Scaling Through Change: The Playbook for Resilient Leadership with Rob Manne

Most companies don’t fail because they can’t grow.
They fail because they can’t adapt fast enough.

In this episode of the Return on Insights podcast, host David Lindover sits down with operations expert Rob Manne to unpack what resilient leadership actually looks like when the pressure is on.

Rob shares a no-BS framework—test, learn, listen, adapt—that helps leaders move faster without creating chaos. It’s a practical system for turning constant change into a competitive advantage, not a liability.

But here’s where it gets interesting:

The companies that scale best aren’t just executing better internally—they’re building smarter ecosystems. Rob breaks down why community and partnerships are often the missing link for growth, especially in the make-or-break 10–200 employee stage.

He also calls out the subtle leadership mistakes that kill momentum:
– Moving fast without clarity
– Overcorrecting instead of staying the course
– Confusing activity with progress

This episode is a reset on how to lead when the old playbooks stop working.

If you’re scaling a business, leading through uncertainty, or rethinking how to grow without burning out your team—this is one to queue up.

Meet our Guest: Rob Manne: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmanne/

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David Lindover

Erin Abbatangelo

 Return On Insights, a property of Partner Marketing Works Int’l. Inc. is a collaboration between Erin Abbatangelo and David Lindover, operating as a media division of Partner Marketing Works.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Return on Insights, the show where candid conversations with bold founders and leaders spark actionable insights for your business. I'm David Lindover.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

And I'm Aaron Abitangelo. Every week, we pull back the curtain with leaders who are scaling teams and shaping the future, sharing the insights that create impact far beyond the bottom line.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Discover how high-performing companies build enduring cultures, inspire teams to think bigger, and turn vision into action. If you see storytelling as your strategic advantage, you're in the right place. Hello. My name is David Lindover. I'm the host of today's edition of Return on Insights Podcast. In today's dynamic markets, leaders of scaling companies must be adaptable. Rob Manny is a seasoned operations expert. Today he's going to share his test and learn, listen, adapt methodology, revealing how strategic community building and powerful partnerships drive sustainable growth. This episode provides actionable insights for navigating market volatility, seizing opportunities, and fostering resilience within your scaling enterprise. Welcome to the show, Rob. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

So my first question, Rob, can you share a specific example of how the test and learn approach directly led to a significant growth opportunity for a scaling company? Could be yours, could be others.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Yeah, so uh my background, my company is called Inflective, and we help companies that with all the operational side of things that drive revenue. So marketing, sales, customer success, so the platforms and processes behind those. And you know, these areas have been going through an incredible amount of change recently, right? And what worked for marketing even two years ago or 12 months ago doesn't work now. So they're constantly trying to uh reinvent the wheel, try new things. And so with this environment, spending six to 12 months to like perfect something, by the time you perfect it, it's actually going to be completely irrelevant. So that's why you know test and learn is really, really important for a lot of the clients and the work that we do. So, as an example, uh, we have one client in the software business, and so they were launching a new product, but this new product, they have to stand up a new customer success uh operations as part of that. So think about call centers, think about a knowledge base for self-serve articles that people can use to troubleshoot, think about you know inquiry management, a ticketing system. So um, so we had to stand that up using HubSpot, and we had to do it in a very short amount of time, something like four to six weeks. And so what was really interesting was what we did, this was uh last fall we actually rolled it out, but we were using AI for a lot of these things, whereas 12 months ago, a lot of the AI capability wasn't really possible. So we basically stood up an AI customer agent that acted as uh uh a frontline response to a lot of the inquiries that were coming in. Um and it reduced the reliance on physical agents, which they they did have at a call center, because all the system needed to do was suck in the information from uh the knowledge base. So, meaning all the articles about how to set up your account and how to enter this and how to enter that, those were automatically transformed into AI chats that then really, really deflected a lot of those calls. So the what was really interesting was after we rolled that out, um, the AI uh agent was so effective that the team that they had built, they'd actually didn't need that much resources, that many resources as they expected. So allowed them to reallocate some of that effort into other areas.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Great example. Great. So, what's one actionable strategy leaders can implement today to leverage community building, good old-fashioned community building for business growth?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Well, I I love technology, but I'm gonna actually say this is not a technological answer. Um, and that's just talk to the people that are important to your business, right? So, you know, I like to really start with customers and just be like, you know, if you have one customer, talk to them about the things that got you to them, uh, got them to you rather, and what is it that they really need? What are their problems? What are their pain points? Or in our world, like what's the wish list of things that they would love technology to do in order to do that? So, whatever your business is, talk to your customers on a regular basis because what you think they are feeling is very different than what they're actually feeling and doing. Um, and then beyond that, then go externally, right? Talk to other people that could be your customers. Because if you're like, let's say your one current customer is not the customer that you want, actually, you want to have different kinds of customers, then try to talk to those people and understand what it is that they need, if that's different than the people that you're currently serving. Um, so there are a lot of technological tools that can allow you to scale that. Um, but you know, so much of what, you know, our business has pivoted a little bit, and we'll probably get into that, but over the past few years. But it's really only when you say, what is the product or the service that these customers need? Am I delivering this product or service? And basically you're determining what's the product market fit between what you're doing and what people need. So I'd say that's the easiest, or not the easiest, but that's the most direct way to get some of the answers that I think you need.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

