In striving to be a good manager, Lucas Conrad-Loew, a customer success manager at energy brokerage Energy CX, takes inspiration from Abraham Lincoln.
Just as the sixteenth U.S. president famously had a rule to never criticize anyone, Conrad-Loew only shares praise for employees in public spaces, reserving negative feedback for personal conversations. He also takes advantage of opportunities to recognize team members throughout the week, whether it’s with the wider department or the rest of the company.
“The outcome is two-fold: The individual feels empowered, and the audience is inspired by their work and given insight into how to mirror that success,” Conrad-Loew said.
Having a strong leadership vision is key to motivating team members to reach critical goals, which is why leaders at Formation Bio never take credit when things go right, nor do they point fingers when something goes wrong.
“They celebrate the team effort and own the outcomes,” Vice President of People Dale Klasko said.
To create clarity as team members work together, she and other leaders make sure information is shared in the format that works best for them, whether that’s through email, Slack or presentations.
“We’ve established norms around what should be communicated in each channel so people know where to look and what to expect,” Klasko said.
By leading with clarity and maintaining alignment, Conrad-Loew and Klasko and managers from companies like Coupa, NBCUniversal and Cohere Health, ensure that team members are eager to drive success. Read on to see what each leader had to say about the hallmarks of good management, the rituals that keep priorities and expectations clear, and the metrics they lean on to measure progress.
Coupa’s AI-powered platform is designed to harness spend data from global buyers and suppliers, making it easier for organizations to change how they manage direct and indirect spend.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
Clarity, empowerment and ownership: Management shares the “why” behind decisions, and then allows the teams the autonomy on the “how,” along with guidance/support where necessary. These are reinforced through goal-setting, reporting progress and most importantly retrospection, enabling teams for continuous improvement and building a better tomorrow together. Deliverables matter, but lasting impact comes from the relationships we build by connecting with each member, beyond just the work itself.
“Deliverables matter, but lasting impact comes from the relationships we build by connecting with each member, beyond just the work itself.”
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
A five-minute daily morning sync-up keeps the momentum and focus on top priorities. Monthly and quarterly OKR reviews ensure every initiative maps to the strategic outcomes, thus creating alignment and adjusting levers for maximum impact to drive success for all of us.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
Expansion into new capabilities energizes people because it allows them to stretch and test their true potential. The outcome translates into meaningful results directly contributing to the customer’s success and a world-class experience. These are tracked through faster resolution times, higher satisfaction and successful renewals.
A subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, NBCUniversal is a global media and entertainment company that oversees multiple brands, including NBC, Focus Features and Peacock.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
A hallmark of strong management on our team is that our leaders are true experts in the work and lead by example. They never ask teams to do something they have not personally mastered, and they show up when it matters most.
“They never ask teams to do something they have not personally mastered, and they show up when it matters most.”
During Sunday Night Football in a divisional game, anytime operators and supervisors had a question our senior director of on-air operations was right there with them, answering, coaching, and standing on the floor during every break to ensure everything ran smoothly. That level of presence is the norm among our management.
During the 2026 Winter Olympics, leaders flew in from California and Denver to be on‑site in Stamford, Connecticut so teams felt supported during a critical stretch. Earlier in the fall, our executive vice president of technical operations made the trip to Stamford for our first NBA game to show the same kind of support. Our executive team set the precedent that visible, hands-on leadership has a huge impact. Now, it’s our turn to carry that forward. We love the work, we love these teams, and we believe in being present because we experienced first-hand how meaningful that leadership was to us.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
We rely on a few core forums and rituals to keep priorities and expectations clear, and it truly takes all of them working together.
At the organizational level, I host a quarterly all-hands that brings together our four major sites: Los Angeles, Denver, 30 Rock in New York City and Stamford. Each of my leaders also runs monthly all-hands with their respective teams to reinforce focus areas and keep everyone aligned.
Within any given month, I review the business, the product portfolio and our AI operations work. I’m always assessing whether these meetings still add value, whether the format needs to evolve or whether something should be consolidated to reduce meeting fatigue. Even with all of that in mind, having regular cadences remains essential. They allow us to reiterate priorities, drive accountability, validate or challenge roadmaps, and share organization-wide updates.
One of the first things I did after restructuring global media operations was evaluate our meeting rhythms and attendees to streamline where we could and better align now that we operate as one organization. From there, we expanded into a more outward-facing business portfolio cadence, giving stakeholders like Peacock and NBC Sports a 24/7 operational view of reliability trends, incident volume, outages and service performance.
