Why Install This System?

The Executive Leadership Performance Accelerator (ELPA) is a 16-Week proving ground for leaders who are ready to operate at The 120 Standard.

This is not leadership theater. It is a live installation of the 120VC Execution Leadership System, led by executives and installed directly into real work.

The accelerator transforms reactive managers into Execution Leaders who:

• Lead with clarity under pressure

• Build aligned, accountable Leadership Teams

• Install operating rhythms that replace burnout-busy with predictable execution

• Deliver outcomes that measurably improve Customer Satisfaction, Team Satisfaction, and Profitability

Executives do not attend ELPA.
They lead it.

The Executive Leadership Performance Accelerator (ELPA) is a high-energy, 16-week cohort immersive experiential training of the 120VC Execution Leadership Operating System.

Phase 1 – 16 Week program features: 

• 8 Live Sessions with J. Scott: Learn the 120VC CORE leadership execution system. Alternating Wednesdays after Orientation Week.

• Weekly Assignments: Actionable practices based on over 25 years of 120VC best practices.

• Community Interaction: Engage with your cohort in real-world settings.

How It Works

Cohort Community
Join a selective cohort of Leadership Teams installing the system together. Cohorts are intentionally limited to protect execution quality and peer accountability.

Weekly Live Execution Cycles
Each week follows a disciplined cadence:

• Apply the system to live work

• Surface blockers and misalignment

• Make decisions and commitments

• Review execution evidence

Bi-Weekly Instructor-Led Sessions
Eight live, 2.5-hour Zoom sessions with J. Scott focused on system installation, not theory.

ELPA Dashboard
Powered by Basecamp, the dashboard serves as the execution hub for artifacts, priorities, commitments, coaching feedback, and cohort communication.

The 5 Knowledge Areas are not concepts. They are measurable leadership behaviors practiced weekly, coached in live work, and scored through TQM, delivering immediate execution improvement and exponential gains in performance, ROI, and leadership capability.

Knowledge Area #1 Personal Mastery: Getting 120% Intentional

Weeks 2-3

Problem Statement: “I’ve mastered the skills of my craft, but I’m still stuck in reaction mode. I’m constantly firefighting, overwhelmed, and burnout-busy because I have too many #1 priorities that change constantly.

How We Solve It: We equip team members and leaders with the discipline and tools to master their priorities, to capture, vet, and focus relentlessly on what truly matters. Using systems like the 2x2, the Daily Focusing Exercise, and the Eyes Up Report, they turn intention into action and lead with clarity and control.

The Shift: Most managers assume subject matter mastery is enough, that if someone learns their craft, whether plumbing, programming, or driving a forklift, they’ll be successful. But the biggest miss in the workplace is that subject matter expertise alone doesn’t drive outcomes. To succeed, two things are required: first, mastery of a craft, and second, personal mastery of priorities. Team members and Leaders must be able to capture, vet, and prioritize their commitments, then execute them as planned. Nobody can do this for you!

This is where the 2x2, the Daily Focusing Exercise, and the Eyes Up Report come in. These tools transform intention into disciplined action. By practicing them alongside key readings and exercises, leaders build the clarity and control to consistently deliver outcomes that drive business growth while crushing burnout-busy.

Knowledge Area #2 Mastering Management - Managing Teams That Get Sh*t Done

Weeks 4-6

Problem Statement

“My team keeps missing deadlines and reacting to fires. Our meetings don’t create clarity, commitments aren’t followed through, and I’m left carrying the weight because nothing feels aligned or reliable.”

How We Solve It

We teach managers the disciplines that create alignment, clarity, and predictable execution. Leaders learn how to run DOINGS instead of meetings. DOINGS are working sessions where the team gathers to advance objectives, make decisions, and generate testable commitments. From Weeks 4–6, leaders also learn how to foster real commitments through promise-based management and radical candor, challenge assumptions using the Ladder of Inference, and manage accountability with transparency and no-blame coaching.

