Every organization over 20 people has the same instinct: when things get harder, add layers, add meetings, add controls. Olivia Montgomery — principal analyst at Data Frame and former Gartner researcher — argues that every layer up the org chart actually knows less about what's really going on, not more. And the fix isn't more visibility for leadership. It's pushing decisions down two or three levels, to an uncomfortable place.

Olivia has spent more than a decade researching how project management, PMOs, and organizational design actually work — first at Gartner, now at Data Frame. Her research has consistently shown that formal PMOs improve project delivery and success, that emotional intelligence in project leaders correlates with better outcomes, and that most "coordination fixes" companies deploy are quietly making things worse.

In this conversation, Olivia unpacks why leadership's perception of clarity is almost always wrong, what the Monday-morning test looks like for teams that are actually clear on what they own, why mixing meeting types (status vs. brainstorm vs. decision) is one of the most common quiet destroyers of time, and the simple first test to apply to any meeting or process: is this alleviating uncertainty? She walks through her Gartner-era research on why PMOs work, why emotional intelligence in project leaders isn't a soft skill but a measurable performance driver, and why AI tools built for engagement are silently eating the productivity gains their vendors promise. She closes on the one thing every leader should do this week: identify the decisions that require the most meetings, and ask honestly why the team doing the work can't make them.

📥 Download the Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

CHAPTERS

[00:00] Cold open + intro
[01:08] Meetings and tools aren't the problem — misuse is
[02:26] Nokia — every layer up knew less
[04:19] Push decisions down two or three levels
[05:59] The Monday-morning clarity test
[07:25] Stop mixing meeting types
[11:32] The first test: is this alleviating uncertainty?
[13:37] Why PMOs actually work — the Gartner research
[18:41] Emotional intelligence in project leaders — 10 years of data
[22:57] Why a strict KPI focus creates dishonesty
[25:40] AI tools are designed to keep you talking
[30:55] Companies need a conscious AI vision, not a vendor-driven one
[32:23] "You built a tool for yourself" — the product-research problem
[35:21] Closing advice — the one thing to do this week

Guest & show links:

Olivia Montgomery on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-montgomery/
Data Frame: https://dataframe.consulting/
In Parallel: https://www.in-parallel.com — we build the shared context layer for teams. Try our AI notetaker for free.

Craig runs growth for Patrick Lencioni and the Table Group, co-owns a floral design business with his wife, and through Green Thumb Consulting helps founders through the transition William Bridges called getting organized — the stage after you've launched a venture but before you've built an institution. Before consulting, Craig ran a 50-person business as CEO and lived the shift he now walks his clients through.

In this conversation, Craig unpacks why founders create the very dysfunction they blame their teams for, how team cohesion (in Lencioni's 5-dysfunctions frame) is the actual foundation execution sits on, and why honesty is a shortcut to almost every problem teams try to solve with more infrastructure. He walks through his own hardest founder moment — realizing everyone on his executive team was better at their function than he was, and having to grieve the loss of being "the rock star" — and how that reframe from how good am I to how effective are these people around me changed the whole job. He closes on the two practices every founder should run: fighting about what's right for the company rather than who's right, and the last-ten-minutes-of-the-meeting discipline that fixes most commitment and accountability failures.

📥 Download the Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

CHAPTERS

[00:00] Cold open + intro
[00:45] The founder-as-bottleneck moment
[02:34] What "getting organized" actually means
[05:07] Monday morning when the founder isn't essential
[06:30] Team cohesion and the five dysfunctions
[09:15] Why honesty saves you from building unnecessary infrastructure
[12:45] "I don't get to be the rock star anymore" — the founder's identity shift
[15:39] Diagnostics — when it's time to get organized
[18:06] Productive conflict — fighting about what's right, not who's right
[23:00] Why committed C-level players beat uncommitted A+ players
[25:51] 99% of the time, the founder is the problem
[27:25] The last-ten-minutes-of-the-meeting discipline

Guest & show links:

Craig Denison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdenison/
Green Thumb Consulting: https://www.greenthumb.consulting/
The Table Group (Patrick Lencioni): https://www.tablegroup.com
Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

Dr. Christy Vanorsdale — founder of Vanorsdale Learning Lab, cognitive multimedia learning researcher, and fractional Chief Learning Officer — explains why L&D keeps solving the wrong problems, and what happens when you treat it as a strategic partner instead of an order taker.

Christy has spent 15 years dragging L&D out of order-taker mode and into being a strategic partner for business. She holds a doctorate in cognitive multimedia learning and today runs Vanorsdale Learning Lab, working with mid-market scaleups and B2C training companies to redesign their learning ecosystems from the ground up.