A longstanding ritual that continues to be invaluable, originally set by our leadership team, is our daily cross-site operational engineering review. Every morning, we align on planned maintenance, discuss any outages from the previous day, and ensure we are protecting critical events and avoiding unnecessary touches to gear. It remains one of the most effective forums we have for keeping everyone in sync on what the day ahead looks like.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
What excites people most about our strategy is how clearly it connects to the metric that defines our credibility: reliability. We are a metrics-driven organization, and reliability is the standard that has earned the trust of every business we support, especially as live sports grow in scale, complexity and visibility.
In our on-air environment, we hold ourselves to “five nines of reliability,” a bar no one else in the industry sets. Five nines means 99.999 percent reliability, allowing virtually no room for failure in live, on‑air systems. In media operations, we target four nines, which means that out of 10,000 fulfilled assets, only one can have an error. These metrics resonate because they are ambitious and meaningful, and they represent a promise we make to our partners.
What makes this even more motivating is that in 2025, we hit those marks. We achieved five nines on air and four nines in media operations. That reinforces our progress and the importance of staying focused, because the moment we stop protecting reliability is the moment we risk losing the trust we have worked so hard to build.
Cohere Health offers intelligent prior authorization in an effort to align patients, healthcare providers and health plans on an optimal care path that drives the best possible outcomes without high costs and burdensome administrative tasks.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
A hallmark of good management on my team is establishing a high bar for delivery while creating a culture of trust and respect. That shows up through clear ownership, open communication and a strong sense of accountability. We reinforce it through regular feedback, transparent decision-making and leaders modeling the behaviors we expect, especially during moments of pressure or uncertainty.
“A hallmark of good management on my team is establishing a high bar for delivery while creating a culture of trust and respect.”
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
We keep priorities and expectations clear through a disciplined agile operating rhythm. Daily standups focus on execution flow and unblocking work, while sprint planning and backlog refinement establish clear priorities, scope and ownership. Retrospectives help us continuously improve how we plan, build, and deliver. Lastly, there are monthly OKRs that we report on, which allows us to understand how we are progressing against our longer-term business and technology goals.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
The most motivating part of our strategy is that we’re using AI to solve concrete healthcare problems, not theoretical ones; improving decision accuracy, speed and consistency in how care is delivered. Engineers can trace their work from model performance all the way to real-world outcomes. We measure progress through indicators like model precision and recall, adoption in production workflows and improvements in turnaround time and approval accuracy, which tell us whether we’re actually delivering better care at scale.
Pluralsight’s online learning platform is designed to help employees at companies and government organizations build stronger skill sets.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
To empower team members, I try to be as clear as possible about company objectives, project deliverables, daily to-dos and so on. The more team members understand both what they’re being asked and why, the more likely it is that they will deliver impactful outcomes. Successful teams are not micromanaged, but rather are given understandable objectives and plenty of space to deliver. To make this work, I try to hire great people and assume competence until proven otherwise. Part of this is also giving great team members more and more complex tasks, being their biggest cheerleaders and advocating for their career growth and opportunities. Lastly, I think it is critical to “walk the walk.” Good managers do not ask team members to do things they’re unwilling to do, whether that be work hours, specific tasks or anything else.
“The more team members understand both what they’re being asked and why, the more likely it is that they will deliver impactful outcomes.”
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
Agile project boards and daily sync-ups keep everyone on the same page and focused on the highest value deliverable. I hold regular one-on-ones with all my direct reports and less frequent but still regular one-on-ones with skip-levels. To make these effective, we review a written list of the most recent/pressing to-dos, and I help sort through challenges and obstacles. Lastly — less a ritual than a way of working — I maintain ongoing and constant conversations with my team members across a variety of mediums, such as Slack, email and text. If someone needs something from me, they should always feel comfortable reaching out directly.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
We are usually able to get customers in front of the whole company a few times per year, and this sense that our work and our offering is making a big impact on people’s lives and organizations’ outcomes through effective technology education and upskilling helps bring the strategy to life for many at Pluralsight. When it comes to metrics to measure progress of the strategy, we think about this a few different ways. Some are internal metrics oriented toward our team members feeling comfortable and confident in their knowledge of the strategy. Others are standard hallmarks of business performance: how well are we retaining customers, how well are we attracting new customers, etcetera.
