Pace Able Guides
Overview
Program Details
What we can help with
As we launch this resource, Guides will be available in four subject areas:
- Accounting leading to financial modeling or financial forecasting
- Honing your leadership
- Sales and sales management
- HR, recruitment support and organizational development
Who we’ve designed this for
Senior-level leaders and middle management (or those hoping to step into middle management roles) are welcome to take advantage of this offering – wherever the incremental value will be greatest.
How far you can go with a Guide
We have allocated resources for you to work with each Guide through a few “figure it out sessions” as part of your built-in benefit of being a Partner. What this looks like will be explained in each Guide explanation (below). The normal guideline is up to four one-hour sessions, and perhaps some email Q&A in between sessions.
Should more structured or in-depth support be identified through the session(s) with your Guide, we are able to support 80% of the cost of meeting the need (subject to a joint discussion of need and cost effectiveness of the additional work contemplated). You would be responsible for covering the remaining 20% of the cost.
Guide availability
What makes this resource unique is that it will be entirely driven by you. We know your schedule is already full of commitments and for this support to be as useful as possible, you need to have the power to define the terms of engagement. Therefore, these Guides are available for you to book one-on-one sessions when/as needed. The normal guideline is up to four one-hour sessions but perhaps you only need a single hour with a Guide. This is for you to define together with your Guide.
Engaging more than one Guide
To maximize the impact of the experience, we ask that you work with one Guide at a time. However, once the experience with one Guide is complete, if you feel your company/organization could benefit from engaging a separate Guide on a new topic, you are welcome to do so.
Do you have questions or want to talk further about this new offering? Please reach out to the Program Manager, Ali Ford at ali@pace-able.net or via WhatsApp at +1 647.879.3673
Ingredients for Success
1. As part of this request process, we’ll ask you to consider what specific business problem you are seeking to solve and outcome you want to drive towards. As part of the application process, we’ll ask you to identify this, so the Guide knows what to be focusing on with you.
2. Two days before each session with your Guide, we ask that you email your Guide and Ali Ford with a short description of the specific sub-question or topic to each session with the Guide. There is no ‘curriculum’ that the Guide will take you through. Instead, you are the one curating this experience. This will be most successful if you take the reins and identify what you want to explore or learn. You are welcome to reach out to Ali to discuss this before sharing the topic with your Guide.
3. After each session, Ali, our program manager, will be reaching out to touch base and see how the session went and if another one is needed. Upon completion of your final session, you’ll receive a survey. Your insights and reflections will be valuable as we iterate on this offering to ensure it is as useful as possible.
How to Participate
Review
Identify
Request to Participate
Fill out the request form HERE. Note: the person participating in the sessions with the Guide should be the one to apply.
Match
Connect
Areas of support & Guides
Accounting leading to financial modeling or financial forecasting
This is intended for members of your team who are currently responsible for the day-to-day accounting or bookkeeping functions of your organization, but who you would like to take on more responsibility in the accounting and forecasting functions of your business/organization.
Specific questions or scenarios that are ideal for this Guide include:
● Strengthening the quality of your books: You are in need of audited financials, but an auditor won’t engage because your books aren’t clean enough.
● Choosing the right software: Your books are being managed via Excel, AirTable, or a similar type of program but it’s time for something more robust. How do you decide what program or tool is best?
● Creating the organization’s first forecast: I’m being asked to create a financial forecast, but I don’t know where to start.
● Simulating cash position for “what if”: A business may not be sustainable even if it is profitable and has a sound business plan, if a combination of negative events takes place. Advance discussion and modeling can prepare you.
Meet your Guide: John Poon
John is an accomplished accounting and finance professional with strong system skills. He has a proven track record of performance at early stage, pre-IPO, public and private corporations in the high-tech, manufacturing and service industries. His strengths lay in building solid infrastructure for growth and implementing systems, controls and processes for scalability and corporate governance.
Honing your leadership
This is intended for you, or other people managers on your team and would like to develop or hone the skills needed to be more effective at leading and managing your team members.
Specific questions or scenarios that are ideal for this Guide include:
● Navigating complexity: Developing skills and strategies for working with challenges that defy easy solutions or problem-solving approaches, within your team or across your organization.
● Staying calm under pressure: Building practices to be able to remain centered and focused even when we face unusual challenges or feel personally triggered.
● Building resilience: Building the internal capacity to stay engaged and motivated even when things don’t go as we hoped or when the challenges we face feel especially daunting.
● Developing a specific skillset: As you review the different skills needed to be a people manager, perhaps you feel confident in many areas but want support in one specific area (e.g. critical feedback, mentorship/coaching, building a high performing team, or delegating). This is your chance to come ready to explore this weakness and work with your Guide to turn into another strength.
Meet your Guide: Ronni Hendel
Ronni is known for her engaging and easygoing style and for her ability to turn theory into practice. She listens deeply, asks powerful questions, and brings a range of resources and tools to her clients. She draws on her experience as an organizational leader, her strong theoretical grounding, and her training and experience in mindfulness. Ronni supports her clients, both individuals and teams, in developing personal resilience, powerful teams, and positive cultures.
She is personally familiar with the rollercoaster ride of leadership, having served in a leadership role for several profit and not-for-profit organizations. Ronni works with clients on several continents and in multiple industries including Higher Education, Consumer Products, Technology, Health Care and Social Enterprise. She especially loves working with people who are dedicating their lives to improving the lives of others and addressing the thorniest of global challenges.
