Apoorva Pande

I help tech founders scale to $10M+ ARR without burning out. 

Most of the founders that I work with are already smart and capable. They're just carrying too much of the business themselves.

My approach blends repeatable delivery systems, predictive client acquisition, and reinforcing your team's culture so that you can take a step back to enjoy life.

Let's connect. I'll teach you how to be profitable (while staying in control).

In college, I ran into a friend that graduated high school a year after me.

She told me she was finalizing the process of selling her company for millions.

I was stunned. How did she get to this point? We went to the same schools. We know the SAME stuff.

This is what she told me:

"At some point you have to decide to improve the way you think. Look at what's serving you and what's not."

That hit me.

So I shifted. I focused on what I actually cared about. Good culture. Impact. Things that energized me instead of drained me.

I joined a company and helped them scale from $300K to $10M.

I found what I enjoyed. I found what served me.

Helping tech founders scale without burning out on their journey to $10M+

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My non-negotiables when I travel:

• Good breakfast
• A gym close by
• High quality WiFi

They guarantee balance no matter where I am.

What did I miss?

A founder once told me:

“I’m going to be your best case study ever.”

He was right.

He binge-watched our content.
Then he executed.

• Month 1: closed a $590K contract
• Month 8: closed a $2M contract
• Year 1: we helped restructure a deal that should’ve been $5–6M

He closed it for $30M.

The other day I overheard a founder say he was "stuck".

I hear this all the time.

Stuck in their business model. Stuck with their team. Stuck at their revenue level.

Here's what I believe: YOU'RE FREE. You can actively decide to do whatever you want at any point.

Here's how we fix it:

- You're stuck because you believe you're stuck. The moment you decide you're not, everything changes. 

- Look inward. What's serving you (what's not?)

- What limiting factor is causing you to get in your own way?

That's the real work. That's when actual change happens.

I heard a quote this week that made "work/life balance" just make sense.

“If I'm not living life the way I want to live, what am I doing this for?”

Think about it this way: You work hard so you can enjoy life. But are you prioritizing fun, travel, friends so you can enjoy work/be more successful?

One charges the other.

(my wife and I in Spain)

ACCELERATING READINESS | ENABLING GROWTH | POWERING POSSIBILITIES

I help individuals, teams, and organizations move from potential to readiness to performance by focusing on the critical missing link — Readiness. Readiness is the coming together of 5 components like Skills, Speed, Self Awareness.......With 29+ years of global leadership across HR, OD, Learning, and Business Growth roles, I blend action research, coaching science, and experiential methods to curate hyper-personalized talent journeys.

As the Founder of myDayOne, I lead the creation of IoB-powered digital solutions and readiness acceleration platforms that unlock alignment at the behavior level — enabling career growth, leadership effectiveness, and business scalability. My work integrates the best of behavioral science, gamification, data analytics, and OD tools, with a focus on real-world application and measurable RoI.

I believe in this simple mantra:
“Develop talent your biggest asset in Business. Accelerate Talent readiness. Ensure future-ready success stories.”


Core Strengths:
- Blending cutting-edge technology with behavioral science
- Engineering high performance through gamification
- Crafting engaging learning experiences through storytelling
- Designing scalable organizational development interventions
- Facilitating sustainable behavior change

Professional Journey:
Diverse experience as:
- OD Practitioner & Change Catalyst
- Learning & Development Specialist
- HR Leader & Strategist
- Executive Coach & Facilitator
- Process Visualizer & Entrepreneur

Education & Certifications:
Proud alumnus of premier institutions:
- XLRI & TISS
- Organisation Development - XLRI, ISABS, CODE & TiSS 
- HR Systems - TuV Rheinland, Mercer Learning & Aon LC
- Human Process  - Relations Institute (TA), ChangeWorks (Appreciative Inquiry), AE Institute (RECBT)
- Experiential Learning - Sullivan Institute, LSP & Thomson Associates
- Coaching - ICF, Gallup, Hogan, Kornferry, NLI
- Story Telling (TM International, IIM-A, ZASW)  

Beyond Business:
Actively volunteered with non-profit organizations, believing in business as a force for good.