Octus’s platform is designed to track the entire credit lifecycle, from origination and underwriting to secondary trading, refinancing, distress and restructuring.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
I don’t believe you can lead people in doing something unless you’re actually doing it with them.
This isn’t about being the best engineer in the room. It’s about sitting next to someone, working through the same problem they’re wrestling with, and building real understanding from that shared experience. That’s where actual empathy comes from. And that’s what creates the kind of connection between people that drives real growth and results you can’t manufacture any other way.So, I show up. I pair-program with engineers across the team. I jump into code reviews and releases. I’m in the weeds with support tickets and incident management, not just to make sure we’re handling things professionally and quickly, but to see where our tools or processes are making people’s jobs harder than they need to be.
“I’m in the weeds with support tickets and incident management, not just to make sure we’re handling things professionally and quickly, but to see where our tools or processes are making people’s jobs harder than they need to be.”
If I’m asking the team to do it, I need to understand what it actually feels like to do it. Otherwise I’m just managing from a spreadsheet, and nobody benefits from that.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
Every week, the entire application development team gets together for our AppDev All-Hands. I kick things off with about 15 minutes of real talk about what’s happening at the leadership level. What are they actually worried about? What’s coming down the pike? Where does our work fit into that bigger picture? I’m always honest when things are still fluid, because they usually are, but I try to give people a sense of what the next few weeks or months might look like for us.
After that, we hand it over to whoever was on call the previous week. They walk everyone through what broke, what almost broke and what we learned. It sounds simple, but it’s how we spot patterns before they become real problems. The whole team gets visibility into what’s actually happening across our systems.
This is also where myself and the other senior team members jump in with questions. Not “gotcha questions,” just the ones that push us to be 10 percent better than we were last week. We know we’re capable of it.
We wrap up with a victory lap. Managers and engineers share what shipped, what got fixed and what we’re proud of from the week. It’s a good reminder that even when things are chaotic, we’re still moving forward.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
The thing that really gets everyone fired up here? When a customer has a rough experience, and we can actually do something about it.
Sure, we’re always working on big strategic initiatives that push us to think bigger. But there’s something different about jumping into a quick huddle with the sales and support teams to fix something that’s actively frustrating someone. That’s when you feel the energy shift. People move faster, get more creative, and drop the usual meeting formalities.
And it’s working. Our net promoter score has grown double digits every year for the past three years. Even more telling: We’ve doubled the number of people using our product for those critical first five-, 10- and 30-minute sessions year over year, which means people are actually sticking around and engaging, not just signing up and bouncing.
Hometap offers solutions that enable people to get more from homeownership so they can get more from life.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
“Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.”
That Nick Saban quote is one I often return to, as transparent, regular feedback is a core part of how we manage at Hometap. We reinforce it through regular one-on-ones, our performance management platform Lattice and biannual reviews. However, the delivery matters just as much as the content. Our managers undergo ongoing development to understand how each person on their team is different and how to tailor their approach accordingly. That’s what can turn feedback from a checkbox into something people actually find useful.
“Our managers undergo ongoing development to understand how each person on their team is different and how to tailor their approach accordingly. That’s what can turn feedback from a checkbox into something people actually find useful.”
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
Our operating model is the ritual, and it only works because every meeting has a clear role. Information-sharing meetings are different from decision meetings, which are different from accountability check-ins.
The most important forum is our in-person quarterly business review, where we share progress against our objectives and hold working sessions to work through current problems and set ourselves up for the next quarter. That’s where we make sure we’re still working on the right things.
Beyond that, our monthly all-hands keeps the broader team connected to the bigger picture. Leadership shares business performance, strategic priorities and what’s ahead with full transparency. It keeps everyone grounded in where we’re going and why.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
What gets people excited is being able to picture where we’re headed. When you communicate strategy well, you’re telling a story about the future of the business, the value we’re creating for homeowners, and what we will have accomplished when the work is done. That clarity is what turns strategy into momentum.
For me personally, the most exciting part is working through the options together. A strategy is really just a set of decisions, and the process of figuring out the right path as a team brings a lot of energy.
In terms of metrics, we tailor our KPIs to the specific strategy. The best ones make progress feel tangible and give the team something they can point to and say, “That’s moving because of the work we’re doing.”
