Highly Adaptive

Jeff Pelliccio

Real conversations. Real leaders. Insights you can use. Highly Adaptive is where executives and change makers come to hear what's actually working—not what's being sold. Hosts Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie bring together operators, advisors, and industry leaders for candid 30-minute conversations that deliver actionable takeaways, not theoretical fluff. Every episode tackles what matters to leaders navigating change: AI strategy, digital transformation, growth tactics, team development, and the decisions that shape organizations. The approach is agnostic—no platform pushing, no vendor allegiance—just multi-perspective truth that helps you cut through noise and lead with confidence. Whether you're running an organization, advising one, or driving change from within, this podcast exists to help you adapt and stay ahead. --- Our Sponsors: Allied Insight & All Things Staffing

  1. Friction and Feedback

    3d ago

    Friction and Feedback

    You've been told to remove friction. Speed everything up. Cut the steps. Automate the approvals. Make the whole thing frictionless. But what if the friction you're racing to delete is the exact thing keeping your business on the road? In this episode, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie turn the mic on themselves and make a case most leaders never consider: friction isn't the enemy. It's the engineering. Using a Formula 1 race car as the through line, they break down why a high-performance machine only works because of friction. Grip on the tires. Downforce in the corners. A constant feedback loop between the driver and the pit. Strip all of that out and the car doesn't go faster. It goes nowhere, or into a wall. From there, they get specific. Erin names the difference between friction that creates traction and friction that creates damage. Jeff explains why your AI tools need human friction to stay useful, not just fast. And both of them get honest about the times they got this wrong, from Jeff cutting the internal review cycles that nearly buried his team to Erin's incentive program that only rewarded the extroverts in the room. The takeaway isn't "add more friction." It's a better question: where does friction belong? Answer that, and you stop fighting the systems you're trying to build. Key Takeaways Engineer friction on purpose: Most leaders plan for feedback and efficiency. Almost no one plans for friction as a strategy. Naming it is step one. Know the two types: Productive friction drives alignment and clarity. Destructive friction breeds chaos and confusion. Your job is to tell them apart in the room, in real time. Treat AI like the driver, not the whole pit crew: When you remove human review to go faster, you remove the alignment and accountability that made the work valuable. Human intervention is the friction. Build a system of friction, not a single point: One point of friction with no feedback becomes a stress point. Where there's heat with no release, things break. Add a challenge point to every major decision: Before you commit, ask what breaks if this scales, who it impacts downstream, and what assumptions you're making. Watch for the two killers: A room full of yes people leaves you fragile. A room full of devil's advocates never gets out of the pit. Know which one you're sitting in. Protect the friction that's working: Before you optimize a step out of existence, ask where it was quietly doing the work. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: When you're engineering the right friction into your client work, you want a marketing partner who builds with the same intention. The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: More resources to help you build alignment instead of chaos across your teams. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    50 min
  2. Beyond the Paycheck

    May 27

    Beyond the Paycheck

    Every leader has lived the moment. Someone you thought was happy walks into your office on a Tuesday and tells you they're leaving. Your first thought is the same as everyone else's. What was the offer? If you've ever done that math, this episode is for you. In this conversation, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie sit down with doctoral researcher and Award Staffing EVP Derek Freese to make the case that retention has never been a math problem. By the time your best person brings up money, the real conversation already happened somewhere else, without you. Derek's research lives inside one of the toughest questions in leadership. What actually keeps people in their work? Not the version on the mission statement. The version that holds when the recruiter calls. His four-prong framework of coherence, significance, purpose, and belonging gives leaders a vocabulary for the thing they've felt but never named. You'll hear why money is the symptom, not the problem. You'll learn why most stay interviews fail before they start. And you'll walk away with one specific move for Monday morning that compounds every week you do it. This isn't an episode about culture. It's an episode about the offense game most leaders aren't playing yet. Key Takeaways Money is the symptom, not the problem. By the time pay enters the retention conversation, the actual disengagement happened months earlier. Leaders who only show up at this inflection point are stuck managing damage, not building loyalty. Flip the math. Stop asking "how little can I spend to keep them?" and start asking "how much would it cost to replace them?" The first question runs defense. The second one builds offense. Meaningful work has four parts. Coherence (does the work make sense?), significance (does it create real impact?), purpose (do the values align?), and belonging (do they feel they fit?). Each is a separate diagnostic. Each requires a different fix. Belonging is the rocket fuel. Derek's research found belonging accounted for 50% of the mediating factor between socioeconomic status and alienation. If you invest in only one prong, start here. Belonging isn't sameness. Hiring people who think and look alike isn't belonging. It's homogeneity. Real belonging is people who share values but bring different experiences, perspectives, and stories. Stay interviews need better questions. "Are you happy?" gives you safe answers. "Where have you had to edit yourself to belong here?" gives you the truth. Diagnostic questions over performative ones. The Monday move. Find one contradiction your team is being forced to absorb. Name it out loud. Ask them what it's been costing. That's the audit that compounds. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: Allied Insight helps leaders build the kind of cultures people don't want to leave, the kind that show up in conversations before they show up in spreadsheets. The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: For more conversations on building organizations people actually want to be part of, visit All Things Staffing. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    53 min
  3. Going Narrow to Go Far

