The Volante’s Switch it Up

Headline! Willow will not be the CEO anymore. David will be the CEO. This is a good thing for us! You can expect more of Willow online, and very little will change from the outside of our company. 

A statement from Willow on the change: 

I have held the title of CEO of Volante Design for 11 years, give or take. I’ve been really proud to carry that title and to lead. I am immensely proud of this small company that we’ve built, and especially the people who have helped make it happen. 

I recently wrote a three year plan for Volante design, because someone smart and demanding in my team said, “What the fuck, you seem to be working on the day to day stuff—what’s next?” I had to pause and step back and do some thinking. I was out to lunch. As always, this astute person got some element of the situation spot on. I wrote the three year vision and it sounds good, but I’ve since realized it’s not the right thing to do. It’s attractive in certain places, and I think there are some great ideas in there that I’d like to harvest and repurpose, and I think I’m starting to get clearer about what’s next. 

I have been the CEO that this company needed for many years. I am good under pressure, and I am focused and dedicated when forging a new path. During Covid I was dogged and made sure that all our staff had the opportunity to work, and I am super proud of how we as a small team handled that change. It was fascinating work to figure out how things work and to build new ways of thinking and doing things. Now, however, Volante Design needs something different. Sometimes I get so caught up in ideas of how we could change things that I make it harder for the good people who are “making the donuts” and doing the important daily work. 

I want to go back to doing some of those daily important things. 

I am not always a good structure maker; I can identify problems and solutions like a motherfucker, but I am not the gal who will make it repeatable. I am not on the Operations team. I can’t think like that. I can write you a story, but it’ll be different every time. That’s what’s fun for me, but if I try to make our organization different every time, it’ll be really distracting and destructive.

After lots of talking and thinking, we’ve decided that David will be the CEO moving forwards. He is an amazing systems builder. Every morning he makes the perfect fried egg three times: one for me and two for him. He nails it 95% of the time. He is the guy for this phase of our company; it’s a phrase that requires steady growth and nailing what we are good at each and every time. At this point we’ve explored and tried enough stuff that we know what works for us and what doesn’t, and I’m not going to help anyone by trying to re-invent it once again. We need to get consistent. 

I will be unleashed into marketing, socials specifically, where I can write and make our products look pretty, fresh, and different in each new space. I can’t wait to be making stuff again.