in Times like these...
Companies fall prey to
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY.
Welcome to:
Think Like a Founder
Think Like a Founder is a new leadership curriculum focused on problem-solving and behavior change within established companies. Itâs a new way of understanding leadership in todayâs changing environment. Itâs experiential, engaging, and focused on shifting perspectives and rewiring the brain.
Learn how to:
- Evolve with your company
- Pursue relentlessly its mission
- Solve problems with grit
- Harness collective intelligence
- Inspire and motivate talent
Modeled on how
founders think
Great founders challenge and redefine the status quo, counteracting stagnation and ultimately driving impact. Theyâre driven by a deep sense of responsibility. They inspire, innovate, and navigate uncertainty. Theyâre relentless.
Through 30 years of experience working with founders, weâve seen how they can navigate uncertainty, adapt to changing markets, and inspire their teams. Now, in times like these, we need leaders who think like founders.
Six Mindsets
So we did some research. We interviewed founders globally in addition to our normal work with founders and their teams. We asked pointed questions. Heard their stories. Understood their motivations. Uncovered lessons learned. We’ve studied what others have learned. We’ve landed on six mindsets that are transferable to all leaders.
Student Forever
Team Matters
Bias to Action
Relentless
Mission Focused
Future Oriented
Curriculum
Student Forever
Team Matters
Bias to Action
Relentless
Mission Focused
Future Oriented
Always be Learning
Student forever
Always Be Learning
We are always learning. It's just a fact of being human. However, to evolve strategically, you must have a plan about how you'll learn and the discipline to pursue that learning every day. We'll dive into how to build learning agility -- that quality that keeps you seeing every setback as an opportunity for growth. In this course you'll map upcoming professional challenges and build a plan for how you will gain the knowledge you need from within the company and in your external network.
Sustain Collaboration
Student forever
Sustain Collaboration
Your biggest strategic advantage is the collective intelligence of your team. As leaders rise the ranks, their ability to know the details becomes harder and harder. This is why it's so important to leverage your team's knowledge and expertise as you look to make major decisions. This class helps you determine how to create spaces for collective intelligence and what your role as a leader consists of in that space.
Earn Trust
Team Matters
Earn Trust
One of the most important skills for a leader to have available to them is the ability to create, re-build, and inspire trust. This can be difficult as each person might assess trust and a break in trust differently. The good news is that it is possible to build trust and create stronger relationships that deliver results. Participants will gain actionable strategies to progress relationships that are current challenges or are brand new.
Build Culture and Bet on Your People
Team Matters
Build Culture and Bet on Your People
Culture is the output from any leaders behaviors and actions over time. It is the driving force for any company's success, trumping even their strategic plans. In this training, leaders explore what kind of culture shadow their casting through their day-to-day actions. From there, they determine how they build their tems in order to enrich their culture, constantly looking for culture contributors. Finally, they take on the issue of recognition and how to celebrate their company's culture carriers.
Optimize for Strategic Speed & Make Decisions Better
Bias to Action
Optimize for Strategic Speed & Make Decisions Better
For a start-up, speed is their only advantage but moving fast isn't sufficient if it doesn't move in a smart way. Leaders will explore a model for building strategic speed and ways to assess and negotiate high-stakes tradeoffs. This strategy will help leaders avoid common pitfalls, including functional silos, politics, and a tyranny of knowledge. Lastly, we'll go through the various steps needed to make a decision, even when there is limited information.
Drive Accountability & Productivity
Bias to Action
Drive Accountability & Productivity
How do you stay on track, stay focused, meet deadlines...and how do you get a team to do the same. Perhaps a team that was used to meeting in person is now meeting from their respective homes. Every meeting has a log-in and a log-out. And with that, there is no casual conversation or banter that serves to connect dots. In this course, participants will explore the shift from company responsibility to personal responsibility when defining productivity and accountability. Weâll dive into the true meaning of accountability, and what practical and tangible frameworks can be put into place to ensure roadblocks are moved, teams are connected, and business moves forward.
