I coach Fortune 500 and high-growth CEOs and their leadership teams through the messy reality of scaling.
If you’re a first-time CEO, leading hypergrowth, or watching your playbook become obsolete in real time, I work with you to lead through it without losing yourself in the process
Do more. Move faster. Add priorities. Hire ahead. Build the plane while flying it. This is the advice leaders hear constantly. And it’s exhausting. I’ve watched brilliant executives burn out following this playbook. Not because they weren’t capable, but because they were trying to do everything.
You can’t scale by doing more. You scale by doing different. The leaders who scale successfully aren’t the ones doing everything. They’re the ones who know which balls to drop.
In recent years I’ve given the condition my clients live in a name: ambient urgency, the always-on pressure that makes everything feel urgent because most of it genuinely is. Naming it is the first step. Deciding clearly inside it is the work.
I was employee #104 at Compaq Computer during its rocket-ship growth from startup to $15 billion in revenue, the fastest in U.S. history at the time. As part of the leadership team, I had a front-row seat to what works, and what breaks, when organizations scale at hyperspeed. I saw the leaders who thrived and those who imploded. The patterns were clear. As a Fortune 100 executive at Compaq and through decades of coaching since, I refined those patterns into a repeatable approach: fewer priorities, better decisions, clearer impact.
I have been on both sides of the table: the operator living the growth, then the advisor guiding it. Clients say that combination is why the work lands. It is also why I do not confuse frameworks with the real thing.
My clients are navigating IPOs, acquisitions, hypergrowth, and leadership transitions and include Pfizer, Aetna, Ping Identity (IPO), QASymphony (acquired by Tricentis), Keyfactor, Witness Systems (acquired by Verint), and Welltok. 95%+ of clients return for additional engagements or refer new leaders.
I write on leadership for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company, and my work is featured in HBR’s 10 Must Reads on High Performance. I publish every other week at ambienturgency.com and in my LinkedIn newsletter, Up and To the Right. Author: No Dumbing Down: A No-Nonsense Guide for CEOs on Organization Growth (Business Expert Press, 2018).
Stanford Directors’ College | Columbia University Executive Program in Organization Development | B.S. Industrial Engineering, Texas A&M University
Based in Jupiter, FL but often found in Seat 2C. Working with leaders globally.
Karen’s path to consulting is a direct result of two inflection points: meeting Dr. Bob Moore, now her husband, and her deep-seated commitment to working and living congruently. Dr. Bob founded Oneteam’s predecessor company, working in clinical, organizational, and sports psychology settings. One notable highlight of his long and productive career: coach to the U.S. skydiving team Airspeed through twelve consecutive national and world championships. After a decade of co-leading Oneteam, Bob retired from corporate work to teach Tai Chi, and can often be found on the business end of a saltwater fishing pole.
When it comes to running a business, none of us has time for approaches that leave us asking, “So what?” In our decade of working together, Karen demonstrated an unflappable bias for action and an obsession for meaningful results.
Every other week, I share what I’m learning about scaling without chaos: the priorities worth protecting, the decisions that actually matter, and how to lead when everything’s moving fast.
No fluff. No generic advice. Just what’s working for leaders navigating hypergrowth right now.
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