This Way Forward
This Way Forward
Podcast Description
This Way Forward is a high-energy podcast where strategy gets real. In just 10 minutes, a C-suite leader walks us through one bold strategic bet: the moment they took the risk, why it wasn’t obvious, what made it hard, and how it changed the game.
Hosted by Charlie Newark-French, CEO at Cascade, each episode is a window into the minds of the people steering companies through uncertainty, complexity, and transformation. No fluff. No jargon. Just raw, strategic decision-making at the highest level.
For leaders who want to learn from the sharpest minds in business, this is the way forward.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on themes of strategic decision-making and leadership with specific topics including risk management, company transformation, and market competition. Episodes feature real-life examples, such as how Lime's CEO Wayne Ting made a pivotal decision to keep hardware in-house, emphasizing the importance of product control in achieving profitability.
This Way Forward is a high-energy podcast where strategy gets real. In just 10 minutes, a C-suite leader walks us through one bold strategic bet: the moment they took the risk, why it wasn’t obvious, what made it hard, and how it changed the game.
Hosted by Charlie Newark-French, CEO at Cascade, each episode is a window into the minds of the people steering companies through uncertainty, complexity, and transformation. No fluff. No jargon. Just raw, strategic decision-making at the highest level.
For leaders who want to learn from the sharpest minds in business, this is the way forward.
Welcome to This Way Forward, the podcast where C-suite leaders unpack the bold strategic bets that changed everything.
In this episode, Charlie Newark-French sits down with Dr. Kristin Mulrooney, strategic planning and execution consultant working with the University of Vermont. Together, they explore the pivotal decision to move away from static, once-a-year strategic plans and track long-term strategic bets with short-term, real-time results.
The bold strategic bet
Higher education institutions operate like a collection of distinct sub-businesses—from academics and athletics to student affairs and operations. While most universities treat strategic plans as static documents reviewed once or twice a year, Kristin bet that higher ed could manage and monitor strategy continuously in real time. By establishing clear structure, discipline, and a centralized technology platform, she set out to align disparate departments into a unified strategy execution engine.
In this episode:
Why higher education functions like a collection of sub-businesses—and how that creates organizational disconnects
Identifying 3-month leading indicators (like term-over-term retention) vs. 10-year lagging indicators
The challenge of persuading executive leaders vs. middle management
Why the student experience relies on unifying tangential teams behind institutional goals
How a centralized platform brings alignment across disparate departments
👉 Subscribe for new 15-minute episodes each month, each focused on one bold decision that changed the trajectory of an organization.
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