Lead with Influence
Relentless
Lead with Influence
Leaders have a different and more complex influencing task than other individuals in their organization. The topics tend to be high stakes and have broad implications for the company at large. This is why we teach leaders how to approach their efforts with a campaign model. This approach distinguishes individuals at each level of buy-in and outlines a phased timeline, working backwards from their change target date. This is important because real influence is earned through understanding the other sideâs point of view and communicating accordingly. This session teaches leaders key skills for influencing effectively, whether itâs inside an organization or outside of it. responsibility when defining productivity and accountability. Weâll dive into the true meaning of accountability, and what practical and tangible frameworks can be put into place to ensure roadblocks are moved, teams are connected, and business moves forward.
Manage Stress and Build Resilience
Relentless
Manage Stress and Build Resilience
Even in the best of times, we can become triggered by an event or even a quick comment. In the worst of times, the stress or emotions can completely take over, impacting our relationships and productivity. Leaders break down real, work-related situations to learn how they react, engage, and manage through stressful situations â and identify the choices they can make to minimize negative impact. From here they explore resilience and grit. We'll walk through frameworks and ask participants to create a unique - and applicable - map of how they can apply both concepts to their work and team.
connect to purpose & values
Mission Focused
Connect to Purpose & Values
With the change to a Purpose Economy - where employees care strongly about being associated with brands that have a clear mission and impact - it's even more important to clearly define your individual purpose. How do your values, background, and expertise come together to inform how you show up in your organization? After you understand how your purpose relates to your work, the next step is to connect that to your company and team's mission, vision, and purpose. Understanding the company purpose will allow both teams and individuals to feel the relevance of their work.
Communicate the Why
Mission Focused
Communicate the Why
Once the purpose is clear, leader's will learn how to leverage storytelling to increase employees motivation and be inspired in the work that they do. Which is a win-win for all. Companies that lead with purpose become more productive and efficient. They also see high employee engagement and increased retention. In this session, leaders learn general story frameworks as well as ways to modify any story based on the audience's preferred style.
Lead through uncertainty
Future Oriented
Lead through uncertainty
Uncertain environments are inherently difficult for people to navigate. Information is often unknown, or ambiguous and the physical and mental impact of that state is tremendous. This class addresses those difficulties and impacts and leads the participant through reflection of previous uncertain situations that were successfully managed and gives more tools and techniques on how to successfully navigate the process. In addition, at different times decisions are made - and how you communicate those changes within an uncertain environment requires careful consideration. By the end, participants will have 3 models to leverage for navigating uncertainty and a messaging structure (and draft!) to use to communicate any change.
See the limitless horizon
Future Oriented
See the limitless horizon
Leader's often feel that they need to do it all. Juggling multiple priorities and working at the speed of light. It's presumed that this will inspire similar actions by their teams and company. However, what really happens is that the workloads of everyone beneath them is magnified and the expected speed needed to complete the work is unattainable. Which is why it's important for leaders to select and emphasize the most important priorities and delegate or postpone the others. Once the focus is created, workflows are manageable and creativity and innovation can truly occur. By creating those clear priorities, leaders can then create the playing fields for true joy and productivity to occur. navigate the process. In addition, at different times decisions are made - and how you communicate those changes within an uncertain environment requires careful consideration. By the end, participants will have 3 models to leverage for navigating uncertainty and a messaging structure (and draft!) to use to communicate any change.Founder's stories
think like a founder podcast
Think Like a Founder is a series of conversations with leaders, thinkers, inventors, revolutionaries, problem-solvers, and smart, nice people. Hosted by Maureen Taylor, co-founder of SNP Communications, Think Like A Founder dives deeper into a founderâs mindset and mentality — what makes them tick? The curiosity. The relentlessness. The crazy. The sacrifice. The loneliness. Host, Maureen Taylor (or Mo, as most know her) co-founded SNP Communications more than 25 years ago in Silicon Valley. Since then, she and her co-founder Renn Vara have served behind the scenes, supporting the world’s top companies to grow and mature through the art of authentic communication. Mo looks at what it means to think like a founder. Why? Because she believes great leaders change the world.
