Neel is the co-founder of Vega Factor and co-author of bestselling book, Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation. Previously, Neel was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, CTO and founding member of an award-winning tech startup, and employee of several mega-institutions. He studied engineering at MIT and received his MBA from Wharton. In his spare time, he’s an avid yet mediocre woodworker and photographer.
Core strengths:
Enrapturing any audience with insight
Making big, scary ideas feel fun, light, and inspiring
Breaking even the coldest of ice with heartfelt goofiness
Core strengths:
Finding the needle of insight in a haystack of data
Fostering harmony in diverse groups of highly skilled people
Braveheart-style inspirational speeches
Core strengths:
Making complex ideas concrete and digestible
Creating environments where people can speak the hard truth without fear
Always finding the perfect sports metaphor
Core strengths:
Cultivating ideation and strategic thinking
Developing trusting, inclusive, and collaborative teams
Able to tolerate and out-wait long pauses motivating group participation or discussion contributions
Core strengths:
Unlocking creativity through structured thinking
Bridging communication gaps
Figuring out exactly what type of nerd you are and running with it
Productivity
Disorganized work creates dysfunctional teams
How does a master woodworker maintain such flawless efficiency in their shop? Too many teams fall into chaos due to poorly organized work. Master four work types to elevate your team's productivity and innovation: play-based, process-based, project-based, and idea-based.
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Leadership
Why should your employees follow you? I wish Boeing asked this question.
Boeing was once synonymous with quality and safety. But as focus shifted from customers to stakeholders, their culture eroded, and with it their planes and reputation. This fate could have been avoided using three leadership techniques: health checks, goal checks, and skill checks.
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Org Design
Org structure might be causing your company's dysfunction
Organizational structures are crucial to an operating model, yet constant re-orging significantly drains motivation and performance. So what's an executive team to do? Align to six first principles: form follows function, reporting lines are powerful enough, strengthen the horizontals, focus on feedback loops, align the strengths and passions, and finally, structure is a part of a system.
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Org Design
Bureaucratic companies: inevitable, or unforced error?
Too many organizations are struggling to adapt to a changing world because of their bureaucracies. The time is now to dismantle them. Address the four main root causes of bureaucracy: skill gaps, motivation gaps, time gaps, and knowledge gaps.
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