Author Archives: Larry Janis

Client Partner

 

 

 

We are seeking a high-impact Client Partner based in US prefer NY/NJ or San Francisco to expand our relationships across leading service provider clients, enterprise leaders and key technology ecosystem players in North America.

This role requires a seasoned relationship builder who can confidently engage C-suite leaders, connect client priorities to our clients value, develop compelling commercial value propositions and operate at the intersection of research, advisory, and ecosystem partnership development.

Key Responsibilities

  1. Grow Wallet Share with Leading Service Provider Clients
  • Deepen and expand relationships with senior executives at top-tier service providers.
  • Drive revenue growth across research, advisory engagements, and custom programs.
  • Provide strategic guidance that helps client leadership teams shape their market positioning, go-to-market strategies, and transformation narratives.
  • Serve as a trusted advisor by aligning insights to client priorities across AI, GBS/GCC, IT and Business Services, and industry trends.
  1. Engage One Council Executives and Identify AI-First Deal Labs & Strategic Opportunities
  • Actively engage senior leaders within One Council, strengthening their connection to the enterprise network.
  • Identify opportunities for AI-first deal labs, helping clients explore and operationalize AI-driven business and delivery models.
  • Translate insight from One Council discussions into meaningful advisory, research, and partnership opportunities.
  • Facilitate executive briefings, roundtables, and strategic dialogues that advance enterprise innovation agendas.

 

  1. Build New Strategic Relationships with Big Tech Firms
  • Establish and grow relationships with major cloud, hyperscale, and AI technology firms.
  • Identify collaboration opportunities that reinforce services as software” vision.
  • Develop joint narratives, ecosystem programs, and partner engagements that expand strategic relevance across the technology landscape.
  • Serve as a connector between big tech, service providers, and enterprise leaders to drive market innovation and insight flow.

Qualifications & Experience

  • 15+ years in client leadership, advisory, sales, or ecosystem-facing roles within research firms, service providers, consulting firms, or technology companies.
  • Proven ability to build trusted relationships with C-suite and senior executives.
  • Strong understanding of enterprise transformation, AI, technology services, cloud, and evolving delivery models.
  • Demonstrated success in account expansion and strategic opportunity development.
  • Excellent executive communication, storytelling, and facilitation skills.
  • Entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to work autonomously and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.

 

What Success Looks Like

  • Significant growth in revenue and relationship depth across leading service provider clients.
  • Strong executive engagement and high-value outcomes generated through One Council.
  • Multiple AI-first deal labs launched with strategic clients.
  • New and influential relationships with big tech firms that elevate HFS’s ecosystem presence.
  • Recognition as a trusted advisor and strategic partner to senior leaders across the services and technology landscape.

 

Sincerely,

Larry Janis

Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group

P-516-767-3030

 

Three hacks to improve your odds of success

 

 

 

 

 

by Kyle Austin Young

 

 

Imagine you’ve set the goal of running a marathon that’s 90 days away. You’ve hired a trainer who says this a less than optimal amount of time, but if you stick religiously to her fitness routine, nutrition plan, and sleep schedule, you’ll be ready come race day. Cheat in any of those three areas, she warns, and you won’t be able to run 26.2 miles on three months’ notice.

Let’s assume you feel pretty good about your odds of following through in each area. You believe there’s a 70% chance you’ll stick with the fitness routine, a 70% chance you’ll stick with the nutrition plan, and a 70% chance you’ll stick with the sleep schedule. What are your odds of doing all three and showing up ready to run?

The answer, surprisingly, is only 34.3%. You have three prerequisites to success. Individually, each seems likely to happen. But you need all three to play out as planned. When we multiply your odds of completing each step in the process, the outlook isn’t so rosy.

This is a relatively simple goal. You only need three things to go right. Now imagine your odds in a more complex and challenging situation—like starting a successful business or winning a coveted promotion. Suddenly, it’s not surprising that nine out of ten businesses supposedly fail or that most people make a tradition out of falling short on their New Year’s resolutions. We aren’t getting unlucky. We’re experiencing the predicted failures associated with big goals and bad odds. But this isn’t a reason to give up. It’s a reason to probability hack. Here are three steps you can take to tilt the odds in your favor.

