Cosmo Tech | The Decision Twin Platform for Supply Chain, Finance & Asset Leaders at Fortune 500 Scale | Simulate Tomorrow. Decide Today.

I specialize in the messy middle of B2B SaaS scaling—taking companies from erratic growth to a disciplined, high-performance revenue engine.

Most sales teams don’t fail because they lack talent; they fail because of ambiguity.
When forecasts can’t be trusted, pipelines move only through founder heroics, and managers report activity instead of owning outcomes, you don’t need another playbook—you need an operating system.

My operating philosophy: Cadence | Ownership | Process

I install a repeatable flywheel of operational excellence:

Cadence
A rigorous Rhythm of Business—daily, weekly, and monthly operating cadence that surfaces execution risk early, before it becomes a board-level surprise.

Ownership
Managers own outcomes, not just activity. Forecasts are built bottom-up so leadership can commit without caveats.

Process
Qualification and execution are standardized before adding headcount, ensuring hiring is tied to capacity and real revenue impact—not hope.

The proof (Ekahau — SVP, Global Sales, 2019–2024)
	•	Revenue: Scaled $25M → $65M ARR in five years
	•	EBITDA: Increased $7M → $32M (margins ~20% → ~50%)
	•	Team: Built a 130-person global organization while reducing per-employee cost 25%

Selected wins
	•	Healthentic: Doubled ACV ($5M → $10M) and drove 10× pipeline growth through GTM transformation
	•	ControlCase: Delivered 34% YoY growth and 300% expansion revenue growth

Currently

Available for VP of Sales or Fractional GTM leadership with B2B SaaS companies $5M–$30M ARR. I also lead SalesGSS (revenue operating frameworks) and DigitalRegIntel (regulatory intelligence for AI/fintech).

The Senator perspective

Two terms as a Washington State Senator taught me the value of high-stakes negotiation and public accountability. I bring that same discipline to sales: clear ownership and execution when the pressure is real.

“Steve is ‘Instant Offense’ for sales—rare and valuable. World-class at creating strategic, data-driven sales teams.”
— Jeff O’Mara, CEO (Healthentic) / GM (Ekahau)

Steve Litzow

AI didn’t kill sales reps.
It killed excuses.

In 2026, AI isn’t a productivity tool — it’s a truth serum.

It exposes:
• Broken process
• Weak management
• Fake activity dressed up as “effort”

If your sales motion is tight, AI compresses time-to-decision.
If it’s sloppy, AI just produces more noise — faster.

Most $10M–$50M ARR teams are about to learn this the hard way.

This is Week 1 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.
Eight weeks. Eight uncomfortable truths.

AI didn’t come for your reps.
It came for your excuses.

Comment “2026” if you want the series.

VP of Sales / Fractional VP (B2B SaaS, VC & PE-backed) for $5M–$30M B2B SaaS | Scaled $25M → $65M ARR | SalesGSS

Your closers aren’t the problem.
Your committee is.

Roughly half of qualified B2B deals don’t lose.
They stall.
“No decision.”

At $10M–$50M ARR, the pattern is consistent:
• Strong champion
• Positive calls
• Deal “feels good”

But it’s single-threaded.

One relationship trying to carry internal selling across:
Finance. IT. Security. Procurement. Operations.

The closer is persuasive.
The organization isn’t aligned.

With 10+ stakeholders involved, persuasion no longer scales.

Elite closers in 2026 aren’t smoother.
They’re better at internal selling.

They multi-thread early.
They equip champions.
They sell the decision process.

Quick diagnostic:

Can your reps name five stakeholders—and each one’s priority—in their top deals?

If not, you’re optimized for persuasion when you need consensus.

Week 2 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.
(Week 1: AI doesn’t fix execution—it exposes it.)

Comment “2026” if you want the series.

If you can’t prove value in the first 60 days, you don’t have a deal.

In 2026, long sales cycles aren’t what kill deals.