Advisor360’s end-to-end wealth management platform is designed to help advisors work more effectively by turning fragmented data into contextual intelligence.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
Dale Carnegie once said, “Give someone a great reputation to live up to.” What this basically means is that you sometimes have to put people in roles which they are not fully comfortable with or maybe not 100 percent ready for, but you know they’ll be great at it over time. In Advisor360 engineering, we’ve practiced that over and over again. We’ve made multiple organization adjustments over time and placed people in new roles — both leadership and individual contributors — and when we did that, we made sure everyone knew the new leaders and individual contributors are going to be great at this role, even before they started. We explained why we did the change, what made them right for this role and what we expect them to do over time. This shows the team we have internal mobility, we grow our people, and we try to make sure people have the opportunity to learn new things and get out of their comfort zone.
The Rituals That Keep Priorities and Expectations Clear on Shay Harel’s Team at Advisor360
- “All-hands meetings: In my all-hands, I’m always making sure we go from the ‘why’ to the ‘what’ and then to the ‘how.’ The team understands the company’s strategy, why we do certain things, how the team’s deliverables fit into the strategy, etcetera. In the end, I’m tying it all up with explicit and ordered priorities for the next quarter. I explain to the team why some things make the top priorities and why some don’t. I'm also making sure we refer to the priorities from last quarter to see if anything is shifting and show that we have an overall stable priority list that does not shift every quarter.”
- “KPIs: KPIs are great to keep the team accountable. We track KPIs at my staff level and go over them on a monthly basis. My leadership team commits to certain KPIs which will move the needle on a set of given business aspects, and then we set goals for the end of the year with specific KPI values the team has to meet every month. The KPIs can be going down (reduce customer issues), going up (increase test coverage) or stay flat (zero critical security bugs open over 30 days). My staff then propagate these KPIs to their teams.”
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
Our emphasis on leveraging AI to deliver business value is getting the team excited. While we’re on the front, the team is aware that there are still deliveries that are needed in order to support the existing customer base and keep moving our platform forward. This kind of work is usually more of the “business as usual” kind of work, but the teams know that the more we deliver on our existing commitments, the more we can shift into AI. We’re already using AI internally, and we’ve proven adoption is rising by looking at the engagement scores of our AI tools. On the application side, we’ve used UX research and demos to show the news capabilities we’re building are going to solve real business needs and use AI to make financial advisors more efficient in their work and as a result be able to serve their customers better and acquire more new customers.
Flatiron Health aims to “reimagine the infrastructure of cancer care,” offering solutions designed to facilitate better clinical trials, accelerate drug development and deliver better care.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
My management approach could be described as empowering leadership. Rather than micromanaging the “how,” I’m focusing on providing the necessary context and support to make sure the team can make efficient progress toward our goals. This approach is built on a foundation of trust in execution and giving people the autonomy to try new things.
“Rather than micromanaging the ‘how,’ I’m focusing on providing the necessary context and support to make sure the team can make efficient progress toward our goals.”
An important component of this is focussing on feedback and growth. Regular feedback is part of our overall management culture and happens day to day, during one-on-ones and in dedicated sessions during the year.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
We maintain alignment through a multi-level system of rituals that connect long-term vision to daily tasks. At a high level, yearly OKRs serve as our foundational business objectives, which are further refined during quarterly planning sessions. This ensures the broader strategy is translated into actionable goals for the team every few months.
To keep these priorities front of mind during the work week, we kick off our sprint planning sessions by revisiting our high-level goals and deriving sprint goals, which are then also pinned in our team chat.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
The team is most excited about our strategic shift from execution to enablement. We are moving away from having to manually execute individual, complex data operations and toward a broader vision for scaling our impact strategically. To make this a reality, we reserve dedicated time for engineering projects specifically designed to increase our velocity, allowing the team to focus on the bigger picture rather than repetitive tasks.
One central metric we use to track this progress is the automation level of operational work. This metric serves as a direct indicator of our success in reducing manual repetitive work. By seeing this number increase, the team has tangible proof that we are successfully shifting our engineering time away from maintenance and toward higher-impact enablement projects.
Formation Bio’s platform is designed to optimize every aspect of drug development, offering more efficient trial design, faster trial completion and higher-quality data capture.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
“We care more about the team being right than being personally right.”
The best leaders at Formation Bio don’t take credit when things go right, and they don’t point fingers when something goes wrong. They celebrate the team effort and own the outcomes. This shows up in how we run projects, debate decisions, and navigate the inevitable complexity of drug development where the stakes are incredibly high.
