Making Soft Skills Concrete
With a focus on thoughtful communication and strategic thinking, I help teams work together to get stuff done!
Let’s work together!
I can help leaders and aspiring leaders in a variety of situations.
Small companies that are beginning to outgrow the old ways
Up until now you’ve been steadily working on a new thing. You were able to move fast and ship fast. Communication was as easy as turning to your coworker at the next desk. But now the company is bigger and communication isn’t as easy. No one’s quite sure what everyone else is working on. You don’t want to lose momentum, but you want clarity for your teams, and you want effective communication.
Leaders that feel constrained by process
Your teams want to get work done, but everything requires a meeting and all of the meetings are unproductive. There are processes, but no one can remember all the steps, or what the purpose of each process even is. You want momentum, clarity, and lightweight process that makes it easier to get things done.
Individuals who want to level up their own strategic execution skills
You’re taking on more responsibility, or you’re leading work efforts that have a lot of different teams involved. You’re great at managing your own work, but now there’s more moving parts and a lot of people, all with different motivations and interests to please. You want feedback or guidance on how to orchestrate work across all these teams and needs, and you want to know how to communicate clearly and effectively.
Consulting engagements are customized to address the issues you or your company want to work through, and can involve any combination of services. I currently offer three different engagement options - group leadership workshops, one on one pairing, and temporary embedded engagements.
About Sam
Sam NeSmith has spent over a decade in technology helping teams work together to build new things and to feel good about it. The bulk of that time was spent at Mailchimp, where as one of the first 100 employees, she shaped practices that would grow the company from an early stage startup to its successful $12 billion dollar sale 10 years later.
Before landing in tech, her career path was winding - lots of retail, giving tours at a dolphin resort, a stint in academia, as well as waiting a million tables and working as an expeditor in fine dining. Once she found her way to tech, she realized that a kitchen and a conference room might not be that different, and that working smoothly with other people is a skill that can be honed, just like a knife. Get it? It’s a kitchen metaphor!