Delayed proof does.

Buyers will wait longer to buy —
but they won’t wait longer to know if they made the right decision.

57% of B2B buyers expect positive ROI within 3 months — not at renewal.

If a champion can’t point to a concrete win inside 60 days:

Confidence erodes
Finance steps in
“Commit” turns into “let’s wait and see”

That’s why the strongest teams aren’t closing faster.

They’re proving faster.

They define Day-60 success before the contract is signed.
They scope for proof, not size.
They treat time-to-value as a deal quality metric, not a CS problem.

If value only shows up at renewal, the deal was insured by hope — not evidence.

This is Week 3 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.
Next week: why slow product cadence is becoming a silent deal-killer.

When supervision exists only in email, it doesn’t exist at all.

This week didn’t bring a sweeping new regulation.
That’s exactly the risk.

Across the U.S. and EU, regulators continued applying existing authority while legislative clarity remains unresolved. That combination — active enforcement discretion + unresolved rules — is where most future compliance failures are born.

Fast-forward 24–36 months and the question won’t be:

“Was the guidance clear?”

It will be:
“What did you know — when did you know it — and how was that knowledge supervised?”

This week alone:

SEC and CFTC signaled regulatory coordination is moving forward without Congress
EU AI Act transparency expectations quietly locked in
FinCEN delayed rules while Treasury intensified enforcement
Enforcement volume dropped — but guidance-based expectations accelerated

None of this required a new rule. All of it creates exposure.

If your supervisory awareness lives in emails, Slack threads, or people’s heads, it won’t survive diligence, exams, or enforcement.

That’s why we published this week’s DigitalRegIntel Supervisory Brief — and why we believe supervisory awareness needs a system of record, not a newsletter.

Because when the question comes,
explanations don’t count. Records do.

This week’s brief formally documents each supervisory signal referenced above.

#RegulatoryCompliance #DigitalAssets #AIGovernance #RegTech #Compliance

This week’s regulatory signal isn’t clarity — it’s formation.

In the U.S., digital asset market structure legislation stalled again. In the EU, regulators are already questioning AI Act transparency practices well ahead of enforcement.

Different jurisdictions. Different tools. Same supervisory pattern.

Expectations are forming before rules finalize — and long before penalties appear.

That’s what shows up later in:
- Board and audit committee questions
- nvestor and acquirer diligence
- Bank and payment-partner reviews

Not “what did the law eventually say?”
But “what did leadership understand and monitor as expectations evolved?”

I publish a short Digital Regulatory Intelligence brief each Tuesday that documents these early supervisory signals — not predictions, not legal conclusions — just what’s forming in real time.

Most regulatory risk doesn’t show up as a rule violation.

It shows up later as a question regulators now ask routinely in enforcement actions:

“When did you become aware of this risk?”

Across new digital regulations and recent enforcement matters, regulators have shifted from checklist compliance to supervisory posture — an expectation of continuous, documented awareness.

Exposure today isn’t just what you did.
It’s what you reasonably knew — and when you knew it.

That’s why this is increasingly a board-level issue, not a compliance exercise.

Curious how others are documenting supervisory awareness before it’s asked for.

The roadmap slide used to be the closer.
In 2026, shipping is.

Buyers don’t evaluate products by vision anymore.
They evaluate them by momentum.

Before they ever talk to your sales team:
• They’ve checked G2 for recent updates
• They’ve Googled what you shipped last quarter
• They’ve asked their network if you’re still actively building

They’re not asking “Where is this going?”
They’re asking “What have you shipped lately?”

Here’s what most teams miss:

Products that can’t show visible momentum during evaluation are assumed incapable of delivering value fast after purchase.

If buyers can’t see progress now, they won’t believe you can produce results in their first 60 days.

The strongest teams in 2026 aren’t winning on features.
They’re winning because buyers can see execution before the first call.

This is Week 4 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.

