The Wisdom to Know the Difference

For most of Tara Rethore’s academic career, she didn’t feel particularly challenged by school. She graduated fifth in her class of 110 at an all-girls college prep school near her home in Connecticut, but she didn’t feel like she had to stretch herself much to do so. Ditto for her first two years of college, when she threw herself into extracurriculars and coursework alike but felt like she wasn’t getting out of the experience what she could. That all changed during her sophomore year when she attended a conference at Mount Holyoke College, a liberal arts college in southwestern Massachusetts that was the first women’s college in the country when it opened its doors in 1837.

Entranced by its history and inspired by the collaborative and innovative community she found there, Tara decided Mount Holyoke was where she needed to be.

“I was doing as much as I could academically, but I thought, ‘I can actually do more. I can be more. I can achieve more if I want to,’” Tara recalls. “I enjoyed it so much that I stopped in the admissions office and said, ‘What would it take?’ I thought about it and spoke about it in a way I never had in my life. I didn’t say, ‘I want to come here. I’d like to enroll.’ I really advocated for myself and said, ‘This is where I want to be. I’d be a good addition. This would be good for both of us. How do we make this happen?’”

Tara earned approval from Mount Holyoke’s admissions office and – perhaps even more critically -- her parents to transfer, and she vowed to make the most of her remaining academic experience. Tara quickly garnered a reputation as a well-liked classmate and trusted leader, as she was selected as a Hall President and founded a campus orientation program for transfer students like herself within her first year on campus.

Her formative experience at Mount Holyoke laid the foundation on which Tara would build a career defined by transformational leadership, first in corporate America and now in her role as Founder and CEO of Strategy for Real™, a strategic advisory, executive coaching and consulting firm that helps CEOs, executives and boards achieve their objectives by turning strategy into action.

“Lots of folks ‘do strategy’,” Tara says. “Most leaders believe you need one of some sort. But a strategy that sits on the shelf or lacks clarity or is held too close to the vest really serves no one, even if it’s elegant. That is what we do, together. I ensure that their strategies are real and actionable. This allows leaders to accelerate performance, to build lasting and meaningful teams, and to establish that underlying operating and organizational foundation that allows executives to sustain their businesses.”

At the heart of Tara’s business is an enduring focus on collaboration and trusted relationships with the executives she helps to navigate the ever-changing business landscape. Informed by her experiences in “big consulting” and the corporate world, Tara has built her own leadership style around the idea that the best outcomes are achieved only when a leader is willing to take the best attributes of each member of their team and meld them to move everyone closer to a shared goal.

“I think strategic leadership is about understanding where you’re headed, what’s needed and what it’s going to take to get there together,” she says. “Fundamentally, it is both individual and collective, and it’s understanding how you put those pieces together to achieve whatever you set out to. My ethos is around, ‘How do we make this work together? What do we each bring to the table, and what do we need to build?’”

The spirit of collaboration is also evident in Tara’s book, Charting the Course: CEO Tools to Align Strategy and Operations, which serves as a go-to reference for aspiring and sitting CEOs facing myriad challenges. Tara co-authored the book, published in 2021, with a former colleague, Catherine Langreney, whose strength is the operations side of business, a skill set that perfectly complemented Tara’s expertise in big-picture, strategic thinking. The result was a companion guide that, while not a one-size-fits-all prescription, helps prompt strategic thinking and spark ideas and problem-solving from multiple angles.

“The sum of those parts and alignment of strategy and operations embedded in the book benefits me, too,” Tara says. “My clients tell me it’s very powerful. Getting the book, discovering what’s in it, and how it works, they realize how it can help both themselves and their teams. Quite a few CEOs have asked: ‘Where was this when I was starting out?’ It’s also an opportunity for conversation, for reference, for providing a value they might not have known they needed. It is the culmination of what Catherine and I have learned and experienced about strategy, operations, and the people who must deliver on objectives.”

Long before she climbed the corporate ladder and counseled fellow executives, Tara got her leadership skills honestly from both her mother and father. Tara was born at Fort Liberty (then Fort Bragg) as her dad served in the Army. The young family moved to New Jersey when, at the urging of an Army general, Tara’s dad elected to pursue a graduate degree at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Her father went on to find success in business himself. Her mother chose a different path – “There were different options and expectations for women, then.” She was equally influential on Tara’s journey. The family moved to the DC suburbs before ultimately settling in Connecticut, and at every juncture, Tara’s mom was determined to give her daughter every opportunity that her sons had.

“There really was still that mindset, at least where I was growing up and the environment I was in, where girls did this and boys did that,” Tara remembers. “Mom never subscribed to the view that I should be limited. She found a way consistently and routinely to help me do whatever it was I wanted to do. If I wanted to play sports and there wasn’t a team, she coached the team. It didn’t matter whether she knew anything about the sport. She figured it out so that I, and other girls, could do it.”

Tara filled her time with a variety of activities, her interests spanning from sports to music to literature. She also babysat and worked odd jobs, the most impactful of which was a stint in the YMCA Leaders Program. The volunteer role allowed her the opportunity to meet children and peers from different backgrounds than her own, and she began to hone her leadership skills by teaching classes on a variety of subjects, only some of which she had any actual expertise in.

“As a parent, I think back and say, ‘Good heavens, parents were paying for kids to teach their kids how to tumble, how to do pottery,’” Tara reminisces with a laugh. “I wasn’t skilled at those things. I checked out a book from the library with my friend, and we learned and taught the class. People were paying for us to do this! But it was very empowering. It was a lot of fun. It was a great community. It was a terrific opportunity, an opportunity that was equal for girls and boys. It was like, ‘Oh, girls can be leaders, too.’”

