Leadership Transformation Results
& Organizational Effectiveness Case Studies
From Fortune 500 middle managers to engineering CEOs, leaders at every level face the same challenge: becoming the organizational bottleneck that keeps teams dependent on them for everything.
Phil Miller
President & CEO
Miller Mechanical Specialties
Executive Leadership: From Operational Bottleneck to Strategic Focus
When Phil came to me, he was carrying a familiar CEO burden: operational overwhelm. He'd unintentionally become the bottleneck. Decisions, ideas, and momentum all led back to him.
Using the RIDE Framework, his leadership team shifted how they worked together. They surfaced what wasn't working, identified the highest-leverage problems to tackle first, and designed safe-to-try experiments the whole team could own.
The result? Instead of ideas getting shot down or defaulting to Phil, the system started changing. Ownership spread, innovation had room to breathe, and effective leadership became scalable.
TESTIMONIAL
"Rory is an excellent facilitator. His one-day workshop was a game changer for our leadership team's ability to evaluate and experiment with new ways of working. Through the experience we had one of the most productive reflection and planning sessions we have had in years!"
Rob Papandrea
Senior Leader
The Boeing Company
Middle Management: From Drowning in Decisions to Team-Driven Results
Rob came to me with a familiar tension: a capable, committed team and a system that had quietly made him the bottleneck. Decisions flowed through him. Progress slowed whenever he stepped away. The pressure to "hold it all together" was real, even with a strong team in place.
Rob needed a way to shift ownership back to the team without losing quality, trust, or momentum. The focus wasn't fixing people—it was redesigning how the team worked so leadership didn't have to rely on heroics.
TESTIMONIAL
"Rory helped my team unlock what every manager hopes for: trust, ownership, and faster delivery—without me in the middle.
Through his facilitation, we identified key tensions slowing us down. He guided us in designing team-led experiments that redefined how we work together. One of the biggest breakthroughs? Removing me, the manager, as the bottleneck and enabling the team to take full ownership of how they deliver.
We've accelerated decision-making, improved collaboration, and found a more direct path to delivering value. Rory's impact was both immediate and enduring."
Holly Armstrong
VP, Environment, Health & Safety
Trident Seafoods
Operations Leadership: From Exhausted Bottleneck to Change-Ready Team
Holly leads operations in one of the toughest environments: seasonal seafood processing with intense work cycles, competing priorities between production and compliance, and the constant challenge of keeping everything aligned while being the go-to person for every decision.
TESTIMONIAL
"Working with Rory has had a clear and measurable impact on my leadership style and team. He brings sharp insight, practical frameworks, and a no-nonsense approach that gets to the heart of issues quickly.
Rory understands the realities of leadership roles and consistently helps me navigate complex decisions with clarity and confidence. His style is direct but supportive—he knows when to challenge my thinking, when to help me refine it, and when to help me laugh at myself.
Every session is focused, productive, and grounded in real-world application. I leave with actionable next steps and a stronger sense of direction. If you're looking for a coach who is strategic, efficient, and genuinely invested in your growth, Rory is an excellent partner."
Brad Nordman
Director of Systems Engineering
Radia
Engineering Leadership: From Perfectionism Paralysis to Experimentation Culture
Brad leads an aerospace engineering team navigating a classic startup tension: talented people who'd come from environments with abundant resources and established processes, now operating in a fast-moving, lean context where perfect plans aren't possible.
His team had become risk-averse. They over-documented potential problems instead of moving work forward. They came to Brad for approval on decisions they should own. Perfectionism was stalling progress, and with a part in-person and part hybrid team, they'd lost the informal connections that build confidence and trust.
TESTIMONIAL
"Rory is a stellar leadership coach. Having worked with him in 2025, I can attest to his impressive ability to survey leaders and teams for areas of improvement, leading you through that search in a manner that results in self-actualized epiphany.
He is a steward of high culture teams, and helps leaders craft their own experiments, steps, and plans to arrive at the changes they seek. He is sneakily good at holding those he coaches accountable to the commitments they make, and it is a joy working him on the journey to improvement.
Rory helped coach me & my team through a needed culture "tune-up". He helped identify our major areas of disconnect & opportunities for improvement, gave me tools to unpack these areas with our team, and examples of self-determined monthly experiments we could run as a team to improve our communication, attitude, and on-time delivery of product.
After 3 months of improvement experiments, my team was a buzz with a newly found connection, alignment, and accomplishment. Easy to work with, incredibly insightful, and delivers the goods. I highly recommend working with Rory if you have the chance."
Ben McKinlay
Senior Operations Manager
Boeing Commercial Airplanes
Operations Management: From Reactive Firefighting to Team-Driven Recovery
Ben runs operations for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in an environment of constant disruptions, unpredictable deliveries, changing expectations from leadership, and the daily challenge of keeping a complex production system moving. He'd become the fixer and the glue, which was unsustainable.
I coached Ben through designing and launching experiments his team could own without causing disruption to their work.
TESTIMONIAL
"Rory's approach is organic and made to suit your needs. When working with Rory, one of the hurdles my team was facing was digitizing our morning kickoffs. In-person meetings are great and come with their own benefits. That said, stepping into a virtual morning gave back 30 minutes of time to 5 managers and 7 support personnel—5 days a week.
Getting this time back has been invaluable to my team and me. Making these adjustments has helped the team be more open to changing items in our daily rhythm to maximize our efficiency and engagement with the hands-on skill teams."
Jamie Krakover
Senior Engineering Manager
Boeing Global Services
Engineering Programs Leadership: From Cross-Functional Chaos to Strategic Clarity
Jamie led engineering programs for Boeing Global Services, responsible for ~100 early-career engineers while navigating the complexity of coordinating across business units, HR, L&D, and engineering functions, each with their own timelines and priorities.
She was managing multiple challenges: translating complex organizational strategy into clear direction, building healthy accountability practices, and ensuring the resources her team created actually reached the engineers who needed them.
I worked with Jamie as a sounding board when she felt stuck or unsure how to proceed, coaching her through the questions that helped her find her own answers and the confidence to act on them.
TESTIMONIAL
"Leadership is lonely and often leaves difficult questions and problems to solve. I've worked with Rory off and on when I've felt stuck, or unsure how to proceed. Rory has been a phenomenal sounding board along the way.
He has an innate ability to ask the right questions in the moment that not only help you pull the best answers to the forefront, but also give you the confidence as a leader to act.
If you are stuck or could use a good coach for yourself or to help your team operate more effectively, highly recommend getting in touch with Rory. He's got the tools to put you and your team on a healthy and successful path.”