    May 20

    Going Narrow to Go Far

    You said yes again. To the client. To the new service line. To the second business you swore you could run alongside the first. It felt like ambition at the time. Six months later, the P&L tells a different story. In this episode, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie sit down with Scott Geller of Path Predict to dig into one of the hardest moves a leader can make: narrowing down on purpose. Scott spent his early years as a fractional CFO saying yes to everyone, from software companies to ghost kitchens to pre-made meal businesses. Then he made the deliberate choice to specialize in staffing. He walks through what changed on the other side of that decision, why "saying no is sometimes more important than saying yes," and what most leaders get wrong about fractional expertise. You'll hear how an industrial staffing client said "we know a lot of nurses" while trying to pivot into healthcare, why Scott applies a five-pillar pressure test before recommending an adjacent expansion, and how to tell when a fractional resource is the right fit versus when a full-time hire is the smarter play. Plus, Erin's "TRY" sticker reframe on what early-stage leaders need to unlearn. If you've been carrying every yes you've ever said and wondering why it feels heavier instead of bigger, this conversation is your blueprint for going narrow to go far. Key Takeaways 🎯 Going wide is often avoidance, not ambition: The hardest question isn't "what else can I sell?" It's "what am I actually the best at?" Saying yes to everything keeps you from answering it. 🚫 Saying no is a growth lever, not a loss: Scott walks away from manufacturing and inventory clients on purpose. Every "yes" you make on autopilot is a "no" to the work you actually do best. 🧩 Run the 5-pillar pressure test before any expansion: Strategy, process, people, tech, and capacity. If you can't honestly stress-test a new direction against all five, you're not expanding. You're guessing in public. 🪝 Specialization is a hook, not a cage: When Scott introduced himself as "a fractional CFO," nobody knew what to do with him. "A fractional CFO for staffing companies" started pulling referrals. The narrowing didn't shrink the opportunity. It changed who was looking for him. 💼 Fractional fits stages, not budgets: For firms in the growth zone trying to reach the next tier, renting the right slice of executive expertise often beats hiring the full seat. The signals to watch for are inside. 🪑 Vet fractional partners for the chair, not the title: Accountants calling themselves CFOs is the trap. Sat-in-the-chair, ran-the-strategy, navigated-the-crisis experience is the test. 📊 Match what you're good at with what you actually enjoy: Competence without enjoyment is a slow burnout. Focus where both overlap, and outsource (or fractionalize) the rest. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: Going narrow only works if the marketing engine behind it actually fits the industry. Allied Insight is the Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: Where staffing leaders go for the resources that match the specifics of the work. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    58 min
  4. Making Remote Teams Work

