For CEOs, and even more so for company founders, the prospect of stepping out of leadership, handing the reins over to your successor, and letting go of the company you have poured your heart into for years can be a challenge. Especially for Evergreen® leaders, who tend to be humble and gritty, their work has been a labor of love; they are so heavily invested in the success of their team, their team’s families, and their company that trusting it will be ok without them is almost akin to watching children go out into the world independently. But it must and will happen to all leaders.

In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Kris Maynard, founder and CEO of Cathedral Holdings, shares his own experience around this moment in his leadership journey. As a founder, he chose to step into the role of Executive Chair first, to ensure that the transition was smooth and gradual, but the end result is the same; someone else is in charge now. His story will shed light on this process for leaders who are looking toward this transition, and while his lessons learned will not make it easy, they will certainly help prevent surprises and prepare you for some of the more unexpected aspects.

Watch and be inspired to prepare for and thoughtfully shape your own transition out of leadership, when the time comes.

In 2022, at Tugboat Institute® Gathering of Teams, Tugboat CEO Dave Whorton shared a talk entitled On Purpose. At the time, we were approaching our ten-year anniversary and our Evergreen® community had grown and matured a great deal. Everything Dave, and all of us at Tugboat Institute, had learned from our incredible members and friends over the years had confirmed Dave’s thinking about the power of the Evergreen company back in 2013, when he set out to create Tugboat. As he honed his vision and planning for the future of this important group, he reconsidered the Evergreen 7Ps® principles and decided it was time to revise our definition of Purpose.

We have decided to re-share this important talk two years later, because our community continues to grow and our circle of friends and followers is growing quickly as well. Purpose lies at the heart of what it means to be an Evergreen leader and company. Whether you watch this as a re-fresh, as a boost and confirmation for the hard work you are doing leading your company, or as an introduction to the values and thinking that collectively guides us, it will be an inspirational twenty minutes.

Listen and be (re-)inspired by the power of the Evergreen movement.

Evergreen® companies, who value their teams and put People First, believe deeply in the importance of a strong culture. However, the critical value of a strong culture is not simply a matter of faith. In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Oliver Staehelin shares concrete data around the specific, strategic advantages a strong culture can give a company. In a world where competition for great talent is not going to ease anytime soon, this is not an optional undertaking for the company that wants to retain a strong team over the long term.

Oliver was an early member of Tugboat Institute, while he was leading the culture assessment company he co-founded with Stanford Professor Charles O’Reilly, Pomello. His early career and all of his subsequent work confirmed for him that culture is not a ‘soft’ topic, nor are its benefits immeasurable.

Listen and be inspired to transform your company’s culture into one of its greatest strategic advantages.