Ronni is a PCC Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation and a Certified Presence-Based Coach®. She completed rigorous training at the Strozzi Institute for Embodied Leadership.
Sales and sales management
This is intended for the person responsible for your sales targets – either directly conducting the sales or managing the team that holds this responsibility.
Specific questions or scenarios that are ideal for this Guide include:
● Our team is underperforming and missing targets. How do I get average sales per person to increase so we can hit our goals?
● I want guidance on how to set up a fair and motivating compensation or incentivization plan for salespeople and/or sales managers.
● Aside from the deals they win, I’ve got limited visibility about what our salespeople are doing day-to-day. How do I change that? What are the right datapoints to have my eyes on?
● We rely on the founder (or only a few key people) to sell for us. How do we build a successful sales team that we can grow confidently?
● We have a good pipeline of new business, but conversion is taking a very long time. How do I get deals to move faster and more assuredly?
● Our current sales performance is concerning and may limit our ability to survive/grow/scale. How do we change that?
Meet your Guide: Whitten & Roy Partnership (you will be matched with a member of the team upon review of your Request Form)
Whitten & Roy Partnership (WRP) is a sales and management consultancy that works with socially-minded organizations across multiple sectors, seeking to transform sales performance. Established in 2009, WRP has served NGOs, social enterprises, and fully commercial clients in over 50 countries across more than 450 project engagements. Interventions are tailored to each client (from B2C, B2B, and B2B2C sales organizations), including addressing sales strategy, channel development, recruiting / compensation / incentives, sales & sales management training, train-the-trainer training, sales aids & tools, sales metrics & CRM usage, marketing, leadership & management capacity-building, customer service, and full business diagnostics.
WRP’s founders and co-CEOs together have over 80 years of business leadership experience. Scott Roy is a life-long entrepreneur with 40+ years of experience starting in door-to-door sales, moving into management, and building large sales teams, sales organizations, and several companies. His extensive practical business experience lays the foundation for many of our approaches to consulting for organizations. Roy Whitten has a PhD in Transformative Learning and Change – the study of how to get organizations and people to change – and has personally trained over 100,000 people in human performance. WRP’s well-rounded team of 50+ consultants consists of experienced business people with different sales and professional expertise. Collectively, our team speaks over 25 languages and is based across the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.
HR, recruitment support and organizational development
Specific questions or scenarios that are ideal for this Guide include:
● Preparing for growth: I finally have some extra resources and can hire a new team member. How do I decide where to add this person when I have so many gaps to fill?
● Role scoping and job description design: Deciding the right name for the role or developing the job description.
● Leadership hiring systems and processes: Reviewing your internal systems to identify opportunities to standardize systems and processes so you can hire more effectively.
● Preparing for onboarding: How to prepare to set my new hire up for success and give them a smooth onboarding experience.
Meet your Guide: Shortlist (you will be matched with a member of the team upon review of your Request Form)
Shortlist is a Nairobi-headquartered company founded in 2015 with a mission to unlock professional potential and address human capital challenges for organizations driving social and environmental impact. Shortlist focuses in particular in connecting high-impact organizations to the talent they need to grow, through both executive search and workforce mobilization programs. We have a local team based across Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt, India, the UK, and the US.
Shortlist is focused on two core offerings: Shortlist Search which provides executive search services for leading startups and impact organizations across Africa, and Shortlist Futures which designs and implements workforce enablement programs across Africa in partnership with donors, governments, enterprises, and education institutions to support economic growth and job creation. To-date we have placed 4,000+ professionals into high skilled jobs and expert advisory roles, and sourced and screened 1,500,000+ candidates. We are a global team of 50+ people, and have worked with over 900 leading organizations, including fast growing startups, impact-focused SMEs, multinationals, and global non-profits.
Additional opportunity: Upskilling promising team members
Note: this opportunity is available to those who want to request financial support to cover 80% of the cost of this yearlong program. Please have the staff member who you would like to participate in the Unlock Impact course fill out this Request Form, choosing the last option (“Team member upskilling through Unlock Impact”) when asked the question “What subject area would you like to focus on?” in order to begin this request.
This is intended for Partners where the best way to set you up for success is to build the capacity of one of your team members so they can step into a larger leadership role, and you can grow the middle management expertise of your business/organization.
This team member would participate in a yearlong course through Unlock Impact, choosing from one of the following streams:
● Organization & productivity
● Collaboration
● Communication
● Project Management
● People Management
Learn more about what they offer and what your team member would experience here.
Meet the provider: Unlock Impact
According to PwC’s CEO survey, the primary challenge hindering business growth and scale is finding (and affording) the talent needed to take their impact to the next level. Yet, there exists a critical gap – a “missing middle”: experienced, empathetic managers that will coach and nurture developing talent to make meaningful contributions within their organizations and communities.
The absence of these managers leads to the lack of crucial managerial soft skills. This often results in hiring expatriates, significant wage disparities between seasoned managers and entry-level employees, or high turnover rates stemming from a competitive labor market, which is detrimental to organizations. Through our fellowship program, we equip talent with managerial soft skills that allow them to add more value to and catalyze growth for their organizations and communities.
Think of the Unlock Impact program as the best parts of a leadership fellowship and a top executive education program combined into a professional development curriculum that is relevant and synergetic with the current talent development needs and priorities.
