How do you know when it’s time to accelerate your organization’s growth?

Making the “go/no-go” decision whether to expand is something many leaders struggle with.

Though there are some extremely inspiring stories of organizations achieving amazing growth, there are many more where poorly timed or thought-out moves resulted in significant losses.

Suzie Yorke is the Founder of Love Good Fats, a snacks company that experienced unprecedented success very soon after launch. In her episode of the Toughest Call podcast, Suzie talks about the thought process she went through when she was presented with a huge growth opportunity while still a relatively new company.

If you’re facing a similar tough call on how to grow your organization, there is an excellent book that may help you with your own thought process.

“Fewer, Bigger, Bolder: From Mindless Expansion to Focused Growth” is written by Sanjay Khosla and Mohanbir Sawhney. I met them both while they were teaching at Northwestern Univ...

A challenging decision organizational leaders can face is when to grow, and by how much. In this episode of the Toughest Call podcast, Suzie Yorke, Founder of Love Good Fats, talks about her decision to “go big” in launching her products across the United States with a major retailer. Additionally, she talks about the expansion process that took place while making the leap from an emerging brand in the natural goods channel to a CPG brand working with big retailers.

Suzie Yorke: On paper we could scale to over 100 million bars, no problem. But then the timing of it when you had two large banners coming on the same month is a different conversation than if you can scale over a year.

Chaz Thorne: Welcome back, or welcome to Toughest Call, a podcast for organizational leaders where we hear stories from your leadership colleagues about career defining decisions. I'm your host, Chaz Thorne.

In this episode, I'm talking with Suzie Yorke about her decision to go big in launching her...

The COVID pandemic has caused many to rethink their relationship with their careers and much ink has been spilled about the Great Resignation. In this episode of Toughest Call, Rishad Tobaccowala, futurist, and author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data,” talks about his strategy for leaving an already successful career decades in the making to achieve something completely different.

Rishad Tobaccowala: Rishad, every career has a midnight hour. The smart people leave at five to 12.

Chaz Thorne: Welcome back, or welcome to, Toughest Call, a podcast for organizational leaders where we hear stories from your leadership colleagues about career-defining decisions. I'm your host, Chaz Thorne. 

In this episode, I'm talking with Rishad Tobaccowala about how he prepared for an exit from an already successful career to something completely different. Rishad, a futurist and keynote speaker who advises global businesses, is the author of “Restoring the So...

Whether you’re switching jobs, changing careers, or transitioning into retirement, a few guiding principles can make all the difference in your success.

In the latest episode of The Toughest Call podcast, Rishad Tobaccowala, futurist, and author of "Restoring the Soul of Business," shares how he approached his shift into something completely different.

In this video analysis, Chaz Thorne discusses Rishad's guiding principles for a successful career move.

After 30 plus years of building a career as a leader within Publicis, the third-largest global communications group, Rishad decided it was time for him to take on a new challenge.

With the decision to leave already made, he then switched to HOW he would leave and broke that process down into three guiding principles:

1. Consult people you trust
2. Make an elegant exit
3. Practice patience with yourself

Consult people you trust

Consult people in your professional network about your plans for the future. They may have done similar...

Lori Nikkel  00:08

And we knew that we had to scale instead of three years in minutes, and scaling wasn't just not two people event scaling the whole business.

Chaz Thorne  00:17

Welcome back, or Welcome to toughest call a podcast for organizational leaders, where we hear stories from your leadership colleagues about career defining decisions. I'm your host, Chaz Thorne. In this episode, I'm talking with Lori Nikkel about her decision to hasten the pace of international expansion to meet the growing demand for food during the pandemic. Lori is the CEO of Second Harvest, a charity that recovers fresh unsold food to protect the environment and provide immediate hunger relief. How many times in your career Have you been told something you wanted to attempt was impossible. Though this may turn out to be true. It's also a position often taken by the overly risk averse to stifle innovation and maintain the status quo. Lori talks about how she leaned on the power have talented and pa...

