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unparalleled ability to understand both the hard and soft levers

needed to drive success.”

Mike Burton CEO, Cornerstone Research

“The Sundheim Group is an

insightful, no-nonsense, get-it-done partner.”

Michael Hejtmanek CEO Hasselblad Bron Inc.

“The Sundheim Group 

pulled us together and focused us 

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Joanna Rupp Managing Director, University of Chicago Office of Investments

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wastes no time getting to the heart of issues.”

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Selected Clients

Come Together: A One-Day Virtual Retreat for Senior Teams

Is the current environment stressing the relationships on your team? You’re not alone. We can help.

Come Together is an open, informal, yet structured one-day virtual retreat for teams of 5-15 people. It provides a pause amidst the dynamic and transactional nature of your current day-to-day life to reconnect, reenergize, and realign your team.

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Doug on the importance of leaders as storytellers


Doug’s Articles

Who Are You At Your Best?

Originally published February 4, 2021 on Forbes At your best, you choose love. You feel fear, or anxiety, or selfishness, or anger, or hate. But you choose love. You choose love because you’ve chosen fear and anxiety before. And it paralyzed you. You choose love because you’ve chosen selfishness before. And it isolated you. You…

Building Team Alignment: It’s An Everyday Job

Originally published January 27, 2021 on Forbes Good leaders know that alignment is critical in building successful teams. Unfortunately, many of them don’t do it often enough. Frequently leaders adopt a one-and-done, event-based mentality, for example, aligning at yearly or quarterly strategy meetings. While alignment should certainly happen at regular strategy meetings, it should also…

Should you really build leaders at every level of your organization?

Originally published November 17, 2020 on Forbes [Spoiler alert: Yes!! If you don’t you’re dead in this economy.] I debated this question with the COO of medium-sized technology firm recently. His take was that while leadership at every level sounded nice, in reality it was impractical and unwise. His argument surrounded five reasons: Some people…

We Need Leaders Who Have The Courage To Love

Originally published November 13, 2020 on Forbes A global pandemic is raging. Racial tensions are smoldering. Economic inequality is increasing. An environmental crisis is looming. And a partisan chasm in the US is widening. The challenges we’re facing didn’t just show up this year or even the over the last four years. They’ve been simmering…

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Doug's Substack Blog - Notes on Leading

The Incredible Patagonia Backstory - April 18, 2024

Last year, after reading my writing on responsible leadership, Patagonia executives reached out to ask if I’d look at Yvon Chouinard’s new book, The Future of the Responsible Company. I thought it was excellent. We need more leaders with Chouinard’s guts and more companies with Patagonia’s constancy of purpose. I ended up reading his other two books as well and writing about it in Forbes. Full article below.

12 Essential Elements of Strong Senior Teams - April 10, 2024

Strong senior leadership teams (SLTs) are the heart of successful organizations. In competitive and fast-paced environments they collectively sense the future and drive performance. For a variety of reasons SLTs are difficult to develop. They’re frequently filled with strong personalities and complicated politics. Increasingly, they’re geographically dispersed. Their work together is often long-term, complex, and ill-defined. All of which leads members to gravitate toward the more familiar and immediate work of running their own organizations over the work of the SLT. Despite the potential value of SLTs, they commonly end up defaulting into loosely-connected info-sharing groups rather than cohesive direction-setting teams.

The third thing - April 4, 2024

The first thing shakes you The mistake The failure The injustice The loss The second thing sits with you The regret The defeat The anger The despair I'm most interested in the third thing What comes next?

View All on Substack


Doug’s Latest Book

Taking Smart Risks

Life is uncertain. Whether in the business world or at home, we feel an increasing loss of control over our future, and find ourselves paralyzed by indecision. Fear prevents people from taking chances and making game-changing moves. Anything other than the status quo appears inherently risky and reckless.

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Client Testimonials

“The Sundheim Group is an insightful, non-nonsense, get-it-done partner. The best executive coach and organizational consultant I’ve ever used.”

Michael Hejtmanek - CEO, Hasselblad Bron Inc.

“We were getting bogged down by the sheer number of priorities and opinions we were managing. The Sundheim Group pulled us together and focused on what mattered most.”

Joanna Rupp - Managing Director, University of Chicago Office of Investments

“We had some tricky issues to address, and not a lot of time to do it. The Sundheim Group moved quickly and professionally. They waste no time getting to the heart of issues.”

Mike Kelly - Former Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

“The Sundheim Group came in, without deep software knowledge, and spoke to us in our language better than we could talk to each other. Doug has a natural instinct for knowing what will and won’t make a difference.”

Debbie Madden - CEO, Stride Consulting

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