Middlegame Partners

Get Reliable Information From Your Engineering Organization

Paul Tevis

Executive Coach to Technology Leaders

Allison Pollard

Former Technical Director | Strategic Advisor

Clarifying which type you're asking for—and telling your teams why—changes what you get back.

Distinguish between 3 types of information to make visible

Get the information you need by sharing context, standing firm, and speaking directly to people’s concerns.

Work effectively with pushback

Turn better information into better conversations with your teams, managers, and stakeholders.

Stop defending your numbers & start shaping the conversation

Stop being the “number explainer.” Build the stories, systems, and credibility to lead with clarity and confidence in the age of AI.

Data & AI leader,19yrs of scaling teams

Pier Martin

 Data & AI leader with 19+ years scaling global teams, Executive coach 

Cohort 5

Cohort 7

As a data leader, do you catch yourself asking questions like…- How do I get execs to actually act on my insights instead of tuning out?- How do I influence peers in Product, Ops, and Marketing when they don’t report to me? - How can I build credibility around AI adoption without just demoing tools?- How do I stop my team from being seen as a “ticket shop” and instead as a trusted partner?If you’re not confident about these, this course is for you. This is a hands-on leadership course designed for emerging data leaders, analytics managers, data science managers, and heads of data who want to grow from technical doers into visible, trusted, AI-ready leaders.Before this course, you may feel:- Stuck explaining numbers that don’t lead to action.- Anxious that AI will outpace your team or make your work irrelevant.- Reactive to hype or resistance, rather than steering the narrative.After this course, you’ll:- Turn “data dumps” into compelling stories that executives repeat in the boardroom.- Translate AI pilots into credible business cases that prove ROI, reduce fear, and win support.- Lead your team confidently through change, balancing optimism with realism.

Lead with Data. Inspire with Story. Win with AI.

How to Master Strategic Communication

How to Lead AI Change with Confidence

  How to Build Your Leadership Operating System

Folks who are early in their career, focused only on technical execution, or looking to break into data/analytics should not enroll.

This course is NOT FOR everyone

It is designed for data managers, analytics leads, and heads of data already managing teams and facing leadership challenges.

This is NOT a beginner-level technical course

Overlooked Data Manager delivering dashboards but dismissed in strategy conversations, eager to be trusted for impact.

Stretched Head of Data managing 5-15 people, stuck firefighting, and needing systems to show control and credibility.

Aspiring AI-Ready Data leader, newly promoted from IC, strong technically but lacking storytelling and executive presence.

Double your team's performance in 10 days with the proven system used by leaders from Amazon, Meta, DoorDash, and small startups


Leadership Coach; Ex. Meta, Amazon

Amazon

Gilad Naor

Ex Meta, Amazon. Management Coach

Eng. leader. Turns EMs into leaders

Chen Feldman

Eng. leader. Turns EMs into leaders (Ex Gong)

Jan 26

April 2026

It's 2026 and the engineering manager role just changed. Orgs are flatter. Promotions are harder. You're expected to stay hands-on technically and lead bigger teams with fewer resources.Most managers respond by working harder. The ones who get promoted work differently, they have a system.Right now:<ul><li>You're firefighting instead of leading</li><li>1:1s waste time instead of driving results</li><li>Delegation leads to failures and outages</li><li>Other managers get the rare promotions</li></ul>Instead, imagine you had:<ul><li>Clarity on what to work on every single week</li><li>A team that runs smoothly without constant oversight</li><li>Delegation that frees your time and grows your people</li><li>A real promotion path built on visible, compounding impact</li></ul>How? Using a proven Management OS used by managers at Big Tech and fast-growing startups. An AI-powered, but human first system, ready for 2026 and beyond.Hi 👋, I'm Gilad. I led teams at Meta and Amazon. After coaching hundreds of managers, I built this system. Together with Chen, I can't wait to help you accelerate your career. You'll learn in a small, intimate cohort, with personalized feedback.

The Management System They Never Taught You


Lead with confidence by knowing what to improve, how to influence, and why.

Transform chaos into calm with systematic management tools (AI done right!)

Expand your scope and accelerate your career growth

You are a software engineering manager with 1-10+ years of experience

Your schedule controls you, and you hate it. You want to move your team forward.

