6 Books That Shaped Our Approach to Marketing, Leadership, and Growth
We’re not giving you a reading list. But, when people ask how we approach guiding their teams, partnering with Sales, or building a strong messaging foundation, it’s most succinct to say: we're Blue Ocean Strategy meets Scaling Up Excellence meets Team of Teams meets The Five Dysfunctions of a Team with a philosophy grounded in The Six Types of Working Genius and StrengthsFinder.
Each introduced a scalable framework, model, or new way of seeing that made us better, and held up through the years.
The frameworks we keep coming back to
Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
An industry-agnostic framework for discovering differentiated value and creating a cateory of one, based on how buyers actually make decisions.
Scaling Up Excellence - Robert Sutton & Huggy Rao
Smart scaling isn’t about doing more, but rather working to figure out what works, and then scaling THAT.
Team of Teams - General Stanley McChrystal
Shared context and deliberate knowledge-sharing enable decentralized decision-making, allowing teams to move faster and operate as one.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni
Teams need to build trust, so they can feel comfortable contributing new ideas and respectfully challenging one another to make the team, and its outputs, more successful.
The 6 Types of Working Genius - Patrick Lencioni and StrengthsFinder 2.0 - Tom Rath
Work flows best when people are operating in their natural zones of strength, not by endlessly trying to fix weaknesses.
There are many more we come back to, but these have become part of our shared language.
They show up in how we think, how we work, and how we partner.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What frameworks shape your approach to marketing and leadership?
Our approach is influenced by proven frameworks like Blue Ocean Strategy, Scaling Up Excellence, Team of Teams, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and The Six Types of Working Genius. Together, they help us drive differentiation, execution, and team alignment.
2. How does Blue Ocean Strategy influence your marketing work?
It helps us identify how to position businesses in a way that creates differentiated value—so they’re not competing in crowded markets, but instead standing out based on how buyers actually make decisions.
3. What does “scaling what works” mean in marketing?
Inspired by Scaling Up Excellence, it means focusing on the strategies already driving results and expanding those—rather than constantly adding new tactics that dilute impact.
4. How do you ensure marketing and sales are aligned?
We apply principles from Team of Teams to create shared context across teams. This alignment enables faster decision-making, clearer messaging, and more effective revenue generation.
5. Why do you focus on team strengths instead of fixing weaknesses?
Frameworks like The Six Types of Working Genius and StrengthsFinder show that teams perform best when people operate in their natural strengths—leading to better outcomes, faster execution, and less friction.
