We start where you are now, not where a textbook says you should be.
Many senior leaders who contact us don’t arrive with a neatly packaged brief. They arrive with a problem that’s been sitting on their desk for longer than they’d like to admit – a revenue number that isn’t moving, a sales team that isn’t firing, a leadership group that looks cohesive in the boardroom but isn’t, or a decision that keeps them awake because there’s no-one close enough to the business or trustworthy enough to think it through with them properly.
We’ve heard most of these conversations. We know that the presenting problem is rarely the whole problem. And we know how to have the kind of conversation that gets in behind the symptoms and quick answers without wasting your time, and without making you feel like you’re being analysed.
What follows is a fair description of where we most commonly start, and what we do from there.
Business Performance Advisory: When revenue has plateaued or margins are under pressure
This is the most common conversation we have these days. Revenue streams that were growing have flattened. Margins that were acceptable are being squeezed by costs, by competition, by pricing pressure, by a market that has changed faster than the business has.
The instinct is to look at the numbers, and the numbers do matter. Or to discount, in the often mistaken belief that dropping your prices will lead to more sales. But in our experience, a margin problem is almost always also a leadership problem, an execution problem, a conspiracy problem, or a structural problem that the numbers are simply reporting on. Treating the symptom without understanding the system beneath it is expensive.
We work with CEOs and their leadership teams to identify what is actually driving underperformance, not just what the P&L is showing and to build a clear, practical plan to address it. We bring financial intelligence, operational experience, and the kind of honest external perspective that is very hard to generate from inside a business under pressure.
What this looks like in practice:
A structured diagnostic of the business: financial, operational, commercial, and human followed by a prioritised action plan developed with your leadership team, and ongoing advisory CEO support as you implement it. Engagements are bespoke. There is no standard programme, but that’s the gist.
Sales Leadership & Revenue Recovery – When the sales team isn’t performing and revenue recovery is urgent
Sales performance is the presenting problem we hear most often. The team is busy. The pipeline looks reasonable on paper. But the numbers aren’t converting, and nobody can quite agree on why.
In our experience, a sales problem is rarely just a sales problem. It is usually a combination of things: unclear value proposition, inconsistent leadership of the sales function, the wrong people in the wrong roles, a coaching culture that never took hold, or a go-to-market approach that made sense two years ago and doesn’t anymore.
We work with sales leaders and their CEOs to diagnose what is actually happening in the sales function – not just the CRM data, but the conversations, the behaviours, the leadership, and the culture – and to build the capability and clarity that drives sustainable sales growth.
What this looks like in practice:
We assess the sales function as a whole: people, process, pipeline, CRM, reporting, incentives, and leadership. We work with you to address the highest-impact gaps first. This may include working directly with the sales team, training & coaching the sales leader, redefining the value proposition, or restructuring roles, rewards, and accountability. We measure everything as we go.
Executive Advisory: When you’re carrying too many of the big decisions alone
This one doesn’t have a season. It is a constant feature of senior leadership, and one of the least talked about in public.
You were appointed because the board believed you could handle it. And you can. But handling it and thinking it through clearly are different things.
The quality of a decision made in isolation, under pressure, with filtered information and competing internal agendas, is rarely of the same quality as the decision made with a trusted, experienced, independent thinking partner alongside you.
That is what we offer – not another opinion, and not a consultant with a framework to sell you. A platinum-level advisory relationship, close enough to understand your business, independent enough to tell you the truth, discrete enough to keep confidences, and experienced enough to know the difference between a problem that needs solving and noise that needs ignoring.
This is Ross Wilson’s primary work. It is available to CEOs, Managing Directors, Founders, and Board Chairs who are serious about the quality of their thinking and their decisions.
What this looks like in practice:
A regular, private advisory relationship structured around your needs and your calendar. Some clients speak with Ross weekly; others monthly. Most engagements begin with a structured conversation about the business, where it is, where it needs to go, and what is getting in the way. From there, develop into something that looks less like consulting and more like a trusted commercial partnership.
Leadership Team Effectiveness: When the leadership team isn’t functioning as one
This is the conversation that takes the longest to arrive with us, rarely surfacing in a first meeting. More often it emerges after trust has been established, sometimes obliquely, sometimes directly, sometimes over a drink when the official conversation is over.
A leadership team that looks cohesive in the office, but isn’t, is one of the most expensive problems a business can handle. The misalignment shows up everywhere – in slow decisions, in siloed execution, in talent that leaves, in a culture that reflects the friction at the top rather than the values on the wall.