I agree 100%. Thanks for the reminder, Rob.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

I have to talk to a few more of my customers. It's been a while as I was thinking about this.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yes. Yeah, it's uh it's something that you have to scale internally, right? So how can scaling companies identify and cultivate partnerships that are going to provide measurable competitive advantage? Sometimes easier to find partnerships, but those that are gonna give you the measurable competitive advantage not so easy.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yeah, I mean that that could be a whole separate podcast, right? How do you cultivate partnerships? Um, you know, when I think of the the a lot of our clients are in the technology space, so hardware, SaaS companies. And so partnerships are very important to them because um they they know that they're not necessarily the people who are going to be in the room with the people who need to make a decision. So in their case, they've just say, okay, again, going back to that customer discussion, right? How are you making a decision, customer, about the things that you you need to grow, right? Or you need to improve the business. And then you think about who is the circle of influence around the customers. And so then you just determine, okay, you know, maybe, maybe again, maybe we think it's accountants who are the decision makers for uh something that needs to happen, but it's actually their controller, right? Maybe with someone a little bit, you know. And so just by understanding that allows you to then be like talking to the right partners rather than just the thing, people that you think could be your partners. But in terms of actually the cultivation part, um, I just had this discussion with a partner of ours last week that they they said we're gonna send over a big uh big long agreement with all the terms of the partnership, and you can redline and send it back to us. And I was like, happy to do that, but rather than spend time, again, perfecting the thing before you know you're gonna actually use it. It's like, let's just figure out a way that we can start, start with something, and then be like, you know, we'll have a bit of a, I don't want to say gentle person's agreement, but we'll have something as a framework to be like, we're not gonna pinch your clients, you're not gonna pinch our clients, and what's the basic referral arrangement? But let's start that, see if there's a fit, and then be like, that was great, let's do more of that. So I would say, yes, you need to have some process in place, but not over baking it and starting with let's 10 partners, let's get 10 agreements in place. It's more like start small with something where you can do a pilot, do a proof of concept, and get something going.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Great advice. What's a common mistake leaders make when trying to adapt quickly? And how can they avoid it? That's a tough one.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Well, I so I wrote, I love this question. Uh, there's six words that I wrote down. We tried that, it didn't work, is probably the biggest mistake that I hear a lot. And not that uh you shouldn't reflect on what's worked and what hasn't. But what I really what's usually behind that phrase is an inconsistent approach to actually test and learning. So, what I mean by that is uh let's talk about marketing for a minute. So we tried Google ads, they didn't work. And it's like, okay, there are so many reasons why a Google ad strategy can or can't work. So let's let's understand that. And before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, be like, what is it that didn't work in that? Is it the actual tactic, or is it the way the tactic was rolled out? And there's as you know, there's so many millions of things that you can do wrong in any marketing sales and customer success approach. And you're like, are we actually learning from the right amount of testing? Right? So that inconsistent approach, I would say, is something to um to really dig into to be like, okay, I I know it can be difficult if a senior executive has said made this decision. We try that, it didn't work. They'd be like sometimes to be like reopen that a little bit, to be like, um, let's let's dig into that. So sometimes it's good to start a little bit fresh, but if you do um if you do approach it, just try to look at the drivers of the things that did or didn't work, um, and then to say, you know, actually, like, yes, let's move on, or let's let's learn from this and iterate a little bit before we move on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Sage advice. Can you provide a real-world case study, Rob, where a strategic pivot unlocked expect unexpected opportunities for a we'll say small to mid-sized company, 10 to 200 employees. So a real-world case study, obviously, you know, tightly packed, where a strategic pivot unlocked unexpected opportunities.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yeah, and so for this one, I mean, we do a lot of work where it's like not necessarily a strategic pivot, but like a technical change. So in this one, I'm gonna talk about one of our clients, it's the American Forest Foundation. Um, they're a really interesting business in that they are their goal is to get um, you know, uh land in the United States under conservation, locked in and saved from deforestation. So basically not harvesting the trees on your property. And a lot of in the US, a lot of the uh the forests are are owned by families and owned by land, individual landowners. So they had this program in place for a little while, but it was only when they developed this really fascinating uh qualification, digital qualification program, which was developed before we started working with them, which basically encouraged farm uh family farm and landowners to go to a website and to enter, find their land on their website and determine if they're eligible for this type of agreement, and then to be like make that path easier for them to basically say, oh, okay, so I can get money for this land without actually harvesting it, and all I have to do is just protect this. And so basically, that technological solution kicked off a huge growth in their business because what they were doing manually and in a kind of ad hoc way was operationalized, and then they started to run ads that drove people to their qualification engine and then kicked off this really, really interesting process from there to go through, okay, let's talk to these people, let's confirm with the landowner that you're actually qualified, and then build the systems to build these agreements and to manage them and to facilitate those payouts. So that's a good example. It was a strategic and technical pivot because they're like, we have this program, but there's just not enough, we're just not able to get in front of enough of the people who could be our customers. So that technological change has really, really accelerated their business and allowed them to get that many more, that much more land on conservation. And now they're looking to say, how do we use AI and other technology to kind of make that process easier and faster?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

You know, Rob, thanks so much for your uh your insights. They're very thought-provoking. Um I think our audience would get a lot of value from today's session. I really appreciate you attending, and I look forward to having you back soon.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Thank you. It's really fun.