Now that we are returning to working in-person, companies have restarted meeting for regular offsites. I’m grateful that we are able to connect face-to-face again, and I’m also aware that these are “expensive” meetings, and that the time is best used when it is thoughtfully planned. When I help companies…

Founders start companies for many reasons. It’s usually a mix of motivations, some motivations are in their awareness, others are not. Some come from a place of possibility, of expansion, even from love. I call them motivations in the light. But founders also have motivations that come from deep needs…

One tool I’ve taught many founders in order to help them run better meetings and make decisions as a team more smoothly is what I refer to as Collaborative Stances. It’s a term I got from Zach Nies who adopted it from Peter Senge’s work on Shared Vision. There are…

Cofounder relationships are like all important relationships in your life- they require care, time, attention, and I believe skill, in order to maintain. Rupture and repair is the cycle we all experience with our functioning relationships. Humans are imperfect creatures. What we do and say or fail to do and…

A few years ago, I was in a forum with some CEOs who were talking about various problems they had at their companies. One question caught my attention in particular: “What do you do about the dishes in the sink?” It seems like an innocuous and even boring question, but…

It’s a gross analogy, and it’s effective for naming what happens in companies. You’ve experienced it. There’s a problem at the company, everyone knows there’s a problem, you all gossip about the problem, but no one wants to be the one to bring it up in the group. Everyone is…

The bigger (and more expensive) the meeting, the more thought required in terms of how it’s structured. …

I’ve heard it from founders- “I want more women and people of color on my cap table.” They usually say it with a look of despair either during a fundraising round or just after it when they realize that the vast majority of investors in their round all look the…

It’s seems like the startup world has finally started to catch on to the power of executive coaches. Similarly, it seems like a lot of people are becoming coaches. While I was at Techstars Boulder, I developed a coaching program that matched dozens of great executive coaches with startup founders…