For companies in the $5 to $25 million revenue range, and especially those selling services, there are many ways to manufacture growth. Healthy and sustainable growth, however, requires the right structure, the right people and the right mindset, as well as the ability to seize the opportunity when presented.

In this article, I share my thoughts on what it really takes to scale a business. My goal is to move beyond generic tips and Silicon Valley platitudes, offering real-world insights for founders and leaders facing the practical and often personal challenges of growth.

Growth Requires Letting Go

Let’s start with the hardest truth: if you want to scale, you have to stop doing everything yourself. In a service business, that means giving up billable hours, handing off client relationships, and delegating decisions. It often means making less money personally, at least for a while.

Many founders wrestle with this, and rightly so. When you’ve built a business around your own expertise, it feels counterintuitive to step back. But it’s the only way to create leverage, because scaling is contingent on your ability to enable others to do what you do well.

One example that has stuck with me came from a conversation with a leader selling his business. His secret to success? Growing by trial and error and experimentation. 

This leader invested heavily in a team of young salespeople during a high-growth push, and he got results fast. He knew that an investment in a salesperson wasn’t their annual salary and bonus, because within three months he would know if he had the right resource. If he needed to, he could cut his risk and his costs at any time.  

But the real key?  This leader wasn’t afraid to turn over staff for non-performance.  He treated hiring like a growth experiment, not a permanent commitment. That mindset: decisive, data-driven, risk-forward, and detached from ego, is what allowed him to scale.  

Healthy business growth rarely happens by accident. It usually requires a decision to invest in something that seems risky, whether it’s people, technology, geography, or a new vertical. According to Salesforce’s 2024 State of Sales Report, 79% of sales leaders reported increased revenue after making strategic investments in people, enablement, or tools. The businesses that grow most rapidly aren’t simply doing more of what they’ve always done. They’re betting on something new. Those that don’t, stagnate.

Processes Will Evolve. Values Shouldn’t.

As your business grows, your processes will evolve. And they should. What worked for 10 employees won’t work for 50. Over time, your culture will shift too, especially as you bring in new leaders and teams. That’s normal.

But your values? They are the bedrock of your organization. Use them in hiring, feedback, and even in client selection. Talk about them at company meetings. Collect the stories of cultural heroes and villains and make them part of the lore of your organization. 

Take the time to define your values clearly. Your values are the glue that holds your company together during the messiness of growth, and they tell people how to behave when you’re not in the room.

Seize Your Breaks. Then Leverage Them.

Every company needs a break. If you grow, you will get your stroke of fortune.  Maybe it’s a marquee client. Maybe it’s a game-changing project. Maybe it’s a big-name hire.

But the mistake is treating the win like a destination instead of a launchpad.

When opportunity knocks, your job is to turn the win into a system. Serve the big client well. Use their name in your marketing or for a reference and understand what was done to win and how you can repeat it. Build a process to win similar clients and projects and embed those lessons into your organizational DNA. 

Strategic leverage is what separates growth spurts from true scale. Don’t just land the big fish. Build a fishing fleet.

Set Real Goals, Not Hollow Ambitions

A line I hear all too often: “We want to be a $100 million company.”

There’s nothing wrong with big goals. But “$100 million” is often a round number masquerading as a strategy. It sounds impressive, but it’s usually untethered from reality.  

Why $100 million? And how? What needs to be true to reach that level?

If you want to transform this statement from a dream to a goal, start by imagining what your organization looks like at $100 million:

• What markets will you need to play in to win?
• What kind of team will you need? 
• What do your clients and offerings look like?

Then, work forwards and backwards:

• What must change in the next 12 months?
• What do we need to invest in? Where will the money come from?  
• How will we know if we’re successful? Do we have intermediate milestones?
• How does the team at $100 million look different than the team today?
• What are the hard truths about us or our business that we need to face and change?

Set goals based on what you can build, not just what you want to be.The risks of not doing so are real: 44% of growing small businesses report cash flow challenges, and 58% cite rising costs as a major barrier to scaling. And even more daunting, only 0.4% of startups ever grow beyond $10 million in revenue within five years.

Scaling Isn’t Doing More. It’s Doing Differently.

Early-stage businesses succeed through hustle. Mid-stage businesses succeed through systems, and it’s a shift that can be jarring.

As you scale, doing more of what already works is often not the answer. Instead, you need to:

• Replace ad hoc workflows with documented processes
• Move from founder decisions to delegated authority
• Upgrade your tech stack to match your complexity
• Create and communicate the [your company name here]-way

If your answer to growth is just “work harder,” you’re not scaling. You’re stalling.

Scaling means shifting from heroic effort to organizational capability. This requires strategy. Do the hard work that comes from honest reflection of your organization’s strengths and weaknesses.  

Don’t Outgrow Your Ability to Deliver

It’s easy to get caught up in chasing revenue goals and new logos. But if your ability to deliver lags behind, you’ll burn client trust faster than you build it.

This is especially risky in service businesses. Every new client stretches your team. Every overpromise chips away at morale. And I’ve seen too many firms “negotiate with themselves” by cutting corners, lowering prices or bending commitments to land a deal, only to regret it later.  

Growth should feel uncomfortable. It shouldn’t feel chaotic.

Protect your delivery capability. Price based on the value you create. Hire just ahead of the curve. Invest in training. Say no when you must. Scaling means growing your operational backbone, not just your top line.

To Be a Leader, Build Leaders.

You can’t scale if every decision flows through you. Your real job as a founder or CEO is to build other people’s judgment. That means:

• Coaching, not just managing
• Letting others make (and learn from) mistakes
• Delegating outcomes, not just tasks

If you build strong leaders, they’ll build the business for you. It will feel and be slower at first. But it’s the only way to scale sustainably. And according to surveys of scaling entrepreneurs, three of the top factors they cite for meaningful growth include:

1. Investing in talent and leadership development
2. Adopting digital tools and automation (89% say this is crucial)
3. Focusing on high-margin client segments

Growth invariably brings new challenges for the CEO. A few I’ve seen stump even the most effective leaders at high-growth companies include:

• A sales leader who delivers the goods but leaves a trail of bodies behind them. They’re unpleasant or arrogant or worse and the organization resents that leadership doesn’t address it. 
• The people who were with you from the beginning who now feel disenfranchised because they haven’t grown with the company. They feel that they have been pushed down into the organization and further from you as others are hired above them. 
• Replacing B-players with A-players. That’s a good thing, right? Beyond bringing new talents and skills, A-players can be motivated, vocal, and sophisticated, and bring with them a whole new set of expectations around compensation, responsibility, and advancement.  

Your job is to figure out how to handle these new challenges while staying true to your values and enhancing your culture. 

This is What Scaling Really Feels Like.

Most founders don’t hesitate because they lack ambition. They hesitate because they’re smart. Scaling introduces risk: financial, emotional, and reputational. And when the business carries your name, every decision feels personal.

But here’s the truth: trial and error is a scaling strategy and most of those bets pay off, or fail, much faster than we expect. Hiring a senior leader feels like a year-long financial gamble, but you’ll know within months if they’re the right fit. Expanding into a new market may seem risky, yet early feedback can validate, or challenge, your assumptions quickly. And handing over operations isn’t just a symbolic move, it’s a strategic shift that often becomes necessary long before it feels comfortable.

Knowing this means understanding your limitations. You may be the visionary, the rainmaker, the cultural anchor. That doesn’t mean you’re the best person to run daily operations at scale.  Knowing  know when your role should evolve is a strength, not a weakness.

And successful founders know something else: it’s lonely at the edge of growth. The bigger the bet, the fewer people understand it. So if you feel fear, hesitation, or doubt, you’re probably doing it right.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, scaling requires the courage to act even when the path isn’t perfectly clear. Your team, your clients, and your investors need you to make decisions. Sometimes you’ll get it wrong. That’s okay. Make the call, learn from it, clean up the mess if you have to, and move forward. 

Rob Novick is a Canopy Business Strategy Expert with more than 20 years of experience in management consulting, acquisition integration and business planning and ownership. Interested in bringing top-tier fractional experts like Rob into your organization? Tell us about your project here.

 ¹ Entrepreneur 2024
– https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/over-half-of-small-businesses-are-struggling-to-grow/482623; Salesforce 2024
– https://www.salesforce.com/blog/15-sales-statistics; Chase Business Survey
– https://media.chase.com/news/us-small-businesses-change-strategies-chase-survey

² Source: Entrepreneur, 2024
– https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/over-half-of-small-businesses-are-struggling-to-grow/482623

 ³ Source: EY Entrepreneur Ecosystem Barometer, 2025
– https://www.ey.com/en_us/newsroom/2025/06/entrepreneurs-are-confident-their-business-will-grow-this-year

  ⁴ Sources: Entrepreneur HQ
– https://entrepreneurshq.com/small-business-statistics/; and LinkedIn commentary
– https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jennscilabro_quick-question-so-forbes-reported-this-activity-7201968692987899904-z74b

The post Scaling Your Business: What Every $5–25M Leader Needs to Know appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

A great hire can push a team to unprecedented levels of success, while a poor one can cause problems well beyond sunk costs. And the stakes are even higher at the executive level. There’s more money, more responsibility, bigger expectations and often, a greater need. Most organizations can’t afford to get these hires wrong.

