Introducing Our Three New Strategy Advisors

The thing that makes a com­pa­ny tick is a sched­ule of goals. And for most com­pa­nies, those goals hap­pen in a reg­u­lar cadence: you’ve got your quar­ter­ly goals, your 1‑year goals, your 3‑year goals, and of course, a long-term vision. We help com­pa­nies to set and real­ize these goals, and while we have them out­lined for our­selves, some­times we need to acti­vate our coach­ing mus­cles and remind one anoth­er to stay on track! 

That’s exact­ly what hap­pened with our biggest goal for this year — to hire three out­stand­ing strate­gic plan­ning advi­sors. As the third quar­ter skid­ded to a halt and the final quar­ter took hold, we were falling short on our biggest goal: to hire two incred­i­ble advi­sors. Let me tell you about it. 

Each year, we get togeth­er as a team. This is a big deal because we work remote­ly, and so for a few days all heads are togeth­er in one room. And of course, we dis­cuss our goals. So in our Airbnb liv­ing room in Whistler, we were hard at work brain­storm­ing and one theme was stand­ing out. We were behind on our most cru­cial goal. It was time to dou­ble down. 

Keep in mind that we weren’t with­out hus­tle. At this point, we had talked to more than 30 advi­sors, but we had to focus our strat­e­gy, give more of our time, and reach out to our net­works. Fast track to the end of the retreat and we were laser focused on find­ing our next A‑Players. And by year end, we were thrilled to have wel­comed three absolute­ly amaz­ing lead­ers to the team to help dri­ve growth strat­e­gy for our clients. 

Although our goal was to secure two new strat­e­gy advi­sors, we couldn’t turn down a third incred­i­ble advi­sor. And, so it’s the begin­ning of a new chap­ter, one we’ve been dream­ing up for quite some time now. 

I’d like to intro­duce you to three new amaz­ing peo­ple that have joined our team: Eliz­a­beth Dut­ton, Chris Howe, and Mar­ty Yaskowich. 

Upon meet­ing Eliz­a­beth Dut­ton, it was clear we had a new A‑player. 

Help­ing oth­ers achieve their best gets Eliz­a­beth up in the morn­ing. She excels at insti­tut­ing process­es and shap­ing cul­tures to help peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions solve prob­lems, iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties, and achieve results. 

Hav­ing worked for orga­ni­za­tions large and small in Toron­to, New York, Seat­tle and Lon­don, Eliz­a­beth has lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence across a myr­i­ad of busi­ness teams and cul­tures. Now liv­ing in Vic­to­ria, B.C, Eliz­a­beth has served as VP Dig­i­tal for Black Press, the largest pri­vate­ly held Cana­di­an media com­pa­ny. For the last six years, Eliz­a­beth has been a founding/​managing part­ner with Women’s Equi­ty Lab, a series of inter­na­tion­al female ven­ture funds across Cana­da and the US. She has also served as a men­tor, advi­sor and board mem­ber for numer­ous start-ups in var­i­ous ver­ti­cals, such as con­sumer pack­aged goods, green tech, health­care and education.

We look for­ward to shar­ing Elizabeth’s exper­tise with you!

The con­sen­sus was absolute — after con­nect­ing with Chris Howe, we knew he would become a trea­sured mem­ber of our team. 

For Chris, strat­e­gy is the sweet spot. With more than a decade of strate­gic exper­tise, Chris approach­es strate­gic coach­ing with a moti­va­tion to unlock lead­er­ship poten­tial by empow­er­ing exec­u­tive teams to face the bru­tal facts and com­mit to momen­tous growth. He has solved strate­gic and oper­a­tional chal­lenges in Retail, Food tech, Edtech, and Aviation.

Known for his abil­i­ty to get to the heart of the mat­ter with thought­ful and prob­ing ques­tion­ing, Chris holds teams account­able to crit­i­cal and chal­leng­ing ques­tions. He has devel­oped his strate­gic lens through the ​’Scal­ing Up Method­ol­o­gy,’ and Jim Collins’ prin­ci­ples, and in his work as a coun­selor. He pri­or­i­tizes prac­ti­cal frame­works to facil­i­tate endur­ing change. Above all, Chris is moti­vat­ed by qual­i­ty and human curiosity.

We’re excit­ed to wel­come Chris to the team.

In 2023, at our annu­al retreat, we set our top pri­or­i­ty for the year: recruit and onboard two new advisors.

When we met Mar­ty Yaskowich, we knew we had to make room for a third new advisor. 

Mar­ty knows how iso­lat­ing lead­er­ship can be for CEOs and Exec­u­tive teams. As an ICF-cer­ti­fied (ACC) exec­u­tive coach, he wants to be a trust­ed, crit­i­cal think­ing part­ner to lead­ers who are try­ing to grow and thrive and build gen­er­a­tional­ly-resilient busi­ness­es. He also wants the lead­ers he works with to be able to bal­ance the demands of work with the joy and abun­dance that comes from hav­ing strong men­tal and phys­i­cal inter­ests and resilience out­side of work.

Marty’s 20+ year career has tak­en him from DDB Cana­da to Canada’s first full-online insur­ance com­pa­ny (Son​net​.ca), where he helped revi­tal­ize a dat­ed brand (Cap­i­tal One) and helped launch one of America’s beloved depart­ment stores (Nord­strom) into the Cana­di­an mar­ket. More recent­ly Mar­ty was the Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer for iQmetrix.

We look for­ward to what Mar­ty can bring to your team!

— — —

I start­ed with a mis­sion to help scale one com­pa­ny at a time. I loved the abil­i­ty to con­nect mean­ing­ful­ly and make an impact in an organization. 

Thir­ty years lat­er, Lawrence & Co. has grown mea­sur­ably, but our sen­ti­ment has remained the same. Our goal is to help dri­ve strate­gic plan­ning and the growth plans of our clients, and have fun while we do it! 

Our work depends on great peo­ple, and it’s an hon­or to bring Eliz­a­beth, Chris, and Mar­ty into the Lawrence & Co. fam­i­ly. We’re con­fi­dent they will do great work and we’d love to facil­i­tate an intro­duc­tion if you or some­one you know is inter­est­ed in dri­ving their growth strat­e­gy and strate­gic plan­ning. Con­nect to learn more about one of these advi­sors and how they approach this work. Con­nect with me at kevin@​lawrenceandco.​com.