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About The Consultant's Way Podcast

The Consultant's Way podcast is your go-to resource for navigating the complexities of the consulting and professional services world. We bring you insightful conversations with industry thought leaders and executives from top Professional Services organizations, sharing their expertise on how to:

 • Build high-performing consulting and professional services teams 

• Differentiate your offerings and increase organizational growth 

• Deliver exceptional client value and drive impactful outcomes

 Brought to you by: 

• McMann & Ransford: A strategy consulting firm with over 30 years of experience helping leading B2B organizations escape commoditization and achieve sustainable growth. Learn more: https://mcmannransford.com/ 

• The Consultant's Way: Your one-stop shop for training and enabling consultants and professional services teams to deliver exceptional client value. Learn more: https://www.consultantsway.com/ 

 Connect with us: 

• LinkedIn: 

○ Dean McMann - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanmcmann/

○ Anthony Paluska - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-paluska-5081804b

• Email: podcast@consultantsway.com 

 Interested in being a guest? 

We're always looking for insightful guests to share their expertise. Reach out to us via email or LinkedIn if you'd like to be considered for a future episode.

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In this episode of The Consultant’s Way, Chris Holmgren joins Dean and Anthony to share real-world lessons from leading professional services teams through growth, change, and disruption. Drawing on his experiences managing large digital event teams before, during, and after the pandemic, Chris discusses how adaptability, communication, and proactive leadership were critical to success.

Chris highlights the importance of recognizing team strengths early, scaling thoughtfully—not just adding headcount—and preserving institutional knowledge through periods of rapid change. He emphasizes the need for strong internal and client-facing communication, proactive transparency with leadership, and creating scalable systems that balance personal leadership with structured data insights.

Through stories of scaling teams up and down under extreme pressure, Chris offers practical takeaways about building trust, empowering team members, and maintaining motivation even when workloads are high. He also shares a humorous moment where a last-minute national ad campaign required an "all hands on deck" scramble—reinforcing that even with strong plans, agility always wins.

Key themes include: putting the right people in the right roles, the power of communication at every level, fostering adaptability, and designing systems that help leaders stay close to the business without micromanaging. Whether navigating hypergrowth or a strategic contraction, Chris’s insights offer valuable lessons for PS leaders managing in an unpredictable world.