    May 13

    Making Remote Teams Work

    Before the pandemic, about 5% of paid workdays happened at home. Today it's roughly 25%. Remote and hybrid aren't experiments anymore. They're the operating model. So why does it still feel like most companies are winging it? In this episode, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie sit down with Valerie Bowden, founder of CRDLE, to get into the real reason remote teams struggle. Spoiler: it's not the model. It's the system behind it. Valerie has built distributed teams from scratch and works with companies every day navigating the gap between "we hired someone remote" and "we actually set them up to succeed." The conversation covers where onboarding breaks down for remote hires, why proximity was never a management strategy, and what operators like Jeff and Valerie have built to replace it. You'll hear the story of one client named Josh who invested an hour a day training three remote SDRs and generated $100,000 in closed revenue in six weeks. You'll also get a look inside Allied Insight's virtual office on Gather Town and why 38 out of 40 team members show up to a voluntary monthly Coffee Break. If your remote team is online but not connected, this episode is your starting point. Key Takeaways Start with onboarding, not outcomes — If you're expecting day-one KPIs from someone you haven't trained, the problem isn't the hire. It's the setup. Rethink your remote onboarding before you evaluate remote performance. Proximity was a crutch, not a strategy — The hallway conversations, the desk drop-bys, the lunch table learning. When everyone was in the office, those moments covered for weak systems. Remote work didn't break your management. It exposed it. Treat remote team members like they're in the office — Give them the same tools, the same access, the same introductions across departments. The closer the experience mirrors in-office onboarding, the stronger the results. Invest in connection, not surveillance — Stop watching the green dot. Build cultural rituals like voluntary Coffee Breaks, cross-department introductions, and personal celebrations. People invest back when they feel invested in. Give someone ownership of the remote experience — One of the biggest mistakes is having no single person responsible for remote team member success. Assign it. Own it. The results follow. Be like Josh — One hour a day of personal training. Six weeks. $100,000 in closed revenue. Three SDRs who are still on his team. The ROI on intentional onboarding is real and measurable. Your talent pool is as big as your infrastructure allows — When your systems work, geography stops being a filter. Whether that means across the state or across the world, good remote infrastructure removes the ceiling on who you can hire next. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: The team behind the systems that make distributed work actually work. The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: Where staffing leaders go for the resources that sharpen their edge. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    44 min
  5. Yes And - Leadership

    May 6

    Yes And - Leadership

    Summary Your team is smart. Experienced. Capable. And they still won't make a decision without you. That's not a hiring problem. It's a culture problem — and it almost always starts at the top. In this episode, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie sit down with Gina Trimarco, keynote speaker, leadership trainer, and creator of the trademarked Improvised Intelligence framework. The topic: why decision paralysis is almost always a leadership issue, and what it actually takes to build a culture where people decide, learn, and decide again. Gina owns Carolina Improv Company in South Carolina and trained at Second City in Chicago. She's spent nearly 20 years watching smart, capable people freeze. Not because they don't know what to do, but because the culture made it unsafe to act. She walks Jeff and Erin through her Improvised Intelligence framework, the connection between improv performance and emotional intelligence, and why the same discipline that makes a great scene partner makes a great leader. The conversation moves from the root causes of team paralysis through the mechanics of psychological safety done right, and into how her book The New Choice Effect reframes the way leaders approach big decisions. The takeaway isn't a framework to memorize. It's permission, for your team and for yourself, to move without waiting for perfect. Key Takeaways Start with self-awareness: Before you can fix your team's decision-making culture, you have to understand your own. Log what gives you doubt. Track how you actually make decisions. Look for the patterns before you look at the people. Psychological safety is working when: people voice opinions without fear, knowing their perspective will be considered even if it isn't used. If your team is silent, that's data about the environment. Safety and accountability aren't opposites: A culture where it's safe to fail isn't one where anything goes. The best leaders create space for imperfect decisions while holding people to the values that define how they show up. The higher you go, the more your EQ can slip: Leaders in the ivory tower lose the pulse. Going to the collective isn't weakness. It's the fastest way to make better decisions with better information. Improvised Intelligence is a trainable discipline: The same skills that make a great improv performer, presence, social awareness, the instinct to make your partner look good, are the skills that make a great leader. And they can be practiced. Every choice is a door, not a verdict: Leaders who treat decisions as permanent stop moving. The New Choice Effect reframes big decisions as the first step in a series, not the cornerstone of everything. Give people permission: Whether it's your team, yourself, or the person next to you, people need explicit permission to explore, decide, and fall safely. Without it, they'll wait. Every time. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: When your team can't move without you, the message isn't working. Allied Insight helps staffing and consulting firms build the kind of marketing that earns trust before the first conversation. The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: For the leaders and operators who keep the staffing world moving. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    58 min
  6. Building the Loom

