About Us

About Metaphase Management

Metaphase Management helps individuals, businesses and communities navigate the path from idea to impact. We coach individuals and companies to define clear direction, design and develop leadership , build teams, consider new types of business models and use new tools to track and report operations.

People are our focus, especially at times of transition such as promotion, retirement or peer-level shifts, company redesign, job or role elimination, succession planning, and functional team collaborations. We work with board members and management to align expectations and directions.

We emphasize processes not to-do lists . We encourage approaches that balance personal, business, community, inspirational and environmental considerations. Understanding that a culture focused on competitive financial performance alone leads to burnout, we incorporate additional factors of wellbeing in setting goald for successful performance.

Founder Susan Mills has, over four decades, guided more than 200 companies and programs from first idea through growth and market leadership, and along the way saw the human cost of pursuing financial performance only. That experience shapes every engagement.

Specialties

Strategy & Planning

Strategic PlanningMarket PositionBusiness PlansScenario PlanningInvestment & Funding

Relationships & Community

PartnershipsCommunity DevelopmentTeambuildingFacilitationCoaching

Operations & Innovation

OperationsBrand CommunicationsCrisis ManagementCircular EconomyGift EconomySocial Impact
Susan Mills

Susan Mills, Founder & CEO

I have been a business companion to information technology entrepreneurs and community initiatives for over four decades. During times of shifting world and technology dynamics, I’ve helped over 200 companies and programs introduce themselves and grow to achieve operating impact. Frequently, my multi-year engagements helped a client mature from the pre-funded concept stage through IPO and market leadership.

Today, the stakes are much higher than competitive dominance. Success will be defined in deeper and broader terms that build humanity’s collective thriving. Rewards will go to decision-makers who integrate business, personal, world, environmental and spiritual perspectives in order to create lasting value and build trustworthiness.

I seek to support those who are challenged by these times and are trying to understand their role in and through this uncertainty. The pressures of AI, climate change, wealth/money chaos, political polarities, family needs, and other complexities can be overwhelming. I want to help individuals deal with disorder and contradictions so they can act in empowered ways they find rewarding.

My coaching and planning work is selective. It is applicable to those in diverse markets, industries and communities. For both individuals and companies, our work together will re-examine approaches to leadership, service and product offers, business models, financial flows, competitor/collaborator relationships and performance tracking and evaluation.

During our engagement, we will acknowledge the complexities at hand and focus on practical and applicable decision-making given this context. This process encompasses articulation of purpose that is translated into practical clarity and alignment regarding roles, responsibilities, outcomes and adaptations, perhaps even new business planning and position.

Background

Metaphase Management, a business and community consultancy with a specialization in executive coaching, focuses on balancing financial, social, family, spiritual and environmental aspects of business and personal life. Founded in 2007, it is the scaled-down successor to TMP, Technology Marketing Partners, my global management consulting firm.

From 1987 to 2005, TMP provided market positioning, partnership and product strategies to over 200 companies as the global communications market moved from analog to digital networks. Notable work included AT&T/Lucent, CLAL Industries, Polycom, Telcordia, IBM, Siemens, Cisco and Northern Telecom. From 1987 to 1990 I served as the inaugural Director of Marketing for venture-funded Aristacom International, which helped inaugurate the market category of computer/telephony. Between 1990 and 2000 I was an active leader in the US industry associations that developed the computer/telephony markets, standards, partnerships and investments.

Education

MBA, Business/Marketing, Saint Mary’s College of California

BA, Economics, Centre College