The Shift

Most teams don’t struggle from a lack of effort. They struggle because their current approach to gathering doesn’t drive progress. Traditional meetings produce discussion. DOINGS produce outcomes. In this knowledge area, we introduce DOINGS as a new management discipline: working sessions where preparation is mandatory, clarity is non-negotiable, and every gathering moves the work forward. If someone shows up without completing the pre-work, the room goes heads-down until everyone is ready. If a follow-on session is needed, it’s scheduled before anyone leaves because if it’s not on the calendar, it won’t happen.

But DOINGS are just the beginning. Leaders learn how to turn conversations into commitments using promise-based management, elevate honesty and speed through radical candor, eliminate the assumptions and internal stories that derail execution using the Ladder of Inference, and how to manage commitments instead of people. They also learn how to manage commitments with transparency and accountability that feels supportive instead of punitive, enabling their teams to take ownership instead of avoiding responsibility.

When leaders master these disciplines, their teams become aligned, predictable, and capable of delivering outcomes they have committed to. Chaos disappears. Accountability rises. And teams finally start getting sh*t done, together, on purpose, and on time.

Knowledge Area #3 Mastering Leadership - From Managing People to Leading Thinkers, and Unlocking the Collective IQ

Weeks 7-9

Problem Statement

My team is full of capable people, but they don’t bring their full thinking into the room. They wait for direction instead of taking initiative. They ask for permission instead of proposing solutions. They hesitate to ask questions that might make them look inexperienced. They avoid challenging ideas or direction, even when clarity is missing.

People don’t act this way because they lack talent or care. They act this way because they learned it was safer to stay quiet. Speaking up, challenging direction, or admitting uncertainty taught them to protect themselves instead of engaging fully.

As a result, I am carrying too much of the thinking. I am the bottleneck. I am connecting dots, solving problems, and making decisions that need to be owned by the team. I’m overwhelmed, stretched thin, and operating in constant reaction.

How We Solve It

In Knowledge Area #3, we teach leaders how to stop being the source of answers and start leading thinking.

Using coaching, feedback, and facilitation disciplines, leaders learn how to engage their team in problem-solving instead of assigning solutions. They practice shifting from telling people what to do to helping them think through what needs to be done, why it matters, and how to approach it.

Through Weeks 7–8, leaders learn and practice how to:

• Build trust through predictable leader behavior in moments of tension, uncertainty, and challenge, so people know from experience, not intention, that speaking up, questioning, and disagreeing won’t cost them

• Use active listening as a leadership tool to help others think their way to a solution they own and believe will work, creating real alignment, confidence, and shared accountability before execution begins

• Give and receive feedback without defensiveness so ideas can be improved instead of protected

• Use storytelling and experience sharing to teach without prescribing

• Create psychological safety that raises the performance bar by enabling early challenge, honest questions, and shared ownership, so accountability tightens and execution no longer depends on the leader being the bottleneck

• Coach as a team to raise the standard of thinking, clarity, and ownership, address performance breakdowns in private so public coaching builds capability, not compliance

Leaders practice convening their team around problems instead of updates, drawing ideas out of others, and coaching thinking until it is clear enough to commit and execute. The focus is not on consensus or comfort, but on clarity, ownership, and better decisions.

As these skills are applied, thinking moves out of the leader’s head and into the team. Initiatives move faster, solutions improve, and execution becomes shared instead of centralized.

The Shift

Most leaders believe their job is to have answers. In reality, that belief is what keeps teams dependent, and leaders overwhelmed.

Leadership is not about handing people solutions. It is about leading the thinking until the team develops a solution that the leader and team believe will work.

From this point forward, leaders draw a clear line: When someone asks for permission or asks how to do something, the leader does not answer. They ask questions, surface assumptions, and coach the thinking until the person or the team comes up with a solution the leader believes will work.

Coaching is how leaders turn intent into execution. It is how empowerment becomes ownership, trust becomes action, and accountability becomes real. Without coaching, leaders either rescue their team by solving problems for them or abandon their team by telling them to figure it out. Coaching is the discipline that avoids both.

