ABOUT
Dr. Cyndi Laurin
Founder of Guide to Greatness® & Growth Alignment Strategist
Dr. Cyndi Laurin is an award-winning author, internationally recognized speaker, and founder of Guide to Greatness®, a strategic growth advisory firm that helps leaders and organizations simplify complexity, align for growth, and build businesses that are easier to run, easier to scale, and harder to break. With more than 25 years of experience, she has guided founders, CEOs, COOs, and executive teams through growth challenges with clarity, structure, and deliberate action.
See more about Dr. Cyndi Laurin and Guide to Greatness® ↓
A framework at the center, a network behind it
While Guide to Greatness® is led by Cyndi, you’re not hiring “a lone consultant.” Behind the work is a stable of seasoned strategic partners—Lean/Six Sigma experts, fractional CFOs, organizational psychologists, niche coaches for high‑conflict personalities, project managers, documentation specialists, and more—who join engagements when their expertise is needed to move the work forward.
This partner bench gives you the best of both worlds: a single, coherent Growth Alignment Framework™ at the center, with a flexible network of specialists who can help you implement it in the real, messy details of your business—finance, operations, people, and processes—without you having to find and manage dozens of separate consultants.
Your Guide to Greatness®
ⓘ Click each slide to explore how the pieces work together and find the right next step for your organization.
Growth Alignment Ecosystem™
Instead of generic business advice, the Growth Alignment Framework™ is the engine behind an entire ecosystem, not just a diagram in a book. It starts by helping you pinpoint your true stage of maturity, so you can stop guessing where the real problems are. From there, the same framework drives alignment—getting leadership, culture, systems, and metrics all pulling in the same direction. Finally, it turns insight into implementation, giving you practical tools, playbooks, and partnerships so your entire team knows what to do next Monday morning.
ⓘ Click each slide to explore how the pieces work together and find the right next step for your organization. →
Growth Alignment Academy™
Online courses and guided learning that help you and your team understand the six stages, the ten Growth Catalysts, and how they show up in your day-to-day business. Each program turns the Framework into simple lessons, practical tools, and real-world exercises so you can build shared language, skills, and habits that support predictable, profitable growth.
Growth Alignment Accelerator™
A focused, short-term cohort where you and a small group of leaders work on one real growth challenge in your business and actually move it forward—not just talk about it. Together, we apply the Framework to your specific stage, clarify the next right moves, and leave you with concrete changes in how your team works, not just new ideas.
Growth Alignment Leadership Catalyst™
Leadership coaching that gets to the root of what is holding you back from being the leader you want to be and turns that growth into visible business results. Your development is directly linked to your team’s effectiveness and the organization’s performance, so as you grow, the whole company grows with you.
Growth Alignment Navigator™
We pinpoint which stage you’re truly in and which stage you want to reach. Together, we build the foundation to get you there—clarifying strategy, setting up simple dashboards to track progress, and mapping the exact work that will get us there. Along the way, we tune structure, workflow, leadership, and accountability so all ten Growth Catalysts are moving in the same direction without overwhelming your team.
Growth Alignment Executive Partner
An ongoing partnership with CEOs and founders who want a trusted thinking partner as they lead through multiple stages of growth. Together, we regularly review your strategy, data, decisions, and dynamics, anticipate upcoming Crisis Catalysts™, and translate the Framework into clear choices so your business—and your leadership—stay aligned, steady, and moving forward.
Growth Alignment Advisor Certification (2027)
A comprehensive certification program for consultants and coaches who want to use the Growth Alignment Framework® with their own clients. Advisors learn to accurately assess stages, apply the ten Growth Catalysts, and design practical roadmaps so they can help organizations achieve predictable, profitable growth with confidence and integrity.
Growth Alignment Ecosystem™
Instead of generic business advice, the Growth Alignment Framework™ is the engine behind an entire ecosystem, not just a diagram in a book.
It starts by helping you pinpoint your true stage of maturity, so you can stop guessing where the real problems are. From there, the same framework drives alignment—getting leadership, culture, systems, and metrics all pulling in the same direction.
Finally, it turns insight into implementation, giving you practical tools, playbooks, and partnerships so your entire team knows what to do next Monday morning.
Growth Alignment Academy™
Online courses and guided learning that help you and your team understand the six stages, the ten Growth Catalysts, and how they show up in your day-to-day business. Each program turns the Framework into simple lessons, practical tools, and real-world exercises so you can build shared language, skills, and habits that support predictable, profitable growth.
Growth Alignment Accelerator™
A focused, short-term cohort where you and a small group of leaders work on one real growth challenge in your business and actually move it forward—not just talk about it. Together, we apply the Framework to your specific stage, clarify the next right moves, and leave you with concrete changes in how your team works, not just new ideas.