“The best leaders at Formation Bio don’t take credit when things go right, and they don’t point fingers when something goes wrong.”
We bake this into our processes deliberately. During hiring, we thoroughly interview leaders across multiple dimensions, screening for values and leadership alignment in every conversation. We ask candidates to walk us through times they changed their position based on someone else’s input, or how they’ve elevated others’ contributions.
We reinforce it through how we recognize and reward performance. Our values are embedded in our leadership dimensions, and we build our upward feedback off of these dimensions. We also celebrate these behaviors through our recognition efforts, including our values awards, spotlighting leaders who exemplify what it means to put the team first.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
At Formation Bio, we’ve adopted a multi-pronged approach to internal communications that keeps priorities clear and drives alignment.
We start by recognizing that people consume information differently. Some prefer Slack, others email, others live conversations or presentations. We’ve established norms around what should be communicated in each channel so people know where to look and what to expect.
For cross-functional visibility, we created the Leadership Exchange, which is a forum where leaders across the company can post updates, share context, and ask questions on a variety of topics. Leaders are expected to cascade information they receive to their teams, ensuring it flows across the organization.
We layer in live updates through all-hands meetings twice a month, quarterly town halls paired with written artifacts covering key updates, and weekly office hours with our CEO. The office hours are particularly valuable because there’s never a set agenda. It’s just a chance to talk in an informal setting, ask questions, and get direct access to leadership thinking.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
Our mission is what excites and connects our people. It is to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently. As we’ve grown and our business model has evolved and the opportunities have broadened, we’ve focused on being explicit about what has changed, what hasn’t, where we’re going and where we are today. We have always connected our business model to our mission, ensuring that we have a clear vision for how we will achieve it.
We’ve also always run employee engagement surveys, but in 2025 we made a deliberate shift. We shortened the survey to focus on the most important and actionable themes, then increased the cadence. We now run identical surveys twice a year, which enables us to measure progress on our action plans and see what’s improving or not improving more regularly.
Creating more opportunities for anonymous feedback and being transparent about the results reinforces our focus on improvement in a tangible way. People see that their input drives change. They see leadership responding. And they see how their work connects to the bigger picture. Excitement comes from momentum, and momentum comes from knowing where you stand and where you’re headed.
The AI and Innovation hub for S&P Global, Kensho Technologies develops machine learning applications that offer organizations comprehensive, timely and actionable insights for decision-making.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
I think the most important part of having a high-functioning team is ensuring that all of your team members have the space to communicate their thoughts and trust in the other members of their team that their ideas will be treated with respect, which is psychological safety.
How Drew Berry Fosters Psychological Safety on His Team at Kensho
There are a bunch of factors that contribute to psychological safety, but as a manager, here’s the reinforcement mechanisms I find the most effective:
- Leading by Example: Make sure that you pay attention and give thoughtful consideration when your team is sharing ideas.
- Creating Space: Give the floor to people in team meetings, and ensure that everyone gets the chance to provide feedback.
- Encouraging Mentorship: Coach the senior members of the team to be mentors for the more junior members.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
I think it’s important to be transparent at every level when communicating about goals and expectations. Bringing in individual contributors to the goal-setting process is critical, especially to establish feasibility; our annual and quarterly goal-setting sessions are where we establish this. Communicating progress and roadblocks to our stakeholders is essential for our leadership to make strategic decisions; our weekly sprint update meetings make sure we are all aligned and allow for real-time problem-solving. Taking the time to reflect and refine the process helps us perform better; retros are where we provide the space to gather feedback. I think these three rituals provide a solid base for our day to day operations.
“I think it’s important to be transparent at every level when communicating about goals and expectations.”
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
People get excited about making an impact and seeing the work that they do make meaningful change. I think strategy is really energizing when there is a clear line between their contributions and how they tie into the company’s holistic vision.
Following from this, at least for software engineers, the metrics that reflect impact are consistently metrics that show user adoption. For a service, this would be traffic or unique customers. For a container or other artifact, this could be something like downloads.