Let's Connect:
Whether you're:
- Leading a corporate transformation
- Scaling your business
- Driving organizational change
- Building high-performing teams

Jithesh Anand

When Vineet Nayar became CEO of HCL Technologies in 2007, he did something most leaders would never dare: he made the performance reviews of the top leaders, including himself, visible to all employees.

HCL's revenue was stagnant. Margins were under pressure. The company was being outpaced by Infosys and TCS in both growth and mindshare.

Nayar noticed that the people closest to customers: engineers, delivery teams, and account managers, had the least voice. Decisions sat with management layers far removed from the actual work.

So he flipped the model. Instead of asking how employees could serve management better, he asked how management could serve employees better.

He made all support functions: HR, Finance, IT, accountable to frontline employees. Employees could rate internal services, escalate issues publicly, and track resolution. 

What this created: 
👉 People closest to the work started being heard, and decisions moved faster.
👉 Transparency changed leader behavior without needing constant enforcement.
👉 Managers stopped being gatekeepers and started being enablers.
👉 Growth became sustainable because internal friction was reduced.

Over six years, HCL grew from 700 million to over $4.7 billion. Employee strength tripled. The company consistently outperformed peers.

Most CEOs would never risk this. Too much exposure. Too much vulnerability. 

But Nayar understood something simple: if you're not willing to be held accountable by your team, why should they trust you to hold them accountable?

PS: If your team could rate you anonymously and the results were shared company-wide, would you be nervous, or confident?

Infosys grew from zero to $71 billion while surviving multiple economic crashes. Narayana Murthy's rule? Bad news always reached leadership before good news. 

In the early days of Indian corporate culture, bad news had a habit of being buried. 

⤷ Delays were explained away. 
⤷ Cost overruns were pushed to next quarter. 
⤷ Small quality issues stayed hidden so no one "looked bad."

By the time leadership heard the truth, it was already too late to fix anything.

So when Infosys started in 1981, Narayan Murthy made a rule: if something is going wrong, it reaches the top immediately. 

This wasn't about pessimism. It was about survival. Good news has a long shelf life. Bad news doesn't. It compounds quietly. The earlier you hear it, the cheaper and calmer it is to fix.

As a result
👉 Problems were discussed while they were still manageable. 
👉 Decisions were made with real information, not filtered optimism. 
👉 Trust built up because people knew they weren't being shielded from reality.
👉 People learned that speaking up early wouldn't get them punished.

A few things this proved: 

1. The cost of fixing a problem early is always lower than fixing it late.

2. When people spend time framing bad news, the problem gets worse while the presentation gets better.

3. Organizations that survive shocks are the ones where truth moves fastest.

Transparency only works when people trust they won't be punished for being honest. Murthy created that trust from day one. And it made all the difference when things got hard.

PS: Do you think most leaders really want to hear bad news or do they just say they do?

When performance drops, leaders blame effort. But I've watched capable people work 60-hour weeks and still fail because the role demanded something they weren't prepared for. 

The work may now require- 
⤷ Judgment instead of execution. 
⤷ Influence instead of delivery. 
⤷ Comfort with ambiguity instead of clarity

And if the person hasn't been prepared for that shift, no amount of pressure creates readiness. It just creates fatigue and self-doubt.

As a leader, here are 5 things you need to check before promoting someone-

1. Watch how they handle ambiguity, not just how they perform with clear instructions. 

2. Observe how they respond when they're no longer the expert in the room. 

3. See how they handle disagreement without taking it personally. 

4. Give them responsibility without authority and see how they cope. 

5. Have an honest conversation about what will change in the role, not just what will grow. 

Not every performance dip needs pressure. Sometimes what's needed is the courage to say: "This role doesn't fit you yet, and that's okay." 

Readiness isn't about slowing people down. It's about making sure growth doesn't quietly turn into damage.

PS: Do you think most performance issue come from lack of effort or lack of readiness?

