We Weren’t Building Leaders—We Were Building Decks

Why I Stopped Fixing Broken Systems and Built Curiosity Led

We weren’t building leaders. We were building decks.

PowerPoint slides. Frameworks. Checklists. Learning modules.

And somewhere between the binders and the budget cuts, I realized: no matter how polished the program looked, the system kept failing the people inside it.

Meanwhile, you’re stuck piecing together dashboards like a digital detective.

The Promote–Panic–Patch Cycle

You’ve seen it.

An IC gets promoted. There’s no onboarding. No expectations. Just a team, a title, and a calendar full of meetings.

So they panic.

They start making reactive decisions. They lean on what worked before.The team feels it. Performance slips. HR gets pulled in. And then?

We patch it. A workshop. A webinar. A coaching session too late.

This is the Promote–Panic–Patch Cycle. It’s how we “develop” managers.

And it doesn’t work.

I Spent 16 Years Trying to Fix It

I’ve led national onboarding programs, built leadership pipelines, coached executives, mapped competencies, and partnered with vendors.I’ve seen incredible intentions fail under poor systems.

Week after week, my team and I shipped slide decks instead of real development.

We were solving surface symptoms while leadership quietly lost faith in the process.

The budget would get cut. The impact would go unmeasured.

And the people who needed the most support?

They kept being left behind.

The Breaking Point

In my last role, I was asked to lead manager development. I proposed a system that would:

• Assess managers by role and level

• Personalize learning journeys with science-based tools

• Introduce Development OKRs tied to performance

• Create a path for identifying and supporting high-potential talent

• Track real behavior change—not just attendance

It was smart. Scalable. Rooted in reality.

But leadership said:“It takes too much time.”“It’s not in the budget.”“Just do something simple.”

What we ended up with was a monthly deck—rushed, underutilized, and ineffective.

That was it for me.The system wasn’t broken.

It was never built to work.

The Human Cost

I watched my own manager—a seasoned VP—join the company with no onboarding plan, no playbook, and no support.

The CHRO assumed she’d “just know what to do.”

She didn’t.

She reacted under pressure. She made assumptions.

She undermined the people around her—not out of ego, but out of fear.

The team collapsed.

Morale disintegrated.

And eventually, I lost my job.

She didn’t fail because she was unqualified.

She failed because the system failed her.

And that lit a fire in me.

What We Keep Getting Wrong

We keep pouring money into tools, platforms, and playbooks—without fixing the core problems:

• Managers are trained outside the flow of work

• Training is generic—not tied to role, level, or reality

• Feedback is confused with coaching

• Learning and performance are disconnected

• Promotions are based on politics, not progress

We’ve built more LMSs than leadership systems.

More checklists than character.

And the real cost?

Trust. Retention. Culture. Performance.

So I Built Curiosity Led

I stopped duct-taping tools together.I stopped hoping managers would figure it out.And I built what I always needed.

Curiosity Led is a complete manager development system—delivered inside everyday tools like Slack and Teams.

It combines:

• 🔍 Science-backed assessments

• 🧠 Personalized learning by role and level

• 💬 Just-in-time AI coaching + nudges

• 📈 Performance data tied to behavior change

• ✅ Real-time visibility into growth and readiness

• 🔄 Integrated delivery with optional LMS and performance tools

Let’s Lead Differently

Let’s stop promoting people and hoping they figure it out.Let’s stop measuring learning by completions.Let’s stop pretending checklists make culture.

Let’s build systems that grow better humans and better business leaders—at the same time.

If you’ve ever duct-taped your manager development plan together—this was built for you.

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