    Apr 29

    Building the Loom

    Summary You've identified the problem. Your departments are fraying. The silos are real. The revenue impact is measurable. Now what? In Part 2 of The Fabric, Not the Thread, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie continue their conversation with Anna Frazzetto, Founder and CEO of AFM Strategic Partners, and shift from diagnosis to action. Anna walks through a tech rollout that looked great on paper and collapsed within three months — not because the tool was bad, but because nobody inspected whether the team was actually using it. She introduces her "inspect what you expect" framework, explains why she treats every rollout like a rehearsal dinner, and shares the three-touchpoint communication method she developed managing offshore teams. Jeff drops the line that may be the most shareable insight across both episodes: "The responsibility of the message landing properly is on the sender, not the receiver." And the PB&J exercise? It's the simplest proof that what you think you communicated and what your team actually heard are almost never the same thing. Part 1 found the fray. This is where you build the loom. Key Takeaways The responsibility is on the sender, not the receiver: If your rollout failed, don't start by looking at the people who didn't execute. Start by asking whether the message was ever woven into the way they actually work. Ownership of communication sits with the person sending it. Inspect what you expect: Rolling something out and walking away isn't leadership. Anna's framework: if you set an expectation, follow up on it. Use gaps as learning opportunities, not blame opportunities. The rollouts that unravel are the ones where nobody checked back in. Over-communication hasn't failed yet: Anna uses three touchpoints for every initiative: a team meeting to discuss, a follow-up email to document, and a check-in the following week to confirm understanding. It sounds like a lot. Until that third touchpoint is when someone finally says, "Oh, now I get it." The PB&J test reveals everything: Ask your team to write instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Watch the assumptions surface. Some people skip "open the jar." That's the same gap that kills your rollouts — the assumption that everyone sees the same picture you do. Treat every rollout like a rehearsal dinner: Before you go live, bring every team member and their managers together for a final check. Make sure Jane knows her role, John knows his, and nobody's carrying a hidden red flag. The tighter the rehearsal, the faster you recover when something breaks. Build templates that outlast the project: The best organizations don't reinvent the rollout every time. They build a repeatable project plan — who's involved, how communication happens, where the checkpoints are — and use it from project to project. The loom becomes a system, not a one-time effort. Thinking in fabric is a leadership identity: Cross-functional leadership isn't a trend. It's a philosophy. The leaders who see the full pattern — not just their own thread — are the ones who move entire organizations forward. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: Building a loom takes intention. Allied Insight helps staffing and consulting businesses design marketing strategies that connect to sales, operations, and growth...not just look good on a slide. The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: The templates, the insights, the community that keeps your threads connected. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    35 min
  7. Culture Isn't a Perk, It's the Point

    Apr 15

    Culture Isn't a Perk, It's the Point

    Summary You've sat in that meeting. The one where someone says "culture is everything"...right before cutting the program that proved it. This week, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie sit down with DeLibra Wesley, founder of NRC and Women of Color in Staffing, for a conversation about what happens when leaders stop copying culture playbooks and start building from what they've actually lived through. DeLibra didn't read about best practices in a book. She built maternity leave because hers didn't exist until her eighth month of pregnancy. She created wellness days because she watched what happened when people were forced to work through their worst moments. She launched a student loan repayment program because her team told her what they needed and she listened. Every policy traces back to something real. The conversation moves from what breaks inside organizations when culture gets treated as optional, to what DeLibra built at NRC that stopped the bleeding, and then beyond her own walls into the communities she serves. Her nonprofit, Women of Color in Staffing, started because she went looking for a community that didn't exist. So she created one. NRC Cares, the philanthropic arm of her company, puts employees on the board of directors and teaches them how to build something that lasts. If you've ever wondered why your culture programs look right on paper but don't stick, this is the episode that explains what's missing. Key Takeaways Culture isn't discretionary, it's infrastructure. When leaders treat culture programs as perks to cut during downturns, they signal that employee wellbeing was never embedded in the first place. "We're going to sunset this" means it's already gone. DeLibra calls out the pattern: companies promise to replace what they cut, and the replacement never comes. The message employees hear is louder than anything on the careers page. Build from what you lived through, not what you benchmarked. Every policy at NRC traces back to a real experience. Maternity leave DeLibra didn't have. Holidays that didn't reflect her team's identities. Fear cultures she watched break people. That's what makes them stick. You can't be a lazy leader. Culture investment is individual. It means figuring out what each person on your team needs, not applying a one-size-fits-all framework and calling it done. The Tomorrow File. DeLibra's concept for change-makers who aren't yet in a position to implement: keep a running file of every culture change you want to make, and be ready when the window opens. Even a crack is enough if you're prepared. Your community doesn't stop at your doors. NRC extended culture investment to contractors through student loan repayment and summer savings plans. Women of Color in Staffing grew from 50 members to nearly 400. NRC Cares puts employees on the board. When the community you need doesn't exist, you build it. Showing up is the strategy. DeLibra adjusts her own calendar around the team's monthly happy hour, not the other way around. The simplest culture investment costs nothing but your presence. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: When your culture runs deep, your marketing should reflect it. Allied Insight helps staffing and consulting businesses build brands that match the organizations behind them. The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: The leadership insights don't stop when the episode ends. All Things Staffing delivers expert resources to keep you sharp between conversations. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    56 min
  8. Finding the Fray