Coaching is what moves thinking out of the leader’s head and into the team without lowering the bar. It builds confidence through authorship instead of reassurance. It develops judgment instead of dependence. It replaces permission-seeking with initiative and silence with contribution.

This is how leaders stop being the bottleneck without stepping away. It is how they scale themselves without disengaging. It is how teams learn faster, make better decisions, and execute with alignment instead of guesswork.

Most leadership advice talks about setting people up for success. Coaching is how leaders actually do it. Not by giving answers. Not by letting people fail to learn. But by leading thinking until success is likely and ownership is earned. Coaching is a powerhouse!

This is the discipline that makes trust measurable, psychological safety productive, and accountability sustainable. Without it, leadership collapses into control, abandonment or overwhelm. With it, teams grow stronger while outcomes improve.

This shift is grounded in a simple promise:

We will succeed together, or fail and learn together, but we will always move forward as one team.

When leaders live this promise, coaching becomes the engine of performance. Thinking moves out of the leader’s head and into the team. Initiative replaces permission. Ownership replaces compliance. The leader stops being the bottleneck because leadership is no longer centralized. The entire team is now leading in the work. And without it, the next level of leadership is not possible.

 Knowledge Area #4: Operating as a Unified Leadership Team – Replacing Escalation with Shared Ownership and Peer Accountability

Weeks 9-12

Problem Statement

“My direct reports are highly capable, committed leaders, but we don’t operate as a team. I have a group of functional owners. Issues get escalated instead of resolved together. Lanes get protected instead of the business being owned as a whole. Silence gets mistaken for alignment, and disagreement gets deferred instead of surfaced.

As a result, we miss critical interdependencies. The handoffs between functions that determine whether my biggest bets succeed or fail are poorly understood, weakly owned, or addressed too late. These breakdowns don’t fail loudly. They fail expensively. The outcomes that matter most are the ones no single team can accomplish alone, yet we continue to operate as if they can.

We need to be investing in growth, transformation, and scale. In reality, I’m often actively funding failure. Big bets get approved and resourced without my direct reports operating as a team. Interdependencies go unmanaged. Tradeoffs go unowned. Risk gets pushed downstream. The investment isn’t the problem. The problem is that I call us a team, but don’t lead us like one.

This isn’t because they don’t care or lack skill. It’s because I haven’t built the muscle required for us to operate as a unified leadership team. Without that muscle, interdependencies stay invisible, escalation feels safer than peer accountability, and we will continue to consistently underperform relative to what the business needs from us.”

How We Solve It

In Knowledge Area #4, we teach leaders how to operate as a unified leadership team instead of a collection of functional owners.

This knowledge area builds the team muscle required to manage interdependencies, make integrated decisions, and resolve issues laterally instead of escalating them. This is where leaders learn to expose and eliminate tradeoffs by working together to drive outcomes that must measurably improve customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction, and profitability, without improving one at the expense of the others.

Through this knowledge area, leaders learn and practice how to:

• Surface and manage cross-functional interdependencies explicitly instead of discovering them late through escalation or failure

• Replace functional optimization with shared ownership of enterprise outcomes

• Expose and eliminate false tradeoffs by fiercely committing to eliminate any investment that won’t measurably improve customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction, and profitability

• Make decisions in the room and own outcomes collectively instead of deferring them upward

• Challenge peers directly and productively without defensiveness or politics

• Build trust through consistent behavior, not intent, so disagreement can surface early without becoming toxic

• Operate using shared team principles that prevent drift toward silence, lane protection, and misalignment

The focus is not on collaboration as a value, but on operating as a single leadership unit that owns outcomes no individual leader or team can deliver alone. This work establishes the foundation required for leadership to move, authority to shift, and accountability to be shared across the team.

The Shift

Many leaders believe effective leadership comes from individual capability and functional ownership. The evidence of that belief shows up everywhere: layoffs, reorganizations, Chapter 11 filings, and CEO oustings. When leadership is fragmented, the system eventually collapses under its own weight.

At this level, leadership is redefined. Leadership is no longer about how strong individuals are. It is defined by how leaders operate together.

