Amy Yip LLC

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

02/12/2026

Is kindness too soft for leadership?

This morning I walked with the Buddhist monks during the final stretch of their Walk for Peace: Day 110

Towards the end, someone asked Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara
👇🏼
“Why are the monks taking a bus back to Texas instead of just flying?”

He responded:
👇🏼
"We had a whole team that drove alongside us, carrying our supplies, organizing logistics, and making this walk possible. If we flew home, they would have to drive back alone. We started together. We're finishing together on the same path."

He chose commitment over convenience.

This is a leader who navigated:
Extreme cold and snow
A monk losing his leg in an accident early in their journey
Constant uncertainty about where they'd sleep each night

And through all the challenges, he led from a place of kindness and groundedness.

The impact?
The monks started with a goal of giving away 1,000 peace bracelets to those they met on their journey.
They've now distributed over 100,000 bracelets.

And the ripple effect went beyond that number.

Thousands walked alongside them.
Local governments and churches invited them in.
Police forces protected them.
Millions followed their mission.

Not because he demanded it.
Because he built trust through kindness.

We've been conditioned to believe that leadership requires armor. That showing up with humanity—with kindness—makes us weak.

But the strongest leaders I see are not the ones performing confidence. They're the ones grounded enough to lead as whole human beings

Kindness makes you the type of leader people will follow, even when the road is long, uncertain, and hard.

02/11/2026

Most leaders know their teams need to be “more aligned.”

What they don’t know is what that actually looks like in practice.

Because team alignment isn’t one-size-fits-all.

And it’s definitely not just a single offsite or workshop.

In this video, I walk through 4 real client journeys that show how alignment gets built depending on what a team actually needs.

Real examples of how alignment work can be structured in very different ways and drive real results.

If you’ve ever wondered:

What could this actually look like for my team?

This will give you a much clearer picture.

🎥 4 Real Client Journeys That Show Exactly How Teams Get Aligned

👉🏼 Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIH3yRzuc-U

02/05/2026

I've been following their journey...

A group of Buddhist monks have been walking 120 days, 2300 miles from Ft. Worth, Texas to Washington, DC.

In rain. In snow. In freezing weather.

Barefoot at times.

For peace.

Along the way, people have joined them by the thousands.

A little boy offering fruit from a basket bigger than his arms.

Strangers walking alongside them.

Law enforcement honoring them with badges and protection.

Churches welcoming them in for shelter.

Different faiths.

Different uniforms.

Different worldviews.

And yet, coming together in dignity, respect, and love for one shared intention: peace.

Early in the journey, there was an accident. One of the monks lost his left leg.

There was no blame. No anger.

Only love. Forgiveness. Compassion.

Even when hate appears along their path, they stop. They listen. They respond with love anyway.

Then someone finally asked what I've been wondering:

“How can I speak to others about your teachings without sounding like a know-it-all?”

Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara's answer was simple:

“Speak from the heart.”

So I'm speaking from my heart.

The world would be a more beautiful place if we choose

Love over hate

Dignity over division

Forgiveness over blame

But this kind of peace doesn't start with "out there"

It starts with us

With how we listen

With how we respond

With how we choose love, even when it's hard

What would it look like if we practiced that a little more each day?

🤍



📷 Photo credit: Walk for Peace