The Growth Executive Officer Masterclass
Most plans do not fail on the arithmetic. They fail on the person carrying them.
A leadership programme for people accountable for growth. Not motivation, and not theory. Diagnostics you run on yourself and your organisation, decision cases with no comfortable answer, and interactive tools that make the trade offs visible.
The constraint this course addresses
Three things have to hold. Only one of them is usually missing.
A growth plan needs a sound thesis, an organisation able to execute it, and a leader able to hold the line when it gets uncomfortable. Firms invest heavily in the first, occasionally in the second, and almost never in the third. That is where plans actually die.
How it is built
Nine interactive tools
Diagnostics you run rather than read. They score your actual situation and give you an output you can act on the same week.
Decision cases, not profiles
Leadership situations presented as choices you have to make before the outcome is revealed, rather than as stories about people who succeeded.
One company held throughout
A single case runs every tool end to end, so the instruments connect rather than sitting as nine separate exercises.
A real assessment
Thirty questions with instant scoring and an explanation for every answer, including the ones you got right.
The UPCHANGE framework
The organising structure of the programme, giving you a repeatable way to approach change rather than a set of disconnected tactics.
Twenty two bonus articles
Extended reading on the parts of the subject that do not fit into a lesson but change how you think about it.
What changes for you
You will be able to
- See your own default under pressure. Most leaders have one, most cannot name it, and it determines what they do in the moments that matter.
- Hold a decision that is unpopular and correct. The hardest part of growth leadership is rarely knowing what to do.
- Diagnose an organisation honestly. Including the parts where the problem is something you put there.
- Sequence change so people can absorb it. The right changes in the wrong order produce the same result as the wrong changes.
Who takes it
- Portfolio company chief executives. Carrying a plan with a clock on it and a board that reads the numbers weekly.
- Operating partners. Who have to influence leaders they do not manage and cannot replace easily.
- Founders and section heads. At the point where the business has outgrown the way it has been run.
- Anyone about to step up. The gap between managing and leading is mostly invisible until you are standing in it.
Every other VCII programme works on the business. This one works on the person running it. If you are comfortable with the numbers and something still is not moving, this is usually the reason, and it is the reason nobody puts on a slide.
You can improve a model in an afternoon. Improving the judgement that decides which model to believe takes longer, and it is worth more.