Operating as a unified leadership team means escalation is no longer acceptable. Silence is no longer neutral. Protecting a lane is no longer responsible. When leaders act as functional owners first, they create gaps no one owns and tradeoffs the business pays for. Those gaps don’t get filled by strategy. They get filled by heroics, and heroics come at a direct cost. Customers feel it through broken promises and inconsistent experiences. Team members pay for it by delivering five-star performance, getting glowing reviews, and then getting laid off anyway. And the business pays for it in missed growth, wasted investment, and declining profitability.

Heroics are not a sign of strong leadership. They are evidence that the leadership team failed to operate as a team. When someone has to regularly save the day, the system is broken. When leaders seek self-glory, indispensability, or credit, they weaken the organization and teach dependence instead of ownership.

This shift replaces heroics with discipline. Leaders stop positioning themselves as problem solvers and start holding each other accountable for solving problems together. Decisions get made in the room. Interdependencies get owned early. Outcomes are integrated instead of traded off. Accountability becomes shared, not escalated.

When a leadership team truly operates as a team, leadership is no longer fixed. The leadership ball moves. Authority passes to the person best positioned to advance the outcome, regardless of title or function. Leaders don’t just lead their teams. They lead each other. They step forward when they have the clearest perspective and step back when they don’t, without ego or defensiveness. This is what allows the organization to move faster without losing alignment, and to scale without creating new bottlenecks.

As this shift takes hold, leadership stops being positional. Authority no longer comes from title or function, but from contribution to the shared outcome. The leadership team becomes a single operating unit capable of absorbing pressure, resolving tension, and delivering results without relying on individual heroes.

And without this shift, the organization will continue to reward self-glory, fund failure, and depend on heroics to compensate for what the leadership team refuses to own together.

Knowledge Area #5: Execution Leadership – Investing Time, Talent, and Capital for Return

Weeks 13-16

Problem Statement

My organization is drowning in projects. The business has a mile-long backlog and wants everything done faster, cheaper, and without breaking anything. My project and operations teams are overloaded, burnt out, and telling me we don’t have enough people to keep up. The business refuses to slow down to clarify what problems they’re actually trying to solve because they’re “too busy,” yet no matter what we deliver, they say it missed the mark and proves we don’t understand them.

Even when we hit timelines and budgets, the work feels like political warfare instead of progress. Scope keeps shifting, success is never clearly defined, and we spend more time in meetings, dashboards, and status reports than delivering things that drive growth for the company. We’re great at starting projects, but terrible at finishing them in a way that creates real impact.

I need a way to get crystal clear on the business problems we’re being asked to solve, align stakeholders before work starts, deliver outcomes instead of activity, and enable my team to operate at a consistent, sustainable pace, while delivering outcomes that create measurable growth for the company.

How We Solve It

In this Knowledge Area, leaders are taught how to permanently exit the request-driven model by learning how to lead their operations and mission-based work like an external investment firm, to ensure a return on the deployment of time, talent, and capital.

Execution Leaders learn how to stop waiting for work to arrive and start originating the work their teams are best positioned to invest in. They proactively assess where the business needs results next and determine how their time, talent, and capacity can be deployed to measurably improve customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction, and profitability.

By regularly identifying where they can create the greatest return, Execution Leaders learn how to pitch opportunities to stakeholders before requests show up. They validate demand, generate alignment, and secure commitment before effort is spent. Work is no longer reactive or request-driven. It is intentional, the business outcomes are crystal clear, and a return is inevitable.

Leaders learn how to:

• Identify where value is leaking across the business before it shows up as urgency, by recognizing early signals that customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction, or profitability are being degraded.

• Identify opportunities to intentionally improve what is already working, proactively investing in initiatives that can measurably enhance customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction, or profitability before the business asks for it.

• Rationalize potential initiatives against measurable impact to the Three Pillars before work begins, ensuring alignment is created upstream and outcomes are defined before effort is spent.

• Validate demand and secure commitment before deploying time, talent, or capital, eliminating speculative execution and protecting teams from rework and shifting expectations.