We work with CEOs to assess what is actually happening in the leadership team – not the official version, but the real one. Then, to build the kind of collective capability, trust, and aligned execution that makes a business genuinely difficult to compete with.
This work requires candour, patience, and a high degree of discretion. We bring all three.
What this looks like in practice:
We begin with individual conversations: with the CEO and, where appropriate, with each member of the leadership team. We form a clear picture of the dynamics, the gaps, and the opportunities. We then work with the team, and with you as their leader, to change what needs to change.
This is not a team-building day. It is a sustained, structured intervention that produces measurable changes in how the team thinks, communicates, decides, and executes together.
Human Talent & Organisational Performance: When people aren’t performing and you need to understand why
Employee performance issues arrive in different forms. Sometimes it is a CHRO or People & Culture leader who reaches out – quietly, carefully – about a team that isn’t delivering, a culture that has drifted off course, or a pattern of exits that nobody has named clearly yet.
Sometimes it is a CEO who has inherited a workforce shaped by a different era of leadership and needs to understand what they actually have – who is in the right role, who is capable of more, who is limiting the people around them, and what needs to change?
We bring rigorous assessment tools, deep experience in human performance, and the kind of honest, humane judgment that this work requires. We do not treat people as problems to be solved. We treat them as the primary source of organisational performance, which means understanding them properly before drawing any conclusions.
What this looks like in practice:
We assess individual and team performance using a combination of validated tools and direct observation. We identify the structural, cultural, financial, and leadership factors that are shaping performance, both positively and negatively. We work with you to make the changes that will produce measurable improvement, and we support implementation rather than handing you a report and stepping back.
Culture & Organisational Transformation: When the culture needs to change and you’re not sure where to start
Culture is not a programme. It is not a values workshop or an engagement survey or a set of posters in the lunchroom. It is the accumulated behaviour of your leadership team, made visible every day in how decisions are made, how people are treated, how conflict is handled, what gets addressed or not, and who’s rewarded and why.
Which means that changing culture requires changing leadership behaviour first. Everything else follows from that.
We work with organisations that are serious about culture change, not as a communications exercise but as a genuine change in how the business operates. This is sustained, demanding work. It produces results that are both measurable and durable – and usually surprising. This requires a CEO who is willing to start with themselves, and then has the right mentor to support the change.
What this looks like in practice:
We begin with the CEO and the leadership team to define what the culture needs to become, identify the appropriate behaviours, what, therefore, needs to change, and then build the leadership credibility and capability to drive that change consistently.
We use assessment tools, facilitated workshops, individual coaching, and ongoing advisory support to see the project through to completion, which is defined at the start.
HOW ENGAGEMENTS WORK
Every engagement is bespoke. Nothing is off the shelf.
You knew we would say that. But it’s true. None of this work follows a formulaic process.
For this reason, we do not sell packaged programmes, standardised frameworks, or pre-built solutions. Every client engagement begins with a genuine conversation about your specific situation and normally requires objective assessments using proven tools, and everything we do flows from that.
Engagements vary in duration, intensity, and composition depending on what the situation requires, but we don’t waste your time or money – we move as quickly as possible while being sure-footed. Some engagements are short and focused – a specific problem, a defined outcome, a clear timeframe. Others develop into long-term advisory relationships that span years and evolve as the business evolves. Sometimes, the CEO takes us with them into their next role because of the trust that has grown.
What stays constant is the quality of thinking, the honesty of the conversation, and the standard we hold ourselves to: if we cannot move the dial, it is not worth doing.
We have worked across a wide range of industries.
Manufacturing and engineering. Professional and financial services. Pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Technology and telecommunications. Primary industries and food production. Defence and local government. Retail and wholesale distribution. Not-for-profit and community organisations.
In New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe, India, China, South-East Asia, and beyond.
The principles that drive performance are consistent across industries. The application requires understanding the specific context, culture, and commercial reality of your business. We bring all of that.
Not sure which of these fits your situation?
That is very common. Most of the best engagements we have had began with a CEO who wasn’t entirely sure what they needed, only that something needed to change.
Start with a conversation. Tell us what is on your mind. We will ask the right questions, and between us we will work out what, if anything, makes sense to do.
It simply starts with a conversation. Contact us to get things moving. It costs nothing but a hot coffee and a half hour or so.
