Since I often hear from my audience and followers that they wish they could come work for me, I’m giving you the next best thing—my most trusted team member.
It is with a whole lot of bittersweetness that I’m sharing this with you: Rebecca Del Secco, who has been with Civility Partners for just under a decade, is ready to spread her wings—and the systems and culture we’ve built together—to another organization.
She and I have been through a lot of ups and downs as we’ve built Civility Partners, including so much personal and professional growth it would take 10 more newsletters to share it all.
Now after all these years, we are parting ways, and I’m taking advantage of my network to help her land in the right spot because we are still great friends with an immense amount of respect for each other. This is bittersweet because I am sad to see her go and also thrilled to see her skyrocket into the world.
After doing client work for a few years, Rebecca spent the last several years building our internal operating systems and managing our team as we grew into a 7-figure business of 12 people who transform behavior and culture in multinational corporations, small businesses, nonprofits, family-owned businesses, private equity projects, government agencies and higher education. Clients span industries from manufacturing to astrophysics, so she’s likely seen your industry at its best and worst.
She built things so well she worked herself out of a job—the team and systems run beautifully. And as long as we remain small and nimble, the learning curve for her has come to slow down.
It’s time for her to move into a new role in a new company where she can learn more, be more challenged in more ways, and explore everything else the world holds for her outside of Civility Partners.
Please check out Rebecca’s profile on LinkedIn, and absolutely feel free to reach out to her there for her resume. If you’d like a direct introduction to her, please reach out to my team, and I will make it.
And please don’t be shy about forwarding this email to your network!
Here are some challenges she is well-equipped to help you and your organization solve:
- Executive Leverage (the overloaded leader): Structuring priorities, preparing decisions, and owning follow-through so leaders can focus on their highest-value work.
- Cross-Functional Coordination (no one owns the whole thing): Connecting the moving pieces, setting clear accountability, and driving initiatives to completion when no one owns the whole process.
- Operational Complexity (outgrowing the systems): Replacing informal processes with practical workflows and tools and helping teams adopt them.
- Visibility and Accountability (flying blind): Building reporting and tracking key metrics so leaders can spot issues and make informed decisions.
- People and organizational challenges: Addressing hiring, onboarding, performance, retention, and change, including sensitive issues, with practical, data-informed recommendations.
- Growth-Related Complexity: Building the systems, processes, and team capacity a growing organization needs to maintain quality.
- Undefined problems: Gathering information, talking with stakeholders, finding the real issue, and seeing the solution through implementation.
Here are some things to listen for:
- Executive Leverage (the overloaded leader)
- I’m in back-to-back meetings all day and then do my real work at night.”
- “I haven’t had time to think about strategy in months.”
- “I’m the bottleneck. Everything has to go through me.”
- “I can’t take a vacation without everything stalling.”
- “I know what needs to happen. I just don’t have the bandwidth to make it happen.”
- Cross-Functional Coordination (no one owns the whole thing)
- “Everyone thought someone else was handling it.”
- “It fell through the cracks between teams.”
- “We keep having the same meeting because nothing gets decided.”
- “That project has been ‘in progress’ for six months.”
- Operational Complexity (outgrew the systems)
- “We built this on a spreadsheet when we were 5 people. We’re 30 now.”
- “It all lives in one person’s head. MINE!”
- “Every time we onboard someone, we’re making it up as we go.”
- “We use five different tools and none of them talk to each other.”
- “We keep solving the same problem over and over.”
- Visibility and Accountability (flying blind)
- “I find out about problems after they’ve already blown up.”
- “I have to ask five people to get one straight answer.”
- “I don’t know if we’re actually on track.”
- “We set goals in January and I haven’t looked at them since.”
- “I feel like I’m making decisions based on gut, not data.”
- “I can’t tell who’s performing and who isn’t.”
- Growth-Related Complexity
- “We doubled in size and everything feels harder.”
- “Growth was the goal. Now it’s breaking us.”
- “We’ve outgrown the way we used to do things, but I don’t know what comes next.”
- “We’re hiring fast and the culture is starting to feel different.”
- “Quality is slipping as we scale.”
- “I’m worried we’re growing faster than we can support.”
I’m, of course, available to answer any questions about her work here and provide a glowing referral to any potential employers.
I am so excited for whatever opportunities come Rebecca’s way! If you’d like a direct introduction, please reach out to my team, and I will make it.
