Growth Insights for CEOs

From Loyalty Programs to Leadership: What 20 Years in CRM Taught Me About Organizational Growth
Executive Takeaways
- The principles that build customer loyalty work just as well on your best employees and partners.
- Salary and bonus are table stakes. What keeps top performers are the moments that make them feel like insiders.
- Internal friction is as damaging as friction in a customer journey — and just as fixable.
- Generic recognition retains no one. Tailored moves do.
Loyalty programs taught many of us how to turn casual buyers into raving fans. My 20 years in CRM and loyalty for brands like Marriott, Amazon, and American Express—and leading a $3B customer platform—taught me something bigger: The same system that keeps customers coming back also keeps your best people from leaving. When growth stalls, most CEOs reach for the usual levers: more demand gen, more recruiting, more channels.
Recent Posts

CEOs: The 7 C's of Hiring Fractional Executives
Wed, Jul 5, 2023 — Since Christopher McKenna signaled the rise of ‘The World’s Newest Profession’ by publishing his book in 2006, the trend towards hiring and deploying management consultants has only been on the rise. One of the newest categories of management consulting is the Fractional Executive. But how does a CEO go about selecting one? Surely it’s not the same process and set of qualities you’d look for in an executive hire?

Meshing the Growth Gears for Sales and Marketing Success
Thu, Apr 20, 2023 — Why do the Marketing and Sales departments always have to be at odds, blaming each other for poor results? That’s the way it is in so many businesses. But it doesn’t have to be. As a company leader, you just want them to work together and get more sales, right? When the two symbiotic functions are working properly, they mesh like gears - Growth Gears - cranking out more sales power than either can produce separately. Take a brief ride with me to explore a model for making this work.

Four Ways that Fractional Leadership is Transforming a Resource-Starved World
Fri, Mar 24, 2023 — In a world where much is spoken about uncertainties, there still are many things that are as certain as ever. Despite the impact of a shaky global economy and a population still looking to shake off Covid’s impacts, hard work – and ingenuity – still rule the day. Individual efforts of unaffiliated workers comprise more nearly 60 percent of the U.S. workforce today, thanks to modern socio-economic values that embrace such flexibility. This also has given rise to a new trend -- building and leveraging common shared resources, especially at the upper tiers.