Training

“The purpose of education must be to elevate the individual.”

Maria MontessoriThe 1946 London Lectures

In my training work I focus on two main audiences:

Founders, senior executives, managers, and their teams in startups and scaleups
Innovation practices, boards, executives and functions at large and very large organisations (50,000+ people)

Note on formats

Short workshops / keynotes are typically 45-90 minutes, with time for discussion or Q&A. They can be delivered one-off, combined or slot into a larger content programme.

Long workshops are typically 1/2 day to 1 full day (with breaks).

Workshop series / short courses are typically 2-4 sessions delivered over a multi-day or multi-week period.

Courses normally refer to 6-12 week (24-120 hours) of comprehensive training.

Facilitation is available for peer circles, roundtables, panels, pitch clinics, off-sites, feedback sessions, etc.

Content is often combined with facilitation, as well as individual or team coaching.

Startups & Scaleups

Most of my workshops for startups and scaleups are designed for the time and money constraints of early stage and high growth companies. That is—short and to the point.

This also works well for those who support entrepreneurs and their busy teams—VC funds, incubation, acceleration, and academic programmes.

However, intermediate and advanced content can’t really be covered in an hour, and may need to be broken into multiple sessions.

Engagements with facilitation or group work are often longer as well, requiring a regular cadence or more intensive delivery.

Keynotes & Short Workshops

Startups & Entrepreneurship

In brief, the history and deeper context behind Lean Startup, Customer Development & Product-Market Fit
Why nobody cares about your launch and MVP isn’t a thing
Framing commercial validation on the basis of assumptions, risks and hypotheses
What venture investors are really looking for in a startup
Using this knowledge to set up your team and fundraising for long term success

Minimum Viable Breakthroughs

Risks, Hypotheses and What’s Next

Steve Blank’s Customer Development model was refined by Eric Ries in the Lean Startup methodology, describing how startups find commercial success—and relying on management and business principles that stretch back over a century.

These gave rise to the concepts of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Product-Market Fit (PMF). And while today these are goals commonly set by investors, can startups truly use them to navigate their execution?

Through lessons from 1,000s of founders, we’ll look at how—regardless of stage or industry—successful startups can effectively test and validate propositions in the market, and examine how the rigorous process of identifying assumptions and strategic risks apply throughout the journey into growth—and beyond.

We’ll also explore how using experimental language in framing challenges and objectives can help you communicate more effectively with your team, your board and your investors.

The two most critical metaphors driving startup execution
Key concepts such as KPIs, OKRs, SMART, AARRR in broader context
Using metrics and hypotheses to measure, validate and sustain your progress
Why OKRs should be your top (but not top-down!) priority
How to avoid common pitfalls in introducing and applying OKRs
Defining success through outcomes and communicating strategy (including investors)

Making Strategy Work

OKRs, Metrics and Where To Start

You may have 10, 10 thousand or 10 million users. Your team might be 5 or 500 strong. But whatever “stage” your company is at, identifying meaningful metrics and establishing a goal seeking, setting and refining culture will make the difference in translating strategy into commercial success.

But while we all recognise that metrics are important, and would rather be strategic than not, effectively empowering your team to execute with clarity, under intense ambiguity and pressure to deliver, can be one of the toughest challenges for a startup to overcome.

Drawing on Peter Drucker’s Management by Objectives (MBO) and Andy Grove’s Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)—developed at Intel and used by Google and other modern tech juggernauts—we’ll discuss why instilling a measurement mindset and equipping people with the right tools and behaviours can radically change how it feels to ask “how are we doing?”.

Crucially, we’ll point to where most teams fail early on in applying OKRs, and examine specific tools and tactics that are key to different phases of growth.

Avoid death traps and differentiate between torpedoes and icebergs
Manage risk by assessing your pipeline and mapping stakeholder relationships
Win on superior intelligence
Plan and account for the unique (but entirely common) attributes of large organisations
Negotiate and set milestones and expectations
Successfully engage through innovation teams and startup interfaces
Tips and hacks for winning, and how to leverage their strengths to help you

How Not To Die

When Selling to the Big Guys

For a startup, time is oxygen. So what do you do when selling into corporates or government—organisations that have an entirely different relationship with time?

This is made even tougher within regulated industries (such as finance or healthcare), but many sectors have their own unique commercial dynamics and complex ecosystems that get in the way of making progress.

And across industries, existential risks can be masked by the apparent “good behaviour” of innovation departments and internal champions.

Which is why the vast majority of startups selling to enterprise die a slow, agonising death.

So how can smart startups survive punishing (12-36 month) sales cycles, successfully negotiating relationships with organisations many times their size?

Taking lessons from hundreds of case studies, we’ll review a mix of insights, strategies and tactics to de-risk and accelerate the process of gaining a market with BIG as customers, partners or investors.

