CASE STUDIES
From Pressure to Possibility - Transforming a Startup Leadership Team for Bold Growth
Team: Senior Leadership Team
Team Size: 7 Senior Leaders
Engagement Length: 1.5 days
Focus Area: to ignite collective ambition, challenge assumptions, and co-create a clear, aggressive roadmap from the current state to the desired state.
Background:
A fast-scaling B2B pharma startup had recently received a significant capital injection from a private equity (PE) firm. With aggressive expectations to increase sales growth and expand market share, the company faced intense pressure to move from 'start-up scrappy' to 'scale-up savvy.' The appointed CEO had spent year one stabilizing operations and finalizing her executive leadership team, bringing in a mix of startup veterans and corporate experts. With the right players finally in place, she saw the opportunity to challenge the team to break out of incremental thinking and build a bold, actionable growth strategy.
Goal:
The team need to collectively:
Challenge assumptions about the market, customers, and priorities
Set, socialize and execute a proactive strategy rather than react to PE pressure
Build the foundations for scalable, sustainable growth, rather than focusing on short-term fixes
Solution:
Leadership Offsite: Bold Visioning + Strategic Mapping: A one-day facilitated offsite was designed to align on the 'one company' mission, envision the future state of the business 18–24 months ahead, and identify the biggest mindset and operational shifts required to achieve it. The team surfaced and aligned on core 'bold moves' to drive business transformation and a 90-day execution plan.
Lessons Learned:
Bold growth starts with bold thinking—together. The turning point was when the team collectively shifted from 'what can we fix' to 'what must we become.'
Challenge drives alignment. By safely surfacing tensions and unspoken assumptions, the team moved beyond the ‘speaking points’ to real strategic alignment.
Shared ambition had to be matched with shared accountability and clear actions.
A bold plan means nothing without a leadership team willing to grow, adapt, and hold each other to high standards.