Growth Alignment Leadership Catalyst™
Leadership coaching that gets to the root of what is holding you back from being the leader you want to be and turns that growth into visible business results. Your development is directly linked to your team’s effectiveness and the organization’s performance, so as you grow, the whole company grows with you.
Growth Alignment Navigator™
We pinpoint which stage you’re truly in and which stage you want to reach. Together, we build the foundation to get you there—clarifying strategy, setting up simple dashboards to track progress, and mapping the exact work that will get us there. Along the way, we tune structure, workflow, leadership, and accountability so all ten Growth Catalysts are moving in the same direction without overwhelming your team.
Growth Alignment Executive Partner
An ongoing partnership with CEOs and founders who want a trusted thinking partner as they lead through multiple stages of growth. Together, we regularly review your strategy, data, decisions, and dynamics, anticipate upcoming Crisis Catalysts™, and translate the Framework into clear choices so your business—and your leadership—stay aligned, steady, and moving forward.
Growth Alignment Advisor Certification (2027)
A comprehensive certification program for consultants and coaches who want to use the Growth Alignment Framework® with their own clients. Advisors learn to accurately assess stages, apply the ten Growth Catalysts, and design practical roadmaps so they can help organizations achieve predictable, profitable growth with confidence and integrity.
Dr. Cyndi Laurin's published works
Insights for business success
Guide to Greatness
A Leader’s Playbook to Predictable, Profitable Growth
Coming Soon: A practical playbook for CEOs, COOs, and business leaders who want a clear, predictable path to scaling without chaos—powered by the Growth Alignment Framework™, the Growth Readiness Scorecard, and field-tested tools.
Catch! A Fishmonger’s Guide to Greatness
Stop Floundering and Become More Effective in Your Life and Work
A year on the fish market floor, this award‑winning book draws on my time working side‑by‑side with the Pike Place Fish Market fishmongers to show how intention, integrity, and a commitment to the success of others can drive both organizational and personal growth—with over 100,000 copies sold in 14 languages.
The Rudolph Factor
Finding the Bright Lights that Drive Innovation in Your Business
Released in 2009, this book chronicles the remarkable transformation of Boeing’s C-17 program, drawn from four years embedded with the team as they turned a struggling operation into a high‑performing, innovation‑driven success story.
Be a Frontline H.E.R.O.
A Parable to Propel Your Job & Life
Short, story-driven, and immediately usable, this parable gives managers five practical tools—exact language to affirm and reset behaviors, a simple formula for effective huddles, and a clear way to delegate the right work at the right time so frontline teams thrive.
Experience grounded in the real arena
Cyndi’s perspective blends clear-eyed analysis with years in the trenches. She has partnered with organizations across healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and professional services—from fast-growing entrepreneurial teams to established, multi-location operations—guiding them through the demands of next-level growth.
Clients describe her as the advisor who knows when to hold the reins firm and when to let a leader find their own balance—”equal parts cheerleader and sage guide,” bringing wisdom, encouragement, and the push to move when others are unsure what to do next. She listens deeply, asks the questions others miss, and helps teams trade scattered effort for coordinated motion that shows up where it matters most: in performance and profit.
Why clients hire Guide to Greatness®
We help founders and leadership teams turn growth chaos into operating maturity, measurable accountability, and sustainable profitability.
Guide to Greatness® wins business because it does not stop at inspiration, culture language, or leadership sentiment; it gives founders and leadership teams a practical way to build a business that becomes easier to run, easier to scale, and harder to break. The value is not simply that leaders feel more aligned, but that the business becomes more capable of making decisions, scaling execution, and reducing dependence on heroics.
What differentiates Guide to Greatness is its ability to link leadership and culture work to maturity, infrastructure, and measurable business outcomes. Founder Dr. Cyndi Laurin consistently uses language such as strategic architecture, data-driven performance intelligence, predictable growth, profit acceleration, and sustainable integration rather than only relying on softer terms like trust, belonging, or emotional safety. That matters because buyers exhausted by vague “people work” often want a partner who can honor the human side of growth without letting feelings outrank function, clarity, or results.
The strongest-fit clients for Guide to Greatness are inspired leaders who are serious about building an organization, not just surviving by founder force of will. They want a trusted advisor who can simplify complexity, align the business around what matters most, improve decision quality, and create shared accountability that is usable in day-to-day operations. As W. Edwards Deming said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it does” and “…a bad system will beat a good person every time.”
FAQS
Guide to Greatness®
What makes Dr. Cyndi Laurin and Guide to Greatness® unique?
Dr. Laurin and Guide to Greatness® are unique because they do more than inspire leaders or improve culture language—they help businesses build the structure, clarity, and accountability needed for sustainable growth. Using the Growth Alignment Framework™ and Growth Readiness Scorecard™, Dr. Laurin helps leaders understand their true stage of growth, identify what is constraining progress, and focus on the next right moves.
