W · What I do

Two ways
to work.

I work as a mentor to the CHRO and as an advisor to senior HR teams. Both are intentionally narrow: find the few things that drive value, then hold the line on getting them done.

I.Mentor to the CHRO II.Advisor to senior HR teams III.How it works
I.

01 · Mentorship

As a mentor to the CHRO.

A confidential, regular conversation with a senior peer who has done your job, in companies your size, and is no longer trying to prove anything.

For whom
  • First-time CHROs settling into the seat
  • Experienced CHROs who want a senior counterpart
  • CHROs carrying a people agenda the CEO and business must back
  • Senior HR leaders facing the lonelier parts of the role
What we work on
  • Your relationship with the CEO
  • Your standing in the executive committee
  • The credibility of your HR leadership team
  • The few people priorities that will visibly move the business
  • How to prepare for the meetings that matter
  • When to push, when to wait, and how to spend capital with the CEO
How it works
  • Monthly sessions of around ninety minutes
  • In person or by video
  • A written note after each session
  • Available on short notice between sessions
  • Where it helps your effectiveness, direct engagement with the CEO
What you get
  • A counterpart outside the company
  • Judgment from someone who has lived the role before
  • Help distinguishing signal from noise
  • A place to think aloud without performing certainty

“The first eighteen months tend to decide whether you become a strategic peer at the top table or the executive in charge of process.

II.

02 · Advisory

As an advisor to senior HR teams.

A short, intense engagement to help a CHRO and their leadership team translate the company's strategy into an HR plan worth the paper it is written on.

For whom
  • CHROs and their leadership teams
  • Senior HR teams with too many priorities
  • Functions that need to reconnect their work to business value
  • Teams preparing or resetting an enterprise people agenda
What we work on
  • Which roles actually move the numbers
  • Which capabilities are missing
  • Which behaviours have to change
  • What the function should stop doing
  • How strategy translates into manager deliverables
The format
  • Engagements sized to the challenge, not to a template
  • Some resolve in a single workshop that ends an argument
  • Some require six weeks of intensive work
  • Some become longer CHRO relationships over a year or more
  • Outputs designed to be used, not admired
The output
  • An HR plan with five or six items, not fifty
  • A sharper view of where value concentrates
  • Clearer choices about what to stop
  • A leadership team with a shared argument

“We work backwards from value: which roles move the numbers, which capabilities are missing, which behaviours have to change, and what the function should stop doing.

03 · How it works

Sized to what the challenge needs.

01.

A first conversation

Sixty minutes, free, no deck. Enough to understand the situation, the stakes, and whether the work belongs in a mentoring relationship, an HR-team engagement, or nowhere at all.

02.

A simple shape

If there is a fit, the shape follows the problem: a workshop, a six-week intensive, monthly mentoring, or a longer relationship with the CHRO.

03.

The work

We focus on the few things that decide performance, not the full inventory of HR activity. The aim is judgment, priority and movement.

04.

A written note

In mentoring work, each session is followed by a written note. In team advisory, the output is the usable plan: five or six items that can survive contact with the business.

04 · The principle

Less activity. More consequence.

A.

Value first

A company exists to be relevant to customers and create value for stakeholders. Everything else is a means to that end, or a distraction.

How I think →
B.

Managers as leverage

Strategy lands or fails in what managers do every day with the people who report to them. In most companies, this is where the largest value sits unclaimed.

Read the convictions →
C.

No silver bullet

Most tools on the market are solutions in search of a problem. What managers and their people need is a small number of honest conversations.

Start a conversation →

05 · Begin

A first conversation is free:
sixty minutes, no deck.

Begin a conversation