Amy Yip LLC

03/26/2026

Thrilled to be speaking at the conference again this year!

Hope to see everyone bright and early on Tues 4/14 for my session: The Team Alignment Playbook: 3 Strategies to Turn Siloed Teams into Collaborative Powerhouses in Room: E-Mainsail East (A)!

Look forward to meeting you! And thank you to the conference organizers for all you do to make the magic happen.

Planning to attend the 2026 SHRM Virginia & DC Annual Conference?

We’ve put together a helpful FAQ page covering everything from registration and hotel details to what to expect during the conference.

👉 Take a few minutes to review before you arrive:
https://ow.ly/VYzT50YxEqi

Still have questions? Drop them in the comments!

03/23/2026

Thrilled to share that I'll be speaking at SHRM Virginia and DC's annual conference on April 14 at 7:30 AM.

👇🏼

The Team Alignment Playbook: 3 Strategies to Turn Siloed Teams into Collaborative Powerhouses

💰 Organizations lose an average of $109M for every $1B spent on projects because teams aren’t aligned on goals and ex*****ons.

That’s $2M a week slipping through the cracks.

The default?

👉🏼 Plan another well-intentioned offsite: great energy, little follow-through

👉🏼 Invest in more check-the-box, one-and-done trainings

👉🏼 Add more meetings, more memos, more messages

It feels like progress.

But nothing actually changes.

And the same conversations keep happening.

In this session, we’ll get into what actually works.

For C-suite and senior leaders responsible for ex*****on and results, who are done throwing money at the symptoms: This is for you.

Hope to see you there!

*****on

03/17/2026

Behavioral scientists call it present bias: the tendency to prioritize what feels urgent right now over what we know will matter later.

You see it in healthcare all the time.

A patient gets the diagnosis, understands the risks, leaves with clear instructions... and still doesn't change anything.

Because nothing feels critical yet.

I've seen this on leadership teams more times than I can count.

The signs are there:

📛 Deadlines slip more often.

📛 Escalations tick up.

📛 Meetings grow heavier.

Something feels slightly off and maybe someone even names it.

👉🏼 But that board meeting is approaching.

👉🏼 A client deadline can't be moved.

So the team issue gets a nod... then is deprioritized for later because "it's not that bad right now."

And by the time it feels urgent enough to act on, it's no longer a team dynamic problem.

It's become a full blow business crisis.

That's the pattern the Team Alignment Temperature Index™ was built to interrupt — a diagnostic we use with leadership teams to help them see clearly where they are, and know when it's time to act.

If something on your team has felt slightly off but hard to name... this one's for you.

What signs are you seeing on your team right now? Drop it in the comments.

Behavioral scientists have long documented a pattern known as optimism bias: the deeply human tendency to believe that negative outcomes are less likely to happen to us, even when the warning signs are already visible. Healthcare offers a familiar example.

03/16/2026

I was at the grocery store yesterday with my two kids.

One arm pulling a wagon with both of them in it.

The other carrying a basket full of groceries.

We got in line.

And then the line didn't move.

The woman in front of me kept changing her mind.

"Actually cancel that."

"Wait… maybe I do want it."

"No, take that off."

Meanwhile my kids started getting restless.

The little one tried to climb out of the wagon.

The older one wanted his snack.

And I could feel that familiar tension: that quiet calculation of what to do next.

Then a woman in the next line caught my eye and waved me in front of her. The person behind her nodded too.

Just like that.

I didn't have to ask. I didn't have to explain. She just noticed.

It reminded me how simple kindness can be.

Not a grand gesture. A small one.

Just noticing when someone might be carrying a heavy load and deciding to make their moment a little easier.

It cost her five minutes.

But it meant so much more than that to me.

Today, people are carrying a lot.

Most of it invisible from the outside.

And in a world that can feel like it's losing its kindness and compassion... small acts matter more than ever.

The leaders and colleagues people remember most aren't always the ones who made the biggest speeches or the boldest moves.

They're the ones who noticed.

And did something about it.

Imagine what our teams and organizations would look like if we all just... noticed a little more.

How might you let someone in front of you today?

03/13/2026

Last week I was in Chicago working with the American Epilepsy Society team on building trust and psychological safety.

Before I left, my 4-year old, eyeing my suitcase, stopped me at the door: "Where are you going?"

“To work with some people,” I said.

“What people? Working on what?"

I tried to explain trust and psychological safety. He responded with a skeptical look.

So naturally... the AES team took a selfie with me so I could show him exactly who I was spending the day with.

Because if mama was leaving, he needed to trust her.

And apparently, photographic evidence is how 4-year-olds trust. 😆

All jokes aside, this team did the hard work.

Trust and psychological safety sound nice on paper.

In practice, it's uncomfortable work.

It means:

• Saying things that have gone unsaid for a long time

• Listening without getting defensive

• Owning where we’ve contributed to the challenges

• Choosing candor over comfort

That takes courage.

And this team leaned in.

They had the hard conversations.

They did the real work that stronger teams are built on.

Thank you Wendy Toyama, MBA, FASAE, CAE (she/her) and the entire AES team for the openness, the honesty, and the willingness to go there.

Because the best teams aren't the ones without problems.

They're the ones willing to have honest conversations about what's not working...

And then actually do something about it.

Oh... and when I got home, my son reviewed the selfie and gave it a nod of approval.

Trust: established. ✅

03/12/2026

I used to love drawing. At some point in my life, I forgot about that love.

Recently, I signed up for a drawing class to force myself to pause and actually do it.

Each week, we focus on one facial feature.