    Mar 25

    Finding the Fray

    Summary You've felt the friction before. The meeting where marketing is celebrating lead volume and sales can't convert a single one. The initiative that stalled because three departments had three different scripts. The moment you realize everyone's working hard — just not together. In this episode, Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie sit down with Anna Frazzetto, Founder and CEO of AFM Strategic Partners, for Part 1 of a two-part conversation about what it actually costs when your organization operates as loose threads instead of connected fabric. Anna shares what she's seen firsthand, including a 23% revenue loss at one company where back-office systems weren't aligned with the services being delivered. She walks through the evolution of the C-suite, why specialization created silos nobody intended, and what happened when she started having teams shadow each other across departments. The results were a paradigm shift in how the organization operated and it started with mutual respect, not a reorg. This is the diagnosis. Part 2 is the fix. Key Takeaways Alignment isn't a buzzword — it's a revenue driver — Only 31% of employees are engaged at work, and 84% of marketers say cross-functional work feels like dragging an anchor. The organizations that figure out how to weave their departments together see compounding returns. Most organizations have all the threads — they're missing the loom — The talent, the tools, and the expertise are already there. What's missing is the structure that connects them. Without shared metrics, interlocking goals, and deliberate coordination, departments run parallel instead of together. The C-suite evolved for good reason — but lost end-to-end ownership — Specialization addressed complexity. But in creating a CRO, CSO, CMO, CDO, and more, organizations lost anyone responsible for the full journey. The threads got stronger. The fabric disappeared. Silos cost real money — Anna observed a 23% revenue impact when back-office systems weren't aligned with service delivery. That number only became visible after an organizational change proved the delta. Most companies don't even measure it. Shadow programs break silos faster than reorgs — When Anna had sales sit with recruiters and recruiters sit with IT, mutual respect replaced finger-pointing. Teams started solving problems together because they finally understood what the other side was dealing with. Start with baby steps, not big bangs — Fear and tenure are the two biggest barriers to organizational change. Anna's advice: pitch the smallest structural shift that creates alignment. One department realignment. One shared metric. One interlocked goal. Build from there. Come with solutions, not just problems — For change-makers who aren't in leadership yet: do the homework, understand the players, and present possible paths forward. Even imperfect solutions show leadership that you're invested in the company's future. Sponsors 🐼 Allied Insight: When your departments aren't woven together, your marketing feels it first. Allied Insight helps staffing and consulting businesses build strategies that connect — not just campaigns that compete for attention. The Preferred Marketing Partner of Staffing and Consulting businesses. 🐙 All Things Staffing: The threads are already out there, industry insights, case studies, and practical resources that connect the dots. Expert Resources for the Staffing Community.

    45 min
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About

Real conversations. Real leaders. Insights you can use. Highly Adaptive is where executives and change makers come to hear what's actually working—not what's being sold. Hosts Jeff Pelliccio and Erin MacKenzie bring together operators, advisors, and industry leaders for candid 30-minute conversations that deliver actionable takeaways, not theoretical fluff. Every episode tackles what matters to leaders navigating change: AI strategy, digital transformation, growth tactics, team development, and the decisions that shape organizations. The approach is agnostic—no platform pushing, no vendor allegiance—just multi-perspective truth that helps you cut through noise and lead with confidence. Whether you're running an organization, advising one, or driving change from within, this podcast exists to help you adapt and stay ahead. --- Our Sponsors: Allied Insight & All Things Staffing

Information

  • Creator
    Jeff Pelliccio
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    31
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Highly Adaptive