Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast, identifies Ankur Ahlowalia’s growth playbook as an allocation decision rather than a hiring plan. When a company must grow while holding expenses down, Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus and previously CEO of Korbyt, holds that exponential growth does not require exponential expense, because rule of 40 and rule of 60 style measures now set company value and demand both growth and efficiency at once. His method on entering any company is fixed: identify the talent already there, fill gaps only where they exist, then empower the top performers with more scope and more opportunity to reach acceleration without heavy spending.
This episode is for CEOs and executives carrying growth targets alongside efficiency targets, who are being asked to expand output without expanding the cost base to match.
Key Takeaways
- Exponential growth and exponential expense are not linked, and current valuation measures make that explicit. Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, points to rule of 40 and rule of 60 style metrics as the reason a company must grow and run efficiently at the same time.
- The playbook starts with an inventory of existing talent, not a hiring plan. Ankur Ahlowalia’s approach on entering a company is to identify the talent present, bring people in only where there are gaps, and then scale with the people already there.
- Acceleration comes from giving top performers more room. Ankur Ahlowalia empowers his top talent and gives them more opportunities, which he describes as a faster path to acceleration without spending a lot.
- Foundation work precedes problem solving, and skipping it costs time later. Ankur Ahlowalia says leaders taking a new role dive straight into problem solving and later wish they had stepped back to confirm the right people were in the right roles and the culture was right.
- Disciplined qualification is a system, not a talent. At Saba Software, Ankur Ahlowalia built battle cards, playbooks, and a win-loss review loop that took win rates above 70 percent and made a two-year seller qualify the same way as a twenty-five-year enterprise veteran.
CEOs Break the Assumption That Growing Revenue Requires Growing the Cost Base
Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, names the assumption directly: people naturally think that if a company is growing exponentially, its expenses should grow exponentially. His position is that this is not necessarily true, and the market has already stopped rewarding it.
The reason sits in how companies are now valued. Ankur Ahlowalia cites the rule of 40 and rule of 60, measures that combine growth rate with profitability, as what dictates a company’s value in the current environment. Under a measure that adds growth and margin together, growth purchased with proportional spending nets out to nothing. The leader is required to grow and to run the company efficiently at the same time, which makes the two goals a single problem rather than a trade-off to negotiate.
His answer is stated as a fixed sequence he applies in every company he takes over:
- Identify the talent already in the company.
- Bring talent in only where there are actual gaps.
- Scale with the people who are already there.
- Empower the top performers with more scope and more opportunity.
Ankur Ahlowalia frames step four as where the acceleration comes from: taking top talent, empowering them more, giving them more opportunities, and finding a faster path forward without having to spend a lot. He also notes he applied the same pattern to his own career, taking on more and more responsibility and getting more efficient, which is the behavior he is now creating room for in others.
CEOs Redirect Their Own Time From Underperformers to the People Who Move the Numbers
Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, treats the leader’s attention as the scarce resource that determines whether the top-performer strategy works. Empowering top talent is not a policy the organization implements. It requires the CEO’s own hours, which means those hours have to come from somewhere.
Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, names where they usually go instead, and says he does not hear Ankur Ahlowalia’s philosophy often. Most executives spend disproportionate time on underperforming direct reports: working out what to do with them, deciding whether to replace them, coaching and mentoring them. The people who will make the difference receive what Glenn Gow calls TLC, meaning mentorship from the CEO, and they are the ones who get least of it.
Ankur Ahlowalia’s foundational conviction supports the reallocation. He says leaders taking on a new role tend to dive straight into problem solving without paying attention to whether the right people are in the right roles and whether the culture is right, then look back and wish they had taken that step first. He calls talent and culture foundation number one, and recommends that any first-time manager or aspiring leader build that skill before anything else. Glenn Gow’s version of the same idea is that a CEO’s most important job is building a leadership team rather than a management team, meaning people who can grow and run their own organizations.
Ankur Ahlowalia extends the logic to retention, answering the objection that developing people makes them leaveable: his view is that people who are developed, given room to grow, and given opportunity will not leave.
CEOs Raise Output Without Adding Headcount by Systemizing What Their Best Sellers Already Do
Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, built the clearest example of doing more with less during Saba Software’s transition from on-premise software to cloud, a period when the company had to build its own cloud infrastructure before AWS was an option and was racing competitors for market share in learning management.
The mechanism he installed was a closed loop rather than a set of tools:
| Component | What it does | Effect on output |
| Sales enablement and playbooks | Trains sellers to articulate differentiators consistently | Removes the variance between what a strong seller and a new seller say in the same situation |
| Battle cards per competitor | Gives every rep the competitive position for each named opponent | Makes competitive knowledge an asset of the company rather than of individual veterans |
| Win review | After a win, sellers are retrained on the specific structure, pitch, and price that produced it | Converts a single win into a repeatable pattern others can execute |
| Loss review | After a loss, the team examines why, so the mistake is not repeated | Produces incremental improvement rather than repeated failure across the team |
Ankur Ahlowalia reports Saba reached win rates north of 70 percent at one point through that loop, and credits then-CEO Shawn Farshchi, whom he names as a mentor, with making win rate the focal point across the company.