In this conversation, Christy walks through why most L&D teams get treated as content-makers rather than strategic partners — and why that misdiagnosis quietly costs companies. She unpacks the "order taker" problem, the trap of promoting subject-matter experts into training roles when they lack a background in how people actually learn, why working memory is limited in space AND time (and why the "make it TikTok-length" fallacy is wrong), how to measure L&D effectiveness through business goals rather than completion rates, and the true story of the IT specialists who were "failing at product knowledge" — until she went and asked them, and it turned out the real problem was they'd never been trained on the customers on the other end of the phone. She closes on the discovery process every L&D leader should run before designing a single module.

📥 Download the Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

CHAPTERS

[00:00] Cold open + intro
[00:57] The "order taker" problem
[03:21] The subject-matter expert trap
[08:44] Working memory — limited in space and time
[13:21] The TikTok fallacy
[16:02] Why L&D isn't at the strategy table
[19:59] L&D as the translator across organizational silos
[20:47] When an emerging scaleup should engage L&D
[22:22] How to actually measure L&D working
[26:00] The IT specialists story — a real misdiagnosis
[29:55] The discovery process every L&D leader should run

Guest & show links:

Dr. Christy Vanorsdale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christievanorsdale-learning/
Vanorsdale Learning Lab: https://www.vanorsdalelearninglab.com/services
Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

How much of your workweek is actually work?

In this special solo episode of The Coordination Tax, Kristian Luoma — co-founder of In Parallel — walks through the newly published Coordination Tax Index 2026: the first quantitative measure of how much of a modern manager's week actually goes to managing the work, versus managing the work about the work. The Index reads 31 out of 100 — meaning nearly a third of management capacity is consumed by coordination overhead before any real work happens.

Kristian is the co-founder of In Parallel and co-author, with Markku Mäkeläinen, of the Coordination Tax Index 2026. The report surveyed 247 managers across five countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Germany — and nine industries. It moves past how people feel about meetings and actually measures where the hours go.

In this episode, Kristian walks through the headline: 16.5 hours a week per manager lost to coordination overhead — roughly two full working days. The perception gap that hides those hours — managers self-report losing 21% of the week, but when they itemise the hours, it's actually 41%. Where the time goes: status meetings, re-explaining context to someone who already had it, and hunting for decisions that already exist somewhere. Why tool count is the strongest structural multiplier — from 13 hours a week at 1–3 tools to 32 hours at 10+. Why the heaviest AI users are carrying more coordination load than non-users, not less. And what the data rules out about how to fix it: you cannot train your way out, you cannot buy your way out with another system of record, and you cannot prompt your way out.

📥 Download the Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

CHAPTERS

[00:00] Intro — 31 out of 100
[01:54] Why we built the Index
[03:50] Where the 16.5 hours actually go
[05:35] The perception gap — and the dark matter of the P&L
[06:47] Why it's structural, not behavioural
[07:56] Tool count — the strongest multiplier
[09:21] The AI paradox — heaviest users pay the most
[11:22] The shared-context dividend
[12:52] What managers would do with the time back
[13:46] Three things the data rules out
[15:26] What to do on Monday

Host: Kristian Luoma (In Parallel)

Show links:

Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

Hosanna Ouellette and Nora Bereczkei ran the operating model rebuild inside Spotify. They explain why autonomy stopped scaling, how they stopped shipping the org chart to users, and why agents break the purposeful ambiguity every operating model quietly relies on.

Nora has built the delivery backbone inside Spotify, the BBC and now at Gusto. Hosanna spent her career moving ideas through one of the largest matrix firms on the planet, and today deploys autonomous agents into live commercial workflows. Together they led the rebuild of Spotify's product operating system — and lived through what the coordination tax actually costs when hundreds of squads try to ship one unified experience to millions of users.

📥 Download the Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

CHAPTERS

[00:00] Cold open + intro
[01:31] What "operating system" actually means to Hosanna and Nora
[04:49] Don't ship your org chart to the user
[08:49] Horizontals vs verticals — the tension every scaling org faces
[11:13] The Airbnb story — low to high coordination tax, on purpose
[14:12] The Spotify model — culture, not structure, was the problem
[18:21] Autonomy at scale — when dependencies grow geometrically
[20:36] The Porsche stopped at a red light — why team velocity is the wrong metric
[23:19] Hard APIs between teams — getting systems of record in sync
[33:12] Why agents can't work with the purposeful ambiguity operating models rely on
[35:35] "Everyone arrives with 26 rocket ships"
[36:41] Productivity era vs outcome era for agents
[39:39] 10× for the individual, 1.7× for the organization
[40:04] The human ceiling on organizational complexity is gone
[46:27] Closing advice — "you can do anything, but you cannot do everything"

Guest & show links:

Hosanna Ouellette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hosanna-ouellette/
Nora Bereczkei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/norabereczkei/
Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

Robert E. Siegel — partner at XSeed Capital, lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and author of The Systems Leader — explains the hidden cost of coordination, why context has become a leader's most valuable asset, and what every CEO should rethink on Monday morning.