1.  Think negative: do everything you can to identify and prevent bad outcomes 

If you flip a coin and call heads, there’s a 50% chance you’ll get the outcome you want and a 50% chance you’ll fail. Our real-life goals are more complex, but the same principle holds. The odds of all possible outcomes add up to 100%. That means, if we can make bad outcomes less likely, we’ll automatically boost our chances of success.

Many people avoid wondering about things that could go wrong. After all, we’re supposed to think positive, right? Unfortunately, positive thinking won’t prevent bad outcomes, which means it won’t improve our odds. Preparation will. By identifying threats to our success, we can get creative and systematically de-risk our goals.

When I applied to become the product director of a growing health organization, shortly after graduating college, my odds of success weren’t great. I was competing against a lineup of more experienced candidates. But I didn’t give up or resort to simply manifesting a good outcome. I took intentional steps to make it happen.

To keep the hiring squad from rejecting me for my youth, I grew a beard to look older. To demonstrate I was up to the task of leading a demanding team, I typed up a spiral-bound plan for improving the department and gave it to everyone I met. To fit in like an existing team member, I read books I knew the team was familiar with, which allowed me to speak their language. The day after an important interview, I woke up to find an email from the CEO. He said I was the most prepared candidate he’d ever seen. Soon after, I was a twenty-one year old department head, on my way to a successful career.

2. Multiply your odds with the power of multiple attempts
An 80% chance of failure isn’t necessarily bad. It means for every five attempts, you expect to succeed once. A door-to-door salesman would be absolutely thrilled with that success rate. Knocking on 200 doors per day would lead to 40 sales! For some goals, it isn’t possible or practical to try multiple times. But for goals with a high degree of uncertainty, multiple attempts can actually be the most reliable way to break through. Sometimes you don’t have to beat the odds, you only have to play them.

Apoorva Mehta estimates that he launched around 20 businesses before founding Instacart, including an ad network for gaming companies and a social media site for lawyers. When COVID hit, his grocery delivery service was in exactly the right place at the right time. Over a span of 10 months, Instacart’s valuation increased by over $9 billion.

Thomas Edison outcompeted his peers and found a practical filament for the incandescent lamp by experimenting with 6,000 different plant materials. Through this inglorious process, he discovered an unlikely winner—carbonized bamboo—and won valuable patents.

History’s most famous creatives took a similar approach to produce enduring works of art. Mozart composed over 600 pieces of music. Beethoven wrote over 700. Van Gogh painted and sketched so prolifically, he averaged roughly one new work of art every 36 hours for 10 years.

And in the world of product development, Ben & Jerry’s created over 300 discontinued flavors on the road to uncovering classics like Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and becoming the top-selling ice cream brand in the United States.

Contrary to popular belief, quantity is not the sworn enemy of quality. It’s a clever way to up your odds of producing great work.

3.  Prioritize low probability steps

Your overall odds of success will never be higher than your most unlikely prerequisite step. For example, imagine you need four department managers’ approval to pursue a time-sensitive idea at work. You think the first three each have a 98% chance of saying yes. The fourth has a 10% chance of saying yes. Again, you need all four to approve. That puts your overall odds at 9.4% — not good.

One proactive step you can take is first talking to the manager who will probably say no. Why? If he says yes, your odds will skyrocket. If he rejects the idea, you won’t have to waste time talking to the other three managers. This is a clever way to fail fast and focus your energy on projects that are likely to succeed.

In a production mindset, we prioritize the longest pole in the tent. In a probability mindset, we prioritize the step with the longest odds. Doing so consistently is a reliable way to experience smaller setbacks and get more of what you want in life.

Every goal that you’re pursuing has two hidden numbers attached to it—a probability of success and a probability of failure. If we can make the first number bigger and the second number smaller, we can rewrite your future. In the context of a single goal, it could change your outcome. Over the course of several goals, it could shift the trajectory of your career. Multiplied across a lifetime of goals, it could redefine your legacy.

This post originally appeared at fastcompany.com

Six Emerging Leadership Shifts And How To Leverage Them In 2026

 

 

 

 

By Maureen Metcalf, Forbes Councils Member

 

 

As we approach the end of 2025, the leadership landscape is evolving at a faster pace than ever. The convergence of AI, global uncertainty and shifting workforce expectations is reshaping what it means to lead effectively. In my work with executives and thought leaders, I have observed a clear pattern emerging: The leaders who thrive are those who embrace AI, navigate complexity, lead with purpose and adapt with agility.