Arcadia’s healthcare data analytics platform is designed to help payers and providers turn complex data into actionable insights, enabling them to focus on improving patient outcomes, operational efficiencies and financial performance.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
At Arcadia, the hallmarks we value in strong leaders are illustrated in five competencies. Strategic thinking means connecting daily decisions to long-term goals. Empowering others is about building trust and coaching intentionally. Ownership shows up as taking responsibility for outcomes and following through on commitments. Interpersonal agility means leaders communicate with empathy and navigate differences effectively. And cross-collaboration means partnering across teams and leveraging diverse input to drive better results. These aren’t abstract values; they’re the lens we use in interviews, performance reviews and ongoing feedback, so expectations are clear from day one and reinforced consistently over time.
“These aren’t abstract values; they’re the lens we use in interviews, performance reviews and ongoing feedback, so expectations are clear from day one and reinforced consistently over time.”
We run a multi-quarter Leadership Lab program that supports emerging leaders through hands-on learning and mentorship. Finally, we have an in-house leader coaching program that offers one-on-one support and intentional development planning, so managers can grow with focus and accountability. The result is a management culture where leaders are coached, not just promoted, and where empowering others is both expected and actively developed.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
At Arcadia, clarity and alignment come from a connected set of forums that reinforce priorities throughout the year. It starts with our annual objectives and key results development process, which starts in the fourth quarter and runs across multiple levels and functions to ensure goals are grounded in both strategy and execution. Those OKRs are then published transparently in our in-house performance tool so everyone can see how their work connects to company priorities. As a leadership team, we review progress monthly as part of our OKR cycle to stay aligned, surface risks early, and make adjustments as needed.
We complement that ongoing cadence with clear moments of companywide alignment. Our annual kick-off in January brings the full organization together to share OKRs and top priorities for the year ahead, setting a strong foundation. From there, monthly all-staff meetings keep momentum going, with updates on financial performance, customer wins and challenges, and our product roadmap. Together, these rituals ensure expectations stay clear, priorities stay visible, and teams remain aligned as the year evolves.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
What excites people most at Arcadia is the impact of our mission: dedicated to happier, healthier days for all. Our strategy brings that mission to life by bringing data and technology together to help healthcare organizations deliver the right care to the right patient at the right time. We focus on turning complex healthcare data into actionable insights that improve outcomes, reduce unnecessary costs, and strengthen the sustainability of the healthcare system. For our teams, it’s deeply motivating to know their work directly supports better care and better experiences for patients.
We’re also energized by how we’re using AI to extend that impact. By embedding intelligence into our platform, we help customers move faster and make smarter decisions at scale. Progress is measured through what matters most: improvements in quality and outcomes for the patients our customers serve, visible in the data we organize for them, alongside our ability to deliver those results efficiently and at scale. Building a stronger, more profitable Arcadia allows us to reinvest in innovation and in our people — ensuring our impact continues to grow.
MVF is an integrated media and marketing company that specializes in services related to lead generation, advertising and market insights.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
One of our hallmarks and something we promote is radical candor, which is built on trust. We work hard to create genuine psychological safety within the leadership team, so people are able to speak openly, challenge each other, and learn together. Feedback isn’t a one-off or top-down exercise; it’s continuous, expected and constructive. That openness allows us to adapt quickly, get better decisions on the table, and improve as a team rather than protecting egos.
“Feedback isn’t a one-off or top-down exercise; it’s continuous, expected and constructive.”
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
We use a bi-annual “rocks” process to set the most important company priorities, tightly aligned to our long-term goals. Each rock has a clear owner and SMART success criteria. Progress is reviewed monthly within the leadership teams, and we share momentum and outcomes through regular town halls. Alongside this, our core KPIs are visible across the business, so teams know what matters and how we’re tracking.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
Progress itself is a huge motivator. I believe firmly that momentum breeds further momentum, and simply seeing tangible movement can be incredibly energising. We’ve built this into our culture by celebrating wins regularly and making progress visible. When people can see that their work is paying off, whether through delivery against priorities or improvements in key metrics, it reinforces belief and helps to keep energy high.
Energy CX is an energy brokerage that aims to help its clients maximize savings, efficiency and sustainability.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
Praise in public, criticize in private. In the words of Dale Carnegie, “Any fool can criticize.” Abraham Lincoln had a rule that he never criticized anyone, ever. The greatest president in the history of our country never criticized anyone, so why should I? Throughout the week, there are a lot of opportunities to publicly praise team members for the great work they are doing. As a manager, you have to take advantage of those opportunities. If you have the whole team, department or company together in one place, take advantage of it, and praise someone’s good work. The outcome is two-fold. The individual feels empowered, and the audience is inspired by their work and given insight into how to mirror that success.
