Speak In Flow

Speak In Flow Helping leaders become masterful communicators and influencers

09/03/2026

You can get your executive team perfectly aligned and still watch the strategy fall apart.

That's the line that stuck with me from my conversation with M.K. Palmore: 35 years in enterprise risk, from the Marine Corps to the FBI to Google Cloud. His take: the breakdown almost never happens where you're looking. Not the tech, not the process, not even the leadership team. It's the layer just below them.

Your VPs get the direction. But if your mid-level managers don't live and breathe it, the strategy quietly dies at the ex*****on layer - the exact place it has to survive.

And his fix isn't a new system. It's repetition. Saying the same thing again next month, and the month after, until it actually holds. He called it resetting expectations, not being rote. Most leaders stop repeating a message right when the team is finally starting to absorb it.

We also got into why the seams between people, process, and technology are where the real cracks hide - and why investing in leaders who might one day leave is still the highest-return move you can make.

Where does your strategy actually break down: at the top, or a level below it?

For years I told leaders they had a communication problem. I was wrong. What they actually had was a movement problem: t...
09/03/2026

For years I told leaders they had a communication problem. I was wrong. What they actually had was a movement problem: the company just couldn't pull in one direction anymore.

You know the signs. Two people walk out of the same meeting with two different plans. A decision sits for a week because it needs you. A client hears one version of your story from sales and a slightly different one from delivery. None of it feels urgent. All of it slows you down.

So we built something for it.

The Executive Briefing is a weekly note for founder-led CEOs and the teams around them: one real challenge, the view from your seat and from theirs, and one thing you can do about it that week.

First issue is out today. Link to subscribe is in the comments.

We're heading into the last stretch of the year. Here's a question worth sitting with: what would need to be true for ne...
08/28/2026

We're heading into the last stretch of the year. Here's a question worth sitting with: what would need to be true for next year to feel less dependent on you than this one did?

That's exactly what a Strategic Growth Conversation is for: a focused, no-pressure look at where leadership alignment is quietly capping your growth, and what it would take to change that before the new year starts.

If the Legacy Growth System™ is a fit, we'll sketch out what working together looks like. If it's not, you'll still leave seeing your company's growth dynamics more clearly than you did walking in.

Either way, you leave with something useful. Grab a time - link's in the comments.

08/28/2026

🎧 One last Summer Replay before we head into fall.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been revisiting conversations that touch on something we think about constantly in the Legacy Growth System™: What does your company need from you as it grows?

For our final replay, I’m going back to my conversation with Karla Yepez, HR Director at Trio Manufacturing, because growth isn’t sustainable if we forget about the people responsible for making it happen.

Karla’s path to leadership wasn’t traditional. She started in an entry-level filing role, followed her curiosity, kept asking questions, and eventually found herself leading people through incredibly difficult moments—including one of the hardest periods of her own life.

What stayed with me from our conversation was her commitment to “bring back human to human resources.”

As companies grow, it’s easy to become consumed by systems, processes, KPIs, and performance. Those things matter. But culture is also shaped every day by whether people feel valued, supported, and connected to what they’re building.

That’s a particularly important reminder as we head toward Q4 planning.

We spend so much time asking what we want the business to accomplish next.

Maybe we should also be asking: What kind of company are we creating for the people who have to accomplish it?

🎧 Revisit the conversation: https://f.mtr.cool/n39bp0ap6z

A finance firm's president told me his biggest clients only trusted him... not his team. Flattering for a minute, danger...
08/26/2026

A finance firm's president told me his biggest clients only trusted him... not his team. Flattering for a minute, dangerous for the business. Every key relationship was one calendar conflict away from a problem.

We worked on shifting ownership of those relationships to his senior leaders: not by stepping back and hoping, but by building how the team shows up, communicates, and earns trust.

A year in, his top client's main point of contact is now one of his directors. The relationship got stronger, not weaker - and the firm stopped depending on him being in every room.

That's leadership alignment doing real work. More in the comments.

The highest-stakes "pitch" your leaders make often isn't to a client. It's the board update. The all-hands. The moment t...
08/25/2026

The highest-stakes "pitch" your leaders make often isn't to a client. It's the board update. The all-hands. The moment they have to get a room of skeptical people to buy into a direction.

And those moments tend to go sideways for boring, fixable reasons: the point wasn't clear, the hard question wasn't anticipated, the ask got buried.

So we made a free Pitch Checklist - a two-minute run-through of the handful of things that decide whether a room leans in or checks out.

Give it to your team before the next one that matters. Link's in the comments.

08/24/2026

This week I'm dropping my daughter at college, and I keep wanting to fill the silence. Then I realized the closest relationships don't need the right words - just enough trust to be yourself and tell the truth.

Same with leadership teams. A quiet room isn't agreement. Real alignment is enough trust to say the hard thing and still commit.

When did one of your leaders last tell you something you didn't want to hear?

08/22/2026

You hired an experienced executive to take things off your plate. Months later, the big calls still route back to you - and you're quietly wondering if you hired the wrong person.

Usually, you didn't. Capable people don't take ownership just because you handed them a title. They take it when the priorities are clear, the decision rights are explicit, and it's genuinely safe to make the call.

Most companies never build that. So even strong hires stay stuck in "let me run it by the founder" mode - not because they can't lead, but because nothing around them was set up to let them.

The Legacy Growth System™ builds that structure, so the leaders you hired can actually lead. Link's in the comments.

Your marketing team isn't the only team responsible for your brand.Every employee represents your company, whether they ...
08/21/2026

Your marketing team isn't the only team responsible for your brand.

Every employee represents your company, whether they realize it or not. The way they talk about their work, interact with customers, share company news, or describe the culture to someone at dinner all shapes how people perceive your organization.

And increasingly, those voices carry more credibility than the perfectly polished message coming from the corporate account.

But you can't hand employees a script and expect authentic advocacy. You have to build a culture people actually want to represent—and then give them the trust and tools to do it in their own voice.

When employees feel ownership of the company they're helping build, they don't need to be told to "promote the brand."

They become part of it.

Read the full article -> link in comments

08/21/2026

"It's just faster if I do it myself."
Every founder has said it - and it's true, right up until it's the reason nothing moves without you.

Taking the task back buys a few minutes now and costs you a dependent team later.

When did you last take something back just because it was faster?

Address

San Francisco, CA
94118

Telephone

(650) 207-1342

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Speak In Flow posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category