Start-ups – Meaford

Should you prepare for your employer to outgrow you?

February 24, 2021

This is a conundrum. You are early in your career in the tech industry and you love working for a small start-up. You enjoy the pace, the energy, and the innovation. Every day you feel you are making an impact. The company is laser focused on growth and success and the culture is all about ...

Courage

December 5, 2020

Everyone knows that an executive’s job is to achieve the outcomes that they have been tasked to achieve. “Say it > Do it, No Excuses” is a common mantra used to describe performance expectations for a senior leader. As people rise in corporate ranks, what many leaders are sometimes slow to grasp is that their ...

Are you climbing a career ladder? Or using the staircase?

November 23, 2020

After you read this title, you may be asking, what’s the difference? Many people talk about “climbing the corporate ladder”, getting promoted from an individual contributor to a Manager, then Director, then Vice President, and onwards into the executive ranks. Many think about their career as a ladder, each step moving you higher vertically. Unfortunately, ...

Think Like An Executive

November 17, 2020

I was recently asked by a client to be a guest on a monthly leadership series that they host for their approximately 200 leaders in their 1500-person business unit. The topic that I was asked to speak on was “How to Think like an Executive”. The audience ranged first line managers to vice-president level. Given the ...

COVID-19 Realities

September 17, 2020

Like many, I am trying to follow COVID guidelines to limit physical business and social interactions, keep my bubble small, wear a mask when out and about, hand wash and sanitize frequently, but I must admit that it is getting harder to stay as diligent as I was in the early months of the pandemic. ...

Working post-COVID… for the times, they are a-changin’

May 4, 2020

You may have seen the headline “OpenText won’t reopen half of its physical offices post COVID-19 pandemic”. In the article, the writer says Opentext’s CEO Mark Barrenechea “is saying out loud what a lot of C-level executives are thinking. The new normal will require less commercial real estate as the capital expenses required can be deployed ...

How do you know if your consultant’s proposal is reasonable?

July 1, 2019

In the tech world today, there are many senior executives who have had successful careers and as a transition into retirement offer their services as a consultant or advisor. Many have a wealth of experience and wisdom to share, but many are also learning the craft of consulting as they go. A few weeks ago, ...

Value Realization, not just Value Proposition

June 3, 2018

I work with many enterprise class B2B software and SaaS companies. Many are continually looking for ways to increase the value proposition to grow average deal size, but in their search for greater Value Proposition, they often miss the concept of Value Realization. Consider this example. You are the maker of lead generation software operating in ...

Career Advice 101 – Observations looking back over many years

September 14, 2017

When I was in my twenties and thirties, I didn’t have a career plan. Even though IBM invested heavily in employee development, I never took career planning seriously and unlike many of my peers, I never aspired to become a CEO or senior executive. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and worse, I ...

What is the real cost of recruiting?

May 18, 2017

I work with early stage software companies ranging from those with only a few dozen employees to those with a few hundred. Each will say that they are part of the talent war and are struggling to find qualified employees to fuel their growth. Yet, most companies have not quantified the cost of recruiting, the ...

Category: Start-ups