“Praise in public, criticize in private.”
On the other hand, there are absolutely moments where people can do better. Being radically honest about that is crucial, and it’s equally as important that it happens during a one-on-one or in private conversation. You never want people to think that they may be “called out” in front of a large group. It results in scared work, not confident work.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
On a weekly basis, we meet with the team twice: once during our Monday Morning Meeting (MMM), and again during our Wednesday Round Table. MMM is more related to housekeeping and getting everyone on the same page to start the week, while Round Table is my favorite meeting of the week. We usually choose a couple main topics that our head of market intelligence and president of strategy educate the team on, followed by open discussion on areas the team has questions on, ending with a brief venting session, highlighting areas where our team or another team could be doing better. The combination of these two meetings allows management a platform to set expectations and clearly identify weekly priorities, while also providing a platform for team members to shift the conversation toward areas they feel need attention.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
I believe that an underlying assumption that everyone is doing their absolute best is essential to managing people. With that, I trust that members of my team are able and excited to get their work done at a high standard. I have found that this creates a space where people are not afraid to ask questions, which ultimately leads to team members striving to be better without any negative reinforcement or “pressure.”
Ultimately, there are always instances where I have to step in and expedite the educational process, but if at all possible, I prefer to take a hands-off approach with the knowledge that any gaps will be brought to my attention for the sake of their continued success in the role. Beyond tangible metrics and team goals, success is measured through an individual’s eagerness and ability to learn about their customer, their pipeline and the industry as a whole. The ones that have a genuine burning desire to improve are not only the easiest to trust, but the quickest to meet and exceed expectations.
SRAM, LLC manufactures bicycle components, operating a portfolio of brands including RockShox, Zipp, Quarq and Hammerhead.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
A hallmark of good management on our team is the consistent use of structured problem-solving to turn issues into learning and action quickly. We train teams across our global sites to use common frameworks so problems are clearly described, root causes are understood, and solutions are proposed by the people closest to the work. This approach has enabled effective cross-site collaboration, such as when our Taiwan operations team partnered with development teams in the United States and Europe to improve production test accuracy. Starting with understanding before action helps us focus on the changes that matter most.
“Starting with understanding before action helps us focus on the changes that matter most.”
That discipline works because leaders model poise under pressure and explicitly reward surfacing issues. Leaders are expected to stay calm, curious and constructive when something breaks, reinforcing the idea that you can’t fix what you don’t know is broken. This has been a hallmark of SRAM since our founding, modeled at the highest levels. High trust shows up clearly in our sprint retrospectives. We set the expectation of high candor and continuous improvement, ensuring nothing is too sacred to question if it helps the team get better.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
We reinforce alignment through tiered standups held at the team, manager and senior leadership levels. These forums focus on surfacing exceptions quickly, clarifying tradeoffs and ensuring the teams get the right support. Leaders challenge themselves to clear roadblocks for their teams and demonstrate servant leadership. When work spans locations, we deliberately invest in relationships through strong communication, virtual collaboration and in-person workshops.
Quarterly OKR planning aligns strategy and execution. Teams don’t just receive objectives — they help shape them by identifying what’s working, what’s broken and where improvements closest to their work can advance our goals. For example, in support of a high-level objective to reduce waste and clarify processes, we’re taking a fresh look at how we review and release our electronics designs. We’re revisiting process participants and reviewing content to improve effectiveness and reduce cycle time. These improvement initiatives are kept visible alongside project work in our agile backlog, revisited quarterly, and adjusted or retired if they no longer have impact. That discipline keeps us focused on changes that matter.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
SRAM benefits from a workforce deeply connected to the products we build, as many employees are cyclists and users of the products. That connection creates shared pride in our work and a sense of achievement when we launch something new. Our strategic focus — to create products and experiences that inspire cyclists and expand the potential of cycling — keeps us very centered around that shared passion.
Over the past decade, SRAM has led our industry, bringing electronics and software to high-end cycling. As software engineering has become critical to SRAM, we’ve raised our bar for excellence within the function. We’re making improvements across the software lifecycle, from early architecture to integration test automation. This objective has been brought to life through several team-driven initiatives aimed at high-impact opportunities.
We’re now piloting use of DX experience development metrics, enabling tracking and honest evaluation of our progress. Metrics include both objective measures of development effectiveness, as well as subjective assessments of developer experience. Through periodic measurement and high-candor feedback from our teams, we’ll re-focus areas for improvement over time.