• Kill low-value or misaligned work early, before it consumes capacity, creates drag, or forces teams into heroics to compensate for poor decisions.

• Prioritize initiatives based on return, not volume, politics, or who asked the loudest, rejecting any work that cannot measurably improve customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction, and profitability, none at the expense of the others.

The purpose is not more control. It is more clarity, better decisions, and dramatically higher returns on execution effort.

This is the system leaders use to eliminate noise, end reactive work, and ensure that every project exists for one reason only: to deliver measurable business growth.

The Shift

Up to this point, leaders have learned how to execute with discipline, align teams, lead thinking, and operate as a unified leadership team. But there is still one final constraint that keeps even strong leaders trapped in reaction: operating inside a request-driven model.

In this final shift, leaders permanently exit that model.

Instead of operating like a broker who waits for instructions and executes trades on demand, Execution Leaders learn to run their operations and mission-based teams like an external investment firm, ensuring a return on the deployment of time, talent, and capital. This is the standard you would expect from Goldman Sachs.

When Execution Leaders operate with an Investor mindset, leadership stops being a role and becomes an investment strategy. Leadership is no longer measured by effort or activity, but by the return it produces.

Execution Leaders are not just leading the team; they are continually investing in it. Every coaching moment, every rationalization, every meeting, and every deliverable is capital—deployed with the expectation of measurable improvement to the Three Pillars.

As a result, every initiative, every dollar, and every hour has a clear vision for how it will measurably improve life for the company’s three stakeholders: clients, team members, and shareholders.

Clients want to feel loved. Team members want to feel successful and like they are growing. Shareholders want to see stock value growth. That’s it. If you can’t clearly define how something will do that, you don’t do it.

As your team operates with this clarity and purpose, something remarkable happens.
They stop reacting and start creating. They eliminate worry. They become unstoppable.

Your clients stop worrying because they can trust that every interaction will be better than the last. Team members stop worrying because they know exactly what’s expected and that their leaders will coach and invest in their growth. Shareholders stop worrying because growth becomes predictable, a natural byproduct of disciplined alignment, trust, and an unwavering focus on the only three outcomes that matter. The measurable improvement of The 3-Pillars.

When most teams in a single company reach that level of alignment, the company itself becomes unstoppable, not because it’s invincible, but because it’s loved.

Loved by clients who feel seen and served. Loved by team members who feel valued and free. Loved by shareholders who see the return in every measurable outcome.

That’s what unstoppable looks like. A company so intentional, accountable, and trusted that everyone it touches is made better by it. That’s not just success, that’s freedom at scale.

Time Commitment (Phase 1 – 16 Weeks):

• ~8.25 hours per person, per week
  
  

• All of that time already exists today
  
  

• It is currently being spent reacting
  
  

ELPA reallocates time.
It does not add more.

What replaces current time usage:

• scattered planning

• reactive decision-making

• status meetings

• escalation handling

• rework
  
  

Participation Standard:

• Leadership Teams attend together

• 90% participation required

• No spectators

• No partial installs
  
  

If someone cannot make this commitment, they should not be on the Leadership Team.
That truth surfaces early and factually.

Program Structure:

• 16‑Week Cohort Accelerator
  Self‑guided daily assignments in the ELPA portal.
  Commitment: 1 Hour Daily Timeblock

• Peer Experience‑Share Journaling
  Leaders reflect on mindset shifts and application.
  Reviewed by peers, Leadership Team Leads, and 120VC Execution Leaders. Commitment: Included in the 1 Hour Daily Timeblock

• Bi‑Weekly Live Cohort Sessions
  2‑hour interactive Zoom sessions, alternating Wednesdays at 3 PM PST.
  Led by J. Scott. 

Commitment: 2-hour time block every two weeks

• Weekly Leadership Team Coaching (Ongoing)

• Tuesday: Weekly DOING (execution and decision‑making)

• Thursday: Weekly Focusing Exercise (prioritization and alignment)

Commitment: 2 Hours Per Week as a Team

Coaching drives adoption, implementation, and execution across the 5 Knowledge Areas, leading to mastery within approximately one year.