Our playbook will draw on tactical empathy, stakeholder intelligence and an understanding of how people and organisations operate in the real world.

Telling the difference between 3 types of money
Why investors and founders see fundraising differently
Profiling investors from across the table
When to raise and when not to raise VC
Tools for going from zero to $5M raised
Keys to managing anxiety and maintaining a healthy blood pressure
YES and NO in venture context
The true meaning of due diligence

Into the Venture Arena

VC Fundraising Strategy at Early Stage

Fundraising is one of the most challenging aspects of running a startup, consuming founders’ time, effort and attention and generating countless risks and frustrations.

Some see raising money as a necessary evil. Others don’t see it as necessary at all. But if you haven’t secured your first check from an institutional venture capital fund, or even had your first meeting with a professional investor, how can you see around corners, or through the smiles?

In this workshop we’ll leave most talk of pitching out of scope. Instead we’ll offer basic, actionable advice for executing on raising venture investment, examine strategic challenges in soliciting and accepting specific types of capital, and suggest a simple playbook for managing the fundraising process itself.

We’ll also highlight potential missteps and warning signs that many startups ignore, and demonstrate how to read investor behaviour and actions, not just their words.

The “why” and “who” of roadmaps
Mapping the phases of a startup journey
Balancing external and internal factors
Negotiating agile, waterfall and complete chaos
How different functions view roadmaps
Applying roadmaps to investment

The Art of Not Getting Lost

Roadmaps for Startups and High Ambiguity

Throw the word “roadmap” around any startup conversation, and watch as controversy unfolds—usually with a dose of sighing and eye rolling.

Though the same holds true within most other product organisations.

Some treat roadmaps as no more than management wish fulfilment, a set of moveable and therefore arbitrary goalposts. Others may think you don’t even need to have a roadmap—because well tended backlogs are enough.

But how can you figure out where you’ll end up, if you’re not actually sure where you’re going?

Roadmaps can take multiple forms. They can evolve with your product and team’s maturity, and sometimes alternate based upon your intended audience and goals.

Adopting a strategic view, we’ll consider how maps can shape reality and perspectives, and show how effective roadmaps can be used as communication hub, resource planning tool, and compass point for maintaining focus and prioritising effort.

Leadership
Vulnerability
Empathy
Collaboration
Burnout
Imposter syndrome
Team conflict
Cash & runway
Personal growth
Bereavement
Illness

When Founders Cry

Stories About Jagged Rocks and Hard Places

From the endless cycle of toxic positivity to the cult of hustle, grit and #StartupLife, it can be extremely uncomfortable for entrepreneurs and investors to face up to the precarious nature of everyday startup reality – and its impact on mental and physical health.

And yet, the extreme hardships that high intensity, high stakes work pile on founders and their teams are one of the most common sources of existential risk for startups.

The vast majority of ventures fail, and many not because of the viability of their business strategy or any errors in execution, but because individual human beings – passionate, capable and driven – could not make it through the hard things.

Here we take a brief pause from the hustle to talk honestly about some of the common human challenges that startup operators encounter.

We’ll share true stories and reflect on what founders can do for themselves, their partners, co-founders and employees to help avoid the worst, and try to create more of the best moments of entrepreneurship.

If you’d like to learn more about these and other workshops, or discuss how we can work together to inspire and instruct your teams, please connect with me directly.

Get in touch

Workshop Series & Courses

Making OKRs Work

Fundamentals of Success for High Growth Teams

From Intel to Google to right now, describing recipes for success and disaster, mapping minefields before kicking off and deconstructing the elements of successful implementation on the journey toward communicating strategy more effectively and bringing clarity to execution.

Deep dive into crafting and refining OKRs and understand how they interact across functions, and relate to planning, budgeting and managing effort, with essential learnings from seed to scale on applying OKRs to evolving high performing DNA.

This set of modules is typically delivered alongside coaching for startup teams starting out their OKR journey, and provides a blueprint and guidance through the 12 month process of embedding OKRs across teams, top down and bottom up.

Getting to How

The Secrets of High Ambiguity Management

There’s a vulnerability and fragility in most organisations that no one is particularly comfortable talking about. Ambiguity about information, skills and capabilities pervades every company but is rarely addressed head on.

And while ambiguity is a natural state, it also the enemy of clarity—the essential need for high performance.

To balance the tightrope between the sheer chaos and extreme discipline required to create commercially successful innovation is no obvious thing. This is a programme for leaders that want to thrive through change and make it possible for their teams to deliver on huge ambitions.

This set of modules is typically delivered alongside coaching for high and fast growth teams. Tailored for executive development, they provide managers from diverse experience with classic and modern thinking and execution tools—techniques and methodologies for empowering people to deliver their best work and execute to win.