For two hours, we draw that one thing over and over and over.

Different angles.

Different lighting.

Same feature.

A part of me is impatient.

I just want to get to the whole face!

But here's what I keep coming back to: Mastery doesn't skip steps.

The eye teaches you light.

The nose teaches you shadow.

The mouth teaches you proportion.

You can't rush your way to the full picture.

You earn it, feature by feature.

And I realize... this is a pattern everywhere in life.

We want the result without the repetition.

The breakthrough without the boring middle.

The whole face before we've learned to see the parts.

But the parts are the work.

The thing you're rushing past might be the very thing you need to slow down for.

Curious:

Where in your life are you skipping the feature work, trying to get to the whole face before you've really learned to see the parts?

And next week: onto the ears!👂

03/11/2026

Many leaders tell us their teams are resisting AI initiatives. And in some cases, they are.

But more often, what looks like resistance is actually confusion.

According to McKinsey:

💡 C-suite leaders are 2.4× more likely to cite employee readiness as the barrier to AI adoption than their own leadership alignment.

💡 Meanwhile, employees are already using generative AI 3× more than leaders expect.

So what’s actually happening?

When leadership teams launch AI initiatives without alignment on key questions:

👉🏼 Who gets to decide what

👉🏼 What the experimentation boundaries are

👉🏼 How success will be measured

👉🏼 How the work will be communicated?

Teams receive conflicting signals.

When signals conflict, teams hesitate.

And progress stalls.

Yesterday, we explored this exact dynamic at our Executive Roundtable with C-Suite and SVP leaders.

The takeaway was simple, but not easy:

👇🏼

Align your leadership team first.

Then communicate that clarity consistently across the organization.

Because if leaders themselves aren't aligned on where things are headed, it's nearly impossible for teams to confidently move forward.

Where does your leadership team still need alignment when it comes to AI initiatives?

~~~~~

Our monthly Executive Roundtables bring together C-Suite and SVPs navigating the real challenges of leading aligned, cohesive teams.

DM me to request an invite.

03/04/2026

Here's a truth that might be hard to hear: Most team alignment efforts are set up to fail before they even begin.

Not because leaders don’t care.

Because a few critical design mistakes quietly undermine the work from the start.

We see the same pitfalls show up again and again across organizations.

If you’re investing in team alignment, avoiding these mistakes matters.

I break them down in this short video.

🎥 Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjK7AU4BS98

Most team alignment efforts don’t fail because leaders don’t care. They fail because of a few critical missteps quietly undermine the work.Through our work w...

02/25/2026

When leaders consider addressing team alignment, two questions usually surface quickly:

What will this cost?

Will it pay off?

In this short video, I break it down in real numbers.

What alignment work typically costs from a small leadership team to an enterprise rollout.

What factors actually drive the investment.

And how to think about ROI in financial terms, not just survey results.

If you’re deciding whether misalignment is worth fixing, this will help you approach the decision strategically.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/Ffgv500XKM8

Executives always ask the same two questions:1) How much does it really cost to fix team alignment?2) And what’s the ROI?In this video, Amy Yip breaks it dow...

02/25/2026

Thrilled to share our newest client win!

Kicking off next week: We'll be helping a National Association on rebuilding organizational trust, strengthening collaboration across departments, and supporting alignment during a leadership transition.

If your team is navigating a change such as a leadership transition, reorg, AI or IT initiative rollout, or M&A activity, we’d be happy to connect and share a few of the best practices we’ve been discussing with other leaders, and give you a quick overview of how we support teams like yours.

Reach out here: amyyip.co

02/19/2026

Rapid growth exposes leadership gaps faster than strategy gaps.

At smaller sizes, shared context carries the organization.

People know each other.

Decisions happen informally.

Culture spreads through proximity.

As scale increases, that glue weakens.

One company grew quickly from a tight founding group to nearly 150 employees.

Revenue initially held.

Performance metrics looked stable.

But cohesion eroded... and four of the six original leaders eventually left.

Cohesion breakdown rarely hurts this quarter.

It threatens the next three years.

As the organization expanded:

👉🏼 Informal alignment stopped working

👉🏼 Early employees felt disconnected.

👉🏼 New hires struggled to find their footing.

The practices that once created speed began creating friction.

The strategy wasn’t failing.

The leadership model hadn’t evolved with scale.

The larger the organization, the less you can rely on informal alignment.

In enterprise environments, this shows up as

👉🏼 slower ex*****on

👉🏼 duplicated work

👉🏼 friction between long-tenured leaders and new talent

👉🏼 and the quiet exit of the very leaders who once held the culture together

During scale, three shifts matter:

1️⃣ Create shared language so expectations are explicit across levels and functions.

2️⃣ Rebuild shared identity so people understand who the organization is now, not who it was.

3️⃣ Normalize disagreement so new perspectives strengthen decisions instead of fragmenting teams.

Growth does not destabilize organizations.

Leadership practices that fail to scale do.

If your organization is expanding, what part of your leadership approach has not evolved with it?

02/17/2026

Should you drive team alignment efforts with internal capacity or bring in outside expertise?

There's no universal answer.

Both paths can work. Both can stall.

The real decision comes down to two variables:

• What the initiative actually demands

• What capacity you can realistically deploy

When those two are misaligned, progress slows, regardless of who owns the work.

If you're weighing this right now, here's a practical framework to help you make this call.

👇🏼

Team Alignment: When to Use Internal Capacity and When to Bring in Outside Expertise

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/team-alignment-when-use-internal-capacity-bring-outside-yip-pcc-xiwte

*****on