16 Weeks Live Execution Cycles - 8 Live Sessions With J. Scott

Starting March 4, 2026

Week 1

ELPA Welcome & Kickoff

Live Zoom Session:
Executive Leadership Performance Accelerator Orientation

Assignments:

• Watch | Welcome to the ELPA – Becoming Irreplaceable
  
  

• Watch | Completing Assignments, Time Blocking & Scoring
  
  

Knowledge Area #1

Personal Mastery: Getting 120% Intentional

Week 2

Getting Focused – The Discipline of Reducing Stress & Getting Sh*t Done

Assignments:

• Watch | Making the Shift
  
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Unleashing the Irreplaceable: How Multipliers Elevate Teams
  
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Cult of Autonomy Is Killing Teamwork
  
  

• Watch | The Hard Truth: Discipline and Accountability Start With You
  
  

• Watch | The 2x2 Prioritization Matrix: Focus on Outcomes That Matter & Eliminate Busy-Work
  
  

Live Zoom Session:
The Discipline of Reducing Stress & Getting Sh*t Done

Week 3

Becoming 120% Intentional

Assignments:

• Read | HBR – Overloaded Circuits
  
  

• Watch | Shawn Achor – The Happy Secret to Better Work
  
  

• Watch | The Weekly Focusing Exercise: Turning Priorities Into Outcomes
  
  

• Watch | The Daily Focusing Exercise: Advance Objectives & Align the Team Daily
  
  

Knowledge Area #2

Mastering Management - Managing Teams That Get Sh*t Done

Week 4

Leading DOINGS That Get Sh*t Done

Assignments:

• Watch | Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
  
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Art of Leading DOINGS
  
  

• Watch | How to Save the World From Bad Meetings
  
  

• Read | HBR – The Most Productive Meetings Have Fewer Than 8 People
  
  

Live Zoom Session:
Leading DOINGS That Get Sh*t Done

Week 5

Fostering Good Commitments & Taming Your Inner Voice

Assignments:

• Read | Morgan Housel – Useful Hacks
  
  

• Read | HBR – Promise-Based Management
  

• Watch | Radical Candor: Improve Feedback
  

• Read | The Ladder of Inference
  

Week 6

Managing Commitments

Assignments:

• Watch | Brené Brown – Blame
  

• Read | HBR – The Right Way to Hold People Accountable
  

• Read | J. Scott – From NASA to the Boardroom: Transforming Dashboards from Accountability to Mission Support
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Managing Commitments
  

  Live Zoom Session:
  Coaching & Results-Driven Leadership

Knowledge Area #3

Mastering Leadership - From Managing People to Leading Thinkers, and Unlocking the Collective IQ

Week 7

Effective Coaching & Feedback

Assignments:

• Read | HBR – The Neuroscience of Trust
  
  

• Read | HBR – The Leader as a Coach
  

• Read | Thanks for the Feedback
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Storytelling and Experience Sharing
  

Week 8

Fierce but Humble – Sturdy Leadership

Assignments:

• Watch | HBR Video – What It Takes to Be a Great Leader
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Psychological Safety: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and How to Foster It
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Leadership Rules of Engagement
  

• Read | HBR – Coaching Your Team as a Collective
  
  Live Zoom Session:
  Build a Culture of Accountability

Knowledge Area #4

Operating as a Unified Leadership Team – Replacing Escalation with Shared Ownership and Peer Accountability

Week 9

Communicate to Lead

Assignments:

• Watch | Simon Sinek – How Great Leaders Inspire Action
  
  

• Watch | William Ury – The Power of Listening
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Communicate to Lead
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The DRIVE Model – Speed Through Alignment & Teamwork
  

Week 10

Create the Future Instead of Reacting to It

Assignments:

• Read | #GSD Post – The Talent Magnet – Hire Believers, Not Bodies
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Mindset Shift: From Victim of Circumstance to Creator with the Empowerment Dynamic
  

