People Strategy
Most people strategies look fine in a slide deck and fall apart the minute they meet real people and real pressure. The priorities are vague, the choices aren’t made, and nobody outside HR knows what it says. I help organisations build something short, honest and usable, whether that means starting from scratch or resetting something that has stopped working.
The situations that come up
- The organisation is growing or changing and there is no clear view of what the people priorities should be.
- There is a strategy on paper, but the leadership team cannot summarise it and the HR team is delivering initiatives that feel disconnected from the business direction.
- A new CEO or CPO wants to understand the current state before committing to a direction.
- The structure does not reflect how the business actually needs to work: accountability is blurred and decisions are slow.
- Culture has shifted during growth or change, and there is a gap between the stated values and the day-to-day reality.
- The business has a clear commercial direction but nobody has worked out what that means for capability, headcount or ways of working.
What this involves
- Diagnostic work to understand the current state and where the gaps are
- Facilitated sessions with senior leadership to identify and test priorities
- Building a people strategy that is short, clear and honest about trade-offs
- Organisation design: structure, accountabilities and ways of working
- Capability and workforce planning connected to the business direction
- Culture work that connects aspiration to the day-to-day reality
What I bring
I have worked at leadership level across a range of sectors and organisation types, which means I have seen what happens when a people strategy is done well and what happens when it isn’t. The shelf document that nobody reads after the board presentation is a pattern I have encountered often enough to be clear about how to avoid it.
My approach to strategy work is direct. I am not interested in producing frameworks that look comprehensive but avoid the hard choices. The output should be something the leadership team can use: a clear narrative, defined priorities and the discipline to say what the organisation will not do.
I work well in situations where the senior team needs someone to push back constructively, test assumptions and help them land on something they will actually commit to.
Common questions
What should a people strategy actually contain?
A useful people strategy is short, clear and honest about trade-offs. It should set out the two or three things that matter most for the people side of the business, explain why they matter, and make clear what the organisation will and will not prioritise. Most strategies fail because they try to do everything and end up meaning nothing.
We already have a people strategy. How do you know if it needs resetting?
A few signs: the leadership team cannot summarise it without looking at the document. The HR team is delivering initiatives that feel disconnected from the business direction. The strategy was written two or three years ago and the business has changed significantly since. Or nobody outside HR knows what it says. If any of those are true, the strategy is probably not doing the job it should.
How does this work in practice?
I work with senior leadership teams to understand the business direction, the current people challenges and the gap between the two. From there we identify the priorities that will have the most impact and build a strategy around them. The output is something a leadership team can actually use, not a shelf document.
Does this include organisation design?
Often, yes. Strategy and operating model are closely connected: the right structure enables the priorities, and a misaligned structure quietly undermines them. Depending on the situation this might include a review of how the organisation is designed, where accountabilities sit, and whether the current structure is set up to deliver what the business needs.
Need a people strategy that actually gets used?
Whether you are starting from scratch or resetting something that has run out of road, a short conversation is usually enough to work out whether I can help and what that would involve.