Large Organisations

My workshops and content for enterprise, academic and government audiences provides insights and solutions on impactful innovation at large and global scale.

This includes both theory and practical solutions for embedding entrepreneurial mindsets and methodologies, incubating intrapreneurial programmes, building up internal delivery capabilities and creating and sustaining value-generating startup interfaces.

I refer to my approach and experience as “outcomes-oriented”, in that it seeks to create and sustain top or bottom line impacts that are tangible and transformative.

Whether the focus has been on horizons 1, 2 or 3—I’ve been fortunate to work with organisations committing significant resources to meaningful activities driving toward strategic growth.

Keynotes & Short Workshops

Productively define innovation impact
Avoid the dangers of ideation obsession
Deconstruct build / buy / partner decisions
Identify innovation blockers and enablers
Create sustainable delivery capabilities
Set the outcomes free

Innovation Outcomes

Taking Off from Whiteboard to Spinout

Is your innovation practice ready to make the jump from theatre and presentation slide filler to actual, measurable, multi-million bottom line growth and organisational transformation?

For those looking to go past incremental innovation and harness Horizon 3 opportunities, unleashing disruptive outcomes and embedding fresh mindsets, institutional challenges can often seem insurmountable, despite the immense capabilities already built into their organisations.

This workshop outlines a proven playbook, tested by some of the world’s biggest organisations, for creating disruptive spinout success and impactful culture change that drives measurable outcomes.

Playbook for corporate-startup interfaces that deliver outcomes
The winning mindset for achieving mutual value
How to leverage wider innovation ecosystems
Go beyond brand equity in attracting the best startups
Navigate co-creation initiatives

How Can Corporates Accelerate?

Startup Interfaces Beyond the Petting Zoo

When BIG and small find a way to truly collaborate, co-create and exchange value, the outcomes can be dramatic and transformative.

But when enterprises engage with startups, it’s often in one of two modes: as a seemingly magnanimous benefactor generously offering access to brand power, knowledge and opportunity, or else: with wide-eyed curiosity as to how these shiny, tiny beasts can move so fast and burn so bright.

Is that enough to attract to most impactful startups? Can innovation interfaces like accelerators, venture investment, open innovation, challenges, calls and competitions truly deliver value to both startups and large enterprises?

This workshop provides an insider’s view of some of the best and most successful models, with examples and proven strategies from the past 10 years.

Demystifying how startups work (and why)
What it takes to stop innovation in its tracks
The paradox and power of entrepreneurial control functions
Applying innovation horizons to practical risk strategies
Narrowing procurement thresholds

Not Everybody is an Entrepreneur

Startup Thinking for Business As Usual

Peter Drucker famously observed that “the business enterprise has two basic functions: marketing and innovation”.

But in reality, in a large organisation many other functions, including those not commonly thought of as innovative, serve as enablers or blockers between creative ideas and successful innovation.

Not all functions are entrepreneurial, and—despite what some may claim—not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur for your business culture to create and sustain innovation.

However, it can be quietly transformative for more people to see behind the curtain of breakthrough innovation, which this workshop exposes and illuminates for a wider functional audience.

Workshop Series & Courses

Outcomes-Oriented Innovation

From Capabilities to Delivery

Any large organisation can impress with innovation theatre, but few succeed at delivering on innovation outcomes that contribute measurable impact and fresh growth.

From multi-million $ spin-outs through accelerated product development, to deep, DNA-splicing cultural transformation, the opportunities for invention and reinvention are fantastic in scope.

But internal teams that seek to deliver on tangible outcomes within inertial organisations can face seemingly insurmountable challenges. They need creative, effective fixes for age-old problems—solutions that work.

How have some of the world’s most respected organisations sought to overcome these challenges? What is the key to actually delivering on the promise of innovation?

This set of modules is typically delivered alongside consulting and coaching either for—or in collaboration with—internal innovation teams.

Sections can also be adapted (if open) or licensed (if proprietary) for kickstarting internal innovation initiatives across horizons—incremental, adjacent or disruptive.

If you’d like to learn more about these and other workshops, or discuss how we can work together to inspire and instruct your teams, please connect with me directly.

Get in touch

Bespoke Content & Instructional Design

Over the past 20 years, I’ve had the opportunity to lead the development and delivery of professional training curricula deployed by teams of experienced instructors, supporting the creation and running of highly successful incubation, acceleration programmes at global scale.

Over the past decade, I have been involved in creating content for 1,000s of hours of individual and group training, from one-off short form workshops (30-90 minutes) to multi-day courses on entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership and management.

If you’d like to learn about additional content not covered here, or discuss developing unique curricula tailored to your needs, please connect with me directly.

Get in touch