By now, you’re well aware of the fractional trend sweeping through the U.S., in which organizations are choosing to bring on high-level, high-skill talent on a part-time and project basis in a range of different C-Suite roles. Organizations can save money while getting access to a leader they could not afford otherwise, while also de-risking the hiring process through contract lengths and the ability to turn support on and off based on their needs.

But like any other type of working arrangement, a fractional executive will work extremely well in some situations and be less effective in others. While every organization is different and every situation has its own nuances and complexities, the following scenarios were identified by Canopy’s own experts as those in which a fractional executive would be the ideal choice.

1. Unlimited ambitions, limited budgets

Cost effectiveness is routinely listed as the top benefit for organizations in bringing on a fractional hire versus their full-time equivalent. Whether or not you agree where that benefit belongs on the list, our community of experts agrees that it should be a factor you consider in approaching any executive hire.

It’s well-documented that hiring a fractional expert, especially at the executive level, can save organizations a bundle. When you factor in the timebound nature of the work and the fact that most fractional experts will not receive health insurance or other benefits, the savings can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the case of a financial executive, assuming an average per hour rate of $350 per hour and a year-long contract, hiring a Fractional Chief Financial Officer (CFO) might cost an organization close to $168,000, while total annual pay for a full-time CFO might run an average of $742,011.

If you have large projects on the horizon or you have critical needs that can’t be filled with your internal team, and you’re limited on budget, it makes economic and strategic sense to consider a fractional expert first.

“Even for organizations with a lot of resources and reserves, it can take months or even years to recover from a bad hire. The ability to de-risk an executive hire, even slightly, continues to be a powerful selling point for fractional experts,” said Griffen O’Shaughnessy, founder and CEO of Canopy Advisory Group. “Significant cost savings aside, fractional hiring offers a way to access expert, executive-level talent without locking you in if things go sideways.”

2. Executive leader transitions

An executive-level hire is a big deal in any organization. Even if these hires don’t work out as planned, there’s a ton of pressure on founders and CEOs to “make it work,” at least for a certain period of time. On the flip side, when the new leader performs extremely well, founders and CEOs need to worry about how to retain an individual who will be in high demand.

Regardless of how an executive leaves the business, the hole they leave in the organizational structure presents both opportunities and challenges. From the perspective of the founder, CEO and Board of Directors, the opportunity is to bring in new skill sets and new thinking. The challenge is to minimize the disruption and, in the case of losing someone valuable, limit the damage from their departure.

The situation is often extremely suitable for a fractional hire given the need to bring someone into the business quickly, the strategic nature of the position in a period of transition and the level of experience required to navigate a potentially difficult situation (including the possibility of preparing for a full-time hire in the role within the next year).

“When you lose a high-level executive who was important to the business, there’s often no clear direction, and the team may not know where to turn,” said Canopy Marketing Expert Kate W. “A fractional executive immediate senior-level expertise without the full-time cost, no annual salary, no benefits overhead. They can step in quickly, stabilize the team, assess the landscape, and drive strategic action.

3. Periods of rapid growth

Early on, much of the messaging around fractional hiring centered on the use of fractional experts as stop-gap measures in transition periods. While many organizations continue to use fractional hires to bridge these gaps, a growing number are discovering the value of fractional experts in accelerating growth plans.

Whereas the first two scenarios are clearly tailored more toward hiring a fractional expert than a full-time resource, the growth stage is a situation where you’re making more of a strategic choice. Regardless of the discipline for the role (e.g., CFO, COO, CRO, CMO, etc.), a full-time hire can certainly prove to be an excellent choice, especially if the individual ends up being a longer-tenured member of the organization and is a leader that the founder and CEO wants to grow a team around.

Reasons a founder or CEO may wish to go with a fractional expert in a growth scenario include:

• An interest in keeping costs down while maximizing impact
• The need for speed-to-impact, including areas like faster onboarding and truncated time-to-result
• A desire to bring in an executive leader with very specific situational experience
• A market or organizational situation that prioritizes agility and the ability to react and adjust quickly

4. Navigating large-scale change

While the departure of a leader or leaders certainly qualifies as change, these are far from the only situations where fractional executive hires can be instrumental in helping an organization withstand turbulent times. And unlike a situation where a single leader leaves an organization and the founder, CEO and Board are forced to move quickly to replace them, a large-scale adjustment to the direction, model or structure of an organization can (paradoxically) provide a bit more breathing room for leadership to approach the problem more strategically.

Similar to the rapid growth scenario, founders, CEO and Boards have the potential to be successful in this situation with either a full-time or fractional hire. In this case specifically, the choice can be largely dependent on the strength and clarity of the organization’s business plan. Clarity on direction often brings with it an understanding of the team that’s likely to be able to fulfill the long-term vision, and in these instances, leaders tend to lean toward full-time hires who can grow with the organization. While fractional experts can perform quite well in this scenario, organizations may choose to skip a bridge option and move straight to a longer-term hire.

Conversely, for all of the reasons fractional experts thrive in any organization, founders, CEOs and Boards may choose to bring in an experienced expert to help them build the future direction of the organization. In this case, they can also provide recommendations on who to hire to build a full-time team, and when it makes the most sense to hire those roles. 

We have also seen leaders set a new direction and then compile a group of the best fractional experts available to drive the plan forward. Whether or not this is a longer-term solution, it invariably helps the organization gain the traction and foothold necessary for a new direction to get off the ground.

Canopy Nonprofit Expert Meg G. described what a fractional expert engagement can look like during a major organizational change: “Sometimes during the life of a nonprofit, the Board of Trustees may find that a total restructuring of staff and mission is required. I went through this for a magazine, during which I was called in to supervise the restructuring and to shepherd how the magazine approached production, management, marketing, fulfillment and more. The process took approximately nine months.” 

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Thank you for reading! If you’re interested in hearing more from our experts on when and how to hire fractional executives, check out our guide, Demystifying Fractional Executive Hiring.

The post Hiring an executive? Here are the top four scenarios where fractional makes sense. appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

As leaders and owners, we often have a clear vision of our strategy, where we want to be as a business and even a broad roadmap for how to get there. In some cases, our vision for what our team should look like is less distinct.

There are numerous reasons for this discrepancy, one of which is how little time most leaders truly have to consider future strategy. From the outside looking in, a person might think that a leader or owner would spend a third or even half of their time planning ahead. In its most recent study on the topic, Harvard Business Review noted that CEOs spend an average of 21.5% of their time on strategy. In a recent Forbes article, executives were encouraged to spend at least 12.5% of their workweeks on strategy. In my experience, the percentage of time most people spend on mapping out the future is much lower.

The more pressing issue I see in how teams are built is how easy it is to fall into the trap of short-termism in hiring and staffing. It’s hard to blame leaders for this, as they’re as responsible for the effectiveness, productivity and cohesion of the team in the short-term as they are in the future. The decision to focus too heavily on the makeup of the team today and in the near future, however, can hamstring leaders in the future by limiting agility and forcing turbulent and trust-eroding actions like layoffs and furloughs.

The other difficult part about identifying short-termism is that it’s often a result of asking the right, or at least extremely valid, questions about your team:

• If this person leaves, will I need to backfill that role?
• What would happen if we didn’t backfill that role if that person left the organization?
• If I need different skills than what this person brings to the table, should I replace this person with someone with a different skill set? What if the new person brings the skills we need but we end up missing the skill set of the current person in the role?
• Do I need to bring in a smaller number of higher-level, higher-cost people and limit the number of junior staff or bring in a higher number of junior staff members and focus on bringing in only a few higher-quality managers to get the most out of them?
• We don’t have anyone with X skill and we need that skill set to fulfill a strategic priority. How will we afford to bring someone on board if we don’t have any additional dollars for headcount?

All of these questions and more are important to consider as leaders, and answering them can help you make progress toward the effectiveness of each member of your team. But that doesn’t answer the question of what your best possible team would look like. 

Changing the Hiring Conversation From Tactical to Strategic

The light bulb moment for me was when I identified that all of the questions listed above focus on individuals. Hiring is inherently about individuals and as leaders, we absolutely have to get that part right. Where we can go wrong, however, is in failing to look at how every element of individual hiring will affect the company’s future.

That mindset shift alone brings the conversation from “we need to get someone onboarded by the end of December” to a more strategic realm. Bringing a new full-time hire in before the end of the year can provide a useful Band-Aid for a particular problem or problems, but it also has a long-term impact. That salary is now on the books until that person leaves or they are forced to leave. Unless they come in at an extremely high level, they must be offered some opportunity for growth, which adds more recurring costs. 

And if that person is a salesperson, how will bringing them on in a full-time role affect other sales hiring and hiring in other departments for the future? Is it a position you can build around? Does their compensation leave you flexibility for other adjustments or does it mean that person will be your only sales resource for the foreseeable future? How will the new role work with the other teams and provide value to the organization above and beyond a sales target?