You are ambitious and want to get that promotion even faster.

You were promoted for your work. Now lead your people. Learn to set expectations, give feedback, and influence in every direction.

Strategic Advisor & Leadership Coach 

Lisa Friscia

Fractional Chief People Officer, Coach and Start Up Mentor & Advisor

Cohort 1

Cohort 2

Most managers don't fail because they don't care. They fail because they can't communicate clearly — and no one ever taught them how.When decisions unravel, projects stall, or trust breaks down, the root cause is almost always the same: unclear expectations, fuzzy feedback, or conversations that never happened. Your team is looking to you for direction. Your boss is expecting results. And somehow you're supposed to translate between both — in real time, under pressure, with no playbook.This isn't a skills gap. It's a design gap. Most managers were promoted because they were great at the work — not because anyone prepared them to lead people through ambiguity, conflict, or change.This course changes that. In three live, hands-on sessions, you'll build a practical, repeatable approach to communicating with clarity — with your team, your peers, and your leadership. And because clarity doesn't stop at the end of the session, you'll also leave with AI prompts and tools you can use on the job to prepare for hard conversations, sharpen your feedback, and communicate with more confidence every day.Stop improvising. Start leading with a system that actually works.

Lead with clarity, give feedback that sticks, and build trust in every direction

Define your leadership lens

Set expectations that actually hold

Have the conversations that actually matter

Lead up, across, and through change

Use AI to communicate faster and more effectively 

Mid-level leaders who are struggling to balance coaching, feedback, and executing

Team and project leads that are balancing managing up, down and sideways

People managers who want actionable strategies and targeted support in communicating through change and uncertainty

Ready to break out, navigating new terrain, or finding your footing? Learn the Leadership OS to become the one they can't afford to lose.

18+ yrs leading teams at P&G & LinkedIn

LinkedIn

Procter & Gamble

Co-Active Training Institute

Sudha Ranganathan

18+ yrs leading teams at P&G & LinkedIn | Trained Coach and Workshop facilitator

Something has shifted - and most leaders are wondering what it means for them: Management layers are shrinking. The bar for team leaders is rising. And this is especially acute for leaders who have been in their role for a while without standing out OR for leaders navigating new contexts (new role, org, or leader).What does it take to be indispensable? After 18+ years in calibration rooms, I've codified the skills that separate leaders whom organizations fight to keep from everyone else.I call this the Leadership Operating system and it includes three critical types of acumen:<ul><li>Business acumen to understand what matters and adapt as priorities shift</li><li>Organizational acumen to build influence and reputation with stakeholders that matter (including the most critical one — your manager)</li><li>Leadership acumen to deploy your energy smartly and bring out the best in your team</li></ul>Across 4 sessions, you will walk away with frameworks and exercises to build these muscles WHILE applying them immediately to your own work context.You'll leave with clarity on what matters, who matters, and how to become the leader your company can't afford to lose.Live sessions: 9-12 PT on Apr 18, May 9, May 23 and Jun 6

What Actually Separates Indispensable Team Leaders from Everyone Else

Build business acumen AND stay adaptive as context shifts around you

Prioritize: Reset or sharpen your team's priorities to maximize business impact

Optimize stakeholder partnerships: Drive alignment, influence, and reputation

Manage your manager: Maximize value to and from your most critical stakeholder

Activate impact: Deploy yourself strategically to elevate outcomes that matter

Become a talent magnet: Build a reputation that attracts and retains top talent

This course is designed for people managers leading teams, not individual contributors without direct reports.

You manage a team with direct reports

Expect real work: Conversations with stakeholders and synthesizing insights into templates to apply concepts to your actual context

You're willing to do the work between sessions

This isn't for leaders already thriving at the top. It's for those who see room to level up—and are ready to do the work.

You believe you have room to grow, and WANT to

Ready to Break Out: Team leaders doing the work, getting decent feedback, still getting passed over. Become the one they'd fight to keep.

Experienced Leader, New Context: New team, manager or org structures around you? Reset and prove impact in unfamiliar territory.

Finding Your Footing: Newer team leader? The window to prove yourself is shorter than you think. Build credibility and win fast.