Next week: Why waiting for clean data is now officially malpractice.

I’m Vijayashree Venkat - Founder of HumanAlpha, a Strategic HR & Leadership Development firm built for one mission:

To help scaling-stage companies grow through People. Process. Culture. Technology.

With over 25 years in HR leadership at brands like Reliance, Mahindra, Max Retail, and 75+ client transformations behind us, I work with visionary CEOs and founders who are scaling fast but need their people strategy to catch up.

Our edge?

We don’t just advise, we build.

We bring execution-ready frameworks, full-stack HR capability, and fractional CHRO support that acts like an extension of your leadership team.

Who we work with:

→ Founder-led startups and MSMEs.
→ $5M+ revenue, 30–2000 employees.
→ Growth-focused, culture-first leaders. 
→ Teams are struggling with people, performance, and leadership pipeline.

What we solve:

→ No senior HR leadership, scattered systems.
→ High attrition, weak culture, leadership burnout.
→ Founders pulled into HR firefighting.
→ Strategic gaps in rewards, performance, and learning.

How we help:

1. Strategic HR Advisory – to build systems that scale
2. Fractional CHRO – senior HR leadership, without the full-time cost
3. Leadership Development – programs, pipelines, and coaching that build leaders at every level
4. Holistic Transformation – across values, culture, process, and technology

I’m also the author of,

📘 In Love with Growth
📘 Leading with a Swag
 and a certified Leadership Coach.

If you’re a founder ready to scale without breaking culture-

Let’s connect.

📩 DM me or write to vijayashree.venkat@human-alpha.com

Vijayashree Venkat

“The leadership standard I refused to dilute as a woman leader.”

I have heard this comment more than once:

“You should soften your standards to be more likeable.”

No.

I never negotiated on three things.

Integrity.
People dignity.
Execution quality.

Those were never situational for me.

They became my leadership signature.

In rooms where shortcuts were normalized, I chose clarity.

When pressure invited compromise, I held the line.

When being agreeable seemed easier, I stayed exacting and fair.

Here is what I learned over time:

1. Standards do not make leaders difficult.
Ambiguity does.

2. People may resist clear expectations initially.
They respect them consistently.

As a woman leader, I did not dilute my standards to fit comfort zones.

I made them explicit, repeatable, and visible in action.

That is how trust compounds.
That is how cultures scale.

There is already enough noise, comparison, and performative leadership around us.

What teams look for is steadiness.
What organizations grow on is consistency.

Leadership does not require hardness.
It requires backbone.

Strong leaders scale faster when standards are explicit and unwavering.

If your standards make some people uncomfortable, pause before adjusting them.

You may be protecting the very culture your organization needs to grow.

Founder, HumanAlpha | Strategic HR Advisor for Scaling CEOs | Fractional CHRO | Building People-First, High-Performance Organisations

They say strong leaders must always speak up.

I disagree.

Everything that has amplified my leadership impact comes down to just three deliberate choices:

1. Listen longer than the room expects

Most leaders respond to the first signal.

Influential leaders wait for patterns to emerge before intervening.

2. Speak only when clarity is earned

Not every opinion needs airtime.

Well-timed insight earns more respect than constant contribution.

3. Intervene with intent, not impulse

Silence sharpens judgment.

When words finally land, they move decisions, not just discussions.

These three have never changed for me.

Across roles. Across rooms. Across crises.

All three are rooted in leadership psychology.

People trust leaders whose words feel considered, not reactive.

More restraint.
More clarity.
More impact.

That is the real script.

Power grows when leaders speak with intent, not impulse.

Tell me in comments, which three behaviors you will continue practicing in every leadership room?

I never tried to fit in to be taken seriously.

I focused on being competent enough to be undeniable.

Early in my career, I noticed a pattern.

Women were often expected to soften their voice, adjust their presence, or mirror the room to earn acceptance.

I chose a different path.