Here are six key leadership shifts I believe will define the coming year, along with practical ways leaders can respond.

1. AI fluency is no longer optional.

AI is transforming every facet of business, from operations to strategy to customer experience. However, the real differentiator isn’t the technology itself; it’s how leaders utilize it. I’ve seen too many executives still delegating AI to IT or data teams, missing the opportunity to shape its strategic impact. AI needs to be treated as part of the team, not just a technology tool.

This theme recurs regularly in my work; I find myself frequently applying the five levels of the CoThink AI Fluency Ladder. How I prompt AI and what I learn from it is making me better and allowing me to deliver better work products.

Leadership Recommendation: Make AI part of your personal leadership toolkit. Model curiosity and experimentation: Learn the basics, ask better questions and get involved in prioritizing use cases. When leaders are visibly engaged, teams follow suit and transformation accelerates.

2. Human-centered leadership is the new competitive advantage.

While AI grabs headlines, human skills are quietly becoming more valuable than ever. Empathy, inclusion and emotional intelligence are no longer “soft skills”; they’re power skills. In a hybrid world, people want to feel seen, heard and valued.

These soft skills can translate to soft power. My facilitator team members participated in research on the use of soft skills and leadership maturity last November. We explored how awareness of leadership maturity levels and managing interactions based on participant maturity can amplify impact. You can turn a values-based experiment into an institutional capability without positional power by developing shared agreements, mutual purpose and developmental awareness.

Leadership Recommendation: Build future-ready leadership skills. Lead with empathy and authenticity. Build trust by being transparent, listening deeply and creating space for diverse voices. Engage others in finding opportunities and solving challenges. Make inclusion and collaboration a daily practice, not a quarterly initiative. The leaders who connect and listen deeply will build the most anti-fragile and engaged teams.

3. Agility is the new stability.

The pace of change is accelerating. Leaders must navigate constant disruption while maintaining clarity and direction, which requires a new kind of agility, one that balances experimentation with a grounded purpose. I have written extensively about business agility as a foundation for strong businesses. This used to be a differentiator; it is now a survival strategy.

Leadership Recommendation: Adopt the mindset of a scientist to become more adaptable. Encourage rapid learning, empower teams to make decisions and embrace iteration. At the same time, anchor your organization in a clear purpose and values. Agility without direction leads to chaos; agility with purpose leads to innovation.

In addition to organizational agility, we need leaders who have the capacity to sustain personal agility. This requires leaders to build anti-fragile resilience, where leaders actually become better based on the stresses they face. Pairing the agility of a scientist with the precision of an engineer can transform bold ideas into tangible solutions through disciplined design and dependable systems.

4. The manager role is being reimagined.

Middle managers are the glue that holds organizations together, yet their roles are under pressure. As AI automates routine tasks, managers must shift from oversight to coaching, development and culture-building. This shift is profound, and it requires support.

Leadership Recommendation: Invest in redefining and re-skilling your managers. Help them adopt the seven mindsets required to lead and manage in dynamic times. Next, determine the framework that supports your development journey and implement it consistently within your organization. Clarify expectations, provide coaching and feedback tools and create communities of practice.

Managers are your culture carriers; equip them to lead with purpose and make a lasting impact.

5. Sustainability is now strategy.

Increasing power demands, climate resilience and sustainability are no longer side initiatives; they’ve become central to long-term success. Stakeholders, from investors to employees, expect leaders to take meaningful action. The challenge lies in aligning sustainability with business outcomes.

Leadership Recommendation: Integrate sustainability into your core strategy. Sustainability can cover a broad range of topics, from the circular economy to navigating climate change. Set measurable goals, tie them to financial performance and communicate progress transparently.

Lead with a transformational mindset; your legacy will be shaped by how you respond to current and future sustainability challenges.

6. Leaders must become unifiers to create cohesive organizations.

In a polarized and fragmented world, leaders must be more than decision-makers; they must be unifiers. People are craving connection, meaning and trust. The most effective leaders are those who bring people together around shared purpose and values. They develop trust and communicate authentically across multiple stakeholder groups.

Leadership Recommendation: Be intentional about cultivating a strong, cohesive organization. Confirm and reinforce rituals that reinforce belonging, foster community, celebrate shared wins and navigate conflict with grace. Lead with humility and courage. In times of division, unity is a strategic advantage.

Final thought: Leadership is a practice, not a position.