I wrote a post about Vineet Nayar's leadership at HCLTech Technologies. He commented and redirected credit to 100,000 employees. What that tells you changes how you think about readiness.

Vineet's comment made it clear that what changed at HCL was no longer dependent on him or a small group at the top. The organization had crossed a threshold where performance became capability-driven, not personality-driven.

Leaders who have lived through a succession cycle know this instinctively.  

If results collapse when the leader steps away, the transformation never took root. His comment tells you the work outlived the role.

What HCL demonstrated went beyond transparency. They had built readiness through repeated learning under real conditions. 

👉 Employees learned how to speak up in a visible system. 
👉 Managers learned how to operate without positional protection. 
👉 Support functions learned that internal demand required the same discipline as external demand.

If you want to build your organization to be capability-driven- 

1. Create situations where they can practice without being punished for imperfect outcomes.

2. Pay attention to what happens when pressure rises; that's where learning is either reinforced or undone.

3. Design for the day you're not in the room. 

Leaders can initiate change, but whether it survives depends on what the organization has practiced enough to trust when things get hard. That's the gap most transformation efforts miss.

Training teaches people what to do. Readiness is knowing they'll actually do it when it matters. Most organizations confuse the two and then wonder why performance isn't growing.

A program runs. People attend. Everyone is aligned in the room. There's a sense of relief that something has been "done" for development. And mentally, leaders move on.

But nothing really changes on Monday morning.

Readiness isn't built when people understand a skill. It's built when they use it in situations that feel uncomfortable, unclear, or slightly risky. That's where skills either stick or disappear.

You can train someone on feedback, delegation, or decision-making. But until they apply it in a real conversation, with real consequences, under some pressure, it stays theoretical.

What truly builds readiness is repetition in context: trying, getting it wrong, getting feedback, trying again. 

Skills applied consistently change behavior. Behavior change is what makes teams dependable when things get messy.

So, stop treating training as the destination. If you're investing in learning, invest equally in application. 

1. Build space for people to practice skills in real work. 
2. Watch what changes, not what's remembered. 
3. Give feedback on behavior. 

Organizations that grow steadily don't rely on programs alone. They build systems where skills are used, tested, and strengthened over time. 

SPARCLE by myDayOne makes that application visible so readiness becomes measurable, not hopeful.

PS: Do you think most people leave training ready to apply what they learned, or do they just know more in theory?

Training completed vs skills applied 

You lost three people this quarter. So you hired four. But if the environment that pushed them out hasn't changed, the new hires won't last either. 

When people start leaving, leaders feel pressure to act fast. Roles need to be filled. Work can't stop. So hiring becomes the most visible response. 

But it's just a band-aid solution. 

People usually leave long before they resign. They leave in small ways first: less initiative, less honesty, less energy. 

And most of the time, it's not because they want a different job. It's because something in the environment stopped working for them.

If the reasons people walked out aren't addressed, new hires will encounter the same issues. The cycle repeats.

Here's how building readiness can help retention in ways hiring never can:
 
👉 People feel grounded when they know what's expected and have the skills to deliver it.

👉 Challenges turn into learning instead of pressure when support is built into the system.

👉 Teams stop relying on heroic effort and constant firefighting; that stability creates trust.

👉 Growth becomes visible, not assumed, and people stay when they feel they're developing, not just surviving.

Hiring will always be part of running a business. But retention starts long before a role is vacant. 

If leaders want people to stay, they have to build environments where people can do good work without burning out or feeling lost.

PS: Have you ever left a job because of the environment?

I've seen leaders drowning in work, and it's rarely the workload that breaks them. It's the unresolved conflict between what different people expect them to be.

One moment, they're expected to move fast and make tough calls. The next moment, they're expected to slow down, involve everyone, and build consensus.

They're asked to empower their teams while still being held responsible for every detail that goes wrong.

Over time, leaders spend more energy trying to balance these competing expectations than doing the work itself. 