I stayed anchored in my work.
I prepared deeply.

I spoke when I had clarity, not to fill space.

I did not perform leadership.
I practiced it.

Over time, something shifted.

Meetings became about my judgment, not my style.

Conversations moved from courtesy to consultation.

Respect came from outcomes, not optics.

Here is what I learned the hard way:

1. Conformity creates approval.
2. Competence creates authority.

When leaders stay grounded in expertise, they stop chasing validation.

They start shaping direction.

This is especially true for women in leadership.

You do not need to borrow someone else’s tone to be credible.

You do not need to fit a stereotype to belong at the table.

You need depth, consistency, and the courage to stand by your thinking.

Authentic authority attracts influence faster than adaptation.

If you are a woman leader reading this, ask yourself:

Where are you adjusting to fit in, instead of standing firm in what you know?

Coaching women leaders is not about fixing confidence.

It is about removing friction between capability and expression.

Across leadership coaching rooms, I see the same patterns repeat.

Highly capable women leaders:

• Second-guess decisions already thought through.
• Over-prepare to feel “ready enough.”
• Delay visibility until perfection arrives.

None of this comes from a lack of competence.

It comes from misplaced responsibility.

At HumanAlpha, we do not treat these as confidence issues.

We treat them as clarity gaps.

Here is how we reframe them into power.

1. Self-doubt → Evidence-based self-trust

We move leaders away from internal noise and back to data, outcomes, and lived results.

Clarity grows when leaders learn to anchor decisions in evidence, not emotion.

2. Over-preparation → Strategic readiness

Preparation is not the problem.

Excess preparation is a signal that the decision authority has not been claimed yet.

We help leaders decide when preparation has served its purpose and action must begin.

3. Waiting for validation → Owning perspective

Women leaders often wait to be invited into influence.

We coach them to enter conversations with a point of view, not a permission slip.

The shift is subtle but powerful.

From “Am I ready?”
To “This is my judgment.”

From “Let me check once more.”
To “Here is the direction.”

From effort-heavy leadership
To outcome-led leadership.

That is when presence changes.
That is when conversations change.
That is when leaders rise with clarity, not force.

When clarity replaces over-caution, authority becomes natural.

If you are coaching or leading women today, ask yourself this:

Are you helping them do more…
or helping them decide faster with conviction?

I want to address a huge misunderstanding about leadership today.

(I’ve been seeing this play out for years)

Ever noticed how leadership conversations keep turning into comparisons?

“IQ leaders are outdated.”
“EQ leaders are overrated.”
“Here’s why the old models failed.”

Let me speak to you, the leader reading this:

1. If you start by dismissing IQ
2. Then downgrade EQ
3. Then announce a “new” leadership idea
4. And justify it by tearing down what came before

Something tells me the leadership thinking is still incomplete.

There is no need to attack what came earlier to explain what comes next.

IQ and EQ were never wrong.

They were simply insufficient for today’s complexity.

Here is the evolution, without noise:

• IQ helped leaders think and analyze
• EQ helped leaders relate and empathize
• CQ (Conscious Quotient) helps leaders choose wisely in ambiguity

CQ is not anti-IQ.
CQ is not anti-EQ.
CQ integrates both and adds awareness.

Conscious leaders pause before reacting.

They notice their biases before deciding.

They balance performance with humanity without diluting standards.

This is not softer leadership.

This is sharper leadership.

Because when systems are complex, people are fatigued, and change is constant-

The most dangerous leader is not the one with low intelligence-

It is the one with low awareness.

The future does not belong to leaders who argue models.

It belongs to leaders who embody the next level of consciousness.

If this perspective unsettles you, reflect quietly.

If it resonates, build it deliberately.

P.S. Awareness is not loud. It does not need to prove itself.

I decided not to pause leadership development when COVID shut the world down.

The real question is: would you have moved forward or waited?

This post is not about what I did.

It is about the leadership choices people make when certainty disappears.