This shift is also the reason why I’ve found the “best possible team” to be such a valuable guiding principle, and something to return to when I or our clients are starting to veer toward short-termism. Answering honestly can immediately broaden your view into what’s truly needed and what’s possible for your organization and your team.

To build your best team, you need to understand exactly where your organization is today, where it’s going, and how you plan to get there. From there, building the best team possible is about understanding the competencies you need, when you need them, and what you can afford. Taking the time to review your team at this level can provide you with that all-important balance between aspirational and realistic, helping you understand what’s immediately attainable, what’s a stretch goal and what may be out of reach (at least for now). Most importantly, it will help you set up your team for success in the future, driving decisions based on agility, buffers against unknowns and the experience of your team instead of overindexing against plugging a single hole today.

So ask yourself, if the stars aligned and you could get everything you want, what would that perfect team look like? And remove the obstacles and limitations you may be unconsciously putting on your answers. This year and beyond, your perfect team doesn’t need to be made up of only full-time employees. It doesn’t have to be limited by geography or a commute or office space. It doesn’t have to align to a traditional organizational structure or 9-5 working hours or hierarchical framework. It just needs to work for you and your employees, and it needs to be forward-looking, knowing how quickly things can change.

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At Canopy, we help you build your best possible team, offering access to the very best fractional experts across every discipline. If you’re interested in learning more about how fractional experts and a blended team can work within your organization, we’d love to chat!

The post What Does the Best Version of Your Team Look Like? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

I say perceived obstacle because I do believe it’s an issue that organizations and leaders can solve through proactive and reactive means. It is, however, a valid and important concern to discuss and plan against before moving forward with any fractional or consulting engagement. 

The best leaders know that issues with team dynamics and communication can effectively cancel out even the best-laid plans. Thus, if you’re bringing up these concerns, there’s a good chance you are a strong people leader. Thank you for being a leader who is doing it right!

In this post, I’ll share my tips on where and how to focus on preserving internal dynamics as you and your team work with external consultants and contractors, including fractional experts. In looking at engagements with contractors on the whole, you have opportunities at key phases throughout the process to make an impact.

Before the Engagement: Goal and Priority Setting

The first, and likely most important, opportunity is making sure you answer key dynamic questions during the goal-setting and priority-setting sections of your project.

There is no bigger risk to fractional projects than a lack of clarity around goals and expectations. In addition to the alignment around what success looks like at the end of engagement, what the project is aiming to resolve (and what it’s not), and communications agreements, this is a step in the hiring process for outside support where I advise leaders to document their answers to the following questions:

• How will this project affect the priority list, capacity and workload for key staff who will be involved? 
• Which, if any, projects will be halted or slowed to introduce capacity for work on the fractional project?
• What do you need to do to rally the members of your organization to ensure they’re a help instead of a hindrance throughout the project?

You can obviously take a much more in-depth approach at this stage, including bringing in the relevant members of your team to help you uncover any blind spots you may have on potential impacts to team dynamics. If you’re in a larger organization, your managers likely have their finger closest to the pulse on morale and the different dynamics that exist with individuals in the organization. Use their knowledge!

Even if you only answer the three questions above, it will get you thinking about how you and the consultant, fractional expert or freelancer will work with your team before the engagement begins.

During the Engagement: The Importance of Day One and Frequent Check-Ins

As leaders, it’s easy to make the mistake of assuming that, because we understand the value to the business of bringing in outside support, our team will immediately feel the same way.

It can certainly happen that way, but it also has the potential to stir up resentment and distress, and not only in lower performers. More concerning, these issues likely won’t arise before the engagement begins.

To proactively counteract some of these feelings at the beginning of an engagement with a consultant, fractional expert or freelancer, I recommend leading a meeting for all of your staff on day one. The goal of the meeting is to introduce your expert or experts and the project itself, and to get your team excited about it. While this alone may not remove some of the obstacles the expert might run into, such as people delaying the project by dragging their feet or pushing back on every detail, it’s always helpful to get everyone else on board. And if enough of your people are enthusiastic about the project and want to be involved in making it successful, that will do a lot more to bring the skeptics along for the ride. 

The day one meeting also helps you avoid putting your project in a silo. If everyone is in the know at the very beginning, you can eliminate a fair number of project-delaying issues, such as unnecessary confusion between internal teams about responsibilities, having to hold multiple onboarding and informational sessions throughout the project as new people are brought in, and general lack of understanding about the project strategy, goals and placement on the priority list.

Post day one, as the engagement becomes a part of every day work for at least some members of your team, making time for separate one-on-one conversations with your outside and experts and the members of your team involved in the project becomes critically important. This way, you can see the warning signs of major issues before they happen. I also recommend leaning on your most trusted people at this time, as they are likely to tell you the truth about how things are really going in an engagement, especially as it relates to dynamics. And if you don’t think they’re telling you the full truth, be direct and let them know you want to hear it, warts and all.

The Post-Engagement Phase

It’s important for business owners and leaders to remember to continue to focus on dynamics after a consultant or fractional expert is no longer working with their teams. Schedule at least one post-engagement meeting to talk through all of the great, the good, the bad and even the ugly. Position the meeting as a way for the team to contribute directly to improving the next engagement with their feedback. Generally, individuals are happy to be involved in these sessions, nearly everyone has an opinion on how something can be improved, and it sets the stage for your transformation into more of a blended team vs. a self-defeating “in-house vs. the world” mentality.

It’s Doesn’t All Have to Be On You

Congratulations again to you for focusing on your team dynamics. I’ve never met a business owner or leader who wished they had spent less time in this area.

The last point I’ll make about dynamics relative to engagements with outside experts is that, if you bring on the right consultant or fractional expert, they can take some of the work off of your shoulders. You and your team can do everything right, and if the wrong person comes in to support your organization, they can damage even the most pristine dynamics. On the flip side, the best fractional experts can bring their knowledge and experience to bear to help you make sure that you’re setting yourself and your team up for success. Because of the way they work, they will do more to allay concerns and fears about their work and their role in the organization than you could on your own.

As we prepare to transition into a new year, I wanted to take a moment to say a heartfelt thank you to each of you. 2024 was another wonderful year for Canopy, and our success is a direct result of the contributions of every member of this incredible community.

The work you do to guide organizations as fractional experts, as business owners and leaders bringing the agility and impact of a blended team to your companies, as members of our local community helping the city, state and its people thrive; it matters. Reflecting on Canopy’s first 15 years, one of the things that strikes me most is the power of being part of a movement. Together, we are building the future of work and ushering in a more effective way for organizations of all sizes and types to compete and win. That matters.

The post How to Preserve Team Dynamics When Working With Outside Experts appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

On the surface, though, the concept can seem counterintuitive. Why wouldn’t an in-house team, made up of people who are often experts in their own right and who have a much stronger sense of the business and brand, be set up well for success without considering expert help? Taking the question further, couldn’t an outside expert actually have a detrimental effect on a project due to disruption of team dynamics and a lack of organizational knowledge?

And yet, it’s a fact that many of the projects in which organizations choose to hire an external expert are deemed successful, and especially relative to what in-house teams internally may have been able to achieve in the past. Why is this the case?

Organization-Wide Investment in Project Success

It’s an uncomfortable truth that, in many corporate environments, being on the same team doesn’t always mean being on the same team. Certain people in certain roles may stand to benefit if projects fail, and they often act accordingly. 

More often than not, projects are not killed in one fell swoop, although that does happen. Instead, failure comes from a thousand different cuts, including unnecessary bureaucracy, last-minute stalling on reviews, sidebar conversations and sudden shifts in prioritization. Regardless of the reasons a person may have for slowing down or upending a project, it can be an incredible source of frustration and affect even the most talented and high-powered in-house teams.

An engagement with an outside expert can eliminate a lot of that bureaucracy and politicking for a simple reason: the money for the engagement is coming from a line item and not from people costs. 

This may not seem like a big difference; in many companies, however, it means that the project receives far more scrutiny. And by extension, there are more internal team members who are invested in its success due to their responsibility for the budget, the referral or a variety of other factors. The organization is paying directly for a positive outcome on an important project, and that alone makes the project more likely to get the resources and support it needs from leadership.

For the fractional expert or freelancer, the investment in success is more obvious. The value of their work, what it’s like to do business with them and their overall reputation is on the line. It will either earn them more business and future clients or it won’t; even an engagement that is “fine” but not Earth-shattering is likely more of a negative than a positive.

And for the internal staff that’s not on the company’s leadership team, while they may truly be invested in the success of the company long-term, their surface-level investment in an outside engagement is more tactical. If a fractional or freelance project fails, it means more work on their plates, which, in the age of ever-leaner teams, is something most employees are desperate to avoid.

Access to (Real) Experience at an Affordable Rate

You can have the world’s most capable in-house team, and they will still struggle without the necessary resources, budget and support. Too often, leadership’s response when looking at an area that’s not performing as well as they had hoped is to assume they don’t have the right people or that their people aren’t working hard enough. While either could certainly be the case, it’s more often that the in-house teams don’t have what they need to be successful. As of August 2024, only 33 percent of U.S. workers in Gallup’s Engagement Survey strongly agreed that they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day, and only 46 percent strongly agreed that they knew what was expected of them at work.

