Insightful Musings on Leadership Consulting and Development

OK, I am a bit late with this whole “blog thing.” Like 25 years. Still, it’s never too late to start, right?

In this first effort, I’ll introduce myself and the important work that I do to help my clients. In future updates, I’ll dive in a bit deeper.

The purpose is really to share what I do, who I can help, and ways for us to interact. This is a one-way medium; however, I am easy to contact via my website as well as on my LinkedIn profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntlane/

Introducing Me: About five years ago, I was forcefully ejected from corporate life. I was a senior leader at a growing startup. You can look it up, but the “from” details don’t matter. And well, bygones.

At that time, I knew I was done working for someone else’s dream. Time to bet on myself. What to do? What to do? That was the question.

First things first. Needed to create some infrastructure.

Need a name. Yes, DBAJTL.com is available (somehow). Doing Business As John T Lane. That’s the ticket. Email. Outlook or Gmail. Well, “Google bad” is my catchphrase (even though I love Gmail). I went with Outlook. Website. Squarespace and say something.

Basics done.

Given my startup experience, I focused on startup consulting. Lo and behold, I landed a first client. Then another and another. Before too long, work was cooking, and BD was “just happening.”

Fairly quickly, my “pitch” positioning came to be. Want to hear it?

“I help early-stage startups successfully enter – and exit – the founder sales phase.” Boom!

After numerous clients and two and a half years serving startups, I had a profound realization:

🡪 It is not really possible – for me anyway – to keep the “arm’s length” relationship with the clients. Startups have so many needs, I just jumped in. Client email and calendar Slack channel and cloud file access Morning standups and Friday wrap-ups

I was an “employee without benefits.” Not what I wanted.

So after my re-birth as a consultant, it was time to pivot again. (Maybe I was the startup??).

While I was working the day job as a startup consultant, my now business partner Will Barfield (https://www.linkedin.com/in/willbarfield/) and I were dabbling as “referral execs” for Organizational Analysis and Design (OAD) personality assessment.

Turns out we liked it, and we became Trained Certified OAD Analysts and Distributors.

Now, how to position myself? That’s when the Leadership Consulting came to be, with a focus on leadership training and team training.

The podcast helped a bunch: More on that later too. Work In Progress with John Lane and Will Barfield. (Episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAbN5ztfXYv1n9sybno7S5w)

Now my focus is on helping individual leaders, their teams, even whole companies to identify their unique and powerful personality traits. Then translate those into communication: Preferences Styles Blind spots

Believe it or not, we spend the most time on “blind spots.”

Once that foundational layer of work is completed, we get to work on the business issue or opportunity that is most pressing for the client. Often things like: Employee engagement, alignment, and retention Improving the recruiting and hiring process Senior leadership team (SLT) communication Sales team productivity and success

I love solving business issues through customized team workshops.

I’m fortunate that I get paid well enough for the work I do. However, it’s the breakthroughs that I can help facilitate that provide my “go juice” for the soul.

Here’s a few:

•    Data scientist who wanted to escape the lab and go out on the talk circuit. She was convinced her bosses would believe she was being disloyal. Nope, they loved the idea. She – and they – are thriving.

•    An early-stage startup team needs to flex toward more client management, yet the employee base is more technically oriented. New hiring approach recruits for a combo of tech and socially oriented CSX team members.

•    Highly accomplished CMO realizes that “her way” of doing things has not been communicated – so expectations are unmet. Now understand why that happens and corrects it. Happier, more productive team.

•    Senior business leader who realized his traits helped lead to the previous company’s demise. A four-year journey of personal – and business- self-improvement is there for all to see in the assessment results.

That’s my “why.”

That’s all for today.

Next up: The OAD assessment—what it tells us and how I use it to help leaders, individuals, and organizations get aligned and moving in the right direction.