Advisory
I fix what isn’t working.
I work as a defined project or from inside your business for a set period.
Leadership assessment
When a decision rests on your senior people (an appointment, a promotion, an acquisition or a restructure), you need evidence on them that will stand up to scrutiny. I start with a scorecard of what the role has to deliver and check that the role is set up to succeed, so that nobody mistakes a poorly designed role for a poorly performing executive. Each person then completes a validated psychometric assessment, a structured interview against the scorecard and, where access allows, conversations with the people around them.
You get a judgement against each scorecard and a clear account of the risk, written for the people making the decision. Every executive receives feedback on their own results. For private equity owners, I run this as leadership due diligence before signing, or as a team assessment timed to feed the 100-day plan.
You deal with me from the scorecard to the readout, I’m accredited in every instrument I use, and because I don’t run executive search, there’s no placement riding on what I tell you.
From Using Psychometrics Like a Grown-Up
Is this snake-oil? Three checks for any assessment
What does it say it measures?Ask for a technical manual or peer-reviewed documentation that defines it clearly.
Do results change dramatically?Aim for reliability around .80 or higher. Below .70 is usually too noisy.
Does it link to what it claims to measure?Look for validity of .30 or more before relying on it for important people decisions.
Hiring
The conversational interview most managers default to predicts job performance less than half as well as a structured one, and the difference comes down to things your managers control: questions drawn from the job, a rating scale, and scoring before the debate starts. I adapt a hiring guide, scorecard and question bank to your roles and values, and run a two-hour workshop that gets your hiring managers using them.
Leadership development
Leadership capability builds over time, so I design development as a modular journey, with each module building on the one before and practice and feedback in between, from first-time managers up to senior leaders. The first stage, the First-Time Manager Programme, gives people stepping up from doing the work to running a team three days on the role itself, getting results through others, and the conversations most new managers put off. I can deliver each stage, or train your own facilitators to run it.
Talent processes
Succession plans, high-potential lists and performance reviews decide who gets developed and promoted, and most of them rest on thinner evidence than the people using them assume. I redesign them so the decisions they produce are ones you can explain and defend.
Organisation design
Structures, roles and reporting lines that fit the work you need done, with a clear job architecture underneath, built with Korn Ferry or Mercer methods (I’m certified in both). The result is the right people in roles that make sense, at a cost you can justify, with pay and promotion decisions that rest on something people understand.
Fractional people leadership
Some of this works better from the inside. I can act as your senior people lead for a set period, typically while you build the function or recruit a permanent hire, and leave behind processes your team can run without me. For start-ups and growing businesses building a people function for the first time, it’s usually the efficient route: the essentials in place, and nothing you’ll have to unpick later.