Sometimes what a leader needs isn't a consultant. It's someone who's actually been there.
I've sat in the chair. I know what it feels like to be the leader in the room asking people to do something different, and to live with the consequences when that goes well and when it doesn't.
That practitioner's perspective is what I bring to advisory relationships. Not a methodology. Not a framework billed by the hour. A thinking partner who has genuinely navigated what you're navigating.
Who I work with:
I work with leaders at all levels who are navigating organizational complexity and want a thought partner with real inside experience. Leaders who are honest enough to ask: what am I missing? What might I be getting wrong? Who can I think out loud with, without it going anywhere?
What this looks like in practice:
- Ongoing advisory relationships with individual leaders
- Change readiness assessment and planning
- Innovation capability building and senior coaching for innovation leaders
- Stakeholder engagement and communication strategy
- Post-merger and acquisition culture work
- Executive team facilitation and alignment
What it doesn't look like:
A long engagement with a big deliverable at the end. I work lightly and directly. The value is in the conversation, not the deck.
Four times the business in twelve months. After the idea was turned down.
I was covering about ten branches for a bank's ultra-high net worth segment. At almost every one, someone would quietly ask whether I had a few minutes for a customer who didn't fit the profile. Someone who had sold a house. Someone who had just retired. People with real money in front of them and real decisions to make, and nobody at branch level who felt equipped to help them.
I proposed dedicating branch staff to those customers. The district executive told me it was a fine idea that would never work. It ran counter to strategy. That was the end of it.
I didn't go around him. I just kept talking about it, until I found people inside the bank's own mutual fund company wrestling with the same gap from the other side. They would fund the roles if we delivered four times the previous year's volume in twelve months.
We didn't get there by teaching people to sell. We built their capability to advise, and we recognised every contribution publicly and by name, down to the teller who spotted the opening.
We finished the year at more than four times the original size, with no added headcount. Other regions asked how. We told them everything, and the model spread because people chose to copy it.
A note for boards, CHROs, and executive teams.
Sometimes the most useful conversation about an executive is the one happening around them, not with them.
In my experience, senior leaders rarely lose effectiveness all at once. It happens gradually. Titles arrive, deference follows, calendars get protected, meetings get filtered, and slowly the leader loses access to the honest input that would have kept them sharp. By the time the pattern is visible from the outside, the leader is often the last person in the building who can see it.
If you're a board member, a CHRO, an executive team member, or a chief of staff watching this pattern develop in someone you care about — or in your own organization — that's a situation I know how to help with. The work is delicate, but it isn't mysterious. It starts with creating the conditions for honest input to reach the leader again, and then with helping the leader rebuild the inquiry habits that ascent typically erodes.
I'm available to management consulting firms, HR advisory practices, and organizational development consultancies as a senior resource for client engagements. If you have a client navigating complex change or a leadership development challenge and you need someone with deep practitioner experience and a track record of senior-level engagement, reach out.
Let's TalkStart a Conversation
Share what you're navigating and Keith will reach out personally.