ExecuFeed fosters functional workplace environments through continuous and measurable improvement in leadership behavior.
ExecuFeed
Execu =Executives, leaders, and high potential leaders.
Feed =Feedback and Feed-forward (Marshall Goldsmith) and feeding leaders with great knowledge, skills, and information to improve their leadership effectiveness.
Our logo is rich with significance and meaning. It was designed by Kimberly and Andrew Stromberg of ASK Advertising in Vancouver, WA. The blue E represents the already successful executives and leaders who are the typical ExecuFeed clients. The green F is reversed to represent feedback. Truly the best way to help great leaders get better is to solicit confidential feedback from those individuals who work closest to the leader.
The blue E borrows a section from the Nextstep logo, representing the stairway from the pyramid. Our clients are ambitious and wish to climb as high as possible until they reach the pinnacle of their careers. Much like the pyramid, the entire logo is symbolic of the corporate ladder that executives will climb during their career.
The two colors of the ladder have meaning as well. The blue portion of the E represents the assertive behaviors a leader typically demonstrates to prove to others they have the knowledge and skill to propel them up the ladder, initially in their career. The green portion represents the new leadership behaviors successful leaders must learn in order to respectfully communicate and build relationships with those colleagues under them. The color green also non-verbally represents go, much like the bottom of a stop light. At a certain point in a leader’s career, the only thing they can change is their leadership behavior. It is no longer about having knowledge and skills. This concept is found in Marshall Goldsmith’s book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. ExecuFeed is trained and certified to use these processes. One of the co-developers of this process with Marshall is Frank Wagner, is an ExecuFeed Associate.
2005 Nextstep
Nextstep was coined as Matthew completed his graduate degree in counseling psychology/ organizational behavior. It was a great description for the work he was doing which was primarily coaching and organizational development. During his practicum he had the challenging opportunity to work with clients with debilitating mental illness and dysfunction. He described it as a rich and eye opening experience. He was glad to have had this opportunity, but he learned one key thing. He knew he wanted to help people develop a promising future and not spend too much time working with a painful past. Not to say that doing that work isn’t important, because it is. It is just not what he does. The name Nextstep was about helping people find success in the future, not about revisiting their past.
From a marketing standpoint a contributing factor to changing the name to ExecuFeed was the ability to have the matching domain name. The domain, nextstep.com was already in use by someone else. Our original domain retool.com still works, but it was difficult to build a brand around it. ExecuFeed was developed as a unique name that well represents the present work that we are doing, and nobody else had come up with it.
1990 Tenth G Training & Development
Was initially named as a tribute to the family of Matthew’s non-verbal communication mentor Michael Grinder. Michael is one of nine children. All are extremely bright and talented people. Michael’s brother John is a co-developer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The Tenth G was coined to be any client who wanted to have the rich skill set that these siblings have, thus being the tenth member of the Grinder family.
The logo was to be built around a triangle, the precursor to the Nextstep pyramid. From an engineering standpoint, the triangle is the strongest possible shape as it is supportive on all three sides. The dot in the center of the triangle represents the leader of the group. The nine dots below the triangle represent the family members as well as the concepts of group dynamics. The lines connecting the corners of the triangle are missing in order to represent a Michael Grinder template to track group dynamics. Each corner represents a specific position of the presenter, individual, and the group (PIG). In classroom management the positions are teacher, individual, and class (TIC).
Eventually the name was changed because everyone inquired about the meaning and very few people understood. Changing the name to Nextstep solved that particular problem, but created a new one as we were unable to secure the nextstep domain name.