As change continues to accelerate and as stakes rise, tenures shorten and individual decisions change the trajectories of careers, it is crucial for leaders to evolve their leadership algorithms continually. That means adapting how you think about leadership and your actions to meet the current challenges. As leaders, we co-create the future our organizations experience.

 

Source: Forbes

What the CEOs of Nasdaq, JPMorgan, and Netflix teach us about leadership

 

 

 

 

Story by Marcel Schwantes

 

The world’s best-performing CEOs have learned to treat self-awareness as their superpower.

Even at the very top of the corporate ladder, the hardest person to manage is…yourself.

According to McKinsey research featured in A CEO for All Seasons, CEOs consistently rate themselves higher on every leadership dimension—from culture and vision to teamwork and personal effectiveness—than their boards and direct reports do.

The “Lake Wobegon effect,” named after the fictional town where “all the children are above average,” refers to the human tendency to overestimate our own abilities. The authors note that it is alive and well in the corner office.

That gap in perception isn’t just psychological. It can be costly. Poorly managed CEO transitions erase nearly $1 trillion in market value every year, much of it traceable to blind spots that leaders never saw coming.

The good news: the world’s best-performing CEOs, leaders like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Reed Hastings of Netflix and Larry Fink of BlackRock, have learned to make feedback their superpower. They treat self-awareness not as a soft skill, but as a strategic one.

Here are five practices drawn from A CEO for All Seasons that any leader can use to sharpen self-awareness and lead more effectively.

1. Seek the truth you don’t want to hear

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, often speaks about the importance of staying alert even when things are going well. Reflecting on challenges earlier in his career, he put it simply: “The big lesson I learned? Don’t get complacent.” As the authors explain, even the most seasoned leaders can drift into overconfidence during stable years. Outstanding CEOs counter that drift by deliberately surfacing uncomfortable truths and asking, What am I not seeing? Who’s telling me only what I want to hear? Dimon’s openness to reflection and course-correction helped him reinforce a culture of vigilance and continuous improvement across the firm.

2. Turn feedback into a system, not an event

Adena Friedman, CEO of Nasdaq, admits that in her early months she didn’t spend enough time meeting board members individually. “I thought, ‘Okay, I’m done with this board meeting—on to the next.’ But then board members began reaching out saying, ‘Adena, I’d like to give you my individual feedback.’”

She soon formalized one-on-one meetings with each member twice a year. Those candid conversations, she says, “enabled both sides to share concerns and, over time, forged trust.” Leaders who systematize feedback through skip-level check-ins, and open board dialogue, normalize constructive critique as part of the operating rhythm.

3. Admit weakness — and build around it

Larry Fink, the longtime CEO of BlackRock, puts it simply: “One of the most important characteristics of a good leader is knowing your weaknesses and admitting them.” Self-aware CEOs don’t chase the illusion of being well-rounded. They build teams that complement their blind spots. The authors note that Fink intentionally surrounds himself with executives whose strengths offset his own, ensuring decisions are tested from every angle. Tech leaders lean on self-awareness as well. Netflix founder Reed Hastings routinely ran “future failure” exercises with his team — asking them to imagine Netflix had collapsed a decade from now and list every possible reason why. That willingness to confront blind spots early is what helped the company keep reinventing itself. Admitting limitations doesn’t erode authority, it expands it. Employees trust leaders who model vulnerability and continuous learning.

4. Get an outsider’s mirror

Robert Smith, founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, compares coaching to developing ambidexterity: “If you’re right-handed, you usually have a weak left hand. A great coach helps you see what you’re weak at and learn to be better.” The research shows that CEOs who outperform across every stage of their tenure rely on external perspective—mentors, board chairs, and executive coaches—to challenge their assumptions. As one author notes, “A true skill of an excellent CEO is executing specific strategies to draw forth candid feedback—and act on it.”

5. Make reflection a daily discipline

Michael Fisher, former CEO of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, keeps two lists: a to-do list and a to-be list. “It’s a simple but profound shift,” he told the authors. “I still keep my to-do list, but now I ask: who do I want to be today—curious, calm, clear?” That habit, the book explains, reinforces a mindset of deliberate self-leadership. Leaders who pause to reflect not only on tasks but on presence stay grounded amid pressure.