Even if you’re the type of leader who understands your team needs help, you still face challenges. Most notably, adding headcount is one of the most difficult processes in any organization, and for good reason. According to the Paycor, labor costs can account for as much as 70 percent of total costs for a business. Thus, even if you are somehow able to get new headcount for your team approved, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to free up enough budget to hire top talent.

Paradoxically, cost is an area where engaging an outside expert can be extremely attractive. Yes, these outside parties are paid at a higher rate that represents their experience and expertise. They are also paid on a time-bound basis, either by project or hourly, and are not paid benefits like insurance or bonuses. As a result, organizations can afford to bring in higher-level experts at a lower overall cost than a mid-range full-time hire. 

Importantly, if your company works with an organization like Canopy Advisory Group who heavily vets every fractional expert in its community, your company will be bringing on an expert with actual experience in the problems you’re trying to solve. If you choose to scroll through LinkedIn to try to find an “expert,” you risk ending up with a consultant who is good at selling themselves but who has never executed anything at the level you need. 

The best experts will provide value well above their overall cost, in both the work and in their impact longer-term, supporting your in-house team with the guidance and in-the-weeds help that they need to make real progress on key projects.

A Blend of Strategic and Tactical Support

Many in-house teams are composed of employees who are meant to play extremely specific roles. Leaders create strategy and manage large teams, specialists support platforms and operations, junior team members focus on blocking and tackling work – you get the idea.

Once again, there are a lot of reasons for this, and it’s not necessarily the wrong approach. It can, however, hamstring in-house teams when it comes to agility and execution. If, due to hierarchy, approval process and extreme specialization, a team takes three weeks to complete a project that should take one, you have a big problem.

Unlike traditional consultants, fractional experts bring a blend of strategic acumen and execution ability, meaning that they can become a contributing member of the team almost immediately. What often helps in-house teams most is working collaboratively with fractional experts and seeing the output, which then helps them adjust and improve their work. This is the longer-term value of fractional engagements that isn’t talked about enough; the impact of ideas, concepts put into practice and inspiration often lingers long after the fractional expert has completed their project.

Outside Support is Often Necessary Due to Barriers Facing In-House Teams

For the most part, organizations don’t need to bring in consultants because in-house teams are incompetent. They need to bring in outside experts because of how hard it can be for in-house teams to get things done.It’s not an indictment of organizational structures and processes as much as it is a fact of life within many companies. 

Organizations look at hundreds of different metrics to determine business health, prioritization, and the success or failure of projects. Smart business owners and leaders are greenlighting fractional engagements to help solve key business problems for a wide range of reasons. The one that will almost always matter most is better outcomes.

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Are you looking for a better way to get your projects across the finish line, on time, and under budget? Canopy can help you find the right fractional expert, onboard them quickly, and ensure a speedy and successful engagement. 

Tell us about your project today at canopyadvisory.com. 

The post Why Does Adding Outside Experts Help Teams Deliver Better Outcomes? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

In business, however, and especially when it comes to different ways of working, myths can be more dangerous. They can set us down a certain path, false assumptions held tightly in our hands, without the benefit of real experience and knowledge.

The reason myths persist, however, is that there is some level of truth in them. If they were wholly unbelievable, they would slowly fade. Many of the myths about fractional work and consulting fall into this category. Someone, somewhere had an experience with fractional work or consulting that spawned the idea that “every fractional and consulting engagement is or will be just like this.”

In reality, these outlying experiences tend to be more exception than rule. To help us layer reality on top of some of the biggest myths about fractional work, we asked our Canopy expert advisors for help in identifying those they hear the most (and what the actual truth is in nearly every case).

MYTH #1: “Fractional hires are too expensive for non-profits and small businesses.”

THE REALITY: Interestingly enough, startups and early-stage companies were among the first to embrace fractional work. The reason? Because hiring fractional team members is often the more cost-effective option than bringing on full-time employees. In some cases, those savings could be significant, with Forbes estimating that the fractional model could cut employers’ payroll costs 30-40% vs. full-time employment. For organizations with tight budgets like many small businesses and early-stage companies, and those who need to keep overhead minimal like non-profits, fractional can be an extremely attractive option precisely because of its cost-effectiveness.

MYTH #2: “Fractional experts run up big bills and don’t deliver results.”

THE REALITY: This myth is derived, whether right or wrong, from a negative view of the value of consulting at a general level. While consulting and fractional work are similar, there are critical differences. Most notably, while all fractional work is consulting, not all consulting is fractional work. True fractional experts offer a “best of both worlds” approach between high-level consulting and freelancing in that they provide both strategy and tactical execution; consultants generally offer only strategy while freelancers generally offer only tactics.

Due to the nature of the work, both the perceived and actual value of fractional work is likely to be more in-line with expected outcomes and results. In terms of the “big bills” myth, while it is true that many fractional experts are paid at significantly higher hourly rates than freelancers, because fractional resources primarily work on a project basis, the costs for an organization remain far lower than other options, including hiring full-time staff members. Organizations hiring fractional resources get access to the very best in expert talent without paying benefits, longer-term salaries or bonuses, driving better results at a much more reasonable cost.

MYTH #3: “Fractional experts don’t care about the company they’re working with.”

THE REALITY: In a recent survey of our community of experienced Canopy fractional experts, this myth came up in many of the open-ended responses. Fractional experts want companies to know that, although they are often working for a limited time or in a limited capacity, this does not affect their interest in integrating themselves completely into organizations. Most take pride in learning company core values and becoming a true part of the team during their engagements. There may be isolated situations where a fractional resource remains detached from a team or organization throughout a relationship, but that would be the rare exception.

MYTH #4: ”This fractional resource will solve all of our problems.”

THE REALITY: The “fractional expert as business panacea” trap can be surprisingly easy to fall into. After all, you’ve chosen and vetted an elite expert to come into your organization and you want to believe that pulling the fractional lever is the one thing you need to do to get your business moving in the right direction or growing faster.

Make no mistake, if you bring in the right fractional expert and set the right expectations, a single project can have a tremendous impact on your business. That said, one of the things that makes fractional work so valuable is that a fractional resource is brought in to solve very specific problems based on their expertise. Imagine that it’s the heat of the summer and you’ve inflated and filled up a kiddie pool. Unfortunately, the pool is leaking. If you’ve identified a single hole in the fabric of the pool, there’s a good chance that you could stop the leak by plugging that hole. If there are multiple holes, plugging one might slow the leak, but will not solve the overarching problem.

The point being that it’s important to look at the value of fractional work for what it’s meant to do: solve specific problems with project-based work (not magically cure every organizational ill in a six-month timeframe).

MYTH #5: “They create a plan then leave chaos in their wake.”

THE REALITY: The “drop a 50-slide PowerPoint deck on the team and leave” myth about fractional work is another that is a result of poor consulting practices. As noted, the critical difference between consulting and fractional work is that most fractional resources participate in the execution of the strategy vs. providing only recommendations.

Beyond the fact that this provides better value for most organizations, the greatest benefit often comes in the positive impact of fractional engagements on internal company staff. Because fractional experts are both creating strategy and implementing it, most make a concerted effort to coach and train employees in their clients’ organizations to ensure that those employees can take the strategy and run with it when the engagement is complete. Watching how a fractional expert works in-real time can provide an incredible amount of value from a development perspective.

MYTH #6: “They use generic playbooks for every engagement.”

THE REALITY: There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a playbook. Every consultant, fractional expert and freelancer is likely to have one, as they need to have a framework or model to be able to articulate and sell their services. The issue arises when a consultant keeps the playbook at too high of a level, providing a generic framework that doesn’t customize to fit the true needs of a business.

That’s precisely how this myth was born, and it’s one of the most common complaints from clients of some of the large consulting shops. For fractional experts, it’s about providing a balance between having a strong framework to apply to organizations and ensuring that they’re providing differentiated value within that framework that the client couldn’t get anywhere else.

MYTH #7: “Being an outsider means they can’t understand our problems.”

THE REALITY: This extremely common myth is a function both of poor experiences with consultants and the resentment that can arise when an organization brings in an expert from the outside to look at any part of a business. Sure, there are likely situations where a consultant or a fractional expert doesn’t do the work to really get to know a business, and those relationships are doomed to fail from the very beginning. In most cases, however, understanding the root business problems, what’s been tried before and the overall dynamics of the business are all implied in the mandate of a fractional expert. It’s part of what they’re paid to do.

In our survey of Canopy expert advisors this year, our fractional experts told us that bringing an outside perspective is often precisely what does help solve problems that may have been difficult for internal teams to see or execute against given their other responsibilities. So this myth can be flipped on its head; an outside perspective can be the most valuable part of a fractional engagement.

MYTH #8: “They’ll just tell us what we already know.”

