UK & USA · Mid-market £250M–£2B
A finite engagement. A clear picture of what you inherited. The few decisions that matter. A structure the business can run without us.
Most new CEOs spend the opening months absorbing the official version of the business: the board pack, the strategy deck, the leadership team’s preferred narrative. That version is rarely false. It is incomplete.
The Reset is built to close that gap before patterns harden. It is not a transformation programme, not a retained advisory relationship, and not a team of juniors producing slides. It is senior people, a defined window, and a bias toward decisions the CEO can own.
Financial health, operational performance, technology spend, and leadership alignment — assessed against what the numbers and the organisation actually do, not what they report.
The output is an unvarnished picture: where value is leaking, which initiatives are stalled, and which inherited commitments should be stopped.
Three to five decisions that will define the first year. Sequencing so the highest-leverage moves happen first. The board is prepared for each one rather than surprised by it.
Noise is removed. Pet projects, legacy programmes and politically convenient activity are named as such.
A decision-making structure, a 12-month agenda, and a leadership team aligned around it. You should be able to run the next year without creating a consultancy dependency.
If the situation requires a short follow-on from a specialist practitioner, that is scoped separately. It is not assumed.
Fit
Newly appointed CEO — typically zero to six months in — of a mid-market firm in the UK or USA, revenue usually between £250 million and £2 billion.
The business is not in formal distress. It is underperforming relative to what the board expected or the market allows. Early signals are present: margin drift, stalled AI or technology spend, a leadership team that works but is not aligned, an inherited agenda still running the diary.
If you need a large transformation army, a long retainer, or a general strategy review with no time pressure, this is not the engagement.
I work with CEOs and CFOs directly. That is the only way this kind of engagement produces honest results.
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