Every decision requires extra thought. Every interaction feels like it needs calibration. That constant adjustment wears people down.

If you're a leader struggling with conflicting roles, here's what can help you- 

1. Revisit your role as the work changes. Expectations that made sense when the team was smaller often become outdated as the scope increases.

2. Be clear about where you add the most value: direction, decision-making, problem-solving, or enabling others.

3. Align expectations upward, not just downward. Regular conversations with your own leaders about priorities and trade-offs prevent you from absorbing unnecessary pressure.

4. Create decision boundaries so teams know which decisions require your input and which don't.

5. Name competing demands instead of internalizing them. When speed and quality both matter, acknowledging the tension openly helps teams understand your choices.

The hardest part about unclear expectations isn't that they exist. It's that most leaders assume they're supposed to figure it out alone. They're not. Clarity is a conversation, not a solo task.

PS: Is role conflict something leaders should fix themselves, or something organizations create by design?

Your new hire fits the culture beautifully. Great values, strong presence, quick rapport with the team. Six months in, they're drowning. Here's what most organizations miss.

Culture fit tells you if someone belongs. It doesn't tell you if they can operate under pressure without constant guidance.

Because people can align perfectly with values and still struggle when decision velocity increases, priorities compete, or stakeholders pull in different directions. 

And without deliberate readiness building, even strong hires start internalizing stress as self-doubt. They burn energy trying to survive the system instead of contributing to it.

So stop treating onboarding as orientation. If a role carries complexity, readiness has to be designed into the first six to nine months. 

⤷ Make decision rights explicit. 
⤷ Normalize uncertainty instead of silently testing resilience. 
⤷ Give early feedback on how work is done, not just what gets delivered. 

And if you're an individual joining a new organization: 
👉 Don't measure your early months by how busy you are. Measure them by how clearly you understand the system you're operating in. 

Remember, strong cultures don't overwhelm people. Unspoken systems do. 

PS: Does cultural fit actually matter if the person drowns six months in because no one prepared them for how the work actually happens?

I've seen companies hit record performance one year and start declining the next. Not because of the market. Because of what leadership stopped doing.

When things are working, development often becomes an afterthought in organizations. 

Performance reviews get polite. Feedback gets careful. Stretch assignments reduce because no one wants to disrupt momentum. 

That's when people start relying on what already worked. Curiosity drops. Capability stops compounding. The organization keeps looking strong from the outside, but inside, it's living off past momentum.

By the time leaders notice results falling, the gap has already formed. Because success today doesn't prepare people for pressure tomorrow. 

If you are leading a growing organization, don't treat development as a reward or a reaction. 

👉 Build growth into the system. 
👉 Make readiness visible. 
👉 Track how people are progressing, not just performing. 
👉 Pay attention to confidence, judgment, and decision-making. 

Remember, the team that got you here won't automatically be ready for what's next, unless you prepare them while things are still working.

That's why systems like SPARCLE by myDayOne work. They turn development from an event into a system that runs alongside the work.

PS: Do you invest in your team's development when things are good or only when a problem shows up?

High expectations should push teams forward. Instead, they're crushing confidence. The reason? The team was never prepared for what the manager started expecting. 

Expectations don't grow immediately, but they do grow subtly. 

The manager has grown, seen more, and been exposed to bigger problems. Their definition of "basic" has shifted, but the team hasn't moved at the same pace.

So suddenly, "just execute" turns into "think end-to-end." "Keep me posted" turns into "own this fully." The team feels it before it's ever said out loud.

People start second-guessing themselves. 
They work longer hours to cover gaps instead of asking questions. 
They stop volunteering ideas because they don't feel ready to defend them.

Here's where the gap shows: 

❌ Manager expects: Asking for help early.
✅ Employee is prepared for: Asking for help once they’ve tried everything alone.

❌ Manager expects: Handling pushback from other teams.
✅ Employee is prepared for: Escalating conflicts upward.

❌ Manager expects: Ownership of outcomes.
✅ Employee is prepared for: Ownership of assigned tasks.