Robert has spent his career at the intersection of Silicon Valley and Stanford. He worked on Andy Grove's research team for Only the Paranoid Survive at Intel, is now a partner at XSeed Capital, and teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where his Systems Leadership course became the foundation for his latest book, The Systems Leader. He is currently working on a new book revisiting Michael Porter's The Competitive Advantage of Nations for a world where business and government are becoming increasingly intertwined.

In this conversation, Robert reacts to In Parallel's Coordination Tax Index — which found that managers lose 16.5 hours every week to coordination overhead and that the heaviest AI users carry the greatest coordination burden. He explains why truth equals facts plus context, explores the five cross-pressures every modern leader must hold at once, discusses what he calls "unserious behaviours in a serious world," and ends with a practical challenge: audit your own calendar, because your team is watching what you actually prioritize.

📥 Download the Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

CHAPTERS

[00:00] Cold open + intro
[00:42] Robert on Andy Grove and Only the Paranoid Survive
[01:09] Why we need a different thesis than 1996 — constant crisis, not one-time inflection
[03:03] The five cross-pressures + the Kathy Mazzarella story
[05:33] Grace under fire — highest highs and lowest lows in the same career
[07:57] "Unserious behaviours in a serious world" — the Zuckerberg vs Musk cage match
[10:15] The Coordination Tax Index — 16.5 hours a week per manager
[11:04] Truth = facts + context — the leader's real job
[13:16] Why AI users are carrying more coordination load, not less
[15:26] Signal from noise — the phone-notifications analogy
[22:40] Monday-morning move: audit your own calendar
[24:56] Your teams are watching where you spend your time
[26:47] The next book — revisiting The Competitive Advantage of Nations

Guest & show links:

Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertesiegel/
Book (The Systems Leader): https://www.robertesiegel.com/the-systems-leader
Coordination Tax Index 2026: https://www.in-parallel.com/coordination-tax/#report

Jeroen Kraaijenbrink is a strategy author, teacher, and independent consultant with more than twenty years in the field — writing, teaching, and working directly with the executive teams trying to actually make their strategies work. His current argument, after all of it, is that most companies don't have a strategy problem at all. They have an honesty problem. And nobody in the building is willing to name it out loud. He is the author of several books, including The One Hour Strategy, and he has developed a diagnostic framework called PACE — Purpose, Awareness, Connection, Energy — to check whether the human conditions for honesty are actually in place before a company writes another plan.

CHAPTERS

[00:00] Cold open — Jeroen on the "honesty problem"
[01:01] Why CEOs are the last to know — rumors travel sideways, not up
[01:32] The truth doesn't travel vertically
[02:23] Strategy isn't strategy — it's analysis, and 100 frameworks in a textbook
[04:28] "Brains at the top, hands at the bottom" — where that idea comes from
[05:47] The One Hour Strategy — everyone in a company owning their piece
[06:51] 50–90% of strategy execution fails, and only 13% of workers engaged
[07:56] Only 1% feel confident voicing concerns in crucial moments
[09:11] Coordination is part of the problem — and part of the solution
[10:13] The dashboard CEO vs. the sick company — a hundred-year-old company in denial
[11:55] Why history gets into the DNA — new leaders can't always break the past
[13:15] The red flags — the first three seconds on Teams, and the forwarded confidential email
[14:56] PACE — Purpose, Awareness, Connection, Energy
[15:47] Purpose: why people only speak up if they care about the cause
[16:36] Awareness: knowing your own blind spots and biases
[17:00] Connection: no psychological safety, no honesty
[17:51] Energy: fear mode, ego, and the split between work and home
[19:57] The one uncomfortable conversation a leader needs to have — with themselves
[22:37] "Just like in airplanes" — start with yourself, then help the rest
[24:11] Be the drop in the water — the ripple effect

Guest: Jeroen Kraaijenbrink · Host: Kristian Luoma (In Parallel)

GUEST & SHOW LINKS

Jeroen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroenkraaijenbrink/
Jeroen's website: https://www.jeroenkraaijenbrink.com/

Jason Barnaby runs Fire Starters Inc., and companies pay him to do the job their founder is already doing badly — running sales. A fractional sales leader, Enneagram-certified coach, and storytelling sales trainer, Jason has worked with teams ranging from 50-person shops to 100,000-person enterprises. Before all of it he was a college professor, a corporate sales leader, a ski bum in Colorado, and the owner of a coffee shop in Poland. He hosts The Sales Spark Podcast and has strong opinions — and, as he puts it, the older he gets the less he cares who agrees with them.

