About

I diagnose growth problems.

Most companies aren't stuck because they're executing badly. They're stuck because they're executing well against the wrong problem. The symptom shows up in one place: conversion, retention, pipeline, morale. And the cause lives somewhere else entirely. Money follows the symptom. A year goes by.

My work is the step before the plan: figure out what's actually happening, what's producing it, and what would have to be true for that explanation to be right.

I've spent twenty years inside growth problems rather than adjacent to them – as a marketing leader in higher education, technology, and healthcare, and currently as Chief Marketing Officer at Alliant International University. That means I've been on the other side of the diagnosis. I've owned the number, made the call with incomplete information, and lived with what came after. It's a different kind of knowledge than the kind you get from advising.

I find the signal in the noise, and I'm comfortable in the tension of ambiguity, long enough to test an explanation before acting on it, not so long that nothing moves.

That patience has a limit, and the limit is the point. Diagnosis exists to aim execution. Without execution, a good diagnosis is worth nothing.

So the work ends where it should: one lever, one experiment ready to run, one named owner, and what to watch for next.

I write about growth diagnosis, judgment, and how organizations learn. Those essays are being published here.

I also write about slower things: calm, clarity, courage, hope, acceptance. That work lives separately, and deliberately so.