Rene Madden

The Elevare Edge · Issue 17 · June 9, 2026 Developing Your People I worked with a woman many years ago who had been with a major financial services firm for over 20 years. She was knowledgeable, she spoke well, and she was exceptional at training others. But she couldn't get promoted past VP. So she made a move. She transferred to another team, thinking a fresh start would change things. Same result. Passed over again. When she asked why, they told her there weren't enough spots. She didn't...

The Elevare Edge · Issue 24 · October 7, 2026 Her team kept asking for more ownership. So she gave it to them. Bigger projects. Fewer check-ins. Her trust. Then the updates stopped coming. She leads 30 people with no managers in between. When a deadline slid, she asked for a status. The answer came back fast, just not the one she wanted. "You're micromanaging us." She tried letting the team hold each other accountable. That didn't work either. Many of them had worked side by side for years....

The Elevare Edge · Issue 23 · September 22, 2026 I once had to walk into a meeting with our CEO and tell him our adoption numbers were bad. I knew they were bad before I got there. I'd checked them four times hoping I'd misread something. I made it through the first slide. He got annoyed. And I stopped talking. Not paused. Stopped. I had context for those numbers. I knew why adoption had stalled and I had a view on how to fix it. None of it came out of my mouth. Someone else in the room...

The Elevare Edge · Issue 22 · September 2, 2026 We don't have a capacity problem. We have a prioritization problem. Somebody says a version of that in almost every leadership meeting I sit in. Heads nod. It sounds disciplined. It sounds like the kind of thing a serious leader says. Then everyone goes back to their desk, and nothing actually comes off the list. Here is why that sentence is so appealing. Prioritization is free. Headcount costs money, requires a business case and means a...

The Elevare Edge · Issue 21 · August 19, 2026 The financial services job market right now is loud. Layoffs. Noise. A hundred people applying to the same role. Here's what I keep telling clients: when the market is crowded, clarity is the advantage. Not more credentials. Not more polish. Clarity about what you actually solve and who needs it. I'm hosting a live session with the Financial Women's Association on exactly this, on September 24th from 6 to 8pm ET (virtual). This isn't a lecture....

The Elevare Edge · Issue 20 · August 6, 2026 This one is personal. I've been in financial services for over 40 years. I started in 1988 reconciling bonds at a small investment management firm in Pennsylvania. I ended up leading teams at some of the largest global institutions in the world. And somewhere in the middle, I watched the same problem show up over and over again, at firms of every size, with good people who were genuinely trying. Two teams. Same client. No real reason to talk to...

The Elevare Edge · Issue 19 · July 14, 2026 You built the business case. The data is airtight. You walk into the room ready. Slide two goes up. You start walking through the methodology. Slide four, you're explaining the assumptions behind the model. By slide six, you're deep in a variance you feel like you have to justify, and you can feel it happening. The MD across the table glances at their phone. Someone starts flipping ahead in the deck instead of listening to you. The energy that was...

The Elevare Edge · Issue 18 · June 24, 2026 You got promoted to lead a broken team. No resources. No support structure. Just a mandate to turn it around. A VP asked me last month: "Rene, do I fire people? Do I wait it out?" Neither. I've coached dozens of leaders stepping into broken teams. The ones who turn it around in months, not years, don't start with performance reviews or terminations. They don't reorganize. They start with a playbook. Here's what I mean by that. A playbook is the...

Hi Reader - I wanted to reach out personally to invite you to something I've been building for a while. On Tuesday, June 2 at 10am ET, I'm hosting a free live webinar called Stop Guessing About Headcount. Here's why I built this: Most leaders see burnout and assume they need more headcount. But the real problem is usually invisible. It's how work is distributed across the team, how complexity gets ignored in assignments, and how staffing decisions get made on feeling instead of data. I know...