• Watch | The Tension Trap: Traction vs. Distraction
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Weekly Team DOING – Where Alignment Becomes Action
  

Live Zoom Session:
The Power of People: Building High-Performing Teams

Week 11

The Power of Learning, Listening & the Positive No

Assignments:

• Read | #GSD Post – The Essential Role of Hiring People with a Growth Mindset
  

• Read | HBR – Barriers & Gateways to Communication
  

• Read | Excerpt – The Power of the Positive No by William Ury
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Liberator – Coach Safety Into Performance
  

Week 12

The Growth Mindset Advantage

Assignments:

• Watch | Carol Dweck – The Power of Believing That You Can Improve
  

• Read | HBR – What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means
  

• Watch | Admiral William McRaven – One Person Can Change the World
  

• Watch | Angela Duckworth – Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
  

Live Zoom Session:
The 8 Execution Leadership Disciplines & How to Use Them

Knowledge Area #5

Execution Leadership – Investing Time, Talent, and Capital for Return

Week 13

Driving Change: Replacing Burnout-Busy with High Performance and Top-Line Results

Assignments:

• Read | J. Scott – The Consulting Mindset
  

• Read | HBR – Why and How to Build an In-House Consulting Team
  

• Read | HBR – Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Challenger – Challenge the Work, Not the People
  

Week 14

Catalyzing Change: How to Test for Authentic Demand

Assignments:

• Watch | Alberto Savoia – Build the Right It
  

• Watch | The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
  

• Read | HBR – What Great Listeners Actually Do
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Debate Maker – Where Opinions Evolve Into Optimal Solutions
  

Live Zoom Session:
Visionary Leadership – Paving the Way for Unstoppable Demand & Project Success

Week 15

Amplifying Demand: Accelerating Impact and Engagement

Assignments:

• Watch | Edward Freeman – Business Is About Purpose
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Case for Ensuring Demand Before Launching Your Project
  

• Watch | J. Scott – Engineering Project Alignment: How to Crowdsource Project Definition & Guarantee Demand
  

• Read | #GSD Post – Your Transformation Project Has Been Funded, Now What?
  

Download:
Irreverent Guide to Project Leadership – Book & Templates

Week 16

Project Leadership & Execution: Delivering 227% Better Results

Assignments:

• Read | HBR – Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance
  

• Watch | J. Scott – Plan to Succeed: Proven Planning Techniques for a 98% Success Rate
  

• Read | #GSD Post – The Investor – Deliver a Return on Investment
  

• Read | Excerpt – The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Live Zoom Session:
Crush Your Goals – Work Your Project Plan & Drive 227% Better Results

High-performing managers are 120% intentional about everything they do.

If a leader doesn’t know what’s going on, they can’t possibly be leading. Create an echo chamber, create teamwork, create a team of teams.

Every ounce of effort is focused on advancing objectives that measurably improve client satisfaction, team satisfaction, and profitability (The 3-Pillars), none at the expense of the others. That is how we avoid trade-offs, short-term thinking, and align disparate teams around a single way of working that avoids conflicting interests.

We communicate to lead, period.

People and organizations are optimized for the results they are getting. If a person or organization wants to get different results, they need the people in their organization to do their jobs differently. Before people will do their jobs differently, they need see the world differently. Vision drives behavior, behavior Drives Outcomes.

The First Law of Transformation: People need to think differently before they will do differently. The first step in a successful transformation is “Getting Shift Done.”

Intentionality, Discipline, Trust, Transparency & Accountability. We Communicate to Lead

Untrained Leaders are reactive, and focused on the problem Du Jour, they are stressed out, burnt out, and fostering a reactive culture of urgency by design.

Symptoms: Their team members respond to missed deadlines and insufficient outcomes by complaining that they have too many #1 priorities, and too much work on their plates, and their solution is always external - better tools, more people, better management, less work.  

Execution Leaders aren’t reacting to the future, they are 100% focused on creating the future. They are intentional about only working on things that will measurably improve the three pillars, they are intentional about the battles they take on, they have a fierce commitment to team alignment and clear expectations,  and foster a culture of discipline, trust, transparency, and accountability.

