Scaling Up Coaches on Differentiation, Decisions, and COVID Leadership

Executive overview

Three Scaling Up coaches — Judy Guido (Los Angeles), Daniel Marcos (Toronto), and Liat Lazar (Jerusalem) — join host Bill Gallagher for a wide-ranging panel on the real-world challenges of growing mid-market companies during the COVID-19 era. The conversation spans brand differentiation, aligned strategy, better group decision-making, women in leadership, adapting sales processes, and keeping remote teams engaged.

The through-line is that most companies only believe they are differentiated — and the coach's job is to dismantle that self-delusion, then help leaders build processes, teams, and culture that prove the difference to customers.

All three coaches note that the pandemic has compressed years of digital and strategic change into months, rewarding companies that deeply understood their customers' shifting pain points and punishing those that relied on relationship-based selling alone.

Brand differentiation: most companies aren't as different as they think

• "Just because you say you're different doesn't mean you are" — Judy's go-to provocation for new clients.
• 80–85% of first-time clients admit, under questioning, their differentiation is indistinguishable from competitors.
• Effective differentiation must matter to the customer, not just the founder — impact on the buyer is the only test.
• Rackspace's "fanatical support" and Southwest's hidden-fee transparency are cited as strong sub-brand examples.
• Daniel coined "sclerious" (serious about scaling) to filter and attract the right clients.
• A hidden acquisition strategy that excludes employees is a red flag — transparency with the team is a core value.
• Two co-founders aligned only when the exit could be framed as a legacy win for the whole team.

Strategy alignment starts at the top

• Problems below the CEO level are almost always an extension of misalignment at the top.
• The One Page Plan and Vern Harnish's Seven Strata surface the pain points that fragmented leadership has been avoiding.
• CEOs who want tools to "fix the people below" without doing personal leadership work are the hardest clients — and the least likely to scale.
• Avoiding the silver-bullet mentality is essential; sustainable growth requires focus and discipline across people, strategy, execution, and cash.
• Growth Institute's Scaling Up online program doubled in revenue during the pandemic precisely because the framework enables rapid re-strategising.

Israel's startup ecosystem and the scaling gap

• Israel has one startup per 2,000 people and a strong track record in deep tech, irrigation, and high-tech innovation.
• Most Israeli companies master the zero-to-ten-million phase but struggle to break through to fifty or one hundred million.
• Women are still underrepresented in senior Israeli tech roles despite near-parity in computer science faculties; research by Prof. Dan Ariely tracks a dropout inflection around age 16.
• The green industry globally employs only about 10% women despite strong alignment with STEM skills and explosive growth.

Group decision-making: smaller, specialist teams win

• Google research found the optimal team size is 4.6 members — above that, diminishing returns set in.
• General McChrystal's special forces model (cross-functional small teams) took the US military from one mission per 15 days to 15 per day.
• Diverse skill sets within a small team matter more than seniority or title.
• Every collaborative decision still needs a single accountable decision-maker who goes last, not first.
• Adam Grant's recommendation: have people brainstorm individually before the group meeting to prevent dominant voices from anchoring the discussion.
• Coaches help CEOs speak last — uncomfortable in the moment, transformative in outcome.
• Involving frontline workers in decisions about frontline problems closes the gap between planning and reality.
• Ownership and commitment to execution are higher when team members co-created the plan.

Coaching as the accelerator

• A coach helps the CEO shut up, surface quieter voices, and get a broader range of perspectives into the room.
• Pre-session surveys, sticky notes, and online ideation tools level the playing field between introverts and extroverts.
• The coach role combines scientist and archaeologist — digging out creative potential from every function, not just the "creative" ones.
• Scaling Up's MBD (Master of Business Dynamics) pairs thought leadership from Vern Harnish, Jack Daly, David Meermann Scott, and others with peer masterminds across 68 countries.
• A mastermind call with participants from Israel, Iran, Argentina, and the US illustrated that shared business challenges transcend geopolitical divides.

Women in leadership: progress and gaps

• Fortune's Most Powerful Women list features the CEO of Accenture (Judy Sweet, No. 1), UPS (Carol Tomei), and Citi (Jane Fraser, No. 6).
• Gwen Shotwell (President/COO, SpaceX) runs daily operations but receives far less public visibility than male co-founders.
• Accenture's breadth across every industry makes it a particularly demanding leadership role — which is why its CEO's placement at number one is significant.
• Women are being placed in charge of the world's biggest pain points: logistics (UPS), financial health (Citi), healthcare.
• Katika Roy's work on the gender pay gap and the broader value of workplace diversity is highlighted as essential reading.
• Diversity in companies correlates with stronger market performance — the world served by businesses does not all look like the typical founding team.

Adapting the sales process in a post-COVID world

• Relationship-based selling that depended on lunches and in-person visits collapsed overnight for many companies.
• Companies that understood how their customers' pain points had shifted maintained or grew sales; those that didn't saw significant declines.
• An office equipment supplier pivoted from fitting out offices to equipping employees' home offices — and ended the year 20% up.
• Judy's proposal process is a working session, not a document sent in advance; 98–99% of prospects feel they got a free consulting session regardless of outcome.
• Synchronous follow-up matters: leave something to answer, keep the conversation open, don't assume the message landed.
• Sales teams are often trained in one or two techniques — the pandemic exposed that rigidity and forced genuine customer-centric thinking.

Making virtual events and remote teams work

• Every five minutes without audience interaction is too long — build in polls, breakouts, and directed questions constantly.
• Breakout rooms work best when an assertive facilitator creates clear openings for quieter participants.
• "ELMO" (Enough, Let's Move On) is a shared signal to redirect conversations that are going in circles.
• Treat virtual events as productions: theme them like TV formats (love it or loathe it, learn it and earn it), invite customers and supply-chain stakeholders as guests.
• Between-session culture matters as much as the sessions: Halloween dress-up on a daily standup, virtual escape rooms, shared cooking classes, and family Zoom dinners all build cohesion.
• Sometimes the best call is to get off video entirely — a phone call from a comfortable chair, or an outdoor face-to-face with space and heaters, resets energy and relationships.
• CEOs who openly admit "my meetings suck" give their teams permission to help fix the problem.

COVID-era economy: outdoor living, supply chains, and opportunity

• Outdoor living is booming: pools starting at $200k, pergolas, canopies, outdoor offices, petscaping, and agroscaping are all surging.
• Patio heaters that cost $130–$150 a year ago are now $300–$600 and out of stock; bicycles, RVs, and office equipment face multi-week delivery delays.
• Toronto restaurants converted street lanes to outdoor seating but have now shut as winter approaches.
• The home has become hospital, school, office, and restaurant simultaneously — driving demand across multiple product and service categories.
• Businesses willing to innovate within constraints (rather than declaring themselves simply open or closed) are the ones finding opportunity.

Growth Institute and upcoming events

• Growth Institute has trained 50,000+ executives from 10,000 companies in 68 countries; Scaling Up is its best-selling programme.
• The MBD is an 18-month programme combining scaling up, top-grading, great game of business, sales (Jack Daly), marketing (David Meermann Scott), and more.
• A Scaling Up Masterclass in Dallas (December 8–10, 2020) will feature Vern Harnish on stage 78–80% of the time, designed for leadership teams to implement together with COVID safety protocols in place.
• Online coaching and in-person events can be combined; coaches can guide teams through the Growth Institute curriculum remotely.