❌ Manager expects: Confident updates in leadership meetings.
✅ Employee is prepared for: Sharing details, not defending judgment.

❌ Manager expects: Think like a leader.
✅ Employee is prepared for: Do it right and don't mess up.

When expectations outpace readiness, your best people just stop trying. 

They conclude they're not good enough when the reality is: they were never prepared for what you started asking.

PS: Have you ever worked harder than ever but still felt like you were falling short?

Expectations vs what team is prepared for

Experience tells you how long someone's been doing the job. Readiness tells you if they can handle what comes next. Most leaders only look at the first.

You can spend years getting very good at solving problems, executing tasks, being reliable, and being the person everyone goes to. Over time, that builds confidence in your skills.

But leadership requires 
⤷ Letting go of being the expert. 
⤷ Holding ambiguity without rushing to fix it. 
⤷ Caring about outcomes you don't fully control.

Many experienced professionals never cross that inner line. They lead with answers instead of judgment. They manage work, not people.

And when they're placed in leadership roles, the gap shows. 

Organizations need to stop treating leadership as a reward for past performance and start treating it as a transition that needs preparation. 

Instead of asking "How long has this person been here?" ask "How has this person changed internally?"

Create space for people to practice leadership before the title arrives. 

👉 Let them make decisions with consequences. 
👉 Let them navigate conflict. 
👉 Let them experience accountability beyond their own output.

The organizations that grow aren't the ones with the most experienced people. They're the ones where people are prepared to carry responsibility without losing themselves.

PS: Have you ever worked under someone who had all the experience but wasn't ready to lead?

Your company doesn't have a leadership pipeline problem until someone critical exits. Then everyone scrambles, and you realize the damage was done years ago.

Organizations often assume that 
👉 Capable people would naturally be ready the moment it comes. 
👉 Time in roles equals readiness for the next one.
👉 Leadership could be built quickly once the need became urgent.

None of that is true. 

Because leadership readiness isn't something that switches on when someone gets promoted. 

It has to be built before the role changes, through exposure, feedback, and practice under real conditions. Without that, even strong performers struggle when the complexity increases.

Here's what actually builds pipelines that work: 

1. Treat leadership as a transition, not a destination. Give people chances to lead before the title by letting them own outcomes, handle conflict and make decisions with incomplete data. 

2. Create exposure before elevation. Ready pipelines are built when people are gradually exposed to complexity. 

3. Build feedback loops that change behavior, not just awareness. Readiness grows when people can see, track, and practice the behaviors expected at the next level.

4. Make readiness visible, not assumed. Know who is ready for what, and why. When readiness is visible, promotions feel intentional. When it's invisible, they feel risky.

Most companies react to leadership gaps. The best ones prevent them. 

They build readiness slowly, over years, so that when the moment comes, they're not searching for leaders, they're watching people they've already prepared step into the role.

PS: Are you building leaders before you need them?

The people who step into leadership roles aren't the loudest ones. They're the ones who made these 4 emotional shifts, long before anyone handed them the title.

I've worked with hundreds of people who couldn't understand why they kept getting passed over for leadership roles. 

Their work was strong. Their results were consistent. They showed up, delivered, and went beyond what was asked.

But when it came to promotion decisions, someone else's name came up instead.
The gap wasn't effort. It was how they responded when things got unclear.

⤷ When priorities shifted mid-project. 
⤷ When a decision had to be made without enough information. 
⤷ When the team looked around the room for direction.

In those moments, some people absorb the uncertainty. Others pass it down.

And that difference shows up in five specific shifts: 

1. Most people wait for more information, more alignment, more certainty. Ready leaders learn to think through uncertainty without making their discomfort everyone else's problem.

2. Early on, the focus is on being seen as capable. Leadership shifts to making sure the work itself succeeds, even when that means asking hard questions or being less liked.

3. Feeling pressure without letting it steer the room. Frustration still shows up. Doubt still shows up. But decisions don't come from emotion, and the team doesn't absorb the stress.

