You got promoted for being excellent at the work. Nobody mentioned the job would stop being the work.
Six months. A working toolkit, a room of ten peers, and direct time with me. Deliberately mixed across industries.
Built for directors, roughly five to ten years in. The first group runs October through March.
ApplyHow six months works
Monthly forum, ninety minutes
Ten people, the same ten for the full six months. Two bring a live situation each session; the rest question it properly before anyone offers advice.
One to one with me, every six weeks
An hour on whatever you can't say in front of nine peers. Comp, a boss, an offer, a decision to leave.
One tool per session, taught properly
We take something from the list above, I show you how it works, and you leave with the actual document.
A working brief each month
One specific thing to go do before we meet again — a conversation to have, a number to ask for, a plan to put in writing. You report back. That's the part that changes things.
The terms
- Size
- Ten per group
- Dates
- Six months, October through March
- Forum
- Ninety minutes, monthly
- 1:1
- One hour, every six weeks
- Tools
- One per session, yours to keep
- Selection
- A conversation with me; groups built on dynamics
- Fee
- Discussed on a call, not on a page
Who it's for
Directors, roughly five to ten years in. You lead a team, you're excellent at the work itself, and the next stretch of the job is asking for something the work never asked for.
No industry requirement. If you're the person your company keeps handing the harder problem to, that's the signal.
What I screen for is curiosity, follow-through, and a real willingness to look at your own part in things. Not seniority.
If any of this is your week, it's built for you
- You've just been promoted over three people who wanted the job.
- You're managing people who were your peers last quarter.
- You need three other teams to move and none of them report to you.
- You keep being told to be more strategic and nobody will define it.
- You present to the executive team and can't tell whether it landed.
- You inherited a plan you don't believe in and have to sell it anyway.
- Someone senior has decided you're difficult.
- You've outgrown your boss and there's nowhere obvious to go.
- You're the youngest person in the room and it's costing you airtime.
- You want considerably more money and every script you've read makes you cringe.
These are what the group actually works on. Not leadership in the abstract — the specific thing on your calendar for Thursday.
A forum on its own won't teach you the mechanics. So you also leave with these.
Ten things nobody sat me down and explained. You get each one as a working tool — a template, a script, or a method you use once and keep. The tools are half of it. The other half is looking honestly at your own part in the situation, which is the harder half and the reason the tools stick.
- Getting things done through people who don't report to youThe one skill that separates a director from a senior manager.
- "Be more strategic" — what they actually meanDecoded into three things you can start doing on Monday.
- The numbers that govern your teamNot the finance version. The four you're accountable for.
- A ninety-day plan that survives your bossWritten so it can't be quietly rewritten around you.
- The one-page memo that gets a decisionStructure, length, and what to leave out.
- Managing up to people three levels above youWhat an executive is listening for, and what makes them stop.
- Running a meeting where something is decidedWho speaks when, and how you close it.
- Asking for moneyThe script, and the timing that matters more than the script.
- The first time you have to let someone goThe conversation, and the two weeks either side of it.
- Telling whether you're being developed or parkedThe signals, and what to do about each.
Sessions are built around whichever of these the room needs next. The order is yours, not mine.
The room is mixed on purpose
Twenty-five years across consumer, retail and businesses that never fit a category taught me how little of this job is sector knowledge. A team that's stopped telling you things looks the same everywhere. So does a plan nobody believes in.
What differs is the received wisdom — the handful of things your industry has decided are simply true. That's usually what's in your way, and it's the one thing you can't see from inside it.
So I build each group across industries. You get read by people with no stake in your assumptions, who will ask the question your colleagues stopped asking years ago.
Who runs it
I didn't come up the traditional way.
Born in Paris, raised across a handful of countries, no straight line and no obvious sponsor. Since then: twenty-five years of building and running companies, seven chief executive seats, businesses scaled into 47 countries and exited successfully, teams of more than ten thousand people, and brands from thirty million to two billion.
When private equity owns an asset and can't work out what to do with it, I'm one of the calls they make.
Most of what I know came from the parts that went badly. That's the part I'm useful for — I'm not trying to be an inspiring story, I want you making a better decision this month than you'd have made without the room.
Three ways in
Short application, then a conversation with me. I read every one myself, and I build each group deliberately — so it takes a little time.