When Table Group — the leadership ideas firm behind The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — partnered with fast-growing HRtech startup Leadr to bring a new SaaS product to market, the opportunity was significant. The product promised to translate world-class leadership principles into daily team management, giving organizations a powerful tool to build healthier, more engaged cultures.

But the road from big idea to scalable product was anything but simple. The joint venture brought together two organizations with different rhythms, styles, and customer bases. Internally, Leadr had a passionate team and strong technical talent — but no established go-to-market engine for a new category of software. Table Group brought brand credibility and audience trust, but no precedent for how to commercialize it in a SaaS environment.

There were early signs of friction: fragmented messaging, misaligned stakeholders, and marketing that wasn’t aligned with sales outreach. Without unified positioning and a clear buyer journey, the team risked spinning their wheels — wasting resources, confusing prospects, and missing the market.

That’s when we were brought in Ellen — not as a surface-level advisor, but as a hands-on, embedded partner. Her role: clarify the product’s core value, align teams across functions, and build the systems that would enable repeatable, high-trust growth.