THE REALITY: Is there an outside chance this could happen? Sure. But the odds are extremely low. While every recommendation may not be brand new, the role of a fractional expert is to provide the right guidance needed to solve business problems. If they’re doing their jobs, known issues will certainly be a part of what a fractional expert uncovers. Fractional experts are paid what they’re paid for a reason, and as a result, what an organization gets back will go far deeper than a surface level.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to bring the right fractional experts into your organization, check out our guide, Making Fractional Work for You, or send us a note here.

The post Myths and Realities of Hiring Fractional Experts appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Fractional experts can join organizations quickly, onboard at high speed due to expertise and experience, and start making an impact almost immediately. Fractional hiring is also more targeted than hiring for full-time employees, because you’re hiring on a project basis. That means you’re able to bring on the right expert to solve a specific problem or problems, as opposed to trying to overcome every business challenge all at once. Last but not least, you get the very best talent without having to foot the bill for benefits or being on the hook for a salary long-term, which can save you quite a bit of money.

Like any type of organizational decision, however, bringing in fractional experts is not the right move in every situation. We asked our community of expert advisors to identify specific scenarios when a full-time employee could make more sense than a fractional hire.

Scenario 1: Organization Needs Support Above and Beyond a Project Basis

As one of our expert advisors noted, one way to identify this scenario is when your fractional expert’s hours are closer to 35-40 for a period spanning around 6 months. Even if you don’t use those numbers, you will know when you’re starting to move from a fractional engagement to something that more closely remembers full-time. From the perspective of the fractional expert, reaching this type of milestone represents a positive longer-term outcome of fractional work, as it means that the expert has brought the organization to a place where it can now sustain the work on a longer-term basis.

Many fractional experts prefer to work with a variety of different clients and would be ready to move on to a new client in this scenario. Others may be open to considering a full-time engagement with your organization.

Scenario 2: Organization Has Reached a Growth Tipping Point

When an organization reaches a certain stage of growth, needs often arise that only full-time employees can fill. This isn’t to say that the organization shouldn’t hire on any fractional experts; far from it. It simply means that there are likely to be both tactical and executive-level roles that the organization may wish to bring on instead of using fractional talent to fill those needs. As mentioned above, hiring for executive-level full-time roles could be partially based on the sheer number of hours needed to get the work done in specific functional areas. It could also be driven by the number of projects necessary for the resources to manage. For more tactical or mid-level roles, it could be an increase in the number of tasks that require constant interaction with customers or suppliers, the need to be available and/or tied into communications during business hours, or the need to manage other staff.

Similar to Scenario 1, Scenario 2 could also be a situation where your organization has worked with a fractional expert and reached the point where a full-time hire simply made more sense. As noted, organizations don’t outgrow all fractional expertise. They reach a point where both full-time and fractional experts should work hand-in-hand.

Scenario 3: Organization Only Needs Tactical and Operational Support

The primary difference between consultants and fractional experts is that, while all fractional work is consulting, not all consulting is fractional work.

Fractional experts actually provide a best of both worlds between consulting and freelancing in that they offer both strategy and tactical execution. Consultants, for the most part, offer the strategy piece through expert advice and guidance, but not the implementation. That’s what makes fractional experts so valuable. They give you the roadmap and then drive you at least part of the way there.

For organizations that are not in need of the strategic or expert-level portion of the equation, hiring fractional doesn’t make business sense. These resources come at a higher cost due to their expertise and experience, and the fact that they provide both strategy and execution. Freelancers or junior full-time employees are often more cost-effective if an organization is looking only for tactical support.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to bring the right fractional experts into your organization, contact Canopy Advisory Group today.

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Fractional work is defined as an arrangement in which an individual provides specialized skills or management services to multiple organizations on a part-time or project basis. An alternative form of work gaining some traction is one thing, but the fact that half of Americans are projected to be participating in this kind of work, and that soon? That qualifies as a seismic shift in the relationships between employers and employees.

So how did we get here? Since 2020, workplaces in the U.S. have been in a near-constant state of turmoil. A pandemic forcing workplaces into full-time remote work, widespread leaks of footage showing how disconnected executives are from their teams, The Great Resignation, return-to-office mandates, mass layoffs, lack of backfills for departed employees, economic uncertainty. It’s created what could be termed a perfect storm for hiring and retention across nearly every industry and vertical.

For businesses, tighter budgets, expanding growth targets, a focus on efficiency and high people costs are making fractional resources more and more attractive. For talented workers, stagnating corporate salaries, poor executive leadership and the constant drumbeat of draconian and impersonal layoffs are fueling a move away from full-time employment. As talented employees leave to pursue the freedom of fractional work, organizations that either do not support side hustles for their staff or exhibit the qualities that tend to push employees out are at the highest risk. And when those companies go to rehire, they will have access to fewer and fewer of the very best, as those experts are more likely to be pursuing alternative work options.

Fractional work is only a threat, however, for organizations who fail to embrace it. The organizations who win in this new world will be those who commit to understanding and embracing fractional work right now. Learning how fractional workers can integrate into their business model, learning which projects are best suited for fractional support, learning how to meld fractional resources with full-time staff. Because those companies will already be far ahead when other organizations are still scrambling to shift when they’re forced to change.

These organizations will understand that they need to change how they staff their companies and complete projects in a work world that’s already undergoing a transformation in how people work. Even more importantly, they will know that sticking with the status quo won’t allow them to achieve their most important goals. Organizations embracing fractional work will:

• Save Money: Hiring a fractional worker saves a company an average of 30-40% over a full-time worker due to a variety of factors, including a shorter, time-bound tenure and lack of benefit payments.
• Increase Agility and Speed: Not only can you hire fractional workers far more quickly than full-time employees, most come with reduced training time and expenses given their experience and high level of expertise. 
• Increase Effectiveness: Expert-led, project-based work will result in more projects being completed on time and at a high level of quality, as fractional resources are unlikely to be slowed down by traditional internal company challenges.
• Innovate With Purpose: Innovation is driven by creativity, knowledge, technique and motivation. The outcome-based nature of the engagements, the level of expertise of the individual consultants, and the limited time they have within organizations inherently makes innovation more of an imperative for fractional workers than their full-time counterparts.

There are, of course, cons of hiring fractional experts into your business instead of full-time staff. While fractional experts are cost-effective due to the fact the organizations don’t pay for benefits or other overhead and because their projects are time-bound, they are also paid as experts, and so become less cost-effective the longer they are under contract. There are also leaders who believe that, because fractional workers are hired on a project basis, they may be less committed to the organization they work for than a full-time employee. Finally, because they often exist outside of the traditional interviewing process for full-time hires, it can be more difficult for organizations to vet the experts effectively (without help).

So, while fractional hiring isn’t likely the hypothetical silver bullet to slay all of your organization’s werewolves, it very well may be the right munition for some of them. If you’re ready to learn more about why fractional work could be right for your business and how to find and hire the expert talent you need to move your most important projects forward right now, set a meeting with our team at Canopy Advisory Group.

The post Why Embracing Fractional Work Can Change Your Business for the Better appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Fractional COOs and COSs have entered the gig economy and are solving many problems for businesses that have a gap in high-level capability. “Most fractional executives have worked for several years in multiple roles and industries—often in many companies. These deep levels of experience make them very adaptable to step in quickly to a senior role. Where it might take years to upskill a current employee, it normally takes 90 days for a fractional executive to be operating at 100%.” 

“So how can the influx of fractional executives be a solution to this significant business gap? The answers fall into three C’s: capability, customizable, and contract.” 

Read the complete Forbes article that dives into these benefits and note the last section on avoiding fractional pitfalls. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2024/03/12/business-succession-through-fractional-leadership/?sh=14495c846c5e

“When opting for a fractional executive, businesses might face challenges like aligning the executive’s availability with the company’s needs, ensuring a good fit with the company’s culture, and managing expectations around deliverables.” Canopy has extensive experience matching high-level professionals with companies to avoid these problems. Connect with our pool of talent and speak with us about what roles you need to fill.  

Contact us at (720) 989-1705 or email info@canopyadvisory.com.

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“Unlike established companies that often have a team of top senior executives, most SMEs and startups only have the business owner acting as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Yet, growth and scale are essential for small companies to survive and compete. A sign that your company may need the intervention of a fractional executive is that it is not attaining set organizational goals.”

The benefits of fractional executives are reiterated often: access to expertise, cost effectiveness, build a complete team, flexibility… Read the Yale Ledger article which expands more on each benefit and consider if your business might align well with additional high-level expertise while it grows. https://campuspress.yale.edu/ledger/fractional-executives-why-your-company-needs-them

“A fractional executive is a seasoned C-suite professional with at least twenty years of experience in their field of expertise. The majority of fractional executives boast an impressive career history with experience in various C-level roles across multiple industries.” Canopy’s talent pool includes a carefully selected group of executive-level experts. Let us help complete your team. 

Speak with us about what roles you need to fill.  

