Company
Built for stability.
Group 18 takes its name from the eighteenth column of the periodic table: the noble gases, the elements that hold their structure under pressure. It is what the firm is engaged to build.
The firm
Enterprise-grade design, applied where it was never available.
Group 18 was founded on the observation that the organizational thinking available to a five-billion-dollar company was unavailable to the companies most in need of it: operators that had tripled in size, often more than once, without ever redesigning how they worked.
The firm's practitioners come from the leadership of scaled technology and financial companies. They work in small, senior teams, embedded with the client's leaders, and measure every engagement against a financial model the client keeps.
- Founded
- 2019
- Offices
- Austin, New York, London, Singapore
Principles
How we think.
- 01
Systems over goals
Organizations fall to the level of their systems, not rise to the level of their goals. Group 18 builds the structure, processes, roles, tools, and rituals that determine outcomes, rather than setting more ambitious targets for a design that cannot deliver them.
- 02
Design problems, not people problems
Good people in a bad system produce bad outcomes. Performance issues are treated first as evidence about the design, and the environment around capable people is changed before the people are.
- 03
Transparency as foundation
What cannot be seen cannot be solved. Every engagement begins by making the invisible visible through diagnostics, interviews, financial modeling, and direct conversation, before any solution is proposed.
- 04
Effectiveness before efficiency
Doing the right things precedes doing things well. Group 18 does not optimize a process that should not exist, and asks first whether the work and its systems are pointed at the right outcomes.
- 05
Practical design
The best system is the one the organization will actually use. Rather than installing a generic framework, each design fits the culture, the people, and the constraints it has to survive in. Adoption is the measure, not elegance.
Leadership
Senior practitioners.
-
Kevin Noble
Founder and Managing Partner
A mechanical engineer by training, Kevin spent a decade at Atlassian scaling teams from two people to 135 as the company grew to a $5B valuation, following earlier roles at Ford Motor Company, in electronics manufacturing, and in warehouse management software. He founded Group 18 to bring enterprise-grade organizational design to companies that had never had access to it.
-
Anna Appell
Partner, Transformation
Anna leads engagements where strategy has to become operating reality. She spent more than eight years at Atlassian, rising to Head of Enterprise Transformation, after six years at Dimensional Fund Advisors, and brings over twelve years of translating strategic intent into measurable outcomes.
-
Nick Garcia
Partner, Analytics and Financial Modeling
Nick leads the financial modeling and quantitative practice. He spent nearly ten years at Atlassian as Principal Business Objective Manager, following roles at Edgeworth Economics and the World Bank, and combines economics with the analytics that make organizational decisions measurable.
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Lauren Nolen
Partner, Programs
Lauren leads cross-functional programs and the embedded partnership model. Her fifteen years in financial services and technology include four at Atlassian leading cross-functional programs and a decade at Dimensional Fund Advisors.
Portrait photography is not included in this concept.
Work with Group 18.
Engagements begin with a conversation about where the design is failing and what it costs, not with a pitch.