Passion

How many times in your career have you been told that something is impossible to do?

While accepting that “fact” might be relatively easy when there’s not much on the line, what happens when the stakes are monumental?  

That’s exactly the situation Lori Nikkel faced when COVID created a massive wave of families turning to food banks. As the CEO of a food rescue organization called Second Harvest, Lori knew she was at a very pivotal moment.

She had two choices: put the brakes on her three-year national expansion plans and wait for the pandemic to end; or hit the gas and complete the expansion in a matter of weeks.

Seeing an opportunity amid the crisis

To make that tough choice, all Lori had to do was take a hard look at two of the biggest casualties of the lockdowns: the collapse of the restaurant industry, and the collapse of the job market.

In other words, a massive amount of food was about to be wasted at a time when the need for food had never been greater. To Lor...

During your career, you’ll likely be told that certain things are simply impossible.

Sometimes we accept that notion as fact.

But other times, we dig in our heels to prove the world wrong.

For Lori Nikkel, her opportunity to do the impossible came when COVID lockdowns swept the country. As the CEO of Toronto-based food rescue organization, Second Harvest, she knew that mass restaurant closures would mean millions of tons of food diverted to landfills at a time when the need for food for vulnerable Canadians was exploding.

Although Lori already had a three-year plan to expand Second Harvest nationally, it was clear that the need for that expansion was NOW.

So, instead of sticking to the three-year plan, she decided the only real choice was the impossible one: to condense that plan to a matter of weeks.

Getting there wasn’t easy. But in the end, Lori and her team crossed the finish line and kept millions of families fed during their hour of need.

While there a...

Heather Byrne  00:06

It was emotional. It was emotional people definitely felt like it was out of left field.

Chaz Thorne  00:13

Welcome back, or Welcome to toughest call a podcast for organizational leaders where we hear stories from your leadership colleagues about career defining decisions. I'm your host, Chaz Thorne. In this episode, I'm talking with Heather Byrne about a tough call, she faced deciding to leave an organization she cared deeply for to relocate closer to her extended family. Heather is the executive director of Alice house, a provider of safe second stage housing and support for women and children leaving situations of intimate partner violence. Many of us struggle with finding and maintaining a healthy balance between family and career. At times, it can feel impossible to reconcile our personal and professional ambitions. Heather talks about how taking care of what made her feel, allowed her to become an even more effective leader.

Heather Byrne  01:...

It Starts with being Grounded in Who You Are

In every professional’s life, there’s a moment where you second guess what chasing the dream really means. In those moments, you realize the cost that professional ambitions can have on your personal ones.

That’s the position Heather Byrne found herself in after a move to Saskatoon.

After relocating to the city from Eastern Canada, Heather and her husband were crushing it professionally. They each had jobs they loved with significant potential for growth.

The problem was they were missing the family connections that were an integral part of their values and identities.

Feeling Isolated

Heather says that even though she and her husband often exclaimed how pleased they were with their career trajectories, they started to have deeper conversations about how isolated they felt.

“We always said that family was the most important thing to us and finding a place to put down roots for our kids,” says Heather. “After some tough conversations, ...

How knowing YOU can make all the difference

We all have moments when we re-think what success really means. When executive Heather Byrne and her husband moved out west to chase the ultimate career path, they found out that all that glitters isn’t gold.

Despite their professional success, they felt increasingly isolated from the deep family connections and traditions they left behind.

The solution finally revealed itself when Heather and her husband had an honest talk about their personal values and agreed that family really did need to come first.

In the end, the move not only proved to be a blessing for their family but their professional careers as well.

Here are four things we can learn from Heather about how to make your next big move the right one: 

• Tune out the noise.

When enough people tell you you’re lucky for your lot in life, it’s easy to believe them. But, while you may be lucky, the real question to ask is, “are you happy?” Tuning out the noise to ...