In this conversation, Jason walks through the “toy box” handoff founders give a new sales leader, the golden spreadsheet locked in a drawer that only one person has the key to, the $20M pipeline he audited that was really closer to $10M (with half the deals already past their close date), why hiring one sales-enablement person can lift sales in a single quarter, how the Enneagram exposes what your best rep does when they go quiet under stress, and the caveman logic of paying a salesperson more than the CEO — “what they kill, we eat.” It closes on an unusually honest exchange about depression, psychological safety, and why the people who look most “on” are often the loneliest in the building.

CHAPTERS  
00:00 Cold open — “if you don't like my opinions, keep scrolling”
01:33 Founder-led sales: the two sides of the business, and when it gets sticky
03:50 Why a fractional leader in 8–12 hours beats a founder's 40
05:00 “You're my VP of sales” — the client who did it right
06:40 Giving busy executives a week of their life back every month
08:16 The breaking points: access to leadership and the “toy box” handoff
10:54 Who owns what? Mapping the internal process
11:55 One approver for every quote, $500 to $500,000 — the bottleneck
12:20 The invisible buyer process: why “yes” doesn't mean three weeks
14:17 Territoriality and the golden spreadsheet in the locked drawer
15:40 When collaboration breaks down — binders are where information goes to die
16:30 The 15-minute room: agree on the three things, then let go
18:16 Hire one sales-enablement pro, own the data, watch sales rise
20:00 The $20M pipeline that was really $10M — closed dates in the past
22:27 Stages vs. gates: “you're not in negotiations until you're redlining”
23:20 The Enneagram: core drivers and how people behave under stress
25:05 The micromanaging story — three weeks of a teammate thinking “does Jason not like me?”
27:30 When your best rep goes dark, pick up the phone
30:04 Compensation as a coordination tool — and job-shadowing every role
32:18 The birthdays missed, and “throwing the grenade over the fence”
33:23 “I'm okay with my salesperson out-earning me” — what they kill, we eat
35:57 The human layer: depression, meds, and dropping the mask
40:00 Psychological safety and the “me too” moment in the room
43:13 Closing advice: run a time audit — if you're not doing monthly 1:1s, the smoke is already there

Guest: Jason Barnaby (Fire Starters Inc.) · Host: Kristian Luoma (In Parallel)
  
GUEST & SHOW LINKS  
Jason on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jason🔥-barnaby-252a68/
Fire Starters Inc.: firestartersinc.com
The Sales Spark Podcast: firestartersinc.com/the-sales-spark-podcast/

Jim Fielding — former President of Disney Stores Worldwide, CEO of Claire's, and President of Consumer Products & Innovation at 20th Century Fox — walks through what actually keeps big organizations honest about what's happening. 

Jim Fielding took over Disney Store during the 2008 financial crisis and reinvented its global footprint across Europe, North America and Japan. He went on to serve as CEO of Claire's — a $1.5B specialty retailer across 3,500+ stores in 44 countries. Then Global Head of Consumer Products at DreamWorks Animation. Then President of Consumer Products & Innovation at 20th Century Fox, where he hired a five-SVP leadership team before he'd even started. Today he's Founder of the League of Radical Kindness, Executive Coach at The ExCo Group, and author of All Pride, No Ego. 

In this conversation, Jim walks through the airplane-hangar prototype behind the Disney Store turnaround, the "glocal" model that let stores feel local while sharing most of their catalog, the two sentences that kill innovation inside any company, and the diagnosis he gives every founder who tells him "my team can't execute" — a diagnosis most CEOs don't want to hear. 

Chapters: 
Taking over Disney Store in 2008
Coordination through travel, listening, and physical presence
The airplane hangar prototype and 350 tours
'Glocal' — 70–75% global, 20–25% local
Test-and-scale: Japan plush → global bestseller
Building Fox Consumer Products with 5 SVPs
'All Pride, No Ego' — controlling ego, not erasing it
The best leaders aren't the smartest people in the room
Truth tellers, vulnerability, and the open-door discipline
The two phrases that kill learning
Diagnosis for the founder whose team 'can't execute'
Closing advice: phone a friend

Jim in LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jimfielding/ 
Book (All Pride, No Ego): https://www.amazon.com/All-Pride-Ego-Executives-Authentically-ebook/dp/B0CF823KM8