Kustomer’s AI-native customer experience platform enables teams to instantly resolve customer issues with AI-powered conversations, triage, route and support agents, track organizational performance and more.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
Start with yes — then figure out how. That mindset forces momentum. When teams name the challenge instead of circling it, leadership can focus on removing barriers instead of slowing decisions down.
“Start with yes — then figure out how.”
We reinforce this through clear ownership and clear interfaces. Each marketer owns a specific pillar — brand, PR, product or paid media — and understands how their work fits with the rest of the system. Think of it like puzzle pieces: Each piece is distinct, but the picture only works when they connect cleanly. That clarity lets people move fast without stepping on each other. Open communication and early escalation make sure blockers surface quickly and progress doesn’t stall.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
We run the business on a consistent operating rhythm. Biweekly team meetings clarify priorities, OKRs connect our work directly to company goals, and regular roadmap reviews keep launches and marketing strategy tightly aligned with product and innovation. Weekly marketing leadership meetings ensure shared awareness and fast decision-making across the team.
None of this works without ownership. The rhythm creates clarity; the people create momentum.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
What excites people is that Kustomer isn’t just adding AI features — we’re rebuilding the customer support stack around it. With our own Model Context Protocol, a new Data Explorer and multiple custom AI assistants, we’re giving support teams a level of speed, visibility and control they’ve never had before. This is customer support moving from reactive to intelligent, and customers are leaning into it because it delivers real gains in efficiency and customer satisfaction scores.
From a metrics standpoint, progress shows up clearly in pipeline and expansion. We track pipeline generated across business development representatives, partnerships and paid media, but just as importantly, we look at how existing customers adopt and expand their use of our AI capabilities. Strong expansion tells us the products are delivering value — and that’s the signal we care most about.
Philo offers a TV streaming monthly subscription service that includes access to on-demand shows and movies and DVR capabilities.
What’s a quotable hallmark of good management on your team — and how is it reinforced?
Support people through transitions, not just transactions. At Philo, we believe in meeting people where they are, whether they're navigating a promotion, welcoming a new family member or exploring a career pivot. Our managers are trained to have proactive, ongoing conversations about growth and belonging, not just performance. We’ve seen this create real
momentum: Employees who stay and grow with us often move into leadership positions because they’ve experienced firsthand what thoughtful management looks like.
“Support people through transitions, not just transactions.”
Our performance management approach is built around clarity and partnership. Managers work alongside their teams to set meaningful goals, celebrate progress, and create personalized
development paths. When someone wants to stretch into a new role or skill area, managers are equipped to coach them through it. This isn’t about correcting problems; it’s about unlocking potential. And it shows: Our most tenured “Philons” often point to the quality of their manager relationships as a key reason they’ve built careers here.
Which forum or ritual keeps priorities and expectations clear?
At Philo, we’ve built a manager community that thrives on collaboration and shared learning. Our managers have access to a People Manager Hub, a centralized resource with templates, frameworks and best practices, but what really sets us apart is our dedicated Slack channel for people managers. It’s become a space where managers don’t just get HR updates; they share
wins, troubleshoot challenges together, and learn from each other in real time. This creates a culture where management isn’t isolating — it’s collaborative.
We also use check-ins to support regular, structured conversations between managers and their teams. These aren’t bureaucratic checkboxes; they’re touchpoints that keep development visible and ensure people feel seen and supported. The ritual matters because it reinforces our belief that great management happens in consistent, meaningful moments, not just once-a-year reviews. Together, these practices ensure our managers lead with both confidence and community.
What part of the strategy excites people — and what metric shows progress?
What excites people at Philo is our commitment to building diverse, equitable teams through intentional, measurable action. We don’t just talk about inclusion; we analyze our pipelines, refine our sourcing strategies, and track representation across departments and levels through diversity snapshots. For our engineering teams specifically, I’ve developed targeted approaches that prioritize underrepresented talent, from crafting inclusive job descriptions to expanding where and how we source candidates.
People get energized when they see this work translate into real culture change. It’s not performative; it’s about creating a workplace where everyone can see themselves reflected in leadership. Progress shows up in the data, yes, but also in the stories: Teams that feel more
collaborative, candidates who tell us Philo felt different from the start, and employees who stay because they believe in what we’re building together.
