Lester Thornhill, CEO of Life’s Abundance, approached the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic with a commitment to continuous improvement. In this talk from Tugboat Institute Gathering of Teams 2021, Lester shares his story of opportunistic innovation through the pandemic, offering a compelling case for seizing upon moments of challenge to strengthen the team and the company for the long term.

In the 1950s, Earl and Carol Holding moved to the Wyoming desert to take over a failing gas station/motel/cafe. That was the first step toward building what Tim Silva calls an "incredible empire" that includes Sun Valley Resort, the home base for Tugboat Summit and Sinclair Oil Corp. Silva, the resort's general manager, says the Holding family used core Evergreen principles to grow their assets.

Robyn Sue has spent the last 13 years (since 2007!) conceiving of and developing Smitten Ice Cream. In her ‘prior life’, she was a management consultant in the U.S. and Europe and became known for her ability to invent new ways of solving problems. In her Tugboat Institute Summit 2016 talk, Fisher breaks down what matters most in building her Evergreen business: creating joy for employees and customers, and committing unwaveringly to being the best.

In today's episode, you'll meet Carrie Freeman Parsons, Chairman of the Board at Freeman Company. Freeman is a global event management company. Carrie shares with us about her lack of skills when assuming her first managing role within Freeman. This lead to her prioritizing leadership development and specifically training new managers with their needed "tools." Carrie noted that it's essential for leaders who build companies to align with the Evergreen 7Ps® principles.

In times of rapid change and chaos, there’s often no playbook for leaders faced with solving complex problems. In this talk from Tugboat Institute Gathering of Teams 2021, Everett Harper, CEO of software development company Truss, offers insight into a framework he developed to create a pathway for decision making and engineer structure amidst uncertainty.

Carl Erickson, Founder and Chairman of Atomic Object, had spent 18 years building his Evergreen® company—after a career as an academic—when he realized he had come to a pivotal moment in his life. What he did next significantly impacted his business and his personal well-being.

Michael Horn, Co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, offers a provocative idea in this talk from Tugboat Institute Gathering of Teams 2021: Silicon Valley is touted as the hub of innovation, with almost all its companies referring to themselves as “disruptive.” But Evergreen® companies, operating with an “impatient for profit, patient for growth” mentality and generational planning horizons, are actually poised to be the engine for future “market-creating” disruptive innovations. Michael’s presentation provides a compelling view of how these innovations can lead to a far greater number of jobs than other innovation types.

In this talk from Tugboat Institute Gathering of Teams 2021, Natalie Nagele, Co-founder and CEO of software development company Wildbit, shares an innovative idea that has transformed her Evergreen® company: We can actually work a lot less.