The post Fractional Executives for Startups and Smaller Businesses appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Think about the people on your teams.  The individuals showing up or logging in every day, helping you and the business move into the future.  Chances are, you are their #1 source for information about where the business is heading and you are also the #1 conduit for the business to know who they are, what they do, and where they’re going.  Who else would be better equipped to inspire the work they’re doing in a meaningful way, and by meaningful, that includes both to the business AND to the employee? Here’s your chance to break the cycle of dull, impersonal, or foggy goals by incorporating aspects of the goal-setting process that will set you apart.

1. Goals need aspiration

Setting aspirational goals that align with a company’s mission, vision, and values fosters a sense of purpose and direction. Aspirational goals transcend mere tasks; they energize and motivate employees by connecting their daily efforts to a larger, meaningful context. When goals are fundamentally tied to a company’s mission, they become a driving force that brings that mission to life. Similarly, aligning goals with the company’s vision creates a roadmap to achieving overarching long-term objectives. Finally, grounding goals in the company’s values ensures that the pursuit of objectives is not only about achieving results but also about upholding principles integral to the organization’s identity. In this way, aspirational goals serve as a unifying force, rallying the collective efforts of the team toward a shared vision and reinforcing the organization’s commitment to its core values.

2. Goals require understanding

Clarity in goal setting is essential for effective communication, alignment, and successful execution within an organization. When goals are transparent and straightforward, individuals can align their efforts seamlessly, fostering a collective sense of purpose and direction. As the guide through this process, your ability to remove ambiguity enhances accountability and empowers team members to make informed decisions based on a shared understanding of the desired outcomes. The SMART framework does force a “clarity critique” of each goal, and if used consistently, can make goal definition efficient and effective.

3. Goals should be personal 

Professional goals that resonate on a personal level with people are more likely to evoke genuine motivation, dedication, and a sense of fulfillment. When employees see their unique talents and interests connected to their professional objectives, work becomes a meaningful journey aligned with individual growth and values. Personalized professional goals tap into intrinsic motivations, and the ability for a company to see, recognize, and value what motivates us as individuals optimizes the work we do as we achieve those goals. As a result, intertwining professional goals with personal dimensions enhances job satisfaction, engagement, and overall well-being, contributing to both individual success and organizational prosperity.

With these differentiators in mind, make setting goals memorable and meaningful with team members that will undoubtedly be leading their own teams someday.  Cheers to 2024!  Let’s get started!

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Click Here to download a PDF version of the eBook.

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Fractional or part-time CFOs have extensive experience, but are generally brought in by startups to help on a temporary basis. A fractional CFO in Denver can deliver a range of financial services and strategic guidance for growing organizations through this part-time offering, helping businesses stay on track without breaking the bank.

Fit Your Strategy to Your Goals

Fractional CFOs offer a wide scope of financial expertise, and delivering the right financial strategy is one of their most important areas of knowledge. They can help develop and refine the financial strategies to fit with the organization’s goals through guidance on everything from budgeting, to forecasting and giving analysis to support decision-making. They can also ensure accurate and timely financial reporting by interpreting financial data to identify opportunities, risks, and trends for better insight into financial management. 

Creating a streamlined financial process is imperative for any business, and fractional CFOs can act as strategic partners – offering financial advice and guidance on an array of critical business decisions. Helping create and write business plans that fit in everything from financial risk assessment to creating the right funding strategy. Many business owners don’t start a business with these tools, and a fractional CFO can help bridge the gap to make sure that you’re on the right track. 

Tackle Today’s Shifting Market

Making sure your financial systems keep up with your particular market is critical – particularly in the growing stages of your business. Fractional CFOs can evaluate and enhance your financial systems and process to bolster accuracy, efficiency, and compliance. This can involve implementing the right accounting software, establishing policies and streamlining financial workflows. Some of this comes down to getting the right bookkeeping and accounting, but the fractional CFO can assist with all of that as well as delivering the right financial data analysis.

Analyzing costs and profitability to identify areas of for cost reduction or revenue enhancement is another area fractional CFOs can assist. Organizing cash-flow statements and conducting a cost-benefit analysis can help improve operational efficiency. They can also help assess the financial viability of potential mergers and acquisitions (M&A), as well as offering support in the negotiation and integration processes. Getting the correct business valuation in the current market is also something the fractional CFO will be able to assist with. 

It’s important to understand that the specific services provided by fractional CFOs may vary based on the needs and size of the organization. For more information on how a fractional CFO in Denver might be right in helping your business, reach out to the experts at Canopy Advisory Group today.

The post What Types of Services Do Fractional CFOs Provide? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Why On-Demand Consulting?

Customers can benefit from on-demand consulting through a wide range of services, including strategic decision making, leadership development, and refining workflows and processes, to name a few. Companies that use on-demand consultants typically already have several full-time staff members, but still require specialized solutions to complex problems, answers to executive-level questions or knowledge of best practices. Additionally, customers use on-demand consulting for complete end-to-end implementation of the identified solutions from your engagement. On-demand consultants are accessible anytime for one-on-one support, regardless of how small or big the challenge may be.

Client Services

On-demand consulting through Canopy Advisory Group provides the expertise, proven skills, and industry knowledge that fulfills our clients’ needs. Our client services include:

• Vetting top-tier consultants from a wide range of industries.
• Identifying what clients value and devising unique strategies to serve every client’s needs.
• Selecting the best consultants that fit each client’s company culture
• Offering access to our team of thought partners and experts
• Being proactive, pinpointing possible problems before they happen
• Developing a process to ensure that each engagement runs smoothly

Resource Support

With on-demand consulting, you’re leveraging the power of years of experience in multiple industries and situations. Every on-demand consultant has an unparalleled depth of expertise and knowledge in their field and is available to address your needs as they arise. Because we familiarize ourselves with your business model, any consultant assigned to you can quickly hit the ground running. We remain connected during the project to make sure the on-demand consultant is providing value and satisfying your expectations.

Top On-Demand Consulting in Denver, CO

Our on-demand consulting services focus on a clear-cut premise: to offer you skilled resources that are thoroughly vetted and selected to meet your timeframe and requirements. 

Hundreds of clients have relied on our on-demand consultants because our experts bring vast, deep knowledge to any situation. Contact us today if you’d like to learn more about us and our network of top-tier on-demand consultants.

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Q: What are some trends or strategies you’re seeing with your clients?
A:  A trend I am seeing leaders struggle with is building trust and achieving performance in current hybrid and remote environments. Leaders sometimes push for performance from a ‘goals and accountability’ angle, but by understanding and leveraging their team’s strengths they could be more effective. Being successful comes down to communication in many ways – we don’t communicate nearly as well as we think we do. When leaders work on improving communication, I see stronger performance.

• In the absence of leveraging a team’s strengths, leaders often start with goals and accountability which is less successful.
• If you are intentional with trust, communication, leaning on strengths, and understanding that people all think differently you can be so much more successful – my goal is to teach people how to do that and help facilitate that.

Q: What are your top questions when meeting with new clients?

A: It’s a series of questions – What is your current situation, What are your value and what is your five year vision, How are you going to get there, Who will you partner with, What are your strengths, and What are you doing to develop the next generation of leaders.

• You need to be clear about your business and vision, but we are not meant to do it alone and we are limited by our own capacity. It’s important to invest in others and develop that next generation of leaders so we can achieve more.

Q: What is a challenge you see in 2022?

A: I’m noticing that DEI training is not really working – we are not getting the results we want. We want to see top, diverse, talent retained and for employees to really feel like they belong at a company. The problem is you can’t improve DEI by just focusing on DEI – a company needs to work on building relationships, community, empathy, and understanding their employee’s strengths. I’d like to see these aspects incorporated into how DEI training is done.

Q: What fires you up at work and in life?

A: Coaching youth sports. I’m fascinated with how leadership shows up in all areas of life – I define leadership as bringing out the best in others. I got into coaching because I wanted to focus on the kids and make sure they came out of their experience with a love for a sport, the feeling that they achieved excellence, and knowing they contributed. It takes a lot to figure out what is going to bring out the best in a kid and I geek out on that.

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We know and appreciate that our bodies require proactive work and intentional habits in order to maintain good physical health. If we want our bodies to perform well we need to take action to maintain health. So why don’t we talk more about the healthy habits needed to maintain our mental health?

As individuals in a system designed to tell us otherwise, It is already a mighty task to seek out preventive medicine for our bodies. Our healthcare system works against it, with the incentives pointed towards sick care, and unnecessary drugs and procedures. It is even harder to seek out preventive mental healthcare. Frankly, it is almost never even discussed in this context.

The body and the mind are inextricably linked. The scientific approach to western medicine over the past 100 years has forced us to compartmentalize physical and mental wellness. Ironically, our mental health is governed by our bodies; our neurotransmitters, our hormones, our gut, our metabolic functioning, and many other core physical systems that are critical to how we exist socially in the world and in relationship to ourselves.

We go for a run or eat a healthy, nourishing meal, in order to stay on top of our physical health and wellbeing. What if we apply the same logic of prevention and wisdom to maintaining (and improving) our mental health as well? What would it mean to carve out time in your daily life to proactively and preventively address mental fitness?

