is different about leading a company in Nashville. Nashville’s largest industry is health care. The Nashville Health Care Council counts more than 900 healthcare companies in the region, generating over $97 billion a year, and the city’s healthcare entrepreneurs have raised more than $2 billion in venture capital in the past decade; HCA Healthcare was founded here in 1968 and sits at number 61 on the Fortune 500. That is a regulated industry run at scale, where the leadership problems are operational and political at once. I led that kind of change inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive, thousands of servers to the cloud at 99.9% uptime, and I built and launched an AI platform that rolled out nationally across retail, healthcare and hospitality in under six months. The music industry that gives the city its name is estimated at about $10 billion a year and 56,000 jobs, and technology is growing behind it: Amazon’s retail operations hub at Nashville Yards, and Oracle’s planned campus of 8,500 people. I founded the company that became Web.com, took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq listing, and was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. Headquarters in the metro include AllianceBernstein, Asurion, Bridgestone Americas, Dollar General, Tractor Supply and Nissan North America in Franklin, and around them sit the PE- and VC-backed companies with a sponsor, a plan and a clock; I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and sat on the operating side as COO in a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your Nashville company, the sectors are different from the ones I led in, and the seats are not. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Questions #### Executive coaching in Nashville: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Nashville? Ask what you would ask anywhere, starting with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### Which Nashville leaders do you coach? CEOs and founders of technology and health-tech companies, senior executives inside hospital systems and other large Nashville enterprises, leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. Most are in significant growth or a significant change. ##### What is different about leading a company in Nashville? The mix. Health care is the largest industry and a regulated one, so change is operational and political at once; the music and entertainment businesses run on creative talent and tight margins; technology is arriving at scale; and the growth companies around them have investors on the board. The section above walks through each and the seats I have held that map to it. ##### Do we need to meet in person in Nashville? No. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Nashville? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Do you coach leadership teams in Nashville, or only individuals? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. It often starts with one executive and widens to the team. ##### Do you facilitate executive offsites in Nashville? Yes: executive offsites, annual and quarterly strategic planning sessions, and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator, in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### Do you coach healthcare executives? Yes, senior leaders in health systems, health services and health-tech companies. The coaching is about the seat you hold, not the clinical work: the board, the peers, the pace of change a regulated environment allows, and the team that worked at the last size. I have built and launched a platform into healthcare and led transformation inside a large regulated enterprise. ##### Do you coach new CEOs and leaders stepping into a bigger seat? Yes, and it is some of the most valuable work: a first-time CEO, a new COO, or a leader promoted into a seat their peers used to hold. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a company in a turnaround. ##### Are executive coaches worth it? It depends on what you need. It is worth it if you are ready to change how you operate and want a thinking partner who has held the seat. It is not worth it if you want someone to hand you the answer, if the gap is a technical skill a course would close faster, or if what you need is therapy. The full test is in [how to choose an executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach). ##### Can my company pay for coaching as professional development? Usually, yes. Most of my clients are funded by their company, because coaching at this level is normally a line item in leadership development rather than a personal expense. If you need to make the case internally, I will help you build it. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - Nashville (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Dallas https://kengavranovic.com/dallas Dallas · Texas ### Executive coach in Dallas. Talk with Ken about Dallas [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I coach CEOs, founders and senior executives in Dallas, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; VP at Cox Automotive through a cloud and DevOps transformation; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. I am a native Texan, born and raised in Galveston, and my practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Dallas companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a Dallas company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Dallas for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Dallas: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Dallas companies: transformation leadership, integration after a relocation or an acquisition, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Dallas executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Dallas. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Dallas headquarters The headquarters that moved here, Toyota to Plano, McKesson to Irving, CBRE and Charles Schwab, and the ones that grew here. A relocated headquarters is a transformation with a new org chart and an old history. I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Financial services leaders Dallas-Fort Worth is the second-largest financial services hub in the country. Executive coaching for leaders in banking, asset management and fintech, where regulation sets the pace of change. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street. Dallas #### What is different about leading a company in Dallas. I am a native Texan: born on Galveston Island, BOI as islanders say, and raised there. I caught my first sandtrout off the Gulf Coast Fishing Pier at 4 and started on computers at 10 in Galveston. Texas is where my story starts, and Dallas is where so much of Texas business now runs. Dallas runs on headquarters. The region holds 23 Fortune 500 headquarters, 11 of them in the city itself, and it keeps drawing more: Toyota moved its North American headquarters to Plano, McKesson to Irving, CBRE from Los Angeles and Jacobs from Pasadena, and AT&T runs its headquarters from Downtown Dallas. A relocated headquarters is a leadership problem before it is a real estate one: a new team, a new city and the old company’s habits arriving on the same moving truck. I have led that kind of integration: the company I founded merged with MicronPC to become Web.com, and I have been through 35 M&A transactions across my career; I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. The other two engines are technology and money. The Telecom Corridor in Richardson is home to more than 5,700 companies, Texas Instruments among them, and Dallas-Fort Worth has passed Chicago as the second-largest financial services hub in the country. I founded an internet infrastructure company and took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq listing, was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M, and led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street as a VP at Unqork. Around them sit the PE- and VC-backed companies with a sponsor, a plan and a clock; I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and sat on the operating side as COO in a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your Dallas company, the seats are the ones I have held. Me at 4 with a sandtrout on the Gulf Coast Fishing Pier, Galveston. Pier Sportfishing News, October 1974. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in Dallas: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Dallas? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other Dallas executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP, VP and COO. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate, and the advice comes from decisions I have made, not only studied. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3, and a native Texan, born and raised in Galveston. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Dallas? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Which Dallas leaders do you coach? CEOs and founders of technology companies, executives inside Dallas headquarters, leaders in financial services, leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. Most are in significant growth or a significant change. ##### What is different about leading a company in Dallas? The headquarters. Dallas keeps drawing relocations, so many leaders are running a company that just moved, with a new team and old habits. Add the Telecom Corridor and the second-largest financial services hub in the country. The section above walks through each and the seats I held that map to it. ##### Do you coach leaders through a headquarters relocation or an integration? Yes. A relocation or an acquisition is an integration problem: two cultures, one org chart, and a board watching the quarter. I have led one through a public-company merger and been through 35 M&A transactions across my career. ##### Do we need to meet in person in Dallas? No. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams in Dallas, or only individuals? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. It often starts with one executive and widens to the team. ##### Do you facilitate executive offsites in Dallas? Yes: executive offsites, annual and quarterly strategic planning sessions, and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator, in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### Do you coach financial services executives? Yes. The coaching is about the seat you hold: the board, the regulators’ pace, the peers and the team. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street, so I know how change moves inside a regulated firm. ##### Do you coach new CEOs and leaders stepping into a bigger seat? Yes, and it is some of the most valuable work: a first-time CEO, a new COO, or a leader promoted into a seat their peers used to hold. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a company in a turnaround. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - Dallas (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Austin https://kengavranovic.com/austin Austin · Texas ### Executive coach in Austin. Talk with Ken about Austin [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I coach founders, CEOs and senior executives in Austin, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder twice, the second company taken from $0 to $200M and a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; COO in a VC-backed turnaround; Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. I am a native Texan, born and raised in Galveston, and my practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Austin companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with an Austin company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Austin for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Austin: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Austin companies: scaling through the next stage, board counsel, and work with private equity and venture-backed portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Austin executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Austin. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Austin’s tech giants Dell’s worldwide headquarters in Round Rock, Tesla’s headquarters at Gigafactory Texas, and the Austin offices of Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, Meta and Oracle. Leading inside a large technology company is its own seat: I was EVP at New Relic, and I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Founders facing a raise or an exit Austin runs on venture money, more than 60 percent of the Texas total in 2018. The next round or the sale is a call I have made more than once as a CEO, and I have been part of 18 exits across my career, three as an operator. More on [coaching for startup CEOs](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach). Austin #### What is different about leading a company in Austin. I am a native Texan: born on Galveston Island, BOI as islanders say, and raised there. I caught my first sandtrout off the Gulf Coast Fishing Pier at 4 and started on computers at 10 in Galveston. Texas is where my story starts, and Austin is where so much of Texas technology now gets built. Austin has been called Silicon Hills since the mid-1990s: enterprise software, semiconductors, corporate R&D and a deep bench of startups. Dell’s worldwide headquarters sits in Round Rock, Tesla’s headquarters inside Gigafactory Texas employs more than 20,000 people, and Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, Meta and Oracle all run offices here. The city felt the dot-com boom and the bust harder than most. So did I: I founded the company that became Web.com, took it from $0 to $200M and a Nasdaq IPO, and steered it through the dot-com collapse by merging with MicronPC. Austin is also a venture town: in 2018 its companies drew more than 60 percent of all venture capital invested in Texas, and at least 15 startup incubators work here, Capital Factory among them. Those founders face the calls I have made: the next round or the sale, which I have decided more than once as a CEO; the move from founder to CEO; the modernization that sets up an exit, which I led as Chief Product Officer through an $80M acquisition. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and sat on the operating side as COO in a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your Austin company, the seats are the ones I have held. Me at 4 with a sandtrout on the Gulf Coast Fishing Pier, Galveston. Pier Sportfishing News, October 1974. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in Austin: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Austin? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other Austin executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder twice, public-company CEO, EVP, COO and Chief Product Officer. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3, and a native Texan, born and raised in Galveston. ##### Do startup founders really need an executive coach? Not always. A founder needs one when the company has outgrown the way the founder leads: the team that worked at twenty people does not at eighty, the board wants a CEO rather than a founder, or the next round depends on decisions the founder keeps deferring. I have made that move myself, from founder to public-company CEO. ##### When is the right time for a founder to start coaching? Before the next step, not after it: ahead of a raise, a first executive hire, a reorganization or an exit process. Coaching that starts after the board has lost patience is harder work for everyone. ##### Can coaching help with a raise or an exit? Yes, as preparation for the leader, not as banking. The next round or the sale is a call I have made more than once as a CEO, I have been part of 18 exits across my career, three as an operator, and I led the product modernization that set up an $80M acquisition. ##### Which Austin leaders do you coach? Founders and CEOs of venture-backed and bootstrapped companies, executives inside Austin’s large technology companies, leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### What is different about leading a company in Austin? The pace and the money. Silicon Hills pairs global technology employers with a dense startup scene, and Austin draws most of the venture capital invested in Texas, so leaders are often scaling faster than their teams. The section above walks through it and the seats I held that map to it. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Austin? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Do we need to meet in person in Austin? No. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach the whole leadership team or just the founder? Both. It often starts with the founder and widens to the team: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit. ##### Do you facilitate executive offsites in Austin? Yes: executive offsites, annual and quarterly strategic planning sessions, and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator, in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - Austin (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Charlotte https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/ Charlotte · North Carolina ### Executive coaching in Charlotte. Talk with Ken about Charlotte [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I coach CEOs, founders and senior executives in Charlotte, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; VP at Cox Automotive through a cloud and DevOps transformation; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Charlotte companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a Charlotte company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Charlotte for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Charlotte: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Charlotte companies: transformation leadership, regulated change, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Charlotte executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Charlotte. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Charlotte’s banks and headquarters Bank of America and Truist headquarters, Wells Fargo’s East Coast operations, and the headquarters that moved here, Honeywell among them. Change inside a large, regulated enterprise is its own seat: I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Financial services leaders Charlotte is the second-largest banking center in the country, after New York. Executive coaching for leaders in banking, asset management and fintech, where regulation sets the pace of change. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street. Charlotte #### What is different about leading a company in Charlotte. Charlotte is the second-largest banking center in the United States, after New York. Bank of America, the second-largest financial institution in the country by assets, is headquartered here; so is Truist; and Wells Fargo runs its East Coast operations and its capital markets business from the city. That is change inside a regulated institution, where the pace is set by the board, the regulators and the risk function as much as by the plan. I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street as a VP at Unqork, and at New Relic I led the FedRAMP work that protected $40M of public-sector revenue. Charlotte also keeps drawing headquarters and technology centers. Honeywell moved its corporate headquarters here in 2018 and Dole in 2019; Lowe’s built a $153M Global Technology Center in South End; Microsoft and Centene run East Coast headquarters here. A move like that is a leadership problem before it is a real estate one: a new team, a new city and the old company’s habits. I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive, and the company I founded merged with MicronPC to become Web.com; I took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq listing and was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. Around them sit the PE- and VC-backed companies with a sponsor, a plan and a clock; I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and sat on the operating side as COO in a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your Charlotte company, the seats are the ones I have held. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in Charlotte: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Charlotte? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other Charlotte executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP, VP and COO. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, and the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Charlotte? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Which Charlotte leaders do you coach? Executives inside banks and financial services firms, leaders at Charlotte headquarters and technology centers, CEOs and founders, leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### What is different about leading a company in Charlotte? The banks and the moves. Charlotte is the second-largest banking center in the country, so a lot of leadership happens inside regulated institutions, and the city keeps drawing relocated headquarters and new technology centers. The section above walks through both and the seats I held that map to them. ##### Do you coach banking and financial services executives? Yes. The coaching is about the seat you hold: the board, the regulators’ pace, the risk function, the peers and the team. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street, so I know how change moves inside a regulated firm. ##### Do you coach leaders through a headquarters move or a new technology center? Yes. A move is an integration problem: a new team, a new city, and the old company’s habits. I have led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise and taken the company I founded through a public-company merger. ##### Do we need to meet in person in Charlotte? No. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams in Charlotte, or only individuals? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. It often starts with one executive and widens to the team. ##### Do you facilitate executive offsites in Charlotte? Yes: executive offsites, annual and quarterly strategic planning sessions, and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator, in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### Do you coach new CEOs and leaders stepping into a bigger seat? Yes, and it is some of the most valuable work: a first-time CEO, a new COO, or a leader promoted into a seat their peers used to hold. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a company in a turnaround. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - Charlotte (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## New York City https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/ New York City · New York ### Executive coach in New York City. Talk with Ken about New York City [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I am an executive coach for CEOs, founders and senior executives in New York City, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; VP at Unqork and Chief Product Officer at Coursedog, two New York companies; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. I lived on Long Island for over three years, and my wife is a lifelong New Yorker who worked in the city before we moved to Georgia. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. New York City companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a New York City company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in New York City for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in NYC: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for New York City companies: transformation leadership, board counsel, integration after an acquisition, and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for NYC executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in New York City. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside New York’s financial institutions and headquarters The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, the banks and asset managers around them, and the many Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city. Change inside a large, regulated enterprise is its own seat: I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Finance and private equity leaders New York City is the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt, and it leads in hedge fund management and private equity. Executive coaching for leaders in banking, asset management, private equity and fintech. As a VP at Unqork, a New York company, I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street. New York City #### What is different about leading a company in New York City. New York City is the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are the world’s two largest stock exchanges, and the city leads in hedge fund management, private equity and the volume of mergers and acquisitions. Leadership here runs on the market’s clock: the board, the investors and the next deal set the pace as much as the plan does. I worked inside that world as a VP at Unqork, a New York company whose no-code platform serves finance, insurance and government, and led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and I took the company I founded to a Nasdaq IPO. The other New York is Silicon Alley, the technology companies centered on the Flatiron district, from fintech to AI. As Chief Product Officer at Coursedog, another New York company, we rebuilt product and engineering in nine months, ARR grew from $4M to $10M, and the company was acquired by JMI Equity for $80M. When we talk about your New York company, the seats are the ones I have held. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in New York City: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in New York City? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other NYC executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP, VP, Chief Product Officer and COO, two of them at New York companies. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, and the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in New York City? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Which New York City leaders do you coach? Executives in finance, private equity and fintech, leaders at technology and venture-backed companies, CEOs and founders, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### What is different about leading a company in New York City? The markets and the pace. New York is the largest global center for trading public equity and debt, so a lot of leadership runs on an investor’s clock, and Silicon Alley adds venture-backed companies scaling fast. The section above walks through both and the seats I held at two New York companies. ##### Do you coach Wall Street, finance and private equity executives? Yes. The coaching is about the seat you hold: the board, the investors, the risk function, the peers and the team. As a VP at Unqork, a New York company, I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street, and a decade as an investor and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits means I know how a board reads the plan. ##### Do you coach technology and startup leaders in New York? Yes: founders, CEOs and product and engineering leaders at venture-backed companies. As Chief Product Officer at Coursedog, a New York company, we rebuilt product and engineering in nine months and the company was acquired by JMI Equity for $80M. See [coaching for startup CEOs](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach). ##### Can executive coaching help me prepare for a promotion or a bigger seat? Yes, and it is some of the most valuable work: a first-time CEO, a new COO, or a leader promoted into a seat their peers used to hold. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a company in a turnaround. ##### Is executive coaching confidential? Yes. If your company is funding the engagement, it will know the engagement is happening and may want to agree the goals up front, but what is said in a session stays in the session. ##### Do we need to meet in person in New York City? No. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams in NYC, or only individuals? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. It often starts with one executive and widens to the team. ##### Do you facilitate executive offsites in New York City? Yes: executive offsites, annual and quarterly strategic planning sessions, and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator, in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - New York City (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## San Francisco https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/ San Francisco · Bay Area ### Executive coaching in San Francisco. Talk with Ken about San Francisco [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I am an executive coach for CEOs, founders and senior executives in San Francisco and the Bay Area, and I held the seats before I coached them: EVP at New Relic, a San Francisco company, while it grew from $300M to $500M; founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; founder and CEO of an AI company that shipped a generative AI product Fortune 500 teams use; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. For my years at New Relic I flew from Atlanta to San Francisco every week, Sunday to Friday, to work with the team at its Spear Street headquarters. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. San Francisco and Bay Area companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a San Francisco company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in San Francisco for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in San Francisco and the Bay Area: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for San Francisco companies: scaling leadership, AI strategy, board counsel, and work with private equity and venture portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Bay Area executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in San Francisco. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside San Francisco’s technology companies Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb and Databricks, and the AI companies founded here or moved here, OpenAI and Anthropic among them. Change inside a company growing that fast is its own seat; I held it as EVP at New Relic. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Leaders taking a company through AI AI companies have been founded in San Francisco or moved here for its talent and its venture capital, and every board now wants an AI answer. I founded and ran an AI company as CEO and shipped a generative AI product that Fortune 500 teams use. See [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). San Francisco #### What is different about leading a company in San Francisco. San Francisco runs on technology. Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb and Databricks are headquartered here, and a new wave of AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic among them, were founded in the city or moved here for its talent pool and its proximity to venture capital. I was EVP at New Relic, a San Francisco company, while it grew from $300M to $500M: I led a 450-person organization through significant change and a new-product push worth $50M+ in incremental ARR, and presented to a board that included partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona. The city has been here before. Startups invigorated its economy in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s; in that boom I founded an internet infrastructure company, took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq IPO, and through a merger with MicronPC it became Web.com. Since then I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, was Chief Product Officer at Coursedog through an $80M exit, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your San Francisco company, the seats are the ones I have held. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in San Francisco: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in San Francisco? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### What makes your coaching different from other SF executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP at New Relic, a San Francisco company, Chief Product Officer and COO. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, and the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in San Francisco? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Which San Francisco and Bay Area leaders do you coach? Founders and CEOs of venture-backed companies, executives inside technology companies scaling fast, leaders taking a company through AI, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### How does executive coaching help with San Francisco’s tech leadership challenges? Most of them are scaling problems: an organization that doubles before its leaders do, a board that wants growth and margin at once, and leaders promoted into seats nobody has held at this size. I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M, so the coaching starts from the seat, not a framework. ##### Do you coach startup founders and venture-backed CEOs? Yes. I founded the company that became Web.com and took it public, spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. See [coaching for startup CEOs](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach). ##### Do you coach leaders through AI transformation? Yes. I founded and ran an AI company as CEO and shipped a generative AI product that Fortune 500 teams use. The coaching is the leadership side: where AI pays in your business, who owns it, and how the team changes. See [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). ##### Do you coach leaders on burnout and the pace of a Bay Area company? Yes, and I have lived that pace. At New Relic I flew from Atlanta to San Francisco every week, Sunday to Friday, and logged 200,000 miles a year between customer advisory boards and global keynotes. It is a lot of fun until you do it. The coaching covers the balance around the work too: family, health and the things that keep you whole, so you show up as your best self in the boardroom and at the dinner table. ##### Is executive coaching confidential? Yes. If your company is funding the engagement, it will know the engagement is happening and may want to agree the goals up front, but what is said in a session stays in the session. ##### Do we need to meet in person in San Francisco? No. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams in the Bay Area, or only individuals? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. It often starts with one executive and widens to the team. ##### Do you facilitate executive offsites in San Francisco? Yes: executive offsites, annual and quarterly strategic planning sessions, and leadership team working sessions, run by an operator, in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - San Francisco (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Miami https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/ Miami · South Florida ### Executive coaching in Miami. Talk with Ken about Miami [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I am an executive coach for CEOs, founders and senior executives in Miami and South Florida, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M, leading 450 people across four countries; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. I lived in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton before moving to Atlanta to start the company that became Web.com. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Miami and South Florida companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a Miami company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Miami for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Miami and South Florida: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Miami companies: transformation leadership, integration after a relocation or an acquisition, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for South Florida executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Miami. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Miami’s headquarters and regional offices Carnival, Lennar and Norwegian Cruise Line are headquartered in the Miami area, and more than 1,400 multinational firms are located here, many running their Latin American operations from the city. Leading across countries is its own seat: at New Relic I led 450 people across four countries. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Leaders of companies that just moved here Citadel and Citadel Securities moved their headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022. A relocated headquarters is a leadership problem before it is a real estate one: a new team, a new city and the old company’s habits. I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. Miami #### What is different about leading a company in Miami. Miami has been called the Gateway to Latin America. It is a major center of commerce and finance with a strong international business community: more than 1,400 multinational firms are located here, many of them running their Latin American operations from the city, and in 2022 Citadel and Citadel Securities moved their headquarters here from Chicago. That is leadership across borders and through a move: a team spread over several countries, and a headquarters that brought its old habits to a new city. At New Relic I was EVP while it grew from $300M to $500M and led 450 people across four countries, and I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. Florida is where I started. Convinced that every business was going to run on the internet, I founded my first company, WIPC.NET, in Deerfield Beach: a $5,000 server rented for close to $5,000 a month, and by the second month we were doing more than $25,000 a month. The limit was the pipe: the backbone to the whole South Florida market was one T3, a 45-megabit connection to the internet, so I moved to Atlanta, where the fiber was, founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, and took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq IPO. Ironically, WIPC.NET was acquired by MicronPC, the same company Interland later merged with. When we talk about your Miami company, the seats are the ones I have held. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in Miami: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Miami? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other Miami executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP at New Relic across four countries, and COO. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, and the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Miami? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Is an executive coach worth it? It is when there is a real problem on your desk and a leader willing to change how they work. The discovery call is where we find out, and if coaching is not the answer, I will tell you. ##### Which Miami and South Florida leaders do you coach? Executives at Miami headquarters and at the regional offices of multinational firms, leaders running teams across Latin America or several countries, CEOs and founders, leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### What is different about leading a company in Miami? The borders and the moves. Miami has been called the Gateway to Latin America, many multinationals run their Latin American operations from the city, and headquarters keep moving here. The section above walks through both and the seats I held that map to them. ##### Do you coach leaders who run teams across Latin America or several countries? Yes. At New Relic I led 450 people across four countries. The coaching is about the seat: decision rights across time zones, leaders you see twice a year, and a strategy that has to land the same way in every country. ##### Do you coach leaders through a headquarters move to Miami? Yes. A relocated headquarters is a transformation with a new org chart and an old history: a new team, a new city and the old company’s habits. I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. ##### Do you coach founders and venture-backed CEOs? Yes. I founded the company that became Web.com and took it public, spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. See [coaching for startup CEOs](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach). ##### Is executive coaching confidential? Yes. If your company is funding the engagement, it will know the engagement is happening and may want to agree the goals up front, but what is said in a session stays in the session. ##### Do we need to meet in person in Miami? No. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams and run offsites in South Florida? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. Executive offsites and strategic planning sessions run in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - Miami (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Chicago https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/ Chicago · Illinois ### Executive coach in Chicago. Talk with Ken about Chicago [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I am an executive coach for CEOs, founders and senior executives in Chicago, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; VP at Cox Automotive through a cloud and DevOps transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Chicago companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a Chicago company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Chicago for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Chicago: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Chicago companies: transformation leadership inside large enterprises, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Chicago executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Chicago. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Chicago’s Fortune 500 Chicago and its suburbs are home to 35 Fortune 500 companies, second only to New York City: McDonald’s, United Airlines, Kraft Heinz, Motorola Solutions and Exelon among them. Change inside a large enterprise is its own seat: I led transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Leaders in finance and trading Chicago has the largest and most diverse finance derivatives market in the world, home to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Executive coaching for leaders in trading, banking and financial services. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street. Chicago #### What is different about leading a company in Chicago. Chicago runs on large enterprises. The city and its suburbs are home to 35 Fortune 500 companies, second only to New York City, among them McDonald’s, United Airlines, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Motorola Solutions, Exelon and Archer Daniels Midland, and the metro’s economy is the third largest in the country. Leadership inside companies that size is its own discipline: a long history, a big org chart, and change that has to move through both. I led a cloud and DevOps transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive, and as EVP at New Relic I sold to 15,000-plus enterprise accounts and led customer advisory boards with Disney and Capital One in the room. Chicago also has the largest and most diverse finance derivatives market in the world, with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Board Options Exchange. I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street as a VP at Unqork, and I took the company I founded to 650 people and a Nasdaq IPO as Web.com. Since then I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your Chicago company, the seats are the ones I have held. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in Chicago: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Chicago? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other Chicago executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP, VP inside an 80-year-old enterprise, and COO. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, and the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3. ##### How much does executive coaching cost in Chicago? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Is executive coaching worth it? It is when there is a real problem on your desk and a leader willing to change how they work. The discovery call is where we find out, and if coaching is not the answer, I will tell you. ##### What industries in Chicago do you coach? Leaders inside large enterprises and the Fortune 500, finance, trading and financial services, technology and software companies, and PE- and VC-backed companies: CEOs and founders, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### What are the signs a leader could benefit from coaching? A seat that got bigger faster than the leader did, a team that keeps stalling decisions, a board or a CEO asking for something the leader has not done before, or a transformation that was announced and is not holding. ##### Do you coach executives inside Chicago’s large enterprises? Yes. Change inside a large enterprise is its own seat: the history, the org chart and the pace all push back. I led a cloud and DevOps transformation inside an 80-year-old enterprise at Cox Automotive, and at New Relic I worked with 15,000-plus enterprise accounts. ##### Do you coach leaders in finance and trading? Yes. The coaching is about the seat you hold: the board, the regulators’ pace, the risk function, the peers and the team. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street, so I know how change moves inside a regulated firm. ##### Do you coach founders and venture-backed CEOs? Yes. I founded the company that became Web.com and took it public, spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. See [coaching for startup CEOs](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach). ##### Is executive coaching confidential? Yes. If your company is funding the engagement, it will know the engagement is happening and may want to agree the goals up front, but what is said in a session stays in the session. ##### Do you work with Chicago clients remotely or in person? Both. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams and run offsites in Chicago? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. Executive offsites and strategic planning sessions run in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - Chicago (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Boston https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/ Boston · Massachusetts ### Executive coaching in Boston. Talk with Ken about Boston [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I am an executive coach for CEOs, founders and senior executives in Boston, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; VP at Unqork, where I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Boston companies get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a Boston company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Boston for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Boston: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Boston companies: transformation leadership, a stalled transformation restarted, board counsel and work with private equity and venture portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Boston executives built around the company you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Boston. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Executives inside Boston’s financial institutions Fidelity Investments helped make Boston one of the top financial centers in the country, and State Street, one of the world’s largest asset managers and custodians, is headquartered here. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### Founders and venture-backed CEOs Greater Boston and the Route 128 corridor remain a major center for venture capital, with nearly 5,000 startup companies. I founded the company that became Web.com and took it to a Nasdaq IPO, and spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm. See [coaching for startup CEOs](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach). Boston #### What is different about leading a company in Boston. Boston is one of the top financial centers in the country. Boston-based Fidelity Investments helped popularize the mutual fund, and State Street, headquartered here, is one of the world’s largest asset managers and custodians. Change inside institutions like those moves at the pace of the regulators and the risk function as much as the plan. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street, and as EVP at New Relic, while it grew from $300M to $500M, I sold to 15,000-plus enterprise accounts. Boston is also one of the largest biotechnology hubs in the world, rated the top life sciences cluster in the country by the Milken Institute, and Greater Boston and the Route 128 corridor remain a major center for venture capital, with nearly 5,000 startup companies; General Electric moved its headquarters to the Seaport District. I founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq IPO, spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your Boston company, the seats are the ones I have held. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in Boston: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose the right executive coach in Boston? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the company, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other Boston executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP, VP and COO. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, and the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3. ##### What is the cost of executive coaching in Boston? Most of my clients are funded by their company. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Is executive coaching worth it? It is when there is a real problem on your desk and a leader willing to change how they work. The discovery call is where we find out, and if coaching is not the answer, I will tell you. ##### Which Boston leaders do you coach? Executives inside financial institutions, leaders at technology and life sciences companies scaling fast, founders and CEOs of venture-backed companies, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### What is different about leading a company in Boston? Money and science. Boston is one of the top financial centers in the country and one of the largest biotechnology hubs in the world, with a deep venture market around both. The section above walks through both and the seats I held that map to them. ##### Can executive coaching help leaders in healthcare and finance? Yes. The coaching is about the seat you hold: the board, the regulators’ pace, the risk function, the peers and the team. As a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street, and at New Relic I led the FedRAMP work that protected $40M of public-sector revenue. ##### Our transformation has stalled. Can a coach help? Yes, if the leaders own the restart. Most stalled transformations stall on decision rights and follow-through, not on the plan. I wrote up [how to restart a stalled transformation](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation). ##### Do you coach founders and venture-backed CEOs? Yes. I founded the company that became Web.com and took it public, spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. See [coaching for startup CEOs](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach). ##### Is executive coaching confidential? Yes. If your company is funding the engagement, it will know the engagement is happening and may want to agree the goals up front, but what is said in a session stays in the session. ##### Do you work with Boston clients remotely or in person? Both. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams and run offsites in Boston? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. Executive offsites and strategic planning sessions run in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - [Washington, DC](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/) (travel, remote) - Boston (travel, remote) ## Washington, DC https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/washington-dc/ Washington, DC · Northern Virginia · Maryland ### Executive coaching in Washington, DC. Talk with Ken about Washington, DC [or book a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) I am an executive coach for CEOs, founders and senior executives in Washington, DC, and I held the seats before I coached them: founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com, taken to a Nasdaq IPO; EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M; VP at Unqork; COO in a VC-backed turnaround. I am CEC and ICF certified, with a BS in Psychology and a master’s in CMHC underway. I have worked with the federal government from the inside of two companies: I carried FedRAMP through at New Relic and Unqork, and met agency CTOs across the government. My practice runs nationally: standing coaching calls on video with leaders everywhere, and on-site work, offsites, working sessions and consulting, anywhere in the country when the engagement books time for it. Washington organizations get the same terms and the same operator. The work #### Three ways to work with a Washington, DC company. ##### Executive coaching, on a standing cadence A standing cadence on video, weekly, every other week or monthly, with access between calls, on the same terms as all my [executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): a practical, candid thought partner who has held the seat you sit in. Executive coaching in Washington, DC for CEOs, founders and senior executives, and leadership team coaching when the team is the unit. ##### Offsites, in your room Executive offsites, strategic planning sessions, retreats and leadership alignment workshops, run by an operator, not a moderator. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. Executive offsite facilitation in Washington, DC: strategic planning sessions, leadership retreats and executive team alignment, in your room or the venue your team chooses. ##### Consulting, on your site Operational work happens where the work is: your floor, your standups, your board meeting. From [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) to [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting), on site when the engagement calls for it. Strategy consulting for Washington organizations: transformation leadership, compliance-first growth for companies selling to government, board counsel and work with private equity portfolio companies. What you get #### What you get from executive coaching. Executive coaching is leadership development built around the seat you are in, not a course. Here is what an engagement delivers, as leadership development for Washington executives built around the organization you actually run. ##### Success, defined up front Before the work starts we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. ##### A thinking partner who has held the seat Standing calls weekly, every other week or monthly, in person or on video, and access between calls, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. ##### A sharper view of your own patterns Blind spots named early, and a clear view of how you lead under pressure. We can work on the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. ##### Executive presence and stakeholder management Presence with a board, investors, PE operating partners and the peers who wanted your job, and a plan for the transition into a bigger seat before it arrives. ##### Progress on the problems that do not fit on a slide The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. The difficult conversation you have been putting off. Accountability that does not backfire. Alignment across a leadership team. ##### Habits that outlast the coaching The right formula, the right tactics, and repeatable actions: the rhythm that keeps the change alive after we finish. Insight alone does not survive a real quarter. Your company can fund it. Most of my clients are funded by their company as leadership or professional development, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. Who I work with #### Who I work with in Washington, DC. I have sat on every side of the table, so I understand how the whole organization moves, not just the seat you are in. ##### Technology founders and CEOs CEO coaching for founders and first-time CEOs: scaling past the team you started with, investor expectations, and the move from founder-led to a real leadership team. I have made that move myself, and I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M. ##### Leaders of PE- and VC-backed companies A sponsor with a playbook and a clock, and a board that wants the plan delivered. I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm, and I was COO in a VC-backed turnaround. ##### Leaders inside federal agencies and government contractors Washington hosts the headquarters of the federal government, and any cloud service that holds federal data must be FedRAMP authorized. I worked closely with the FedRAMP program office and carried FedRAMP through at New Relic and Unqork; at New Relic that work protected $40M of public-sector revenue. ##### Leadership teams Leadership team coaching: the team as a unit, not only its leader. Executive team alignment, clear decision rights, and an offsite that turns into follow-through. More on [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). ##### COOs, presidents and product leaders The second in command, whether the title is chief operating officer or president, and the most senior product leader. I have held the COO seat and the product seat. More on [coaching for COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and [coaching for Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). ##### CEOs of companies that sell to government Selling to the federal government is its own seat: compliance comes before revenue, and the agency CTO wants to meet the person accountable. I carried FedRAMP through at two companies and met those CTOs myself. Washington, DC #### What is different about leading a company in Washington, DC. Washington runs on the federal government. The city hosts the headquarters of the federal government, and FedRAMP, the government-wide program for the security assessment and authorization of cloud products, decides which cloud services may hold federal data. I worked closely with the FedRAMP program office and drove FedRAMP authorization at both New Relic and Unqork; at New Relic that work protected $40M of public-sector revenue. My New Relic organization included a large government business, and I made many trips to the Social Security Administration and other agencies to meet their CTOs. Washington is also home to many of the nation’s largest industry associations, non-profit organizations and think tanks, centered on and around K Street, and to the global headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I founded Interland, the company that became Web.com, and took it to 650 people and a Nasdaq IPO; as a VP at Unqork I led implementations for Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street; I spent a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm and board member across 35 deals and 18 exits, and sat in the COO seat of a VC-backed turnaround. When we talk about your Washington organization, the seats are the ones I have held. Ken Gavranovic. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP, VP, COO; executive coach since 2019. Nasdaq, IPO day for the company I founded, the one that became Web.com. Questions #### Executive coaching in Washington, DC: the questions people actually ask. ##### How do I choose an executive coach in Washington, DC? Start with which seat the coach has held and what happened to the organization, then the credentials, then how the cadence works week to week. I wrote up [six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach), including me. ##### How is your coaching different from other Washington, DC executive coaches? I held the seats before I coached them: founder and public-company CEO, EVP, VP and COO, and I carried FedRAMP through at two companies. You work with me directly for the whole engagement, not a matched associate. I am CEC and ICF certified, a member of the APA, ACA and LPCA, and the author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3. ##### How much does executive coaching typically cost in DC? Most of my clients are funded by their organization. The price depends on cadence, length and how much of the work is on site; you get a scope and a number on the discovery call. What the market charges is in my [guide to executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost). ##### Is executive coaching worth it? It is when there is a real problem on your desk and a leader willing to change how they work. The discovery call is where we find out, and if coaching is not the answer, I will tell you. ##### Do you work with government agencies and contractors? Yes. I have worked with the federal government from the inside of two companies: I drove FedRAMP authorization at New Relic and Unqork, working closely with the FedRAMP program office, and I made many trips to the Social Security Administration and other agencies to meet their CTOs. ##### Which industries in DC do you coach? Government contractors and companies selling to government, technology and software companies, associations and mission-driven organizations, finance, and PE- and VC-backed companies: CEOs and founders, COOs, presidents and product leaders, and whole leadership teams. ##### What is different about leading in Washington? The customer is often the government. Compliance comes before revenue, the buyer answers to a mission and a budget, and the organizations around the city, associations, think tanks and international institutions, run on boards and members as much as on markets. ##### Can executive coaching help me through a transition into a bigger seat? Yes, and it is some of the most valuable work: a first-time CEO, a new COO, or a leader promoted into a seat their peers used to hold. I have made those transitions myself, from founder to public-company CEO and into the COO seat of a company in a turnaround. ##### Do you coach CEOs of companies that sell to government? Yes. Selling to the federal government is its own seat: compliance before revenue, long cycles, and an agency CTO who wants to meet the person accountable. At New Relic that FedRAMP work protected $40M of public-sector revenue. ##### Is executive coaching confidential? Yes. If your organization is funding the engagement, it will know the engagement is happening and may want to agree the goals up front, but what is said in a session stays in the session. ##### Do you work with Washington clients remotely or in person? Both. Most of my clients work with me on video on a standing cadence, with access between calls. On-site work, an offsite, a strategic planning session or a working session with your team, happens where your team is, in Washington, Northern Virginia, Maryland or anywhere in the country, when the engagement books time for it. ##### Do you coach leadership teams and run offsites in Washington, DC? Both. Leadership team coaching treats the team as the unit: decision rights, how the team disagrees, and the follow-through after an offsite. Executive offsites and strategic planning sessions run in your room or the venue your team chooses. See [facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) for how the room works. ##### How do we start? The same way every engagement starts: a discovery call. Forty-five minutes on video, the real problem on your desk, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. Keep reading - [How to choose an executive coach: six questions to ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach) - [How much does executive coaching cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost) - [How to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite) Start here #### Start with the real problem. Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the real problem on your desk and you will leave with a sharper version of it, and a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it. - Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time. - Forty-five minutes, on video. - A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not. [Schedule a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Or reach me directly: (629) 304-8755 ken@kengavranovic.com ✓ #### Thanks. Your note's on its way. Ken will get back to you personally. If it's time-sensitive, feel free to grab a slot above. Where I work in person #### In person, or remote. City by city. Executive coaching across a table, offsites in your room, consulting on your site. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia; remote everywhere. - [Alpharetta](https://kengavranovic.com/alpharetta) (home base) - [Atlanta](https://kengavranovic.com/atlanta) (home market) - [Nashville](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/nashville/) (travel, remote) - [Dallas](https://kengavranovic.com/dallas) (travel, remote) - [Austin](https://kengavranovic.com/austin) (travel, remote) - [Charlotte](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/charlotte/) (travel, remote) - [New York City](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/new-york-city/) (travel, remote) - [San Francisco](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/san-francisco/) (travel, remote) - [Chicago](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/chicago/) (travel, remote) - [Miami](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/miami/) (travel, remote) - Washington, DC (travel, remote) - [Boston](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching/boston/) (travel, remote) ## Media https://kengavranovic.com/media About Ken ### Selected Podcasts, Interviews and Writing Ken Gavranovic has been interviewed on CNN, has written for the Forbes Coaches Council and CEOWORLD, contributes to Thinkers50, and has been a guest on Software Engineering Daily and the GOTO Book Club. He has spent twenty-five years running and rebuilding companies, and the shows that book him want the operator’s version rather than the theory. A selection is below: 25+ appearances, each with a link to the source. Interested in having Ken on a podcast or at an event? [Get in touch](https://kengavranovic.com/booking). #### Podcast interviews Conversations about building companies, leading through change, and what AI actually does to a P&L. Twenty-two here, newest first. - Podcast · Software Engineering Daily [Blameless with Ken Gavranovic](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/blameless-with-ken-gavranovic/) 14 September 2023 - Podcast · Prodity: Product by Design [Finding Product-Market Fit by Solving Actual Problems](https://share.transistor.fm/s/ee4a9e4f) 1 August 2026 - Podcast · The Learn-It-All Podcast [Stop Ignoring These 7 Leadership Mistakes That Can Kill Your Startup](https://www.learnit.com/podcast) 25 September 2025 - Podcast · Future Tech and Foresight [AI, Work, and the End of Repetition](https://futuretechandforesight.com/podcast/ai-work-and-the-end-of-repetition/) 9 September 2025 - Podcast · Paul Higgins Podcast [AI Agents Are the New Hires](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/612-ai-agents-are-the-new-hires-with-ken-gavranovic/id1230108055?i=1000709967617) 27 May 2025 - Podcast · Wild Business Growth [Growing Your Business toward IPO](https://maxpodcasting.com/ken-gavranovic/) 14 May 2025 - Podcast · The Reminger Report [AI and Organizational Change](https://theremingerreportpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1745286/episodes/16985358-ai-and-organizational-change) 17 April 2025 - Podcast · NinjaCat, What Gets Measured [How To Achieve Measurable Success with AI](https://www.ninjacat.io/blog/wgm-podcast-how-to-achieve-measurable-success-with-ai) 11 March 2025 - Podcast · Embracing Digital Transformation [Turning Organizational Resistance into Opportunity](https://embracingdigital.org/en/episodes/edt-247/) 5 March 2025 - Podcast · The Growth and Scaling Podcast [The Smart Way to Solve Business Problems](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-469-ken-gavranovic-the-smart-way-to-solve-business/id1655873332?i=1000692303045) 14 February 2025 - Podcast · The Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur [Transformative Growth and Overall Wellbeing](https://www.thewantrepreneurshow.com/ken-gavranovic/) 29 January 2025 - Podcast · The Tech Chef [Navigating Digital Transformation](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/navigating-digital-transformation-with-ken-gavranovic/id1517448332?i=1000685349945) 21 January 2025 - Podcast · The Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur [The People-First Approach to Business Growth](https://www.thewantrepreneurshow.com/blog/the-people-first-approach-to-business-growth-with-product-genius-ceo-ken-gavranovic/) 19 November 2024 - Podcast · The Jeff Bullas Show [He Built a $200M Empire Using AI](https://www.jeffbullas.com/podcasts/) 2025 - Podcast · That Tech Pod [Think Like a Genius: the Human Side of AI, Ethics and Innovation](https://thattechpod.substack.com/p/think-like-a-genius-the-human-side) 2025 - Podcast · Startup Savant [Building a Business That Scales](https://startupsavant.com/startup-savant-podcast/episodes/ken-gavranovic) 13 December 2023 - Podcast · The WealthAbility Show [A Bulletproof Business, with Tom Wheelwright](https://www.wealthability.com/podcast/episode-149-a-bulletproof-business-tom-wheelwright-ken-gavranovic/) 2023 - Podcast · School for Startups Radio [In conversation with Jim Beach](https://schoolforstartupsradio.com/school_joy/) 16 August 2023 - Interview · Authority Magazine [5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business](https://medium.com/authority-magazine/ken-gavranovic-of-blameless-on-5-things-you-need-to-know-to-successfully-scale-your-business-32912f0277a8) 13 July 2023 - Interview · TFiR [With No-Code, Anyone Can Build Business Applications](https://tfir.io/with-no-code-anyone-can-build-business-applications-ken-gavranovic-unqork/) 9 September 2021 - Podcast · Code Story [The Future of the SDLC: No-Code Architecture](https://kengavranovic.com/2021/08/21/code-story-podcast-interview/) 11 August 2021 - Interview · Noomii [Interview with Ken Gavranovic](https://www.noomii.com/users/ken-gavranovic_icf_cec) 2026 #### Video and conference talks - Video · GOTO Book Club [Architecting For Scale, with Lee Atchison](https://gotopia.tech/episodes/147/architecting-for-scale) 2022, re-run 2023 - Television · CNN [Ken Gavranovic interviewed on CNN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_RAxpycI5g) - Keynote · OOP Conference, Munich [What Separates Successful, Real Digital Projects from ‘Digital Theatre’?](https://www.oop-konferenz.de/oop2019/programm/keynotes.html) 2019 #### Published writing Bylines on leadership, transformation and measurement. - Writing · Forbes Coaches Council [Council contributor, articles by Ken Gavranovic](https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/people/kengavranovic/) - Writing · CEOWORLD Magazine [Articles by Ken Gavranovic](https://ceoworld.biz/author/ken-gavranovic/) - Writing · diginomica [Articles by Ken Gavranovic](https://diginomica.com/author/ken-gavranovic) - Writing · New Relic [Posts by Ken Gavranovic](https://newrelic.com/blog/authors/ken-gavranovic) - Writing · The European Business Review [Excerpted from Business Breakthrough 3.0, with Lee Atchison](https://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/) #### Press and profiles - Press · DevOps.com [New Relic Extends Observability Reach and Scope, quoted as SVP of products](https://devops.com/new-relic-extends-observability-reach-and-scope/) 2019 - Profile · GOTO Conferences [Expert profile and talks](https://gotopia.tech/experts/1111/ken-gavranovic) - Profile · Coruzant Technologies [Executive profile](https://coruzant.com/profiles/ken-gavranovic/) Each row here is verifiable: outlet, title, date, and a link that works. Appearances without a public link are not listed. In the rooms that matter #### From the trading floor to the main stage. Nasdaq Ringing the bell: taking the company he founded public. Cox Auto Launching the cloud move with AWS's Andy Jassy. New Relic Keynoting FutureStack. Gartner On stage at the IT Symposium. Workshop Leading a leadership & growth session. Recognition & voice #### A trusted perspective, in the boardroom and the press. Author of the Amazon best seller Business Breakthrough 3.0, with 100+ published articles, international keynotes, and features across leading outlets. Forbes CNN CNBC Wired WSJ TechCrunch #### Verified business Actionable Growth Strategies, LLC is a [BBB Accredited Business](https://www.bbb.org/us/ga/alpharetta/profile/executive-coaching/actionable-growth-strategies-llc-0443-91849997) with an A+ rating, accredited since August 2026. #### If your organization is navigating a pivotal moment, let's talk. A focused, no-pressure conversation to help you move forward with clarity, and fewer unnecessary missteps. [Book a consultation](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) ken@kengavranovic.com (629) 304-8755 ## Book Time https://kengavranovic.com/booking Let's set up some time ### A focused, no-pressure conversation about where you're headed. Whether you're navigating change, complexity, or a pivotal moment, this is a chance to get clarity and explore how Ken can support your goals. No slides, no pitch. 1 Tell Ken what's on your mind. The challenge, the decision, or the transition you're facing. 2 Get a grounded perspective. Shaped by decades in the seat: founder, CEO, operator, and investor. 3 Leave with a clear next step. Whether or not we end up working together. Discovery call 45 minutes · Video call · No cost · Confidential #### What to expect in the 45 minutes It’s 45 minutes and it’s free. This is a working conversation, not a pitch. Come with the situation that’s actually on your mind: a transition, a team that’s stuck, a decision with no clean answer, an AI question with a budget attached. I’ll ask more than I talk. You’ll leave with a sharper read on the problem and at least one thing worth doing next week, whether or not we ever work together. If the work calls for coaching, a session, or an advisory engagement, I’ll say so plainly and tell you what that looks like. If I’m not the right person, I’ll say that too, and point you somewhere better. Booking on behalf of your executive? Book the slot in their name and add a line about what they want from it; I will send a short brief before the call. Prefer email? ken@kengavranovic.com ## Insights https://kengavranovic.com/insights/ Insights ### Field notes on leadership & change. Essays on AI, accountability, transformation, product-led growth, high-performing teams, and operating with clarity through change. Featured · October 11, 2026 #### First 90 Days as a New Executive: What to Do and What Not To Four moves that worked, five mistakes I watch new leaders make, what changes when a sponsor owns the company, and the questions people ask in their first week. Read the essay → September 23, 2026 #### How to Find the Best Chief Product Officer Coach: 7 Tests The pressures on the product seat, what the evidence on coaching supports, and seven tests that show in a single call whether a coach can do the work. September 23, 2026 #### How to Find the Best COO Coach: Seven Tests for One Call Why the COO seat is hard to learn on the job, what coaching research says it can and cannot fix, and seven tests to run in one call. September 23, 2026 #### How to Find the Best Executive Coach for General Managers What the first P&L does to a leader by the numbers, what the research says coaching can and cannot change, what leaders who have paid for coaching say, and seven tests for one call. September 23, 2026 #### How to Find the Best IT Director Coach: Seven Tests What the IT director seat does to the people in it by the numbers, what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. September 23, 2026 #### How to Find the Best VP of Engineering Coach: Seven Tests The executive-table jobs the VP of Engineering seat adds, which outcomes coaching moves and which it does not, and seven one-call tests you can put to any coach. September 23, 2026 #### How to Find the Best B2B SaaS Coach: Seven Tests for CEOs What running a subscription software company does to a founder by the numbers, what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. September 23, 2026 #### How to Find the Best Engineering Leadership Coach: Seven Tests What the director of engineering seat does to the people in it, what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. September 23, 2026 #### How to Pick the Best Startup CEO Coach: Seven Tests What the seat does to a founder by the numbers, what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. September 19, 2026 #### 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. September 19, 2026 #### Strategic Planning Offsite Agenda: Pre-Work, Two Days, Template A two-day strategy offsite agenda for a leadership team: the pre-work, three to five decisions agreed first, who is in the room, and a template. September 17, 2026 #### How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost in 2026? Rates by Level, Who Pays, and How I Price The published ranges by level and by structure, the ICF survey behind them, the five things that move the number, who pays, and how I price my own engagements. Read → September 6, 2026 #### Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For. The pattern behind most stalled transformations, one that failed three times before one leader fixed it, and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days. September 6, 2026 #### How to Run an Executive Offsite That Actually Produces Decisions The Decision Contract: three to five decisions agreed in writing before the agenda exists, a decision log read back before the room empties, and thirty days of follow-through. Read → September 3, 2026 #### How to Choose an Executive Coach: The Six Questions to Ask The six questions to ask any executive coach, what each one is really testing, and what strong answers sound like. Read → September 3, 2026 #### The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants Five board questions on AI, the answer that fails and the answer that holds, and two workloads in production in ninety days. Read → September 3, 2026 #### Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty The Reversibility Ledger: what you cannot take back, what you will know and when, and the rule that chooses between them. Read → June 16, 2026 #### Does Accountability Improve Performance? What the 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. Read → March 17, 2026 #### Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI Citrini and Citadel reach opposite conclusions on AI. Both miss the point, and the peer-reviewed neuroscience for why original human thought may be a permanent ceiling AI cannot reach. Read → June 17, 2025 #### Why Integration Beats Growth Speed A Proven Approach That Goes Against Conventional Scaling Wisdom Let me share something I’ve learned the hard way: Despite what most advisors... Read → June 17, 2025 #### Win the AI Game: Your Practical Guide to Mastering Gen AI Now Look, let’s cut to the chase. AI is no longer coming. It’s here, radically transforming how we work. And make no mistake, this isn’t... Read → April 11, 2025 #### The Human-AI Synergy: Redefining Process Excellence in the Digital Age Beyond the AI Hype: Transforming Core Operations with Human-AI Collaboration In my work advising Fortune 500 corporations and private equity... Read → November 19, 2024 #### Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It Have you ever felt like you’re driving a high-performance car, but someone else is holding the steering wheel? You’re heading in the right direction,... Read → October 27, 2024 #### M&A Success Is No Longer the Exception: It’s the Rule Why Bolt-On Acquisitions Are Thriving in Today’s Business Environment When it comes to M&A, the game has changed. Years ago, most mergers... Read → October 16, 2024 #### AI Transformation Is a People Problem, Not a Tech One How AI is Transforming Businesses: A People, Process, and Technology Revolution Anyone remember all the failed public cloud adoptions and digital... Read → June 4, 2024 #### Why “We’re a Family” Backfires at Work In the competitive world of business, the idea of treating your company as a family has gained traction, especially among tech giants. However, as Air… Read → May 20, 2024 #### How AI Creates Value in PE Portfolio Companies Introduction In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, private equity (PE) portfolio companies face a myriad of challenges, including the impera… Read → May 20, 2024 #### How High-Performing Teams Actually Work "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." - African Proverb Introduction In today's fast-paced business environment, the… Read → May 20, 2024 #### Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance In my extensive work with product and engineering teams across various industries, I've consistently observed common challenges that hinder optimal pe… Read → May 20, 2024 #### Making Acquisitions Work: Lessons from Web.com In today's dynamic business landscape, acquisitions have become a powerful tool for companies seeking transformation, growth, and competitive advantag… Read → April 18, 2024 #### Are You a Manager or a Leader? Ken Gavranovic at Thinkers50: global meeting of the world top business thinkers Subir Chowdhury Ken Gavranovic By Ken Gavranovic, with ins… Read → February 7, 2024 #### Leadership Lessons from Thinkers50 In leadership thought and practice, platforms like Thinkers50 stand as pivotal gatherings where today’s foremost thinkers in management share... Read → August 29, 2023 #### Product-Led Growth or Customer Nurturing? Product-Led Growth or Customer Nurturing? For Chief Product Officers, understanding the nuances of your product and the time required for customers to… Read → June 2, 2023 #### Business Breakthrough 3.0 Out Now! Don't Wait, Buy Now Business Breakthrough 3.0 has Arrived “BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0 offers practical insights to drive structure affects decision-making speed and... Read → September 11, 2022 #### Leaders vs Managers: What Actually Separates Them Leadership and management are frequently spoken of as if they are synonymous, yet they are distinct concepts. It's a common misconception that manager… Read → May 15, 2022 #### Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company? Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company? The world is changing. As product-centric, market-led companies feel the pressure to take a customer… Read → April 2, 2022 #### 7 Questions That Boost Employee Engagement 30% Stop the Big Quit More than 2/3s of US employees are not actively engaged at work. Boost your employees’ engagement by 30% with 7 powerful questions.… Read → March 28, 2022 #### Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Three Rs In the first article in this series, I made the case for enterprise agility, not just saying you’re a digital business but truly operating like one.… Read → March 21, 2022 #### Digital Transformation, Part 2: People, Process, Tech When your organization faces scary numbers (a weak quarterly report, low customer satisfaction, sluggish time-to-market), the natural instinct is to… Read → March 17, 2022 #### Digital Transformation, Part 1: Why It Fails It’s 2022. All businesses are digital, right? That assumption is not only not as safe as you think it is, it’s downright dangerous to the health of a… Read → March 11, 2022 #### OKRs: Measure Outcomes, Not Activity The difference is critical to your company’s success. Download the full deck here. For years, companies used to make annual plans to drive more Enterp… Read → March 9, 2022 #### How to Build a Risk Matrix That Cuts Downtime It doesn’t matter if your company is in the Fortune 100 or a small business that you operate from your home, Risk Management needs to be an integral p… Read → August 21, 2021 #### 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. Read → April 27, 2021 #### No-Code Doesn’t Mean No Software Engineers Among software development and tech professionals, there’s a lot of buzz and hype around no-code platforms. No-code has enormous potential to... 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Reply STOP at any time to opt out, or HELP for help. ## First 90 Days as a New Executive: What to Do and What Not To https://kengavranovic.com/insights/first-90-days-as-a-new-executive/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### First 90 Days as a New Executive: What to Do and What Not To Four moves that worked, five mistakes I watch new leaders make, what changes when a sponsor owns the company, and the questions people ask in their first week. By Ken Gavranovic · October 11, 2026 I joined New Relic as EVP right after the CEO let go of the previous head of product. Our largest customers told us there had been little innovation in nearly three years. Sales had stopped trusting that product and engineering could deliver. And person after person told me they had already tried what I was about to suggest. That is what the bigger seat usually looks like. You don't get it because things are going well. You get it because something has to change, and the people who handed it to you expect the change to show up fast. I coach executives stepping into a bigger seat, a first-time CEO, a new COO, a leader promoted over the peers they sat beside, through the first quarter. I have made those moves myself: the founder who became a public-company CEO, the EVP at New Relic, the VP at Cox Automotive, the [COO in a turnaround](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach). This is what I did that worked, what I watch new leaders get wrong, and the one place where the standard advice splits. #### Most people in the bigger seat are doing it for the first time The seat your peers used to hold, the mandate nobody wrote down, and the pressure that comes with both are what the job is, not a verdict on you. The numbers further down say the same thing: most new COOs and CEOs are first-timers, most were promoted from inside, and most report the strain. When a private equity sponsor owns the company, the pressure has a date on it: a value creation plan, a board that wants the number and the story behind the number, and a sale somewhere down the road. More on that below. #### What I did, and what I would do again ##### 1. Find out which job you were actually hired to do The COO seat alone has at least seven versions. At Cox Automotive a recruiter brought me in to fix technical problems. The problems were people and process. Ask the CEO, the board and the sponsor the same question in your first week, then write the answer down and send it back to them. If the three answers differ, that is your first finding. ##### 2. Learn the business from your customers, internal or external, and the front line before you touch the org chart At New Relic the customers and the sales team told me what was broken faster than anyone inside product would have. If you run a function like technology or finance, your customers are the people inside the company who depend on you; ask them the same questions. The front line knows. In month one you can ask the naive question; by month six the same question costs you standing. ##### 3. Agree decision rights and success measures with the CEO, in writing, in the first quarter Which calls are yours, which stay with the CEO, how you disagree in private and align in public. The CEO relationship is set in the first quarter, not the first year. If a sponsor owns the company, do the same with the operating partner: what they see, when, and how bad news travels. ##### 4. Fix one visible operating problem before you redesign anything At New Relic we changed three things. One general manager held product and engineering to business metrics. A quarterly planning session set the share of engineering that went to the roadmap, to bugs and to new sales. And one escalation meeting decided every roadmap change, so nobody traded the roadmap under the table. Six months later our customer advisory board, Disney's CTO and Capital One's SVP among them, told us we had delivered more than in the previous three years. Nearly $50 million in new sales followed within five months. None of it needed a reorg first. #### What I watch new leaders get wrong ##### 1. Taking the deck's word for it In my first week at Cox Automotive I was handed a spreadsheet with a Gantt chart that pinpointed exactly what we would deliver and when. I asked one question: how accurate has that been so far? Trust the plan you inherited when the front line and the numbers agree with it. Not before. ##### 2. Letting the team the change will disrupt most run the change I watched one healthcare company try to move to the cloud three times, with the operations team in charge of its own disruption, and each time success was defined as "we moved to the cloud". It worked the fourth time, under one leader, when success became building software faster and more reliably. [The full story is here.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/) ##### 3. Making "we shipped it" the definition of success A team once asked me for three million dollars to build an API. Success was "we ship it". When success became a million transactions in the first 90 days, the same team found the integrations, the sales training and the SKU the plan had left out. Outcomes over activity, from the first week. ##### 4. Managing the way that earned you the promotion In the first 250 people at Interland, most decisions came to me. That is how a founder gets to 250 people, and it is exactly what stops a company at 250 people. Your value in the bigger seat is what happens when you are not in the room. ##### 5. Going quiet People will resist the change, and they will fill your silence with their own version of it. Say where you are going, why it is a must, and that it is not optional. Then say it again, in one-on-ones, with each person's context. #### The numbers behind the first quarter More than 85% of the COOs appointed in 2025 were first-time COOs, and 82% were promoted from inside, according to Russell Reynolds (more on [the COO seat here](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach)). Of the 168 new S&P 1500 CEOs named in 2025, 84% were first-time CEOs and 48% came from the COO or president seat, according to Spencer Stuart ([the general manager guide](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-executive-coach-for-general-managers/) covers that path). And 71% of 10,796 leaders in DDI's Global Leadership Forecast 2025 reported significantly higher stress since stepping into their current role ([the IT director guide](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-it-director-coach/) has the rest of that study). Read together: the job is usually new to the person doing it, and the strain is the job, not the person. #### Where the advice splits, and where I land Half the field says touch nothing for 90 days. The other half says the biggest mistake new leaders make is not moving faster. Both are reacting to the same two failures: the leader who redesigns the org in week two on a slide deck, and the leader who is still "listening" in month five while the team decides nothing matters. My read: learn fast, decide on data, and make the first decision visible. A decision almost always beats a pause. If you cannot find one visible operating problem worth fixing in your first quarter, you have not learned the business yet; and if you fix six, nobody will remember which one mattered. #### If a private equity sponsor owns the company The four moves and the five mistakes still apply. What changes is the clock. A sponsor arrives with a playbook and a timeline, and a board that expects the plan delivered. The first ninety days have to stabilize before any of the plan can happen, and the operating partner is a second CEO relationship: agree early what they will see, when, and how you will bring bad news before it is a surprise. Surprises cost more trust than bad news delivered early. One of my clients was the technology leader at a private equity-backed company. His boss told him he was under pressure. Then the company told my client the boss was being replaced, and that he could take over as interim. He had led people. What he had not done was lead beyond the work itself: the sponsor, the board, the peers who were now his team. We built the first quarter around one job, getting the stakeholders aligned on what the seat was for. He went to each of them and asked what they needed from the role, listened, and wrote it back to them, so the mandate existed on paper before anyone measured him against it. From there it was the sequence that works when it is followed, and the one most new leaders skip under pressure. A plan the stakeholders had shaped, so they owned it. Expectations reset with the team and with the shareholders, out loud, so nobody was measured against the old ones. Then execution, and more communication than felt necessary. It is the same sequence as the New Relic story above, with a smaller team and a shorter clock. The interim did not need to be the hero. He needed the people around him to know what was going to happen next, and then to see it happen. #### Your first 30 days, in one list - Ask the CEO, the board and the sponsor what you were hired to do. Write down the answers and send them back. - Talk to your largest customers, internal or external, and the front line before you talk to consultants. - Agree decision rights and success measures with the CEO in writing. Do the same with the operating partner. - Ask each plan you inherit one question: how accurate has it been so far? - Pick one visible operating problem. Fix it in the quarter. Say so when it is fixed. - Tell your former peers the friendship continues and the role changed. Settle the passed-over candidate in week two. - Hold a one-on-one with each person who reports to you and ask the same questions each time; read the disagreements as signal. #### The questions people ask in their first week ##### What should a new executive do in the first 90 days? Find out which job you were actually hired to do, and write it down. Learn the business from your customers, internal or external, and the front line before you touch the org chart. Agree decision rights and success measures with the CEO in writing. Then fix one visible operating problem before you redesign anything. The CEO relationship is set in the first quarter, not the first year. ##### How long should you wait before changing anything? Less time than most of the advice says. Half the field tells you to touch nothing for 90 days; the other half says the biggest mistake new leaders make is not moving faster. My read: learn fast, decide on data, and make the first decision visible. A decision almost always beats a pause. ##### How do you lead people who used to be your peers? Say the change out loud, once, and then behave like it. Tell each former peer in a one-on-one that the friendship continues and that your role now requires you to treat them the same as the rest of the team. Deal with the person who was passed over for your seat in the first two weeks, not after it festers. Small symbols matter more than you think. ##### What if the team knows more than you do? Good. Learn before you change: your customers, internal or external, the sales team, each lead who reports to you. Your value in the bigger seat is not knowing the most. It is what happens when you are not in the room: whether decisions get made, whether the right work gets done, whether problems reach you early. ##### What changes when a private equity sponsor owns the company? The clock. A sponsor arrives with a playbook and a timeline, a value creation plan the board expects delivered, and a sale somewhere down the road. The first ninety days have to stabilize before any of that can happen. Treat the operating partner like a second CEO relationship: agree what they will see, when, and how you will bring bad news early. ##### Is an internal promotion easier than coming in from outside? Easier on knowledge, harder on authority. Most new executives are promoted from inside: 82% of the COOs appointed in 2025 were, according to Russell Reynolds. You know the business, which is the advantage. You also inherit the seat your peers used to hold and a mandate nobody wrote down, and nobody resets the relationship for you. ##### When should a new executive get a coach? In the first quarter, if at all, because that is when the mandate, the CEO relationship and the first visible decision get set. A first-time CEO, a new COO or a leader promoted over their peers gets the most from a thinking partner who has made the same move. If you want someone to hand you the answer, a coach is the wrong purchase. If you just landed the seat and want a thinking partner who has sat in it, [that is the work I do](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). The first conversation is [forty-five minutes on video](https://kengavranovic.com/booking), no pitch. Tell me what you were hired to do and who handed you the job, and I will tell you honestly whether I can help. #### Keep reading - [How to Find the Best COO Coach: Seven Tests for One Call](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-chief-operating-officer-coach/) Why the COO seat is hard to learn on the job, what coaching research says it can and cannot fix, and seven tests to run in one call. - [How to Find the Best Executive Coach for General Managers](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-executive-coach-for-general-managers/) What the first P&L does to a leader by the numbers, what the research says coaching can and cannot change, what leaders who have paid for coaching say, and seven tests for one call. - [Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/) The pattern behind most stalled transformations, one that failed three times before one leader fixed it, and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Find the Best Chief Product Officer Coach: 7 Tests https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-chief-product-officer-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Find the Best Chief Product Officer Coach: 7 Tests The pressures on the product seat, what the evidence on coaching supports, and seven tests that show in a single call whether a coach can do the work. Facts first, my answers at the end. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 Who is the best Chief Product Officer coach, and how do you find one? Nobody honest will hand you one name, because the right CPO coach for a first-time head of product inheriting a team is the wrong one for a sitting CPO whose founder still rewrites the roadmap. This guide is about hiring a coach for the product seat, not about hiring a CPO: search results for the second question are crowded, and for the first they are nearly empty. It is meant to be useful whichever product leadership coach you pick, including none. It sets out the pressures on the seat, with published figures; what the coaching research supports and what it does not; and seven tests that show, within one call, whether a coach can handle the work a product executive actually carries. My own answers come last, in one section. I work with [Chief Product Officers](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach) and the product leaders about to become one, and I have held the product seat and the CEO seat above it. Sources for every figure are listed at the end. Written for: a Chief Product Officer in the first year, a director, VP or head of product about to become the top product executive in the company, a CPO whose remit just grew to include engineering, design or a P&L, and the founder looking for a coach for a new product leader. Search for a CPO coach and you will find Chief People Officer coaches and certification courses mixed in, so each test below is specific to product. #### The product seat by the numbers The seat is new, and spreading fast. Three in ten Fortune 1000 companies employed a Chief Product Officer in 2023, about twice the share of a year before, and 31% of CPOs owned a P&L, a share the researchers expect to reach 70% by 2028.1 Most executives around a CPO have never worked with one. Nor have most CPOs held the job before: Russell Reynolds studied 40 fast-growing tech companies that listed from 2017 to 2021 and found the CPO usually arrived after the CTO and was nearly always a first-time CPO.2 The seat is graded on output while the CEO and the board grade outcomes. Among 300 product leaders surveyed, 77% said their teams were judged on features shipped, not on revenue or customer results, and just 23% of product teams reported to a CPO.3 The CPO is hired to close that gap. A venture firm's guide for CEOs hiring a CPO lists what the CEO will judge: turning what customers say they want into what they need, clear writing and synthesis, a record of setting product strategy, an understanding of how pricing, packaging and features drive revenue, and credibility across the company. It warns against the candidate who was near a great product but not personally responsible for it.4 The founder rarely lets go. Founders who hire a CPO seldom step away from product altogether, one executive search firm tells them,5 and the same venture guide quotes the Product CEO Paradox: the only thing that wrecks a company faster than a product CEO who is deeply engaged in the product is one who disengages from it.4 The lines around the seat are where it breaks. In a 2025 survey of 350 marketing, sales and R&D professionals by a collaboration software vendor, 85% reported go-to-market misalignment every week or month and 89% said collaboration breakdowns hurt revenue directly.6 And the seat is being redrawn: the 2025 edition of the CPO study, with more than 1,000 CPOs, reports more CPOs moving into CEO, COO and board roles and taking on M&A strategy.7 Few senior leaders have outside help. The 2013 survey by Stanford and the Miles Group, covering more than 200 CEOs, directors and senior executives, found that almost half of the senior executives had no coach or outside adviser, and that delegation, conflict management and team building topped the list of what leaders wanted help with.8 #### What coaching can and cannot do for a product leader, per the evidence The research on coaching is solid and quieter than the marketing. A 2014 meta-analysis found positive effects in all five outcome groups it examined: coping improved least, at 0.43, self-regulation toward goals most, at 0.74, and performance and skills by 0.60.9 A 2016 meta-analysis of 17 studies found an overall effect of 0.36, strongest for individual results and attitudes.10 In practice, coaching dependably improves how a leader sets goals, manages themselves and copes, and improves performance to a moderate degree. None of the studies looked at product leaders, and a coach who promises a return-on-investment percentage should be able to name the study. A product leadership coach is not a product management course, a fractional CPO or a mentor. A course closes a skill gap faster and for less. A fractional CPO does the job for a period. A mentor who has held the seat tells you what they did. A peer circle of product executives gives you people who understand the job, and nobody accountable to you. A therapist works on the past. A coach holds no stake in the roadmap, keeps your confidence, does not hand you the answers, and works on your leadership and your decisions in the seat today. A career coach who has never led product sits outside all of these, and it is the first thing product leaders rule out when they ask for help. Choosing the wrong coach has a cost: one venture firm's guide calls it a liability, because that coach steers your focus toward the wrong problems.11 ##### Three kinds of coach, and a fourth trap for product leaders That guide describes three kinds of coach a leader tends to meet.11 The reactive coach is a fine listener and a shock absorber, and rarely has the operating instincts to help steer the business. The former operator has those instincts, the pattern recognition that comes from running things, and tends to replay their own playbook. The structured coach mixes week-to-week responsiveness with a development plan and tools like a 360. Product leaders meet a fourth kind: the product-craft coach who knows discovery and roadmaps cold and has never sat at the executive table where a CPO is judged. Product teams hire three kinds of specialist coach: discovery coaches for the teams, transformation coaches for a company moving from feature teams to product teams, and product leadership coaches for the CPO and the head of engineering; the good ones in that last group have usually run product or technology themselves. Most CPOs need the executive-table coaching more than the craft, and some need both. A credential is the entry ticket, not the choice: the ICF found in 2023 that 85% of practising coaches hold one and 73% say clients expect it.12 Fit with your seat is the choice. ##### Before the first call, write the brief Write down what you need from a coach the way you would write a requirements document: two or three outcomes, specific enough to check (not "be more strategic" but "take the board through a roadmap tied to the P&L"), and the business result each one serves, such as keeping the product team, delivering the roadmap or getting ready for investors. The brief sharpens every test below, and it is the document that gets the budget approved. #### Seven tests for a Chief Product Officer coach, one call each Each test is one job the product seat needs a coach to do, set out as why it matters, the question to ask, and what a strong answer sounds like. Put all seven to each coach on the list, including the one somebody recommended. ##### Test one: have they held the product seat, and the seat above it? Why it matters: you want someone who has been the most senior product leader in a company and has seen that seat from the CEO's chair. Nearly every product leader the AI engines name for this question held a product executive seat at a company you would recognize, and the buyers' own words are blunt: they want someone who has operated at scale, not a career coach. The question: which product seat did you hold, at what scale, what were you personally responsible for, and what happened to the company? A strong answer: a product, a number, a board, and the thing they got wrong. The venture firm's warning about CPO candidates applies to coaches as well: near a great product is not the same as responsible for it.4 Verify the seat before you sign: the title and dates on LinkedIn, the company's own announcement, a conference bio from the time, and the certificate number behind any ICF credential. Then ask which coaching engagement went wrong and what they changed after it. ##### Test two: can they coach the founder who still owns product? Why it matters: this is the relationship that ends many CPO tenures at earlier-stage companies. The question: my CEO rewrote the roadmap in the all-hands last week; what do I do on Monday? A strong answer: decide out loud which decisions the founder keeps, which you own, and how you will disagree, before it becomes a trust problem; and some sympathy for the founder, because the paradox is real.5 A coach who has been the founder in that conversation can tell you what the CEO is afraid of losing. ##### Test three: can they move you from features shipped to outcomes the board counts? Why it matters: the scorecard. Three in four product teams are still measured on output,3 while more CPOs are handed a P&L every year.1 The question: how do I present product to the board as capital allocation? A strong answer: revenue, retention and risk first, features second; a view on pricing and packaging; and a way to show a product bet whose payoff the market will take a year or more to confirm. ##### Test four: can they coach the rooms that judge the seat? Why it matters: executive presence. More than half of the product coaching pages the AI engines cite on this seat name executive presence or influence, and "how do I get better at stakeholder management and executive presence as a product leader" is one of the questions product leaders put to the engines. The seat is judged in a handful of rooms: the board, the customer conference stage, the customer advisory board, and the all-hands that follows a slipped date. The question: I present the product strategy to the board next month; what do you want to see? A strong answer: they ask for the deck and for who sits on the board, and they have stood in those rooms themselves. ##### Test five: can they work the lines between product, engineering and sales, and the AI question? Why it matters: the seat lives in the friction. The CPO usually arrives after the CTO,2 most go-to-market teams report misalignment every week or month,6 and the CEO now wants an AI plan by next quarter. The question: the CTO and I disagree about what ships this quarter, and sales has already promised the feature to a customer; what now? A strong answer: someone who has sat on the engineering side or the selling side of the roadmap and can describe the meeting that settles it, and who can tell an AI demo from an AI product that reaches production. ##### Test six: which kind of coach are they, and can they hold the psychology without turning it into therapy? Why it matters: the coach has to work on the person as well as the plan. The product seat is lonely in its own way: every function has an opinion about the roadmap, the market can take a year to say whether you were right, and the isolation and self-doubt that product coaches describe on their own pages follow from that. The question: what do you do when I tell you I am not sure I am the right person for this seat? A strong answer: they name their kind,11 say what they will not do, and separate coaching from therapy in a single sentence. Put confidentiality in writing on the same call: the company usually pays for CPO coaching, so agree that the content stays yours and the company learns attendance and a simple verdict on progress. When the CEO is paying, write it as a three-way agreement among you, the CEO and the coach, before the first session. ##### Test seven: will they push back, and pick up during a launch? Why it matters: candor and speed. In the first call, apply the 70/30 rule as a check: a good coach lets you do most of the talking. It is a rule of thumb, not a standard. The product half is timing: the launch slip, the lost deal blamed on the roadmap and the reorganization rumor all arrive between sessions. The question: what happens when something breaks the Thursday before a launch? A strong answer: fewer words from the coach than you expected, one thing you had not said aloud, and a straight answer about access. #### The price of CPO coaching, who pays, and the terms worth insisting on Coaching of every kind averaged $244 an hour worldwide in the ICF's 2023 study, and $272 in North America.12 Product executive coaching belongs in the C-suite band: full engagements from $5,000 to $60,000, hourly rates from $800 to $3,500, and monthly retainers from $1,000 to $10,000. The product coaches who publish a price sit inside that band, and at least one scales it with the company's funding stage. My guide to [what executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) has the detail by level. The employer usually pays, since it is investing in a product leader it means to keep; a first-time CPO should ask for coaching in the offer, before the start date, when agreeing is easiest. How I work with product leaders is on the [Chief Product Officer coach page](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach). Terms: a no-charge call of half an hour to an hour with each coach you are considering; success defined in writing up front; month-to-month terms; confidentiality in the contract; and an early 360 or similar, so progress is measured against more than how the sessions felt. #### How to identify a bad coach: the red flags - A coach who has run a product team but never sat at the executive table, coaching the executive table. - A career coach or a certification course sold as CPO coaching; check that "CPO" means product and not people. - Frameworks without a scorecard: roadmap advice with no view on revenue, retention or the P&L. - Only one side of the founder relationship: a coach who always blames the founder, or always the product leader. - Promised returns with a percentage attached and no study to back it. - One coach in the marketing and a different one in the sessions. Ask who you will work with. - A lock-in, or silence between sessions in the week of a launch. #### Where to look Ask the people who have paid for one: your CEO, your investors, and product leaders one stage ahead of you. Product executive peer circles are a strong complement, and the AI engines name them alongside individual coaches. LinkedIn profiles are the pages the engines cite most often for product coaches, so read the coach's own history there, not just the website. Noomii and the ICF's coach finder are two directories of credentialed coaches. The "best product leadership coaches" lists are a starting point, and several are written by people ranking themselves. Then run the seven tests on each name. #### How I answer the seven, as one candidate The seat and the seat above it: at New Relic, as EVP, I stepped into the product seat after the CEO let the previous product leader go, and ran product and go-to-market for a public company past $500M in ARR, 450 people in four countries, with new products worth $50M-plus in incremental ARR. Later, as Chief Product Officer at Coursedog, I led a rebuild of product and engineering in nine months that led into the company's $80M acquisition by JMI Equity. Above the seat: Interland, the company I founded, reached $200M and listed on Nasdaq, so I have also been the founder who owns product. The scorecard: the New Relic new products and the Coursedog exit above. The rooms: I presented product strategy to a New Relic board that included partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona, gave the global keynote at FutureStack, led the customer advisory boards, and have spoken at 50-plus other events. The lines: I was VP of Engineering at Cox Automotive, and at Blameless, as COO, I rebuilt how the company sold and lived on the receiving end of the roadmap. Type: operator first, and the other half is not borrowed: a psychology degree (summa cum laude), a Certified Executive Coach since 2019 and an ICF credential, so the board narrative and the product leader carrying it get worked on in the same hour. Access: calls on a set rhythm, and the phone when a launch goes sideways. The rest is on the [Chief Product Officer coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach), and the short version from my [general guide to choosing a coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) still applies: has this person operated at the level you are playing at, are they trained and certified and not just experienced, and after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet? #### What product leaders ask before choosing a coach ##### Who is the best Chief Product Officer coach? The one who has held a product executive seat and seen it from the CEO's chair, and can prove it in one call against seven tests: the seat held, the founder who owns product, the scorecard, the rooms that judge the seat, the lines to engineering and sales, the psychology, and access. There is no single best CPO coach; it depends on your stage, your founder and what is breaking. ##### What is the difference between a CPO coach, a product coach and a career coach? A product coach usually works on the craft: discovery, roadmaps, the product team. A career coach works on the next job. A Chief Product Officer coach works on the executive seat: the CEO relationship, the board, the scorecard, the organization and the person carrying all of it. Product leaders who ask for help tend to say it outright: they want someone who has operated at scale, not a career coach. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? Roughly: the leader talks for about seventy percent of a good session and the coach for about thirty; some coaches put it at 80/20. No professional body sets it and nobody measures it, but it is a useful check in a first call, because a coach who did most of the talking was demonstrating rather than coaching. ##### How much does a CPO coach cost, and who pays? C-suite engagements are published at $5,000 to $60,000, hourly rates at $800 to $3,500 and retainers at $1,000 to $10,000 a month; across all coaching in North America the 2023 average was $272 an hour. The employer usually pays, and a new CPO can ask for coaching as part of the offer. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? Moderately, according to the evidence. Pooled studies show better performance, coping, well-being, self-regulation and attitudes to work: effects between 0.43 and 0.74 in a 2014 meta-analysis, and 0.36 overall across 17 workplace studies in a 2016 one. No study has isolated product leaders, so a coach quoting a return-on-investment percentage should be able to name the study. ##### Should a new head of product hire a coach or join a CPO course or accelerator? It depends on the gap. If it is a product management skill, such as discovery, roadmapping or metrics, a course or a cohort-based CPO accelerator closes it faster and for less. If it is the seat, meaning the CEO, the board, the organization, the scorecard and the person carrying them, that is coaching, and the first year is when it repays the fee fastest, since that is when the seat's habits form. ##### I am the CEO. How do I choose a coach for my CPO? Shortlist two or three coaches who have held a product executive seat, then let the CPO make the choice after a call with each, because the relationship with you is one of the things the coaching will work on. Agree the goals as three: CEO, CPO and coach, in writing before the first session; the CPO owns what is said in the sessions, and you get attendance and a plain read on progress. ##### Is a peer circle or a fractional CPO a substitute for a coach? Neither is a substitute; each is a different tool. A peer circle of product executives gives you people who understand the job and a confidential room. A fractional CPO does the job for a period. A coach works one to one on you in the seat you hold. Many CPOs use a peer circle and a coach together. #### Where the numbers come from - [Products That Count and Capgemini, 2023 CPO Insights Report, as reported by TechCrunch, "The rise of the chief product officer", May 6, 2023](https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/06/rise-chief-product-officers/) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, "Beyond the Founding Team: Product" (40 high-growth technology companies that went public 2017 to 2021)](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/technology-growth-company-leadership/product) - [Pendo and Product Collective, State of Product Leadership 2019 (300 North American product leaders), press release, February 11, 2019](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pendo-releases-2nd-annual-state-of-product-leadership-survey-revealing-significant-shifts-in-traditional-product-management-roles-and-focus-300792759.html) - [Andreessen Horowitz, "Hiring a Chief Product Officer" (Caroline Horn, Charles Hubbard and Jenna Zucker), June 14, 2023](https://a16z.com/hiring-a-chief-product-officer/) - [Egon Zehnder, "Hiring the right Chief Product Officer: a founder's guide", November 2024](https://www.egonzehnder.com/functions/technology-officers/chief-product-officers/insights/hiring-the-right-chief-product-officer-a-founders-guide) - [Mural, GTM Alignment Gap Index (350 marketing, sales and R&D professionals, fielded March to April 2025), May 28, 2025](https://www.mural.co/blog/gtm-alignment-gap-research-study) - [Products That Count, Capgemini and Mighty Capital, 2025 CPO Insights Report (1,000-plus CPOs), press release, April 23, 2025](https://www.prweb.com/releases/ai-is-changing-everything-products-that-count-releases-2025-cpo-insights-report-in-partnership-with-capgemini-and-mighty-capital-302435592.html) - [Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rock Center for Corporate Governance and The Miles Group, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey (200-plus CEOs, directors and senior executives)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12119) - [Norwest Venture Partners, How to Choose the Right Executive Coach for Startup Leadership (Bryan Bayer), 2023](https://www.norwest.com/blog/choose-right-executive-coach-startup-leadership/) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) #### Keep reading - [Chief Product Officer Coach, Former CPO](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach) Coaching for Chief Product Officers and the heads of product stepping into the seat, from a former CPO and Nasdaq IPO CEO. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. - [Executive Coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) Coaching from someone who has held the seat: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, New Relic from $300M to $500M. [Chief Product Officer coaching with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Find the Best COO Coach: Seven Tests for One Call https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-chief-operating-officer-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Find the Best COO Coach: Seven Tests for One Call Why the COO seat is hard to learn on the job, what coaching research says it can and cannot fix, and seven tests to run in one call. Facts first; my own answers last. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 Who is the best COO coach, and how do you find one? No single name survives the question, because the chief operating officer seat is not one job. It is whatever the CEO needs most, and the coach who suits a COO hired for a turnaround will not suit a COO being groomed to succeed the CEO. This guide is about hiring a coach for the COO seat, not about hiring a COO, and it aims to help whichever COO coach you end up choosing, or none. It has three parts: what the seat does to the people who hold it, in published numbers; what research on coaching says it can and cannot change; and seven tests you can run in a single call to find out whether a given COO executive coach can do the work the seat demands. I answer the seven myself in a separate section at the end, as one candidate among several. I [coach COOs and second-in-command executives](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) and held the COO seat in a venture-backed turnaround, which is the lens; each figure is footnoted to its source. Who this is for: a COO in the first year of the seat, a COO whose mandate shifted underneath them, a second in command being readied to succeed the CEO, the Integrator beside a visionary founder, and the CEO looking for a coach for a new COO. A head of people assembling a shortlist can put the seven tests to each candidate and compare. #### What the COO seat does to the people in it, by the numbers Almost nobody arrives having done it before. Of the 146 COOs appointed worldwide in 2025, the most in seven years, 88% had never held the title and 82% came up from inside the company.1 So the typical new COO learns the job in front of people who were peers a quarter ago. The job is not fixed either. The Harvard Business Review research on the role counted seven distinct reasons companies create it, among them carrying out the CEO's strategy, running a single major initiative such as a turnaround, supplying what the CEO lacks, and auditioning a possible successor, and it found that trust between the two people decides whether any version works.2 The CEO's side of the checklist is published as well: maturity and a lack of ego, chemistry with the founder, experience scaling a company, the ability to hire, and a focus on process, plus the reminder that a COO need not run everything the CEO does not.3 The clock is short and the seat is fragile. Since 2019 COOs have averaged about 3.2 years in the job, and the stated reason is that they tend to leave when the transformation they were brought in for is finished.4 Only 38.1% of the largest US companies had a COO at all in 2025, so most people who take the title have no predecessor to learn from.5 And the seat is the main road to the top: COOs and presidents accounted for 48% of new chief executives across the S&P 1500 in 2025,6 and 43.9% of the sitting CEOs of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies moved up directly from a COO or president role.5 The researchers who interviewed COOs about the move to CEO heard one phrase again and again: that COOs have "an over-developed execution muscle and an under-developed strategy muscle", and that boards come to see them that way.7 New CEOs told them the board is not one relationship but ten, one with each director, and several said the surprise was having nobody next door to test an idea on. The advice was an independent advisor, because most of the people around a new chief come with an agenda, and a transition and coaching plan measured in twelve months rather than a hundred days.7 Outside help is scarce at this altitude. When Stanford's business school and the Miles Group surveyed over 200 chief executives, directors and senior executives in 2013, almost half of the senior executives said nobody outside the company coached or advised them, and the help leaders most wanted was in delegation, conflict management and team building.8 COOs lean hardest on the person the seat is built around: in a 2025 survey of more than 150 nonprofit COOs, the CEO (65%) and teammates (64%) came first, then COO peer groups (35%), articles and online resources (33%) and mentors (28%); a coach was not among the supports a substantial number named.9 #### What coaching can and cannot change, according to the research Two meta-analyses carry most of the evidence. The first pooled the organizational coaching studies available in 2014 and found positive effects on every class of outcome it measured; the smallest, 0.43, was on coping, the largest, 0.74, on goal-directed self-regulation, and performance and skills came in at 0.60.10 A second review in 2016 combined 17 workplace coaching studies and put the overall effect at 0.36, with more movement in individual results and attitudes than in skills.11 Taken together, coaching reliably shifts goal-setting, self-management and resilience, and shifts performance moderately. No study singled out COOs and the samples are small, so anyone quoting a coaching ROI figure should be asked for the study behind it. The category matters as much as the person. A consultant or a fractional COO does the work and owns an outcome for a period. A mentor has done the job and tells you how it went. A peer group gives you other operators and nobody accountable to you in particular. A therapist works on the past and how it feels. A coach holds no stake in the result, keeps what you say in confidence, and works on how you lead and decide in the seat you hold now. Getting the category wrong is expensive: one venture firm's guide warns that the wrong coach can become a liability by pointing your attention at the wrong things.12 ##### The three types of coach, and what each one misses The same guide sorts the coaches a leader is likely to meet into three types and names the gap in each.12 The reactive or business-therapy coach listens superbly and absorbs pressure, and usually lacks the operating pattern recognition to help run the business, so the sessions follow the week instead of the priorities. The former operator brings that pattern recognition, and tends to prescribe the playbook that worked for them whether or not your company resembles theirs. The structured coach pairs week-to-week responsiveness with a development plan and feedback instruments such as a 360. For a COO the trap is specific: the seat is mostly execution, so a coach who only talks execution makes the strong muscle stronger and leaves untouched the one the board is watching.7 Know which type you are buying, and which one this year of your seat needs. Credentials are table stakes, not the decision: in the ICF's 2023 study 85% of practising coaches held one, and 73% said their clients expect it.13 The ICF awards three levels, ACC, PCC and MCC, each requiring more logged coaching hours than the last. The decision is still fit with the version of the seat you hold. #### Seven tests for a COO coach, one call each Each test below is one job the COO seat needs a coach to handle, with the job it checks, the question to put, and what to listen for. Put all seven to every COO coach on your list, the recommended one included. ##### Test one: which version of the COO seat have they held? The job it checks: operating experience at your altitude, and whether the coach knows there is more than one COO job. The seven versions call for different people: an executor, a turnaround lead, a partner, an heir.2 Ask: which version did you hold, what was the mandate in the first month, and what became of the company? Listen for: the operator test passed in one breath, with a company, a mandate, a number and the hard part named. Scar tissue, not adjectives. A coach who has only advised COOs can still be good; ask which phases of a company they have personally operated through, and notice how specific the answer gets. Then check the claim before the second call: the dates on their LinkedIn history, the company's own announcement of the appointment, a press release that names the title. A claimed ICF credential comes with a certificate number the ICF's own site will confirm. And ask for the engagement that did not work, and why: a coach with scar tissue has an honest answer ready. ##### Test two: can they coach the CEO relationship from both chairs? The job it checks: the relationship that decides the seat. The COO coaching pages the AI engines cite on this question all name the CEO relationship, five of five in our captures, and the research puts trust between the two at the center.2 The ways it fails are well documented: the chief executive who contradicts the COO's decisions, goes around the COO to the staff, or makes commitments without an operational check; and if the staff believe the COO cannot decide anything without the chief executive, the organization has gained no management capacity at all.14 Ask: my CEO and I have not agreed who decides what; walk me through the first conversation. Listen for: decision rights on paper before the first crisis, a rule for disagreeing in private and aligning in public, and a plan for the leaders who will try to appeal past you to the CEO. A coach who has been the CEO in that relationship can tell you what the CEO is not saying. ##### Test three: will they start with the cash and the clock? The job it checks: whether the coach understands that most COO seats are transformation seats with a deadline; tenure tracks the transformation, about three years on average.4 Ask: here are the last three months of numbers; what would you look at first? Listen for: where the cash goes, which growth metric is running ahead of the capability behind it, and which one operating problem to fix in plain view before redesigning anything. If the answer starts with your leadership style, it is the wrong coach for a turnaround. ##### Test four: can they help you lead the people who used to be your peers? The job it checks: the executive team. Eight in ten new COOs are promoted from inside,1 so the seat usually arrives with former peers who now report to you and at least one who wanted the job. Ask: who on my team do I talk to first, and what changes in that first one-to-one? Listen for: a sequence, a view on resetting working relationships everyone assumes are already settled, and an honest line on when a strong peer is the wrong direct report. ##### Test five: can they get you in front of the board, and ready for the CEO seat if that is the road? The job it checks: the strategy muscle, and how the board sees you. The seat is the most common route to CEO,6 and the most common knock on COOs is that they are execution only.7 Ask: how do I show the board I think strategically without stepping on my CEO? Listen for: lead one consequential strategy exercise in front of the board with the CEO's blessing, build a relationship with each director rather than with "the board", and plan any transition in months, not in a hundred days. If the CEO seat is not your road, a good coach says so and coaches the seat you have. ##### Test six: which type are they, and can they hold the pressure without turning it into therapy? The job it checks: whether you are buying an operator, a listener or a system,12 and whether the coach can work on the person as well as the plan. The COO seat is lonely in a particular way: it absorbs the CEO's pressure and the organization's, with nobody above to test an idea on who is not also judging it. Ask: what happens in a session when I finally say what I actually think, and where does your coaching stop? Listen for: they name their type and say what they will not take on, and they can say in a sentence where coaching stops and therapy starts. Settle confidentiality on the same call, in writing, because COO coaching is usually paid for by the company and often proposed by the CEO: the content is yours, and the CEO hears whether you are showing up and whether it is working, nothing more. Put it in a three-way agreement that you, the CEO and the coach sign before the first session: the goals the CEO can see, and the content only you can. ##### Test seven: will they push back, and pick up when it lands? The job it checks: candor and access. In the first call, watch the 70/30 rule, the rule of thumb that you should do about seventy percent of the talking; it is not a standard, but a coach who fills the hour is selling. The COO half of the test is speed: the resignation, the missed quarter and the CEO's late-night message do not wait for the next session. Ask: what happens when something lands between sessions? Listen for: less talking than you expected, one thing you had not said aloud before, and a plain answer about access. #### What COO coaching costs, who pays, and the terms that protect you The ICF's 2023 figures put the mean fee for an hour of coaching at $272 in North America and $244 worldwide, across every kind of coaching.13 C-suite work sits well above that. The published bands are retainers of $1,000 to $10,000 a month, hourly rates of $800 to $3,500, and $5,000 to $60,000 for a full engagement, and companies typically set aside $10,000 to $50,000 per executive a year. My [executive coaching cost guide](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) breaks it down by level. At the COO level the company almost always pays, and the CEO is often the one who suggests it, which is about the best signal a new COO can get: the CEO plans to keep you. If your CEO offers, say yes, and pick the coach yourself. How I work with COOs is on the [COO coach page](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach). Terms: a free call of thirty to sixty minutes with each coach; success written down before the first session, with how progress will be measured; month to month instead of a six-month lock-in; a confidentiality clause that says who sees what. An engagement that needs a long lock-in to prove its value has put the value in the lock-in. #### Red flags - A coach who has never carried an operating number, teaching the COO seat from a framework. - One version of the seat sold as the only one: the turnaround playbook applied to an heir apparent, or the reverse. - A coach who reports to the CEO about you, or who will not put confidentiality in writing. - Execution-only coaching for a COO the board already sees as execution only. - An ROI claim with no study behind it, or a promise that the coaching will make you CEO. - A firm that sells you one coach and sends another. Ask who will be on the calls. - A lock-in, or no way to reach the coach between sessions when the problems will not wait. #### Where to look Begin with those who have already bought coaching at this level: your CEO, your board members and investors, and COOs a stage ahead of you. Ask who they used, and in which version of the seat. Peer communities for COOs and second-in-command executives give you other operators, which is valuable and is not the same as one person accountable to you. Directories such as Noomii, and the ICF's own coach finder, let you filter credentialed coaches. The "best COO coach" lists are a starting point with a caveat: several are written by the coaches ranked first. Then put the seven tests to every candidate, the recommended one included. #### My answers to the seven tests, for the record Version of the seat: COO of Blameless, a Series B venture-backed company, brought in for a turnaround, the second of the seven reasons in the research. Burn fell by half and runway grew by 18 months; we rebuilt go-to-market, the win rate climbed from almost zero to 80% and the sales cycle shortened by 40%; we launched a generative AI product for incident response that Fortune 500 reliability teams use; and the company merged with FireHydrant. The CEO relationship: I have held both chairs, as the COO and as founder and CEO of Interland, which reached $200M and 650 people and listed on Nasdaq. The cash and the clock: that turnaround was the job. Former peers: at New Relic I led 450 people in four countries through significant organizational change. The board and the CEO road: I ran a board as a founding CEO, presented to a New Relic board whose members included partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona, and spent ten years as a venture firm's managing partner; over my career I have been on the boards and deal teams of 35 deals and 18 exits. Type: operator first, and the other half is not borrowed: a psychology degree (summa cum laude), a Certified Executive Coach since 2019 and an ICF credential, so the operating plan and the COO carrying it get worked on in the same hour. Access: a standing cadence of calls, and my number for what cannot wait. More is on the [COO coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach). And the short version from my [guide on choosing any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) still applies: has this person operated at the level you are playing at, are they trained and certified and not just experienced, and after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet? #### Questions COOs and CEOs ask before they hire a coach ##### Who is the best COO coach? The one who has held the version of the COO seat you hold, can coach the CEO relationship from both chairs, and proves it in one call against seven tests: the mandate, the CEO, the cash and the clock, former peers, the board and the CEO road, the psychology, and access. There is no single best COO coach; the seat has at least seven versions, and the right coach for a turnaround is the wrong one for an heir apparent. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? It is a rule of thumb: the person being coached should do roughly seventy percent of the talking and the coach roughly thirty. No professional body sets it and nobody measures it, yet it is worth watching in a first call, where a coach who talked for most of the hour was pitching. ##### What is the average cost of an executive coach for a COO, and who pays? The average hourly fee for coaching of every kind was $272 in North America in 2023. Executive coaching for a COO sits well above that: published C-suite rates are $1,000 to $10,000 a month on retainer or $800 to $3,500 an hour, and companies usually budget $10,000 to $50,000 per executive a year. At the COO level the company almost always pays, often at the CEO's suggestion. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? Yes, by a moderate and measurable margin. A 2014 meta-analysis of organizational coaching found gains in how people perform, cope, feel about their work and steer themselves toward goals, with the smallest effect at 0.43 and the largest at 0.74; a 2016 review of 17 workplace studies put the overall effect at 0.36. Neither looked at COOs on their own, so ask any coach quoting an ROI figure for the study behind it. ##### Should the CEO choose the COO's coach? The CEO can propose it and pay for it; the COO should choose. The relationship with the CEO is one of the main things the coaching works on, so a coach the COO did not pick, reporting to the CEO, cannot do that part of the job. Agree in writing that the COO owns the content and the CEO hears only whether the COO is showing up and whether it is working. ##### Is a COO coach the same as a peer group or a fractional COO? No. A peer group gives you other operators and shared experience, with nobody accountable to you in particular. A fractional COO does the job for a period and owns an outcome. A COO coach develops the person in the seat. Many COOs use a peer group and a coach at the same time. ##### Does every COO need a coach? No. Not every company needs a COO, and a COO title on the operations lead of a small company doing last year's job rarely needs one. Coaching earns its fee when the seat is new to you, the mandate or the CEO has changed, the company is in a turnaround, or the seat is being used as the road to CEO. Before that, a mentor or a peer group is the cheaper answer. ##### Is a COO program a substitute for a COO coach? No; they do different jobs. The business-school programs for COOs run from about four to seven months in a cohort and teach the function: strategy, operations, transformation. A COO coach works one to one on the seat you hold: the mandate, the CEO relationship, the team and you. A program suits someone preparing for the seat; a coach suits someone already in it. #### Where the numbers come from - [Russell Reynolds Associates, Global COO Turnover Index (2025 data), read September 23, 2026](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/reports-surveys/global-coo-turnover-index) - [Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles, "Second in Command: The Misunderstood Role of the Chief Operating Officer", Harvard Business Review, May 2006](https://hbr.org/2006/05/second-in-command-the-misunderstood-role-of-the-chief-operating-officer) - [Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook, "How do you choose a COO?"](https://growth.eladgil.com/book/chapter-4-building-the-executive-team/how-do-you-choose-a-coo/) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, press release on COO tenure, June 25, 2025](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/about/newsroom/ftse-100-coo-tenure-plummets) - [Crist|Kolder Associates, Volatility Report 2025 (664 Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies)](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/62164a05607c3e5978f251ec/t/697a5e8270557e4f749688f4/1769627266651/2025+CKA+Volatility+Report+Final.pdf) - [Spencer Stuart, 2025 S&P 1500 CEO Transitions: Behind the CEO Moment, February 2026](https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/2025-sp-1500-ceo-transitions-behind-the-ceo-moment) - [Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles, Making the Move from COO to CEO, Accenture COO Circle briefing, April 2010](https://miles-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/coo_to_ceo_april_2010_accenture_coo_circle.pdf) - [Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rock Center for Corporate Governance and The Miles Group, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey (200-plus CEOs, directors and senior executives)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey) - [The Bridgespan Group, "Nonprofit COOs: Where to Turn for Support" (survey of 150-plus nonprofit COOs, mid-2025)](https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/coo-where-to-turn-for-support) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12119) - [Norwest Venture Partners, How to Choose the Right Executive Coach for Startup Leadership (Bryan Bayer), 2023](https://www.norwest.com/blog/choose-right-executive-coach-startup-leadership/) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) - [The Bridgespan Group, "The Executive Director and the COO: an important partnership", January 2016](https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/executive-director-coo-important-partner) #### Keep reading - [COO Coach, Former Chief Operating Officer](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) Coaching for COOs and second-in-command executives from a former turnaround COO and Nasdaq IPO CEO. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. - [Executive Coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) Coaching from someone who has held the seat: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, New Relic from $300M to $500M. [COO coaching with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Find the Best Executive Coach for General Managers https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-executive-coach-for-general-managers/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Find the Best Executive Coach for General Managers What the first P&L does to a leader, what the evidence says a coach can fix, and seven tests that show in one call whether a coach can do the job. Facts first; my own answers last. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 How do you find the best executive coach for general managers? The honest answer, and the one every guide that ranks on the question arrives at, is that no one coach suits every general manager; the right one depends on the business you now run and what is breaking in it. What does not vary is the job. A general manager owns the revenue and the cost of a business at once, and leads functions they never ran. So this guide does three things the search results mostly skip. It sets out what the seat does to a leader, by the numbers. It says what the research shows a coach can and cannot change. And it gives seven tests, one per job the seat needs done, that you can run in a single call with any coach on your list. My own answers to the seven are in one section at the end, where you can weigh them like any other applicant's. I was EVP and General Manager at New Relic while revenue went from $300M to $500M, and I coach [general managers and P&L leaders](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coach-for-general-managers); that experience shapes the tests, and each figure in the guide is footnoted to a source listed at the end. Who this is for: the leader promoted from sales, operations, product or engineering into a first P&L role, whether that is a region, a plant, a product line or a whole business unit; the division president or country manager who already runs one and wants the next; and the CEO or head of people who has to pick a coach for a new GM and wants a way to compare the names on the list. If your company already has a coaching platform or a panel, the seven tests still apply: run them on the coaches you are offered. #### What the general manager seat does to a leader, by the numbers It is where companies grow their next chief executives. Among the 168 CEOs the S&P 1500 appointed in 2025, 30% came up as divisional CEOs, 48% from the president or chief operating officer role, and 84% had never been a chief executive before. Spencer Stuart describes the divisional role as the place a leader gets to "walk the walk", with broad oversight of a P&L and a business.1 So a GM is rarely just running a unit. Usually the GM is also being measured, whether anyone says so or not, for the seat above. It is a different job from the one that earned the promotion. In interviews with more than 40 executives, including leaders who had just made the move, HR heads and the managers who develop high-potential talent, Watkins found that many rising stars stumble when they go from leading a single function to leading a business, which puts them in charge of a P&L and of executives across every function for the first time. He names seven shifts the move demands: from specialist to generalist, analyst to integrator, tactician to strategist, bricklayer to architect, problem solver to agenda setter, warrior to diplomat, and supporting cast member to lead role.2 Most of them run against the instincts that got the promotion. A former PepsiCo president's account of the general manager's job is a useful checklist for what replaces them: set the strategy, shape the environment people work in, put the resources where the strategy says, develop the managers, build the organization, and oversee the operations, six jobs where the functional career trained one or two.3 It takes longer than anyone plans for. Gabarro followed 14 management successions, among them four newly appointed division presidents over three years, in American and European companies with sales from $1.2 million to $3 billion. Taking charge ran through five predictable stages: taking hold, immersion, reshaping, consolidation and refinement. The quality of the new leader's working relationship with the boss weighed heavily on whether the succession worked.4 And the number is the credential that follows a leader for the rest of a career: when Spencer Stuart surveyed 2,300 senior women leaders, 70% held or had held a P&L, and 47% of the CEOs among them credited the pursuit of P&L roles with moving their career.5 The first quarter in the bigger seat, move by move: [First 90 Days as a New Executive](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/first-90-days-as-a-new-executive/). Senior leaders mostly do this without outside support, even though they say they would take it. A Stanford survey run with The Miles Group asked more than 200 chief executives, directors and senior executives: close to two in three CEOs had no external coaching or leadership advice, nearly half of senior executives had none, and almost every CEO said they would welcome some. Sharing leadership and delegating, handling conflict and building the team were what they most wanted help with.6 #### What coaching changes, and what it does not, by the research Coaching has a real research base, and it points to steady, moderate gains rather than transformations. A 2014 meta-analysis pooling studies of coaching in organizations reported positive, significant effects on all five outcome groups it examined, among them goal-directed self-regulation (an effect size of 0.74), performance and skills (0.60) and coping (0.43).7 A 2016 meta-analysis focused on workplace coaching put the overall effect at 0.36, with bigger gains in individual-level and attitude outcomes than in skills.8 Read together: expect sharper goals, steadier self-management and better coping, with a measurable but moderate lift in performance. Both studies pool small numbers of trials and neither isolates general managers, so a coach who quotes you a precise return on investment is quoting marketing. A coach cannot run the unit for you, and it is not the only kind of help. A consultant diagnoses and recommends. A mentor inside the company knows the politics and shares what worked for them. A finance partner teaches you the income statement line by line. A therapist helps with history and feelings. A coach keeps what you say private, gains nothing from any particular decision, and works on how you lead the unit now. For a first-time GM, the most useful coach usually overlaps with two of those: someone who can read your P&L with you and still keep the conversation on how you lead. ##### Two kinds of coach, and why a general manager usually needs both The ranking guides sort coaches in one of two ways. Some coaches come from running something: they have carried a number and held the chair, and they can tell you where a decision like yours tends to land. Others come from technique: trained, credentialed and practised at asking the question that changes your mind, but they have never owned a P&L. Google's own summary of the qualities to seek in a GM's coach describes the hybrid: someone who has served as an operator or senior business leader and also holds professional coaching credentials. The operator alone tends to prescribe the playbook that worked for them; the technician alone asks good questions about a forecast they cannot read. Credentials are common now, 85% of coaches in the ICF's 2023 study held one,9 so a credential is the minimum to expect, and the operating record is what separates one candidate from the next. ##### What leaders who have paid for coaching say The forum threads that rank on these searches are worth reading for one reason: the people answering include leaders who have bought coaching, not only coaches selling it. Read across seven of them, three things stand out. First, when a reply ranked a coach's experience of situations like yours above certificates, it almost always came from someone who had been the client or run the company; the replies putting credentials first came from coaches. Second, the leaders whose company paid for the coach raised the same worry more than once: whose side is the coach on? One described advice that felt tilted because the coach also had a seat on the company board. Third, the practical advice was consistent: talk to two or three coaches before you choose, meet every two to three weeks rather than every week, and decide at the start what better will look like. The seven tests below build those points in. #### Seven tests, one call each Every test covers one job the seat will ask a coach to help with, and comes in three parts: the job it checks, the question to put to the coach, and the answer that should reassure you. Put all seven to every coach you are considering, the one a colleague recommended and the one the company already pays for included. One tactic helps with every test: before you describe your situation, ask each coach where they are strongest and which problems they would send elsewhere, so the answer is theirs and not an echo of yours. ##### Test one: can they read your P&L with you? What it tests: whether the coach has owned a number, not just talked to people who did. A GM's first year is spent learning which lines of the income statement are real, which are allocations, and which forecast assumptions will not survive the quarter. What to ask: send them last quarter's P&L for your unit and ask what they would want to know first. What a good answer sounds like: questions about gross margin, the cost you inherited and the assumption under the forecast come before any question about your leadership style, and the coach can describe a quarter when their own number missed and what they did in the following week. ##### Test two: can they help you lead the functions you never ran? What it tests: the move from specialist to generalist and from analyst to integrator.2 You now judge heads of finance, operations, sales and product on work you have never done yourself, and trade their priorities off against each other. What to ask: how would you help me evaluate a head of a function I never led, and how do I settle a fight between sales and operations when both are right? What a good answer sounds like: a working method, such as the measures that tell you a function is healthy and a single forum where cross-functional trade-offs get decided in the open, rather than a personality assessment. ##### Test three: do they know how to manage the CEO above you? What it tests: the relationship the research puts near the center of whether a new leader takes charge successfully.4 Your CEO now judges you on a number, and the relationship works or fails on decision rights and on how you disagree. What to ask: what should I agree with my CEO in writing in the first sixty days? What a good answer sounds like: specifics on mandate, decision rights and the two or three measures you will be judged on, and ideally a coach who has sat on the other side of that relationship, as the CEO a general manager reports to. ##### Test four: can they turn the plan into an operating rhythm? What it tests: bridging strategy and execution, the phrase that runs through every summary of what a GM coach does. The corporate plan arrives in a deck; the unit needs a quarterly plan, a meeting cadence and a way to change course without renegotiating every week. What to ask: what does a good quarterly plan for my unit look like, and who changes it and how? What a good answer sounds like: a structure they have actually run, with capacity decided up front and a named place where changes get made, not a framework with a trademark on it. ##### Test five: can they prepare you for the room? What it tests: executive presence where a GM is judged, in front of the largest customers, the operating review, the board and the whole company. What to ask: bring the next big presentation and ask them how they would change it. What a good answer sounds like: they cut it, reorder it around the decision you need, and tell you what the audience is really going to ask. A coach who has presented to a board or given a keynote under pressure answers from experience rather than theory. ##### Test six: do they know what the next seat requires? What it tests: whether the coach can help you build the record the CEO seat is filled from. Boards promote divisional leaders when they have owned a P&L, faced the board and the largest customers, and made enterprise-level decisions;1 a GM who waits for a title to get that experience usually waits too long. What to ask: what would a board need to see from me in two years that it cannot see today? What a good answer sounds like: a concrete list inside your current role, not advice to update your profile. ##### Test seven: will they push back, keep your confidence, and pick up when it matters? What it tests: three things the guides that rank all warn about. Challenge: a coach who agrees with you for an hour is expensive company. Confidentiality: when the company pays, as it usually does for a GM, agree in writing before the first session what the sponsor sees, and ask whether the coach has any other role with the company, a board seat or a consulting contract, that could tilt the advice; the right answer is that the leader owns the content and the sponsor gets attendance and an agreed view of progress. Access: the resignation, the customer escalation and the missed forecast do not wait for the calendar. You will see a 70/30 rule mentioned around this search: the coach should listen for roughly seven parts in ten and speak for three. It is a habit, not a measured standard, yet it is worth noticing on the first call. What a good answer sounds like: one point you had been avoiding saying yourself, a clear line on who sees what, and a plain answer about reaching them between sessions. #### Fees, who pays, and the terms worth insisting on The ICF's 2023 study put the average hourly coaching fee at $244 across the world and $272 in North America,9 and executive coaching for a leader who owns a P&L costs well above that: published figures start around $1,000 a month on retainer and reach $10,000, with hourly rates of $800 to $3,500 and whole engagements of $5,000 to $60,000. My guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) breaks those numbers down by level and explains who pays and how I price. For a general manager the company usually pays, because it is developing a leader it intends to keep and often to promote; the fee is small next to the P&L the leader carries. Terms: expect a free first conversation of thirty to sixty minutes and treat it as the fit test. The guides that rank put six months as the usual minimum for change that lasts; the leaders who have paid for coaching mostly settle on a session every two to three weeks, with access in between, and find weekly too often; insist on a way out if the fit is wrong, on success measures agreed in writing with you and your sponsor before you start, and on the confidentiality line in test seven. A coach who needs a long lock-in to show value is selling the contract, not the coaching. #### Red flags - Advice on your P&L from someone who has never answered for a P&L of their own. - A process they cannot explain in two minutes, or one that is mostly personality assessments. - An outcome promised before they understand your business, or an ROI figure no study supports. - Vagueness about what your sponsor will see, or reluctance to put it in writing. - One method applied to everyone: a new GM of a plant and a new GM of a software unit do not need the same hour. - A firm that sells you a named coach and assigns someone else. Ask who you will actually meet, and meet them. - A profile built from borrowed phrases and inflated titles. Leaders choosing from a company coaching platform say the profiles are where the overselling happens; the first call is where it shows. #### Where to look Your first names should come from leaders who have paid for coaching at your level, which is also what the leaders on the forums say worked for them: your CEO, your head of people, the general managers who were promoted from the seat you are in. Your company may run a coaching panel or platform; use it as a list, then run the seven tests on the names it gives you. The ICF's coach finder and the coaching directories filter by credential, level and location. Business-school executive education programs for new general managers teach the functions in a week; they are a good complement to a coach, not a substitute. Wherever a name comes from, a referral earns a coach a place on the list; the tests decide who stays on it. #### How I answer the seven tests P&L: as EVP and General Manager at New Relic I ran the platform organization of 450 people in four countries while revenue went from $300M to $500M, with $50M-plus of incremental ARR from new products, and before that I was the founder and CEO of the company that became Web.com through its Nasdaq IPO. Functions: I took the New Relic seat after the CEO let the previous leader go, and put product and engineering under one set of business metrics; I have also held the COO, CPO and CTO seats, so I have run most of the functions a GM inherits. The CEO above you: I have been the CEO a general manager reports to and the general manager reporting up, so I coach both sides of that relationship. Operating rhythm: the quarterly plan with fixed shares of capacity and the cross-company meeting for any change to it are the moves I ran at New Relic and [wrote up](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/). The room: the global keynote at FutureStack, the customer advisory boards, and a New Relic board that included partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona. The next seat: ten years as managing partner of a venture firm, with board seats across 35 deals and 18 exits, which taught me what a board looks for in a leader. Pushback and confidentiality: a psychology degree, CEC certified since 2019 and ICF credentialed, with the confidentiality line agreed in writing before the first session. The rest is on the [general manager coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coach-for-general-managers), and the three proofs in my [general guide to choosing an executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) apply here too: the coach has sat in your seat, is trained and certified on top of the experience, and in one real conversation told you something true you had been avoiding. #### Questions general managers ask before they choose ##### How do I find a good executive coach as a new general manager? Ask the people who have already bought coaching at your level, your CEO, your head of people and the GMs promoted before you, talk to two or three of the coaches they name, and run seven tests on each: can they read your P&L with you, lead you through the functions you never ran, help you manage the CEO above you, turn the plan into an operating rhythm, prepare you for the room, build the record for the next seat, and push back while keeping your confidence. ##### Who is the best executive coach for a general manager? Whichever coach can do the seven jobs your seat now requires, and show it in one call. No one coach suits every GM; the guides that rank on this question agree it turns on your business and on what is breaking in it. For a first-time P&L owner, the tie-breaker is an operating record: someone who has been accountable for a number, and who also holds a coaching credential. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? Yes, by a moderate margin. A 2014 meta-analysis shows significant gains in performance, well-being, coping, attitudes to work and goal-directed self-regulation, with effect sizes between 0.43 and 0.74, and a 2016 review of workplace coaching puts the overall effect at 0.36, strongest for individual outcomes. Neither isolates general managers, so ask any coach who promises a return where the number comes from. ##### What does a general manager coach work on? The parts of the seat a functional career does not prepare you for: owning the P&L and the forecast, judging and leading functions you never ran, the relationship and decision rights with the CEO above you, turning strategy into an operating rhythm, executive presence with customers and the board, and building the record the CEO seat is filled from. ##### Should my company pay for my coach, and what will they see? For a general manager the company usually pays, because it is developing a leader it intends to keep. Before the first session, agree in writing what the sponsor sees, and check the coach has no other role with the company, such as a board seat, that could tilt the advice: the right answer is that you own the content of the conversations and the sponsor gets attendance and an agreed view of progress against goals set with you. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? A habit good coaches keep: listen for about seven parts in ten and speak for three. Nobody audits it, but on a first call it is telling; a coach who did most of the talking was pitching. ##### How long should coaching for a new general manager last? The guides that rank put six months as the usual minimum for change that holds, with sessions weekly or every other week, which matches the research showing that taking charge of a business runs through several stages over many months. Agree the success measures at the start, and keep a way out if the fit is wrong. #### Where the numbers come from - [Spencer Stuart, 2025 S&P 1500 CEO Transitions: Behind the CEO Moment (168 transitions), February 2026](https://www.spencerstuart.com/-/media/2026/02/ceo-transitions-us/2025-s-p-1500-ceo-transitions-behind-the-ceo-moment.pdf) - [Michael D. Watkins, How Managers Become Leaders: The Seven Seismic Shifts of Perspective and Responsibility, Harvard Business Review, June 2012](https://hbr.org/2012/06/how-managers-become-leaders) - [Andrall E. Pearson, Six Basics for General Managers, Harvard Business Review, July 1989](https://hbr.org/1989/07/six-basics-for-general-managers) - [John J. Gabarro, When a New Manager Takes Charge, Harvard Business Review Classic (first published 1985), January 2007](https://hbr.org/2007/01/when-a-new-manager-takes-charge) - [Cassandra Frangos, Spencer Stuart, Balance Sheets to Boardrooms: Accelerating Women Leaders Through P&L Experience (2,300 senior women leaders), April 2025](https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/balance-sheets-to-boardrooms-accelerating-women-leaders-through-pl-experience) - [Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rock Center for Corporate Governance and The Miles Group, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey (200-plus CEOs, directors and senior executives)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12119) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) #### Keep reading - [Executive Coach for General Managers](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coach-for-general-managers) Coaching for general managers and P&L leaders from a former EVP and General Manager who took New Relic from $300M to $500M. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. - [Executive Coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) Coaching from someone who has held the seat: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, New Relic from $300M to $500M. [General manager coaching with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coach-for-general-managers) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Find the Best IT Director Coach: Seven Tests https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-it-director-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Find the Best IT Director Coach: Seven Tests What the IT director seat does to the people in it, what a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. Facts first; my own answers last. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 How do you find the best IT director coach? Google's own answers to that question and to how to choose one say to look for someone who combines general coaching method with deep technology experience and a track record of scaling engineering or IT operations, and every guide that ranks on it adds the honest caveat: there is no single best coach, it depends on what is breaking and where you are headed. This guide is written to be useful whichever coach you end up with, including none. It covers what the search results mostly skip: what the IT director seat does to the people in it, by the numbers; what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix; and seven tests that tell you in one call whether a particular coach can do the specific jobs the seat needs done. My own answers to the seven are at the end, in one section, so you can read them as one candidate's. I coach [IT directors and senior technology leaders](https://kengavranovic.com/it-director-coach) and ran a $250M technology budget over more than 1,000 engineers as a vice president at Cox Automotive; that is the lens, and every number below has a source at the bottom. Who this is for: IT directors and directors of infrastructure, applications, security or data; senior IT managers stepping into a director role; and technology leaders one step from VP or CIO, usually reporting to a CIO, CTO or CFO. It is also for the CIO or the head of learning assembling a shortlist for one of their directors, who can run the seven tests on every name and compare the answers side by side. #### What the IT director seat does to the people in it, by the numbers The job changes the day you take it. In DDI's 2025 study of 10,796 leaders, 71% reported significantly higher stress since stepping into their current role; burnt-out leaders were 3.5 times more likely to leave, and of more than 70,000 manager candidates DDI assessed, only 19% showed strong delegation skills.1 Delegation is the habit the IT director seat runs on, and almost nobody arrives with it, because the seat is usually filled by promoting the strongest engineer on the team. The load is heavy and mostly invisible upward. Among 7,726 technology professionals ISACA surveyed in 2025, heavy workloads (54%), long hours (43%), tight deadlines (41%), lack of resources (41%) and unsupportive management (41%) topped the list of work stressors, and while 83% said mentors are important and 63% wanted one, only 22% had one.2 In Foundry's 2025 State of the CIO research, 15% of IT leaders described themselves as burned out and another 33% reported some burnout in their current role.3 The seat above you turns over, and the mandate keeps growing. The average CIO at the 1,000 largest U.S. companies stays 4.6 years, 3.9 in healthcare,4 so most IT directors report to a new boss with a new agenda at least once. Foundry's 2026 study finds CIOs actively leading digital transformation at 82% of companies, 82% tasked with evaluating AI additions to the technology stack, and 40% reporting directly to the CEO, down from 48% a year earlier.5 Among 2,015 technology leaders in 62 countries, 65% sit on the executive committee, the share reporting an AI skills shortage rose from 28% to 51% between two reports, and only a third report a clear return on AI so far.6 And the board is paying attention: 66% of public-company boards discuss technology at every meeting, yet only 34% of the directors in those boards feel confident their colleagues understand what transformative technology means for the growth strategy.7 The IT director's deck is often how that understanding gets built. #### What a coach can and cannot do, according to the evidence Coaching is one of the better-studied interventions in organizational psychology, and the results are positive but smaller than the marketing. A 2014 meta-analysis of coaching in organizations found significant positive effects on all five outcomes it measured: performance and skills (0.60), well-being (0.46), coping (0.43), work attitudes (0.54) and goal-directed self-regulation (0.74).8 A 2016 meta-analysis of 17 studies of workplace coaching found an overall effect of 0.36, smaller for skills (0.28), larger for affective outcomes (0.51) and largest for individual-level results (1.24).9 In plain terms: coaching reliably helps people set and pursue goals, cope, and feel differently about their work, and improves performance by a moderate amount. Neither study looked at IT leaders specifically, so treat any coach who quotes a return-on-investment multiple with suspicion and ask which study it came from. What a coach cannot do is run your program or replace the other kinds of help. A consultant is hired to deliver an answer. A mentor has walked the road and describes it when asked. A therapist works on where you have been and how it feels. A coach keeps confidence, holds no stake in your decision, and works on how you decide and lead this quarter. Google's own answer on finding an IT leadership coach draws the same line, a coach asks guiding questions where a mentor or consultant gives direct advice, and recommends the hybrid: formal coaching training together with real time in the technology industry. ##### The four kinds of coach you will meet The generalist executive coach: strong on presence, communication and career, often through a large firm or a corporate program; the weakness is context, because an IT director's problems arrive as a stalled migration, an outage the board heard about or a security budget the CFO cut, and a coach who never carried a platform cannot tell the technology problem from the leadership one. The technology executive coach, usually a former CIO or technology executive: the operator who has, in the words of one CIO.com piece on the type, lived your world, and can anticipate landmines and name blind spots;11 the weakness is the assumption that what worked in their company will work in yours. The platform or marketplace coach: fast to book, filtered by specialty and price, often a former leader from a large technology company; the weakness is depth and continuity, and you are choosing from a profile. The peer group: a room of other technology leaders facing the same problems, strong on perspective and isolation; the weakness is that nobody in the room is working on you. Most directors need two of the four at different points. Know which you are buying. Credentials count, but they are the entry ticket, not the decision: in the ICF's 2023 study, 85% of coach practitioners held a certification or credential from a coaching organization and 80% said their clients expect one.10 Treat the credential as table stakes and the fit as the decision. #### Seven tests, one call each The tests below are the seven jobs an IT director needs a coach to be able to do. Each one says what it tests, what to ask, and what a good answer sounds like. Ask them of everyone on the list, including anyone your company recommended. ##### Test one: can they make your budget case land with the CFO? What it tests: technology-to-business translation, the skill every guide on this search names first, and the one most technical leaders were never taught. What to ask: bring the last budget case that did not get funded and ask why it failed. What a good answer sounds like: they start from the business result and the cost of not doing it rather than from the architecture, they find the sentence the CFO stopped reading at, and they have sat on the approving side of a technology budget, not only the requesting side. ##### Test two: can they coach the move from best technical person in the room to leader of it? What it tests: the identity shift that generic coaching treats as a skills problem. Google's own definition of the job is helping technology leaders move from technical managers to strategic executives. What to ask: I still fix the hardest problems myself when things go wrong; what do you do with that? What a good answer sounds like: they treat it as the core of the work rather than a habit to drop, they ask what you are afraid will happen if you stop, and they can describe how someone they worked with made the change without losing the respect of their engineers. ##### Test three: can they help you lead through your managers? What it tests: delegation, manager quality and the hard conversations, the work that decides whether a director scales. Only 19% of assessed manager candidates show strong delegation skills.1 What to ask: one of my managers is not working out and I have been putting off the conversation for two months; what do we do in the next two weeks? What a good answer sounds like: specifics, including what to say, what to write down, and how to protect the team while it happens. ##### Test four: can they get a technology decision through the executive meeting or the board? What it tests: executive presence and influence with people who do not share your technical frame. Two-thirds of public-company boards now discuss technology at every meeting, and a third of their directors are confident they understand it.7 What to ask: here is the deck for next month's steering committee; what is really being asked? What a good answer sounds like: they ask for the deck, tell you what to send three days before, and have presented to a real executive team or board under pressure, which they describe with specifics rather than adjectives. ##### Test five: do they know why transformations stall? What it tests: whether they can help with the program actually on your desk, the cloud migration, the ERP replacement or the AI mandate. With CIOs leading digital transformation at 82% of companies,5 most IT directors are delivering one. What to ask: my program is six months in and stalling; where would you look first? What a good answer sounds like: ownership, the measure, decision rights and whether the executives are still deciding, before any mention of tools or methodology. Stalls are rarely technical. ##### Test six: can they coach the politics, including a new boss? What it tests: stakeholder management inside a matrix, and the moment most directors meet at least once, when the CIO or CTO above them is replaced; average CIO tenure is 4.6 years.4 What to ask: my CIO just left and the program is now mine; what do [the first ninety days](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/first-90-days-as-a-new-executive/) under the new leader look like? What a good answer sounds like: they talk about what the new leader was hired to change, about showing up with the honest state of your programs before you are asked, and about deciding what you want from the change rather than only surviving it. ##### Test seven: will they push back, and can they hold the burnout without turning it into therapy? What it tests: whether you will hear something you did not want to, and whether the coach can work with the part of the seat nobody talks about. Nearly half of IT leaders report some burnout.3 The 70/30 rule that appears on nearly every search in this family, that the coach listens about seventy percent of a session and talks thirty, is a rule of thumb rather than a standard, but it is a fair thing to watch in a first call. What to ask: where does coaching end for you and therapy begin, and when my company pays, who sees what? What a good answer sounds like: less talking than you expected, at least one thing you had not said out loud yet, a one-sentence line between coaching and therapy, and a written agreement that the content stays yours while the company gets attendance and a yes or no on progress. #### What it costs, who pays, and the terms to insist on Across every kind of coaching the average fee for a one-hour session in 2022 was $244 worldwide and $272 in North America.10 Published U.S. ranges for director-level executive coaching run $300 to $600 an hour and $6,000 to $15,000 for a six-month program, with monthly retainers from $1,000 to $10,000 across all levels; the breakdown by level, who pays and how I price are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). At director level and above the company usually pays, most often from the learning and development budget or the CIO's, and a director inheriting a transformation or preparing for promotion is exactly the case it is funded for. If you need to ask, put it in business terms: the program at risk, the promotion in view, and what success will look like in writing. Terms: take a thirty to sixty minute first call with each coach on your list and treat it as the fit test it is; the good ones do not charge for it. Engagements for this seat typically last six months to a year with sessions every two to four weeks. Agree before the first session, in writing, what success looks like and what the company sees. Avoid long lock-ins; if the terms need a year to prove value, the value is in the terms. #### Red flags - A coach who has never carried a technology budget, a platform or an outage, talking about your technology leadership. - A technology expert who wants to fix the architecture instead of coaching the leader: that is a consultant with a coaching invoice. - A return-on-investment multiple without a study behind it. - A firm that markets a named coach and assigns you someone else. Ask who you will actually meet. - No line on confidentiality when your employer pays, or a report to your boss you have not seen. - No boundaries: a coach who cannot say in one sentence where coaching ends and therapy or consulting begins. - Guru promises, or a personal brand doing the work a method should. #### Where to look Start with the people who have already paid for one: your CIO or CTO, the technology leaders you respect in other companies, and your head of learning, who may already hold a panel of approved coaches. The International Coaching Federation runs a directory of credentialed coaches that you can filter by specialty. Peer groups and industry communities for technology leaders are a second route, and the coaching marketplaces give you a menu filtered by background and price. Then run the seven tests on every name, including the one that came recommended; a recommendation is where the list starts, not where the choice ends. #### My own answers to the seven, for the record I am a former CTO, a former vice president of engineering and a former CEO, so read what follows as one candidate's answers. Budget case: at Cox Automotive I ran the technology budget for five years and sat on the approving side of directors' cases. Identity: I taught myself assembly at ten and built my first business on the Pick operating system before I held the CTO and CEO seats, so the move I coach is one I made myself, and the one every director who reported to me had to make. The tech geek never left, either: I still build, with two inference servers at home and a house that runs on AI. Managers: the Cox cloud transformation was delivered through directors and their managers, and the operating rhythm that did it is teachable. The room: as EVP at New Relic I presented to the board with Benchmark at the table, and spoke at the Gartner IT Symposium. Transformations: I wrote up the six causes of a stall and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days in [what I look for when a digital transformation stalls](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/). Politics and a new boss: I have coached a VP of Technology through the replacement of his CTO, and he came out of it running the transformation with a bigger mandate. Pushback and the person: I am a certified coach, CEC and ICF certified since 2019, with a psychology degree, and one hour covers the plan and the person carrying it. The rest is on the [IT director coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/it-director-coach), and the three-proof test from my [general guide to choosing an executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) still holds: has this person held the seat at your level or above it; are they trained and certified as well as experienced; and after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet. #### Questions IT leaders ask before they choose ##### Who is the best IT director coach? The one who can do the seven jobs your seat needs next and prove it in one call: make your budget case land, coach the move from technical expert to leader, help you lead through your managers, get a decision through the executive room, diagnose a stalling transformation, coach the politics including a new boss, and push back while holding the burnout. There is no single best; Google's own answer and the guides that rank on the question say to look for experience in technology management and in scaling IT operations, plus coaching training. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? The evidence says yes, moderately. A 2014 meta-analysis found significant positive effects on performance and skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes and goal-directed self-regulation, with effect sizes from 0.43 to 0.74; a 2016 meta-analysis of 17 workplace studies found an overall effect of 0.36, largest for individual-level results. Neither studied IT leaders specifically, and a coach who quotes a return-on-investment multiple should be asked which study. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? A rule of thumb that in a good coaching session the coach listens about seventy percent of the time and talks about thirty. It is not a standard and nobody measures it, but it is a fair thing to watch for in a first call: a coach who talked for most of the hour was selling, not coaching. ##### How much does an IT director coach cost? Published U.S. ranges for director-level executive coaching run $300 to $600 an hour and $6,000 to $15,000 for a six-month program, against an average of $272 an hour across every kind of coaching in North America in 2022. At director level the company usually pays, from the learning and development budget or the CIO's. ##### Do I need a coach, a mentor or a consultant? A consultant delivers an answer; a mentor shares what they did when you ask; a coach works on how you decide and lead, in confidence, with no stake in the outcome. Among technology professionals, 63% want a mentor and only 22% have one, so if you can get a mentor, get one. For the IT director seat the useful coach is the hybrid Google's own answer describes: formal coaching training together with real time in senior technology roles. ##### When should an IT director get a coach? At the two moments the search results ask about most: moving into a first director role, when the job stops being technical, and preparing for VP or CIO, when the work becomes scope and executive relationships. Add a third, when the CIO or CTO above you is replaced. The wrong moment is after visible trouble has started. ##### What is the difference between an IT director coach and a CIO coach? Mostly the level of the seat. A CIO coach works with the person who sets the technology agenda and answers to the CEO and the board; an IT director coach works with the person delivering it through managers and making the case upward, often with the CIO seat as the goal. The good ones overlap, because the director's next job is the CIO's problems, and the seven tests apply to both. #### Where the numbers come from - [DDI, Global Leadership Forecast 2025 (10,796 leaders; 70,000-plus assessed manager candidates), April 2025](https://www.ddi.com/about/media/burnout) - [ISACA, Tech Workplace and Culture 2025 (7,726 technology professionals), press release, 5 March 2025](https://www.isaca.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/2025/1-in-3-tech-pros-switched-jobs-leaving-74-of-firms-worried-about-it-talent-retention) - [CIO.com (Foundry), IT leadership burnout: the hidden cost of executive stress, citing Foundry's 2025 State of the CIO, 2025](https://www.cio.com/article/4209332/the-leadership-burnout-no-one-talks-about-it-executives-who-are-afraid-to-ask-for-help.html) - [Korn Ferry, Age and Tenure in the C-Suite (the 1,000 largest U.S. companies by revenue), 21 January 2020](https://ir.kornferry.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/34/age-and-tenure-in-the-c-suite-korn-ferry-study-reveals-trends-by-title-and-industry) - [Foundry, 2026 State of the CIO Study (25th annual; 662 heads of IT and 249 line-of-business respondents), 2026](https://resources.foundryco.com/hubfs/CIO_Foundry_%20State%20of%20CIO_%20Study%202026.pdf) - [Nash Squared / Harvey Nash, Digital Leadership Report 2025 (2,015 technology and digital leaders, 62 countries), May 2025](https://www.nashsquared.com/dlr-2025/dlr-2025) - [NACD, 2024 Public Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey: Technology Oversight, 2024](https://www.nacdonline.org/all-governance/governance-resources/governance-surveys/surveys-benchmarking/2024-public-company-board-practices-and-oversight-survey/technology-oversight/) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12119) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary (fees for 2022)](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) - [CIO.com, Executive coaching from seasoned CIOs makes the difference (Dan Roberts), 4 September 2024](https://www.cio.com/article/3504771/executive-coaching-from-seasoned-cios-makes-the-difference.html) #### Keep reading - [IT Director Coach: former CTO and VP of Engineering](https://kengavranovic.com/it-director-coach) Coaching for IT directors and technology leaders from someone who held the seats above theirs: CTO, VP of Engineering over 1,000 engineers, and CEO. - [Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/) The six causes of a stall and the five questions to ask in the first thirty days. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. [IT director coaching with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/it-director-coach) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Find the Best VP of Engineering Coach: Seven Tests https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-vp-of-engineering-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Find the Best VP of Engineering Coach: Seven Tests The executive-table jobs the VP of Engineering seat adds, which outcomes coaching moves and which it does not, and seven one-call tests. The numbers come first; my answers come last. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 Who is the best VP of Engineering coach? There is no single answer, and the honest guides and Google's own answer both say it depends on what you are trying to fix: the size of the organization, the executive table you just joined, or the next seat. This guide is written to help you find the best VP of Engineering coach for your situation whoever you pick, including nobody. It covers what the seat adds to an engineering leader's job, by the numbers; which outcomes coaching moves and which it leaves alone; and seven one-call tests you can put to any coach, each built on a job the VP seat needs done. I put my own answers in a single closing section, to be weighed like anyone else's. I coach [VPs of Engineering and CTOs](https://kengavranovic.com/vp-of-engineering-coach) and held the seat myself across more than 1,000 engineers; each number is footnoted to its source. It is written for a VP of Engineering, a head of engineering about to take the title, or a CTO who runs the organization rather than the architecture; also the CEO or the head of people shopping for a coach on their behalf. If you manage one team of engineers and are deciding whether to manage at all, a mentor or a peer circle is the better first step. #### What the VP of Engineering seat adds, by the numbers The job got wider without getting any longer. In LeadDev's 2025 survey of 617 engineering leaders and developers, 65% reported an increase in scope and 40% took on more direct reports; 38% of engineering leaders worked longer hours than a year before; 22% of respondents were at critical levels of burnout; and 40% reported a less motivated team than a year earlier.1 AI raised the stakes rather than the headcount: across nearly 5,000 technology professionals, 90% use AI at work and more than 80% say it made them more productive, 30% report little or no trust in the code it produces, and AI adoption now correlates with higher delivery throughput but still with lower delivery stability.2 Meanwhile the business is watching: in a 2026 vendor survey of 636 engineering professionals, 84% said engineering productivity is a top management concern.3 And the clock is shorter than the title suggests: across the top 1,000 US companies the average technology chief holds the seat for 4.6 years, against 6.9 for the CEO.4 What changes on the inside is less visible. A VP who writes about her own promotion describes the first shift as moving from managing engineers to managing managers, and having to learn to see friction through a layer of people who now sit between you and the work; she also found that the job itself is contextual, shaped by whatever the company needs fixed and by who else sits at the executive table.5 The venture firms that hire VPs of Engineering for their portfolios agree on the moment the seat appears: roughly ten engineers or more, with the founder or CTO turning into the bottleneck and velocity or quality slipping; below five engineers a VP is likely to be underused.6 What they look for says what the seat demands: experience scaling a team from about five to fifty and beyond, ownership of process, a player-coach style, and the ability to explain engineering to people who are not engineers.6 Three hiring frameworks say the same thing from different angles. Shopify's VP of Engineering grades the seat on process, people and technology, and notes that the order of the three changes as the company grows.7 A second venture firm warns against hiring a leader two stages ahead of the company, and says the balance moves from hands-on technical leadership toward business judgment and management once a team passes about fifty engineers.8 And the first firm puts the risk plainly: experience at a larger company does not guarantee success at a smaller one.6 A coach for this seat has to know which of those stages you are in. #### What coaching moves, and what it does not Coaching is well studied, and the effects are real but moderate. Theeboom and colleagues pooled the studies of coaching inside organizations in 2014 and found gains in all five outcome groups, smallest for coping (0.43), largest for goal-directed self-regulation (0.74), with performance and skills at 0.60.9 Jones, Woods and Guillaume pooled 17 workplace studies in 2016: a pooled effect of 0.36, bigger on how people feel about their work than on skills, bigger with internal coaches than external ones, and no gap at all between in-person coaching and coaching done partly or fully online, nor by how many sessions there were.10 In practice: coaching reliably changes how a leader sets goals, regulates, copes and leads; it moves performance by a moderate amount; and a remote coach is not a compromise. None of those studies looked at VPs of Engineering, so treat a coach who promises a return-on-investment multiple with caution. Most executives never get the help. Of the 200-plus leaders that Stanford and the Miles Group surveyed in 2013, close to two in three CEOs had no outside coach or adviser at all, and the skills they most wanted to build were conflict management, sharing leadership and team building.11 Those are the executives a VP of Engineering reports to and sits beside; the gap is usually wider one level down. A coach will not run the organization for you. A consultant delivers the work. A mentor has done your job and passes on what worked for them. A peer community gives you people in the same seat. A therapist looks at the past and what it did to you. A coach is confidential, is not invested in any particular outcome, and works on the way you make decisions and lead right now, and at the VP level the most useful ones combine that with enough operating experience to give you a straight answer when you need one. ##### Five kinds of coach on this search, and the gap in each - The former engineering executive who now coaches: has held a VP of Engineering or CTO seat, knows the vocabulary, and can read an org chart in a minute. What they can miss: the business side of the table, if they have never owned a P&L or sat in the CEO's chair, and a tendency to replay the one company they ran. - The peer community or CTO network: a cohort of people in your seat, often with one-to-one sessions attached. What it can miss: confidentiality inside a group, and depth on your specific organization. - The marketplace of per-session mentors: fast, flexible and cheap by the hour. What it can miss: continuity, and a coach who knows your context well enough to challenge it. - The career or job-search coach: good at the next title, the interview loop and the offer. What it can miss: the job itself once you have it. - The general executive coach with technology clients: strong on presence, communication and the psychology of the role. What it can miss: the difference between a staffing problem and an architecture problem when the CEO asks why delivery slipped. Credentials still matter: four in five coaches told the ICF in its 2023 study that clients expect a certification.12 A credential gets a coach onto the list; fit decides who stays on it. #### Seven tests for a single call Each test is a job the VP of Engineering seat adds on top of leading engineers. For each: the job it checks, the question to put, and what to listen for in the reply. Put all seven to every coach you consider, including the one a colleague recommended. ##### Test one: have they owned a budget and a headcount plan in front of a CFO? The job: the part of the seat no engineering manager is trained for. It comes with the function's budget, its hiring plan and its cost of delivery, all three defended at the executive table. Ask: here is my headcount plan for next year; what will the CFO push back on first? Listen for: cost per unit of delivery, the capacity behind each commitment and what gets cut if revenue slips, not about how to ask nicely for more engineers. ##### Test two: can they get you ready for the board, and for due diligence? The job: knowing what a board wants to hear from engineering, and what an investor or an acquirer checks when they look under the hood. On AI, boards now want the spend, the payback and the evidence for both. Ask: I present to the board in six weeks; what goes on the slide, and what should I expect to be asked? Listen for: someone who has presented to a board themselves, or sat on one, and they talk about risk, spend and delivery confidence, not architecture diagrams. ##### Test three: can they help you define the split with the CEO, the CTO and the CPO before it defines you? The job: the relationship that makes or breaks most VPs of Engineering. The firms that hire for the seat say to define the split between the CTO and the VP early, and that a company that cannot define it may not be ready for the hire.6 The product and engineering seam is the other half. Ask: the CTO and I both think we own the roadmap; what do we write down, and who arbitrates? Listen for: a concrete decision-rights split, written, with an escalation path, and a view of what the CEO needs from each of you. ##### Test four: do they know which of process, people and technology your stage needs first? The job: stage fluency. The same three skills matter at every stage, but in a different order,7 and a leader who brings a later stage's answer too early slows the company down.8 Ask: we have forty engineers and ship weekly; what breaks next? Listen for: the next failure named before you describe it, and advice on what not to build yet. ##### Test five: can they design the organization for the next size, not the current one? The job: org design, the job that arrives when a team passes the size one person can hold and a layer of managers appears between you and the work.5 Ask: when do I add directors, how many engineers per manager, and what do I stop doing myself? Listen for: numbers from their own experience, a plan for the managers you promote, and a warning about the work you will be tempted to keep. ##### Test six: can they turn AI into a number the board will trust? The job: closing the gap between the AI story and the delivery data. Adoption is near universal, trust is not, and faster throughput is arriving with lower stability.2 Ask: my CEO expects AI to double output; what do I measure, and what do I say at the next board meeting? Listen for: a plan for the platform, review and testing discipline that lets the gain survive production, and a metric you can defend a quarter later, not a promise. ##### Test seven: can they help you win the room, not just the argument, and tell you when you are wrong? The job: the personal shift the seat asks for. At the executive table the better argument does not win on its own, the scope keeps widening and the hours with it,1 and a leader who is always right in the architecture review can still lose the room. Ask: tell me something about how I came across in this call. Listen for: a coach who listened more than they talked, one thing you did not want to hear, and they are clear about where coaching ends and therapy begins. #### Cost, who pays, and the terms worth insisting on The ICF's most recent figures (2022) put the average hour of coaching, all types, at $244 globally, and at $272 across North America.12 At the executive level the published figures are far higher: between $1,000 and $10,000 monthly on a retainer, or $800 to $3,500 per hour. My cost guide has the numbers by level, who usually pays and how I set fees: [what executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). For a VP of Engineering the company usually pays, as leadership development, and it is worth asking your CEO or head of people before you pay yourself. Terms: an introductory call of half an hour to an hour, free, with every coach on the list is normal, and it is the fit test. When the company pays, put in writing before you start who owns the content: what you say stays yours; the employer sees who turned up and whether the goals are moving. Month to month is fair; a six-month lock-in before any value is shown is not. #### Red flags - Someone who has never led managers, advising on how to scale an engineering organization. - Big-company frameworks with no sense of your stage: the venture guides warn about hiring leaders two stages ahead, and the same applies to the coach. - An ROI figure that no study supports. - Strong opinions, strongly held: a coach with one development process or one org design for every company. - A firm that markets one coach and staffs you with another: ask who shows up each week. - No line between coaching and therapy, or between coaching and doing the work for you. #### Where to look Ask the people who have hired one: your CEO, peers at other companies, your investors and independent directors, and the engineering leaders you admire, and find out which coach they used at your scale. Published lists of engineering leadership coaches help, though some are written by coaches who list themselves first. Engineering-executive communities and coaching marketplaces let you filter by price and format. Put every name through the seven tests. #### How I answer the seven Budget and headcount: as EVP and GM at New Relic I ran product and engineering together for a business that grew from $300M to $500M, and planned engineering capacity against roadmap, bugs and sales commitments every quarter. The board: partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona sat on the New Relic board I presented to, and I ran my own board as founder and CEO of Interland, now Web.com, through its Nasdaq IPO. The split: I have held the CEO, COO, CPO and CTO seats at different companies, so I have been on each side of the decision-rights conversation. Stage: from a startup to 650 people at Interland, three venture-backed startups since, and an 80-year-old enterprise. Org design: at Cox Automotive I was the VP of Engineering across more than 1,000 engineers, 10,000-plus servers moved to the cloud at 99.9% uptime. AI: I have built and shipped AI products as a CEO, and I still build, with two inference servers and an AI-powered house. Right versus effective: a psychology degree, CEC and ICF certification since 2019, and a lot of meetings where I learned it the hard way. I started as an engineer, teaching myself assembly at 10. The rest is on the [VP of Engineering coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/vp-of-engineering-coach), and the operating rhythm I used at New Relic is written up in [aligning product and engineering for performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/). #### Questions VPs of Engineering ask about coaching ##### Who is the best VP of Engineering coach? Whoever can do the next jobs your seat needs, at your scale, and prove it in a single call: the budget in front of a CFO, the board, the split with the CEO and CTO, the order of process, people and technology for your stage, the next org design, AI you can measure, and honest pushback. It depends on your focus area, which is also what Google's own answer to the question says. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? On balance yes, and moderately. Theeboom's 2014 meta-analysis found gains in performance, well-being, coping, work attitudes and self-regulation (effect sizes 0.43 to 0.74); the 2016 review by Jones and colleagues of 17 workplace studies found a pooled effect of 0.36, with no gap between in-person and online coaching. Neither looked at VPs of Engineering. ##### Which coaching is best for engineering leaders at the VP level? A hybrid: someone who coaches, meaning they make you do the thinking, and who has also held an engineering executive seat, so they can give you a straight answer on a budget, a board slide or an org design when you need one. Pure mentoring gives you someone else's answer; pure coaching without the operating experience cannot tell a staffing problem from an architecture problem. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? A rule of thumb: the coach should be listening around seventy percent of the time and speaking around thirty. Nobody measures it, but notice it on the first call; a coach who held the floor for most of the hour was pitching. ##### How much do leadership coaches charge? The ICF puts the average hour of coaching at $244 worldwide and $272 in North America (2022 figures). Executive coaching costs more: published retainers fall between $1,000 and $10,000 monthly, hourly rates between $800 and $3,500. At the VP level the employer usually pays, as leadership development. ##### Is a CTO higher than a VP of Engineering? Usually the CTO is the more senior title, but the jobs differ more than the rank: the CTO tends to own technology direction and the outside story, the VP of Engineering the organization and delivery. In many companies one person does both. The firms that hire for these seats say to define the split early; a coach should help you do that with your CEO. ##### Can my company pay for a VP of Engineering coach? Usually, yes. Most companies treat coaching at the VP level as leadership development, and the CEO or the head of people approves it. Agree in writing who sees what: you own the content of the sessions, and the company gets attendance and a view of progress. #### Where the numbers come from - [LeadDev, The Engineering Leadership Report 2025 (617 engineering leaders and developers, surveyed 14 to 27 March 2025)](https://leaddev.com/the-engineering-leadership-report-2025) - [Google Cloud, DORA: State of AI-assisted Software Development 2025 (nearly 5,000 technology professionals), announced 23 September 2025](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-the-2025-dora-report) - [Jellyfish, 2026 State of Engineering Management Report (636 engineering professionals, March 2026)](https://jellyfish.co/2026-state-of-engineering-management/) - [Korn Ferry, Age and Tenure in the C-Suite (top 1,000 US companies by revenue), 21 January 2020](https://ir.kornferry.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/34/age-and-tenure-in-the-c-suite-korn-ferry-study-reveals-trends-by-title-and-industry) - [Emily Nakashima, On Becoming a VP of Engineering, Part 1: The Path to VP, Honeycomb](https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/becoming-vp-of-engineering-pt1) - [Leslie Crowe, BCV Field Guide: Hiring Your First VP of Engineering, Bain Capital Ventures, 24 June 2025](https://baincapitalventures.com/insight/bcv-field-guide-hiring-your-first-vp-of-engineering/) - [First Round Review, Hiring a VP of Engineering? Use This Framework from Shopify's VPE (Farhan Thawar), 29 April 2021, updated 29 February 2024](https://review.firstround.com/hiring-a-vp-of-engineering-use-this-framework-from-shopifys-vpe-to-get-it-right/) - [Tim Shieh, How to Choose a VP of Engineering, Pillar VC Founder Playlist, 2022](https://www.pillar.vc/playlist/article/how-to-choose-the-right-vp-of-engineering/) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/does-coaching-work-a-meta-analysis-on-the-effects-of-coaching-on-) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/25642/) - [Stanford Graduate School of Business and The Miles Group, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey (more than 200 CEOs, directors and senior executives)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) #### Keep reading - [VP of Engineering Coach Who Held the Seat](https://kengavranovic.com/vp-of-engineering-coach) Coaching for VPs of Engineering and CTOs from a former VP of Engineering over 1,000 engineers and a Nasdaq IPO CEO. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. - [Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/) The New Relic operating rhythm: one owner over product and engineering, a named share of capacity, one escalation meeting. [VP of Engineering coaching with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/vp-of-engineering-coach) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Find the Best B2B SaaS Coach: Seven Tests for CEOs https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-b2b-saas-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Find the Best B2B SaaS Coach: Seven Tests for CEOs What running a subscription software company does to the person running it, what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. Facts first; my own answers last. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 How do you find the best B2B SaaS coach? Everything that ranks on the question, from the marketplaces to the masterminds to Google's own answer, says the same thing in different words: it depends on your ARR stage, on whether you are bootstrapped or venture-backed, and on which bottleneck is in front of you this quarter: churn, pricing, acquisition, team scaling or strategy. This guide is written to be useful whichever SaaS coach you end up with, including none. It covers three things the search results mostly skip: what running a subscription software company does to the person running it, by the numbers; what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix; and seven tests that tell you in one call whether a particular coach can do the specific jobs a B2B SaaS CEO needs done. My own answers to the seven are at the end, in one section, so you can read them as one candidate's. I coach [B2B SaaS CEOs, founders and executives](https://kengavranovic.com/b2b-saas-coach) and ran a subscription software company from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO; that is the lens, and every number below has a source at the bottom. Who this is for: the founder or CEO of a B2B SaaS company past product-market fit, usually somewhere between $1M and $100M in ARR, and the COO, CPO, CRO or CTO who owns a piece of the recurring-revenue machine. If you are pre-revenue, a mentor, an accelerator or a peer community is usually the better first call, and the numbers below say why. If you are assembling a shortlist for a founder, run the seven tests on every name and compare the answers side by side. #### What the SaaS seat does to a founder, by the numbers Start with why the choice matters. McKinsey followed about 3,000 software and online-services companies over three decades: 28% ever reached $100 million in revenue, and 3% reached $1 billion. A company growing 20% a year, a rate most industries would envy, was far more likely to disappear than to scale; McKinsey put its odds of ceasing to exist within a few years at 92%. Most of the fastest growers, 85%, could not keep their rate, and fewer than a quarter of those got it back.1 The study's early-warning list for a stall reads like a SaaS dashboard: slower customer acquisition, lower lifetime value from new customers, partners drifting away, and key people leaving sales, presales or engineering.1 The coach you hire has to read those signals from your numbers, not from your mood. The public benchmark shows what good looks like at scale. In 2021 the 100 public SaaS companies McKinsey studied with more than $100 million in revenue had a median growth rate of 22%; barely one in three met the Rule of 40, across 200 software companies over a decade the rule held only 16% of the time, and just 1.6% grew 30% or more for ten straight years.2 What separated the leaders was net revenue retention of 120% or more, which is 20% growth a year before a single new customer, and payback on customer acquisition inside 16 months, where the bottom quartile needed close to four years.2 A coach who cannot talk fluently about those two numbers is coaching a different business. Private B2B SaaS shows the same link between retention and growth. In a 2025 survey of more than 1,000 private companies, median net revenue retention ran 102% to 106% by contract size and gross retention 90% to 95%; companies under 90% net retention grew at a median 15%, and those over 130% at 50%.3 Median growth was 22%: 25% for equity-backed companies and 20% for bootstrapped ones.4 Retention is the number to hand a prospective coach first. The personal cost is measured too, and mostly hidden. In a survey of more than 400 founders, 72% reported an impact on their mental health, 81% said they do not openly share their stress, fears and challenges, founders turn to a spouse (76%) and co-founders (49%) far more than to investors (10%), and 77% get no professional help at all.5 In the Stanford and Miles Group survey of more than 200 CEOs and senior executives, nearly two-thirds of CEOs received no coaching or leadership advice from outside the company while nearly all said they would welcome it; the areas they wanted help with most were delegation, conflict management and team building.6 #### What a coach can and cannot do, according to the evidence Coaching is one of the better-studied interventions in organizational psychology, and the results are positive but smaller than the marketing. A 2014 meta-analysis of coaching in organizations found significant positive effects on every outcome it measured, with effect sizes from 0.43 for coping to 0.74 for goal-directed self-regulation, and 0.60 for performance and skills.7 A 2016 meta-analysis of 17 studies of workplace coaching found an overall effect of 0.36, larger for individual-level results and for how people feel about their work than for skills.8 In plain terms: coaching reliably improves how people set goals, regulate themselves, decide and cope, and it improves performance by a moderate amount. Neither study looked at SaaS CEOs specifically, so treat any coach who quotes a return-on-investment percentage, a multiple on ARR, or a guaranteed exit with suspicion. What a coach cannot do is run the company or replace the other kinds of help. An advisor gives you answers. A mentor has done the job and shares it when asked. A board member has a duty to the company and a vote. A therapist works on the past and how you feel about it. A consultant does the work for you and leaves. A peer community gives you people at your stage and no one accountable for your outcome. A coach is confidential, has no stake in the outcome, and works on how you decide and lead now. The venture firms that buy coaching for founders are blunt about the cost of getting the category wrong: the wrong coach "can be a waste of time and money, or worse, a liability, if they point your attention towards the wrong things".9 ##### The three types of coach you will meet, and the SaaS version of each One venture firm's guide sorts every executive coach a founder is likely to meet into three types, with a weakness for each.9 The business-therapy or reactive coach: an excellent listener, a shock absorber, valuable for burnout; the weakness is that they lack the pattern recognition to be a thought partner in operating the business, so sessions address the week's fluctuations rather than the persistent priorities. The former-operator coach: a CEO who has scaled a company, with the pattern recognition that comes from it; the weakness is that they tend to think the strategy that worked for them will work for you. The structured coach: nimble on the week-to-week while holding a developmental plan, with tools and 360 feedback. In SaaS the field adds a fourth and a fifth: the growth or go-to-market coach who will fix your funnel, your ads or your demo rate and has never held a P&L, and the community or mastermind, which is a room of peers at your ARR band with a facilitator. Each is right for something. Know which you are buying, and which you need this quarter. The other VC-side guide on the question makes the point that matters most for a subscription business: the choice is "less about credentials and more about fit": stage and context alignment, fluency in your kind of company, founder dynamics, growth pressure, and how the coach operates under high-pressure situations.10 Credentials still count: in the ICF's 2023 study, 85% of coaches held a credential from a coaching organization and 80% agreed that their clients expect them to be certified.11 Treat the credential as table stakes and the fit as the decision. #### Seven tests, one call each The tests below are the seven jobs a B2B SaaS CEO past product-market fit needs a coach to be able to do. Each one says what it tests, what to ask, and what a good answer sounds like. Ask them of everyone on the list, including anyone who came recommended and anyone who ranks first. ##### Test one: can they read your numbers and name the bottleneck? What it tests: pattern recognition in recurring revenue, the reason to hire a SaaS specialist instead of a general business coach. Retention decides the growth rate,3 and the leading indicators of a stall are visible in the metrics before they are visible in the plan.1 What to ask: send net revenue retention, gross retention, churn by cohort, CAC payback and the pipeline coverage before the call, and ask what they see. What a good answer sounds like: they skip the definitions, ask for the cohort view you did not send, and name one bottleneck, not five. A coach who asks you to explain what net retention is, or who answers with a framework before they have looked at the numbers, is the wrong type for this job. ##### Test two: have they made a pricing and packaging decision that they had to live with? What it tests: whether they know that pricing in SaaS is a product decision, a sales decision and a retention decision at once, and that it is hard to change later. What to ask: when did you last change a price, what happened to churn and to the sales cycle in the two quarters after, and what would you have done differently? What a good answer sounds like: a specific company, a specific number, and the part that went wrong. Higher contract values retain better, 95% gross retention above $250,000 in ACV against about 91% below it,3 so a coach who has only ever sold one price point is answering from one data point. ##### Test three: can they help you decide the motion, not just execute it? What it tests: whether they can tell product-led from sales-led from the hybrid, and know which the stage, the buyer and the contract value can afford. Choosing between product-led and sales-led motions is a board-level call; I wrote a guide to [whether product-led growth is right for your company](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/05/15/product-led-growth/) that lays out the three eras and the metrics. What to ask: describe your motion in one sentence and ask them what breaks first at three times the revenue. What a good answer sounds like: they name the point where founder-led selling stops working, what a repeatable sales process needs before the first sales leader is hired, and what the unit economics have to look like for the motion to be fundable. A coach who has run a go-to-market rebuild, and can say what the win rate and the sales cycle did afterward, has done this job. ##### Test four: have they sold to your next segment? What it tests: whether they know that moving from small business to mid-market, or from mid-market to enterprise, means a different product, price, contract, security posture and sales team. What to ask: which segment am I in, which one is next, and what did it cost the last company you saw make that move? What a good answer sounds like: they have been on both sides of at least one of those transitions, they can describe the enterprise buyer's procurement from the inside, and they say the uncomfortable thing about what the current sales team can and cannot do. ##### Test five: can they sit in the board meeting with you, and have they sat on the other side? What it tests: the board room, the Rule of 40 conversation, the next round and the exit. Boards are increasingly engaging leaders on the Rule of 40 directly, and at least one large SaaS company has tied executive incentives to it.2 Only one founder in ten confides in an investor about the pressure,5 which is why the value of a coach is so often described as advice without the agendas of boards or investors. What to ask: bring the deck and ask what the board is really asking, and what your lead investor is thinking the week after the round closes. What a good answer sounds like: a coach who has only been the founder answers from one side; a coach who has also sat on the investor side answers from both, and can tell you which questions are the fund talking and which are the person. Ask, too, whether they have been inside a public company; the job past $100M ARR is a different job. ##### Test six: can they build the executive team with you, and hold the psychology without turning it into therapy? What it tests: the two things most of the hours in the seat actually go to. Delegation, conflict management and team building were the top areas CEOs wanted help with in the Stanford survey,6 and the move from doing the work to running the company is the transition every SaaS guide names. Seventy-two percent of founders report a mental-health impact and 77% get no professional help,5 so a coach who cannot go there is not doing the whole job, and a coach who goes there and stays there is a therapist with a different invoice. What to ask: at my ARR, which executive hire comes first and how would you interview for it; and what do you do when I say the true thing out loud, and where does coaching end for you? What a good answer sounds like: a hire they got wrong and what it taught them, a view on when the team that got you here stops being the team for the next stage, and the line between coaching and therapy drawn in one sentence. Ask about confidentiality in the same breath: when the company pays, who gets a report and what is in it? The right answer is that the founder owns the content and the company gets attendance and a yes or no on progress, agreed in writing before the first session. ##### Test seven: which type are they, will they push back, and will they pick up on Tuesday night? What it tests: whether you are buying a shock absorber, an operator, a system, a funnel fix or a room of peers, and whether the coach knows which;9 whether you will hear something you did not want to; and whether the coaching moves at the speed of a company that reports monthly recurring revenue. The 70/30 rule that keeps appearing around this search, that the coach listens about seventy percent of a session and talks thirty, is a rule of thumb rather than a standard, but it is a fair thing to watch for in the first call. What to ask: which type are you, and which are you not; what happens when the renewal, the resignation or the down-round term sheet lands on a Tuesday night? What a good answer sounds like: they name their type without hesitation and tell you what they will not do; less talking than you expected; at least one thing you had not said out loud yet; and a plain answer about access between sessions. #### What it costs, who pays, and the terms to insist on Across all kinds of coaching the average fee for an hour was $244 worldwide and $272 in North America in 2022, the latest year the ICF has published,11 and CEO-level coaching sits well above that: retainers are published at $1,000 to $10,000 a month, hourly rates at $800 to $3,500, and full engagements at $5,000 to $60,000. The breakdown by level, who pays and how I price are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). At this level the company usually pays, and increasingly the investors do: Felicis commits 1% of every first check to founder development including coaching, therapy and CEO peer groups, and reported more than 100 founders had used it,12 and other firms publish flat stipends of around $5,000 a year for every portfolio founder.13 If your board offers to pay, that is a vote of confidence, not a warning; take it, and choose the coach yourself. Measure the fee against the business, not the budget line: at $10M ARR, one point of net revenue retention is $100,000 a year, every year. Terms: set up a thirty to sixty minute call with each coach on your list and treat it as the fit test it is; the good ones offer it free. Month to month with no lock-in is the common answer among the coaches who rank for this seat, and it is the right one: if the terms need six months to prove value, the value is in the terms. Agree what success looks like before the work starts, in your numbers: net retention, win rate, sales cycle, the executive hires made. #### Red flags - A coach who asks you what net revenue retention is, or who has a framework ready before they have seen a single cohort. - A guru: a personal brand, a trademarked system, a promise of a specific multiple, an exit or a percentage return with no study behind it. - A funnel specialist sold as a CEO coach: fixing your ads or your demo rate is a real service and a different one. - Corporate credentials with no subscription-business context: frameworks built for a stable enterprise do not survive a pricing change at $8M ARR. - A community or a marketplace sold as one-on-one coaching, or a firm that markets a named coach and assigns you an associate. Ask who you will actually meet. - No boundaries: a coach who cannot say where coaching ends and therapy, consulting or investing begins. - A lock-in, or a coach who is unreachable between sessions in a business where the renewal does not wait for the calendar. #### Where to look Start with the people who have already paid for one: your investors, your independent board members, and the SaaS founders you respect at the next ARR band up, and ask who they used at your stage. The "best SaaS coach" lists are a second source, with the caveat that several are written by the coaches ranking themselves first, and that most of what ranks is a community or a marketplace rather than a person. Directories such as Noomii and the coaching marketplaces give you a menu filtered by stage and price. Then run the seven tests on every name, including the one that came recommended; a recommendation is where the list starts, not where the choice ends. #### My own answers to the seven, for the record The numbers: I took New Relic's net revenue retention from 95% to 115% as EVP while the company grew from $300M to $500M, and cut monthly churn from 3% to 1.5% as COO in a turnaround. Pricing: at Coursedog ACV rose 40% in nine months alongside ARR from $4M to $10M; at Web.com 200,000 small businesses paid monthly at 90%-plus retention. The motion: rebuilding the go-to-market motion at Blameless took the win rate from near zero to 80% and the sales cycle down 40%. The segment: small business at Web.com, 15,000-plus enterprise customers at New Relic, Goldman Sachs, Marsh and State Street at Unqork, and the enterprise buyer's side inside Cox Automotive. The board: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO with $50M-plus raised from Microsoft and Verizon, EVP presenting to a public-company board, and a decade as a managing partner at a venture firm across 35 deals and 18 exits. The team and the psychology: 650 people at Web.com, a 450-person organization through change at New Relic, and a certified coach (CEC and ICF, since 2019) with a psychology degree, so the same hour covers the plan and the person carrying it. Type and access: an operator first; standing calls and access between them. The rest is on the [B2B SaaS coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/b2b-saas-coach), and the three-proof test from my general guide still holds: has this person held the seat at your stage; are they trained and certified as well as experienced; and after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet. #### Questions SaaS founders ask before they choose ##### Who is the best B2B SaaS coach? The one who can do the seven jobs your seat needs next, at your ARR stage, and prove it in one call: read your numbers and name the bottleneck, decide pricing and packaging, decide the motion, sell into the next segment, sit in the board room from both sides, build the executive team while holding the psychology, and push back in the moment. There is no single best; everything that ranks on the question says it depends on stage and on what is breaking. ##### What is the difference between a SaaS coach and a business coach? A business coach teaches frameworks that apply to any company. A SaaS coach has run a recurring-revenue business and knows which numbers matter at which stage: why net revenue retention decides the growth rate, why pricing is a product and a sales decision at once, why a sales-led motion that worked at $5M ARR breaks at $20M, and what the board will ask about the Rule of 40. The difference shows up in the first call: a SaaS coach skips the definitions and asks for your churn by cohort. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? The evidence says yes, moderately. A 2014 meta-analysis found significant positive effects on performance, well-being, coping, work attitudes and goal-directed self-regulation, with effect sizes from 0.43 to 0.74; a 2016 meta-analysis of 17 workplace studies found an overall effect of 0.36, larger for individual results. Neither studied SaaS CEOs specifically, and a coach who quotes a return-on-investment percentage should be asked which study. ##### How much does a SaaS coach cost? Retainers for CEO-level coaching are published at $1,000 to $10,000 a month, hourly rates at $800 to $3,500, and full engagements at $5,000 to $60,000, against an average of $272 an hour across every kind of coaching in North America in 2022, the latest ICF figure. The company usually pays, and some venture firms fund it outright: Felicis commits 1% of every first check to founder development, and other firms publish flat stipends of around $5,000 a year. At $10M ARR, one point of net revenue retention is worth $100,000 a year. ##### Should I join a SaaS mastermind or community instead of hiring a coach? They answer different questions. A community gives you peers at your ARR band and a facilitator, which is the right first call below $1M ARR and a good complement above it. A coach is one person accountable for your outcome, who has seen your numbers and will say the uncomfortable thing. Past product-market fit, most founders end up with both; the mistake is buying a community and expecting coaching, or the reverse. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? A rule of thumb that in a good coaching session the coach listens about seventy percent of the time and talks about thirty. It is not a standard and nobody measures it, but it is a fair thing to watch for in a first call: a coach who talked most of the hour was selling, not coaching. ##### How do I know if I need a SaaS coach? When the company has outgrown the playbook that got it here and you are the only person who can see the whole machine. The usual signs: growth slowed and nobody can say from which cohort; the pricing page has not changed since $2M ARR; the motion that worked is missing quota; the executive team escalates everything to you; the board meeting is a defense rather than a plan. Any two of those is enough. #### Where the numbers come from - [McKinsey & Company, Grow fast or die slow (Eric Kutcher, Olivia Nottebohm, Kara Sprague; about 3,000 software and online-services companies, 1980 to 2012), April 1, 2014](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/grow-fast-or-die-slow) - [McKinsey & Company, SaaS and the Rule of 40: Keys to the critical value creation metric (Paul Roche, Sid Tandon), August 3, 2021](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/saas-and-the-rule-of-40-keys-to-the-critical-value-creation-metric) - [SaaS Capital, 2025 B2B SaaS Retention Benchmarks (14th annual survey, more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies), September 2025](https://www.saas-capital.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/RB32WS1-2025-B2B-SaaS-Retention-Benchmarks.pdf) - [SaaS Capital, Private B2B SaaS Company Growth Rate Benchmarks (2025 survey), 2026](https://www.saas-capital.com/research/private-saas-company-growth-rate-benchmarks/) - [Startup Snapshot, The Untold Toll: The Impact of Stress on the Well-Being of Startup Founders and CEOs (400-plus founders), 2023](https://www.startupsnapshot.com/research/the-untold-toll-the-impact-of-stress-on-the-well-being-of-startup-founders-and-ceos/) - [Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rock Center for Corporate Governance and The Miles Group, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey (200-plus CEOs, directors and senior executives)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12119) - [Norwest Venture Partners, How to Choose the Right Executive Coach for Startup Leadership (Bryan Bayer), 2023](https://www.norwest.com/blog/choose-right-executive-coach-startup-leadership/) - [HSG, Executive Coaching for Startup CEOs: Scaling Leadership in the Early Days, January 2026](https://www.hsgcap.com/article/executive-coaching-for-startup-ceos/) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) - [Forbes, This VC Firm Is Gifting Founders 1% Of Every Invested Dollar To Spend On Coaching And Mental Health (the Felicis Founder Pledge), September 2018](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/09/10/vc-firm-pledges-1-percent-to-founder-health/) - [Pillar VC, How to Choose a CEO Coach for Startup CEOs (Sarah Hodges, managing partner)](https://www.pillar.vc/playlist/article/how-to-choose-a-ceo-coach/) #### Keep reading - [B2B SaaS Coach: Founder-CEO to Nasdaq IPO](https://kengavranovic.com/b2b-saas-coach) Coaching for B2B SaaS CEOs, founders and executives from a founder-CEO who scaled to $200M ARR and a Nasdaq IPO, then $300M to $500M at New Relic. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. - [Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company?](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/05/15/product-led-growth/) The three eras of the software buyer, the three pillars of product-led growth, and the metrics that tell you whether the motion fits. [B2B SaaS coaching with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/b2b-saas-coach) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Find the Best Engineering Leadership Coach: Seven Tests https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-find-the-best-engineering-leadership-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Find the Best Engineering Leadership Coach: Seven Tests What the director of engineering seat does to the people in it, what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. Facts first; my own answers last. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 Who is the best engineering leadership coach? Nobody honest will give you a name. The right coach for a first-time engineering manager is the wrong one for a director who started managing managers last quarter, and neither is the right one for a VP of Engineering weighing the CTO title. So this is not a list. It is the part of the search results that is usually missing: what the director and VP seats do to the people who hold them, in numbers with sources; what the research says a coach can change and what it cannot; and seven tests you can run in a single intro call to find out whether a specific coach can do the specific jobs your seat needs done. It is meant to be worth reading whichever coach you pick, or if you pick none. My own answers to the seven sit in one section at the end, so you can weigh them as one candidate's. The lens is my own: I coach [directors of engineering and engineering leaders](https://kengavranovic.com/director-of-engineering-coach) and ran engineering as a VP over more than 1,000 engineers. Who this is for: directors of engineering, heads of engineering and senior engineering managers running two or more teams through a manager layer, and VPs of Engineering who share a roadmap with a product leader. If you are a tech lead or a first-time manager of engineers, most of the tests still apply, but the marketplace mentors and the engineering-manager training programs are usually the better first call, and the numbers below say why. If you are the VP or CTO buying coaching for a director on your team, run the seven tests on the shortlist and compare the answers side by side. #### What the seat does to the people in it, by the numbers Start with what happened to the job in the last year. When 617 engineering leaders were surveyed in March 2025, two in three said their scope had widened and two in five had picked up more direct reports, while only 3% had less on their plate than before. More than a third were working longer weeks. Asked about burnout, 22% put themselves at the critical level and a further 24% at moderate. Two in five said their team was less motivated than it had been twelve months earlier.1 The cuts, where they came, fell on the middle: among companies that reduced their manager count, 67% took out line managers and 56% took out the directors and other managers of managers. Nearly half of the people managing engineers, 47%, had thought about going back to an individual-contributor job in the previous year; among those managing managers the figure was 27%, and the reasons people gave for staying were pay, not wanting to lose their technical edge, and liking the work.1 Then consider how much of the outcome runs through you. Gallup's two-decade dataset, 27 million employees across 2.5 million work units, attributes at least 70% of the variance in engagement to the manager. The same research estimates that roughly one person in ten has high talent for managing, that two more in ten can perform at a high level if coached, and that organizations get the manager hire wrong about 82% of the time.2 Gallup's worldwide survey for 2025 adds the trend: manager engagement dropped five points in a single year, 27% to 22%, the sharpest fall it has recorded, while engagement among all employees slid to 20%, the lowest reading since 2020.3 For a director that arithmetic is the job itself. The engineers are no longer yours to manage; the managers are yours to pick and to grow. Google's Project Oxygen, its own study of what separates its best managers, ranks "Be a good coach" first among ten behaviors, before empowering without micromanaging, communicating effectively, supporting career development, setting a clear vision and strategy, and keeping key technical skills, and reports that teams under highly effective managers performed better, were happier and lost fewer people.4 AI is the newest line on the same desk. Asked in late 2024, 77% of software engineering leaders rated building AI capabilities into their applications a significant or moderate pain point, and 71% rated the use of AI tools in the engineering workflow the same way.5 A separate 2025 survey of more than 640 CTOs, engineering managers and engineers found nine teams in ten using AI coding tools, an average reported velocity gain of 25%, and 61% of engineering budgets growing as a share of company revenue.6 The mandate to lead that change arrives from above and from below at once, and it rarely arrives with a plan. Two more numbers describe the seat itself. Engineering executives change roles roughly every three years, and when the seat above yours opens, 68% of the time it is filled from outside rather than by the director already in the building, 77% in North America; the leaders who move say they are looking for autonomy, full ownership of a product, or a strategic seat at the leadership table.12 And the step onto the ladder is where most of the attrition happens: a VP of Engineering at Figma, previously Slack, puts the share of newly promoted engineering managers who leave the post and go back to being an individual contributor at about half, an estimate rather than a study, but from someone who has run the promotion many times.13 The last number explains why guides like this one exist. When Stanford and The Miles Group surveyed more than 200 CEOs, board directors and senior executives, close to two-thirds of the CEOs were getting no coaching or leadership advice from outside their company and nearly half of the senior executives were getting none, yet almost all of them said they would take it. The capability they most wanted to build was conflict management, followed by mentoring and developing talent, and delegating and sharing leadership.7 Read that list again with a director of engineering in mind: it is the whole job. #### What a coach can and cannot do, according to the evidence Two meta-analyses carry most of the weight here, and both land in the same place: coaching works, and the effect is real but moderate. Pooling the organizational studies available in 2014, researchers found positive effects on every outcome they tested, ranging from 0.43 on coping up to 0.74 on goal-directed self-regulation, with performance and skills at 0.60 and an overall figure of 0.66.8 Two years later a second team pooled 17 workplace-coaching studies and reported an overall effect of 0.36, stronger for individual-level outcomes and for how people felt about their work than for measured skills.9 Translated: expect better goal-setting, self-management, coping and attitude, and a moderate lift in performance. Do not expect a number with a dollar sign on it. Neither analysis covered engineering leaders, the studies are few, and no one has run a controlled trial on directors of engineering; when a coach quotes a return on investment, ask which study produced it. What a coach cannot do is run your organization, write your roadmap, or replace the other kinds of help. In engineering the categories blur more than in most functions, so it is worth drawing them. A mentor has held the seat and tells you what they did; the value is pattern recognition, the risk is that their company was not yours. A consultant, including the fractional CTO, fixes the problem for you and leaves; the value is speed, the risk is that you did not learn to do it. Technical mentoring works on the code and the architecture. Leadership coaching works on you: how you decide, how you lead through other people, and how you show up in the executive room, with someone who has no stake in the outcome and enough context to know what the decision feels like. Interview coaching, which crowds the search results for engineering manager and director roles, is a fourth thing again: it gets you the seat, it does not help you hold it. ##### The three kinds of coach you will meet in engineering The coaches who rank for engineering leaders sort themselves into three kinds, and most say so on their own pages. The former operator: a past engineering manager, VP of Engineering or CTO who now coaches, and who will tell you plainly that sometimes clients want answers, not questions; the strength is credibility and speed, the weakness is the square peg, the operating playbook that worked at their company applied to yours. The trained coach without an engineering past: often an ICF-credentialed professional who is excellent at the listening, the questions and the psychology; the strength is the method, the weakness is that they cannot read your org chart or your architecture debate, and generic management training rarely survives contact with an engineering team. The marketplace mentor: an engineering leader still doing the job, booked by the month through a platform, at a fraction of the price; the strength is currency and cost, the weakness is that it is advice, not development, and the platform vets the profile rather than the outcome. Credentials remain table stakes: in the profession's own 2023 study, 80% of coaches agreed that clients expect a coach to be certified or credentialed.10 Know which kind you are buying, and which you need this quarter. #### Seven tests, one call each Seven jobs, seven tests. For each one: the capability it checks, the question that checks it, and the shape of an answer that passes. Run all seven on every name on your list; a recommendation gets a name onto the list, it does not get it off the hook. ##### Test one: have they managed managers, at a scale beyond yours? What it tests: whether they know the job you are actually doing. Managing managers is the step every guide names and few coaches have taken; it is also where the engagement variance gets decided.2 What to ask: how many people did you lead through other managers, at how many layers, and what changed for you at that step? What a good answer sounds like: a number, a company, and one specific thing they got wrong the first time they delegated an outcome instead of a task. ##### Test two: can they fix your operating rhythm without slowing delivery? What it tests: the move from firefighting to strategy, which is the sentence on almost every ranking page for this seat. What to ask: describe my week, then ask what they would change first: the planning cadence, the escalation path, or the meeting where the roadmap gets renegotiated. What a good answer sounds like: they ask how capacity is allocated between the roadmap, reliability and the sales asks before they ask about your calendar, and they can name a rhythm they installed that let the teams keep shipping while the director stopped being the referee. ##### Test three: can they translate your work upward? What it tests: executive communication, the skill the VP and CTO evaluate you on whether or not they say so. Strong delivery does not travel upward by itself. What to ask: here is the platform decision I have to defend next month; how would you frame it for the executive team? What a good answer sounds like: they turn architecture and reliability into outcomes, risk and a trade-off in under a minute, and they have presented to an executive team or a board themselves rather than coached other people to. ##### Test four: do they know the seam between product and engineering? What it tests: whether they have lived the most strained relationship in a growth company from either side. What to ask: our product lead and I disagree about what ships this quarter; what do you do with that? What a good answer sounds like: one owner for the business metrics, one scoreboard both of you are measured on, and a story about a time they made that pairing work, with the numbers it produced. ##### Test five: can they help you hire and grow managers, and have the hard conversations? What it tests: manager quality, promotions, feedback and performance, the work most of the hours in this seat go to and the area executives most want help with.7 What to ask: I have a manager who is loyal, liked and not good enough for the next size; walk me through the next ninety days. What a good answer sounds like: a sequence, not a slogan, and a clear view on when to develop, when to move and when to part, from someone who has done all three. ##### Test six: can they lead AI adoption without stalling the team? What it tests: whether they treat AI as a people problem before a tooling problem. Nine in ten teams already use the tools;6 the difference between the teams that resist and the teams that embrace shows up in productivity, and the pressure to decide sits with you.5 What to ask: what should I say to the executive who wants an AI plan by Friday and to the senior engineer who thinks it is a fad? What a good answer sounds like: a bet worth making, a way to measure developer productivity you could defend upstairs, and no vendor names in the first five minutes. ##### Test seven: will they help you decide the VP or CTO question, on purpose? What it tests: whether they have held the seat above yours, and whether they will tell you the truth about it. "Is VP of Engineering higher than director" is the question people type; the real one is whether you want the job that owns strategy, hiring the leaders and the plan the CEO and board can believe. What to ask: what does a VP of Engineering do that I do not, and how would you know if I were ready? What a good answer sounds like: a plain description of the seat above yours from the inside, and a plain answer about what they would say if you were not ready yet. While you are at it, settle confidentiality: if your employer is paying, ask what, if anything, gets reported back. A coach worth hiring will say that the sessions belong to you, that the company learns whether you showed up and whether the goals are moving, and that this goes in the agreement before session one. #### What it costs, who pays, and the terms to insist on The profession's own census puts the mean price of a one-hour session at $244 in 2022, a 9% rise over three years, across roughly 109,000 practising coaches.10 For engineering leaders the spread is much wider than that average suggests. At the low end, the marketplaces list engineering-leadership mentors at monthly rates of about $150 to $300.11 At the other end, the solo coaches who rank for the director and VP seats publish anything from about $2,400 a month on a six-month program to $2,500 to $10,000 a month for CTO-level engagements. How the price moves with seniority, who normally pays, and my own pricing are laid out in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). From director upward the bill usually goes to the employer's learning or leadership-development budget, a fact the coaches in this field state on their own pages. Frame the request as a development plan: one goal the business owns, one goal you own, a checkpoint at six months. On terms, the free thirty-minute intro is the norm in this field, and it doubles as the fit test, so take one with every candidate. The sound structures are month to month with no lock-in, or a fixed block of three to six months with a review at the end; a contract that needs a year to demonstrate value is selling the contract. Weekly or fortnightly is the usual cadence, with a way to reach the coach between sessions when the outage or the resignation will not wait. #### Red flags - A coach who has never managed managers, coaching a director on how to. - Interview coaching sold as leadership coaching: it gets you the seat and does not help you hold it. - Generic management training with the word "engineering" added: frameworks built for a stable corporate function rarely survive an engineering team, and the ranking coaches say so themselves. - A fractional CTO engagement dressed as coaching: if they are doing the work, you are not learning it. - A return-on-investment percentage with no study behind it, or a promise about the promotion. - No line between coaching, mentoring and consulting: the good ones name which they are doing and when. - Unreachable between sessions in a seat where the outage, the resignation and the reorg do not wait for the calendar. #### Where to look How do you find a reputable one? Three places, in this order. First, ask the people who have bought this before: your own VP or CTO, directors you rate at other companies, and whoever owns the learning budget, who usually keeps a shortlist. Second, the curated lists that engineering newsletters and communities maintain, remembering that they are lists of names and not of outcomes. Third, the coaching marketplaces, which let you filter by title and price and are the sensible starting point for a first-time manager. Whatever the source, vet the background against your transition, and every name then goes through the seven tests above, the recommended ones included. #### My own answers to the seven, for the record Test one, managing managers: at Cox Automotive I ran engineering as a VP with more than 1,000 engineers below me and a full layer of directors and managers in between; at New Relic I was EVP over 450 people in product and engineering. Test two, the rhythm: the New Relic system, one owner for the numbers, capacity allocated each quarter, a single escalation meeting and a customer advisory board, is described on the seat page; it turned into $50M-plus of incremental ARR from new products. Test three, upward: I have presented to that company's board and given the keynote at its customer conference. Test four, the seam: I have sat on the product side of it as a CPO, at Coursedog, where the product and engineering organization was rebuilt in nine months. Test five, the hard conversations: I stepped into New Relic after my predecessor was let go, and later ran a turnaround as COO at Blameless. Test six, AI: I built and launched an AI platform as a CEO, I write about adoption as a people problem, and the tech geek who started with assembly at ten never left: two inference servers at home run a house that senses when I walk into a room. Test seven, the seat above: VP of Engineering, CTO, CPO, COO and CEO, the last of them at the company that became Web.com, which went public on Nasdaq; I can describe each from the inside. I am ICF and CEC certified. The rest is on the [director of engineering coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/director-of-engineering-coach), and the three-proof test from my general guide still holds: has this person held the seat above yours; are they trained and certified as well as experienced; and after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet. #### Questions engineering leaders ask before they choose ##### Who is the best engineering leadership coach? The one who can do the seven jobs your seat needs next and prove it in one call: has managed managers at a scale beyond yours, can fix the operating rhythm without slowing delivery, can translate engineering work upward, knows the product-and-engineering seam, can help you hire and grow managers, can lead AI adoption without stalling the team, and has held the seat above yours. There is no single best; the guides that rank on the question all say it depends on the seat and on what is breaking. ##### Which coaching is best for engineering leaders? The kind that matches the transition you are in. Engineering leadership coaching exists because the people-management, strategic and scaling skills the job needs are the ones an engineering education leaves out, and the right coach is the one whose own technical management background matches your transition: individual contributor to manager, manager of managers to executive, or VP to CTO. A first-time engineering manager is usually best served by a mentor or a marketplace coach who is still doing the job, plus a management fundamentals program. A director managing managers for the first time needs leadership coaching with engineering context, from someone who has held the seat above, including the call on when to stay hands-on. A VP or CTO needs executive coaching that can go to the board. Technical mentoring and interview coaching are different products and should not be bought by mistake. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? Yes, by a moderate and well-documented amount. The two meta-analyses that pool the organizational research put the overall effect between 0.36 and 0.66, strongest on goal-setting, self-regulation, coping and attitude to work, and moderate on performance. Engineering leaders were not studied as a group, so treat any percentage return on investment as a marketing claim until someone shows you the study. ##### What is the difference between an engineering coach, a mentor and a fractional CTO? A mentor has held the seat and tells you what they did. A fractional CTO does the work and leaves. A coach works on how you decide and lead through other people, with no stake in the outcome. The best engineering coaches can switch between the three inside one session and will tell you which one they are doing; the ones to avoid cannot tell the difference. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? The informal expectation that the client does about seventy percent of the talking in a session and the coach about thirty. No body enforces it and nobody measures it, but it is worth noticing on the intro call. Engineering leaders often want more telling than that, which is fine when you asked for a mentor; if the coach filled most of the hour uninvited, you were being pitched. ##### How much do leadership coaches charge? The average fee for a one-hour session across all coaching was $244 in 2022. For engineering leaders the band is wide: marketplace mentors from about $150 to $300 a month, solo coaches who rank for director and VP seats from about $2,400 a month to $2,500 to $10,000 a month at CTO level. The company usually pays at director level and above. Rates by seniority and how I price are in my guide to what executive coaching costs. ##### Is VP of Engineering higher than director? In most companies, yes: the VP runs engineering for the whole company and sits with the executives, while a director runs a group of teams inside engineering. "Head of engineering" is used for either, depending on size. What separates the two is the room rather than the headcount: a VP is judged on strategy, on the leaders they hire, and on whether the CEO and the board believe the plan. The seventh test above is built around that difference. ##### Can my company pay for engineering leadership coaching? At director level and above the employer usually does, from the learning or leadership-development budget, and the coaches who rank for this seat say the same on their pages. Put it forward as a development plan: one goal the business cares about, one you care about, a six-month checkpoint, and a written sentence on confidentiality so everyone knows what the company will and will not hear. #### Where the numbers come from - [LeadDev, The Engineering Leadership Report 2025 (617 engineering leaders surveyed 14 to 27 March 2025; 37% managers of engineers, 18% managers of managers)](https://leaddev.com/the-engineering-leadership-report-2025) - [Gallup, State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders; Randall Beck and Jim Harter, Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement, 21 April 2015 (27 million employees, 2.5 million work units)](https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx) - [Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (263,810 respondents in 2025)](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx) - [Google re:Work, Following the data: the research behind great managers (Project Oxygen)](https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/following-the-data-the-research-behind-great-managers) - [Gartner press release, 22 May 2025 (survey of 400 software engineering leaders in the US and UK, October to December 2024)](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-22-gartner-survey-finds-77-percent-of-engineering-leaders-identify-ai-integration-in-apps-as-a-major-challenge) - [Jellyfish, 2025 State of Engineering Management Report (640-plus CTOs, engineering managers and engineers)](https://jellyfish.co/resources/2025-state-of-engineering-management-report/) - [Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rock Center for Corporate Governance and The Miles Group, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey (200-plus CEOs, directors and senior executives)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12119) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary (survey closed 2 December 2022)](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) - [MentorCruise, Engineering Leadership coaches listing (monthly rates as displayed 23 September 2026)](https://mentorcruise.com/coach/engineeringleadership/) - [Russell Reynolds Associates, Attracting and Retaining Engineering Talent in a Hyper Competitive Talent Landscape (138 CTOs and senior engineering executives), 15 November 2021](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/articles/attracting-and-retaining-engineering-talent-in-a-hyper-competitive-talent-landscape) - [First Round Review, New Engineering Managers Have a High Failure Rate: This Figma Leader is on a Mission to Fix It (interview with Marcel Weekes, VP of Engineering, Figma), 4 December 2023](https://review.firstround.com/new-engineering-manager-advice/) #### Keep reading - [Director of Engineering Coach](https://kengavranovic.com/director-of-engineering-coach) Coaching for directors of engineering and engineering leaders from a former VP of Engineering across 1,000-plus engineers. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. - [Executive Coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) Coaching from someone who has held the seat: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, New Relic from $300M to $500M. [Director of engineering coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/director-of-engineering-coach) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Pick the Best Startup CEO Coach: Seven Tests https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-pick-the-best-startup-ceo-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Pick the Best Startup CEO Coach: Seven Tests What the seat does to a founder, what a coach can and cannot fix, and seven tests that tell you in one call whether this one can do the job. Facts first; my own answers last. By Ken Gavranovic · September 23, 2026 Who is the best startup CEO coach? Every guide that ranks on the question gives the same honest answer: there is no single best, it depends on your stage and on what is breaking. This guide is written to be useful whichever coach you end up with, including none. It covers three things the search results mostly skip: what the seat actually does to a founder, by the numbers; what the evidence says a coach can and cannot fix; and seven tests that tell you in one call whether a particular coach can do the specific jobs a startup CEO needs done: the board room, the round, the executive team, decisions under ambiguity, the stage, the psychology, and pushback at speed. My own answers to the seven are at the end, in one section, so you can read them as one candidate's. I coach [startup CEOs and venture-backed founders through hypergrowth](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach) and took the company that became Web.com from a startup to a Nasdaq IPO in three years; that is the lens, and every number below has a source at the bottom. Who this is for: the founder or CEO of a venture-backed company somewhere between a Series A and a Series C, with product-market fit in hand and a company now outrunning its operating model, its executive team and the CEO's own job. Pre-seed founders still validating are better served by a mentor or a peer group first, and the numbers below say why. Chiefs of staff and heads of people assembling a shortlist for a founder can run the seven tests on every name and compare the answers side by side. #### What the seat does to a founder, by the numbers Almost everyone in it is doing it for the first time. Russell Reynolds looked at 40 of the fastest-growing technology companies to go public in the last decade and found that three in four of their CEOs were doing the job for the first time; where a founding CEO was swapped out, the swap came around a major round.1 The most common way to die is growing faster than the company can absorb: Startup Genome's study of 3,200 high-growth companies found that 70% had scaled too early, carrying headcount three times what their revenue justified, and that 93% of those never reached $100,000 a month.2 The barriers are mostly inside the building: Bain's five-year study of 8,000 companies puts 85% of the barriers to profitable growth inside the company, manageable rather than market-driven, and finds that only one company in nine sustains profitable growth over ten years.3 The personal cost is measured too, and mostly hidden. In a survey of more than 400 founders, 72% said the job had affected their mental health, 44% reported high stress, 37% anxiety and 36% burnout; 81% said they keep their stress, fears and challenges to themselves; founders turn to a spouse or partner (76%) and co-founders (49%) far more than to investors (10%); and 77% had sought no professional help at all.4 The most-read essay on the job calls managing your own psychology the hardest CEO skill to learn, "the fight club of management", with sections titled Nobody to Blame and It's a Lonely Job.5 And the people in the seat mostly go without outside help while saying they want it. In the Stanford and Miles Group survey of more than 200 CEOs, directors and senior executives, nearly two-thirds of CEOs received no coaching or leadership advice from outside the company, almost half of senior executives received none, and nearly all of the CEOs said they would welcome it. The areas they wanted help with most were sharing leadership and delegation, conflict management, team building and mentoring.6 The venture firms that pay for coaching list the moments that trigger it in plainer words: you just took institutional capital and face managing a board for the first time; you need to have a difficult conversation with a key executive; you want to scale the culture on purpose; you need to understand what actually motivates each person on your management team.7 #### What a coach can and cannot do, according to the evidence Coaching is one of the better-studied interventions in organizational psychology, and the results are positive but smaller than the marketing. A 2014 meta-analysis of coaching in organizations found significant positive effects on every outcome it measured, with effect sizes from 0.43 for coping to 0.74 for goal-directed self-regulation, and 0.60 for performance and skills; the aggregated effect was 0.66.8 A 2016 meta-analysis of 17 studies of workplace coaching by internal or external coaches found an overall effect of 0.36, larger for individual-level results and for affective outcomes than for skills.9 In plain terms: coaching reliably improves how people set goals, regulate themselves, cope and feel about their work, and it improves performance by a moderate amount. Neither study looked at startup CEOs specifically, and the sample of studies is small, so treat any coach who quotes a return-on-investment percentage with suspicion; the figures that circulate come from one 2001 case study of thirty mid-level managers estimating their own results. What a coach cannot do is run the company or replace the other kinds of help. An advisor hands you answers. A mentor has walked the road and describes it when asked. A board member owes a duty to the company and holds a vote. A therapist works on where you have been and how it feels. A coach keeps confidence, holds no stake in the outcome, and works on how you decide and lead this quarter. The guides written by people who buy coaching for founders are blunt about the cost of getting the category wrong: choosing the wrong coach "can be a waste of time and money, or worse, a liability, if they point your attention towards the wrong things".10 ##### The three types of coach you will meet One venture firm's guide sorts every executive coach a founder is likely to meet into three types, with a weakness for each.10 The business-therapy or reactive coach: an excellent listener, empathetic, often a former therapist, quick to build trust, valuable as a shock absorber and for burnout; the weakness is that they typically lack the pattern recognition to be a thought partner in operating the business, so sessions address the week's fluctuations rather than the persistent priorities, and the company can outgrow the leader. The former-operator coach: a CEO who has scaled a company, with the wisdom and the wartime pattern recognition that come from it; the weakness is that they tend to think the strategy that worked for them will work for you, a square peg in a round hole when your circumstances differ. The structured startup coach: nimble at responding to the week-to-week needs of a leader while holding a developmental plan, with startup-specific tools and 360 feedback. The rank-one page on this search says the same thing the other way round: systems-first coaches help with execution discipline, meeting structure and decision frameworks; internal-side coaches work on the patterns, fears and identity issues that shape how you lead; most founders need both at different points. Know which you are buying, and which you need this quarter. The other VC-side guide on the question makes the point that matters most for a startup: the choice is "less about credentials and more about fit": stage and context alignment, startup fluency, founder dynamics, growth pressure, and how the coach operates under high-pressure situations.11 Credentials still count: in the ICF's 2023 study, 85% of coaches held a credential from a coaching organization and 80% agreed that their clients expect them to be certified.12 Treat the credential as table stakes and the fit as the decision. #### Seven tests, one call each The tests below are the seven jobs a startup CEO past product-market fit needs a coach to be able to do. Each one says what it tests, what to ask, and what a good answer sounds like. Ask them of everyone on the list, including anyone who came recommended. ##### Test one: can they run your next board meeting with you? What it tests: executive presence and the board room, the first thing a venture-backed founder loses control of. Managing a board for the first time is the number one trigger the venture guides list for hiring a coach,7 and a founding CEO who gets replaced gets replaced around a round.1 What to ask: bring the deck and ask them what the board is really asking, what to send three days before, and how to run the room so the meeting works for you instead of on you. What a good answer sounds like: they ask for the deck, not for your feelings about the deck, and they have presented to a real board under pressure, which they describe with the names of firms rather than adjectives. ##### Test two: have they managed investors from your chair, and sat in theirs? What it tests: whether they know what your investors want to hear that you are not saying, and what the investors are not telling you. Only one founder in ten confides in an investor about the pressure,4 which is why the value of a coach is so often described as advice without the agendas of boards or investors. What to ask: what is my lead investor thinking the week after the round closes, and how do you know? What a good answer sounds like: a coach who has only been the founder answers from one side; a coach who has also sat on the investor side answers from both, and can tell you which questions are the fund talking and which are the person. ##### Test three: can they build the executive team with you, not just talk about delegation? What it tests: the work most of the hours in this seat actually go to. Delegation, conflict management and team building were the top areas CEOs wanted help with in the Stanford survey,6 and "I need to hire and lead people more experienced than I am" is the sentence on the ranking coaches' own pages. What to ask: at my stage, which executive hire comes first, how would you interview for it, and what decision rights go on paper on day one? What a good answer sounds like: specifics, including a hire they got wrong and what it taught them, and a view on when the team that got you here stops being the team for the next stage. ##### Test four: which of the three types are they, and can they do both jobs in one hour? What it tests: whether you are buying a shock absorber, an operator or a system, and whether the coach knows which.10 What to ask: which type are you, and which are you not? What a good answer sounds like: they name it without hesitation, they tell you what they will not do, and they can describe a session in which the board deck and the sleeplessness got handled in the same hour. The operator who cannot go near the psychology and the listener who cannot read a P&L are each doing half the job. ##### Test five: do they know what breaks next at your stage? What it tests: startup fluency, which the venture guides rate above credentials.11 At Series A the job is the founder-led sales engine and the first real hires; from Series B on it is the move from builder to a leader whose team runs without them, and keeping speed and culture through five and ten times the headcount. Scaling too early shows up first as headcount three times what the revenue justifies.2 What to ask: describe your company in one sentence and stop. What a good answer sounds like: they name what breaks next without you telling them. ##### Test six: can they hold the psychology without turning it into therapy? What it tests: the part of the job nobody talks about.5 Seventy-two percent of founders report a mental-health impact and 77% get no professional help,4 so a coach who cannot go there is not doing the whole job, and a coach who goes there and stays there is a therapist with a different invoice. What to ask: what do you do when I say the true thing out loud, and where does coaching end for you? What a good answer sounds like: they ask how you are sleeping before they ask about the number, and they can draw the line between coaching and therapy in one sentence. Ask about confidentiality in the same breath: when the company pays, who gets a report and what is in it? The right answer is that the founder owns the content and the company gets attendance and a yes or no on progress, agreed in writing before the first session. ##### Test seven: will they push back, and will they pick up on Tuesday night? What it tests: whether you will hear something you did not want to, and whether the coaching moves at the speed of the company. The guides say challenge, not validate; listen and push back. The 70/30 rule that keeps appearing around this search, that the coach listens about seventy percent of a session and talks thirty, is a rule of thumb rather than a standard, but it is a fair thing to watch for in the first call. The startup-specific half is access: the term sheet, the resignation and the bad board call do not wait for the calendar. What to ask: what happens when it lands on a Tuesday night? What a good answer sounds like: less talking than you expected in the call, at least one thing you had not said out loud yet, and a plain answer about access between sessions. #### What it costs, who pays, and the terms to insist on Across all kinds of coaching the average fee for an hour was $244 worldwide and $272 in North America in 2022, the latest year the ICF has published,12 and CEO-level coaching sits well above that: retainers are published at $1,000 to $10,000 a month, hourly rates at $800 to $3,500, and full engagements at $5,000 to $60,000. The breakdown by level, who pays and how I price are in my guide to what [executive coaching costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). At this level the company usually pays, and increasingly the investors do: Felicis commits 1% of every first check to founder development including coaching, therapy and CEO peer groups, and reported more than 100 founders had used it,13 and other firms publish flat stipends of around $5,000 a year for every portfolio founder.7 If your board offers to pay, that is a vote of confidence, not a warning; take it, and choose the coach yourself. Terms: set up a thirty to sixty minute call with each coach on your list and treat it as the fit test it is; the good ones offer it free. Month to month with no lock-in is the common answer among the coaches who rank for this seat, and it is the right one: if the terms need six months to prove value, the value is in the terms. #### Red flags - A coach who has never sat in a board meeting on either side, talking about executive presence. - Corporate credentials with no startup context: frameworks built for a stable enterprise do not survive a Series B, and the wrong coach is "a liability if they point your attention towards the wrong things".10 - Guru promises, overnight transformation, or a personal brand doing the work the method should. - A return-on-investment percentage without a study behind it. - A firm that markets a named coach and assigns you an associate. Ask who you will actually meet. - No boundaries: a coach who cannot say where coaching ends and therapy or consulting begins. - A lock-in, or a coach who is unreachable between sessions in a seat where the decisions do not wait. #### Where to look Start with referrals from the people who have already paid for one: your investors, your independent board members, and the founders you respect, and ask who they used at your stage. The "best startup CEO coach" lists are a second source, with the caveat that several are written by coaches ranking themselves first. Directories such as Noomii and the coaching marketplaces give you a menu filtered by stage and price. Then run the seven tests on every name, including the one that came recommended; a recommendation is where the list starts, not where the choice ends. #### My own answers to the seven, for the record Board room: as EVP I presented to the New Relic board with partners from Benchmark, Trinity Ventures and Madrona in the room, and before that I ran Interland's board as its founder from the first institutional round to the Nasdaq listing; the keynote stage at FutureStack and the customer advisory boards are where the executive-presence work got practised. Investors: more than $50M raised from strategic partners including Microsoft and Verizon while founding, then ten years as a managing partner at a venture firm, sitting on boards across 35 deals and 18 exits. Executive team: Interland grew to 650 people on my watch, a 450-person organization went through significant change at New Relic, and Coursedog's product and engineering group was rebuilt in nine months. Type: operator first, and the other half is not borrowed: a psychology degree (summa cum laude), a Certified Executive Coach since 2019 and an ICF credential, so the board deck and the founder carrying it get worked on in the same hour. Stage: three venture-backed startups at three different stages since the IPO. Psychology: one hour covers the plan and the person carrying it. Tuesday night: standing calls, and the phone between them. The rest is on the [startup CEO coaching page](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach), and the three-proof test from my [general guide to choosing an executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) still holds: has this person held the seat at your stage; are they trained and certified as well as experienced; and after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet. #### Questions founders ask before they choose ##### Who is the best startup CEO coach? The one who can do the seven jobs your seat needs next, at your stage, and prove it in one call: run the board room with you, manage investors through the round from both sides, build the executive team, decide under ambiguity at speed, know your stage, hold the psychology without therapy, and push back in the moment. There is no single best; every guide that ranks on the question says it depends on stage and on what is breaking. ##### Does executive coaching actually work? The evidence says yes, moderately. A 2014 meta-analysis found significant positive effects on performance, well-being, coping, work attitudes and goal-directed self-regulation, with effect sizes from 0.43 to 0.74; a 2016 meta-analysis of 17 workplace studies found an overall effect of 0.36, larger for individual results. Neither studied startup CEOs specifically, and a coach who quotes a return-on-investment percentage should be asked which study. ##### What is the difference between a startup CEO coach and an executive coach? The job. A corporate executive coach works on presence, communication and career inside a stable company. A startup CEO coach has to be able to open your board deck, know what your investor is thinking, tell you which executive to hire first, and do it at the speed of a company doubling in a year. The venture firms that pay for coaching describe the choice as less about credentials and more about fit: stage, startup fluency, founder dynamics, growth pressure. ##### What is the 70/30 rule in coaching? A rule of thumb that in a good coaching session the coach listens about seventy percent of the time and talks about thirty. It is not a standard and nobody measures it, but it is a fair thing to watch for in a first call: a coach who talked most of the hour was selling, not coaching. ##### How much does a startup CEO coach cost? Retainers for CEO-level coaching are published at $1,000 to $10,000 a month, hourly rates at $800 to $3,500, and full engagements at $5,000 to $60,000, against an average of $272 an hour across every kind of coaching in North America in 2022, the latest ICF figure. The company usually pays, and some venture firms fund it outright: Felicis commits 1% of every first check to founder development, and other firms publish flat stipends of around $5,000 a year. ##### Should a pre-revenue founder pay for coaching? Usually not yet, and not out of the runway. Before product-market fit the work is validation, which a mentor, an accelerator or a peer group answers better than a retainer. Coaching earns its fee once the company is outrunning its operating model, its executive team and the founder's own job, which tends to arrive with product-market fit or the round after it. ##### What is the difference between a startup coach, a founder coach and a CEO coach? Mostly the word the buyer typed. A startup coach usually means someone who works with early-stage companies on the business; a founder coach tends to mean the person, identity, co-founders, the stress; a CEO coach tends to mean the job, the board, the team, the round. If you are the founder running a venture-backed company past product-market fit, you want one person who does both, and the seven tests apply whichever word you used. #### Where the numbers come from - [Russell Reynolds Associates, Beyond the Founding Team: A Leadership Playbook for Growth, CEOs (40 high-growth technology companies that went public 2017 to 2021)](https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/technology-growth-company-leadership/ceo) - [Startup Genome, Premature Scaling: A Deep Dive (3,200 high-growth startups), 2011](https://startupgenome.com/insights/premature-scaling-a-deep-dive) - [Bain & Company, press release on The Founder's Mentality (Chris Zook and James Allen; 8,000 companies, 40 countries), 2016](https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2016/internal-breakdowns-cause-85-percent-of-company-shortfalls-in-achieving-profitable-growth/) - [Startup Snapshot, The Untold Toll: The Impact of Stress on the Well-Being of Startup Founders and CEOs (400-plus founders), 2023](https://www.startupsnapshot.com/research/the-untold-toll-the-impact-of-stress-on-the-well-being-of-startup-founders-and-ceos/) - [Ben Horowitz, What's the Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology, Andreessen Horowitz, 2011](https://a16z.com/whats-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/) - [Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rock Center for Corporate Governance and The Miles Group, 2013 Executive Coaching Survey (200-plus CEOs, directors and senior executives)](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey) - [Pillar VC, How to Choose a CEO Coach for Startup CEOs (Sarah Hodges, managing partner)](https://www.pillar.vc/playlist/article/how-to-choose-a-ceo-coach/) - [Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 2014](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499) - [Jones, Woods and Guillaume, The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 89, 2016](https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12119) - [Norwest Venture Partners, How to Choose the Right Executive Coach for Startup Leadership (Bryan Bayer), 2023](https://www.norwest.com/blog/choose-right-executive-coach-startup-leadership/) - [HSG, Executive Coaching for Startup CEOs: Scaling Leadership in the Early Days, January 2026](https://www.hsgcap.com/article/executive-coaching-for-startup-ceos/) - [International Coaching Federation, 2023 Global Coaching Study, executive summary](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) - [Forbes, This VC Firm Is Gifting Founders 1% Of Every Invested Dollar To Spend On Coaching And Mental Health (the Felicis Founder Pledge), September 2018](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/09/10/vc-firm-pledges-1-percent-to-founder-health/) #### Keep reading - [Startup CEO Coach: hypergrowth to IPO](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach) Coaching for startup CEOs and venture-backed founders through hypergrowth, from a founder who took a startup to a Nasdaq IPO in three years. - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The general version of this guide: six questions that separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. - [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/) Rates by level, who pays, and how I price, with the published ranges behind every number. - [Executive Coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) Coaching from someone who has held the seat: founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO, New Relic from $300M to $500M. [Startup CEO coaching with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/startup-ceo-coach) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost in 2026? Rates by Level, Who Pays, and How I Price https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost in 2026? Rates by Level, Who Pays, and How I Price The market ranges and the one survey behind them, the five things that move the number, who pays, and how I price my own engagements. From an executive who approved these budgets before he ever sent an invoice. By Ken Gavranovic · September 17, 2026 Executive coaching in the United States runs from about $150 to $3,500 an hour at the extremes, $1,000 to $10,000 a month on retainer, and $5,000 to $60,000 for a full engagement, depending mostly on who is being coached and by whom. Those are published ranges, not a benchmark, and the spread is the whole story: the same word covers a first-time manager's coach and a former CEO who advises the people running companies now. This page separates the two, shows where the numbers come from, explains the five things that move the price, and tells you how I price my own engagements. I have sat on both sides of this: I have paid for coaching, I have approved coaching budgets as the executive signing them, and I coach senior operators today. One thing first. There is no audited price index for coaching. What exists is one profession-wide survey, the [International Coaching Federation's Global Coaching Study](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf), plus what individual firms and guides choose to print. I keep the two apart below, and I say which is which. #### What is the average cost for an executive coach? The ICF's 2023 study, its most recent with fee data, puts the average fee for a one-hour coaching session at $244 worldwide and $272 in North America, across every kind of coaching. Two of its findings matter more than the average. First, in the ICF's words, "those coaches who mainly serve executives command the highest hourly fees." Second, "the higher the proportion of clients who are sponsored, the higher the hourly fee." Sponsored means the company pays. So the average executive coach costs more than $272 an hour, and the published guides land there. [Careerminds' 2026 guide](https://careerminds.com/blog/cost-executive-coaching) puts the hourly extremes at $150 to $3,500 and full programs at $5,000 to $60,000. [simply.coach](https://simply.coach/blog/guide-to-executive-coaching-pricing/) puts a monthly retainer or advisory arrangement at $2,000 to $10,000. Read those numbers the way you would read a salary survey. The range is wide because it blends four different markets that happen to share a name. At the bottom, coaches in their first years, working mostly with individuals who pay themselves. In the middle, credentialed coaches with a decade of practice. At the top, people who have run companies and now work with the people who do, on retainer, usually paid by the company. The ICF study is explicit that fees rise with years of experience, with the share of executive clients, and with the share of company-sponsored clients. If you are a senior leader, the top of that range is your market, and the average is not. #### How much do executive coaches charge per session? Per session is the price most people search for, and the model senior work uses least. Published hourly rates run from $150 for newer coaches to $3,500 and more for a small group who work only with sitting CEOs. The middle of the market for senior leaders sits in the hundreds per session. The reason per-session pricing is rare at the top is not marketing. It is what the work is. A coaching call is one hour; the value is what happens between the calls: the message before the board meeting, the fifteen minutes after the difficult conversation, the draft of the memo you did not want to send. That access is what a retainer buys, and it is why most executive engagements are sold as a monthly retainer or a fixed engagement rather than by the hour. If a coach quotes you by the session, ask what happens between sessions. If the answer is "nothing," you are buying meetings, not coaching. #### How much does a CEO coach cost? More, and for a reason a CEO will recognize: the person across the table has usually held the seat, and the calendar access is different. Careerminds puts C-suite and CEO coaching at $800 to $3,500 an hour and $20,000 to $60,000 or more for a six-month program. Where a monthly retainer is published for founders and CEOs, the guides put it at the top of the retainer band, up to $10,000 a month, and the coaches who publish their own retainers tend to work with venture-backed founders, where the company pays and the stakes are visible on a cap table. What you are paying for at that level is judgment on decisions that do not repeat: the next round or the sale, the executive who has to go, the board that has stopped believing the plan. A coach who has made those calls charges for having made them. A coach who has read about them should not. #### Executive coaching cost by leadership level These are Careerminds' published figures for 2026, by the seniority of the person being coached. I quote them because they are the most cited set, not because they are a standard; they are one firm's read of the market. Leadership level Typical hourly rate Typical six-month program Manager or team lead $150 to $400 $3,000 to $9,000 Director $300 to $600 $6,000 to $15,000 VP or senior leader $500 to $800 $10,000 to $25,000 C-suite or CEO $800 to $3,500+ $20,000 to $60,000+ Source: Careerminds, "Executive coaching cost: 2026 pricing guide," June 2026. The pattern to notice is the multiplier between rows. A CEO's coaching costs five to seven times a manager's. That is not the coach's ego. It is the size of the decisions on the table and the scarcity of people who have sat in that chair. #### Executive coaching cost by engagement structure The second thing that moves the number is the shape of the engagement. Again, published figures, with their sources. Structure Published range Where it fits Hourly or per session $150 to $3,500 an hour (Careerminds) Pilots and one-off questions; rare at senior level Fixed-fee package, three to six months $5,000 to $30,000 (Careerminds) A defined transition: a new seat, a first quarter, a specific presentation Monthly retainer, one leader $1,000 to $5,000 (Careerminds); $2,000 to $10,000 (simply.coach) Standing cadence plus access between calls; the model most operator-coaches use Group coaching $1,500 to $5,000 per participant (Careerminds) A cohort of leaders at the same level Enterprise program, multiple leaders $50,000 to $135,000+ a year (Careerminds) Firm-managed, several executives, reporting to a sponsor Company budget per executive $10,000 to $50,000 a year (Careerminds) What organizations typically allocate; larger enterprises more for senior tiers Two guides, two retainer bands that only partly overlap. That is the market telling you the truth: there is no rate card, and anyone who quotes you "the going rate" for a retainer is quoting one page they read. #### What sets the price: the five factors When I quote an engagement, five things set the number, and they are the same five behind every range above. Any coach who cannot tell you which of these moved their quote is guessing. - Who is being coached. One executive, or a [leadership team](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). Team work is scoped and priced differently, because the work is different: alignment across people who report to the same person, not one person's leadership. - Cadence and access. Weekly, every other week, or monthly standing calls, and what sits between them. Access between calls is most of the value at senior level, and most of the price. - Length. Engagements run in months, not weeks. Six months is a common floor, because that is how long a real change takes to hold. - Remote, in person, or a blend. Standing calls run on video everywhere. In-person work, and the travel that comes with it, is scoped into the engagement up front. - Who is paying. The ICF finds fees rise with the share of clients whose company pays, and company-sponsored engagements usually include sponsor meetings and progress reporting that private ones do not. #### Who pays for executive coaching? Mostly the company. Coaches in the ICF study report that "57% of their clients are sponsored and 43% are primary clients," and the sponsored share is higher in business and executive coaching than in life coaching. In my practice most clients are company-funded, and the reason is simple: organizations invest in the leaders they intend to keep, and coaching at this level is normally a line item rather than a personal expense. Careerminds reports that companies typically allocate $10,000 to $50,000 per executive a year for it. I have sat on the other side of that request, as the executive deciding whether to approve it. The strong requests name the business outcome the coaching is for, the measure that will show it, and the person accountable for it. The weak ones ask for "development." If you need to make the case internally, I will help you build it. The calibration meetings at the start of an engagement, where we agree what success looks like and how we will measure it, produce exactly the document an approver wants to see. Bring it to the person who signs, and the conversation is short. One practical note from the same guide: when the employer pays, coaching is generally a deductible business expense for the company. When an individual pays, deductibility depends on whether the coaching maintains or improves skills in the current role. Ask your accountant; I am not one. #### If you are paying for it yourself Say so on the call. Depending on the situation and the fit I take some of those engagements, and we shape the scope around it. It is how I give back to the next generation of leaders. #### Are executive coaches worth it? You will find return-on-investment percentages on most cost pages. Treat them carefully. The figures that circulate trace back to one 2001 case study of about thirty mostly mid-level managers estimating their own results, and to a 2009 survey in which fewer than one in ten respondents could supply the numbers. I wrote about that in [the six questions to ask any executive coach](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/): a coach who leads with an ROI percentage has told you how they handle evidence. What the ICF study does support is narrower and more useful. Clients expect credentials: eight in ten coaches say so. Companies fund most senior coaching. And coaches with operating clients charge the most, because that is where the buyers put their money. None of that proves your engagement will pay off. It tells you what the market has decided is worth paying for. The honest test is the one I use in my own engagements. We agree what success looks like before the work starts, in writing, and we hold the work to it at set points, not only at the end. The value shows up in the decisions you make between sessions. If we cannot name a change worth the fee, I will tell you, and we stop. #### When executive coaching is not worth the money It is not worth it if you want someone to hand you the answer. That is consulting, and it is a different engagement with a different price. It is not worth it if the person being coached did not choose it; a leader sent to coaching as a remedy rarely does the work between sessions, and the work between sessions is the work. It is not worth it as a substitute for a decision the company is avoiding, such as whether the person is in the right seat at all. And it is not worth paying senior-operator rates for a first-time manager. A good leadership coach at the lower end of the ranges above is the better buy, and I will say so on the call. #### What a quote should contain Whatever the number, a coaching quote for a senior leader should let you see the five factors in it. Who is coached, and whether a sponsor is part of the arrangement. The cadence, written as a number of standing calls a month, and what access sits between them, written down. The length, with a date. Whether any of it is in person, and who pays for the travel. And the terms: what happens if it is not working after ninety days. If a quote is one line with a total on it, ask for the shape. A coach who cannot show you the shape has priced the relationship, not the work. Two quotes that differ by a factor of three are usually not the same engagement. Weekly calls with a coach who answers the phone on a Sunday before a board meeting is a different product from two calls a month with nothing between them, and it should cost more. Compare cadence and access first, then the record, then the number. #### Questions to ask about price before you sign - What is included between sessions, and how fast do you respond? - What happens at ninety days if it is not working, and what does it cost to stop? - If my company is paying, what does the sponsor see, and what stays in the room? - Is in-person work priced in, or scoped separately? - What would make you say this engagement is not worth it, and would you say so? The last one is the tell. A coach who has held a seat like yours has stopped engagements that were not working, and will say so without flinching. That is the same instinct that made them worth the fee in the first place. #### How I price My [executive coaching engagements](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) are scoped to the leader and the mandate, not a rate card. I work on a monthly retainer, not a per-session fee, and the five factors above are the whole of what sets it: one leader or a team, the cadence and the access between calls, the length, remote or in person, and who is paying. Most of my clients are company-funded. Month to month; cancel with 30 days' notice; no annual contract. By the end of a [45-minute discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) you will have a scope and a number for it. If you have a budget in mind, say so on the call. It shortens the conversation, and I would rather shape the engagement to it than guess. #### How to get it approved Three things get a coaching request approved, in my experience signing them. Name the business outcome and the date: not "executive presence," but "the board stops relitigating the plan by Q2." Name the measure, ideally one the approver already tracks. Name what happens if nothing changes, because that is the number the approver is really weighing. Then attach the coach's record, because the approver will check it. Everything on [my About page](https://kengavranovic.com/about-ken) is there so you can. #### Frequently asked questions ##### How much does a leadership coach cost? Less than an executive coach at the senior end, because the client is usually earlier in their career. Careerminds puts managers and team leads at $150 to $400 an hour and $3,000 to $9,000 for six months, and directors at $300 to $600 an hour and $6,000 to $15,000. ##### How much should an executive coach cost? Enough that the coach has held a seat like yours and can give you real access between calls, and no more than the outcome you named is worth. For a senior leader the published market is a monthly retainer in the four figures and a full engagement in the five. ##### How much does it cost to hire a leadership coach? Published engagements run $5,000 to $60,000 for a six-month program, with the bottom of the range for emerging leaders and the top for C-suite work with a former operator. ##### Is an executive coach worth it? When the measure is agreed before the work starts and the leader does the work between sessions. If either is missing, no price is worth it. ##### How much does a leadership development program cost? Organizations typically allocate $10,000 to $50,000 per executive per year for coaching and development, and enterprise programs covering several leaders run $50,000 to $135,000 or more a year. ##### Do companies pay for executive coaching? Yes, most of the time. The ICF reports 57 percent of coaching clients are sponsored, and the share is higher for executive work. Most of my clients are company-funded, and I help build the internal case. ##### Is executive coaching tax deductible? When the company pays, it is generally a deductible business expense for the company. When an individual pays, it depends on whether the coaching maintains or improves skills in the current role. Ask your accountant. ##### How long does an engagement run? Months, not weeks. Six months is a common floor, because that is how long a real change takes to hold, and the length is set in the calibration meetings before the work starts. #### Keep reading - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: The Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) Question five is the short version of this page. The other five are the ones to ask before you talk about money. - [Executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) How an engagement runs, who it is for, and what it costs. - [About Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/about-ken) Who I work with, the seats I have held, and what a first conversation looks like. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For. https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For. Announced in January, stalling by month six. The pattern behind most stalled transformations, one that failed three times before one leader fixed it, and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days. By Ken Gavranovic · September 6, 2026 A digital transformation announced in January and stalling by summer is not unusual. It is the normal case. I have led transformations at large companies and small ones: a $3B automotive platform with a thousand-plus engineers, a hundred-person venture-backed startup, and a public software company between them. I have sat on the board while portfolio companies attempted them and watched what venture and private equity pressure does to them. I have been called in after they stalled by major retailers, insurance companies, and technology companies. The versions differ: organizational design, who is accountable for the transformation and who is merely empowered to attempt it, the investor's clock. The pattern does not. That lived experience is the playbook. It is what lets me name the pattern in the first conversation and fix the right thing instead of the visible thing. #### The one that failed three times A large healthcare company spent more than twenty million dollars on three failed attempts to move to the cloud. The technology was never the problem. The first attempts were run by infrastructure. The software teams whose systems were being moved fought with infrastructure the whole way, because their designs were never part of the plan. Infrastructure was executing a migration; software was living with the result. And the team leading the transformation was also the team it would disrupt the most. The focus was on checking a box, not on achieving a business outcome. It worked on the fourth attempt, and the difference was not a new platform or a new vendor. It was organizational. The company put software and infrastructure under one leader, accountable for the outcome rather than the activity, and the conflict that had stalled three programs disappeared because it no longer had two sides. The migration completed. What followed was a dramatic increase in engineering production, and in the speed and performance customers experienced. That is the shape of most stalls I see. Nobody is lazy. Nobody is wrong. The work is organized so that the people who have to make it succeed are the people it hurts, or the people who need each other report to different bosses with different scoreboards. #### Why digital transformations stall I wrote most of [this list in 2022](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/), and every stall since has fit it. Ownership sits in the wrong place. The team running the change is the team the change disrupts, or the two teams that need each other report to different leaders with different numbers. You get what you organize for. A transformation run by one side of a conflict will produce the conflict. Accountability is for activity, not outcomes. [The group that owns the result has to be accountable for it even when it depends on another group](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/11/enterprise-agility-okr-outcomes-over-activity/), or the review becomes a blame exchange between two teams that were each on plan. There is no business problem, so there is no measure. "Move to the cloud" is [a tactic, not a destination](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/11/19/why-leadership-teams-fail-and-how-to-fix-it/). If the leadership team cannot say what the transformation will make true, in a number, by a date, the program will be measured on activity, and activity is where stalls hide. The healthcare company was measuring completed migrations. The business outcome it needed was never written down. The people being changed were not told how it affects them. Every employee's first question is "what does this mean for me," and nobody does their best work in survival mode. If the answer is "your job gets automated" and nobody says it, the people closest to the work will slow it down without ever refusing anything. Decision rights were never settled. [Who decides sequencing, who decides what the old business gives up, who decides when a workstream is done.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/) When two people each believe it is theirs, everything is busy and nothing moves. Leadership stops deciding. This is the one that surprises boards. Transformations rarely die in the teams. They die in the executive suite, when the leaders stop making the calls about outcomes, funding, and what gets stopped, and start reviewing dashboards instead. Without leadership, some transformations simply will not succeed, and no amount of vendor or methodology changes that. #### A transformation I owned when the numbers were under pressure When I arrived at New Relic as EVP and General Manager, our largest customers said we had not shipped meaningful innovation in nearly three years. Sales had no confidence that product and engineering could deliver, and customers were looking at competitors. Revenue was $300 million and the plan said $500 million. What I stopped: product and engineering reporting to different leaders with different measures. I appointed a general manager to align both on business metrics, which ended the finger-pointing because there was no longer a second finger. Who resisted: the leaders who were on plan by their own number. Each function was hitting its scoreboard while the company missed the customer. What unlocked it: a quarterly planning session that set a specific allocation of engineering capacity across the roadmap, bugs, and new sales commitments, and a cross-company escalation meeting where any change to the roadmap had to be argued and agreed by the leaders of the company, in the open. Trade-offs stopped happening under the hood. Six months later, at our Customer Advisory Board, the CTO of Disney and an SVP at Capital One told us we had delivered more of what they wanted in six months than in the previous three years. That translated into roughly fifty million dollars in new sales within five months, and the company went on to $500 million. #### What I look for in the first thirty days I do not start with a maturity assessment or a new roadmap. I start with the pattern, and the pattern shows up in five questions asked of every executive, one on one. What problem is this transformation solving, and how will we measure it? If the answers differ across the room, the program has no destination, only tactics. Who owns it, and is that the person it disrupts? I ask who runs it, who reports to them, and who has to live with the result. If the answer is a team on one side of a conflict, or two teams that report to different leaders, I have usually found the stall. Who has the decision? Sequencing, what the old business gives up, what "done" means. Unsettled decision rights look like disagreement about the plan. They are not. Do the scoreboards fight? Each leader's number, side by side. If sales, engineering, and operations can each hit their number while the transformation fails, the incentives are the problem, not the people. Does the leadership team believe it is a must? I ask each of them, alone, what happens if it does not get done. If nobody can answer, the stall is the honest answer to a question the kickoff never asked. By the end of the thirty days I know which of the six causes is doing the damage, and I write it down for the CEO in plain language, with the one or two decisions that restart it. It is rarely all six. It is never the one the kickoff deck named. #### What you should expect from an advisor The right advisor should be willing to say uncomfortable things, work with the CEO privately, and then help the leadership team turn those conclusions into operating commitments with owners and dates. Be wary of anyone whose main deliverable is a maturity assessment, a new roadmap, or another offsite. Ask any advisor, including me: tell me about a transformation you personally owned when the numbers were under pressure; what did you stop doing, who resisted, and what decision unlocked progress; how would you diagnose our situation in the first thirty days; what access would you need; and what would make you tell me the current transformation leader, or I, should be replaced. My answers are above. The last one is simple: when the person leading the change is the person the change disrupts most, and cannot be moved out of that position, the program will fail again, and I will say so. #### Operating partner, turnaround consultant, or advisor: which does a stall need? An operating partner takes a seat and owns an outcome; that is the right answer when the stall is a leadership gap. A turnaround consultant runs a process against a deadline, usually a cash deadline; the right answer when the stall is a survival problem. An advisor stands beside the CEO over time while the CEO makes the calls; the right answer when the leadership is sound and the transformation is not. I work all three ways, and most stalled transformations need the third, with the first held in reserve. #### What an engagement involves, and how it is priced The first thirty days are the diagnostic above: interviews with every seat, the plan tested against the causes, a written verdict the CEO can act on. After that, the work takes one of three shapes: [standing advisory, a scoped project with owners and dates, or transformation leadership](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting), which is priced like the operating commitment it is. What moves the number is scope, cadence, and how much of the work is on-site. We agree on it at the discovery call, once we both know the shape of the work. I do not publish fees. #### Common questions Why do transformations stall at six months? Because the launch runs on enthusiasm and month six runs on the operating model, and most transformations never changed the operating model. The old business still wins every resource fight, and the people being changed were never told what it means for them. What are the signs an executive team is avoiding a decision? Every workstream is on track and the total is late. The resource conversation is always next quarter's. Two executives each describe the same decision as the other's. What does a diagnostic for a stalled transformation involve? Thirty days: every executive interviewed one on one, the plan tested against the six causes, a written verdict with the one or two decisions that restart it. Priced as a scoped project. How is an operating partner different from a turnaround consultant? One takes a seat and owns an outcome; the other runs a process against a deadline. A stall usually needs neither first. It needs the decision nobody has made. Can a transformation be restarted without replacing the team? Usually. Most stalls are ownership and decision problems, not talent problems. The exception is when the leader of the change is the person it disrupts most and cannot be moved; then the structure has to change before anything else can. Why do most digital transformations fail? The consultancies' own surveys put it at about seven in ten, and some higher. In my experience the number matters less than the pattern. They fail for the six reasons above, and the first two are organizational: the work is owned by the team it disrupts, or measured on activity instead of an outcome. Technology is almost never the cause. A transformation announced with conviction and stalling by month six is usually one unmade decision away from restarting. #### Keep reading - [Digital Transformation, Part 1: Why It Fails](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/) Every company calls itself digital. Few operate that way. Why seven in ten transformations fail, and the five shifts that separate the ones that do not. - [Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/11/19/why-leadership-teams-fail-and-how-to-fix-it/) Why leadership teams stall, and how to get the steering wheel back. - [Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-judgment-under-uncertainty/) The Reversibility Ledger: what you cannot take back, what you will know and when, and the rule that chooses between them. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Run an Executive Offsite That Actually Produces Decisions https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Run an Executive Offsite That Actually Produces Decisions The Decision Contract: three to five decisions agreed in writing before the agenda exists, a decision log read back before the room empties, and thirty days of follow-through. By Ken Gavranovic · September 6, 2026 Most executive offsites fail before anyone books a flight. Not in the room. Before it. The agenda gets built around topics instead of decisions, the hard conversation gets pencilled in for after lunch on day two, and the team goes home with a wall of sticky notes and a deck nobody opens again. Everyone feels closer. Nothing was decided. I have been on every side of that room: the founder and CEO who called the offsite and took the company through a Nasdaq IPO, the EVP at New Relic and the VP at Cox Automotive with a $250M budget who sat through them, the COO in a turnaround who could not afford one that produced nothing, and now [the facilitator hired to run it](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). Whatever you call yours, an executive offsite, a leadership retreat, a strategy workshop, an alignment session, the test is the same. Did the team leave with decisions that have owners and dates? The method I use to get there has a name, so you can ask any facilitator for it. I call it the Decision Contract. #### What a Decision Contract is [A Decision Contract](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation#decision-contract) is a one-page list of the three to five decisions the leadership team must make before the room empties, agreed in writing by the CEO and the facilitator before the agenda exists. Each line names the decision, who owns it today, what it costs to leave it open another quarter, and what "decided" will look like when the room reads it back. It is not a list of topics. "Discuss pricing" is a topic. "Decide whether we raise list price in the first quarter, and by how much" is a decision. The template itself is on the facilitation page, as a table and as [a one-page PDF](https://kengavranovic.com/downloads/decision-contract-template.pdf). Fill it in before you book a room, with me or with anyone. If you want the agenda that sits on top of it, the [block-by-block two-day agenda](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-planning-offsite-agenda/) is published separately, with the pre-work and the thirty days after. The contract does three jobs. It forces the CEO to say what the offsite is for. It gives every executive a reason to prepare, because they know what they will be asked to decide. And it gives the room a way to know when it is done. Bob Frisch and Logan Chandler made a version of this argument in Harvard Business Review in ["Off-Sites That Work"](https://hbr.org/2006/06/off-sites-that-work): offsites go wrong in the design, long before the room. #### Before the room: every seat, one on one Once the contract exists, I talk to every person who will be in the room, one on one, before anyone books a flight. Forty-five minutes to an hour each, confidential. Three questions do most of the work. What has this team already decided that it keeps re-deciding? What is the conversation this team is avoiding? And on each line of the contract, where do you actually stand today? By the end I know where the real disagreements live, and which ones are about facts, which are about decision rights, and which are about two people. That shapes the agenda. Where it helps, I add a short assessment pass on personality, EQ and how the team handles conflict, so the room is designed for the people who will be in it. #### Who should be in the room The CEO and the direct reports who own the decisions on the contract. Add a board member or an advisor for a specific block if one decision needs them. Do not add people because leaving them out would feel awkward. Every extra seat makes the true thing harder to say. #### In the room: run it for decisions, not presentations The room is structured around the contract. No presentation runs longer than ten minutes. Disagreement comes first, not last: I open with the disagreements the interviews surfaced, while everyone is fresh and the CEO is listening rather than talking. Two rules hold the room together. First, decision rights get named before the decision gets made. Who decides, who gets a say, who has to live with it. Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko's ["Who Has the D?"](https://hbr.org/2006/01/who-has-the-d-how-clear-decision-roles-enhance-organizational-performance), also in Harvard Business Review, is still the clearest account of why teams stall here. Most alignment problems are unsettled decision rights wearing a disguise. Second, every decision is captured in a decision log as it happens: what was decided, what was deliberately deferred and until when, what was escalated, who owns it, and the first action with a date. Before the room empties, I read the log back out loud against the contract. If they do not match, we are not done. This is where an operator in the chair changes the outcome. When the room politely converges on a plan that its own numbers say cannot work, a neutral moderator writes it on the flip chart. I say so, labelled as opinion, and the team decides what to do with it. The CEO sets how much of that they want. #### After: the thirty days that decide whether it worked The decision log goes to every attendee within two business days. Then thirty days of follow-through: a check on each owner and date, the operating rhythm the decisions plug into, and the first two places a decision started to slide back. The measure of an offsite is not the two days. It is the ninety after. #### Offsite, retreat, workshop, or alignment session: which do you need? People call these different things. The method is the same; the emphasis moves. An executive offsite is the one- or two-day room where a leadership team resets its plan. A leadership retreat or executive retreat puts the team itself on the agenda: trust, candour, how it handles disagreement, with the business decisions along for the ride. An executive or leadership workshop is a half day to a day on one problem that will not die in email. A leadership alignment workshop is for a team that thinks it is aligned and needs to find out whether that is true. All four start with a Decision Contract, because a retreat that builds trust and decides nothing does not hold either. #### Facilitator, team coach, or run it yourself? If your team knows what to do and cannot get it decided, you want a facilitator. If the same decision comes back every quarter, the pattern lives in how the team works, and that is standing work, [leadership team coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching), which I do separately. Patrick Lencioni's work on team dysfunction is a good map of that territory. One honest conversation usually tells you which you need. Can the CEO facilitate their own offsite? Rarely well. The CEO is a party to every decision on the contract and the person the room is most careful around. Whoever runs the process cannot also be in the argument, and the argument is the point. #### In person or remote? Do the room in person. Standing work runs fine on video. The two days where ten people have to say what they actually think while the boss listens do not. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia. In person across Atlanta is easy, and I fly in for the rest of the country when the engagement books time for it. The pre-interviews and the thirty-day follow-through run on video wherever you are. #### What determines the cost I do not publish fees, and I would be careful with anyone who prices an offsite before asking what it has to decide. Five things set the number: days in the room, seats in the room (each one is an interview), whether an assessment pass is useful, whether the follow-through is thirty days or the full quarter, and travel. By the end of the first conversation you will have a scope and a number for it. #### How to pick an offsite facilitator If you are the chief of staff or the executive assistant building the shortlist, ask every candidate the same four questions. What is your method, and can you describe it in one paragraph? Have you held a seat like the ones in our room? Will you interview every attendee before the agenda is set? What do we receive after the room, and for how long? Then give the finalists the same real situation and compare the agendas they propose. Hire the one whose agenda starts with decisions rather than topics. The first conversation with me is [forty-five minutes on video](https://kengavranovic.com/booking), no pitch. Tell me what the room has to decide and who will be in it, and I will tell you honestly whether I am [the right person to run it](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). #### Keep reading - [Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-judgment-under-uncertainty/) The Reversibility Ledger: what you cannot take back, what you will know and when, and the rule that chooses between them. - [Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/11/19/why-leadership-teams-fail-and-how-to-fix-it/) Why leadership teams stall, and how to get the steering wheel back. - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Strategic Planning Offsite Agenda: Pre-Work, Two Days, Template https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-planning-offsite-agenda/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### A Strategic Planning Offsite Agenda for a Leadership Team: the Pre-Work, the Two Days, and the Template Two weeks of pre-work, three to five decisions agreed before the agenda exists, about fifteen working hours in the room, and thirty days of follow-through. The block-by-block agenda I run. By Ken Gavranovic · September 19, 2026 A two-day strategic planning offsite has four parts, and only one of them happens in the room. Two weeks of pre-work. Three to five decisions agreed in writing before anyone builds an agenda. About fifteen working hours across two days, structured around those decisions instead of around presentations. Then thirty days of follow-through. Teams that skip part one and part four get two good days and a quarter that looks exactly like the last one. Below is the agenda I actually run, block by block, with the pre-work that has to land before it and the decisions that usually end up on the list. Take it and run it yourself, or [have someone run it](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). Either way the structure is the same. #### First: is this annual planning, or a strategy reset? They are different rooms and they fail for different reasons. Annual planning starts from last year's plan. The question is how much more, by when, with what resources. The numbers move. The shape of the business does not. That is a real meeting and it usually belongs with the finance calendar. A strategy reset starts from a decision the company has not been able to make. Not a number, a decision. Three signals: - The same decision keeps coming back and never closes. It gets discussed every quarter, everyone has a position, and nothing is written down that anyone could act on. - The plan has missed for two or three quarters and every explanation is about execution. When the explanation is always execution, the problem is usually further up: the plan is asking the company to do more things than it can do well. - The team is quietly arguing about something structural. Where the business is really working, who owns which segment, which product gets the engineers. The argument never gets settled in a room with everyone in it. Any one of those is enough. If you recognise two, you are not behind on planning. You are carrying a decision. The agenda below is built for that, whatever the decision turns out to be. #### The two weeks before: the pre-work that decides the outcome What goes wrong in these rooms usually went wrong two weeks earlier. Nobody wrote down what had to be decided, so the agenda filled up with topics, the hard conversation landed late on day two, and everyone flew home with photographs of a whiteboard. Three pieces of pre-work prevent all of it. ##### 1. The decision list, agreed in writing (two weeks out) Two weeks out, before anyone opens a calendar, the CEO and whoever is running the session write down the three to five decisions this offsite exists to make. One page. Per line: the decision itself, the person who owns it today, the cost of carrying it another quarter, and the wording that will count as decided. I call it [the Decision Contract](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/), and the method behind it is its own piece. Topics do not belong on it. "Pricing" is a topic. "Raise list price in Q1, yes or no, and by how much" is a decision, and the test is whether the sentence can be true or false by March. Three to five of them, not nine. A leadership team can close five real decisions in two days. Nine is how you end up with a deck instead of a plan. ##### 2. One conversation with every seat in the room (ten days out) Forty-five minutes to an hour with each person, confidential, before the agenda is written. Three questions carry most of the weight. Which decisions does this team keep making again? What does nobody say out loud when everyone is in the room? And line by line on the list, where do you stand right now? By the end you know where the real disagreements live and which kind each one is: a disagreement about facts, a disagreement about decision rights, or two people. Those three get handled differently in the room, and you cannot tell them apart from the outside. ##### 3. The evidence pack, five pages, sent seventy-two hours out Not a strategy deck. The five things the business has already told you, in numbers nobody argues with on the day: - Retention and expansion by cohort and by segment, not blended. - Gross margin by product or segment, with the cost lines that actually move it. - Pipeline by source, and what share of new revenue came from the motion you say is your motion. - Win/loss from the last two quarters, in the customers' words, not the sales team's summary. - Where engineering time went last quarter against where the plan said it would go. Read before, not presented in the room. If it needs a presentation to be understood, it is not ready. The rule I hold: no pre-read longer than ten pages, and nothing in the room that was not in the pre-read. #### What usually ends up on the decision list The decisions are different in every company, and the agenda does not care which ones you bring. But across these rooms the same four shapes come up, and it is worth knowing them before you write your own list. - Where the business is actually working, and where the next four quarters go. Not where we hoped. Where retention, expansion and win rate say it is. For a growth-stage technology team this is usually the segment or motion question; for a company further along it is usually a portfolio question. Same decision, different vocabulary. - What we stop. Focus without a stop list is a wish. The stop list is the decision, and it is the one that needs a night's sleep. - Who decides what, from here. A great deal of what a team calls misalignment turns out to be an unanswered question about who has the call. - The thing nobody will say. There is almost always something everyone in the room knows and nobody has put on a slide. If it does not make the list, the other three decisions will be made around it, and they will not hold. One test before you finalise the list: could someone act differently on Monday because of this line? If not, it is a topic. #### The two-day agenda, block by block About fifteen working hours. Times are a working pattern, not a rule. What matters is the order. The disagreement goes first, while the team is fresh and the CEO is listening rather than talking. The stop decision goes before dinner on day one, because it is the one people need a night with. Day one: what the business is telling us, and what we stop Time Block What has to come out of it 8:30 The decision list, read aloud Everyone hears the three to five decisions and what "decided" looks like. Nothing else is on the agenda. 9:00 What the business taught us Forty-five minutes on the evidence pack, questions only. No presentation longer than ten minutes. 10:15 The disagreements, first The facilitator puts the disagreements the interviews surfaced on the wall, unattributed. The team names which are about facts, which about decision rights, which about people. 12:00 Lunch No working session. The morning needs to settle. 1:00 Where the business is actually working Decision one: what the next four quarters are built around, with the evidence named rather than asserted. 3:00 The focus decision, and the stop list Decision two: what gets the resources, and what stops. Named, not implied. 4:45 Read the log back What was decided today, in the words it will be written in. Disagreements get named, not smoothed. Evening Dinner, no agenda People need a night with the stop decision before day two. Day two: what it means, who owns it, and what the company hears Time Block What has to come out of it 8:30 What did not survive the night Thirty minutes to reopen anything that looked decided and is not. Better here than in six weeks. 9:00 The structural decisions Decisions three to five: how the team is organised around the focus, what gets resourced, what sequence. 11:00 Decision rights For each decision: who decides, who gets a say, who has to live with it. Written down. 12:00 Lunch 1:00 The operating rhythm Which existing meeting each decision plugs into, and what metric will show it moving. A decision with no rhythm is a decision that quietly expires. 2:30 Owners and dates Every decision and every defined alternative gets one name and one date. One name, not a team. 3:30 The log, read back against the list If the log and the decision list do not match, the room is not done. This is the test that makes the two days real. 4:15 What we tell the company on Monday Three sentences the whole team will say the same way. Write them in the room. #### Who should be in the room The CEO and the direct reports who own the decisions on the list. Six to ten people. Add a board member or an advisor for a single block if one decision genuinely needs them, and have them leave after it. Seats handed out to avoid hurt feelings cost you the honest conversation, and the honest conversation is what the two days are for. If someone should be there for development reasons, give them the day-two operating-rhythm block. That is real exposure and it costs the room nothing. #### What you leave with: decisions, or defined alternatives Not every decision closes in the room, and a session that forces a false close is worse than one that does not. The honest output is one of two things for every line on the list. A decision: what was decided, who owns it, the first action, and a date. A defined alternative: the two or three real options, what you would need to know to choose between them, who owns finding that out, and the date they bring it back. That is not a deferral. A deferral is "let's come back to this". A defined alternative has a name and a date on it. All of it lands in a decision log while the room is still in session: the call that was made, anything parked and the date it comes back, anything sent up a level, the owner, and the first action with its date. Every attendee has the log within two business days. #### The thirty days after The measure of an offsite is not the two days. It is the ninety after, and the thirty that set them up. Week one: the log is out, and every owner has confirmed their first action in writing. Week two: the three sentences have been said to the company, by the CEO, in the same words the leadership team wrote. Weeks three and four: each decision has appeared at least once in the operating rhythm it was assigned to, and someone has checked the first two places a decision started to slide back. There are always two. The failure mode is not disagreement. It is silence, a decision that nobody argues with and nobody schedules. #### Where these sessions go wrong - The agenda is built from topics. Topics produce discussion. Decisions produce decisions. - The hard conversation is scheduled for after lunch on day two. By then the room has invested a day in agreeing, and nobody wants to be the one who reopens it. - Too many people. Twelve is a conference. Ten is the ceiling for a room where people say what they think. - The evidence arrives as a presentation. If the data is new to the room, the room spends its day understanding it instead of deciding with it. - Nobody will say the quiet part. When a room talks itself into a plan its own numbers contradict, a moderator writes it up as agreed and moves on. - No owner, or a team as the owner. A decision owned by "product and sales" is owned by nobody. - The plan never plugs into the operating rhythm. This is the most common one and the easiest to fix, and it is why day two ends where it does. #### Run it yourself, or bring someone in You can run this agenda internally. Plenty of teams do, and it beats not doing it. The two things that are hard to do from inside: the confidential one-on-ones, and saying the true thing when the room does not want to hear it. If you are weighing that against hiring someone, [what a facilitator or planning consultant costs](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-a-strategic-planning-facilitator-cost/) is published separately: the survey figures, what moves the fee, and what to ask before you sign. The CEO in particular can rarely run their own reset. They are a party to every decision on the list and the person everyone is most careful around. The person holding the process cannot be one of the people arguing, and the arguing is the whole point. If you do bring someone in, the piece on [how to run an executive offsite](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/) has the questions to ask before you hire. I have called these sessions and I have sat through them. Founder and CEO through a Nasdaq IPO. EVP at New Relic. VP at Cox Automotive with a $250M budget. COO in a VC-backed turnaround, where two unproductive days were not something the company could absorb. These days I am the one [running the room](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation), which is the same two days from a different chair. #### The templates Two one-page PDFs, both free and neither gated. The Strategy Offsite Plan is this page on one sheet: the two-week pre-work checklist with owners, the block-by-block agenda for both days, and the thirty-day follow-through. The Decision Contract is the one you fill in first, where the three to five decisions get written down before the agenda exists. It also lives on the [facilitation page](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation#decision-contract). Use them with me or with anyone. If you take one thing from this page, take that: the agenda comes after the decisions, never before. The templates Take the plan with you. The pre-work checklist, the two-day agenda and the thirty days after, on one page. Plus the Decision Contract to fill in first. [The Strategy Offsite Plan (PDF)](https://kengavranovic.com/downloads/strategy-offsite-plan-template.pdf) [The Decision Contract (PDF)](https://kengavranovic.com/downloads/decision-contract-template.pdf) Bring a filled-in contract to [the discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) and we start from the decisions, not the agenda. #### Common questions ##### What should a strategic planning offsite agenda include? Three to five named decisions, the evidence behind them read in advance, the disagreements surfaced in the first two hours, a stop decision before dinner on day one, decision rights, owners and dates, and a read-back of the decision log against the original list before the room empties. If an agenda contains presentations and time slots but no named decisions, it is a conference agenda. ##### How long should a strategy offsite be? Two days for a strategy reset with structural decisions in it. One day if there is a single decision and the team already trusts each other. Half a day is a working session on one problem, not a reset. What does not work is two days with eight decisions, or one day that tries to be two. ##### What pre-work should a leadership team do before a strategic planning session? The decision list agreed in writing two weeks out, a confidential conversation with every person who will be in the room, and a five-page evidence pack sent seventy-two hours ahead: retention and expansion by cohort, gross margin by segment, pipeline by source, win/loss in the customers' words, and where engineering time actually went. ##### How do you lead a strategic planning session? Open with the decisions, not the agenda. Put the disagreements first while people are fresh. Cap presentations at ten minutes. Name decision rights before each decision, not after. Capture every decision in a log as it happens. Read the log back against the decision list before anyone leaves, and treat a mismatch as unfinished work rather than a rounding error. ##### Who should attend a strategic planning offsite? The CEO and the direct reports who own the decisions on the list. Six to ten people. A board member or advisor for one block if a specific decision needs them. Nobody added for politics or optics. ##### What are the four types of facilitators? In practice you will meet four, and they are good at different things. The process facilitator holds the structure and stays out of the content. The trainer teaches a method and runs the room through it. The content expert brings an answer and works the team toward it. The operator has sat in the seat the room reports to and will tell you when the plan contradicts your own numbers. The first is safest, the last is the one worth paying for when the decision is hard and the team already knows the method. Ask which one you are hiring before the contract, not after. ##### Should we do it in person? Do the room in person. The pre-interviews and the thirty-day follow-through run fine on video. Two days where ten people have to say what they actually think while the boss listens do not. #### Keep reading - [How to Run an Executive Offsite That Actually Produces Decisions](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-run-an-executive-offsite/) The Decision Contract method in full: the contract, the interviews, the decision log, and the thirty days after. - [Facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) How I run these sessions, what a room costs you when it produces nothing, and the templates. - [Strategy Consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) When the work is bigger than a room: advise, enable, or drive. ## Strategic Planning Facilitator Cost 2026: Rates and Who Pays https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-a-strategic-planning-facilitator-cost/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How Much Does a Strategic Planning Facilitator or Consultant Cost in 2026? The one industry survey that publishes real numbers, what the rest of the field claims, the five things that move the fee, who pays, and how I price. By Ken Gavranovic · September 19, 2026 In the United States, a facilitator running a one-day session charges about $4,000 on average, including the preparation and the follow-up. That is the average reported by facilitators themselves in the field's annual practitioner survey. Around that number, hourly work for strategic planning runs roughly $150 to $275, a two-day executive session with an experienced independent typically lands somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000, and a full strategic planning engagement with interviews, sessions and follow-through is commonly quoted between $10,000 and $35,000. Those are wide ranges, and the spread is the whole story. The same job title covers someone who runs a two-hour workshop from a deck and someone who has sat in the chair your leadership team reports to. Below is where each number comes from, what actually moves it, and what you should ask before you sign anything. #### One thing worth knowing first: nobody neutral publishes a rate card For executive coaching there is a global professional body that surveys its members and publishes the results. Facilitation has nothing equivalent. The International Association of Facilitators and the International Institute for Facilitation both certify facilitators, and neither publishes a fee survey. One independent training-cost site that used to publish facilitator day-rate tiers took them down on audit, saying plainly that the tiers were not traceable to any publicly available industry survey it could link to. So treat every day rate you read, including the ones on this page, as self-reported. The closest thing to real data comes from an annual survey of practitioners, and I have separated it from everything else below so you can see which is which. #### What the survey data actually says SessionLab, a company that sells software to facilitators rather than facilitation itself, runs an annual State of Facilitation survey. Two editions asked about money. Average fee for an in-person one-day (8 hour) workshop with 15 participants, including preparation and follow-up Where Average fee Source United States $4,000 State of Facilitation 2024, 975 facilitators in 93 countries Northern America $3,750 same Australia and New Zealand $2,500 same Western Europe $2,325 same United Kingdom $1,860 same The earlier edition asked the same question by job title, across 1,112 responses, and found something worth sitting with. For the same day of work, people calling themselves facilitators reported a median of $2,000, while consultants and coaches reported $2,400 and trainers $2,500. Same room, same day, four hundred dollars of difference that comes from the word on the invoice. A separate 2023 survey by the Association of Facilitators in the United Kingdom found about half its respondents charging between £500 and £1,000 a day, which lines up with the UK figure above. #### What facilitators earn is not what a session costs A lot of the searching around this question is people asking what facilitators make for a living, and the two numbers get mixed up constantly. In the same 2024 survey, about a quarter of respondents earned more than $90,000 a year from facilitation and roughly a third earned under $30,000. Many facilitate part time alongside consulting or a staff job. That matters to you as a buyer for one reason. A day rate is not a salary divided by working days. It has to carry the unbilled preparation, the weeks with no session booked, and the fact that most practitioners are not facilitating five days a week. When someone quotes you a low day rate, the usual explanation is not generosity. It is that the preparation is not in the number. #### Hourly, day rate, project or retainer: what you are actually buying The four ways this work gets priced Structure Typical range When it fits, and what to watch Hourly $150 to $275 for strategic planning facilitation; $150 to $500 for strategy consultants Fine for advice by the hour. A poor fit for a session, because the value sits in preparation nobody wants to itemise on a timesheet. Day rate Survey average $4,000 in the US. Practitioners publish anywhere from $1,500 for someone starting out to $7,500 and up for an established corporate facilitator The common unit. Always ask what the day rate includes. If preparation and follow-up are extra, the quote is not what it looks like. Project or engagement fee Commonly $10,000 to $35,000 for a full strategic planning engagement; wider at both ends The honest structure for real work, because it prices the outcome rather than the hours. It should name exactly what is included. Monthly retainer $2,000 to $10,000 a month is a published range For standing advisory rather than a session. If what you need is one room, you do not need a retainer. Every figure in that table other than the survey average comes from practitioners publishing their own rates. I have not linked to any of them, and I would not put much weight on a single one. They tell you the shape of the market, not the price of your session. #### What a two-day executive session costs Working from the survey number, a straightforward two-day session with an experienced independent facilitator generally falls between $5,000 and $25,000 all in, which is roughly the day rate doubled plus the preparation. Boutique firms that put a named methodology and a team behind it quote considerably higher, and large consultancies higher again, because you are buying a firm rather than a person. The reason the range is so wide is that it is not really a price for two days. It is a price for two days plus everything around them, and the "everything around them" is where the difference lives. #### The five things that move the fee - The preparation. One-on-one conversations with everyone who will be in the room, a written decision list agreed before the agenda exists, and an agenda built from what those conversations surfaced. This is the single biggest driver, and the one most often quietly left out of a cheap quote. - Days in the room. Half a day, one day, two days. It is the most visible variable and usually not the most important one. - The size and seniority of the room. Six executives who own decisions is a different job from thirty people in a workshop. More senior generally means more preparation, not more people. - What happens afterwards. A decision log within two business days and thirty days of follow-through is real work, and it is what makes the two days survive contact with the next quarter. If nobody is doing it, nobody is charging for it. - Travel and location. On-site anywhere in the country is normal for this work and usually scoped into the engagement, but ask rather than assume. #### Facilitator or consultant: which are you paying for? The four-hundred-dollar gap in the survey is not really about pricing confidence. It reflects two different jobs. A facilitator holds the process and stays out of the content. The team reaches its own answer and owns it. A consultant brings you an answer, with analysis behind it. Both are legitimate, and they cost differently because the work is different. There is a third thing worth naming, because it is what most leadership teams actually want and rarely ask for. Someone who holds the process and has sat in the seat your team reports to, who will say plainly when the room is converging on a plan its own numbers contradict. That is the version I run, and the reason I do not price it as a workshop is that most of the work happens before anyone books a room. If you want the mechanics, the [two-day agenda is published in full](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-planning-offsite-agenda/), block by block. #### Who pays Almost always the company. A strategic planning session is a business expense that comes out of the budget of whoever called it, usually the CEO, sometimes a COO or a head of strategy, occasionally a board that has asked for a reset. Unlike coaching, this is rarely something an individual funds personally, because the deliverable belongs to the organisation rather than to a person. If you need to get it approved, the number that matters is not the fee. It is the cost of the decision staying open another quarter. Most teams can name that figure in about a minute, and it is almost always larger than the quote. #### How I price One fee for the engagement, not a day rate. It covers the preparation, including a conversation with every person who will be in the room, the days themselves, and the thirty days of follow-through afterwards. Fees depend on scope, and we agree them on the discovery call once we both know what the room needs. If you have a budget in mind, say so on the call. It shortens the conversation, and I would rather shape the work to it than guess. #### When it is not worth the money - When the decision is already made. If the CEO knows the answer and wants the room to arrive at it, that is a communication exercise. Run it yourself and save the fee. - When nobody will own the follow-through. A session with no owner for what comes after is two good days and a quarter that looks like the last one. - When the real problem is one relationship. Two people who cannot work together will not be fixed by an agenda, and a session will make it more visible rather than better. - When you want a team-building day. That is a real thing worth doing, and it is not this. Pay for what you actually want. #### Questions to ask before you sign - What exactly does the fee include: preparation, the days, and what afterwards? - Will you talk to everyone who will be in the room before you build the agenda? - What do we leave the room with, in writing, and when do we get it? - What happens in the thirty days after, and is that in the fee or extra? - Are you facilitating, consulting, or both, and which have you quoted me for? - What does travel add? Any facilitator worth the fee will answer all six without hesitating. If preparation and follow-through are both missing from the answer, you are being quoted for a room and a whiteboard. #### Common questions ##### How much does a meeting facilitator cost? For a professional facilitator running a working session, expect the day rate to be the unit. The survey average in the United States is about $4,000 for a one-day session with fifteen participants, including preparation and follow-up. Short internal meetings are usually priced hourly, roughly $150 to $275 for strategic planning work. ##### How much do workshop facilitators charge? Published practitioner rates run from about $1,500 a day for someone early in their career to $7,500 and above for an established corporate facilitator, with named-methodology specialists quoting well beyond that. The surveyed average for a one-day workshop in the United States is about $4,000. ##### How much does a strategic planning consultant cost? Hourly, roughly $150 to $275 for planning facilitation and $150 to $500 for strategy consulting more broadly. As a project, a full strategic planning engagement is commonly quoted between $10,000 and $35,000, though it runs wider at both ends depending on how much analysis and follow-through is in scope. ##### What is the typical hourly rate for a strategic planning consultant? Benchmark sites put strategic planning facilitation at roughly $150 to $275 an hour and strategy consultants at $150 to $500. Be careful with hourly rates for session work: the preparation is the part that makes the session work, and it is hard to bill honestly by the hour. ##### How much does a strategic plan consultant typically cost? Most organisations end up somewhere between $10,000 and $35,000 for a full engagement covering interviews, the sessions themselves and follow-through. A single facilitated session without the surrounding work costs considerably less, and usually delivers less. ##### Do facilitators charge for preparation? The good ones include it. The survey figures above are explicitly defined as covering preparation and follow-up, which is the right way to quote. If a day rate looks low, ask whether preparation is inside it or billed separately. #### Keep reading - [A Strategic Planning Offsite Agenda for a Leadership Team](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-planning-offsite-agenda/) The block-by-block two-day agenda, the pre-work that decides the outcome, and the templates. - [Facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation) How I run these sessions, what you leave the room with, and the thirty days after. - [Strategy Consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) When the work is bigger than a room: advise, enable, or drive. ## The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants: Five Questions, and Wins in Production Before the Next Meeting https://kengavranovic.com/insights/the-ai-answer-your-board-wants/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants: Five Questions, and Wins in Production Before the Next Meeting The answer that fails, the answer that holds, and the ninety days between meetings. By Ken Gavranovic · September 3, 2026 Somewhere between the last board meeting and the next one, a director will ask the CEO for the AI plan. Not a deck about AI. A plan. Most CEOs, including good ones, will answer with a list of initiatives, a vendor or two, and a slide that says "exploring." The board nods. Nothing changes. Ninety days later the same question comes back with a sharper edge. I have sat on both sides of that table. As a CEO I took a company through a Nasdaq IPO and answered to a public board. As a managing partner for a decade I sat on boards and asked the questions. And more recently, as CEO of Product Genius, I built and launched an AI product and rolled it out nationally in under six months, which is the part most AI advisers have not done. Here is what a board actually wants to hear about AI, and how to have real wins in production before you have to say it. #### Start with the numbers the board has already read Directors read the same surveys you do. Two of them frame every AI conversation in 2026. Alvarez and Marsal surveyed a hundred private equity executives and operators: 73 percent expect AI to raise the value of their companies within a year, and 8 percent say it is materially moving EBITDA today, [as PitchBook reported](https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pe-has-yet-to-prove-its-ai-bets-to-investors). [FTI Consulting surveyed 200 fund and operating leaders](https://www.fticonsulting.com/insights/reports/2026-private-equity-ai-radar): 95 percent say their AI initiatives met or beat the business case, and only about a third say their companies use AI in day-to-day operations. [MIT's NANDA initiative put a number on the gap](https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/) inside companies generally: 95 percent of enterprise generative AI pilots deliver no measurable P&L impact. So the board's real question is not "do we have an AI strategy." It is "are we one of the 8 percent, and how would we know." Answer that, and the rest of the meeting takes care of itself. #### The five questions, with the answer that fails and the answer that holds ##### One. What business problem are we solving with AI? Before the workloads, answer the question underneath this one. Is AI a must for this company or a should? I ask every leadership team to name where they are going, why, and whether the thing in front of them is a must or a should. If it is a should, the where or the why is wrong, or the team is not committed, and no amount of activity fixes that. If all three line up, the how gets clear and focused. A CEO who tells the board AI is a "should" has answered the board's real question already, and not well. The answer that fails: "We are exploring use cases across the company." The answer that holds: "AI is a must for us, and here is where and why. We ran [a workload sweep](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/). Of the recurring processes in the business, these four can be modeled, carry this volume at this cost per unit, and have a named owner. We are starting with the two that are boring and large." A board can diligence that. It cannot diligence "exploring." ##### Two. How much of the work can AI actually take, and how do we measure it? The answer that fails: "Productivity gains across the organization." The answer that holds: "Our operating rule is that any process we can model can be mostly automated, with the exceptions routed to people. In customer service, support and claims that typically takes 30 to 70 percent of the work off the human queue. We measure the share of each workload's volume that no longer touches a person, and we report it as a line, not a story." [Klarna's assistant took two thirds of its customer service chats in month one](https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/). Independent tests of off-the-shelf agents land near 38 percent. The spread is execution, and the board deserves to know which end you are on and why. ##### Three. What could go wrong, and who owns it? The answer that fails: "We have a governance framework." The answer that holds: "Every automated workload has an exception path with an owner, and the failures we expect are these. In engineering, the constraint moves: [Faros AI's 2026 telemetry across 22,000 developers](https://www.faros.ai/blog/are-ai-coding-assistants-really-saving) found epics per developer up 66 percent, but review time up 91 percent and 31 percent of code reaching production unreviewed. So we are adding product and review capacity before we buy more multiplier." Boards trust the CEO who names the failure mode before it happens. ##### Four. Who owns AI in this company? The answer that fails: "The CTO, with a cross-functional committee." The answer that holds: "One person owns the AI agenda at the level where trade-offs get made, and here is why that person is qualified." The test I apply: has this person shipped an AI product, not advised on one; have they run a P&L of real size; can they get an operating team to adopt something it did not ask for. If nobody inside passes all three, say so, and say how you are covering it. That is a more credible answer than a committee. ##### Five. What will be true by the next meeting? The answer that fails: "We will have a roadmap." The answer that holds: "Two workloads in production, each with an internal owner and a measured share of volume off the queue, reported here as two numbers. Then the next two." A roadmap is a promise. Two numbers are evidence. #### The ninety days between meetings Here is how to have those two numbers. Weeks one and two: the workload sweep. List every recurring process in the business. Score each on four questions: can it be modeled, what is its volume and unit cost, what happens to the exceptions, who will own it after the outside help leaves. Rank by cost times confidence. Pick two. Not ten. Weeks three to ten: production, not pilot. Build the two workloads with the team that will own them, put them into production at a defined share of volume, and route exceptions to a named person. The reason MIT found 95 percent of pilots delivering nothing is that pilots have no owner and no exception path. Skip the pilot stage. A workload in production at 30 percent of volume with an owner beats a pilot at 100 percent of a demo. Weeks eleven and twelve: the two numbers. Share of volume off the human queue for each workload, and the cost line it moved. Put them on one slide. Then the sweep list, ranked, so the board sees what is next and why. That is the whole plan. It is not a strategy deck, and it should not be. The board did not ask for a document about AI. It asked whether the company can execute, and two workloads in production answer that in a way no deck can. #### What to say if the honest answer is "not yet" Sometimes the honest answer to question five is that nothing is in production and the organization is not ready. Say that. Then say what you are doing in the ninety days to change it, and who is accountable. Boards forgive "not yet" with a plan. They do not forgive "exploring" for the third meeting in a row. #### Where I fit [I work with CEOs on this in three shapes](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). An AI roadmap, which is the workload sweep with numbers behind every line. An adoption sprint, which takes one or two workloads to production with your team before the next board meeting. And fractional AI leadership, where I hold the mandate across the company without the full-time hire. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia, work with CEOs everywhere on video, and come on site when the work calls for it. If your board has asked the question and you would rather answer it with two numbers than a deck, [the first conversation is forty-five minutes](https://kengavranovic.com/booking), and if I am not the right person for it I will say so. #### Keep reading - [How a PE Firm Gets AI Into Portfolio Companies: The Operator’s Playbook](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/) Why 73 percent of PE executives expect AI to lift portfolio value and 8 percent see it in EBITDA, and the playbook that closes the gap. - [Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/) Two of Wall Street's smartest shops disagree about AI. Both are missing the operator's question. - [Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-judgment-under-uncertainty/) The Reversibility Ledger: what you cannot take back, what you will know and when, and the rule that chooses between them. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty: How Operators Decide When the Data Runs Out https://kengavranovic.com/insights/strategic-judgment-under-uncertainty/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Strategic Judgment Under Uncertainty: How Operators Decide When the Data Runs Out The Reversibility Ledger: what you cannot take back, what you will know and when, and the rule that chooses between them. By Ken Gavranovic · September 3, 2026 Every executive I work with eventually brings me the same problem in different clothes. The board wants a decision. The data does not support one. Waiting has a cost. Being wrong has a cost. The question they ask out loud is "what would you do?" The question underneath is "how do I decide when I cannot know?" A one-way-door decision is judged by weighing what cannot be undone against what you will soon learn. This essay is my answer. It is the method I used in three decisions I still think about, and the one I use now as a practical, candid thought partner to CEOs and product leaders on strategic product and business challenges. #### The people who wrote the field, and what the seat adds Four people shaped how I think about this, and I recommend all of them. Jeff Bezos gave operators the plainest version of the test in Amazon's [2015 shareholder letter](https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/annual/2015-Letter-to-Shareholders.PDF): some decisions are one-way doors you cannot walk back through, most are two-way doors, and the two deserve different processes. Annie Duke taught executives to separate the quality of a decision from the quality of its outcome, and to treat every choice as a bet with odds rather than a verdict. Philip Tetlock measured forecasting, showed how often expert prediction fails, and in Superforecasting described the habits of the small group who beat it. Howard Marks writes about cycles, risk and second-level thinking from inside a firm he co-founded and still co-chairs, so his memos carry the weight of capital at stake. What I add is narrower. Bezos's test sorts decisions into two doors and stops there. The operating seat forces two more questions once you know you are standing at a one-way door: how much of this can I still take back, and by what date will I know whether I was right? Most of the strategic decisions on a CEO's desk are not cleanly one door or the other. They are mixed, and the mix is the decision. A CEO is not asked to forecast the market. She is asked to commit people and money before the forecast resolves, and to answer for it either way. The method below is how I do that. #### Three decisions I still think about Interland. We had grown from nothing to $200M in revenue and 650-plus people, and taken the company public on Nasdaq. Then the dot-com market collapsed. Every forecast we had was built on a world that no longer existed. The decision was whether to stay independent and wait for the market to come back, carrying the cash risk that came with waiting, or merge with MicronPC and survive as something different. No spreadsheet could answer that. We merged. The company survived. Blameless, as COO. A turnaround where the honest read was that burn would kill the company before the product could prove itself. The decision was how much to cut without cutting the thing customers were paying for. We took burn down by half while stabilizing revenue and rebuilding go-to-market until the deals we had been losing started to close, and the company merged with FireHydrant from a position of strength. Cox Automotive. I ran a cloud and DevOps transformation with a $250M budget: more than ten thousand servers moved to the cloud at 99.9 percent uptime, with a thousand-plus engineers changing how they worked. The uncertainty was not whether the technology worked. It was whether an organization of that size would move with it. Every phase was a bet on people, placed before the evidence was in. Across those, and across the thirty-five M&A transactions and eighteen exits I have been part of as an operator and an investor, the same habit kept showing up. I did not have a name for it then. The name below is mine. The idea underneath it, sorting what you cannot undo from what you can, belongs to the people above, and to every operator who has learned it the expensive way. #### First, is it a must Before any ledger, I ask three questions of the decision itself, and I ask them of every leadership team I work with. Where are we going? Why? And is the thing in front of us a must or a should? If it's a should, one of two things is true: the where or the why is wrong, or we are not committed. Either way, the how will stay foggy no matter how much analysis we pile on it. If all three line up, the how gets clear and focused, and that is the moment the decision deserves the work below. Tony Robbins made "turn your shoulds into musts" a well-known line about willpower. This is not that. Here the where and the why do the deciding, not the will; a must you cannot explain is a should wearing a costume. #### The Reversibility Ledger The Reversibility Ledger is a two-column method for a one-way-door decision when the data has run out: what I cannot take back, against what I will know and when. The rule that joins the two columns is the whole method: prefer the option whose irreversible commitments are smallest relative to what you will learn by the date you named. The decision that matters is not "which option is right." It is "which option can I undo, at what cost, and how fast will I know." Write two columns. Column one: what this decision commits me to that I cannot take back. People I will lose. Customers I will disappoint. Money that is spent. A market position I give up. Be specific and be honest. Executives tend to underestimate this column because they picture the version of the decision that goes well. Column two: what I will know, and when, that I do not know now. Every uncertain decision has a date on which some of the uncertainty resolves. A customer renews or does not. A quarter closes. A hire works out or does not. Name the date and the signal. Then apply the rule. Not the option that wins on a model you do not trust. The option that keeps you in the game long enough to learn. At Interland the merger felt like the larger commitment. On the ledger it was the smaller one. Independence in a collapsing market committed us to a cash position we could not reverse. At Blameless, cutting deeper than felt comfortable was reversible. Hiring back is possible. Running out of cash is not. #### Three habits that make the ledger work Decide the decision date first. Uncertainty does not resolve itself. Set the date on which you will decide with whatever you know then, and tell the board that date. It stops the meeting from becoming a weekly rerun. Separate the quality of the decision from the quality of the outcome. This is Duke's rule, and it is the one operators struggle with. A good decision made on the ledger can still go badly. Review the ledger, not the result, or your team learns to hide its reasoning. Say what would change your mind, in writing, before you decide. Tetlock's best forecasters wrote down in advance what would move them. If nothing would change your mind, you are not deciding under uncertainty. You have already decided and you are looking for cover. #### When to use it, and when to bring someone in Use the Reversibility Ledger when part of the decision cannot be undone, the data will not settle it, and waiting has a price. It is built for CEOs, founders and product leaders who have to commit before they can be sure. It is not for decisions a spreadsheet can settle. Those you should just make. The ledger is simple. Filling it in honestly is not, because the person filling it in is the one who has to live with column one. That is where an outside operator earns the fee: not to make the decision, but to make column one complete and column two concrete when the executive is too close to it. It is much of what I do in advisory work. This is the conversation I have as an executive advisor on a first call, and it is the one I had with myself at Interland. The shapes that work takes, from standing counsel to running the change yourself, are laid out on [the strategy consulting page](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). If there is a decision on your desk now, bring it to [a discovery call](https://kengavranovic.com/booking). #### Keep reading - [How to Choose an Executive Coach: The Six Questions to Ask](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/) The six questions to ask any executive coach, what each one is really testing, and what strong answers sound like. - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... - [How a PE Firm Gets AI Into Portfolio Companies: The Operator’s Playbook](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/) Why 73 percent of PE executives expect AI to lift portfolio value and 8 percent see it in EBITDA, and the playbook that closes the gap. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Choose an Executive Coach: The Six Questions to Ask https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-to-choose-an-executive-coach/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Choose an Executive Coach: Six Questions to Ask Six questions separate a coach who has done the job from a confident one. Here is what each question tests, and what strong answers sound like. By Ken Gavranovic · September 3, 2026 Most executives looking for a coach want the same thing: someone with meaningful operating experience, who has been through significant company growth and can be a practical, candid thought partner on executive leadership, organizational effectiveness, stakeholder management, executive presence, and strategic product and business challenges. The hard part is telling that person apart from a confident one before you have paid for six months. It is the difference between an operator who coaches and a career coach who has read about operating, and it is not visible on a website. Six questions make it visible. If you are the executive, ask them. If you are the assistant, chief of staff or head of people assembling a shortlist for someone else, ask them and you will be able to compare the answers side by side. Here is what each question is really testing, and what my own answers are. #### Question one: what is your coaching approach and what do you specialize in? What the question tests: whether the coach has a method, or just a personality. A good answer names the work and how it gets done. Mine: I [coach senior operators](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) through the problems that do not fit on a slide. Leading through a transition into a bigger seat. The team that worked at the last size and does not at this one. Stakeholder management and executive presence with a board, investors, and the peers who wanted your job. [Accountability that does not backfire](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/). Alignment across a leadership team. The human side of change. The method is the same one I used running transformations for twenty-five years, which I call the Three Rs: the right formula, meaning the thing that actually needs to change, named precisely; the right tactics, meaning how it gets done in this company with these people; and repeatable actions, the rhythm that keeps the change alive after I am gone. Most coaching produces insight. Insight does not survive contact with a real quarter. The Three Rs are how it does. If a coach cannot describe their approach in a paragraph a stranger could repeat, they do not have one. #### Question two: what is your operating experience, and who are your typical clients? What the question tests: has this person done the job, or studied it? This is the filter that matters most for a senior operator, and it is the one most coaching websites are vaguest about. Ask for specifics: which seat, which company, what happened. My answer is specific because it can be. I founded Interland, grew it to $200M in revenue and 650 people, and took it public on Nasdaq. I was EVP at New Relic while it grew from $300M to $500M, leading 450 people across four countries. I ran a $250M budget at Cox Automotive through a cloud and DevOps transformation. As COO at a venture-backed company I cut burn in half, stabilized revenue, took the win rate from near zero to eighty percent, and took it to a merger with FireHydrant. Across my career I have worked through 35 mergers and acquisitions and 18 exits, on both sides of the table. I am also a certified coach, ICF and CEC since 2019, with a psychology degree and CMHC graduate work underway at Mercer. The combination is the point. We can talk about the board meeting and the person walking into it in the same hour. [Typical clients](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching): CEOs, [COOs](https://kengavranovic.com/coo-coach), [CPOs](https://kengavranovic.com/chief-product-officer-coach), CTOs and general managers at companies in significant growth, and the leaders one level below being built for those seats. Founders scaling past the team they started with. Executives at companies backed by private equity where the sponsor has a playbook and a clock. #### Question three: how is an engagement structured, and how long does it run? What the question tests: whether you will know what you are buying. Ask for the steps. Mine are four, and there is no mystery in them. First, a discovery call: a straight conversation about what is actually going on and whether I am the right person for it. Second, calibration: we agree what success looks like and how we will both know, before the work starts, not after, and we check the work against that measure at set points along the way, not only at the end. Third, standing coaching calls, weekly, every other week, or monthly, on video or in person, with the cadence set in calibration. Fourth, ad hoc access, because the hard things do not wait for the calendar. Duration: long enough for the change to hold. Engagements run in months, not weeks, and they are built around repeatable actions you keep after we finish. Be wary of anything sold in a fixed number of sessions with no measure attached, and of anything open-ended with no calibration at the start. #### Question four: are you available in person, in my city? What the question tests: logistics, and honesty about them. Many executives prefer in person, and many are not in Georgia. It is a fair ask and it deserves a straight answer, not a brochure. Mine: I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Standing calls run on video with leaders everywhere, and I work on-site when the engagement calls for it. Atlanta metro in person is easy. For New York, San Francisco and elsewhere, sessions mix and match: video for the standing cadence, and I fly in when the engagement books time for it, with travel scoped into the engagement up front. Ask any coach the same: where are you, how do you work day to day, and what happens when the work needs a room, such as [an offsite or a leadership team working session](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). #### Question five: what does individual executive coaching cost? What the question tests: whether the coach will be straight with you about money. You will notice I do not publish a figure; what the market charges, and what sets it, is in [How Much Does Executive Coaching Cost in 2026?](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/how-much-does-executive-coaching-cost/). Here is what I will tell you instead, because it is what the quote will contain. Five things set the price of an [executive coaching engagement](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). Who is being coached, one executive or a leadership team. The cadence of standing calls and what access sits between them. The length of the engagement. Whether the work is remote, in person, or a blend that includes travel. And who is paying: most of my clients are funded by their organization, because companies invest in the leaders they intend to keep, and coaching at this level is normally a line item rather than a personal expense. That is not a quirk of my practice. [The International Coaching Federation's own survey](https://coachingfederation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf) of the profession finds that coaches who mainly serve executives charge the most, and that fees rise with the share of clients whose company pays. If you need to make that case internally, I will help you build it. I have approved those requests as the executive on the other side. By the end of the discovery call you will have a scope and a number for it. If you have a budget in mind, say so on the call. It shortens the conversation, and I would rather shape the engagement to it than guess. #### Question six: do you offer an introductory chemistry or discovery session? What the question tests: whether you can find out before you commit. Yes. [Forty-five minutes on video](https://kengavranovic.com/booking), no pitch. We work out whether there is something here worth doing, and if there is not, I will tell you. Use that conversation well: bring a real problem, not a hypothetical, and notice whether you leave with a sharper version of it than you arrived with. If you hear one true thing you had not said out loud yet, you have your answer about the person. The rest is scope. #### When coaching is not worth it Ask the six questions and you will find out whether the coach is worth it. Whether coaching is worth it is a different question, and sometimes the honest answer is no. It is not worth it if you want someone to hand you the answer. That is consulting. I do that work too, and it is a different engagement with a different shape. It is not worth it if you are not willing to change how you operate. Coaching produces a sharper view of your own patterns; if you will not act on it, you have paid for an interesting conversation. It is not worth it if the gap is a technical skill. A course or a specialist will close that faster and for less. It is not worth it if what you need is therapy. A good coach will say so and help you find the right person. My psychology degree and CMHC training are part of why I can tell the difference, and why I will tell you. And it is not worth it if your company is using coaching to avoid a decision about you. If that is the situation, ask the question out loud before anyone signs anything. If none of those describe you, coaching is likely worth it, and the six questions will tell you whether the person in front of you is. #### The three-proof test, for any coach If you want a shorter version of all six questions, it is this. Has this person operated at the level you are playing at? Are they trained and certified, not just experienced? Most clients now expect it; in the ICF's 2023 survey, eight in ten coaches said so. And after one real conversation, did you hear something true you had not said out loud yet? Chemistry matters. Proof matters more. One more piece of fine print: if a coach leads with a return-on-investment percentage, ask which study. The figures that circulate come from one 2001 case study of thirty mostly mid-level managers estimating their own results, and from a 2009 survey in which fewer than one in ten respondents could supply the numbers. A coach who quotes them as an industry average has told you how they handle evidence. The order matters: operating experience first, method second, logistics and money third, and a way to test the fit before committing. If you are choosing an executive coach, ask those six questions of everyone on your list, including me, and choose the one whose answers were the most specific. Specific is what candid sounds like in writing. #### Keep reading - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... - [Leaders vs Managers: What Actually Separates Them](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/09/12/who-needs-managers-when-you-have-leaders/) Leadership and management aren't the same thing. What truly separates a leader from a manager, and why the diff... - [7 Questions That Boost Employee Engagement 30%](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/04/02/stop-the-big-quit-more-than-2-3s-of-us-employees-are-not-actively-engaged-at-work-boost-your-employees-engagement-by-30-with-7-powerful-questions/) More than two-thirds of US employees aren't actively engaged at work. Seven powerful questions leaders can use t... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Does Accountability Improve Performance? What the Research Says https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Does Accountability Improve Performance? What the Research Says Accountability genuinely drives performance. Most leaders capture almost none of it, because they get one of three things wrong. Here is what the research says, and how to get all three right. By Ken Gavranovic · June 16, 2026 An org-level precondition supports three team-level conditions that make accountability drive performance. Accountability improves performance only under three conditions: it is aimed at the reasoning, not just the result; it is set before the decision, not after; and it is safe to tell the truth. Aimed at outcomes alone, after the fact, it makes decisions worse. The research below says so, and so does every turnaround I have run. One honest caveat up front: a 2021 team study found that accountability raised effort and willingness to collaborate without raising task performance (Stewart et al., 2021). That is the point. Effort is not the lever. Thinking is. #### The problem ##### The speech that changes nothing I've sat in that meeting. The numbers miss, someone leans back and says "we need more accountability around here," heads nod, and nothing changes. Next quarter, same room, same speech, same miss. ##### Loss of money and potential I've also watched the expensive version. A founder raised more than forty million dollars across three rounds, Series A, B, and C, and looked like he was winning the whole way. Then he sold the company for a price that never cleared the preference stack, and walked away with a job and no return. The raise was the activity everyone celebrated. The return was the outcome nobody owned. Every round he stacked more preferred capital ahead of his own common, and nobody was accountable for whether the business was actually building value above what it now owed. ##### The corporate blame shuffle Then there's the version that never makes the news, the one that quietly grinds teams down for years. I worked with an exec who had mastered what I call the corporate blame shuffle. Magnetic in a meeting, absent to his own team. When things went well, he was on top of it. When they went sideways, it was always someone below him. He never owned a single outcome his team produced. And his reward for the people who actually delivered was more work. The harder you worked, the more he piled on, while he collected the credit upstairs and shipped the blame downstairs. He's still there. He's still getting promoted. That's worth sitting with, because it isn't bad luck. He has never been held accountable for the one thing that matters, his team's outcomes, because the organization grades him on the meeting, not the delivery. Credit flows up, blame flows down, and the scoreboard never catches it. Psychologists even have a name for the engine underneath it. It's called outcome bias. In a set of five studies, people rated the exact same decision as smarter, and the decision maker as more competent, purely because it happened to turn out well, even when they were told to ignore the result and knew the person had no better information at the time (Baron & Hershey, 1988). We promote the people whose bets happened to land and the people who tell the cleanest story, and we mistake both for skill. The shuffle itself has a name in the research too. Self-serving attribution bias is the deep human habit of claiming success as our own and pinning failure on something outside us, the team, the timeline, that one person (Miller & Ross, 1975; Mezulis et al., 2004). We stop acting like scientists and start acting like defense attorneys for our own competence. And it doesn't stop with him. Blame is contagious. In four experiments, people who simply watched someone else blame others were twice as likely to blame someone for their own unrelated mistakes, and the researchers found that when people blame, they learn less and perform worse (Fast & Tiedens, 2010). So a blame shuffler isn't just dodging ownership. He's training everyone around him to dodge it too, and quietly lowering the whole team's performance while he does it. ##### Why big companies move slow Now multiply that by a few hundred managers. When blame is in the air, people stop deciding and start protecting themselves, and the whole place slows to the speed of cover. It's one of the real reasons big companies move so slowly, and most of them have no idea it's happening. ##### Working at cross purposes The quieter cousin of the blame shuffle is misalignment. Big companies don't stall because people aren't trying. They stall because people try hard at things that pull against each other. Sales is accountable for booking revenue, engineering for stability, support for closing tickets fast. Each team optimizes its own number, the numbers fight, and the result is noise: rework, turf, and meetings to reconcile what never should have conflicted. Steven Kerr named the root of this fifty years ago, in a paper every leader should read called "On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B" (Kerr, 1975). Reward the wrong number, or one that fights the team next door, and people will deliver it, right off a cliff. That isn't a people problem. It's an accountability design problem. #### Accountability is not the problem Done right, it's one of the most powerful performance tools a leader has. The research is clear that holding people accountable sharpens their judgment and lifts their results, but only when a few specific conditions are met. Most leaders never meet them. They reach for the word, skip the conditions, and get the backfire instead of the benefit. So here are two things: why most accountability fails, and the three conditions that make it work. #### When does accountability backfire? This is the trap most leaders fall into. Accountability is not a cure-all (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). It turns negative under specific, common conditions: - Outcome-only pressure. Judge people purely on the result and you narrow their attention, raise their stress, and push them to double down on a failing bet or pass the buck. In Barry Staw's classic experiment, people who were personally responsible for a bad result poured even more money into the failing course of action, not less (Staw, 1976). - After the fact. Accountability that shows up only once the decision is made breeds defensiveness, not better thinking. - A known answer. When everyone can see the conclusion you want, accountability produces conformity, not rigor. - Surveillance. Crank it too high and it reads as monitoring. You get resentment, lower motivation, and counterproductive behavior (Hall, Frink, & Buckley, 2017). - No safety. On a team with no psychological safety, accountability produces silence and cover-your-tail, not the truth (Edmondson, 1999). Each of those is a fork in the road. Avoid them, and accountability becomes one of the most powerful tools you have. That comes down to three conditions. #### How to make accountability work A promise before I start. I'm not asking you to take my word for any of this. I learned each of these the hard way, running companies for thirty years, and only later went and read the research that says the same thing. So for each condition you get what to do, a quick picture of what it looks like, and the science behind it, with links at the bottom to go check me. Take my experience as the reason to keep reading. Take the research as the reason to believe it. ##### Condition 1: Hold people accountable for their thinking, not just the result This is the what, and it's the single biggest lever. Picture two managers reviewing the same failed launch. The first asks, "Why did you miss the number?" and gets a wall of excuses. The second asks, "Walk me through how you decided," and gets a real conversation about the call that went wrong. Same miss, completely different room. Accountability for how someone reasons produces more systematic, even-handed thinking, while pressure on the result alone narrows attention and breeds defensiveness (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999; Patil, Vieider, & Tetlock, 2014). Ask the second question. ##### Condition 2: Set it up before they decide, not after This is the when, and it's where most leaders blow it. Get the expectation in early. The same person makes two different decisions depending on one thing: whether they knew going in that they'd have to explain their thinking. Tell someone up front that they'll walk the room through their reasoning, and they slow down and weigh the options. Spring it on them after they've already committed, and all you get is a defense lawyer. Timing is not a detail, it's the mechanism (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Don't telegraph the answer you want. Walk in and say "I think we should ship Friday, thoughts?" and you already know the thoughts. They're yours, handed back to you. The moment your team can read the conclusion you're after, accountability stops producing rigor and starts producing agreement (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Ask for their reasoning before you show your hand. ##### Condition 3: Make it safe to tell the truth This is the how, and without it the first two collapse. Keep it human, not surveillance. There's a line between holding someone accountable and watching their every move, and your team feels exactly where it is. Cross into monitoring and you get compliance, resentment, and your best people quietly updating their resumes. Accountability has a ceiling, and past it, surveillance backfires into lower motivation and counterproductive behavior (Hall, Frink, & Buckley, 2017). Tie it to ownership and growth, not control. Build psychological safety alongside it. Think about the last time everyone in a meeting nodded along and you knew, in your gut, it was wrong. Nobody said it. That silence is what accountability without safety buys you. When people feel safe enough to take the risk of speaking up, teams learn, and learning is what drives performance (Edmondson, 1999). When Google spent two years studying nearly two hundred of its own teams, the top factor separating the best ones wasn't talent, tenure, or resources. It was psychological safety (Duhigg, 2016). Protect the dissenter. The scariest sound in a leadership meeting isn't an argument. It's a fast, unanimous yes. The tight, agreeable team is the one most likely to walk off a cliff together (Janis, 1982; Turner & Pratkanis, 1998). Reward the person who says "I think we're wrong." That one voice is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy. One level up: point the numbers in the same direction. Those three conditions are how you hold a person or a team accountable. Before any of them matter, check that the things you hold different teams accountable for can all win at once. If sales, engineering, and support are each chasing a number that fights the others, no amount of good one-on-ones will save you. That's Kerr's warning, don't reward A while hoping for B. Line the scoreboards up first, then hold people to their thinking on how to hit them. That's the playbook. At the org level, line the numbers up so teams aren't pulling against each other. At the team level, hold people to their thinking, set it up before they decide, and make it safe to tell the truth. Do that and accountability stops being a threat and starts doing what the research says it can, which is drive real performance. Accountability is not a volume knob. You don't fix a quiet team by getting louder, and you don't build value by celebrating the raise. Ask better questions, earlier. Make it safe to disagree. Judge the thinking and the real result. Go team. Two more studies belong beside those. Verwaeren and colleagues (2022) found that process accountability increases exploration while outcome accountability decreases it, which is condition one in a peer-reviewed sentence. And a 2022 study found outcome accountability can help on complex tasks while process accountability helps on simple ones. Read together with Stewart (2021), the lesson holds: for the decisions executives actually make, which are the complex kind, hold people to the thinking, set it early, and keep it safe. #### Common questions about accountability Does holding people accountable actually improve performance? Yes, when the conditions are right. Accountability for how someone reasons, set before they decide, on a team where it's safe to tell the truth, sharpens thinking and lifts results. Accountability for the outcome alone, sprung after the fact, or run as surveillance tends to do the opposite (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999; Patil, Vieider, & Tetlock, 2014). What's the difference between accountability and responsibility? Responsibility is the task you're assigned. Accountability is owning the result of it, good or bad, and being able to explain how you got there. Responsibility can be shared across a team. Accountability lands on a person. You can hand someone a job, but you can't hand off who answers for it. How do you hold your team accountable without micromanaging? Hold people accountable for their reasoning and their results, not their every move. The moment it turns into checking in hourly and watching every step, it reads as surveillance, and the research shows that backfires into resentment and lower performance (Hall, Frink, & Buckley, 2017). Set the expectation up front, then get out of the way. Why does accountability sometimes backfire? Because most of it is aimed wrong. Judging people only on outcomes, springing it on them after a decision is already made, or running it as surveillance all tend to make decisions worse, not better (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). And on a team with no psychological safety, accountability just buys you silence (Edmondson, 1999). How do you hold someone accountable without it feeling like punishment? Reframe it from blame to clarity. Ask "walk me through how you decided," not "why did you fail." Set the expectation before the decision so it's a shared standard rather than an ambush, and protect the people who speak up honestly. Done this way, accountability builds trust instead of fear. What are the three levels of accountability? I do not use levels. Accountability works or backfires on three conditions: what you hold people to (their thinking, not just the result), when you set it (before the decision), and whether it is safe to tell the truth. Most "levels" models are those three in different clothes. Do performance agreements drive accountability? Only if they are written before the decisions they cover and name the reasoning expected, not just the number. An agreement signed after the fact is a scorecard, and scorecards alone do not change how people decide. #### The research, if you want to check my work You don't have to believe me. Go see for yourself. - Baron, J., & Hershey, J. C. (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(4), 569–579. Five studies showing people judge the same decision as smarter, and the decision maker as more competent, when it happens to turn out well, even when told to ignore the result. This is why the polished operator keeps getting promoted. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.4.569 - Duhigg, C. (2016, February 25). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times Magazine. The readable account of Google's Project Aristotle, which found psychological safety was the top trait of its best teams. This is journalism about Google's internal research, not a peer-reviewed study, but it's the easiest entry point. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html - Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. The peer-reviewed field study showing safety drives learning, and learning drives performance. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999 - Fast, N. J., & Tiedens, L. Z. (2010). Blame contagion: The automatic transmission of self-serving attributions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(1), 97–106. Four experiments showing blame spreads. Seeing someone blame others doubled people's likelihood of blaming for their own unrelated mistakes, and blamers learned less and performed worse. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.10.007 - Hall, A. T., Frink, D. D., & Buckley, M. R. (2017). An accountability account: A review and synthesis of the theoretical and empirical research on felt accountability. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), 204–224. A review of felt accountability, including the point that too much of it produces diminishing returns and counterproductive behavior. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2052 - Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin. The original argument that cohesive groups suppress dissent and make worse decisions. - Kerr, S. (1975). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management Journal, 18(4), 769–783. The classic on misaligned incentives. Organizations reward the easy-to-measure thing, then wonder why they didn't get the thing they actually wanted. https://doi.org/10.2307/255378 - Lerner, J. S., & Tetlock, P. E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin, 125(2), 255–275. The foundational review. Shows when accountability sharpens judgment and when it amplifies bias, and why timing and audience matter. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.255 - Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130(5), 711–747. The large meta-analysis confirming the self-serving bias is robust across studies, including the tendency to blame failure on outside forces. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.5.711 - Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82(2), 213–225. The classic that named the bias. Note it found strong evidence for taking credit for success and was more cautious about the blame-failure half, which the Mezulis meta-analysis later confirmed. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076486 - Patil, S. V., Vieider, F., & Tetlock, P. E. (2014). Process versus outcome accountability. In M. Bovens, R. E. Goodin, & T. Schillemans (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability. Oxford University Press. The clearest treatment of process accountability versus outcome accountability and the tradeoffs between them. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199641253.013.0002 - Staw, B. M. (1976). Knee-deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(1), 27–44. The original escalation-of-commitment experiment. People who had invested heavily in a failing project threw more money in as it kept failing, not less. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90005-2 - Turner, M. E., & Pratkanis, A. R. (1998). Twenty-five years of groupthink theory and research: Lessons from the evaluation of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 73(2–3), 105–115. An honest accounting of how well the groupthink model actually held up. Read this alongside Janis. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1998.2756 - Stewart, V. R., Snyder, D. G., & Kou, C.-Y. (2021). We hold ourselves accountable: A relational view of team accountability. Journal of Business Ethics. A team study in which accountability raised effort and willingness to collaborate without significantly raising task performance. Cited here as the honest caveat: effort is not the lever. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8600914/ - Verwaeren, B., Nijstad, B. A., & Van Dijk, D. (2022). The effect of accountability focus on individual exploration. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 31(3). Process accountability increases exploration; outcome accountability decreases it and increases exploitation. Condition one, measured. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1359432X.2021.1938055 Accountability that sharpens instead of scares is standing work in my [executive coaching engagements](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). #### Keep reading - [7 Questions That Boost Employee Engagement 30%](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/04/02/stop-the-big-quit-more-than-2-3s-of-us-employees-are-not-actively-engaged-at-work-boost-your-employees-engagement-by-30-with-7-powerful-questions/) More than two-thirds of US employees aren't actively engaged at work. Seven powerful questions leaders can use t... - [Leaders vs Managers: What Actually Separates Them](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/09/12/who-needs-managers-when-you-have-leaders/) Leadership and management aren't the same thing. What truly separates a leader from a manager, and why the diff... - [Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/) Two of Wall Street's smartest shops disagree about AI. Both are missing the operator's question: what adopting i... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI By Ken Gavranovic · March 17, 2026 In 1997 everyone was certain the internet would reshape the economy in five years. They were right about everything except what mattered most: the timing, the mechanism, and what you were supposed to do about it. We are doing it again with AI. And the people who get this right will not be the ones who picked the correct forecast. Citrini's risk map and Citadel's pacing metric answer different questions, and read together they define the builder's window. I founded my first technology company in that era. The internet was going to eliminate every middleman, destroy retail, make geography irrelevant, and reshape the global economy inside of five years. The pundits were both completely right and spectacularly wrong at the same time. I am watching the same movie again with AI. And just like then, the most interesting question is not who wins the macro debate. It is what you do about it while everyone else is still arguing. #### Two smart people. Two very different conclusions. CitriniResearch issued a research note in February outlining a fictional scenario set in 2028. The S&P is down 38% from its 2026 highs. Unemployment has hit 10.2%. White collar layoffs have triggered a consumer spending collapse, a private credit crisis built on SaaS debt that assumed ARR would stay recurring, and early stress in the $13 trillion residential mortgage market. The mechanism is not a classic financial bubble. It is a feedback loop: AI improves, payrolls shrink, spending softens, companies buy more AI to protect margins, AI improves again. A self-reinforcing cycle with no brakes. That same week, Citadel Securities published a rebuttal. Their argument is grounded in actual data. AI adoption at work, measured by the St. Louis Fed's Real Time Population Survey, is not accelerating non-linearly. It looks more like a standard S-curve. Job postings for software engineers are rising, up 11% year over year. New business formation is expanding rapidly. Displacing white collar work at scale requires orders of magnitude more compute than currently deployed, and if automation expands rapidly, compute costs rise, creating a natural economic barrier to further recursion. Recursive capability, they argue, does not imply recursive adoption. Both papers are serious. Both are worth reading. And both miss the point for anyone trying to build or lead something right now. #### The macro debate is the wrong question. What I know from building and taking a company from zero to $200 million in revenue through a public offering is that the macro environment is the water you swim in. You cannot choose it. You cannot wait for the researchers to agree before you act. The companies that win technology transitions are not the ones with the best forecast. They are the ones that build the right thing faster than the transition makes the old thing obsolete. The Citrini scenario is not prediction, it is a risk map. The Citadel paper is not reassurance, it is a pacing metric. Read them together and you get something useful: the disruption is real, the timing is uncertain, and the window for builders is open right now, before the feedback loop closes or the S-curve plateaus. What Citrini gets right is the mechanism. The companies most vulnerable to AI are becoming its most aggressive adopters. ServiceNow cutting 15% of its workforce while selling workflow automation. Every dollar saved on headcount flowing into the capability that enables the next round of cuts. That is not dystopia. That is rational corporate behavior under pressure, and it is already happening. The question is not whether this continues. It is whether you are building the platform that benefits from it or the platform that gets rationalized away. What Citadel gets right is the velocity of organizational change. Change is slow. Change in regulated environments is slower. There is an enormous gap between what AI can demonstrate in a proof of concept and what an enterprise will actually trust with its mission-critical workflows. That gap is measured in years, not quarters, and it is where most of the real business value gets built. #### What this means for builders right now. Three points I would make to anyone building or leading during this period. First, the data advantage is the moat. The Citrini scenario describes AI agents routing around friction, collapsing intermediation, and destroying businesses built on information asymmetry. That is true. But proprietary data that cannot be replicated, real transaction history, behavioral patterns at scale, performance data across thousands of deals, that is not friction. That is the foundation of a defensible platform. The businesses that survive this transition are the ones sitting on data that gets more valuable as AI improves, not less. Second, the workflow complexity premium is real and temporary. Citadel is right that regulated, high stakes environments have coordination friction, liability constraints, and trust barriers that slow AI adoption. That premium exists today. It will not exist in five years. The window to build the category defining platform inside that premium, before the friction disappears, is what gives this moment urgency. Third, the leadership question is not about AI literacy. It is about judgment under uncertainty. Every executive I know is consuming the same research, attending the same conferences, and asking the same questions. The difference is not who understands the technology. It is who can make clear decisions with incomplete information, build and execute with a team while the strategy is still evolving, and maintain a long view when the short term data is volatile. That is the differentiation between founders and operators, and between operators and administrators. Just about every article about AI stops here. They treat the macro debate as the whole story and leave the most important question untouched. I want to go somewhere most AI commentators do not bother to go: the neuroscience of why original human thought may represent a permanent ceiling that AI cannot reach, not eventually, but in principle. #### Why AI will never reach original human thought. The science is clear. This is the section most AI commentators gloss over. Not because the research does not exist, but because it requires coming to terms with an uncomfortable truth: there may be a structural gap between what AI achieves and what original human thought represents. Not in five years. I don't think ever. The first pillar is embodiment. When you have a gut feeling that something is wrong with a deal, that is not noise. That is your body processing risk signals that have not yet reached your conscious reasoning. Antonio Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis demonstrated that emotion and bodily state are not separate from reasoning. They are constitutive of it (Damasio, 1994). We think with our bodies. Patients whose brain regions that integrate emotion into decision making were damaged did not become more rational when their emotional processing was disrupted. They became incapable of making decisions at all. The implication for AI is direct: a system with no hormonal architecture, no visceral sense of risk, no embodied history of consequence, is not reasoning. It is pattern matching at an unprecedented scale. These are not the same thing. The second pillar is what happens when you stop trying. Your brain has a network that activates specifically when you are not focused on a task. When you are in the shower, driving without thinking, or staring out a window, that network is running. Scientists refer to this as the Default Mode Network. It turns out to be central to original creative thought. Beaty and colleagues found that the most creative people show stronger connectivity between this rest-state network and the executive network that evaluates and focuses (Beaty et al., 2016). This is the neuroscience of the 3am insight, the idea that arrives when you step away from the problem. Large language models do not have a Default Mode Network. They do not rest. They do not daydream. They only process when prompted. The architecture that generates human creative breakthroughs does not exist in any current AI system, nor is there an apparent computational analog. The third pillar is the one nobody has figured out yet. We do not have a scientific explanation for why experiencing something feels like anything at all. Why does seeing red feel like something? Why does grief feel like something? David Chalmers called this the hard problem of consciousness in 1995, and the field has made little progress toward resolving it since (Chalmers, 1995). Original ideas frequently emerge from subjective states: grief, wonder, confusion, the particular texture of a lived experience that cannot be retrieved from a training corpus because it was never written down. AI processes tokens. It has no inner experience. Whether that gap is bridgeable in principle is genuinely unknown, but nothing in the current trajectory of AI development addresses it at all. I want to be precise about what this does and does not mean. AI will get dramatically better at everything humans do deliberately: retrieval, synthesis, pattern recognition, rapid iteration on existing frameworks, stress testing ideas against vast bodies of knowledge. These are enormous capabilities and anyone not using them is leaving a real advantage on the table. But the original thought that decides what to build, which problem is worth solving, what the insight is that nobody else has seen yet, that still has to come from a human who has lived something, felt something, and has the embodied architecture to generate a connection that falls outside the distribution of everything that has been written before. > AI is the best recall and synthesis engine ever built. That makes it a powerful amplifier for human original thought. The original thought still has to come from you. #### The honest answer. I do not know if the Citrini scenario unfolds in 2028. Neither does Citrini. Neither does Citadel. What I know is that every significant technology transition in my career rewarded the people who stopped debating the macro and started building the right thing at the right moment. The neuroscience tells us that the limited resource in an AI-abundant world is not data, compute, or even domain expertise. It is the human capacity for original thought: embodied, emotionally integrated, and architecturally unique. Your 401(k) will figure itself out. The more interesting question is what you are building while everyone else watches it gyrate. ##### References Peer-Reviewed Beaty, R. E., Benedek, M., Silvia, P. J., & Schacter, D. L. (2016). Creative cognition and brain network dynamics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(2), 87-95. Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200-219. Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Putnam. Market Research CitriniResearch & Shah, A. (2026, February 22). The 2028 global intelligence crisis: A thought exercise in financial history, from the future. Citrini Macro Memo. Flight, F. (2026, February 24). The 2026 global intelligence crisis. Citadel Securities Macro Views. Cutting through AI narratives to an operating decision is the job of my [AI consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). #### Keep reading - [The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/the-ai-answer-your-board-wants/) Five board questions on AI, the answer that fails and the answer that holds, and two workloads in production in ninety days. - [No-Code Doesn’t Mean No Software Engineers](https://kengavranovic.com/2021/04/27/no-code-doesnt-mean-no-software-engineers/) Among software development and tech professionals, there’s a lot of buzz and hype around no-code platforms. No-c... - [Digital Transformation, Part 1: Why It Fails](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/) Every company calls itself digital. Few truly operate that way. The dangerous gap between claiming to be a digit... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Why Integration Beats Growth Speed https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Why Integration Beats Growth Speed #### A Proven Approach That Goes Against Conventional Scaling Wisdom Let me share something I’ve learned the hard way: Despite what most advisors tell you, maximum growth speed isn’t your goal. Integration is. After working with hundreds of leaders across tech, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services, I’ve seen a pattern that challenges traditional thinking. When I analyzed 11,000 companies across seven decades, the data revealed something shocking: only 650 companies maintained growth above 5% for over 30 years. Just seven companies, including Johnson & Johnson and Berkshire Hathaway, stayed in the top performance quartile throughout the entire study. Three growth decisions that must be made together by one leadership team as an integrated system. In today’s uncertain economy, this matters more than ever. Companies facing inflation pressures and talent shortages are especially vulnerable to what I call in Business Breakthrough 3.0 “the subconscious mind of the business”, those underlying patterns driving behavior that can sabotage your growth strategy. #### I’ve Been There: The Growth Integration Crisis You’ve probably lived this scenario: Your board demands accelerated growth → You expand rapidly without supporting systems → Your NPS and employee engagement scores plummet → Teams retreat into silos with conflicting metrics → Growth grinds to a halt → You blame market conditions. When I led New Relic’s transformation as EVP/GM during a similar economic climate, pushing 40% year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth, we discovered something crucial: growth without integration creates measurable “organizational debt” that shows up in three critical KPIs: - Customer retention rates drop by 15-30%. - Employee productivity decreases by 20-25%. - New initiative implementation times double or triple. At Web.com, scaling from zero to IPO and $500M+ in revenue, I watched this debt compound until our EBITDA margins were threatened. The conventional wisdom of “grow at all costs” nearly sank us. #### The Counter-Intuitive Framework That Changes Everything Through these real-world battles, I developed what I call the RDM framework, an approach that often contradicts what most growth advisors suggest: Rate: How fast can you grow without breaking things? While competitors chase maximum growth, Pal’s Sudden Service maintains one error per 3,600 orders (versus the industry’s one per 15) by tying growth directly to manager development capacity. Their restraint looks like weakness to outsiders, but delivers 3x higher profit per location. Direction: Where should you point your growth efforts? In SaaS, we’re told to expand offerings. In manufacturing, it’s geographic expansion. But I’ve seen companies thrive by doing the exact opposite of conventional wisdom: Walmart by doubling down on core markets, Johnson & Johnson through targeted diversification. What matters isn’t following industry norms, but building from your distinctive capabilities. Method: How will you fuel this growth? In today’s capital-constrained environment, Southwest Airlines’ approach is instructive. They achieved 12.3% CAGR (beating the industry’s 10.5%) not through external funding but by developing operational capabilities competitors couldn’t replicate, a lesson most C-suites miss. Here’s the leadership insight that changed everything for me: These three decisions must be made by the same leadership team, in the same room, as an integrated system, not delegated to separate departments with competing incentives. #### Four Actions You Can Implement This Quarter Having navigated both high-growth environments as COO at Blameless and EVP at New Relic, as well as complex integrations through 35+ M&As, I’ve identified four leadership actions that deliver immediate results: - Create a cross-functional growth council with real decision-making power. Typical cross-functional teams lack authority. Instead, form a council with P&L responsibility that meets weekly with a focused agenda: identifying integration constraints before they become visible in financial results. Track the “constraint identification lead time” as your key metric here. - Implement a growth absorption dashboard that balances speed with capability. Most executive dashboards track growth metrics exclusively. Create a balanced scorecard that pairs each growth metric with its corresponding capability metric: sales growth vs. onboarding capacity, market expansion vs. support infrastructure, feature releases vs. quality indicators. The gaps between these paired metrics predict future problems. - Make joint RDM decisions in your next leadership meeting. Bring your CFO, COO, and CRO together to make rate, direction, and method decisions in concert. Ask: “If we succeed in A, can we actually deliver B with method C?” I’ve watched both startups and Fortune 500 companies transform once they stopped making these decisions in separate meetings. - Institute quarterly strategic recalibrations with this specific agenda: “What capabilities do we need to build before accelerating further?” When leading digital transformation across multiple $1B+ brands at Cox Automotive during market uncertainty, these capability-focused sessions prevented the margin erosion most of our competitors experienced. #### The Hard Truth About Sustainable Growth in Today’s Economy After decades leading growth organizations through multiple economic cycles, here’s the contrarian insight I’ve validated repeatedly: “The companies that deliberately slow growth to build capabilities during uncertainty outperform those that maximize growth rates during the same period.” While most companies chase market share and growth at all costs during economic pressure, the real winners temporarily moderate growth to build capabilities that enable them to accelerate rapidly when conditions improve. As a senior leader, your most important skill isn’t maximizing growth. It’s integrating your rate, direction, and method decisions into a coherent system Integrating a growth strategy end to end is precisely what my [advisory engagements](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) are built for. #### Keep reading - [Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/) Two of Wall Street's smartest shops disagree about AI. Both are missing the operator's question: what adopting i... - [No-Code Doesn’t Mean No Software Engineers](https://kengavranovic.com/2021/04/27/no-code-doesnt-mean-no-software-engineers/) Among software development and tech professionals, there’s a lot of buzz and hype around no-code platforms. No-c... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Win the AI Game: Your Practical Guide to Mastering Gen AI Now https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/win-the-ai-game-your-practical-guide-to-mastering-gen-ai-now/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Win the AI Game: Your Practical Guide to Mastering Gen AI Now Look, let’s cut to the chase. AI is no longer coming. It’s here, radically transforming how we work. And make no mistake, this isn’t just for tech folks. Anyone can leverage AI today using simple language commands instead of code. My team’s research confirms what I’ve seen firsthand: over 40% of U.S. work activity can be enhanced or completely reimagined with generative AI. Legal, banking, insurance, and capital markets will feel this shift most intensely, with retail, travel, healthcare, and energy close behind. The article's framework of three fusion skills, each with three sub-techniques. Here’s the reality check: your future success hinges on how effectively you partner with large language models like ChatGPT. I’ve been in the trenches with teams implementing these technologies, and I can tell you that three critical “fusion skills” separate those who thrive from those who merely survive. #### Skill 1: Intelligent Interrogation – Think WITH Your AI I meet too many professionals who treat AI like a search engine, tossing basic queries at it and expecting magic. That’s leaving serious value on the table. Intelligent interrogation means crafting prompts that produce genuinely better outcomes. It’s about thinking with AI, not just asking it questions. ##### Break It Down, Step by Step Remember how scientific management transformed manufacturing? We need that same rigor with AI prompting. Break down your process into clear steps and optimize each one. Try this right now: Add the simple phrase “Let’s think step by step” to your next complex prompt. Research shows this can boost accuracy more than threefold across various tasks. Here’s a real example I used with my finance team last week: My department has a budget of $500,000. We’ve spent 20% on equipment and allocated 30% for a new hire. We just received a budget increase of $50,000. What is our remaining budget? Let’s think step by step. The AI responded: “Initially, your department had $500,000. You spent 20%, or $100,000, on equipment, leaving $400,000. You allocate 30%, or $150,000, for a new hire, which brings the budget down to $250,000. Finally, you recently received a budget increase of $50,000. Your remaining budget is $300,000.” This creates a traceable reasoning chain I can verify rather than a black-box answer. For complex problems, like optimizing a sales rep’s travel route across multiple cities, this approach is invaluable. ##### Train Your AI in Stages When I worked with a pharmaceutical client on R&D processes, we realized their domain expertise was too complex to dump into a single prompt. Instead, we introduced the AI to their work gradually, in distinct stages. MIT researchers proved this works. They successfully trained ChatGPT to understand DNA structural biophysics by breaking that complicated task into sequential subtasks. For your inventory management challenges, try this prompt structure: I want to optimize our inventory management process using a step-by-step approach. Let’s break this down into stages: - First, analyze our historical demand patterns using this data: [INSERT YOUR DATA] - Based on that analysis, what inventory levels should we maintain? - Now, project our reorder points considering our current supplier lead times of [X] days. - Calculate optimal order quantities given our storage constraints of [Y] cubic feet. - Finally, evaluate how this approach would have performed against last quarter’s actual results. Let’s start with step 1, then proceed through each stage in order. ##### Explore Multiple Paths Business isn’t linear, and neither should your AI exploration be. For strategy design, product development, or any creative process, guide your AI to visualize multiple potential solutions. I recently worked with a CPG marketing team that supercharged their forecasting accuracy by 43% using this technique. They primed their AI prompts to function as “superforecasters”, assigning probabilities to possible outcomes and arguing both for and against each one. I’m developing our go-to-market strategy for [product]. Rather than seeking a single answer, I want to explore multiple approaches: - Generate three distinct strategy options that could achieve our goal of [specific objective]. - Identify the conditions under which each approach would be optimal. - Suggest how we might combine elements from different approaches. #### Skill 2: Judgment Integration – Because Machines Still Need Human Wisdom Let’s be real: AI can hallucinate, contains outdated information, and lacks the ethical grounding and contextual understanding that you bring to the table. Judgment integration means knowing where and how to inject your human discernment into the process. ##### Feed It Better Information (RAG) I was working with a healthcare provider whose AI kept generating outdated treatment recommendations. The fix? Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). RAG supplements an LLM’s training with information from authoritative knowledge bases. This prevents a lot of the misinformation and outdated responses that plague off-the-shelf tools. I need accurate information about [topic] that includes the latest developments as of [current date]. - Any data or research published in the last [X months/years] - Information from these specific authoritative sources: [list trusted sources] - Current regulatory guidelines from [relevant authorities] If you’re uncertain about any information, please indicate this clearly rather than making assumptions. Note: You’ll likely need your IT team to properly implement RAG in your workflows, but this prompt approach helps maximize its value. ##### Guard Your Data and Watch for Bias Here’s something I learned the hard way: if you’re using confidential data, only use company-approved AI models behind your firewall. Never paste sensitive information into public LLMs. I also regularly catch myself embedding subtle biases into my prompts. Recently, I asked an LLM to explain how a quarterly report signaled a five-year growth trajectory, classic recency bias in action. I was overweighting the most recent information when predicting future events. I want to analyze [topic/data/situation] while consciously avoiding common cognitive biases. Please help me consider: - Multiple time horizons (not just recent events) - Contradictory evidence that challenges my initial hypothesis - Base rates and broader context beyond my immediate experience - Alternative explanations for the patterns I’m seeing My initial perspective is [your view], but I want to ensure I’m considering this objectively. ##### Challenge Suspect Output When you see questionable AI output, your instinct might be to say “try again” repeatedly. Don’t. UC Berkeley researchers found this actually degrades response quality over time. Instead, identify exactly where the error occurred and have a separate LLM tackle just that part. I’ve used this technique with product development teams to troubleshoot complex calculations. I notice an error in your reasoning at step [X]. Instead of redoing the entire analysis, let’s focus specifically on this part: - The problematic step is: [paste the specific section] - I believe the issue is: [explain what seems wrong] Please break this specific step down into smaller sub-problems and explain your reasoning for each one. Once we correct this step, we’ll integrate it back into the full analysis. #### Skill 3: Reciprocal Apprenticing – Teaching AI Your Business Context This is where the magic happens. Reciprocal apprenticing means training AI on your specific business context while simultaneously learning how to guide it through increasingly complex challenges. I’ve implemented this with teams across industries, and here are three approaches that deliver results: ##### Demonstrate Your Thinking Process Before giving an LLM a complex problem, prime it with examples of how you want it to think. The “least-to-most” approach, breaking down complex challenges into progressive subtasks, is particularly powerful. Google DeepMind research shows this can boost accuracy from a dismal 16% to an impressive 99%. I want you to approach this marketing challenge using a “least-to-most” reasoning method, working from simpler questions to more complex ones. Here’s how I want you to think through launching our new [product]: - START WITH AUDIENCE: Who are our potential customers for this product? Consider demographics, behaviors, and needs. - THEN DEVELOP MESSAGING: Based on the audience identified, what key messages would resonate with them? Focus on performance, features, and emotional benefits. - NEXT DETERMINE CHANNELS: Given our audience and messaging, which channels would most effectively reach them? Consider digital, traditional, and partnership opportunities. - FINALLY ALLOCATE RESOURCES: How should we distribute our $[X] budget across these channels for maximum impact? Let’s solve each component in this specific order, using the answer from each step to inform the next. ##### Teach Through Examples One of the most effective techniques I’ve implemented is “in-context learning”, teaching AI by showing examples within your prompts. This approach lets you customize pre-trained models without technical complexity. Medical researchers found that LLMs shown examples of medical summaries produced results equal or superior to human-generated summaries 81% of the time. I’ve applied similar techniques with sales teams to dramatic effect. I want to train you to help with [specific task] in our unique business context. Let me show you several examples of how we approach this: Now, I’d like you to apply this same approach to the following new situation: ##### Build on Progressive Complexity The real power of reciprocal apprenticing comes when you progressively increase complexity. I’ve worked with sales teams who started with basic data analysis and gradually built toward sophisticated customer segmentation models. Consider two software companies I advised, both looking to boost sales. The first company’s sales leader began by providing historical data and asking about quarterly demand forecasts. Then he added information on customer software upgrades and annual budgets, asking about seasonality effects. Finally, he incorporated CRM statistics and marketing reports, exploring campaign impact on sales. I want to build a model of our [business process] step by step, each time adding more complexity. As we progress, I’ll provide feedback on what works for our specific business context. #### Now What? Getting Started Today Here’s the hard truth: waiting for your organization to train you on these skills is probably a losing strategy. Our 2024 survey of 7,000 professionals revealed that while 94% were ready to learn gen AI skills, only 5% reported their employers were actively training their workforces at scale. You need to take matters into your own hands. I’ve seen countless professionals transform their careers by proactively developing these capabilities while their peers waited for formal training. - Take an online course from Coursera, Udacity, or university programs like those at UT Austin, ASU, or Vanderbilt. - Experiment with the prompting techniques I’ve shared using your own business challenges. - Advocate for opportunities to integrate these tools into your workflow. What’s coming next? You’ll need skills for chain-of-thought prompting with multimodal large language models (MLLMs) that handle text, audio, video, and images simultaneously. Research shows the right prompting can double their performance. Bottom line: this isn’t a technology wave you can afford to watch from the shore. No major innovation in history has spread this fast or will transform knowledge work so profoundly. The future won’t be built by AI alone. It will be shaped by people like you who master these fusion skills and apply them thoughtfully to real business challenges. When you are ready to move from reading about AI to running it, [here is how I help](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). #### Keep reading - [The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/the-ai-answer-your-board-wants/) Five board questions on AI, the answer that fails and the answer that holds, and two workloads in production in ninety days. - [Why Integration Beats Growth Speed](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/) A Proven Approach That Goes Against Conventional Scaling Wisdom Let me share something I’ve learned the hard way... - [Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/) Two of Wall Street's smartest shops disagree about AI. Both are missing the operator's question: what adopting i... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## The Human-AI Synergy: Redefining Process Excellence in the Digital Age https://kengavranovic.com/2025/04/11/the-human-ai-synergy-redefining-process-excellence-in-the-digital-age/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### The Human-AI Synergy: Redefining Process Excellence in the Digital Age #### Beyond the AI Hype: Transforming Core Operations with Human-AI Collaboration In my work advising Fortune 500 corporations and private equity portfolio companies on AI transformation, I consistently encounter the same pattern: executives racing to “AI-ify” their businesses with chatbots, marketing tools, and customer service applications. Yet most are missing the greatest opportunity: transforming their core operational processes. “How do we move beyond AI pilots and demonstration projects?” a CEO of a major manufacturing company recently asked me. My answer was simple but challenging: “Stop chasing the obvious applications and start reimagining how work actually happens.” The four pillars of Business Breakthrough 3.0, from foundation to technology on top. The most impactful AI process improvements I’ve guided have focused not on peripheral functions but on the operational heart of the business. Consider Mercedes-Benz’s smart factory in Stuttgart, where production line workers identify quality variances using AI assistants on tablets, diagnosing root causes within minutes instead of hours. The system captures their actions, continuously improving recommendations across all facilities in a virtuous cycle of human-AI collaboration. This isn’t a vision of tomorrow. It’s happening today. And it represents the future of process excellence where human-AI synergy delivers measurable, sustainable value by amplifying human capabilities, not replacing them. #### What is AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough? In the evolving business landscape, the timeless principle of kaizen (continuous improvement) remains fundamental. What’s changing dramatically is how we achieve it, through the emerging partnership between humans and generative AI. This isn’t just automation. It’s a complete reimagination of how work happens, how teams collaborate, and how businesses continuously improve. I call it AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough, a framework for achieving human-AI synergy in the real world. This approach represents a modern evolution of continuous improvement, specifically designed to scale in today’s digital environment. ##### From Traditional Process Improvement to AI-Fueled Transformation The roots of process excellence can be traced to post-war Japan, with Taiichi Ohno’s Toyota Production System. Toyota didn’t pursue radical innovation; instead, it focused on relentless, incremental improvement. That mindset revolutionized manufacturing through just-in-time production, root-cause analysis, and total quality management. Today, the game has fundamentally changed. Natural language interfaces now allow frontline workers and non-technical employees to interact directly with AI systems. Data, both structured and unstructured, can be harnessed to uncover insights, predict issues, and proactively solve them before they escalate. We’re not merely optimizing workflows; we’re enabling the people closest to the work to become agents of transformation themselves. Throughout my career leading digital transformation initiatives, I’ve consistently observed that the most sustainable improvements come not from technology alone, but from empowering the people doing the actual work. Generative AI accelerates what the best teams have always done: learn, adapt, and iterate with purpose. #### How AI Democratizes Process Excellence Across Organizations One of the most powerful aspects of AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough is its democratizing effect. This approach isn’t about replacing humans; it’s about augmenting their capabilities and expanding their impact. At Mercedes-Benz, shop-floor employees leverage the MO360 Data Platform to view drill-down dashboards, identify production bottlenecks, and make data-informed decisions in real time. These systems don’t dictate decisions to workers. They provide contextual information that enhances human judgment and creativity. At Mahindra & Mahindra, frontline maintenance staff can now ask AI virtual assistants how to troubleshoot equipment issues and receive step-by-step guidance, complete with visual references. This capability has reduced machine downtime by 37% and improved first-time fix rates by over 40%. The results aren’t theoretical. They’re translating directly to operational efficiency and cost savings. #### Real-World Examples of Human-AI Synergy Across Industries ##### Manufacturing: AI Process Improvement in Action Mahindra & Mahindra’s production teams utilize AI-driven virtual assistants that provide step-by-step repair instructions. What makes this approach unique is that the system continuously learns from successful repairs, building a knowledge base that grows more valuable over time. The result: a 37% reduction in machine downtime and a 42% improvement in first-time fix rates. ##### Pharmaceutical & Healthcare: AI-Powered Quality Control Merck employs generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create synthetic defect-image data, supporting enhanced root cause analysis and process optimization. This innovative approach has resulted in over a 50% reduction in false rejects during quality control inspections, saving millions in manufacturing costs. Absci leverages zero-shot generative AI to design de novo antibodies without requiring prior training data. This breakthrough approach has the potential to reduce traditional drug development timelines from six years to just 18 months, demonstrating how AI can fundamentally transform R&D processes. ##### Product Development: Accelerating Innovation Cycles Companies including Colgate-Palmolive, Nestlé, Campbell’s, and PepsiCo are using generative AI to accelerate product formulation and validate new product ideas. At PepsiCo, this approach has compressed the initial formulation phase by 70%, allowing for more iterations and testing within the same development window. ##### Engineering Design: AI-Enhanced Creative Solutions NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center utilizes AI-assisted design to create components that are significantly lighter (up to 35% weight reduction) and more resilient than traditionally designed parts. These techniques are now being adapted for specialized manufacturing across aerospace, automotive, and medical device industries. #### Autonomous AI Agents: The Next Level of Process Excellence The next frontier in this evolution is the emergence of truly autonomous AI agents, systems capable of: - Setting and pursuing goals independently - Analyzing complex environments and planning multi-step strategies - Learning from experience and continuously improving over time - Collaborating with humans and other AI systems to solve problems DoNotPay’s CEO demonstrated this potential by instructing an AI agent to “Find me money,” resulting in the agent identifying unnecessary subscriptions, drafting dispute letters, and negotiating bill reductions without human intervention beyond the initial prompt. The system recovered over $400 in savings through completely autonomous actions. Major technology companies, including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google, and Salesforce, are developing comprehensive platforms for building such autonomous AI agents, significantly expanding their capabilities across diverse business functions. #### How Collaborative AI Agents Transform Organizational Workflows In complex workflows, forward-thinking organizations are deploying systems of specialized agents that collaborate to: - Extract relevant information from unstructured data sources - Interpret policies, regulations, and business rules - Compare applications or processes against established criteria - Generate recommendations and draft responses - Coordinate activities across departments and systems Research from Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute indicates that human-agent collaboration consistently outperforms traditional robotic process automation (RPA), achieving 93% accuracy in workflow identification and 90% precision in task completion, while requiring significantly less human intervention and maintenance than conventional automation. #### Why Human Judgment Remains Essential in AI-Driven Processes Despite significant advancements in AI autonomy, human judgment, creativity, and contextual understanding remain central to process improvement. This isn’t a limitation. It’s a feature of well-designed systems. Employees optimize agent models for effective human interaction, while agents enhance human decision-making capabilities by processing information at scale. This creates a symbiotic relationship that drives continuous improvement beyond what either could achieve alone. In my work with dozens of organizations implementing AI, I’ve consistently found that the most successful solutions are always developed with humans at the helm: curating context, asking the right questions, and guiding the system toward outcomes that truly matter for the business and its customers. #### The Business Breakthrough 3.0 Framework: Implementing Human-AI Synergy Organizations serious about leveraging human-AI synergy should ground their transformation efforts in a structured framework. In our Business Breakthrough 3.0 model, we establish four key pillars: - Purpose-Driven Foundation: Begin with mission and values that guide all decision-making - Critical Thinking Framework: Anchor decisions in structured approaches to problem-solving - Learning Architecture: Create systems that support continuous learning and adaptation - Technology Enablement: Deploy AI tools that amplify human capabilities, not replace them Generative AI isn’t a shortcut around these fundamentals. It amplifies their impact when properly implemented within this framework. ##### Case Study: Deutsche Telekom’s AI-Driven Process Transformation Deutsche Telekom exemplifies this approach by using generative AI tools to streamline business processes, eliminating communication bottlenecks between technical and business teams. Their system enables business experts to describe processes in natural language, which the AI then translates into formal process models and documentation. This initiative has streamlined over 250 processes, increased employee satisfaction by 32%, and generated annual cost savings of €15 million. ##### Advanced Tools in the Modern Process Excellence Toolkit Process mining, advanced control systems, and digital twins (virtual replicas of physical systems that enable simulation and optimization) complete the modern process excellence toolkit. These technologies help organizations uncover entrenched inefficiencies, behaviors and workflows that often go unchallenged due to institutional inertia. When paired with generative AI, they reveal organizational blind spots and enable decision transparency, which is essential to building a dynamic, high-performance organization. For example, at leading healthcare systems, digital twins model staffing needs, patient flow, and simulate emergency scenarios. With generative AI interfaces, these sophisticated tools become accessible to clinical staff without technical backgrounds, democratizing process improvement across the enterprise. #### Leadership’s Critical Role in Successful AI Transformation Technology alone, no matter how advanced, cannot transform a business. Successful transformation requires leaders who can align people, strategy, and AI capabilities with a clear sense of purpose. In every transformation I’ve led, the breakthrough moment didn’t come from automation or technology deployment. It came from a team aligned on mission, empowered by data, and grounded in shared values. That alignment is the true catalyst of AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough. #### Implementing AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough: A Practical Guide AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough isn’t just another business buzzword. It represents human-AI synergy applied to the discipline of continuous improvement. It combines timeless operational principles with the adaptive power of modern AI technology. It brings together the best of human insight with the speed, scale, and pattern recognition capabilities of generative AI systems. Organizations that embrace this future won’t merely reduce costs or incrementally improve operations. They’ll unlock entirely new approaches to innovation, growth, and market leadership. ##### The 4-Step Implementation Playbook for AI-Driven Excellence The implementation playbook is clear and aligns closely with the principles outlined in Business Breakthrough 3.0: - Empower employees with contextual data and intuitive tools - Make process excellence everyone’s responsibility, not just specialists - Build AI agents that support and accelerate human decision-making - Keep humans in the loop to drive continuous learning and improvement This approach doesn’t signal the end of human involvement in operations. It marks the beginning of a new chapter in business transformation, with humans at the center and AI as the force multiplier that unlocks previously unattainable levels of performance. #### The Future of Human-AI Synergy in Business Transformation This is the new era of Human-AI synergy, where AI handles routine analysis and pattern recognition, while humans provide vision, judgment, and ethical guidance. Organizations that cultivate a learning culture, proactively address resistance to change, and continuously align their people with evolving tools will thrive in this new landscape. And that, more than any particular technology or methodology, is what will define process excellence in the digital age. #### FAQs About AI-Driven Process Excellence AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough is a framework that combines human expertise with AI capabilities to transform business processes, focusing on continuous improvement and operational excellence through human-AI collaboration. ##### How does AI improve process excellence? AI improves process excellence by analyzing vast amounts of data to identify patterns and inefficiencies, automating routine tasks, providing decision support to human workers, and enabling predictive maintenance and quality control. ##### What’s the difference between AI automation and human-AI synergy? AI automation replaces human tasks with technology, while human-AI synergy creates a collaborative partnership where AI handles data processing and pattern recognition while humans provide judgment, creativity, and ethical oversight. ##### How can companies start implementing AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough? Companies should begin by identifying core operational processes that impact business outcomes, assessing current capabilities, developing a clear transformation roadmap with measurable goals, and investing in both technology and people development. ##### What skills do employees need to thrive in a human-AI synergy environment? Employees need a combination of digital literacy, critical thinking, collaboration skills, adaptability, and domain expertise to effectively partner with AI tools and systems. Ken Gavranovic is the co-author of Business Breakthrough 3.0 and has led digital transformation initiatives at multiple Fortune 500 companies. He specializes in helping organizations achieve operational excellence through the thoughtful integration of human talent and AI capabilities. [Contact Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/contact/) to learn how AI-Driven Operational Breakthrough can transform your business.d AI capabilities. Blending AI into how a company actually operates is core to my [AI consulting work](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). #### Keep reading - [The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/the-ai-answer-your-board-wants/) Five board questions on AI, the answer that fails and the answer that holds, and two workloads in production in ninety days. - [Win the AI Game: Your Practical Guide to Mastering Gen AI Now](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/win-the-ai-game-your-practical-guide-to-mastering-gen-ai-now/) Look, let’s cut to the chase. AI is no longer coming. It’s here, radically transforming how we work. And make no... - [Why Integration Beats Growth Speed](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/the-perils-of-an-unintegrated-growth-strategy/) A Proven Approach That Goes Against Conventional Scaling Wisdom Let me share something I’ve learned the hard way... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It https://kengavranovic.com/2024/11/19/why-leadership-teams-fail-and-how-to-fix-it/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It Have you ever felt like you’re driving a high-performance car, but someone else is holding the steering wheel? You’re heading in the right direction, but it feels like you’re not in control. That’s how most leadership teams feel when they don’t have alignment on what success looks like and why it matters. Over the years, I’ve seen this issue again and again, both as a leader and as a consultant. I’ve worked intimately with teams undergoing large-scale transformations, helping struggling organizations move from underperforming to high-performing. These experiences span startups, publicly traded companies, and private equity-backed ventures. The author argues teams must define what success looks like and why it is a must before the how falls into place. In this season of my life, I’m focused on scaling my own businesses, but my passion for helping leaders unlock their full potential led me to start ACTIONABLE, a consulting business aimed at giving back. Through this, I’ve guided teams through turnarounds and transformations that defy the odds. #### The Common Pattern of Leadership Team Failures I’ve seen companies fail for the same reason time and time again, regardless of their size or industry. The leadership team lacks a crystal-clear shared vision of what their future state looks like and alignment on why it’s a must to achieve that future state. Without clarity on the what and the why, teams waste valuable time, energy, and resources. Even the best operational frameworks or individual contributors can’t overcome this fundamental misalignment. ##### The 3-Step Formula for Leadership Team Success Over the past year, I’ve developed a program to help teams break this cycle. I’ve run dozens of onsite and remote sessions, working with leadership teams to uncover the root issues and unlock their full potential. What’s remarkable is that this doesn’t typically require new hires, added resources, or armies of consultants. It’s about getting to the heart of what really matters. Most teams confuse the how with the what it looks like. For example, the healthcare company’s goal was simply, “Move to the cloud.” That’s not a vision. It’s a tactic. - Reduce idea-to-production time from X days to Y days. - Achieve fully automated deployments with a modern tech stack that attracts top-tier talent. - Double market share and improve win rates against competitors. When your team is clear on what success looks like, you can all work toward it with purpose. The next critical step is to articulate why the future state matters. This is where most teams stumble. If the leadership team isn’t collectively passionate about the why, progress will stall. The “why” must go beyond surface-level reasoning. It must answer why achieving the future state is a must: - “If we don’t improve this portfolio company, raising our next fund will be impossible.” - “If we don’t hit our numbers this year, our sponsor will fire us all.” Without a unified and compelling “why,” teams lack the energy and urgency to persevere through challenges. Here’s the paradox: When teams are aligned on what the future state looks like and why it’s a must, the how becomes much easier. Decision-making is faster. Accountability is higher. Political games evaporate because everyone is on the same page about where they’re headed and why it matters. It’s so funny how most leadership teams focus on the how primarily. They get caught up in tactics, tools, and processes, but that’s wrong. The how will always follow naturally once the what and the why are aligned. It’s a step that gets overlooked, and it’s the root cause of so many failed transformations. ##### Why This Matters Now When I meet with leadership teams, I often ask: “It’s a year from now. Describe what your team’s future state looks like and why it’s a must that you achieve it.” In almost every case, I hear wildly different answers, not just about the future state itself but also about why achieving it is essential. That’s the problem. Without a shared vision of what success looks like and a unified understanding of why it’s a must to achieve that future state, teams flounder. They waste energy debating priorities, chasing misaligned goals, or playing political games. When everyone answers those questions the same way, transformation becomes inevitable. Obstacles are no longer barriers. They’re simply problems to solve. ##### A Season of Giving Back I’ve helped startups grow into $50M+ businesses in under two years, advised teams to 10x their revenue, and supported turnarounds that seemed impossible. While I’m deeply focused on my own ventures, I’m dedicating this phase of my career to helping others thrive. If you’re a leader looking to align your team, overcome challenges, or simply brainstorm, I’m here to help. Feel free to book time with me, no charge, no strings attached. Fixing a leadership team from the inside is the team side of my [executive coaching practice](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). #### Keep reading - [Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/) The pattern behind most stalled transformations, one that failed three times before one leader fixed it, and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days. - [Leadership Lessons from Thinkers50](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/02/07/navigating-leadership-frontiers-with-marshall-goldsmith-subir-chowdhury-thinkers50/) In leadership thought and practice, platforms like Thinkers50 stand as pivotal gatherings where today’s foremost... - [How High-Performing Teams Actually Work](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/how-high-performing-teams-work-unlocking-the-secrets-of-success/) What makes high-performing teams work? The structure, trust, and leadership behaviors that unlock sustained team... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## M&A Success Is No Longer the Exception: It’s the Rule https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/27/bolt-on-acquisitions-ma-success/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### M&A Success Is No Longer the Exception: It’s the Rule #### Why Bolt-On Acquisitions Are Thriving in Today’s Business Environment When it comes to M&A, the game has changed. Years ago, most mergers were a gamble, with the odds stacked against success. In fact, back in the early 2000s, 70% of mergers and acquisitions were failures. Companies spent billions chasing growth through deals that ultimately collapsed under their own weight. But fast forward to today, and we’re seeing something remarkable: 70% of mergers are succeeding. This isn’t just a flip of the coin; this is the result of a strategic shift in how companies are approaching M&A. This success is particularly notable when you look at bolt-on acquisitions, smaller deals that add complementary businesses or capabilities to a core platform. These types of acquisitions, once considered risky, are thriving. But why? What’s changed? Four reasons M&A success has become the rule rather than the exception. #### 1. The Playbook Has Expanded Beyond Cost-Cutting Back in the day, M&A was largely a scale game. Companies were targeting competitors in the same industry, hoping to grow their footprint, cut costs, and dominate markets. It worked, for a while. But here’s the problem: you can only cut costs so far before you hit a wall. Today’s companies are thinking beyond that narrow focus. They’re using M&A to expand into new markets, acquire cutting-edge technology, or gain new capabilities like AI and data analytics. Think about it: companies aren’t just buying competitors anymore. They’re acquiring innovative startups, emerging tech firms, and even businesses in entirely different sectors to future-proof their operations. This broader approach to M&A is why bolt-on acquisitions are becoming more common and more successful. According to United Effects, aligning strategic goals is key in bolt-on acquisitions. These deals allow companies to access new markets, combine technologies, and multiply strengths, leading to greater customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies #### 2. Due Diligence Is Smarter Than Ever One of the biggest reasons deals failed in the past? Sloppy due diligence. Companies would run the numbers, shake hands, and hope for the best. That’s not how it works anymore. The best acquirers today have adopted a more sophisticated due diligence process. They aren’t just looking at spreadsheets; they’re assessing cultural fit, leadership capabilities, and how well the people within the target company will adapt to their new environment. Today, companies are expanding their due diligence beyond financials to include cultural assessments, talent reviews, and even social media analysis. This added layer of intelligence helps businesses avoid the “culture clash” that used to derail so many integrations #### 3. Experience Is the Best Teacher M&A isn’t something you do once and master. The companies that are winning today are the ones that have built M&A into their long-term strategy. They’ve developed a rhythm. As Bain’s research shows, the more deals a company does, the better they get at it. Companies that make frequent, smaller acquisitions, like bolt-on deals, are quickly becoming experts at seamlessly integrating new businesses Look at what’s happening in Silicon Valley: companies like Facebook and Amazon are constantly doing smaller, strategic acquisitions. They’re not looking for fixer-uppers. They’re looking for businesses that can plug into their operations and scale quickly. They’re focused on speed, synergy, and strategic growth, and it’s working. #### 4. Integration Is Finally Getting the Attention It Deserves M&A has always been hard. Integrating two companies, whether it’s systems, people, or processes, is an enormous task. But in the past, it was often treated as an afterthought. Deals were done, and then leaders would try to figure out how to make it all work. Unsurprisingly, it rarely did. Today, companies understand that integration is where the real value of a deal is realized. Thanks to new tools, methodologies like Agile, and advances in technology, integration is no longer the headache it once was. Businesses now have entire teams dedicated to making sure the integration process runs smoothly, from pre-deal planning all the way through post-deal execution Companies that focus on people and process integration are the ones that are winning. Whether it’s talent assessment or systems harmonization, the tools we have today allow companies to avoid the pitfalls of the past. ##### A Personal Experience: Helping Acquirers and Acquirees Navigate Integration I’ve had the privilege of working closely with both acquirers and acquirees to ensure that the people, process, and technology components of the integration are aligned and running smoothly. Recently, I worked with a U.S.-based company that acquired a smaller Greek firm. As a player-coach, my role was to help the acquired team navigate the much larger landscape of the parent company, while keeping both sides aligned with the M&A value goals. The success of this acquisition wasn’t just about strategy or technology. It was about guiding the people involved and helping them adjust to the new company culture, systems, and expectations. When both the acquirer and the acquired teams understand the bigger picture and work toward common goals, that’s when M&A success happens. ##### The Path Forward: M&A as a Growth Strategy We’re entering an era where M&A isn’t a risky bet. It’s a key driver of growth. But here’s the thing: it’s not just about the big deals anymore. The companies that are thriving are the ones making frequent, smaller acquisitions, bolt-on deals that fit neatly into their strategic vision. They’re thinking bigger by going smaller. And they’re seeing the results. If you’re navigating the complex world of M&A or want guidance on integrating an acquisition smoothly, let’s connect. I’m offering a free 45-minute discovery call where we can discuss your challenges and how I might help you achieve success. [Schedule your call here](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) Integration is where bolt-ons are won, and it is the heart of my [transformation advisory work](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). #### Keep reading - [How AI Creates Value in PE Portfolio Companies](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/) How private equity firms can harness AI to accelerate value creation across portfolio companies: the practical plays. - [AI Transformation Is a People Problem, Not a Tech One](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/16/ai-business-transformation/) How AI is Transforming Businesses: A People, Process, and Technology Revolution Anyone remember all the failed p... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## AI Transformation Is a People Problem, Not a Tech One https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/16/ai-business-transformation/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### AI Transformation Is a People Problem, Not a Tech One #### How AI is Transforming Businesses: A People, Process, and Technology Revolution Anyone remember all the failed public cloud adoptions and digital transformations where people thought magic would happen just because they “went to the cloud”? Companies thought it was purely a technology problem, but what they forgot was the people and process side of the equation. Employees resisted. They didn’t understand it. I literally flew around the world telling companies and their teams how to have a successful transformation, and here’s what I’ve learned over the years: Transformation is a whole team sport. It’s no different from what happened when I started Web.com (back when it was Interland) at the dawn of the Internet. Everyone was asking, “How’s the Internet going to impact me?” I remember pitching to a VC who asked, “Do you believe your own BS, kid?” when I said every business would run online one day. Well, guess what? They do now. If you thought the Internet or public cloud was transformative, buckle up. AI is going to change the game by magnitudes you can’t even imagine. The developer productivity gap depends on whether teams resist or embrace AI. Here’s the thing: 80% of organizations are pushing for hyperautomation, automating every business process possible, but they’re missing one critical factor. They treat AI like a tech solution, but it’s really a people and process solution . When teams aren’t part of the adoption process, they resist, and productivity barely moves. But when you bring everyone into the fold, when you make AI a whole team effort, that’s when you see the magic happen. #### AI for Developers: A Massive Productivity Boost Let me share some stats with you, ones I’ve seen firsthand while helping companies navigate this shift. One easy example: AI for developers. If developers resist AI, you get a 5% productivity boost. But if they embrace it? You’re looking at a whopping 30% boost . Think about that for a minute. For every three employees, you practically get an extra one in terms of output. This is big. No, scratch that. This is massive. #### AI Is a People, Process, and Technology Problem But people go wrong when they think AI is just another technology tool. “Here’s the tool, developers. Problem solved.” Wrong! It’s not just a technology problem. It’s a people, process, and technology problem, bundled together. The key to AI success is in how you empower your people to use it #### Breaking Down Silos for AI Adoption One common mistake? Letting AI adoption sit in silos, with only the tech team handling it. That’s a recipe for failure. To succeed, you’ve got to break down those silos and make sure HR, marketing, operations, and IT are all collaborating on this transformation. Without that integration, you’re leaving potential on the table. #### AI Doesn’t Replace Humans: It Amplifies Them And remember, AI doesn’t replace humans. It amplifies them. AI can process data, but it can’t think like us. It doesn’t innovate or solve problems creatively. That’s why AI should be seen as a tool that augments human talent, not replaces it As a leader, it’s your job to involve your team, explain the benefits, and provide the support they need. People want to understand how this will impact them. Without that understanding, they resist. And let’s be honest, who can blame them? If you thought the Internet changed the world, just wait. AI is going to make that look like child’s play. So to all the leaders out there: bring your entire team on board. Build collaboration between your tech and non-tech teams. Empower your people. The businesses that get this right will be the ones that lead the future. ##### Conclusion If you’re facing challenges in transforming your company with AI or unsure where to find the quick wins, let’s connect. I’m offering a free 45-minute call where I’ll share actionable insights based on what I’m seeing work in the field. [Schedule your call here](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) If you are deciding where AI actually pays in your business, that is [the work I do](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting). #### Keep reading - [How a PE Firm Gets AI Into Portfolio Companies: The Operator’s Playbook](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/) The workload sweep: model it, automate most, route exceptions to humans, and measure the share of volume off the human queue. - [The Human-AI Synergy: Redefining Process Excellence in the Digital Age](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/04/11/the-human-ai-synergy-redefining-process-excellence-in-the-digital-age/) Beyond the AI Hype: Transforming Core Operations with Human-AI Collaboration In my work advising Fortune 500 cor... - [Win the AI Game: Your Practical Guide to Mastering Gen AI Now](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/06/17/win-the-ai-game-your-practical-guide-to-mastering-gen-ai-now/) Look, let’s cut to the chase. AI is no longer coming. It’s here, radically transforming how we work. And make no... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Why “We’re a Family” Backfires at Work https://kengavranovic.com/2024/06/04/the-pitfalls-of-treating-your-company-as-a-family-lessons-from-airbnb-netflix-and-beyond/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Why “We’re a Family” Backfires at Work By Ken Gavranovic · June 4, 2024 In the competitive world of business, the idea of treating your company as a family has gained traction, especially among tech giants. However, as Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings have shown, this approach can lead to challenging situations when tough decisions need to be made. Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, recently shared his thoughts on this topic during a conversation with Wharton psychologist Adam Grant on the "ReThinking" podcast. Reflecting on the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Chesky recounted how he wrote a heartfelt note to his employees, expressing his "deep feeling of love" for them as the company faced layoffs. Despite his genuine sentiment, Chesky now acknowledges the issues with calling a company a family. "It is true that a company's not a family," he admitted. "In fact, we had to make that pivot." The emotional ties created by a family mentality can complicate necessary business decisions like layoffs or firings, making them even more painful for all involved. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, offers a different perspective. He advocates for viewing companies more like professional sports teams. "You should organize around this idea that everyone has to fight for their job every year, like it is in professional sports," Hastings explained during Stanford University's "View From The Top" interview series. Hastings argues that the family approach can impair a leader's ability to manage their team effectively. In a family, unconditional support is the norm, regardless of individual performance. However, in a business, performance and productivity must be the primary focus. Leadership development coach Joshua A. Luna supports this view in a 2021 Harvard Business Review article. He warns that referring to a company as a family can lead to managers exploiting emotionally attached employees, pushing them to go above and beyond like a sibling might. If they don't, they risk falling out of favor or even losing their job. Luna suggests that Hastings' sports team analogy is more effective. It fosters a sense of belonging and camaraderie while keeping the emphasis on performance and results. A healthy workplace culture, he notes, "respects the transactional nature of this relationship." Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook, also weighs in on this topic, stating, "It’s not a family, it’s a team. You don’t fire your family, but companies do need to make tough decisions for the overall health of the organization." This sentiment echoes the need for a clear distinction between personal and professional relationships in the workplace. Additional insights come from Patty McCord, Netflix’s former Chief Talent Officer, who co-authored the company's famous culture deck. She emphasizes that "adequate performance gets a generous severance package," reinforcing the idea that only top performers should stay on the team. This approach ensures that the company remains agile and competitive. #### Examples Beyond Netflix and Airbnb ##### 1. Zappos: Zappos, known for its exceptional customer service and unique corporate culture, once embraced the family metaphor under its CEO, Tony Hsieh. However, even Hsieh recognized the limitations of this approach. He later transitioned to a "holacracy" management style, aiming for a more distributed and accountable system of leadership and responsibility. This shift underscored the need for balance between community spirit and business pragmatism. ##### 2. HubSpot: HubSpot, a leading inbound marketing company, has been known for its strong culture and treating employees well. However, co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah realized that referring to the company as a family could create unrealistic expectations. Instead, they focused on creating a culture of autonomy and responsibility, allowing employees to thrive while maintaining high performance standards. #### Supporting Research Research supports the idea that treating a company as a family can lead to negative consequences. A study published in the *Academy of Management Journal* found that organizations promoting a familial culture often face challenges with performance management and accountability. The study concluded that while a supportive work environment is crucial, it must be balanced with clear performance metrics and accountability structures to ensure organizational success. Moreover, a report from *Gallup* highlighted that high-performing teams are those where employees have clear expectations, regular feedback, and a sense of autonomy. The report emphasized that while emotional bonds are important, they should not overshadow the need for objective performance evaluations and accountability. ##### Balancing Emotional Support and Performance As leaders navigate the complexities of building strong, motivated teams, it's crucial to balance fostering a positive work environment with maintaining clear boundaries. The experiences of Chesky, Hastings, and other leaders highlight the potential pitfalls of a family-like atmosphere in a business setting. Adopting a professional sports team mindset allows leaders to cultivate a culture that values both collaboration and accountability. This approach helps develop strong bonds among colleagues while ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities in driving the company's success. Ken Gavranovic, an experienced CEO and leadership expert, advises, "Creating a culture of transparency and performance metrics is essential. Employees need to know what's expected of them and how they contribute to the company's goals." Ultimately, effective leadership requires finding a middle ground between nurturing a supportive work environment and maintaining the objectivity needed to make tough decisions. By learning from the insights of experienced CEOs like Chesky, Hastings, and others, today's leaders can build resilient, high-performing teams that thrive amidst challenges and change. Culture questions like this one come up in almost every [coaching engagement](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) I take. #### Keep reading - [Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/11/19/why-leadership-teams-fail-and-how-to-fix-it/) Have you ever felt like you’re driving a high-performance car, but someone else is holding the steering wheel? Y... - [Leadership Lessons from Thinkers50](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/02/07/navigating-leadership-frontiers-with-marshall-goldsmith-subir-chowdhury-thinkers50/) In leadership thought and practice, platforms like Thinkers50 stand as pivotal gatherings where today’s foremost... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... The article contrasts the family model it warns against with the sports team model its leaders endorse. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Making Acquisitions Work: Lessons from Web.com https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/corporate-development-unlocking-acquisition-success-leveraging-external-expertise-to-achieve-your-strategic-goals/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Making Acquisitions Work: Lessons from Web.com By Ken Gavranovic · May 20, 2024 In today's dynamic business landscape, acquisitions have become a powerful tool for companies seeking transformation, growth, and competitive advantage. According to a recent report by PwC, the global M&A market saw a remarkable rebound in 2021, with deal values reaching $5.1 trillion – an astonishing 57% increase from 2020. However, amidst this surge in activity, the harsh reality remains: a staggering 70% to 90% of acquisitions fail to deliver the anticipated benefits, as reported by Harvard Business Review. The stakes are high, and the challenges are numerous. Cultural misalignment, lack of strategic fit, poor integration planning, overestimated synergies, and communication breakdowns are just a few of the pitfalls that can derail even the most promising acquisitions. Deloitte's survey reveals that 30% of executives attribute deal failure to cultural issues, while McKinsey's research shows that only 23% of acquisitions create value due to strategic misalignment. Bain & Company emphasizes the importance of detailed integration plans, and KPMG's study highlights that 83% of mergers fail to boost shareholder returns due to overestimated synergies. To navigate this complex landscape and ensure that your acquisition delivers on its business case while keeping key talent engaged and ensuring smooth integration, partnering with experienced external experts is a proven strategy for success. As a seasoned professional with a track record of driving successful integrations, I bring the objectivity, specialized skills, and focused attention necessary to help your organization achieve its strategic objectives. Industry data consistently reinforces the value of external expertise in acquisition success: - A study by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals found that companies that engage external experts for M&A support achieve, on average, 20% higher returns compared to those that rely solely on internal resources. - Research by the Management Consultancies Association reveals that organizations that partner with external consultants for post-merger integration realize synergies 25% faster than those that don't. - A report by the Institute for Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances highlights that companies that allocate 5% or more of the deal value to integration planning and execution, often through external support, are 40% more likely to achieve their stated objectives. #### Real-World Success Story: Building WEB.COM One of the most significant projects I led involved merging two distinct companies to build WEB.COM. One company had been built entirely organically, while the other was an integrated group of 12 acquisitions. This complex merger presented numerous challenges, but by addressing the common pitfalls and implementing strategic solutions, we successfully integrated these entities into a thriving organization. ##### Challenges and Solutions: - Cultural Misalignment: We faced significant cultural differences between the organically grown company and the acquisition-based entity. To address this, we conducted extensive cultural assessments and facilitated workshops to align the organizational cultures. This process involved creating a shared vision and values that resonated with employees from both backgrounds. - Strategic Fit: Ensuring strategic alignment was crucial. We revisited the strategic objectives of both companies and identified overlapping goals and complementary strengths. By doing so, we created a unified strategy that leveraged the strengths of both organizations. - Integration Planning: Given the scale of the merger, detailed integration planning was essential. We developed a comprehensive integration plan with clear milestones, timelines, and responsibilities. This plan included detailed communication strategies to keep all stakeholders informed and engaged. - Managing Synergies: We approached synergy estimation conservatively, setting realistic goals and continuously monitoring progress. This involved frequent reviews and adjustments to our integration approach to ensure we were on track to achieve our objectives. - Effective Communication: Communication was a top priority throughout the integration process. We implemented regular updates, town hall meetings, and feedback mechanisms to ensure transparency and address any concerns promptly. By leveraging these strategies, we successfully integrated the two companies, resulting in WEB.COM's growth and success. The merger not only met but exceeded its business case, creating substantial value for the combined entity. #### Conclusion: Making Acquisitions Work Ensuring acquisitions deliver on their business case while keeping key talent engaged and integrating people and technology smoothly requires strategic planning, detailed execution, and the right expertise. By understanding the common pitfalls and implementing proven strategies, organizations can significantly improve their chances of success. Engaging experienced external experts provides the necessary focus, skills, and objectivity to drive results, making it a valuable approach for achieving acquisition goals. For those navigating the complex process of integration, leveraging external expertise can be the key to turning acquisition aspirations into reality. With a track record of successful integrations and a deep understanding of what drives success, my role is to help organizations achieve their strategic objectives and realize the full potential of their acquisitions. About Ken Gavranovic Ken Gavranovic is a seasoned executive with a distinguished track record in leading successful acquisitions and driving transformative growth. As the CEO of Actionable, Ken leverages his extensive experience, having led 1 IPO, 3 public companies, 35 M&A integrations, and 18 exits. He also managed M&A for New Relic as EVP & GM, reporting directly to the CEO. His background includes roles as CEO, CMO, CRO, CPO, and CPTO in both public and private sectors, providing him with unique insights into every facet of leadership and organizational dynamics. Ken’s hands-on approach and deep expertise make him a trusted advisor for companies seeking to achieve their strategic goals through effective acquisitions and integrations. When a deal like this is on your desk, an operator’s [advisory perspective](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) changes the outcome. #### Keep reading - [M&A Success Is No Longer the Exception: It’s the Rule](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/27/bolt-on-acquisitions-ma-success/) Why Bolt-On Acquisitions Are Thriving in Today’s Business Environment When it comes to M&A, the game has changed... - [How AI Creates Value in PE Portfolio Companies](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/) How private equity firms can harness AI to accelerate value creation across portfolio companies: the practical plays. - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... Each recurring pitfall in the WEB.COM merger paired with the solution Ken applied. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How a PE Firm Gets AI Into Portfolio Companies: The Operator's Playbook https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/harnessing-ai-to-propel-private-equity-portfolio-companies-to-new-heights/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How a Private Equity Firm Gets AI Into Its Portfolio Companies: The Operator’s Playbook By Ken Gavranovic · Updated September 2026 (first published May 2024) Seventy-three percent of private equity executives expect AI to raise the value of their portfolios in the next twelve months. Eight percent say it is materially moving EBITDA today. Those are Alvarez and Marsal's numbers from their 2026 survey of a hundred PE executives and operators, [reported by PitchBook](https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pe-has-yet-to-prove-its-ai-bets-to-investors), and the gap between them is the whole subject of this essay. [FTI Consulting's 2026 survey](https://www.fticonsulting.com/insights/reports/2026-private-equity-ai-radar) of 200 fund and operating leaders shows the same shape from the other side: 95 percent say their AI initiatives met or beat the original business case, yet only about a third say their portfolio companies use AI in day-to-day operations. The pilots work. The companies do not change. It is not a technology gap. Every firm in those surveys has access to the same models. It is an execution gap, and execution is an operator's problem. I have sat on both sides of it. For a decade I was a managing partner at Fortress Capital Partners, with fifteen-plus exits and a board seat's view of what [a value-creation plan](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) looks like when the operating team is not bought in. Before and after that I was the operator: founder and CEO of Interland through a Nasdaq IPO, EVP at New Relic, VP at Cox Automotive running a $250 million budget through a cloud and DevOps transformation, COO in a turnaround, and CEO of Product Genius, where we built and launched an AI engagement platform and rolled it out nationally in under six months. What follows is the playbook I use now, written for the partner who owns the AI mandate and the CEO who has to deliver it. #### Start with the rule that makes AI legible to a P&L, and to EBITDA Here is the operating rule I apply to every portfolio company. Any process you can model can be mostly automated, with the exceptions routed to humans. That sentence does three things for a sponsor. It tells you where to look: not at the org chart, at the processes. It tells you what "done" means: most of the volume handled without a person, the rest handed to one. And it tells you what to measure: the share of a workload's volume that no longer touches a human queue. Applied to customer service, customer success, support and claims processing, that pattern typically takes 30 to 70 percent of the work off human queues. The public record brackets the same range. [Klarna's assistant handled two thirds of its customer service chats](https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/) in its first month, the equivalent of 700 full-time agents, by the company's own account. Independent tests of off-the-shelf agents land much lower, near 38 percent. The spread between those numbers is not the model. It is whether someone modeled the process first and designed the exception path. That is execution, and it is where the 8 percent separate from the 73. #### Run a workload sweep, not an AI strategy The document a portfolio company does not need is another AI strategy. What it needs is a workload sweep: a list of every recurring process in the business, scored on four questions. One, can it be modeled? If the inputs and the decision rules can be written down, it qualifies. If every case is a judgment call, it does not, yet. Two, what is the volume, and what does a unit of it cost today? This is the EBITDA line, in advance. Three, what happens to the exceptions? Every workload has a residue that must go to a person. If nobody owns that path, the automation fails on the first hard case and the team stops trusting it. Four, who inside the company will own it after the consultant leaves? A workload with no internal owner is a pilot, and pilots are where the 73 percent live. [MIT's NANDA initiative put a number on that in 2025](https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/): 95 percent of enterprise generative AI pilots deliver no measurable P&L impact. The ones that do are owned inside the business. Rank the list by cost times confidence, and start with the boring wins: the high-volume, low-glamour workloads that nobody puts on a board slide. They fund the next one, and they teach the team the muscle before anything ambitious is attempted. Across a portfolio, the sweep does something a single company cannot: the same workload shows up in six companies, and the second implementation costs a fraction of the first. One anonymized example of what the sweep becomes when it takes hold. A private equity company stood up a whole-of-company AI initiative: every function, not just engineering, charged with finding what in its own work could be modeled and automated, and bringing the idea or the working automation back. That flips AI from an IT project into an operating cadence, and it's where the durable EBITDA comes from, because the people closest to the process find the wins no consultant's sweep would. One more question belongs on the sweep, and it is the one that quietly sets the timeline. Where does this process's data actually live, and who owns it? A workload that looks simple on a process map can sit on three systems, two of them a vendor’s, with no clean history to learn from. That is not a reason to skip it. It is a reason to know, before anyone commits to a date, whether you are automating a process or first rebuilding the record of it. #### Fund-level AI is not portfolio-company AI Most of what gets written about AI in private equity is about the firm’s own workflow: sourcing deals faster, reading a data room, summarising diligence, monitoring the portfolio, drafting LP reporting. That work is real and worth doing, and it is mostly a software purchase. It does not move portfolio EBITDA. The EBITDA sits inside the operating companies, in the processes that run every day whether or not a deal is in market. Customer service, customer success, support, claims processing. Engineering. That is a different job, it is bought differently, and it is owned by people who do not work at the fund. Both are worth doing. Only one of them shows up in a value-creation plan. If your firm has an AI initiative and the only artefacts so far are faster diligence memos, you have bought the first one and called it the second. #### Expect the bottleneck to move Engineering is where sponsors see the biggest multiplier and the biggest surprise. In software teams, output runs three to seventeen times with AI, depending on the codebase and the guardrails. That range comes from my own builds and from direct conversations with engineering leaders at Fortune 500 enterprises, and the independent telemetry is now catching up to it. [Faros AI's 2026 study of 22,000 developers](https://www.faros.ai/blog/are-ai-coding-assistants-really-saving) across more than 4,000 teams found epics completed per developer up 66 percent at high AI adoption. It also found pull-request review time up 91 percent, bugs per developer up 54 percent, and 31 percent of code reaching production with no review at all. Read those together and the lesson is plain. When coding stops being the constraint, the constraint moves to product and to QA. [The 2025 DORA report](https://dora.dev/research/2025/dora-report/) calls AI a mirror and a multiplier: it amplifies whatever operating discipline was already there. A portfolio company that adds AI coding tools without adding product judgment and review capacity gets more code, more bugs, and no more EBITDA. Plan for the new bottleneck before you buy the multiplier, or the multiplier eats itself. #### Decide who owns the mandate The reason most AI plans stall is that nobody owns them at the level where trade-offs get made. The role that fixes this has a name now: the AI operating partner. [Heidrick and Struggles defines it](https://www.heidrick.com/en/pages/aida/a-new-strategic-imperative-in-private-equity_the-ai-operating-partner) as an operating partner who drives AI-enabled value creation across a portfolio, and the definition is right. The search firms describe the talent pool as fund-level PE operators on one side and machine-learning consultants on the other. What they cannot tell you is how to test a candidate, because the profile that passes is rare. Here is the test I would apply, whether the seat is full time, fractional, or a consultant on a scoped engagement. Has this person shipped an AI product, not advised on one? Building and launching is the only way to know what breaks in production. Has this person run a P&L of real size? Otherwise the AI plan will be technically elegant and commercially beside the point. Has this person sat on the sponsor's side of the table? The plan has to survive an investment committee and an exit narrative, not just a demo. Can this person get an operating team to adopt something they did not ask for? That is the actual job, and it is a leadership job, not a data science job. Fewer people pass all four than you would think. Most AI consultants pass the first. Most operating partners pass the second and third. The plan needs all of them in one seat, or in a small team that reports to one. #### Run it across the ownership cycle: diligence, hold, exit A sponsor's AI work does not start at the first board meeting after close. It starts in diligence and ends in the exit story. In diligence: run the workload sweep on the target before you own it. It tells you what the EBITDA bridge is worth and whether the management team can execute it. At close: the AI plan belongs in the first hundred days, and it survives contact with the operating team only if the team helped write it and owns the first workload. During the hold: sweep the portfolio, find the same win in several companies, build it once, adopt it everywhere, and measure adoption, not licenses. Licenses are a cost; adoption is the return. At exit: the AI story a buyer will pay for is not "we deployed AI." It is a list of workloads, the share of volume each one handles without a human, and the margin it moved. That is a number a buyer can diligence. #### What to do this quarter If you are the partner with the mandate, pick two portfolio companies, not ten. Run the sweep in each. Put one boring workload from each into production with an internal owner and a measured share of volume off the human queue. Report the two numbers to the investment committee next quarter. Then do the next two companies with what you learned. If you are the CEO who has to deliver it, ask your sponsor for one thing: the authority to say no to AI projects that fail the four sweep questions. The fastest way to become one of the 8 percent is to stop funding the pilots that keep you in the 73. #### Where I fit [I do this work three ways](https://kengavranovic.com/ai-consulting): an AI roadmap, which is the sweep with numbers behind every workload; an adoption sprint, which takes one or two workloads to production with your team; and fractional AI leadership, where I hold the mandate across a company or a portfolio without the full-time hire. I am based in Alpharetta, Georgia, work remotely with sponsors and CEOs everywhere, and come on site when the work calls for it. If your firm is trying to get from the 73 percent to the 8, [the first conversation is forty-five minutes on video](https://kengavranovic.com/booking), and if I am not the right person for it I will say so. #### Common questions What does an AI operating partner do? Drives AI-enabled value creation across a portfolio: the workload sweeps, the EBITDA bridge, the internal owners, and the adoption. The seat can be full time, fractional, or a consultant on a scoped engagement; what matters is that someone owns the mandate at the level where trade-offs get made. How do you choose an AI operating partner or consultant? Apply four tests. Has this person shipped an AI product, not advised on one? Has this person run a P&L of real size? Has this person sat on the sponsor's side of the table? And can this person get an operating team to adopt something they did not ask for? Fewer people pass all four than you would think. How much of a process can AI actually automate? Any process you can model can be mostly automated, with the exceptions routed to humans. In customer service, customer success, support and claims processing that typically takes 30 to 70 percent of the work off human queues. The spread is execution, not the model. How do you measure AI in EBITDA? Per workload: the share of volume that no longer touches a human queue, times what a unit of that volume cost before. Measure adoption, not licenses, and report a baseline and a measured result the CFO can audit. That is the number a buyer can diligence at exit. #### Keep reading - [AI Transformation Is a People Problem, Not a Tech One](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/16/ai-business-transformation/) How AI is Transforming Businesses: A People, Process, and Technology Revolution Anyone remember all the failed p... - [The Human-AI Synergy: Redefining Process Excellence in the Digital Age](https://kengavranovic.com/2025/04/11/the-human-ai-synergy-redefining-process-excellence-in-the-digital-age/) Beyond the AI Hype: Transforming Core Operations with Human-AI Collaboration In my work advising Fortune 500 cor... - [The AI Answer Your Board Actually Wants](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/the-ai-answer-your-board-wants/) Five board questions on AI, the answer that fails and the answer that holds, and two workloads in production in ninety days. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How High-Performing Teams Actually Work https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/how-high-performing-teams-work-unlocking-the-secrets-of-success/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How High-Performing Teams Actually Work By Ken Gavranovic · May 20, 2024 #### "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." - African Proverb #### Introduction In today's fast-paced business environment, the success of an organization often hinges on the performance of its teams. High-performing teams are not just a result of assembling talented individuals but are a product of specific practices, mindsets, and dynamics that foster excellence. Have you ever been in a company where "after meetings" are held after the official meeting, or where everyone knows a project is failing but no one wants to acknowledge it? These are clear indicators of a poorly performing and unhealthy team. This article delves into the secrets of high-performing teams, uncovers common gaps, and offers actionable approaches to elevate team performance. By leveraging these insights, you can transform your team into a powerhouse of productivity and innovation. #### The Secrets of High Performing Teams ##### 1. Psychological Safety Research by Google's Project Aristotle revealed that psychological safety is the cornerstone of high-performing teams. When team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other, it cultivates an environment where innovation thrives. Teams with high psychological safety are more likely to harness diverse perspectives, leading to better decision-making and problem-solving. A study by Deloitte found that organizations with a strong culture of psychological safety experienced a 27% reduction in turnover, a 40% increase in employee engagement, and a 12% increase in productivity. ##### 2. Clear Goals and Roles High-performing teams have a clear understanding of their goals and the roles each member plays in achieving them. This clarity aligns efforts and ensures that everyone is working towards the same objectives. A study by the Harvard Business Review found that teams with clear goals and well-defined roles are 2.5 times more likely to achieve their targets. Furthermore, research by Gallup indicates that employees who strongly agree that they have a clear job description are 30% more likely to be engaged at work. ##### 3. Continuous Learning and Adaptation High-performing teams prioritize continuous learning and are not afraid to adapt their strategies based on feedback and changing circumstances. They embrace a growth mindset, viewing challenges as opportunities to learn and improve. This adaptability is crucial in navigating the complexities of today's business landscape. A report by Bersin by Deloitte revealed that organizations with a strong learning culture are 46% more likely to be first to market and have 37% higher productivity. ##### 4. Strong Communication Effective communication is the lifeblood of high-performing teams. It ensures that information flows seamlessly and that everyone is on the same page. According to a report by McKinsey, organizations with effective communication practices are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their peers. Moreover, a study by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that poor communication is responsible for an average loss of $62.4 million per year in organizations with 100,000 employees. #### Common Gaps in Team Performance Despite the known benefits of the above practices, many teams still struggle to reach their full potential. Here are some common gaps: ##### 1. Lack of Trust Without trust, teams cannot function effectively. Trust issues often arise from poor communication, lack of accountability, and previous negative experiences. Teams that lack trust are less likely to collaborate and more likely to encounter conflicts. A study by PwC found that organizations with high levels of trust are 2.5 times more likely to be high performing. ##### 2. Poor Conflict Resolution High-performing teams do not avoid conflict; they manage it constructively. Poor conflict resolution can lead to resentment and decreased morale. Teams that lack effective conflict resolution strategies often struggle to maintain cohesion and focus. A report by CPP Global found that employees spend an average of 2.1 hours per week dealing with conflict, amounting to approximately $359 billion in paid hours in the U.S. alone. ##### 3. Insufficient Feedback Feedback is essential for growth, but many teams fail to provide regular, constructive feedback. This can result in stagnation and missed opportunities for improvement. Teams that lack a culture of feedback are often unaware of their weaknesses and blind spots. A study by Gallup revealed that employees who receive regular feedback are 3.5 times more likely to be engaged than those who receive none. ##### 4. Resistance to Change In a rapidly changing business environment, resistance to change can be detrimental. Teams that are not open to new ideas and approaches are likely to fall behind. Resistance to change often stems from fear of the unknown and a comfort with the status quo. A report by McKinsey found that 70% of change programs fail, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. #### Approaches to Improve Team Performance To bridge these gaps and enhance team performance, consider the following approaches: ##### 1. Foster Psychological Safety Create an environment where team members feel safe to express their ideas and take risks. Encourage open dialogue and celebrate failures as learning opportunities. Implement regular team-building activities to strengthen relationships and build trust. Google's Project Aristotle found that teams with high psychological safety were more likely to make use of their teammates' ideas and less likely to leave Google. ##### 2. Define Clear Goals and Roles Ensure that each team member understands their role and how it contributes to the team's objectives. Regularly revisit and adjust goals to keep them relevant and challenging. Use tools like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to track progress and maintain alignment. John Doerr, the author of "Measure What Matters," found that organizations using OKRs saw a 3.5x increase in productivity compared to those without a goal-setting system. ##### 3. Encourage Continuous Learning Promote a culture of continuous learning by providing opportunities for professional development and encouraging knowledge sharing. Implement regular retrospectives to reflect on what worked, what didn't, and how the team can improve. Research by the Association for Talent Development found that companies that offer comprehensive training programs have 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalized training. ##### 4. Enhance Communication Invest in communication tools and practices that facilitate transparent and timely information sharing. Encourage regular check-ins and stand-up meetings to keep everyone informed and aligned. Provide training on effective communication techniques and conflict resolution. A study by Towers Watson found that companies with highly effective communication practices have 47% higher total returns to shareholders compared to firms with poor communication. #### How My Advisory Services Can Help As an executive advisor, I specialize in transforming teams and organizations to achieve their highest potential. With extensive experience in strategic leadership and operational excellence, I can help you: - Build Trust: Develop a culture of trust and psychological safety within your team. - Clarify Goals: Define clear, actionable goals and roles that align with your strategic objectives. - Foster Learning: Implement continuous learning practices that drive innovation and growth. - Improve Communication: Enhance your team's communication and conflict resolution skills. By partnering with me, you can unlock the full potential of your teams and drive sustainable success. #### About Ken Gavranovic Ken Gavranovic is a highly accomplished executive and thought leader with an impressive track record of spearheading successful acquisitions and driving transformative growth in both public and private companies. As the CEO of Actionable, Ken draws on his vast experience, having stewarded 1 IPO, 3 public companies, 35 M&A integrations, and 18 exits. In his previous role as EVP & GM at New Relic, Ken led M&A efforts, reporting directly to the CEO. With a multifaceted background spanning CEO, CMO, CRO, CPO, and CPTO roles, Ken brings unparalleled insights and expertise to every aspect of leadership and organizational transformation. #### PS: Powerful Questions to Gain Insights ##### 1. Am I Accountable? - Employees want ownership of their work and to have their compensation reflect it. However, they may not feel accountable due to unclear roles, lack of authority, fear, lack of connection to their work's purpose, or not seeing accountability modeled by leaders. ##### 2. Do I Belong? - A sense of belonging drives productivity and engagement. Employees might feel they don't belong due to misalignment with company culture, under- or over-utilization, or if their job doesn't bring out their best. ##### 3. Am I Measured Fairly? - Fair measurement requires transparency, alignment of metrics with values, consistent criteria, and clear justification for changes. Employees need to know the rules are fair and stable. ##### 4. Is My Opinion Heard? - Employees need to know their feedback is valued and acted upon. This involves regular feedback opportunities, transparent communication of actions taken, and a culture that encourages open dialogue. ##### 5. Am I Being Developed? - Employees want growth opportunities. Lack of development programs, ambiguous career pathways, and unhealthy competition can stifle their growth and engagement. ##### 6. Do I Have Balance? - Balance is crucial to prevent burnout. Companies must ensure clear processes, adequate staffing, and a culture that supports work-life balance. ##### 7. Do I Believe? - Employees need to believe in the company's mission, vision, and values. If they feel disconnected, it can impact their engagement and performance. #### Implementing the 7 Yeses To achieve these "yeses," conduct leadership forums to identify and prioritize areas for improvement based on employee feedback. Regular company-wide surveys can then help maintain and improve engagement. By following this method, companies have seen a 30% increase in overall employee engagement scores. According to Gartner, improving your Employee Value Proposition can lead to a 28% increase in employees likely to recommend the organization, a 40% increase in high performers, a 6% increase in intent to stay, a 7% increase in wellness, and a 9% increase in employees likely to accept the job again. With the right formula and tactics, you can navigate the challenges of today's business environment and build a high-performing team. Building teams that work like this is the heart of my [leadership team coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). #### Keep reading - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... - [7 Questions That Boost Employee Engagement 30%](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/04/02/stop-the-big-quit-more-than-2-3s-of-us-employees-are-not-actively-engaged-at-work-boost-your-employees-engagement-by-30-with-7-powerful-questions/) More than two-thirds of US employees aren't actively engaged at work. Seven powerful questions leaders can use t... - [Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/) Two of Wall Street's smartest shops disagree about AI. Both are missing the operator's question: what adopting i... Each high-performing team practice answers a common gap, matched to a concrete fix. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance By Ken Gavranovic · May 20, 2024 In my extensive work with product and engineering teams across various industries, I've consistently observed common challenges that hinder optimal performance. These challenges often stem from misalignments in priorities, inefficient processes, and a lack of cohesive collaboration between key departments like sales, product, and engineering. If you find that sales, product, and engineering all have different opinions on what's important, or that major code initiatives are stuck behind feature flags for months, or if your product is lagging while sales constantly demands new features, then you have a problem. The good news is that in the people-process-technology world, all of these are process issues, and I can help. #### Aligning Priorities Across Departments One of the fundamental issues in many organizations is the misalignment of priorities between sales, product, and engineering teams. Sales teams focus on immediate revenue opportunities, product teams prioritize long-term vision and user experience, while engineering teams aim for technical excellence and stability. These differing priorities can lead to conflicting demands and bottlenecks in the product development cycle. Solution: Establish a unified roadmap that balances short-term sales goals with long-term product strategy. This can be achieved through regular cross-functional meetings where each team can present their priorities, discuss trade-offs, and agree on a shared vision. Implementing a collaborative planning process ensures that everyone is on the same page and working towards common objectives. Example: At New Relic, when I arrived after the CEO let go of the previous leader, we hadn't had much innovation in nearly three years according to our largest customers. Our sales team had no confidence that product and engineering could deliver, and our customers were looking at competitors. To address this, we implemented several key changes: - We appointed a General Manager to align Product and Engineering on business metrics and eliminate finger-pointing. - We set up a quarterly planning session to define our most critical initiatives and allocate a specific target of engineering resources for roadmap, bugs, and new sales items. - We established a cross-company escalation meeting, where any changes impacting the roadmap had to be discussed and agreed upon by the leaders of the company. This eliminated poor business trade-offs under the hood and ensured everyone was aligned if a roadmap item needed to be shifted. These changes had a significant impact. At the next Customer Advisory Board meeting, the CTO of Disney and SVP of Capital One exclaimed, "You have delivered more of the functionality we wanted in the last six months than in the last three years," including logging, AI, and many other features. This led to nearly $50 million in new sales within five months. #### Streamlining Processes for Efficient Execution Inefficient processes can cause major code initiatives to be stuck behind feature flags for months, rendering them barely used or obsolete. This not only wastes valuable resources but also hampers innovation and competitive advantage. Solution: Adopt agile methodologies to enhance flexibility and responsiveness. Break down large initiatives into smaller, manageable tasks that can be delivered incrementally. Utilize feature toggles strategically to allow for gradual rollouts and testing without delaying overall progress. Regular retrospectives and process audits can help identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, ensuring continuous process optimization. Example: Stripe, the leading online payment processing platform, was struggling with prolonged feature flag delays. After transitioning to an agile framework and conducting regular process audits, they improved their feature deployment rate by 50% and significantly reduced technical debt. They also implemented a continuous delivery pipeline, enabling them to release new features and fixes to production multiple times a day, increasing their responsiveness to customer needs and market demands. #### Bridging the Gap Between Product Development and Sales A common complaint from sales teams is that the product is falling behind while they constantly ask for new features to meet customer demands. This disconnect can create frustration and hinder the company's growth potential. Solution: Implement a feedback loop where sales insights are integrated into the product development process. This involves establishing a clear channel for sales teams to communicate customer needs and feedback to product managers and engineers. Prioritize features based on a combination of customer value, market trends, and technical feasibility. By aligning product development with market demands, you can ensure that the product evolves in a way that supports sales efforts and drives growth. Example: Epic Systems, a leading healthcare technology company, created a structured feedback loop that allowed their sales team to input customer needs directly into the product backlog. They also established a customer advisory board, consisting of key clients and industry experts, to provide strategic guidance and validate their product roadmap. This alignment led to a 30% increase in customer satisfaction and a 20% boost in sales within nine months. #### Enhancing Team Collaboration and Communication Effective collaboration and communication are essential for high-performing product and engineering teams. Miscommunication or lack of communication can lead to misunderstandings, duplicated efforts, and missed opportunities. Solution: Foster a culture of open communication and transparency. Utilize collaboration tools like Slack, Jira, or Trello to keep everyone informed and aligned. Regular stand-ups, sprint reviews, and cross-functional workshops can help maintain clarity and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals. Encourage a culture of mutual respect and trust where team members feel valued and heard. Example: Atlassian, the company behind popular collaboration tools like Jira and Confluence, implemented regular cross-functional workshops and adopted a transparent communication culture. They also invested in team-building activities and off-site retreats to strengthen relationships and facilitate informal knowledge sharing. This resulted in a 25% improvement in project delivery times and enhanced team morale. #### Leveraging People, Process, and Technology To build high-performance product and engineering teams, it's crucial to leverage the right combination of people, processes, and technology. Each of these elements plays a vital role in achieving excellence and driving innovation. - People: Invest in hiring and retaining top talent. Provide opportunities for continuous learning and professional development. Foster a culture of empowerment and accountability where team members are encouraged to take ownership of their work and contribute to the company's success. Implement a robust onboarding process to help new hires quickly integrate into the team and become productive. - Process: Implement agile methodologies and best practices that promote efficiency and adaptability. Regularly review and refine processes to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure continuous improvement. Establish clear roles and responsibilities to minimize confusion and duplication of efforts. Implement a data-driven decision-making process to prioritize initiatives based on impact and feasibility. - Technology: Utilize cutting-edge tools and technologies that enhance productivity and collaboration. Ensure that your tech stack is aligned with your business goals and can scale to meet future demands. Invest in automation and DevOps practices to streamline workflows and reduce manual errors. Regularly assess and update your technology infrastructure to stay competitive and meet evolving customer needs. #### Conclusion Building high-performance product and engineering teams requires a holistic approach that addresses the alignment of priorities, streamlining processes, bridging the gap between departments, and enhancing collaboration. By focusing on people, process, and technology, you can overcome common challenges and drive sustainable growth and innovation. If you recognize these issues within your organization and need expert guidance to navigate these challenges, I can help. With a proven track record in transforming complex operations and catalyzing revenue growth, I offer strategic solutions tailored to your unique needs. Let's work together to build high-performing teams that drive success and transformation. About Ken Gavranovic Ken Gavranovic is a highly accomplished executive and thought leader with an impressive track record of spearheading successful acquisitions and driving transformative growth in both public and private companies. As the CEO of Actionable, Ken draws on his vast experience, having stewarded 1 IPO, 3 public companies, 35 M&A integrations, and 18 exits. In his previous roles, Ken was the CEO of Web.com, where he led the company through rapid growth phases, a successful IPO, and a significant merger. He served as Chief Product & Technology Officer at Coursedog, managing a global team and achieving an acquisition valued at over $80 million. As Senior Vice President at Unqork, he drove revenue growth and initiated significant government compliance projects. Ken also held key roles as Vice President at Cox Automotive and First Data Corporation, significantly enhancing operational efficiencies and leading strategic projects. With a multifaceted background spanning CEO, CMO, CRO, CPO, and CPTO roles, Ken brings unparalleled insights and expertise to every aspect of leadership and organizational transformation. When a team needs to have this conversation in one room, that is [a working session I facilitate](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). #### Keep reading - [Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Three Rs](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/28/boost-your-enterprise-agility-by-following-the-three-rs/) Enterprise agility comes down to three Rs. A practical operating framework for moving faster, adapting sooner, a... - [OKRs: Measure Outcomes, Not Activity](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/11/enterprise-agility-okr-outcomes-over-activity/) Most companies measure activity completed, not outcomes achieved. Why that distinction is critical to success. - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... Sales, product, and engineering pull in different directions until a unified roadmap aligns them. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Are You a Manager or a Leader? https://kengavranovic.com/2024/04/18/are-you-a-manager-or-a-leader-the-difference-impacts-everything/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Are You a Manager or a Leader? By Ken Gavranovic · April 18, 2024 By Ken Gavranovic, with insights from [Dorie Clark](https://www.linkedin.com/in/doriec/) and [Marshall Goldsmith](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshallgoldsmith/) In today's fast-paced business world, it's crucial to understand the difference between being a manager and being a leader. As Marshall Goldsmith, the world-renowned leadership coach, puts it, "One of the most important differences between managers and leaders is that managers work to get people to do what is needed, while leaders work to get people to want to do what is needed." Great leaders inspire and empower their teams to achieve a shared vision. They don't just push people to do what's necessary; they motivate them to reach their full potential. As Dorie Clark, the author of "The Long Game," says, "The best leaders are focused on creating a culture of growth and development. They prioritize helping their team members build new skills and take on new challenges." The article turns on one contrast: managers get compliance, leaders get commitment. In my experience, the most effective leaders are givers, not takers. They prioritize contributing value to others and building trust through humility, vulnerability, and openness to feedback. This servant leadership approach enables them to create loyal followers who are invested in the company's success. Leaders also drive innovation, growth, and change by embracing risk and thinking strategically. They look beyond day-to-day operations to focus on the big picture and are willing to challenge the status quo in pursuit of a greater goal. As Dorie Clark notes, "Visionary leaders are always scanning the horizon for new opportunities and thinking about how to position their organizations for long-term success." I'll be the first to admit that I don't always achieve my goals of being a leader, but I constantly strive for it. My aim with everyone and every company I work for is to help them develop skills that will benefit both the organization and their personal growth. When you do that, amazing things happen. I've witnessed the power of leadership firsthand. I once had an engineer who wanted to improve their public speaking skills. By arranging opportunities for them to present at meetings, they not only inspired their colleagues but also gained the confidence to pursue their dream of becoming a priest. Years later, they reached out to share the success of their thriving congregation. Another time, I recognized the potential in an employee who was brilliant but lacked self-assurance. By encouraging them to be their best self and setting them up for success, their confidence soared. Today, they hold a senior vice president position at a Fortune 100 company. Leadership also means valuing diverse thoughts and opinions. In one instance, during a meeting about a struggling project, a junior female engineer proposed a solution that differed from the manager's approach. Despite being quickly dismissed, I encouraged her to speak up again and made sure her idea was heard. Her solution got the project back on track, and she has since become a leader who revolutionized the company's product engine. That one moment of advocacy helped her find her voice and become her best self. As Marshall Goldsmith emphasizes, "The best leaders are not necessarily great managers, and the best managers are not necessarily great leaders. The skill sets are different." However, when you work hard at being a leader, incredible things happen to your employees, customers, partners, company, and even your family. Leadership is about believing in the unlimited potential of people. As Dorie Clark says, "Great leaders help their team members see possibilities that they may not have seen for themselves." By modeling leadership principles and empowering others to grow, you can create a ripple effect of positive change. In closing, remember that the past is written, the future is uncertain, and all we have to focus on is NOW. Be a great leader, model it, and watch as the results show up in every aspect of your life and business. Ken Gavranovic P.S. I want to share a personal story that exemplifies the impact of leadership. My daughter [Alexandra Gavranovic](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-gavranovic-a21b82278/), who is typically very shy, decided two years ago that she wanted to write a dystopian novel. Despite her reservations, I encouraged her to pursue her dream, believing in her unlimited potential. Now, 400 pages and two years later, she has completed her novel. This experience has not only helped her grow as a writer but has also boosted her confidence in all aspects of her life. As leaders, when we believe in others and support their aspirations, we help them achieve things they never thought possible. That's the true power of leadership. Check out her book at [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Deception-Our-Remedy-Alexandra-Gavranovic/dp/B0CYHFBB84/ref=sr_1_1?crid=A6ZIRSRXBHSB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.2LalfUSuAPLF5tFhkM-rHAXrIcV8qxFfvNcnD-Pj6sHk3Sg0m-1qmDmKwsaYvYPWtxpv_6XV9pbj9wM7rLehr1hYhlW_d5smsPURL18I3qlfh6NxMtW0A5b1nrpjh8Pp4jIStG9nhpQBWhIV6XC7jb-dsX5igSjmCX6LvYx4_0ecI2hZVTsEjIyVQL2-jTyTAMsiK_amAZ9E0ARdGkMpha249_6fFHxPWRIBuwBI9g8.HA1JekBxLUv_7L4JW4Bm0WcXVQDDf0JwpWtcaJ1zVNY&dib_tag=se&keywords=gavranovic&qid=1712680804&sprefix=gavranovic%2Caps%2C118&sr=8-1) PS Go team. And I can't forget my great Mentor and Ny Times Best Seller[ Dorie Clark](https://dorieclark.com/) PS: When you lead with purpose, you meet amazing people and accomplish things you never thought possible. Even more importantly, your team begins to surprise themselves with their capabilities. Working this out for your own seat is a coaching conversation, and [here is how I run those](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). #### Keep reading - [Why “We’re a Family” Backfires at Work](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/06/04/the-pitfalls-of-treating-your-company-as-a-family-lessons-from-airbnb-netflix-and-beyond/) Treating your company as a family sounds caring, but it backfires. Lessons from Airbnb, Netflix, and beyond on b... - [Why Leadership Teams Fail, and How to Fix It](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/11/19/why-leadership-teams-fail-and-how-to-fix-it/) Have you ever felt like you’re driving a high-performance car, but someone else is holding the steering wheel? Y... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Leadership Lessons from Thinkers50 https://kengavranovic.com/2024/02/07/navigating-leadership-frontiers-with-marshall-goldsmith-subir-chowdhury-thinkers50/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Leadership Lessons from Thinkers50 In leadership thought and practice, platforms like Thinkers50 stand as pivotal gatherings where today’s foremost thinkers in management share insights that shape the direction of leadership. As the author of “Business Breakthrough,” I had the opportunity to engage in deep discussions with thought leaders like Marshall Goldsmith and Subir Chowdhury, exploring the nuances of what truly makes a leader transformational. [Marshall Goldsmith](https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/)‘s notable work, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” emphasizes the need for leaders to continuously evolve, focusing on proactively identifying and addressing personal blind spots. [Subir Chowdhury’s](https://www.subirchowdhury.com/) “The Power of Six Sigma” demonstrates how principles of relentless improvement, inspired by Toyota, can be applied to achieve sustained success in organizations as varied as Sony and Lufthansa. Four leadership pillars drawn from Thinkers50 dialogues and the author's own experience. Through my journey from launching startups to leading them to the public market, I’ve seen how innovative approaches can disrupt and outperform the established order. It’s clear that leadership is about more than intellect or charisma; it involves embracing mental models that foster resilience and adaptability. As Marshall suggests, with anonymous feedback, reflecting on past failures to guide future strategies is critical for meaningful progress. #### What Thinkers50 Reinforced Drawing from the rich dialogues at Thinkers50 and my own leadership experiences, here are insights for those committed to refining their leadership prowess. ##### Embrace Failure and Imperfect Learning Engaging with the wisdom shared at Thinkers50 has deepened my understanding of failure’s critical role in leadership development. This principle, echoed by Goldsmith and Chowdhury, has reaffirmed my belief in the constructive power of failure as a springboard for growth and innovation. ##### Take Extreme Ownership Emphasizing the importance of complete accountability for outcomes has been a guiding principle in my leadership approach. This shared belief among the world’s leading management thinkers has reinforced my conviction that authentic leadership is about embracing triumphs and setbacks and using these experiences to foster a culture of resilience and ongoing improvement. Ownership is more than taking credit; it’s about crediting the team for successes, clearing obstacles, articulating vision, instilling belief, and driving strategy. ##### Proactively Address Triggers The Thinkers50 discussions, particularly on Goldsmith’s insights into behavioral triggers, have underscored the importance of proactive leadership in managing personal and organizational triggers. Creating an environment that values diverse perspectives and commits to shared goals is essential for cohesive and effective leadership. ##### Kindling the Internal Fire The concept of ‘Mojo,’ the inner drive that propels leadership passion, has been a central theme in my leadership philosophy. My experiences, echoed by the Thinkers50 consensus, highlight the critical role of passion and enthusiasm in inspiring teams and catalyzing change. An anecdote from my early career, when a bold stance against a competitor’s threat rallied my team, illustrates the power of a clear vision and the belief in overcoming obstacles together. My participation in Thinkers50, coupled with the insights from “Business Breakthrough,” showcases the alignment of my leadership principles with the broader wisdom of some of the most respected minds in management. The pillars of embracing failure, taking ownership, proactive engagement, and igniting passion are crucial to mastering the complexities of modern leadership, spurring innovation, and securing lasting achievement. These insights encourage leaders to boldly advance on their paths, fortified by the knowledge that their experiences resonate with and are supported by a global community of leadership thinkers. Ken PS Go team. And I can’t forget my great Mentor and Ny Times Best Seller[ Dorie Clark](https://dorieclark.com/) The ideas in this piece shape how I [coach senior operators](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) today. #### Keep reading - [How High-Performing Teams Actually Work](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/how-high-performing-teams-work-unlocking-the-secrets-of-success/) What makes high-performing teams work? The structure, trust, and leadership behaviors that unlock sustained team... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... - [Wall Street Is Asking the Wrong Question About AI](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/03/17/two-smartest-research-shops-wall-street-disagree-ai-both-missing-point/) Two of Wall Street's smartest shops disagree about AI. Both are missing the operator's question: what adopting i... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Product-Led Growth or Customer Nurturing? https://kengavranovic.com/2023/08/29/product-led-growth-vs-nurture/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Product-Led Growth or Customer Nurturing? By Ken Gavranovic · August 29, 2023 Product-Led Growth or Customer Nurturing? For Chief Product Officers, understanding the nuances of your product and the time required for customers to grasp its value is essential. When pioneering a new category, prioritizing customer nurturing is crucial. However, if your product's benefits are immediately evident, then a Product-Led Growth (PLG) approach complemented with a sales assist model might suit you best. When considering nurturing campaigns, especially when aiding customers in comprehending the problems you address and the ensuing benefits, here's a list to keep in mind: Awareness of the Problem: First and foremost, the prospect needs to recognize that they have a problem or need that requires a solution. Understanding of Your Solution: Prospects need to learn what you offer, how it works, and why it might be the right solution for their specific needs. How does your solution provide value to them? This is where they learn the specific advantages and benefits they would get from your product or service. Differentiators: How is your solution different or better than alternatives in the market? Why should they consider your product or service over competitors? Social Proof and Testimonials: Real-world success stories, case studies, or testimonials can play a key role in building trust and validation. Pricing Information: Depending on your business and the buying cycle, you might want to give them an idea of the cost associated with your solution. Trust and Credibility: Over time, you'll want to establish trust through delivering consistent value in your communications, displaying expertise, and possibly by sharing third-party validations or certifications. Overcoming Objections: Address common concerns or misconceptions that prospects might have. This can be done through FAQ sections, videos, webinars, or blog posts. Company Culture and Values: Some prospects want to align with companies that share their values or ethos. Sharing information about your company culture, mission, and values can resonate with certain audiences. Engagement Opportunities: Webinars, live Q&A sessions, interactive content, or even free trials can offer hands-on experiences and deepen their engagement with your brand. Clear Call-to-Actions (CTAs): Make sure you guide them towards the next steps, whether it's setting up a meeting, signing up for a trial, or downloading a resource. Sorting growth motions like this is the sort of decision my [strategy consulting](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) exists for. #### Keep reading - [Making Acquisitions Work: Lessons from Web.com](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/corporate-development-unlocking-acquisition-success-leveraging-external-expertise-to-achieve-your-strategic-goals/) Acquisitions drive transformation and growth, yet most underdeliver. How to leverage external expertise to unloc... - [M&A Success Is No Longer the Exception: It’s the Rule](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/10/27/bolt-on-acquisitions-ma-success/) Why Bolt-On Acquisitions Are Thriving in Today’s Business Environment When it comes to M&A, the game has changed... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... Which go-to-market model fits depends on how quickly customers grasp your product's value. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Business Breakthrough 3.0 Out Now! Don't Wait, Buy Now https://kengavranovic.com/2023/06/02/business-breakthrough-3/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Business Breakthrough 3.0 Out Now! Don't Wait, Buy Now #### Business Breakthrough 3.0 has Arrived “BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0 offers practical insights to drive transformations and optimize agility. It is often overlooked how organizational structure affects decision-making speed and the ability to leverage talent. Organizations may not realize that they get the outcomes they organize for.” In Their New Book, BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0, Experts Lee Atchison and Ken Gavranovic Help Companies Knock Down Silos, Fuel Engagement, And Drive Change At Start-Up Speed The five integrated parts of the methodology, building from company soul up to growth. “Working with hundreds of leaders worldwide has led us to develop a highly effective business improvement strategy that we’ve seen succeed time and time again. Our method allows you to break free of your old way of doing business, putting your most valuable data to work to restructure your company, knock down silos, fuel engagement, and drive change at start-up speed,” -Lee Atchison and Ken Gavranovic, authors of the new book BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0.” Drawing on their combined 60 years of business and technology experience, Atchison and Gavranovic provide a step-by-step process for clarifying how a company operates. They uncover entrenched patterns holding it back and use data to identify what’s working and what’s not. They also leverage the motivational drivers embedded in all of us. By using the BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0 method, companies will foster employee engagement and inject sustainability and cultural longevity into their organizations. The methodology is composed of five integrated parts: • Mission, Vision, And Core Values – Many companies have mission, vision, and value statements that are rarely mentioned or cause snickers because they differ from what the company truly is. To be effective, these statements must represent the true soul of the company. They can be partially aspirational as long as they express actual values. Atchison and Gavranovic show why these statements are important and provide guidelines for creating effective ones. • Critical Thinking Frameworks: The Power of OKRs – Based on years of experience, the authors recommend the OKR (objectives and key results) framework. “OKRs can help any organization enforce a systematic, disciplined process ensuring employees work together on crucial actions impacting the organization,” they write. The authors provide in-depth instructions for developing OKRs and discuss traps to avoid and how to get everyone onboard with the OKR approach. • Measure What Matters – It is nearly impossible to operate a successful business without tracking its performance. The key is measuring what matters. In Business Breakthrough 3.0 leaders learn how to identify and analyze the right metrics, so they know exactly what’s working, what’s not, and what needs improvement. This includes everything from revenue and cash flow to employee needs and customer demands. • Choose the Right Business Structure – Businesses must have the right organizational structure to succeed. The structure affects operations, learning, and improvements, and how systems and products are made or software applications are built, even how fast they are built. Atchison and Gavranovic provide an overview of different structures, discussing the pros and cons of each, so leaders can pinpoint the right one for their company. Sales and marketing are essential components of any profitable business. New trends and methods are constantly emerging, while others become obsolete. The authors examine top strategies – sales-led growth, marketing-led growth, and product-led growth. They provide an in-depth look at each and reveal how to implement the best approach for your business. BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0 is the ultimate toolkit for companies wanting to thrive in today’s hyper-competitive, constantly changing business world. The authors’ practical advice – supported by case studies, helpful charts, and simple diagrams – can be put to work immediately. They explain, “the ultimate purpose of our book is to allow leaders to gain a deep awareness of how their companies operate and what’s blocking their success. With this knowledge, they can move forward and solve any problem confronting them.” Lee Atchison, co-author of BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0, is a software architect, author, speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. At Amazon, he built the AWS Elastic Beanstalk and its first software download store, and led the retail website’s early migration to a service-based architecture. At New Relic, he grew the product architecture from startup stage to large enterprise SaaS. Often quoted in technology publications, Lee hosts the Modern Digital Business podcast and is the founder of Atchison Academy, offering online courses to help leaders manage modern digital businesses. Learn more at [www.leeatchison.com](https://www.leeatchison.com). [Ken Gavranovic](https://kengavranovic.com/about-ken), co-author of BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0, is COO of Blameless and a board member and private equity advisor to several companies. In his 20s, Ken started Interland, now web.com, growing it to $200M and leading its IPO. Since then, he has driven hyper-growth at unicorn businesses, gaining experience across various industries. At New Relic, he grew revenues to $500M. At Cox Automotive, he oversaw a $5B+ portfolio of brands, including AutoTrader and Kelly Blue Book. Recently, he has led several IPO and private equity exits generating up to ninety times ROI. These experiences have equipped him to guide businesses to scale in growth, transformation, and results. Learn more at [www.kengavranovic.com](https://kengavranovic.com). More on the thinking behind the book is on [my about page](https://kengavranovic.com/about-ken). #### Keep reading - [Code Story Podcast Interview](https://kengavranovic.com/2021/08/21/code-story-podcast-interview/) Ken Gavranovic on Noah Labhart's Code Story podcast: learning assembly at ten, building what became web.com... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Leaders vs Managers: What Actually Separates Them https://kengavranovic.com/2022/09/12/who-needs-managers-when-you-have-leaders/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Leaders vs Managers: What Actually Separates Them By Ken Gavranovic · September 11, 2022 Leadership and management are frequently spoken of as if they are synonymous, yet they are distinct concepts. It's a common misconception that managers inherently possess leadership qualities. However, is this accurate? Are these roles entirely dissimilar? A manager's responsibility is to oversee operational aspects within a company or organization, ensuring smooth and efficient operations. Conversely, a leader plays a different role, motivating team members to pursue goals and forge enduring connections with other teams and individuals. What distinguishes management from leadership? Let's explore. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT IS CLEAR The article contrasts the operational role of a manager with the visionary role of a leader. They are separate entities and not interchangeable. While management is an activity that leaders undertake, leadership is a vital skill that managers need for success. Consequently, there are managers who are not leaders and vice versa. Managers typically concentrate on the daily operations of an organization, responsible for goal setting, providing necessary tools for employees to meet these goals, and evaluating employee performance. In contrast, leaders emphasize inspiring employees to reach these goals, focusing on the broader vision and long-term objectives, and fostering the motivation needed for goal achievement. LEADERSHIP IS CRUCIAL FOR AN ORGANIZATION'S SUCCESS It involves inspiring individuals to collaborate towards a common goal. Management, on the other hand, entails planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. Despite apparent similarities, these are fundamentally different concepts. Leadership drives individuals towards a shared objective, whereas management encompasses organizational structuring and control. Thus, the significance of leadership in any organization is paramount, as it is essential for its optimal functioning. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP Managers handle operational tasks and evaluate employee performance, setting specific goals. Leaders, however, focus on motivating and inspiring employees, setting long-term objectives and guiding teams towards them. Managers have a defined toolkit for their roles, but leaders utilize a broader range of skills, including communication and interpersonal abilities. DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF LEADERS Successful leaders often share certain traits, although there is no definitive list. Common characteristics include the ability to inspire trust, motivate others, pursue goals, take risks, listen, learn, collaborate, and take responsibility. These are key attributes, though not exhaustive, in defining successful leadership. In summary, leadership and management are distinctly different. Managers are involved in the day-to-day operations and goal-setting for employees, while leaders inspire and motivate employees towards these goals. The roles of leaders and managers differ in focus, responsibilities, and skill sets. Leaders often possess a range of qualities, with some being particularly defining. An important consideration is the evolving nature of teams towards empowerment and self-regulation. This raises a question: while leadership remains essential, is the role of managers still as crucial?" Turning managers into leaders is much of what happens in [one-on-one executive coaching](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching). #### Keep reading - [Are You a Manager or a Leader?](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/04/18/are-you-a-manager-or-a-leader-the-difference-impacts-everything/) Are you managing or leading? The difference impacts everything: culture, performance, and growth. Ken Gavranovi... - [Why “We’re a Family” Backfires at Work](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/06/04/the-pitfalls-of-treating-your-company-as-a-family-lessons-from-airbnb-netflix-and-beyond/) Treating your company as a family sounds caring, but it backfires. Lessons from Airbnb, Netflix, and beyond on b... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company? https://kengavranovic.com/2022/05/15/product-led-growth/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company? By Ken Gavranovic · May 15, 2022 #### Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company? The world is changing. As product-centric, market-led companies feel the pressure to take a customer-centric approach as expeditiously as possible. It can be difficult to maintain – let alone devise – the strategies necessary to survive and thrive. As customer demands continue to increase, companies need to adopt a customer-led growth approach to stay ahead of the curve and get the most out of their limited resources. How the buyer and sales motion shifted across three eras, leading to product-led growth. What exactly is product-led growth (PLG)? It is a sustainable, long-term growth strategy centered on creating a product that people want – rather than just a product. The optimal model for today’s end-user-focused market (more on that below), PLG depends on the product to acquire and convert customers. Most companies don't have the luxury of time to let their products mature naturally. They need to get results fast. Product-led growth offers a way of working that leads to a more humane development process, yielding better results with less time and effort. Anyone who wants improved growth results should consider this approach, so keep reading to find out more about how to get started. It’s Time for a New Approach The old development model is built with speed bumps. When companies follow the traditional approach – create and market a product, engage with early adopters, expand rapidly, and then slow down and scale more efficiently – many find themselves in a predicament: They have more customers than they know what to do with, but their growth trajectory hasn't matched their expectations. Or, they see a massive increase in their go-to-market (GTM) expense to educate customers on the value proposition, leading to lower R&D investment and a declining product over time. If you're in this position, you've probably heard about product-led growth. It's a new approach to growth that focuses on the product itself - not the business or marketing strategies that support it. This article will provide an overview of the product-led growth approach, including the benefits, who it's best for, and the key pillars. In the next article, we will discuss how this impacts your GTM operations. But first, let's look at how times have changed and how your product approach needs to change with it. The CIO era: 1980s Sales-led growth in the 80s and 90s was aided by field salespeople, who met with a buyer (CIO) over dinner and on the golf course. The most important criteria were the compatibility of IT products. The Exec Era: 2000s The turn of the millennium brought a sea-change, as data centers faded away and cloud-based services took center stage. The advent of on-demand, onsite slashed development costs. In the Exec Era, outbound salespeople and marketers were targeting a specific buyer: the non-technical executive. The execs purchased new technology based on their business goals, like key performance indicators (KPIs) or return on investment. In this era of "marketing-led growth," sales development representatives (SDR) hunted marketing qualified leads (MQL). Inbound marketing fueled high velocity inside sales, which is why all those who joined in followed it enthusiastically – until they hit the wall. Although the Exec Era is a thing of the past, its memory is alive and well: VCs and SaaS pundits love to reminisce about these days gone by – even as its relevance declines with every passing day. The End User Era: 2010s and beyond Fast-forward to the present day, but rather than a quantum leap, we’ve advanced exactly as expected. Infrastructure is more elastic and scalable than it has ever been before. APIs and modular tools allow developers to not have to write everything themselves anymore, an efficiency gain for customers that results in better products (usually free). Because everyone now has access to thousands of new products, discoverable with just a few clicks or taps on their phone screen, if you want to attract and convert individual end-users, you need a scalable, bottom-up distribution approach that empowers consumers to find, evaluate, and adopt the product on their own. That’s where product-led growth comes in. #### The Business Benefits of PLG The end-user-focused growth model is a win-win. Today, there are 21 large public companies that use a PLG approach - including all of the top IPOs in 2019. As more PLG firms go public every year, this number continues to increase rapidly. Furthermore, post-IPO, product-led growth firms reach an average revenue run rate of $10M and begin to scale at a rapid speed because they're not limited by labor-intensive lead generation or sales processes. With a 2x median enterprise value (EV) of these companies compared to the other SaaS index as a whole, it’s no wonder that they have created over $208B of worth so far. We see this trend continuing into 2022, with much more added market value expected. #### The Three Pillars of Product-led Growth Pillar 1: Design for the end-user End users are in command. They are individuals, not organizations, who think in terms of conventional return on investment. People want to address the problem they're currently facing. “Designing for end-users is really understanding what they do—and it's also truly understanding who you serve," as Tope Awotona, CEO and Founder of Calendly, puts it. In other words, designing for end-users entails putting real people’s needs first. Pillar 2: Deliver value before capturing value Relationships require give and take. In order to get something in return, you have to give your users something of value first. This is why product-led companies prioritize short time to market (TTM), for example, by allowing users to access some (or all) of the features before they need to pay for it-- through a self-serve free trial, freemium model or open-source model. But delaying payment does not automatically provide value on its own. In the time between when a user signs up for a product and when they enter their credit card information, they need to realize how valuable the software really is. That’s the timeframe in which you must solve the user's problem or help them reach the proverbial light bulb moment in which they understand how your software will improve their day-to-day life. This involves creating features and functionality that symbolize your core value, as well as deleting anything that distracts from reaching it. Whether your business model is low-touch or high-touch, a successful PLG company eliminates all obstacles for customers. Pillar 3: Make an investment in the product with go-to-market goals. It generally costs more to produce software than to deliver professional services to a first client. The marginal cost to provide the same value to a second customer is close to zero after that. This makes the upfront expenditure very lucrative in the long run. PLG organizations invest in the product with the goal of generating acquisition, conversion, and expansion. They accomplish this by: - Investing in robust product data that allows teams to track, measure, and analyze user behavior - Developing a growth function that is in charge of ensuring the product improves its distribution, enablement, and ability to capture value - Optimizing the user experience while maintaining product quality. - Experimenting with ways to improve the user journey in multiple dimensions and learn from those outcomes. #### Examples of PLG Businesses Slack Founded in 2009, Slack is a team collaboration platform with universal name recognition. Slack’s success is due to their understanding that they aren’t just selling software. Their value proposition is a more productive, streamlined way for team members to communicate. With user experience as their North Star, Slack is the epitome of a PLG business. Calendar A scheduling tool that makes it easy for people to find meeting times, Calendly is a highly viral product: Every time someone uses the app to send an invite, they are also advertising and starting a viral loop. There are few barriers to entry, and because the technology solves a nearly universal issue, it's quickly picked up by users. Airtable Founded in 2012, Airtable is a spreadsheet database hybrid that helps people better organize their personal projects. Currently worth more than $1 billion, with customers up and down the Fortune 1000 list, Airtable is used world-wide. Created as a self-serve product, Airtable prioritizes customer success over consultative sales as part of its bottom-up design. #### PLG metrics A new GTM approach to growth requires new metrics. For example: - Growth Rates. Although SaaS companies typically believe they need high growth is key, data suggests that PLG organizations will have slower growth rates until they reach $10 million ARR, at which point the inverse is true. Don’t get caught up on growth rate early on. A slower growth rate might be a sign you’re on the right path. - CAC Payback. Public PLG businesses spend more on R&D costs (product and engineering) than their SaaS peers. The product's sales and marketing expenses are lower, but it's difficult to determine the return on investment of product-related expenditures. - LTV/CAC. This classic SaaS metric doesn't work for PLG companies, mainly because it doesn't take into account some of the key pillars that make PLG businesses attractive: low churn and the chance for revenue expansion from accounts. - Logo Retention. What is the best way to track logo retention in a bottom-up adoption scenario, when you may have hundreds of individuals from an organization, each with their own account? Net Retention is one of the few metrics that crossover. #### How to Measure Product-led Growth The Natural Rate of Growth (NRG) surpasses existing SaaS metrics. Beginning – as always – with the product, it allows PLG firms to determine the proportion of their recurring income generated through organic channels. This is a one-point indicator of the rate at which a firm naturally expands, before adding on incremental expenditures in sales and marketing. The formula looks like this: Natural Rate of Growth = 100 x Annual Growth Rate x Organic Signups (%) x ARR from Products (%) Advantages of the NRG are that it: - Acts as a strong indicator of future revenue - Is trackable from the early days of monetization to IPO - Applies to all software companies, at every stage of maturity - Requires no sophisticated processes or tooling - Indicates whether a business can drive efficient growth via the product itself. #### How to Become Product-led The majority of companies - especially those with roots in the CIO and exec eras - are not product-led. Achieving product-led growth is a journey. While there are many advantages to being founded on PLG principles, any software company can adopt the core tenets of product lead growth to improve user experiences and increase go-to-market efficiency. It is possible for non-PLG companies to become product-led if certain conditions are met: they have strong leadership (or else it will be too difficult), they understand their customers'' pains points, know how to transform problems into solutions that provide value, appreciate creativity above all else in their people (creatives make products out of nothing!), and they have the patience to let their product grow. #### Is a PLG Strategy Right For Your Product? We have identified eight primary characteristics of a successful product-led growth company – some of which must be true in order for you to make the transition. 1. The product-market conditions are favorable. This includes: low marginal costs per user; users have direct buying power; and no existing solution meets the users’ needs. 2. Your product provides a unique, customizable solution to assist individual users with their daily tasks. 3. Your product is easy to understand, evaluate, and adopt into the user’s daily workflow, such that they can recognize its value quickly and easily – without needing help from your employees. 4. You put your value before the paywall and offer tiered options for pricing that increase along with usage. 5. The features and functionalities of your product allow it to serve as an acquisition channel for marketing, selling, and onboarding new users. 6. You get product engagement from marketing funnels, not sales team contact. 7. The more people who use your product, the more valuable it becomes. If you're building a platform, the more services a user connects to it, the greater its value. 8. There are product champions within your clients' firms who promote usage of your solution and help it grow within the organization. With a majority of these criteria satisfied, you’re in a good position to start a PLG transition. However, even if you have all eight, implementing PLG does not happen overnight, nor should it. It's a process that should be gradual, strategic, and always intentional. Stay tuned for the next article in which we will discuss the GTM implications, hybrid approaches for product development/GTM, and how to get started. Choosing between product-led and sales-led motions is a board-level call, and [exactly what I advise on](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). #### Keep reading - [Product-Led Growth or Customer Nurturing?](https://kengavranovic.com/2023/08/29/product-led-growth-vs-nurture/) When should you lean on product-led growth and when does hands-on customer nurturing win? A short field guide to... - [Making Acquisitions Work: Lessons from Web.com](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/corporate-development-unlocking-acquisition-success-leveraging-external-expertise-to-achieve-your-strategic-goals/) Acquisitions drive transformation and growth, yet most underdeliver. How to leverage external expertise to unloc... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## 7 Questions That Boost Employee Engagement 30% https://kengavranovic.com/2022/04/02/stop-the-big-quit-more-than-2-3s-of-us-employees-are-not-actively-engaged-at-work-boost-your-employees-engagement-by-30-with-7-powerful-questions/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### 7 Questions That Boost Employee Engagement 30% By Ken Gavranovic · April 2, 2022 #### Stop the Big Quit ##### More than 2/3s of US employees are not actively engaged at work. Boost your employees’ engagement by 30% with 7 powerful questions. The Great Resignation is here. We might not agree on what to name it, but whether we call it [The Great Contemplation](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2021/11/22/the-great-resignation-isnt-really-a-thing-something-else-is/?sh=68753be23e5b), [The Great Upgrade](https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/07/economy/great-resignation-jobs/index.html), [The Great Reimagination](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/great-reimagination-tom-ziglar/?trk=public_profile_article_view) (or [many more](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2021/12/14/2021-brought-us-the-great-resignation-no-one-can-agree-what-to-call-it/?sh=34f60c39509c)), there’s no question the workplace landscape has shifted, putting companies on the defensive. Since the May 2021 [prophecy](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-10/quit-your-job-how-to-resign-after-covid-pandemic) of Texas A&M management professor Anthony Klotz started coming true, U.S. employers have had to take a good hard look at themselves to explain this dramatic shift in the balance of power. And figure out how to stop it. The three Rs turn seven yes-or-no questions into a repeatable engagement method. There is no shortage of proposed solutions: Workplaces need to be more flexible. Salaries need to increase. Company culture needs to be more welcoming. Yes, leaders need to look at these issues – and not just the leaders whose workers have already stampeded out the door. Statistics suggest 2022 holds more employee churn: In a 10,000-person [survey](https://futureforum.com/pulse-survey/) of knowledge workers conducted by Harvard Business Review and Future Forum, 57% said that a new job is on the table. However, this news might be flashy, but there’s nothing new about it. Companies lose employees all the time. The point is, not all companies. It’s the companies who fail to engage their employees that face the highest rates of attrition. Defined by [Gallup](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improve-employee-engagement-workplace.aspx#ite-357458) as “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace,” employee engagement is the ultimate litmus test for the health of a company. No company will reach its potential without engaged employees, yet [stats](https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/insights/employee-experience) produced by Gartner now show that only 13% of employees consider themselves fully satisfied. That’s the number that should be keeping everyone up at night. Whether a disengaged employee puts both feet out the door is barely relevant. If they’re just warming their chairs, they aren’t delivering their best. A company full of half-in employees is hair’s width away from going under. So here’s what can put your mind at ease. To increase employee engagement by 30% or more, all it takes is the three Rs: The Right Formula, the Right Tactics, and Repeatable Actions. Let’s start with the first R: What is the Right Formula for employee engagement? Ask your employees. It’s that simple. But it’s not one-size-fits-all. You can only improve engagement by taking a deep look at what’s going on in the dynamic between your employees and your unique company culture. That’s why we have developed a very successful diagnostic formula that involves asking seven highly targeted yes or no questions. If the majority of your employees answer, “yes,” to all seven, you’re golden. If they answer, “no,” that’s when the Right Tactics come into play: Ask them, “What would have to be true to get to a yes?” When you listen to their answers, you’ll have a concrete, customized action plan of necessary changes to get the engagement you want. All that’s left to do is rinse and Repeat, by surveying your workforce quarterly or yearly, and you’ll be the one at the helm of the company that bucks the trend. To learn more about these questions, why they get at the heart of employee engagement, and common reasons you might get a “no,” read on. #### #1 Am I accountable? All humans want to be accountable, even employees. Don’t laugh – we’ve all seen employees who’d probably prefer to be napping under their desk, and that’s precisely the point: They’re usually the ones who have burned out from watching their slacker colleagues get promoted. No one wants to be micromanaged, but employees do want ownership of the work they complete – and have their compensation reflect it. Typical reasons employees say they don’t feel accountable: They're not clear Knowledge work can be ambiguous. However straightforward we think the position descriptions and KPIs are, accountability can be difficult to pinpoint. Add to that matrix structures and cross-functional work, and a vague concept gets even more murky. They don’t feel they have the authority Not everyone can lead without positional authority. It requires employees to influence without overstepping, such as the case of delivering an outcome through cross functional collaboration with peers. Those who lack this skill may feel their hands are tied unless they receive support from above. They're scared In a stick-instead-of-carrot environment, studies have shown that people lack the [psychological safety](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2307/2666999) to be open, hold themselves accountable and learn from their mistakes. They don’t realize how important they are If an employee is disconnected from the purpose of what they do, they won’t realize how important they are in delivering an outcome. When they do, they may be more likely to do their part – and be accountable when they don’t. They don't see others (especially leaders) modeling accountability Accountability is a sign of trust, and trust is part (or not) of a culture. When employees see leaders act defensively, point fingers, or take credit for other’s success, it’s not only demotivating but also discourages accountability. When leaders take difficult feedback on the chin, stand up and apologize for an issue–even if it wasn't entirely in their control–people feel more inspired to do the same. #### #2 Do I belong? Humans need other humans. It’s in our DNA. A sense of community is what keeps families, tribes, communities and companies together. Research shows that employees who feel a sense of belonging are more [productive, motivated and engaged](https://coqual.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CoqualPowerOfBelongingKeyFindings090720.pdf). Employees who don’t feel a larger sense of connection will work to disrupt it–and try to build a subculture in opposition. Typical reasons someone says they don’t belong: They don’t align to your company culture If this is the reason, you’ve got two possible issues: your hiring process or and your culture. Your hiring process should be honed to vet people who align to your culture; if it doesn’t, you need a new process. However, if your employees don’t feel a sense of belonging because your culture has shifted, make sure that shift is purposeful – or you may have a rash of people feeling out of place and unengaged. They feel under- or over-utilized; the job doesn’t bring out their best – maybe it brings out their worst If you get this answer, you may want to look at whether you’ve underinvested in an area – or overhired. Maybe you’ve automated the business to a point where it is no longer challenging for your employee. This is an opportunity to consider how to realign the employees’ skills and the company’s needs, by adjusting hiring, management or investment. #### #3 Am I measured fairly? Everyone wants to play a game with a known set of rules and goalposts that don’t keep moving, but above all, they want to play on a level field. Yet 70% of workers [feel](https://www.reflektive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/REFLEKTIVE_RESEARCH-BRIEF_FINAL_111219-1.pdf) they aren’t being evaluated fairly by their managers. The place ‘fairness’ tends to crop up is in the all-important performance review, a highly debated topic that deserves plenty of scrutiny – especially if you’re getting a “no” on this one. Typical reasons someone says they aren’t measured fairly: The process isn’t transparent You can have the most elaborate process in the world, but if parts of it take place in the dark, it won’t feel fair. Air it out and make sure all the stakeholders are aware of what’s going on. The metrics don’t match the implicit values You want to make sure you incentivize employees to do the things you say you want them to – and that those rewards are clearly built into the review structure. There’s nothing worse than being told to do X and then being dinged for not doing Y. The criteria change too often - or without clear justification Once you implement a method of assessment, think good and hard before you scrap it and set up another. Sometimes needs change, and it’s fine to adapt your measurements accordingly, but if you’ve got a flavor of the month, employees will feel like they’re being pushed through a revolving door of metrics. When you do have to change criteria, put extra effort into communicating why – and make sure they line up with your company values. #### #4 Is my opinion heard? You know what’s worse than not asking for employee feedback? Asking and ignoring the answer. Or, more to the point, not communicating what you learned from it–and what actions you plan to take as a result. If you hold a town hall, plan a follow up where you let people know you are evaluating their input and acting on it, if appropriate. Typical reasons someone says they aren’t heard: No one asks Employee feedback should be embedded in your workplace culture at every level. It’s not enough to conduct high-level, yearly surveys; you need to make sure to integrate micro opportunities for feedback regularly, so that your management catches smaller but recurrent issues before they snowball. Nothing ever changes If you conduct regular surveys but don’t follow up, or don’t communicate the (intended) follow up, your employees will resent it. Make a communication strategy around any survey you set up, let employees know when they can expect to hear back from you, and honor your commitment. They’re saying something between the lines Sometimes employees don’t feel comfortable saying things directly – commonplace fears, according to [research](https://smallbusiness.co.uk/employee-ideas-business-listening-2544393/), with only 42% of junior level employees expressing confidence in sharing their ideas. This suggests that your employees’ best ideas are locked away somewhere, but before you can figure out exactly what they aren’t saying, you must assess why their lips are sealed. This means taking a look at your management and how their personalities and procedures are impacting the climate. #### #5 Am I being developed? If you are not growing, you are dying. Everyone wants a chance to learn more skills. Stagnant employees go on auto-pilot. When an employee doesn’t see a future for themselves in your organization, they’re just counting down the minutes to their next coffee break, their next vacation, or their going-away party. When they see work as an opportunity for personal and professional growth, the gears of engagement start to turn. Typical reasons someone says they aren’t being developed: Your developmental program is weak It’s easy to slap together “professional workshops.” It takes more effort to build a cohesive, coherent program that addresses what your employees want – and gives them what they need. It’s even more challenging to build that program and execute it consistently. Career pathways at your company are ambiguous Do your employees know how to get from A to B to C or are promotion policies a deeply guarded secret. When employees feel like they have to play politics to get ahead, their loyalties start to shift. Instead of doing the best work for everyone, they want to do the right work for themselves – and if their efforts fail, they’ll end up demoralized and resentful. A clear, level playing field will allow employees to feel a sense of growth. There’s unhealthy competition This speaks to company culture. Management should be incentivized to develop and promote their best and brightest, not keep others down out of fear for their own positions. A rising tide floats all boats – so make sure your culture and policies reflect this adage. #### #6 Do I have balance? If employees don’t have a sense of “balance,” they will burn out, and burnt out employees are [2.6%](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/282659/employee-burnout-perspective-paper.aspx) more likely to look for a new job. Balance will look different for employees of a fast-growing startup versus an established Fortune 500. The key is that they feel balance. Statistics have proven repeatedly that effective employees have balance and invest in their body, mind, spirit and family. Companies that actively reinforce this have employees that feel cared for. Typical reasons someone says they don’t have balance: You’re understaffed Maybe you’ve already been hit by employee attrition; maybe your staffing hasn’t caught up to shifting priorities. Employees can only pick up the slack for so long before it throws them off kilter – and drains their engagement levels. You lack clear processes [Multitasking is out](https://health.clevelandclinic.org/science-clear-multitasking-doesnt-work/). Focus is in. Your employees might feel out of balance if they are being asked to do too many different things with no clear workflow. When someone knows what they need to do and when, they can develop a clear game plan – and execute it – which contributes to a sense of balance. Your policies and/or your culture don’t promote it In order to give employees a sense of balance, you need to implement the right policies – whether it’s work-from-home options or caregiver leave – and make sure your culture supports people taking advantage of those policies. No one should be penalized for taking advantage of a benefit you offer, so make sure your reviews account for that. #### #7 Do I believe? The seventh “yes” is the single most important; it gets you across the finish line. A company can offer all the perks, but at the end of the day, no one comes to work for the wheat grass juice. A company is not the sum-total of its fringe benefits; it’s just a bunch of people who believe. If it’s just about believing in their paycheck, you’ve got a problem; [mission-driven employees ](https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2018/05/15/the-importance-of-having-a-mission-driven-company/?sh=12db303e3a9c)stick around and are more likely to become high performers than those who are just in it for the direct deposit. It’s that they believe the company will make good on its promises – to the employees, the shareholders and the public. That starts with how closely your lived culture reflects your mission, vision and values. If your employees feel like they’re looking in a funhouse mirror every time they try to figure out what you stand for, chances are, they don’t believe. Ask the question just like this: “Do you believe?” Keep it open-ended. Don’t add in any details. The point is to find out how they define “belief,” whether they don’t believe in your market strategy, your leaders or something else. Then, when you ask them, “What would it take to get to a ‘yes’?” look for patterns in their answers. Unpack those patterns, and you’ll have an actionable roadmap to engagement that is tailored to your company at this specific moment in time. How should you implement the 7 Yeses? Once you have the Right Formula, you need to adopt the Right Tactics, which means unpacking what must be true to get to a “yes.” Ideally, you’ll hold a leadership forum with a facilitator who can focus on the reasons behind any “no.” Collectively, their answers will form company action items that should be prioritized based on percentages. If 82% are unhappy with market strategy, that’s where you focus, and then move down the list, ignoring any outliers. Then, once you have succeeded at the leadership level, you can conduct regular surveys company-wide. This becomes your Repeatable Action that you can implement, until you get your seven yeses. With this method, we have seen a 30% increase in overall employee engagement scores. And, according to Gartner, improving your Employee Value Proposition will also yield benefits such as: 28% increase in employees who are likely to recommend the organization… 40% increase in high performers 6% increase in intent to stay 7% increase in wellness 9% increase in employees likely to accept the job again There’s a lot of chatter about the Great Fill-in-the-Blank, but with the three Rs, you can be the company that dodges 2022’s most worrisome trend. If engagement is the fire you are fighting, this is the ground my [coaching work with leaders](https://kengavranovic.com/executive-coaching) covers. #### Keep reading - [Leaders vs Managers: What Actually Separates Them](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/09/12/who-needs-managers-when-you-have-leaders/) Leadership and management aren't the same thing. What truly separates a leader from a manager, and why the diff... - [Are You a Manager or a Leader?](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/04/18/are-you-a-manager-or-a-leader-the-difference-impacts-everything/) Are you managing or leading? The difference impacts everything: culture, performance, and growth. Ken Gavranovi... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Three Rs https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/28/boost-your-enterprise-agility-by-following-the-three-rs/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Three Rs By Ken Gavranovic · March 28, 2022 A three-part series on digital transformation: [Part 1](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/) · [Part 2](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/21/how-to-operate-like-a-digital-business/) · Part 3 [In the first article in this series,](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/) I made the case for enterprise agility – not just saying you’re a digital business but truly operating like one. It means that throughout your organization, teams accept change, drive towards acceleration and are comfortable with ambiguity. Then, I laid out the framework for successful change. It never starts from the approach – “Let’s go to the cloud!” or “Let’s build pods!” It starts from a business problem whose success can be measured: “Reduce our TTM from 1.5 years to six months.” A measured business problem drives three sequential steps that feed back into the outcome. Once you have a problem and a metric, you need the right [mindset:](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/21/how-to-operate-like-a-digital-business/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business) The scope of the transformation needs to be your people, your processes and your technology. I’ve seen what happens when leaders don’t fully invest in transforming their people, processes and technology across the entire organization: A company buys the latest system, their software team leaps at it, but the operations team isn’t on board, no one updates the necessary processes. With all the friction, TTM actually gets longer. So how do you get it done correctly? Once you’ve got that foundation, you need to turn your attention to the Three Rs – the right formula, the right tactics and repeatable actions for your business problem. It takes all three: The formula is the big-picture framework, the tactics are the blueprint of how it gets done, and the repeatable actions keep the machine humming long after the transformation is implemented. As your goals shift over time, you’ll necessarily hone the three Rs. But because a truly digital company is better able to respond to opportunities and threats, once you’ve taken the first major step towards enterprise agility, each subsequent iteration should go more smoothly. The Right Formula for Digital Transformation The three Rs always depend on your company’s maturity and specific business problem. However, if we use cloud migration as an example, the formula will often involve breaking down the steps of your old process and understanding how they translate to the new technology. If you’re automating the controls the ops team used to do manually, you need to think about how to set up that structure for cloud success. You need to build a system capable of checking the quality code, doing security scans, setting up firewalls and meeting compliance standards. In other words, you need to ask yourself, “What are all the old processes we had and what is the formula to automate that?” If you’re trying to increase enterprise agility, you might be looking for a formula for your decision-making bodies to increase their efficiency. That might mean creating a t-shaped pod where you put the business and technology leaders together or inverting control in your business structure, which requires leadership to create [OKR](https://www.whatmatters.com/faqs/benefits-of-okrs)s that will empower efficient, aligned decision-making. Whether you uncover the right formula yourself or hire a consultant, in most cases, you’re not going to be starting from scratch. I often see teams trying to discover a formula that is well known by others. If the problems have been solved, why not learn from it? Most things already exist somewhere. The Right Tactics for Digital Transformation If the formula is your high-level framework, your tactics get into the weeds and become the blueprint. In the case of a cloud migration, the right tactics will involve looking at how the automated process checks for vulnerabilities, maintains compliance, and restricts data. In the case of building multidisciplinary t-shaped teams – you need the right tactics to determine how these new entities will function: Who are the members of each pod, from what levels of my organization do they come, how many pods do we need, how do they make decisions, what training do they need? There will be trial and error, as you develop these tactics. However, as long as they are built to respond to your measurable business outcomes, you know you’re moving in the right direction. Again, you aren’t reinventing the wheel here, so don’t try. There are best practices for building a [ci-cd pipeline](https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/ci-cd-pipeline) or a [Scaled Agile Framework](https://www.scaledagileframework.com/), and many more of the most foundational tactics of agile enterprises. Repeatable Actions for Digital Transformation Together, the right formula and the right tactics will put you on the brink of success, but the third R - repeatable actions - is what ensures the transformation gains traction and doesn’t fizzle out. As the machine gets up and running, you need repeatable actions that feed into the measurable outcomes. In the example of the cloud migration, that might mean asking yourself about how your software and operations teams continue to integrate and innovate. In the case of the pods, you might need to ask yourself, “What’s my reporting structure? How do I ensure they continue to make decisions even when there’s friction?” Everything in this step points to the measurable outcomes, so as you systematize the repeatable actions, you get feedback that tells you whether you’ve managed to reduce your TTM sufficiently or whether you need to further tweak some element. Remember, as your teams become fully digital, it means they are embracing change, accelerating and getting comfortable with ambiguity. This means setting expectations for constant feedback, as part of every day operations. The Pay off It’s easy to say you’re a digital company. It’s hard to operate as one. Even digital native brands have to do the hard, constant work of embracing change – especially as they scale. After all, the dinosaurs of today were the innovative companies of yesterday; and without constant change, the innovative companies of today will be the dinosaurs of tomorrow. But when leadership adopts the right mindset and approaches digital transformation as an organization-wide endeavor – involving people, process and technology – the upside is limitless. As automation reduces toil and increases opportunities for high-value work, employee engagement gets a boost, and it becomes easier to attract top talent and respond to competition – which is why, in the end, the digital companies meet and exceed their goals. A company is only a collection of people who believe, so build your company to make the most of your people – by supporting them with well designed processes and bleeding-edge technology. That’s the secret to a true digital business. This framework is also the backbone of the [offsites and planning sessions I facilitate](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). #### Keep reading - [OKRs: Measure Outcomes, Not Activity](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/11/enterprise-agility-okr-outcomes-over-activity/) Most companies measure activity completed, not outcomes achieved. Why that distinction is critical to success. - [Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/) Why product and engineering teams stall, and how to transform them into high performers: field-tested fixes from... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Digital Transformation, Part 2: People, Process, Tech https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/21/how-to-operate-like-a-digital-business/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Digital Transformation, Part 2: People, Process, Tech By Ken Gavranovic · March 21, 2022 A three-part series on digital transformation: [Part 1](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/) · Part 2 · [Part 3](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/28/boost-your-enterprise-agility-by-following-the-three-rs/) When your organization faces scary numbers – a weak quarterly report, low customer satisfaction, sluggish time-to-market – the natural instinct is to play the change card. Something decisive. Dramatic. Digital. Their fingers pointed at the “old” system, so many CEOs want a “new” one. Learning from their IT department that a new system will take 18 months, they go shopping for a tech partner to do it faster. Six months later, they’ve got a new system, a disgruntled tech department, and friction all around. Successful digital transformation addresses people first, then process, then technology, all anchored to the why. A story that starts like this always ends the same way: with more scary numbers on the next quarterly report, stagnant customer satisfaction, or the same bloated TTM. That’s why, before undertaking a digital transformation, leadership needs to answer two questions: - What problem are we trying to solve? - How will we measure success? If an organization enters a digital transformation with a vague goal like, "make this group better," it will end up with overly complicated systems that demand more work. Instead, ask yourself what’s motivating the drive to build the new system, for example, “deliver insurance products faster.” Once you have your reason, you need to determine measurable outcomes, such as cutting delivery time in half or getting higher marks on customer surveys. These questions will have unique answers, depending on the level of your company’s maturity and the challenges it faces. Regardless, companies that succeed at digital transformation follow a consistent pattern. #### Change, Grow, and Scale These Three Things for Successful Digital Transformation We’ve all heard the old adage, technology is only as good as the people who use it. But in a large-scale company, your people also need to be tapped into an organizational structure that allows them to get results in a timely fashion. People, process and technology – they’re like three wheels on the same tricycle. You need to address them all, if you want to change direction and get where you’re going faster. As a certified executive coach and strategic adviser, I’ve seen company after company make huge technological investments in the hopes it will catapult them ahead, only to fail because they only checked two of the three boxes. Of the three, however, most of these struggles are related to the people – not because they lack skills, but because leadership does not prepared them for the change with transparent explanations about why it’s happening. #### Get Your People on Board When the sound of change echoes through the halls, every employee’s first thought is, “How does this impact me?” And no one does their best work in survival mode. An announcement can’t just be, “Hey guys, we’re going to the cloud.” No one will be listening if they’re wondering what happens to their job security after an automation. Start with the motivation: “The competition’s time-to-market is x times faster; going to the cloud keeps us in the game.” Remember, the change is not the outcome; it is the approach to the outcome. Being transparent about the stakes allows employees to know their part in reaching it: “We need to be more efficient… Here’s why.” For example, when introducing the dreaded automation, point out that the goal is to replace low value job functions, giving employees more room to develop the high value skills that increase future prospects. Another way to get your people on board is to experiment with one multidisciplinary team and use their success as an incentive to the company as a whole. A team mindset – that highlights the mutual benefit to employees and company – makes your people more likely to grease the wheels rather than throw a monkey wrench in the gears of change. Even if an employee isn’t actively generating friction out of fear, they won’t be able to put new technology to use if they aren’t trained on all aspects. I’ve seen companies adopt the latest and greatest products – only to have their processes take just as long, because they failed to get their employees up to speed. #### Make Your Process Reflect Your Objectives Once your people have the mindset and skills to tackle your goals, you have to look at how they interact with one another across the company. For example, an insurance company won’t be able to optimize its speed with the traditional approach to compliance that requires multiple checks at every step. Instead, it should build compliance into the new process. Whatever your goal, you need to ask yourself, “What communication structure optimizes for the outcome?” That likely requires a reorg, because, as [Conway's Law](https://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html) suggests, "Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." So if your company is structured in siloes – with traditional marketing, finance, operations and customer service departments – you’ll likely get siloed thinking: operational departments that are discouraged from working with each other and, as such, unlikely to achieve any higher order objective. However, “reorg” can risk being as much of a buzzword as “digital transformation.” Any reorganization has to serve your motivation – and your people. You might incorporate direct and dotted line reporting, so that performance reviews take place within traditional departments but day-to-day work happens in t-shaped teams that have the depth and breadth of knowledge to execute high level work at a fast clip – along with constraints that ensure they make decisions in alignment with the OKRs. #### Choose the Technology that Fits Your Why Once you’ve checked the boxes on people and processes, the last step is to choose the technology that will let you get the job done. You aren’t shopping for features and functionality; you are buying or building a product that you can integrate into your enterprise with your people and processes, optimized for your specific business outcomes. Before you reach for the “[shiny new object](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/06/15/13-industry-experts-share-reasons-companies-fail-at-digital-transformation/?sh=32ed36f07a3f),” have you done the market research? If your problem has been solved before, how? If not, do you need a bespoke solution? Make your technology respect the patterns. Is it a buy or build? Don’t customize if it’s not necessary, but if it is, what’s the approach? What does maintenance look like? Are you kicking your problem down the road or, worse, creating new ones? How long will the build take? This is where it pays to have your objectives in mind: If your goal is to accelerate your transformation but a build takes two years, is that too high a price? If you go down the “buy” route, find a technology partner that understands the business value to your company and the impact of their solution. Are they talking about features and functionality (red flag!) or about how to move you forward to your measurable outcomes? #### Put Your Company’s Needs First Digital transformation succeeds when it starts from a problem and metrics to determine whether it has been solved. As with [reorgs](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2018/09/28/five-common-causes-of-repeated-reorgs-and-how-to-reorg-more-successfully/?sh=543dadb6112b), [mergers and acquisitions](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjls9ft65j2AhUdg3IEHWAJD38QFnoECAQQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhbr.org%2F2020%2F03%2Fdont-make-this-common-ma-mistake&usg=AOvVaw3YXF1zDrF0amBCfvoARdE_) large-scale changes fail more often than not. That’s because so few leaders understand the need for a holistic approach that takes into account people, process and technology, using the “why” as a touchstone. This underlying why will allow you to get your people on board and up to speed; it will influence any needed changes in process; and it will help you select the proper technological product. Then, as you get your people, process and technology in place, you’ll want to apply the three Rs (right formula, right tactics, repeatable actions) to ensure your change takes root and helps your company to thrive. Stay tuned, and I’ll walk you through how the three Rs apply to digital transformation in Part 3 of this series. (Missed Part 1? [Check it out here](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/) . Want to be sure never to miss my communications? Subscribe to my mailing list below .) If you want an operator in the room while you make this shift, [this is how I work with companies](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). #### Keep reading - [How to Build a Risk Matrix That Cuts Downtime](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/09/risk-management-do-you-know-your-companys-risk-how-to-set-up-a-risk-matrix-to-reduce-downtime-security-vulnerabilities-and-more/) How to build a risk matrix that reduces downtime, security vulnerabilities, and costly surprises: a practical routine. - [Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company?](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/05/15/product-led-growth/) Is product-led growth right for your company? A CPO's framework for deciding when a PLG motion fits, and when it does not. - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Digital Transformation, Part 1: Why It Fails https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Digital Transformation, Part 1: Why It Fails By Ken Gavranovic · March 17, 2022 A three-part series on digital transformation: Part 1 · [Part 2](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/21/how-to-operate-like-a-digital-business/) · [Part 3](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/28/boost-your-enterprise-agility-by-following-the-three-rs/) It’s 2022. All businesses are digital, right? That assumption is not only not as safe as you think it is, it’s downright dangerous to the health of a company. Over these last few decades, we’ve forgotten the bumpy road to digitalization – even as we’re facing another historical inflection point. In the late 1990s, Many businesses went online kicking and screaming. Many more refused to make the substantive changes to accompany their minimal web presence – which is why today nearly 50% of the Fortune 500 from 2000 are gone today. Sometimes, if you want to go forward, you have to look back: One of the problematic legacies of the 2008 downturn is the idea that IT is a commodity that can be outsourced to the lowest bidder. With wide competitive moats, it seemed like a no-brainer to save on cost, but that short-term savings came at a long term cost. Today, those companies find themselves lacking in enterprise agility: the ability to change, adapt, and compete. Now the tides are turning again, and companies stuck in this outdated mode are at risk. The velocity imperative reigns supreme: Customers want value faster than ever, and plenty of companies are happy to meet their ever-increasing demands. In 2021, VCs invested nearly $675 billion worldwide in companies that are disrupting: born digital, born to move fast, and armed with a massive war chest, they’re breaking down the competitive moats that some companies relied on. Digitally native brands (DNBs) [know](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/private-equity-and-principal-investors/our-insights/digitally-native-brands-born-digital-but-ready-to-take-on-the-world) why their consumer is drawn to their brand, and they have the data to predict what they’ll want next. Some companies get it: JP Morgan invested nearly $10 billion in tech last year; Walmart [acquired](https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/05/20/jetcom-may-be-history-but-walmart-got-what-it-need.aspx) jet.com – and now they're giving Amazon a run for their money in certain areas; [Domino’s](https://www.wsj.com/articles/dominos-ceo-doesnt-want-a-robot-making-your-pizza-11561644000) has gone 100% automated, allowing franchisors to know every step of the process from order to delivery to satisfaction. Other companies transform for the sake of transformation, not for the underlying business problem they need to solve. I’ve seen companies try to launch themselves into the cloud, one, two, three times, only to fall flat on their face when they realize they bought themselves spiffy new technology with no idea how to make it mesh with their people and processes. Buying or building the shiniest new system does not make you a digital business. In fact, if you make that investment without undertaking the necessary steps, you could end up going slower than before. It’s not just legacy companies that are facing this kind of challenge: Even digitally native brands (DBN) need to commit to continuously evaluating their operations. It’s easy for a pared down startup to operate in a lean way; but as organizations scale, egoes and politics can lead to the creation of traditional siloes – even in the most innovative of companies. #### Signs of a True Digital Business A digital business does not mean throwing dollars at fancy tech partners and walking away. It requires a true transformation in how you operate at all levels. When you’re operating as a digital business: - Change is a constant. As the environment becomes more dynamic, more strategic options are on the table. Instead of fearing change, teams accept it as a constant across the Enterprise, not just in software teams’ continuous improvement retros. - Teams drive towards acceleration. As velocity increases, teams learn to make faster decisions with imperfect data. Once the decision is made, they couse correct in real time with the data that flows in. - Teams get comfortable with As uncertainty increases, scenario planning replaces single-point forecasts. Instead of waiting for direction or approval from “leadership,” teams move forward with constraints. #### How do I Get There? A full-scale transformation is neither quick nor easy. Author Fred de Vito had it right when he said, “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.” The specific steps, of course, will depend on your company’s maturity, its goals and its position in the marketplace. However, in my work as a strategic adviser and coach, I’ve been able to discern patterns. A successful digital transformation requires shifts in every aspect of your company, from mindset to organizational structure. You get what you organize for, as programmer and visionary Mel [Conway](https://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html) taught us: If you have an old-fashioned, siloed organizational structure full of friction, you’ll never produce a game-changing product, as fast or as cost-effectively as a company with true agility. You need to move from… - centralized decision rights to distributed decision rights with constraints (typically critical thinking frameworks like OKRs) - valuing technical experts to valuing business experts who solve business problems instead of checking boxes - disconnected multidisciplinary silos to t-shaped delivery teams - accountability focused on efficiency/effectiveness to measurable business outcomes - an industrial to an entrepreneurial mindset. As you confront transformation, take a hard look at how a great idea moves through your organization and into production. If it’s a tangled, unpredictable mess, with multiple choke points, start by simplifying. When you do, you minimize constraints on your system, at which point you can: - move to t-shaped technology and business teams with boundary-crossing competencies - integrate business, sales, marketing and technology departments into high performing pods - invert control, maintaining focus by implementing OKRs. Not only do these changes massively increase Enterprise Agility, they also boost employee engagement, which means a win all around. Instead of being bound by the old saying, “Pick two: Speed, Quality and Cost,” you get all three. You’ll be able to up your technology teams’ table stakes, expecting them to be: fast, scalable, portable, disposable, high-quality, reliable, resilient, observable, cost-effective, maintainable, continuous and automated. And their operating model should change to adaptive, responsive, autonomous, collaborative, fast-to-fail, blameless, t-shaped, flexible, responsible, data-driven, integrated and most importantly trusted by their business partners. Other benefits will include: - Your corporate KPIs will become multi-dimensional. - You'll stop calling teams “devops” because you know it's an operating methodology. - You'll have a relentless focus on reducing toil for your employees and customers. By automating away soul-crushing activities, you free people up to focus on high-value activities. Now you know what’s in it for you. But the challenges are real: Seven out of ten businesses [fail](https://www.bcg.com/press/29october2020-companies-can-flip-the-odds-of-success-in-digital-transformations-from-30-to-80) when trying to undergo a digital transformation. In my next blog, I’ll explain why getting the right technology is only part of the recipe for success. Without changing people, process and technology, you’ll never make it into the elite who truly achieve enterprise agility. Deciding whether to run this playbook is the kind of question I take on in [company advisory](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). #### Keep reading - [Your Digital Transformation Stalled. Here Is What I Look For.](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/restarting-a-stalled-digital-transformation/) The pattern behind most stalled transformations, one that failed three times before one leader fixed it, and the five questions I ask in the first thirty days. - [Digital Transformation, Part 2: People, Process, Tech](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/21/how-to-operate-like-a-digital-business/) When the numbers turn scary, the instinct is to play defense. How to operate like a true digital business and bu... - [How to Build a Risk Matrix That Cuts Downtime](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/09/risk-management-do-you-know-your-companys-risk-how-to-set-up-a-risk-matrix-to-reduce-downtime-security-vulnerabilities-and-more/) How to build a risk matrix that reduces downtime, security vulnerabilities, and costly surprises: a practical routine. - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... The author's before-to-after shift in how a company actually operates, not just what tech it buys. [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## OKRs: Measure Outcomes, Not Activity https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/11/enterprise-agility-okr-outcomes-over-activity/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### OKRs: Measure Outcomes, Not Activity By Ken Gavranovic · March 11, 2022 #### The difference is critical to your company’s success. [Download the full deck here.](https://actionablegrowthstrategies.s3.amazonaws.com/Outcomes+over+Activity.pdf) For years, companies used to make annual plans to drive more Enterprise Agility. Now they make quarterly forecasts for the same purpose. New tactic, same game. But what if that Enterprise Agility is defined by activity level rather than concrete outcomes achieved that build towards real Enterprise Agility? If annual or quarterly success is measured by activity only, does that actually make a company “successful”? Let’s say the employees were really busy and their “activity level” was high; in fact, they were so busy that they did not have time for the things that really have the potential to move the needle for their company and customers. This is because the broad focus on “activity” for the sake of activity deprived them of the conscious narrow focus on only activity for the sake of achieving certain outcomes. In other words, their “activity” included even the activity that has zero influence on achieving the outcomes you want… So why the heck are we measuring success by activity? This happens often because the company, business unit, or team is missing critical thinking frameworks, which – if implemented correctly – can demolish silos, cultivate connections across different reporting structures, and enable that frontline autonomy that drives new solutions to business problems because people are measured by driving business outcomes vs. activity level. The whole company will rally around the things that matter most to the overall business, aligned in mission and purpose instead of disconnected by silos and turf wars. It keeps members continuously stretching, and you will dramatically increase Enterprise Agility if you implement these critical thinking frameworks quarterly. Enough mystery. These frameworks are known as OKRs. An Objective sits on top of the measurable Key Results that carry it. What are OKRs? Increase sales, margins, and employee engagement, and get more time by doing less wasteful work with Objectives and Key Results. The system of Objectives and Key Results is a critical thinking framework and ongoing discipline that seeks to ensure employees work together. It allows companies and team members to FOCUS ON WHAT'S IMPORTANT. When implemented correctly, it also means making sure the most important things get done first, or they won't get done at all. Do any successful companies use OKRs? Yep. Ever heard of a little company called Google? [Google has been using OKRs almost since its inception](https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2016/08/31/want-to-set-goals-like-google-use-okrs/?sh=2efcf30b2b8e). The Objectives and Key Results framework has been around since the 1970s. The concept was created by [Andy Grove](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ht_1VAF6ik), known as the father of management science, but popularized by John Doerr in his book Measure What Matters. John Doerr also happened to be one of the earliest investors in… you guessed it: Google. OKRs quickly became an important part of management of Google’s culture and way of working. Unsurprisingly, other large tech companies soon adopted the management framework. Famous names such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Dropbox, Spotify, Airbnb and Uber are just a few of the companies that now use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Do I need OKRs? Use this checklist to find out. Do any of these sound like your workplace? - Teams not aligned; they operate in silos. - Low or inconsistent employee engagement. - Inconsistent or incorrect tactics to unclear outcomes. - Everyone’s busy, but if you asked them what was accomplished that moved the company forward last quarter, they’re at a loss of how to respond. If any of those bullet points rang true, continue reading... OKRs are the nervous system of a well-run company. OKRs allow you to Align on Objectives instead of being divided by tactics. Every business is a digital business or a wannabe digital business That means you have to transform all three of the following areas to be successful. If you are a digital business, you have to act like a digital business. Implementing OKRs is a great step in that direction. - People - Process - Technology In this article I will discuss how you can quickly implement OKRs successfully in your organization. You can watch my video below, download the presentation, and even contribute your own great examples of good and bad OKRs to it. You can download the current list here or email okrs@kengavranovic.com with your best or worst examples (but please remove any proprietary data or company name). Where do I start? We start where we always start: with the 3Rs. For a lasting transformation, you must follow the 3Rs. OKRs are no exception to the rule; we have to apply the 3Rs even to them! - Right Formula - Right Tactics - Repeatable Action I’ve made these helpful charts so you can compare the Right Formula directly to the Wrong Formula you’ve likely been using. The Right Formula – Key Takeaways - Objectives indicate WHAT will be achieved, no more and no less. - Key Results benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the objective. - When properly designed and deployed, they're a vaccine against fuzzy thinking and fuzzy execution. - Key Results are measurable and verifiable. It’s not a Key Result if it’s not a number. - Most importantly, a Key Result expands our limits. Remember to tell your teams that this will be iterative. Goal setting isn't bulletproof. When people have conflicting priorities, unclear/meaningless/arbitrarily shifting goals, they become frustrated, cynical, and unmotivated. How do we avoid this? By linking goals to certain team members or the company’s broader mission. What’s the difference between Committed OKRs and Aspirational OKRs? Committed OKRs don’t change. They’re the goals that will be delivered no matter what, period. Aspirational OKRs are the moonshots you can aim for, but don’t necessarily need to deliver. Some companies have them, others don’t – it’s up to you. The benefit of having Aspirational OKRs is that often when we have goals this ambitious, even if we miss them, we often end up reaping some benefit. This can inject surprise opportunities on a company’s path. One last thing about our Right Formula for OKRs here. This one is very important! Always have the group that created the OKR be accountable for the key result. For example, let’s say the business unit has an OKR that is dependent on Group B within this business unit. If Group A has it as an OKR, they are accountable whether Group B delivers or not. This is forcing a function for collaboration/alignment or for Group A to self-serve. This is the #1 mistake in OKR roll-outs. Otherwise teams will have OKRs, forget to get alignment on dependencies, and then state they missed their goal because of another team. It turns into one big blame game. Ideally, have the Key Result be in both teams. Feel free to email me at ken@kengavranovic.com if I can help you on your roll out. Second, the Right Tactic for OKRs The first step is to pick an Objective. As discussed, Objectives indicate WHAT will be achieved, no more and no less. By definition, Objectives are significant, concrete, action-oriented, and (ideally) inspirational… unless they’re Aspirational. Then identify the Key Results for that Objective. Key Results benchmark and monitor HOW we get to the Objective effectively. KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive, yet realistic. That’s your tactic, plain and simple. Here are some examples. Lastly, the Right Formula and Right Tactics mean nothing without Repeatable Action. Once you get the hang of identifying Objectives and Key Results, writing and sharing those Objectives and Key Results, it’s your job to make this process a habit. OKRs are one of my personal favorites because they really help your team understand what matters, what doesn’t, what are obstacles, and how to measure whether or not they’re actually moving towards solving those obstacles. Plus, it gives them the flexibility and autonomy on the tactics to get there versus handing that down specific tactics. Next Steps Turning outcomes into an operating rhythm a team actually runs is the heart of my [strategic planning facilitation](https://kengavranovic.com/facilitation). #### Keep reading - [Aligning Product and Engineering for Performance](https://kengavranovic.com/2024/05/20/transforming-product-and-engineering-teams-for-high-performance-insights-and-solutions/) Why product and engineering teams stall, and how to transform them into high performers: field-tested fixes from... - [Digital Transformation, Part 3: The Three Rs](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/28/boost-your-enterprise-agility-by-following-the-three-rs/) Enterprise agility comes down to three Rs. A practical operating framework for moving faster, adapting sooner, a... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## How to Build a Risk Matrix That Cuts Downtime https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/09/risk-management-do-you-know-your-companys-risk-how-to-set-up-a-risk-matrix-to-reduce-downtime-security-vulnerabilities-and-more/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### How to Build a Risk Matrix That Cuts Downtime By Ken Gavranovic · March 9, 2022 It doesn’t matter if your company is in the Fortune 100 or a small business that you operate from your home, Risk Management needs to be an integral part of your daily considerations to run a profitable business. Of course, depending on your size and scope there will be different factors that need to be considered. A multi-national company needs to focus on different risk factors than a “mom and pop” business. For example, a large company would focus on the risk of a system failure or security breaches while a small business’ focus might be “did I buy too much inventory or provide too much credit to a specific individual”. In either case mitigating risk makes the ‘bottom line’ more attainable. We’re going to focus this article on Assessing and Mitigating Risk for larger companies that have the resources and data available to track and record data daily, weekly, monthly, etc. and report on that data on a regular basis. If those capabilities are available and not used then lack of risk management becomes another large risk factor that needs to be addressed by the company’s senior management. A five-step repeatable cycle for identifying, scoring, and mitigating business risk. While Risk Management is frequently associated with application software risk, it is also very useful when utilized in other activities within an organization. Sometimes the risks associated with a decision isn’t whether moving forward with new products or projects is the right thing to do, but, whether you’re at risk if you don’t move forward. Should we ‘build it and they will come’ or should we wait for a client to ask for it? These types of questions can be built into a risk matrix document specific for a different type of risk assessment than the traditional application model. #### The Three Rs of Risk Management To decrease risk in your everyday operational areas, all it takes is the three Rs: The Right Formula, the Right Tactics, and Repeatable Actions. #### The Right Formula: Five Steps to Score Risk Let’s start with the first R: What is the Right Formula for risk mitigation? The answer for your technical team(s) will be different than your product or finance teams, so, we’ll focus on the techies and highlight a technical solution: #1) Identify and document known vulnerabilities #2) Develop a scoring matrix to rate the highest to lowest risks to the business #3) Prioritize the remediation of the items at risk #4) Communicate to all interested parties #5) Develop project plans to mitigate potential issues #### The Right Tactics: Running the Process The second R: What are the Right Tactics for delivering on the Right Formula? #1) A brainstorming session with the people that know the systems/environments the best. Put together a list containing any known or potential situations that keep the IT teams awake at night. It doesn’t matter whether they are critical situations or just an annoyance, get them on the list so it can be considered complete. #2) Using criteria such as Severity, Likelihood, and Impact, create a scoring matrix of all the list items. #3) Align your business leaders and IT teams together to determine prioritization of the items on the risk matrix #4) Communication is essential. Document and publish details both laterally and upwards in the organization. #5) Make it happen. When you follow the steps, you’ll have a concrete customized action plan of necessary changes to get the results you want. #### Repeatable Actions: Making It Quarterly All that’s left to do is rinse and Repeat, by repeating the above exercise on a quarterly or yearly basis, you’ll have the knowledge to make the right decisions on how to spend your investment dollars without putting the company at risk. #### What a Risk Matrix Contains A typical Risk Matrix would be a simple document containing things like nature of risk, likelihood of risk occurring, severity of the of the risk, impact of the risk to the business, costs to remediate the risk, when might the risk occur, and $ cost associated in worst case scenario. Using the operational metrics collected continually on 365/7/24 basis and having your technical teams performing scheduled reviews of their systems and scoring those various systems against the operational metrics data will help to determine the “Risk Factor” associated with any identified event that has occurred in the past and help to determine what’s the likelihood that it will occur in the future. If the results of the review of each system/application are high severity, high likelihood, and high impact, then mitigation is most likely required to get the impact to an acceptable risk rating. If the impact is low, then maybe the risk rating is acceptable nothing needs to be done. Decisions aside, it’s essential that the exercise is performed in order to be able to make a decision on whether or not to accept the risks. To get a global view of all Risk at the corporate level, each business unit within an organization should create a Risk Matrix for each product/offering available. The business leader of the unit should then prioritize each of the created matrixes to determine the order of importance to the business unit. This will produce at the business unit level a document that can be rolled together with other business units’ Risk Matrixes to assemble an enterprise level matrix to be communicated to the “C” level officers. Once the organization’s senior management has a thorough understanding of the known vulnerabilities, prospective new products and risks to the organization, deciding on where and when to invest the company’s money and resources becomes a less risky exercise. Having the right process and data available makes this possible. #### Using the Matrix to Direct Investment When you put in a Risk Matrix process it not only captures risk, it becomes a fantastic tool for year-end budgeting activities. When you’re looking to determine where you are going to invest your money, by utilizing your risk matrix you can identify some areas that you might not normally invest in. One area that you might not normally invest in is your KTLO applications. Your team tells you that those applications never have any problems, but if the data shows that if “this this and this” happens to your primary revenue generator, you could potentially be putting 70% of your revenue at risk. Proactively, when we see enterprises engage this systematic technique as a risk matrix exercise we see better risk decisions being made. For example, one company determined based on the data produced by the Risk Matrix that a high impact outage lasting an hour could cost them $52 million dollars and the cost to bring that impact down to something more manageable would only cost the $1 million dollars, so proactively they made that investment based upon data. When you institute a repeatable action Risk Matrix, it’s not a one-off exercise that has everyone scrambling around because something just broke, this is being purposeful in determining what your risk posture is on a regular basis, driving your investments and keeping your clients and employees happy. If you use Risk Matrix as a driver for your risk mitigation strategies, you’ll have a safer and more profitable company. In conclusion, Risk is present in almost all situations and can be detrimental to any business or company. By preparing for and determining your company’s riskiest situations, risk aversion, risk avoidance, and risk acceptance, your people and teams will be able to make Risk a manageable variable in your business decision process. By Ken Gavranovic & Alan Surrel (former CTO First Data) Building a risk matrix with a leadership team is standing work in my [advisory engagements](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting). #### Keep reading - [Product-led Growth: Is it right for your company?](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/05/15/product-led-growth/) Is product-led growth right for your company? A CPO's framework for deciding when a PLG motion fits, and when it does not. - [Product-Led Growth or Customer Nurturing?](https://kengavranovic.com/2023/08/29/product-led-growth-vs-nurture/) When should you lean on product-led growth and when does hands-on customer nurturing win? A short field guide to... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## Code Story Podcast Interview https://kengavranovic.com/2021/08/21/code-story-podcast-interview/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### Code Story Podcast Interview I joined Noah Labhart on the Code Story podcast for a Season 5 bonus episode. We talked about the path from writing assembly as a kid to running product and engineering at scale, and what actually makes a technology organization work. Ken Gavranovic lives in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, namely Alpharetta, with his wife Heather and two teenage daughters. As a kid, he was fascinated by the movie War Games. What excited him was not the war aspect, but the fact that a kid could sit in front of a computer and build anything with their mind. While living in Galveston, TX, he dove into computers as a 10 year old, reading books and learning assembly. His first computer job was working on the Pick operating system, where he built a way for people to send faxes from their desk. The year after, his solution was a two million dollar business. After that he moved to NY to write software, and then to Florida. While in Florida the internet started booming, about the same time as AOL. He figured out everyone was going to run their business on the internet, so he moved to Atlanta to be in a place with the highest density of bandwidth, and built what is known as web.com today. Ken was part of many transformational efforts throughout his career. Before the venture he was in at the time of this interview, he ran product and engineering at New Relic. Three things drew him to that role: a purposeful culture, a world-changing goal, and the size of the opportunity in front of him. This interview was recorded in 2021. Role and company references reflect that time. The longer version of this story lives on [the about page](https://kengavranovic.com/about-ken). #### Keep reading - [Business Breakthrough 3.0 Out Now! Don't Wait, Buy Now](https://kengavranovic.com/2023/06/02/business-breakthrough-3/) Business Breakthrough 3.0 has Arrived “BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH 3.0 offers practical insights to drive structure af... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ## No-Code Doesn’t Mean No Software Engineers https://kengavranovic.com/2021/04/27/no-code-doesnt-mean-no-software-engineers/ [← Insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/) ### No-Code Doesn’t Mean No Software Engineers By Ken Gavranovic · April 27, 2021 Among software development and tech professionals, there’s a lot of buzz and hype around no-code platforms. No-code has enormous potential to transform the way we build applications and fundamentally shift the software development landscape. This is largely because line of business employees can use it to reconfigure and/or create applications to help them be more efficient in their specific use cases. Yet behind all the excitement, many software engineers and IT teams are feeling a sense of discomfort and hesitancy. There’s an elephant in the room that no one is talking about. That elephant represents this thought: “If we don’t need code to build software, what does that mean for people who write code?” No-code does not remove engineers; it moves their effort from low-level plumbing to higher-value work. It’s a natural human response, one that we’ve seen play out over and over again throughout history. Cloud computing was supposed to displace Ops; artificial intelligence and automation were supposed to replace developers; robotics are going to replace the human workforce. Change is hard, but it’s transformational once executed. Think about the long weeks teams used to wait for hardware before the cloud empowered instant computing. It’s easy to see how software engineers might have this concern about no-code–a technology with a name that is the antithesis of what they do. But the idea that no-code will render software engineers and IT teams–and all the work they have already done–irrelevant, is stifling opportunity. No-code doesn’t mean no development or engineering; it means accelerating delivery and unleashing creativity and innovation. At the enterprise level, no-code expedites time to market, increases reliability and maintainability while simultaneously reducing costs and future-proofing investment decisions. Organizations that have embraced no-code are already getting ahead and benefiting from better business agility. This eWEEK Data Points article presents industry information from Ken Gavranovic, Head of Platform, Engineering and DevOps at [Unqork](https://www.unqork.com/). Here’s what actually happens when software engineering or IT teams invest in no-code: No-code doesn’t mean no software engineers; it means accelerating delivery and unleashing creativity and innovation. Read what actually happens when software engineering or IT teams invest in #nocode in my op-ed via @eweek: [https://bit.ly/3tYauTl](https://bit.ly/3tYauTl) Devs can get back to doing what they love with @Unqork. Weighing platform bets like no-code is a classic [project advisory](https://kengavranovic.com/strategy-consulting) question. #### Keep reading - [Digital Transformation, Part 1: Why It Fails](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/17/do-you-operate-like-a-digital-business/) Every company calls itself digital. Few truly operate that way. The dangerous gap between claiming to be a digit... - [Digital Transformation, Part 2: People, Process, Tech](https://kengavranovic.com/2022/03/21/how-to-operate-like-a-digital-business/) When the numbers turn scary, the instinct is to play defense. How to operate like a true digital business and bu... - [The Science of Accountability](https://kengavranovic.com/2026/06/16/the-science-of-accountability/) Accountability drives performance, but most leaders capture almost none of it. The research on why it backfires... [Work with Ken](https://kengavranovic.com/booking) [More insights](https://kengavranovic.com/insights/)