The Executive Thinking Partnership
The decisions that carry the most consequence are the ones you have been making with no one to think them through with.
You were brought in because you can see what needs to happen. And most of your week goes on everything but that. The politics. The same problems coming back. Making the case, again, for what you already know is right.
By the time the fires are out, the work that is actually yours to do is still waiting.
None of this shows from the outside. The position is right, the organisation is serious, the results are there. And you know the way you have been working cannot hold what you are trying to do next.
What this is
Someone in it with you, at the level you are working at.
This is not coaching and it is not another strategy. It is a thinking partner who holds the whole picture with you, does not flinch at the stakes, and has no stake in your politics.
You can bring the pressure, the politics and the doubt without making any of it smaller, and without translating it so other people will understand. I stay in the tangle with you until the noise settles and the next true move is clear.
I have spent most of my working life inside the systems you are describing, two decades on the commercial side of international media serving the oil and gas industry, inside the machine, not observing it. I founded Shestainability, co-founded Lean In Equity and Sustainability, and I sit on advisory boards in the UK and Nigeria. I am not describing your world from the outside.
What we work on
We start with whatever is most pressing. A decision. A board you have to face. A restructuring. A person. A public moment. And it is rarely only about that.
Underneath it sit the bigger questions. What are you building. Who needs to be at your table. What is this problem designed to solve. What is possible in three years, not three months. And the one I keep coming back to, at the expense of what.
From there, you move your time, your power and your voice towards what is actually yours to do.
What the women say
From facing the system alone to being met at the level of her responsibility.
"As a woman in a senior leadership position in a large, hierarchical organisation, I needed someone who understands the reality for women leaders. I have experienced first hand how she can support someone to rise above so many barriers and bring to life a vision bigger than they could have imagined."
— Michelle Jarvis
From trying to influence upward to shaping the structure itself.
"What we ended up working toward was so much bigger than the original objective. I convinced senior leadership to create a new Research division and appoint me as its leader."
— Amy Bowe
From constant firefighting to strategic leadership at scale.
"We've gone from hundreds of millions to more than two billion, and to lead that I've had to stop being the one in the energy-draining detail and step into lifting the organisation towards the future, focusing on people, partnerships and the system, instead of constant firefighting."
— Senior leader, European multinational
How it works
What is usually missing in these rooms is almost never a strategy. It is one person, with no stake in the outcome, who you can think in front of, so the thing only you can see does not stay something you hold on your own.
Let's talk.
Our conversation is not a commitment, but a beginning.
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