Symptoms: Their way of working results in a high-performing team that isn’t stressed out, burnt out, or working nights and weekends. They have esprit de corps, high levels of engagement, teamwork, and success.

ELPA installs a discipline of execution that:

• Aligns priorities before work begins

• Forces decisions into the open, early

• Reduces rework and escalation

• Converts leadership effort into measurable outcomes

Organizations that install this system achieve:

• 227% better performance

• 98% execution success rates

• Predictable delivery without burnout or heroics

The cost of ELPA is finite.
The cost of inaction compounds every quarter.

Short answer: This is not a leadership program.

Leadership programs teach ideas and hope behavior changes later.
ELPA installs a leadership operating system inside live work, under real pressure.

Nothing in ELPA happens in theory:

• No case studies
  

• No simulations
  

• No hypothetical exercises
  
  

Every discipline is applied to work you are already accountable for.

If the system is not visible in:

• priorities

• decisions

• commitments
  execution evidence

then it hasn’t been installed.

That’s why ELPA produces 227% better performance with a 98% execution success rate.
Not because leaders are smarter.
Because the system forces different behavior when it matters most.

If you want inspiration, credentials, or a break from the business, this is not it.
If you want execution to change inside the business, this is real.

It will disrupt waste and stabilize execution.

ELPA does not add work on top of the business.
It replaces:

• fragmented planning
  

• redundant meetings
  

• priority churn
  

• late-stage escalation
  

• rework caused by misalignment
  
  

With:

• one execution rhythm
  

• one shared definition of priority
  

• one visible commitment system
  

By week 4–6, most teams report:

• fewer meetings

• fewer escalations

• clearer decisions

• calmer execution
  

The business does not slow down.
It becomes predictable.

If your current system depends on heroics, urgency, or escalation to function, that will be disrupted.
That’s not instability. That’s removing a structural liability.

ELPA is not easy.
It is not comfortable.
It is not optional.

It is a system install for leadership teams who are done tolerating:

• execution drift

• burnout-busy leadership

• misalignment disguised as autonomy

If this feels intense, it’s not for you.
If it feels like the standard you’ve been missing, it’s time to talk.

Yes. And that’s why it works.

ELPA requires an Executive Sponsor who:

• leads the accelerator

• models the behaviors

• protects the operating rhythm

Executives do not observe ELPA.
They lead it.

If leadership delegates this work, the system will not install.
That’s not a risk. That’s a filter.

The upside:

• Leadership behaviors change at the source

• Mandate is real

• Adoption happens fast

If the system fails to install, it is immediately visible.
No politics. No hiding. No ambiguity.

That clarity is intentional.

Execution failure is not neutral.
It compounds quietly through stalled initiatives, wasted capacity, and leadership drag. When leadership teams operate without a shared execution system, organizations pay for it every quarter.

Where the Money Leaks

1. Priority Churn

• Strategic priorities change without completion

• Work starts, stops, and restarts

• Teams stay busy while outcomes slip

• Cost: sunk labor, delayed ROI, lost opportunity
  
  

2. Rework & Decision Drift

• Decisions are made in silos, then revisited

• Interdependencies surface after execution begins
  “Alignment” happens downstream, if at all
  Cost: rework, missed deadlines, credibility erosion

3. Burnout-Busy Leadership

• Leaders firefight instead of lead

• Execution depends on heroics and escalation

• High performers absorb the load until they burn out or leave
  Cost: attrition, disengagement, execution fragility
  
  

4. Portfolio Waste

• Too many initiatives, not enough finish

• Projects compete instead of compound

• Success is defined politically, not economically
  Cost: capital spread thin, value leakage, low return density
  
  

The Financial Reality

Most organizations don’t fail because of bad strategy.
They fail because execution never stabilizes.

Without a shared execution operating system:

• Leadership time is misallocated

• Investment returns are unpredictable

• Accountability is subjective

• Risk remains invisible until it’s expensive

This is not a leadership problem.
It’s an Leadership System problem.