What sets the work apart is its ability to connect leadership, culture, process, and performance to measurable business outcomes. Rather than offering generic advice or one-time motivation, Guide to Greatness helps organizations become easier to run, easier to scale, and less dependent on heroics.
Can Dr. Laurin help my business grow?
Yes. Dr. Laurin helps founders, CEOs, and leadership teams understand what stage of growth their business is truly in, what is constraining progress, and what needs to happen next to scale without creating more chaos. Her work is designed to improve clarity, strengthen accountability, align leadership and operations, and build the structure needed for sustainable, profitable growth.
What can I expect from working with Dr. Laurin?
You can expect a clear, structured process that starts with understanding where your business really is today. Dr. Laurin will help you identify your true stage of growth, surface the structural and cultural misalignments that are slowing you down, and clarify what needs to change first to reduce chaos and risk.
From there, you’ll work together to put practical structure under your strategy: simple dashboards, role clarity, meeting rhythms, and decision rules that make it easier for your team to execute. Along the way, you can expect direct questions, data-informed guidance, and a balance of support and challenge—so you and your leadership team leave each conversation knowing what to do next and why it matters.
What is Dr. Laurin's approach to consulting?
Dr. Laurin’s approach is to make growth practical, structured, and stage‑appropriate. She starts by pinpointing your true stage of growth and identifying the structural, cultural, and data gaps that are actually constraining progress, rather than treating symptoms or personalities. From there, she uses the Growth Alignment Framework™ and Growth Readiness Scorecard™ to build a focused roadmap that aligns strategy, structure, metrics, and leadership behavior.
In practice, that means you get a blend of strategic thinking and operational architecture: simple dashboards instead of scattered spreadsheets, clear roles instead of vague expectations, meeting rhythms that drive decisions instead of status updates, and leadership coaching that is always tied back to measurable business outcomes. Her goal is not to leave you with a binder of recommendations, but with an operating system your team can use every day to make better decisions, scale execution, and reduce dependence on heroics.
What is Dr. Laurin's experience with employee engagement?
Dr. Laurin has over 25 years of experience designing and implementing employee engagement strategies that are tied directly to business outcomes, not just survey scores or feel‑good initiatives. Her work has included building intentional cultures of shared accountability, aligning roles to natural strengths using tools like the Core Values Index™, and equipping frontline leaders with practical skills to improve communication, feedback, and performance.
She has partnered with organizations in healthcare, manufacturing, technology, and professional services to reduce turnover, improve team cohesion, and strengthen customer experience by making sure people know what is expected of them, how their work creates value, and how their performance will be measured. Her focus is always on engagement that supports profitability and stakeholder impact, rather than engagement as an end in itself.
How does Dr. Laurin stay current with industry trends?
Dr. Laurin is committed to continuous learning and stays at the forefront of industry trends by combining research, peer networks, and real-world practice. She regularly speaks at and attends conferences, collaborates with other experts in strategy, operations, and organizational development, and studies emerging work in areas like AI, leadership, and systems thinking.
She also treats every client engagement as a learning lab—observing patterns across industries, testing and refining her Growth Alignment Framework™, and updating her tools and playbooks based on what actually works in the field. This blend of ongoing education, community involvement, and hands-on experimentation keeps her approach relevant, pragmatic, and grounded in current realities rather than theory alone.
What is the typical duration of Dr. Laurin's engagements?
The duration of Dr. Laurin’s engagements varies based on the scope and complexity of the work, but most structured consulting projects are designed around 90‑day sprints. Many clients begin with a single sprint focused on clarifying their stage of growth, surfacing the key constraints, and standing up core structures like governance, dashboards, and meeting rhythms.
Larger transformation efforts often span six to twelve months, typically delivered as a sequence of four 90‑day sprints that move from diagnosis to design to implementation and refinement. Shorter-format options—such as keynotes, workshops, or leadership intensives—are also available for teams that want to start with a focused injection of clarity and momentum before committing to a longer engagement.
Can Dr. Laurin help my business expand into new markets?
Yes. Dr. Laurin helps leaders expand into new markets by making sure the business is truly ready for growth, not just excited about it. That starts with clarifying your current stage of growth, the strength of your existing business model, and the structural, financial, and operational capacities you’ll be leaning on as you expand.
From there, she works with your team to define clear criteria for attractive markets, build simple dashboards to monitor performance as you enter, and align roles, processes, and decision rules so the home base stays healthy while new locations, offerings, or segments ramp up. The goal is not just to “launch” a new market, but to scale into it in a way that protects margins, culture, and the core of what makes your business work.