Here is what that phase taught me.

1. Do not suspend growth because conditions are inconvenient.

When classrooms closed, learning did not stop.

We redesigned leadership journeys to work across online and offline realities, without lowering standards.

2. Replace events with journeys.

One-off programs collapsed overnight.

So we built blended learning journeys with live virtual labs, applied projects, and reflection loops that kept leaders engaged and accountable.

3. Accelerate capability when others freeze.

While many organizations paused development, leaders who kept learning built confidence faster than their environment changed.

4. Design for reality, not perfection.

We stopped waiting for “ideal” conditions and created systems that worked inside uncertainty, not outside it.

5. Turn resilience into a muscle, not a slogan.

Confidence did not come from motivation.

It came from leaders seeing themselves adapt, decide, and lead through disruption.

That period reshaped how HumanAlpha works even today. 

Flexible systems.
Blended learning.

Leadership development is designed for disruption, not stability.

Confidence becomes leadership only when action continues in crisis.

If disruption hits again tomorrow, ask yourself honestly:

Would your leadership systems pause…
or would they evolve and move forward anyway?

Transforming a feedback culture does not start with a new form.

It starts with changing how managers think about their role.

This organization had 300 employees.

- Performance reviews were transactional.
- Feedback was episodic.
- Coaching was absent.

Here is what we did:

1. We stopped treating feedback as an annual event.

2. We reframed managers from “reviewers” to “coaches.”

3. We designed a 6-month “Manager as Coach” journey with live leadership labs and micro-coaching pods.

The outcome surprised even the leadership team.

Engagement lifted by 42%.

Not because we introduced fancy tools.

But because managers learned how to listen, reflect, and develop people in real time.

This connects deeply with a habit I have had since 2010.

I work on leadership thinking every single day.

But I do not deploy every idea immediately.

You see, I write constantly.

Insights, reflections, observations from leaders and teams.

Some become frameworks.
Some become coaching conversations.
Some remain quietly refined until the timing is right.

The same principle applies to feedback cultures.

Not every conversation has to be evaluative.
Not every insight needs to be delivered immediately.

Quality reflection beats rushed judgment.

Our rule inside this transformation was simple:

Managers practice daily → Coach deliberately → Review with intent.

That is how feedback stops being transactional and starts becoming developmental.

True leadership cultures are built the same way strong thinking is built.

You practice often.
You apply selectively.
You compound what works.

Question for leaders reading this:

Are your managers trained to evaluate performance or to grow people?

These 3 rhythms changed how leaders execute at scale.

(Read on if you believe performance is built, not chased.)

Over the years, I have seen strategies fail for one simple reason:

There was no execution cadence.

At HumanAlpha, we focus less on motivation and more on repeatable leadership habits.

Here are the three that consistently transform execution and morale.

1. Weekly clarity beats monthly panic

Weekly check-ins create rhythm.

They surface risks early, align priorities, and keep leaders grounded in reality instead of assumptions.

↳ Teams stop firefighting
↳ Managers lead with visibility
↳ Progress becomes predictable

2. Monthly reviews build ownership, not pressure

Monthly cadence shifts conversations from blame to learning.

Leaders review outcomes, not activity.

↳ What moved?
↳ What stalled?
↳ What gets corrected next month?

This is where accountability becomes constructive.

3. Retrospectives plus coaching make learning stick

Retrospectives without coaching create insight but no change.

Coaching without retrospectives lacks context.

Together, they form a powerful loop:

↳ Reflect
↳ Reframe
↳ Practice
↳ Improve

This is how leadership capability compounds.

These rhythms are not complex.
They are consistent.
And that is the point.

Leadership does not fail because people lack intent.

It fails because habits are not designed.

When performance cadences are structured, execution improves, and morale follows.

P.S. If your leadership team is exhausted despite working hard,
the problem is rarely effort.
It is almost always rhythm.

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The Battle

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