Leadership & Organisational Consultancy

There are questions that sit above the individual and below the strategy — questions about how the leadership team is actually functioning, whether the right people are in the right roles, and whether the cultural habits of the organisation are helping or hindering the results it is trying to produce. These are the questions the consultancy work is designed to address.

Unlike coaching, which is led by the individual's own agenda, consultancy involves diagnosis, observation, and recommendation. The practice brings an external view, asks the questions that insiders find it difficult to ask honestly, and produces a clear account of what is going on and what might usefully change.

What the consultancy covers

Senior leadership team effectiveness

Most SLTs function adequately. A smaller number function well. The difference is rarely about the individuals — it is about the patterns of interaction the team has developed, often unconsciously, over years. Common patterns we see include: a dominant voice that closes down genuine debate; a surface consensus that masks unresolved disagreements; an over-reliance on the CEO to make decisions the team should be making collectively; and a meeting cadence that prioritises updates over thinking.

The SLT effectiveness work typically starts with individual conversations with each team member (confidential and separate), followed by observation of real team meetings, and then a facilitated half-day session where the diagnostic findings are presented and the team works through them together. The output is a set of specific, agreed changes to how the team operates — not a culture document, but real adjustments to meeting design, communication norms, and decision-making process.

Succession planning and pipeline development

Most organisations do not have a serious succession plan. They have a list of names and a general intention that something will be sorted out when the time comes. The consultancy work in this area is about building something more substantial: a clear picture of who is genuinely ready for what, what the gaps are, and what the organisation needs to do in the next twelve to thirty-six months to close them.

This often involves structured assessments (conversation-based, not psychometric), honest conversations with the candidates themselves about their readiness and ambitions, and a set of development actions that are specific enough to be tracked. It is not a comfortable process — genuine succession work requires naming the gaps, including the ones that no one is saying out loud — but it is a great deal less disruptive than arriving at the moment of transition without a plan.

Culture and performance alignment

Culture is not the values statement on the wall. It is the set of behaviours the organisation actually rewards and tolerates, the things that get people promoted and the things that get them quietly sidelined, the stories that get told about who succeeded and why. When an organisation's results are not matching its ambitions, the reason is usually somewhere in there.

The culture diagnostic work involves interviews across levels of the organisation, analysis of the patterns in what we hear, and a structured feedback session with the senior leadership team. The aim is to give leaders a clear, honest account of the cultural dynamics that are limiting performance — and a specific set of leadership behaviour changes that would shift them. The focus is always on what leaders can do differently, not on a whole-organisation change programme.

Post-merger and post-restructure integration

When two organisations merge or a business undergoes a significant restructure, the technical work of integration usually gets handled. The leadership work — helping two leadership cultures find a working relationship, addressing the inevitable anxieties and territorial instincts, building a shared language for how decisions will be made — often does not. The practice has done this work with a range of organisations and the approach is always the same: get both sides talking honestly, find the genuine common ground, and design a set of practical integration actions that the combined leadership team can commit to.

Our approach

The consultancy work is not managed from a distance. Sally is the practitioner throughout — not a senior partner who attaches their name to work done by a junior team. Engagements involve direct contact from start to finish.

The approach is diagnostic before it is prescriptive. We take the time to understand what is actually happening before suggesting what should change. Organisations are complex, and presenting recommendations without a genuine understanding of the context is usually a waste of everyone's time.

We work with a small number of organisations at any one time. That limits the volume of consultancy engagements we take on, but it means the work is done properly.

Typical outcomes

At the end of a consultancy engagement, client organisations typically report:

• A clearer, more honest account of what the leadership team's actual strengths and limitations are
• Specific changes to meeting design, communication norms, or decision processes that the team has agreed to and is implementing
• A succession plan with named development actions, not just named successors
• Senior leaders who feel they have been given a genuine outside view, rather than a facilitated conversation that avoided the difficult things

The measure of a consultancy engagement is not a report. It is whether the organisation is making better decisions six months after the work ends.

Starting a consultancy conversation

If you are trying to work out whether consultancy or coaching is the right fit for your organisation, the How We Can Help page is the best starting point. You can also look at the The Team page for more on the practice's background and experience.

To talk it through directly, email [email protected]. The introductory conversation is confidential and free.

You may also want to look at our Leadership Training & Workshops — some organisations find that a combination of consultancy and facilitated group training produces the most lasting results.