Perspectives on people, leadership, and organisational design.

Most startups don't fail from competition. They fail from the inside, usually at the hiring stage. Fifteen years and four self-inflicted mistakes later, here's how to spend your first ten hires buying capacity instead of chaos.

Hiring is an expense. Hiring badly? Even more so. Why do so many hires fail to make the hoped-for impact even after such an extensive process? And how can companies get more efficient?

There’s something different about coming in to a company from outside, rather than growing up within the organisation. In most larger organisations, there’s a natural balance between internal and external talent, just as in sports leagues there are developmental players and high-profile transfers. But in rapidly growing, founder-led companies? That tends not to be the case. Done right, a senior hire has the years or decades of pattern recognition to spot, suggest and correct areas which may not be noticed by the founding team.

When growth stalls or complexity rises, the instinct is to look for a person — a new COO, a stronger Head of People. But what looks like a hiring gap is frequently a signal that something deeper has not been designed clearly enough.

Most organisations don’t have a hiring problem. They have a clarity problem. In most organisations, hiring is reactive. Something breaks, someone leaves, the team is stretched, and a role is opened to solve the immediate problem. The process may be structured, but the thinking behind it rarely is. Strategic hiring looks different. It starts before the vacancy exists. But what does it really mean to be following a strategic hiring process?

**Most companies think they have a hiring problem.** **Often, they have a leadership system design problem instead.**

The management operating system most organisations rely on was built for a different world.

Organisations today are operating in an environment defined by increasing complexity. So why do many organisations still rely almost exclusively on a hiring model designed for a far more stable world?

The same leader can be highly effective in one environment and significantly less effective in another, even when capability remains unchanged. Alignment and timing often matter as much as skill.

Fractional leadership tends to struggle in three scenarios: ➙ When organisations expect a fractional leader to replace internal ownership rather than strengthen it ➙ When success is measured by presence instead of measurable outcomes ➙ When leadership teams are aligned in principle but not aligned in execution

Fractional leadership is not the right solution for every company or every situation. While the upside can be significant, the downside of placing a fractional leader into the wrong environment is equally real.

It is also about understanding when different phases of an organisation require different types of contribution — and when leadership fit needs to evolve alongside organisational needs.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙖𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙧 𝙞𝙨 𝙨𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚: every bus leaving the station shares the same initial stops. It’s only when you stay on the bus long enough that the route becomes uniquely yours.