4. Thinking past delivery to what happens next. Completion isn't the finish line anymore. The questions shift to: What breaks if this goes wrong? Who's affected downstream? What didn't we see coming?

Leadership doesn't start when someone hands you authority. 

It starts when people bring you problems instead of hiding them. When they feel steadier after talking to you. When they trust your judgment in moments that matter.

That trust gets built long before the title arrives.

PS: Which of these shifts do you think is hardest to make?

You rewarded the employee who worked late every night. You overlooked the one who prevented three weeks of rework with one decision. That's what happens when you focus on hours, not impact.

One person looked dedicated because they stayed visible. The other looked efficient because they solved the problem quickly and moved on. 

But in most organizations, visibility wins over value.

That's because hours are easy to see. Impact requires judgment to recognize. 

So leaders default to what's measurable: logins, meeting attendance, late-night Slack messages. It feels objective. It feels fair.

But work doesn't create value because someone sat longer at a desk. 

It creates value when someone makes a decision that matters, prevents a crisis, or moves things forward with clarity.

Here's how the two approaches play out:

❌ Logging hours: Staying online late
✅ Working for impact: Finishing the work that actually moves things forward

❌Logging hours: Responding instantly to messages
✅ Working for impact: Responding thoughtfully, even if it takes time

❌Logging hours: Working late to fix avoidable issues
✅ Working for impact: Fixing root causes early

❌Logging hours: Filling the calendar
✅ Working for impact: Protecting time for deep work

❌Logging hours: Being available all the time
✅ Working for impact: Being reliable when it matters

Time is a poor proxy for value. The organizations that grow sustainably aren't where people stay online longest. They're where people are trusted to think, decide, and deliver. 

PS: If you could change one thing about how your organization measure productivity, what would it be?

Logging hours vs working for impact

Your team is doing everything you asked. Training done. Hours logged. Effort visible. But when pressure hits, they still look to you for the answers. Here's why...

Activity measures energy. Readiness measures judgment. Most organizations build systems that reward the first while assuming the second will follow. 

Early in their careers, people are rewarded for being responsive and compliant. 

Then suddenly they're expected to make trade-offs and own outcomes, without ever being taught how to operate when the stakes are higher.

The gap isn't motivation. It's unpracticed responsibility.

Here's how you can actually build readiness in your team: 

👉 Give people real decisions to own, not instructions to follow. That's where judgment develops.

👉 Pair learning with live situations while the stakes are still manageable. Skills stay theoretical until applied under real pressure.

👉 Help people understand how the role expects them to think, not just what it expects them to deliver.

👉 Let them stumble in guided conditions. Mistakes made with support build confidence. Mistakes avoided through protection build dependency.

Effort without guided exposure stays stuck at effort. 

The moment organizations start pairing learning with real responsibility, that gap leaders have been sensing for months starts closing.

Companies spend thousands recruiting talent. Then they hand new hires a laptop, a handbook, and say, "figure it out." That's where retention dies. 

You interviewed for weeks. You negotiated the offer carefully. You celebrated landing the perfect candidate. 

👉 Then day one, and it's a blur of paperwork, system logins, and a generic presentation about company values. 

👉 By week two, they're confused about how decisions actually get made. 

👉 Month three hits, and they're hesitant to ask questions ever because everyone seems busy. 

👉 By month six, they're updating their resume.

It's not the work that pushes them out. It's the silence around how things actually work.

The unspoken rules. The real decision-makers. The safe people to ask for help. Without that context, even talented people feel like outsiders trying to decode a system no one explained. 

The companies that keep their best hires do something different. 

1. They assign a peer guide so new hires have someone safe to ask "dumb questions." 

2. They explain how decisions really happen, not just what the organisation chart says. 

3. They check in frequently in the first 90 days instead of disappearing after the welcome meeting.

Your onboarding process isn't just about getting people started. It's about making them feel like they actually belong. 

And belonging is what keeps people from looking elsewhere when the first recruiter calls.

PS: If you could change one thing about how companies onboard new hires, what would it be?

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