Tara commuted by train to a high school in Connecticut that she says afforded her a solid education, but not one that opened myriad doors when it came to college choices. She ultimately landed at Mount Holyoke studying quantitative economics, however, and it helped launch her into a job at a small, family-run investment management firm on the buy-side of Wall Street directly out of school, where her leadership skills continued to become evident.

“I came in at a supervisory level right out of college because that’s the job they had,” Tara says. “The hiring manager took a chance on me. She said, ‘You’re smart. You work hard. You’ve got the fundamentals, and you’ll figure out the rest of it.’”

Like her father, Tara’s career took a turn when she earned admission to one of the country’s top business schools: University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. She enrolled at Chicago Booth with eyes on becoming a corporate treasurer, but she quickly realized that was not a path she’d enjoy, and ultimately studied International Finance and Strategy.

“I discovered what corporate treasurers really do and decided that wasn’t for me,” Tara says. “I’m a big-picture thinker. I don’t enjoy the details. I had jobs that were detail-oriented that made me crazy. Can I handle the details? One hundred percent yes, of course. I have to. Do I like it? No, I do not.”

Tara immediately put her graduate degree to work with a position on strategy teams in the international and domestic oil and gas divisions of Atlantic Richfield Company before securing a consulting role at Arthur D. Little. She found her work with both companies fascinating and cherished the opportunity to travel the globe and assist clients in keeping abreast of the shifting natural gas industry.

By this time, however, Tara was married with young children, and all the time spent in far-flung destinations around the world took a toll.

“I wanted to be more present,” Tara says. “I didn’t wait as long as I did in life to have children and have a family to see them raised by someone else, even if the someone else is my husband who is perfectly capable. I was missing too much, so I made a change.”

The change, as it turns out, was stepping out on her own. In 2001, with her husband Glen in graduate school and a young family to feed, Tara began her entrepreneurial journey by doing any and all consulting work she could get her hands on.

The change was also emblematic of a larger shift for Tara, as family took center stage. She focused more on her relationships with those she loved and the memories she could make with them. This view guided her professional choices and daily actions to be both a good mom and effective executive.

“That was from my mother,” Tara says. “Dad was the traditional breadwinner; Mom led the household. She also worked and later, built her own career. But family always came first. Now, I find that I’m decreasingly attached to things. Not that things aren’t important in terms of the memories they provoke, both good and bad. But there is no one thing that I value more than anything else. It’s the relationship, the experience, the learning that matters.”

Tara’s first go at running her own business was not as she expected. She found herself straying from her strengths, focused more on the necessity of making ends meet for her family than on doing work she found fulfilling and catered to her unique skill set. She missed collaborating with colleagues and the ability to work exclusively in the areas where she could provide the most value.

The desire to once again be part of a team led Tara back to her final role within the corporate world, a Vice President position at Lafarge North America. This role brought Tara and her family to the Northern Virginia area in the midst of parallel job hunts. The pair relied on each other immensely for support during the tumultuous transition period, including welcoming a new baby to their family within weeks of relocating.

It was a manifestation of the promise they’d made to each other in their wedding vows: to be a true partnership that reflected the best attributes of both.

“We both welcomed having people who appreciated how the other thought and understood how the other contributed greatly to the partnership,” Tara recalls. “I think I balance him at times. Glen’s very grounded in what’s possible. He provides a steady, largely even-keeled, and thoughtful presence. I’m always thinking of what could be. I’m a strategist. We create a nice combination, not unlike when you align strategy and operations. It’s that balance between what could be and what is.”

Tara ultimately stepped away from Lafarge after effectively working herself out of a job, helping usher through a merger with the corporation’s French-owned parent company that eliminated the necessity of she and her team. Unwilling to uproot her family yet again for another corporate job in a different locale, Tara again struck out on her own, this time determined to do it her way.

And do it her way she has for the past 18 years, shifting her focus over time from a consulting, project-centric model to her preferred work of strategic advisory and executive coaching and mentorship. Tara’s own experiences, from transferring to Mount Holyoke when she didn’t feel academically challenged to pursuing opportunities in both corporate America and as her own boss as circumstances evolved, inform the advice she offers to young people entering the working world today: few decisions are permanent, and it’s never too late to make the change that will unlock your potential.

“There are few things that truly constitute a life-altering decision,” Tara says. “The decisions you make right now about a career, while it can put you on a path or a trajectory that may look good to you at the moment, it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to be the only path you take forward. It may feel like a life decision. In fact, many things feel like a life decision because you care and they’re important in the moment. And it matters. But if you make a decision that proves to be suboptimal, learn from it, figure out what’s changed. Then make a new decision. Be open to the exploration of other options.”

Tara credits her adaptability in large part to her mother, who always emphasized the importance of living without regret. She traces her business acumen and direction to her father. But equally attributable to both parents is the trait that may be most valuable of all: a relentless work ethic and determination to be the best at whatever she sets out to do.

For high achievers such as Tara and the executives she counsels, though, just as important is knowing when to step back, trust the strategy you’ve carefully developed and relinquish the illusion of control over aspects of business that cannot actually be controlled – even by those in the corner office. She often cites a line from “The Serenity Prayer,” hoping that both she and her clients have “the wisdom to know the difference.”

“In business, strategy is ongoing, active,” Tara says. “Unless someone hands me a crystal ball, there are things I will not know. There are things a team and business won’t know. Furthermore, there are things we don’t control. You don’t control what your competitors do or what your customers do. You control how you respond to things that happen or how you influence outcomes. The wisdom does come from knowing the difference. What part of this do we control, and what part of it do we not? That wisdom, that understanding of what you can control and what you cannot, is foundational.”