There are endless options, most of them best done when personalized to your unique needs and unique body, just as no one diet or exercise routine fits all. But we do all agree on a few core concepts like whole foods, water, sleep, and movement. When it comes to preventive mental healthcare, here are a few universally relevant ways to stay fit.

• Change the types of inputs your mind receives.

If you are chronically feeding your mind with the 24-hour news cycle, or watching disturbing television, or endlessly scrolling, you are doing the equivalent to your brain of eating a Big Mac every afternoon. Get clear on what media inputs are allowed in your life and engineer out the bad stuff.

• Find regular and consistent quiet time to integrate and process your thoughts.

We live in a world that is always on. We need to be strong enough to step away for periods of time for our bodies, minds, and spirits to keep up with the pace.

• Get an accountability partner.

The power of training for athletic endeavors in teams is well-documented and respected. It works because accountability works. Find people or places in your life where you can regularly check in on how you are feeling, processing, and showing up to yourself and your life.

Our bodies are ever-changing and so are our minds. Always on a journey back towards balance and healing. Preventive care is taking the long view. It is the tiny, incremental steps day after day that matter. Our mental health cannot snap into a renewed state overnight, just like we cannot lose 10 pounds the week before our high school reunion. By changing our approach to how we view our mental health, we can unlock access to a lifetime of mental fitness.

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The USA Today paints the picture this way:  The country has recovered 76% of the 22.4 million jobs lost last spring as businesses closed to try to contain the spread of COVID-19, leaving payrolls 5.3 million jobs below their pre-pandemic level.

There is a “Musical Chairs” of sorts happening.  According to Fortune, nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers are currently looking for a new job.  Trying to match these workers with the available jobs is challenging, particularly with so many variables in the search.  In some cases, employees who have spent months in a remote role are not ready to give up their newfound autonomy and are job searching instead of agreeing to report back to the office.  And for many, the last eighteen months have been a time of reflection about how they want to spend their days and whether they are on the right career path.  The New York Times has dubbed this the YOLO Economy, for the acronym – You Only Live Once.  Many higher income workers, buoyed by the savings accumulated from more than a year of largely skipping entertainment, travel and big purchases, while enjoying stock market gains, are ready to pursue “riskier” passion projects instead of remaining in a job that feels stagnant.  In short, they want a career that taps into their sweet spot.

Research has shown people tend to re-evaluate their job and career choice after a major life event.  During the pandemic, this reassessment has happened to a large number of us all at the same time.  Some have decided this is the time to switch industries, go back to school, or retire early, in what market analysts have dubbed “the Great Resignation.”  LinkedIn reports that 57% of its recorded job switches between May and July were from one industry to another.

Some analysts tend to blame stimulus checks and unemployment payments for de-incentivizing workers to jump back into the labor force, and there may be some truth to this.  However, others argue this is much too simplistic a view – and the reasons behind the labor shortage are both varied and complicated.  For those forced to exit the job market to protect themselves or their family members from exposure to the virus or to care for kids suddenly at home, there are no easy answers.

Economist Dante DeAntonio of Moody’s Analytics expects the current labor shortage to take some time to resolve, even with school re-openings and progress in vaccination numbers.  “The labor shortages will start to abate in September and this fall, but it’s not going to be an immediate fix. This could well play out over two, three years.”

The post Why are People Out of Work, but Businesses Can’t Find Employees: Part 1 appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

Answer:  COVID-19 has impacted nearly every aspect of our professional lives – businesses have been restructured entirely and many of us are overwhelmed by added pressure and demand resulting in high levels of chronic stress and workplace burnout.

We all have unique responses to stress, which are shaped by factors, such as: our family of origin, level of resilience and locus of control.  Some have an intrinsic locus of control, where difficulties are approached as “challenges that can be overcome” and others have an extrinsic locus of control and see obstacles as “problems that are happening to them”. 

​We, as humans, have far more authority over our mind and body’s responses to stress than we often realize. The key to understanding the signs and symptoms of chronic stress/burnout is to understand that they don’t appear all at once or overnight.  They tend to sneak up on us. It’s important to pay attention to the symptoms or cues our minds and bodies are telling us about our cognitive, physical and emotional wellbeing.​

When you are operating at a high level of stress and not recognizing symptoms, the likely result is workplace burnout.

​Common symptoms of burnout:

• Fatigue​
• Difficulty focusing​
• Lacking satisfaction with work and achievements​
• Feeling disillusioned​
• Lack of motivation​
• Feelings of guilt

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, it’s time to implement some self-care strategies.  Self-care doesn’t mean upending your entire life. It means making room for small, mindful, realistic shifts.  Here are some ideas:

​Mind & Body: ​

• Get adequate rest​: Incorporate a nightly routine to help prepare you for sleep.
• Choose healthy foods​: Be mindful that during times of chronic stress, the brain will transmit messages craving high sugar, empty calorie food and beverages.   ​
• Move your body​: Find creative ways to remain active throughout your day.  Schedule ”standing breaks” chair yoga, dedicated time for exercise, going on a walk, ​
• Engage in active relaxation​: Active relation activities like journaling, walking in nature, reading a book, meditation, and breathwork promote long-term health benefits for physical and emotional well-being. ​
• Keep things in perspective​: Maintain realistic and attainable expectations.​

Work/Life Balance:

• Set up for success​: Establish a morning routine​, set scheduled breaks​ in advance and honor your lunchtime​.
• Protect your workspace/home space​: Be deliberate about setting boundaries, create a dedicated space conducive to work and productivity​
• ”Book-end” your workday:​ Consider how you will know when work life is done, and your personal life begins (ex: visual cues, closing the laptop, cleaning work area, taking a brief walk or step outside for fresh air) ​
• Take time to connect: Reach out to family, friends, and your colleagues.

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What’s the difference between a mentor, a sponsor, an ally, and an advocate? I want to help underrepresented colleagues succeed but am confused about what these terms mean.

Answer:

You already signaled your intent: you want to do the right thing by helping underrepresented colleagues succeed. Let’s stop here and think about what it would look like to see your underrepresented colleagues succeed.

STEP 1: Ask, what does “success” mean for your colleagues in this context?

(If you don’t know, start by getting to know them better. Ask questions. Listen.)

Success might mean:

• Your colleague receives a well-deserved promotion
• Your colleague’s ideas are heard and valued in meetings
• Your colleague knows they are being compensated equitably
• Your colleague is given stretch assignments and responsibilities
• Your colleague is invited to high-level meetings with senior leaders
• Your colleague receives opportunities for professional development
• Your colleague feels safe to express their opinions with peers and leaders

The key with this exercise is to center your colleagues in their success. If it were a story, they would be the protagonist, not you.

STEP 2: Once you have a working definition of success, reverse engineer the steps needed to achieve it.

Where and how does your position of power intersect with these steps? It’s at these points of intersection where you can lend support.

Support might look like:

• Calling out bias when it occurs in the workplace
• Actively speaking up for your colleague in meetings
• Introducing your colleague to your professional network
• Asking to hear your colleague’s opinion in group settings
• Advocating for a company-wide pay equity audit or greater pay transparency
• Supporting equitable workplace policies (such as the diverse-slate approach to hiring or the removal of binding arbitration clauses)

Now, back to your original question: what does it mean to be a mentor, a sponsor, an ally, and an advocate? There are technical definitions for each label, with each definition spanning the DEI continuum. (You can read more about these definitions here.) However, I urge you not to get caught up in what to call yourself.

Focus on your stated goal: to help underrepresented colleagues succeed. What proof, what data, do you need to verify that you reached your goal? Because at the end of the day, the proof (i.e. seeing your colleagues succeed) matters more than what you call yourself.

The post Are You A Mentor, Sponsor, Ally or Advocate? appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

This group celebrated its first ‘Negro History Week’ in February 1926, these celebrations spanned cities across the nation. In the late 1960’s, with the Civil Rights Movement gaining traction and heightening awareness of the Black experience, ‘Negro History Week’ evolved into  Black History Month. In 1976 President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month, noting the importance of public recognition of the contributions Black Americans have made in America.

For this reason it’s critical that the celebration of Black History Month continues and expands. In addition to community recognition of Black History Month, it’s important that businesses take bold and deliberate actions in the recognition and celebration of the contributions of Black American’s. Diversity creates dimension, and inclusion is the vehicle organizations activate to effectively achieve workforce equity. Inclusion demands action, operational integration, and leadership, and this is an area many organizations have room to grow.

Although the recognition and celebration of Black American’s should be ongoing, initiating Black History Month programming is a sound starting point for businesses as they work to achieve their inclusion and equity goals. Organizations can celebrate Black History Month by:

1. Amplifying Black voices: “Pass the mic” opportunities are an impactful way of humanizing the Black experience. This can be accomplished by inviting external Black speakers, inviting existing team members to speak, and creating moments for Black voices to resonate throughout the organization. Creating environments that support psychological safety enable all team members to show up authentically. Passing the mic is not only a way to celebrate Black History Month, but it’s a collaborative strategy that will benefit the organization beyond the month of February.
2. Education, workshops, and learning: Fostering inclusion and equity in the workforce requires exercising new muscles that challenge thinking and support individual growth. Organizations can champion learning by offering DEI curriculum; sharing books, articles, and podcasts; or engaging in Black History Month trivia as an organization. As businesses work to become more inclusive, it’s important that space is created for team members to be introspective and self reflective.
3. Support Black owned businesses: Organizations can take action and demonstrate their commitment to diversity through the implementation of a supplier diversity initiative. Supporting Black owned businesses highlights the innovation and multifaceted talents of Black founded and operated companies, while adding to the longevity and sustainability of Black owned businesses.

