Coming soon:
A Tactical Guide To Unlocking Initiative, Collaboration, and Leadership in Teams
Building High-Impact Organizations
This book outlines a practical approach to building teams that excel because of — not despite — their humanity. It explains how to create a workplace that that fuels personal growth in service of the company’s mission and creates purpose-driven leaders focused on positive impact.
“The [book] is a treasure trove of valuable insights, presented in concise, easy-to-read chapters. What I appreciated most were the actionable tips and ready-to-use templates. I was able to implement new processes and workflows right away. I highly recommend it!”
— Yannick Bontinckx, co-founder & CEO, Ziggu
Precise, step-by-step tactics for building a great team
Written by an entrepreneur who has tried and tested everything in practice (no theory detached from reality).
For entrepreneurial leaders with teams of 5 to 250 members.
Company
Operating
System
&
Culture
Align entire company
on strategy and goals
Improve hiring, performance management, termination
Make better and
faster decisions
Design organizational structure, roles, responsibilities
Introduce optimal meeting cadence and formats
Improve trust, relationships and collaboration across departments
The million dollar question
How come so many people feel disengaged at their paid jobs, while giving everything in other activities, even if unpaid?
Think of volunteering, raising children, buying and renovating a home, mastering a music instrument…
What if we could tap into that same source of motivation in companies?
This is a book about building great teams, but unlike most other books.
Most books…
focus on extracting maximum performance from a team, perhaps while also building a great company culture. They sometimes seem to consider teams as a necessary evil to gain market share or profit.. Much advice comes from the desire to control people and outcomes. The management solutions we are presented with, often don't feel right. These practices may seem bureaucratic or downright inhumane but we apply them anyway because we see no alternative.
This book…
aspires to go one level deeper. It argues that it’s helpful to stop seeing teams like deterministic machines and embrace humans’ unpredictable, creative and self-motivated nature. By working with instead of against the alive nature of team members, not only becomes running an organization more effortless, it also results in unprecedented inspiration, creativity, motivation and synergy among colleagues. As a result, a virtuous circle is created where team members, customers, and the company increasingly flourish, seemingly without much active effort.
Target audience
Who should read this book?
This book is for entrepreneurs and leaders of start-ups and small businesses in the range of 5 to 250 team members, as well as for consultants and coaches that advise them.
Organizations adopting the tactics in this book have seen inspiring results:
Teams shift from merely working hard to being deeply engaged and inspired
Customers feel deeply understood and become raving fans
Companies need much less formal management, while growing profitably and sustainably
"Now that we are running Zerocopy in a very structured, clear and smooth way as a team… I can’t even remember how I ran the company without any tools on my own. That, and many other things, I am forever grateful to Alexander of Grow With The Flow."
— Maxime Carpentier, founder & CEO of Zerocopy
"Alexander has given me immediate value with practical tools to start managing my company in a more productive way. All of which has been rooted in best practices from successful entrepreneurs around the world ánd tried and tested by Alexander in a real organization. I wholeheartedly recommend working with [Alexander] if you want a happier team, more focus for yourself and a growing business."
— Jochen Boeykens, founder & CEO of Skindr
Something is broken in the way we organize work
Organizations run into all kinds of complexity and people issues:
Hard to create clarity & focus (feeling of chaos)
Hard to maintain team unity & cooperation (failing internal communication, lack of cross-departmental collaboration, rising tension & politics)
Hard to get leaders working on instead of in the business (constantly in firefighting mode, bottleneck for everything)
Hard to hire and keep the right people
As a result, leaders feel conflicted and discouraged:
Where is the joy and fulfilment in this? Would I want to work in the type of workplace I'm creating?
Why does everything depend on me being present, high-energy, and noticing what’s failing?
How can I work more on the business and not just in it?
How can I create a high-performing team without ending up with a cut-throat culture?
How can I sell my company without selling my soul?
Does it really have to be like this? There must be a better way?
It doesn’t have to be like this. There’s a better way!
In this book, you will find a detailed, step-by-step blueprint:
A new lens for seeing organizations in a new way that opens up possibilities.
Essential practices for leaders to develop people, step back and work on what matters
Tools for creating psychological safety and trust
A process for helping team members grow based on self-reflection rather than just feedback
Simple practices for fostering customer orientation among the team
Team meeting routines that energize and encourage candor and initiative
Decisions process that goes beyond top-down and consensus decisions
Routines for creating accountability rooted in support rather than blaming or shaming
Tools for clarifying your company identity and how to bring it alive
An organizational structure that promotes leadership and collaboration instead of using power
A compensation system that doesn’t depend on one person’s opinion and encourages self-development
And much more…
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About the author
My name is Alexander Vuylsteke. For over 10 years, I’ve been developing the organization and leadership of fast-growing start-ups.
Why am I the best person to write this book? I’m still learning too, and only share what I have found so far.
Nevertheless, here’s why I felt confident writing this book (at the risk of self-bragging):
This is one of the few books that are both rooted in extensive research and tried and tested by the author.
Having previously started and run my own company, I deeply understand the context in which co-founders and entrepreneurs operate.
My own company has been featured as case study in academic research, books, conferences and a documentary exploring “teal” organizations (see book Reinventing Organizations).
I’ve tested my approach during hands-on leadership roles in several companies.
Dozens of start-ups, scale-ups and small businesses have further validated my approach.
As management consultant at Bain & Company, I’ve gained important insights in organizational design and leadership.
Previous work of mine was published in a respected, blind peer-reviewed academic journal, the Journal of Interactive Marketing (which has an Impact Factor of 7.8).