In closing, the higher leaders rise, the less feedback they naturally receive and the more intentional they must become about finding it. As A CEO for All Seasons shows, the most successful CEOs build mechanisms for truth-telling into their calendars, cultures, and conversations. They listen hardest when the news is hardest to hear. Because in every season of leadership, the ultimate differentiator isn’t brilliance—it’s self-awareness.

This post originally appeared at inc.com.

How to deal with an annoying boss

 

 

 

 

BY Art Markman

 

Annoying peers are hard enough to deal with. Things get even more complicated when the annoying person is your boss. As with peers, there are several ways that a boss can be annoying. Unfortunately, you have to tread lightly with many (though not all) bosses.

To be clear, the focus here is on annoying bosses, not toxic ones. A boss who is a narcissist, a harasser, or who sows mistrust isn’t just annoying, they’re bad for you and the organization. I’m going discuss four things that may seem petty, but if you start dreading your engagements with your boss (or resenting them for their foibles), it can come back to hurt your working relationship.

The cipher 

Some people are blessed with the ability to communicate clearly. They open their mouths, and full paragraphs of well-formed sentences spill out that illuminate whatever they are talking about. But, as Steve Martin once said, “Some people have a way with words, and others . . . uh . . . not . . . have a way.”

If your boss is in that latter category, they may ask you to do things, give you feedback, or generally talk about things going on at work that you don’t fully understand. It might be tempting to nod along with them and then try to figure it out later. That avoids an awkward discussion, but it probably causes more problems than it solves.

Instead, develop a routine with your manager to summarize the outcome of meetings/discussions at the end. Tell your boss that this is to help you remember. Then, repeat back the important bits. Your boss will correct anything you get wrong. As an added bonus, this exercise might give your boss additional words and phrases they can use to talk to you about similar things in the future.

The micromanager

A boss who gets into the details of your work is frustrating, because you’d like to be able to complete what you’re doing without constant oversight. There are two common reasons why bosses micromanage.

When someone gets their first supervisory role, they are usually in a transition from front-line work to management. Because their job (up to that point) involved doing something just like what you are doing now, it may be hard for them to let go of the details of the work to focus on what they need to do with their new position. For these bosses, it is often okay to have a gentle conversation in which you ask questions about their new responsibilities and provide a subtle reminder that the front-line work is not part of their day-to-day any longer.

The second typical source of micromanagement is anxiety. When your boss is not confident in their leadership or when they feel threatened by other factors at work, they may clamp down on the people working for them to ensure that nothing goes wrong. While this tactic may make them feel better, it makes everyone else miserable.

There are two things you can do here. First, create a schedule of checking in with your boss every so often. You’d like to get that to once a week if you can, but you may have to start by doing it at the end of a work shift, or every two days, and gradually work your way to once a week. Second, provide a shared document of the status of projects. This record is helpful anyhow, because it can be used when something goes wrong with a project. If your boss has access to the status of key projects, they may be less likely to pester you for those details and add suggestions about how they would approach things.

The forgetter

One of the Big Five personality characteristics is conscientiousness, which reflects the degree to which you focus on details and follow rules. Some bosses are highly conscientious, and they are up on the details of every project. Others are not.

When your boss is not conscientious, they may be great at giving strategic and tactical advice, but they may forget things later. They may miss meetings that don’t make it to their calendar, or forget something they told you they would do later.

A forgetful boss needs more constant reminders than a conscientious one. Follow up meetings with a written summary of key points and any specific information you need from your boss later. Send that summary by email. Even bosses who aren’t that conscientious are likely to check their email and to respond to direct requests on those emails.

If there are particular things you need to get from your boss by a specific date, coordinate with their admin if they have one. Try to ensure that key dates and requests get on their calendar. Often, a forgetful boss is aware that things slip through the cracks, and so they have a system to help them keep from dropping too many balls.

The (long-winded) storyteller

One thing about being the boss is that people feel like they need to listen to you. Some bosses (particularly those who have been in a leadership role for a while) get used to having an audience, and they may use meetings and even hallway conversations as an opportunity to regale you with stories.

A good storyteller keeps it brief and relevant. If your boss is not a great storyteller, then seeing them wind up to tell a long tale can send shivers of dread up your spine. You may have to bear a certain number of these stories—particularly if you’re sitting in the break room. But, you should try to have something scheduled up against meetings you have with your boss so that you have something you need to get to. That way, if your boss does launch into an epic narrative, you have a good reason to excuse yourself and move on.

 

Source: Fast Company