Black history is American history, when businesses celebrate and recognize the contributions of  Black American’s they create space for the acknowledgement of the Black identity in their organizations. Championing inclusivity is actionable, our unique identities must be celebrated and acknowledged. Celebrating Black History Month is a good starting point for businesses as they work to build equitable workforces. But, this commitment to equity can’t stop with Black History Month celebrations, it’s ongoing work and commitment requiring leadership, culture, and operations.

The post Inspiring Equity Through Black History appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

And while budgets are cut and spending scrutinized, the need to invest in the development and well-being of our leaders is greater than ever before. We need leaders who are equipped to see us through this crisis and lead us into our new reality. That’s where executive and leadership coaching can play a vital role.

You have heard the saying that exemplifies this COVID-19 situation: “we are in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat”. People are faced with a multitude of different challenges at this time, from job loss to homeschooling, working on the frontlines to leading a team remotely. Coaching provides real-time, individualized support and development, meeting leaders where they are in this moment.

Coaching provides a safe place for reflection amidst the chaos of a crisis. It is an opportunity to examine mindsets, beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve in the current context and explore new ways of thinking, and being, to open up new possibilities.

What is important today that wasn’t a month ago?
What is possible now that wasn’t before?
What chances have you taken and what have you learned?
What have you learned and unlearned?

It is an opportunity to move from reaction to intention. To tackle stressors and build resilience. To find courage and comfort in the ambiguity and the vulnerability that arises from not knowing.

As leaders find support through coaching to increase awareness, adapt to the current context and develop the agility to deal with the storm rocking their boat, and the boats of those around them, this calm, compassionate and proactive leadership approach ripples through the organization. With increasing layers of leadership in organizations dispersed by this pandemic, building capacity and confidence in those leaders is paramount, and coaching can provide the ideal development solution.

The post Why leadership coaching is needed now more than ever appeared first on Canopy Advisory Group.

I haven’t been good at applying this mantra throughout my career.  I am somewhat of a control freak. So, in the past when things didn’t go as expected, I could get stressed or upset.  What I’ve learned through my experiences over the decades is that I can’t control too many things, except for me. Mistakes will be made. Balls will drop. Children will get sick at the worse possible times. You’ll find a nail in your tire when you are already late to a meeting. The weather won’t cooperate with your outdoor activities.  You can get upset and frustrated, or you can quickly adjust and develop a back-up plan. I’ve learned that for my own health, it’s better to let go and control my attitude and response to the situation.

And what better time to apply this than now? Who would have thought a few months ago that our businesses would be temporarily (or permanently) closed? That we would have to postpone a wedding or cancel our family ski trip? That we would be furloughed … or without a job? We can’t control what is happening around the world right now. We are in uncertain times. And we can make the best of it and stay positive. I’ve been inspired by the moving stories during these times. It’s not just the healthcare providers and first responders (who are amazing human beings) who are going above and beyond. Many people we know are doing extraordinary things. Families are spending quality time together. People are helping neighbors and strangers in incredible ways. People are making the best of a tough situation. This is what a great attitude means.

At work, a positive attitude helps us to see problems as opportunities from which to learn and grow. Don’t we all love being around positive people?  It’s a quality I look for when hiring a new person into an organization. During interviews, I ask about a difficult situation they faced in their past and how they handled it. I’m not looking for the most creative solution or the most amazing outcome. I’m looking for how the person viewed the situation and how they approached it. Did they immediately roll up their sleeves and start coming up with potential solutions? Did they engage their fellow workers?  Did they take responsibility and learn from the situation?

Positive people have great energy and are a great influence on others. And unfortunately, the ‘Negative Nelly’ can also have an impact. You know that person who’s the first to complain about the situation or the one to tell you how they tried it before, why it’s a bad idea or why it won’t work?  These are the people who can bring a great brainstorming session to a halt, and instantly suck all the energy out of a room.  While we need people in the workplace with differing perspectives, and people willing to say what needs to be said, we need people to handle it in a constructive way without bringing others down.

At one of my jobs, I had a counterpart who was an unhappy person. He would walk into my office once a week to complain. Yes, business was challenging. Sales were down, we were missing projections, and the analysts were unhappy.  But instead of spending time discussing what we could do to improve results, he’d complain about our boss, our counterparts, how we were focused on the wrong things …and I’d get sucked in.  I may have been very happy when he walked in, but by the time he left, I felt lifeless and disgruntled.  Looking back, I realize that I never walked into his office.  I didn’t want to have these “dissection of everything that was wrong with the company” discussions with him. In retrospect, I should have stopped him at the door and invited him to dump on someone else!

On the other hand, many years ago I worked with a woman who was always positive and had great energy.  People enjoyed being around her.  She was one of the first people selected for key taskforce teams. She was a great listener and made people feel good about themselves.  She could always find the silver lining in a situation. She rose rapidly through the organization and I believe much of it was because of her great energy and ability to remain positive and pleasant in tough situations.

I believe it’s important to keep a positive attitude and approach problems as learning opportunities. It’s far more enjoyable and healthier to be around positive, can-do people versus those who complain and drag you down.  Things happen. COVID-19 has impacted everyone. We will emerge stronger and be ready should the world be faced with something like this again. Change is constant and life is about learning and growing. You can’t control what’s happening around you, but you can control your response. You can adjust the sails in response to the winds.  “Attitude is Everything”.

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Culture is defined as the rules of behavior that direct daily actions in the workplace. It’s how things happen or the way a company does things. And many times, it’s not the same as what is written on paper. Culture is based on actions not words. It’s how the leaders behave during good times and in high stress situations. It’s what gets rewarded or recognized in a company. It’s the unspoken but understood way the business operates.

I was fortunate to find a perfect culture for my personality in my first job out of graduate school. It was a fast-paced environment. I had the opportunity to lead big projects and make an impact. The more I accomplished, the more I was recognized or rewarded with a promotion. I was a director in my late 20’s leading large team and several agencies. I had responsibility for big budgets. It was a ‘lean and mean’ organization that let you take on a lot of responsibility. I did well. I didn’t appreciate the importance of cultural fit until I moved into my next job.  My next company was huge with a lot of great people, but I was bored! I went from being stretched and growing like crazy, to moving slowly and bureaucratically. There were so many people and you had to involve just about everyone to get a decision made. I likened it to “whack a mole”. You thought you included everyone and then another person popped up and said they needed to be involved. Things moved too slowly for me.  And, the people who got promoted were nice people, but didn’t necessarily work the hardest or do the best job. It was just a different culture and one that worked well for a lot of people, but not me. After that, I knew what to look for in an organization that fit better with my style.

I also learned that leaders really impact the culture of a company. If the boss wants people to openly give their opinions in meetings, people learn to speak up. If the leader rewards people who keep quiet and do as they are told, that’s what most people will do. In my first job, the leaders expected people to speak their minds. In fact, the head of marketing kicked people out of meetings if they weren’t adding value. He wanted a lively debate and didn’t have time for people who didn’t have a point of view. He wanted to hear everyone’s thoughts (based on data, of course) so we could make the best decision.

Leaders set the tone and attitude in a company by how they behave.  I had two bosses that approached problems very differently, and the environment reflected their behavior and attitude. When something went wrong with a project, the first boss would get very grumpy and angry at the team. He was quick to blame and wanted to know who was at fault. People spent time defending their role in the situation, trying to explain what happened, and ultimately pointing fingers. Bodies were tossed under the blame bus. Unfortunately, issues took too long to get resolved because people were wasting time playing the blame game.

Another boss reacted to problems differently. When a project went off the rails, he told the team to work together to fix the problem. He didn’t want details on what happened or who messed up.  He wanted the problem fixed … and fast.  After the problem was resolved, he got the team together and thanked them for responding quickly. Then he asked key people to review the situation and propose changes so the same mistakes wouldn’t happen again. This culture was one of teamwork and continued improvement.  This boss treated mistakes as learning opportunities that would ultimately strengthen the team and the company.  The first boss had the attitude that mistakes were failures, and someone had to pay.  I know which boss inspired the teams to want to do their best.

The tone and culture are set from the top. If you want your company to be one of accountability and teamwork, that’s what you should recognize and reward.  If you want a culture where people contribute at all levels, then engage all levels and make sure people know you care about their ideas. Reward them for coming up with more efficient methods and cost savings.  Decide the culture you want and then live it. Reward the behavior you want to see. Nip bad behavior in the bud. Culture isn’t what is written down but rather how the company gets things done based on the leadership and what gets rewarded and recognized.

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