The qualification discipline is what makes the system efficient rather than merely organized. Glenn Gow raised the point directly, asking whether this also means becoming world class at qualifying, and Ankur Ahlowalia agreed, framing it with a baseball rule his team used: you do not swing at every pitch. Strong sellers do that instinctively. The system exists for everyone else, and its result is that a two-year seller and a twenty-five-year enterprise veteran qualify the same way, declining the deals the company cannot win. That is capacity created without hiring anyone.
CEOs Act as Change Agents in Every Phase, Coaching to the Moment Rather Than the Vision
Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, describes the constant across every stage of a company’s life as the leader’s role rather than the leader’s plan. His formulation is that a CEO must consistently be an effective change agent at every phase of the journey, never resting on their laurels, because a company changing its trajectory is breaking silos and bad habits and reconstructing itself.
What he has adjusted with experience is the delivery. Ankur Ahlowalia describes bringing the relevant experience and coaching for what the executive is going through in that particular moment, rather than talking about everything else he knows. He calls it situational leadership: getting into the weeds with the person on the current problem, instead of restating a big vision that is needed but does not move the immediate work.
The transition he is running at Chronus is the live test. Chronus is moving to an AI-native platform, and Ankur Ahlowalia has appointed a chief AI officer to deepen how data and human connection drive business performance. His account of what needs to change is comprehensive: how customers are serviced, how products are created and supported, the operations behind them, and pricing and packaging. His account of the human reality is equally direct, that employees are nervous at times about how their jobs will change.
His approach to that is to make the transition personally beneficial rather than institutionally necessary. Ankur Ahlowalia’s message to the team is that as the company marches toward AI, employees grow their own skills and get to build an AI company from the ground up, which he calls a tremendous experience. Staying high energy and functioning as a cheerleader is part of the job description he assigns himself, alongside the coaching in the moment.
Principles CEOs Will Apply From This Episode
| Principle | Practice | Named outcome evidence |
| Growth and expense are decoupled by design | Treat efficiency-adjusted valuation measures as a constraint on how growth is funded, not as a separate finance concern | Ankur Ahlowalia names rule of 40 and rule of 60 style metrics as what dictates company value now, and runs the same top-performer playbook at Chronus that he ran as CEO of Korbyt |
| Inventory the talent before writing the hiring plan | On entering a company, identify who is already there, fill only real gaps, then scale through the people present | Ankur Ahlowalia applies this as his fixed entry playbook in every company he leads, including his current transformation of Chronus into an AI-native platform |
| Move the leader’s hours to the top performers | Reclaim the disproportionate time spent deciding what to do with underperformers and redirect it into mentoring the people producing results | Glenn Gow reports that most CEOs he works with spend their time inverted on this, and identifies Ankur Ahlowalia’s allocation as one he rarely hears from executives |
| Systemize what strong sellers do instinctively | Build battle cards, playbooks, and a win-loss review loop so qualification discipline does not depend on individual tenure | Saba Software reached win rates north of 70 percent under this loop, with win rate made the company-wide focal point by then-CEO Shawn Farshchi |
| Coach to the moment, not to the vision | Bring the specific relevant experience for what the executive is facing right now rather than restating the strategy | Ankur Ahlowalia applies this while taking Chronus through an AI transformation that changes servicing, product creation, support, operations, and pricing at once |
Quotes from This Episode
- “You don’t swing at every pitch.” Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO, Chronus
- “You learn from your losses, don’t replicate the mistakes.” Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO, Chronus
- “I always view companies I lead as … a professional sports team.” Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO, Chronus
- “If you develop your people and you … give them opportunity to grow, they won’t leave.” Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO, Chronus
- “You always have to be an effective change agent, never rest on your laurels.” Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO, Chronus
Frequently Asked Questions
How can a company grow revenue without growing expenses at the same rate?
Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, told Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and a CEO for 25 years, that the assumption linking exponential growth to exponential expense is false, and that rule of 40 and rule of 60 style measures now require a company to grow and run efficiently at once. His playbook on entering any company is to identify the talent already present, hire only into genuine gaps, and then scale through the people who are there. Ahlowalia’s acceleration comes from empowering top performers with more scope and more opportunity rather than from adding headcount.
Where should a CEO spend time: with underperformers or top performers?
Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, concentrates his attention on top performers, and Glenn Gow notes that he rarely hears this philosophy from executives. Most CEOs spend disproportionate time on underperforming direct reports, deciding whether to replace them and attempting to coach them, while the people who will make the difference receive the least mentorship. Ahlowalia also rejects the concern that developing people makes them likely to leave, holding that employees given growth and opportunity stay.
How do you improve sales results without hiring more salespeople?
Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO at Chronus, built a closed loop at Saba Software combining sales enablement, playbooks, competitor battle cards, and structured review of both wins and losses, which took win rates above 70 percent. After each win the team retrained reps on the specific deal structure, pitch, and price that produced it, and after each loss they examined why. The qualification discipline is what creates capacity: his team’s rule was that you do not swing at every pitch, and the system made a two-year seller qualify the same way as a twenty-five-year enterprise veteran.
CEOs Work With Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Their Own Capability
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits, drawing on 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
