You can have the right leaders and still have the wrong structure, culture, or strategy. I work with boards, executives, and leadership teams to close the gap between where an organisation is and where it needs to be.
Start a ConversationThere's a difference between helping a leader grow and helping an organisation change. Both matter. This work focuses on the second one: the systems, culture, strategy, and governance that determine whether your organisation succeeds or stalls.
With over 30 years in executive leadership across for-purpose, corporate, and government-adjacent sectors, I bring a practitioner's lens to organisational challenges. I've navigated financial crises, led major transformations, and used Harvard Business School frameworks to diagnose and resolve the root causes of strategic and operational gaps.
What I Do
Whether you're facing a performance gap, planning a strategic shift, or managing the cultural fallout of change, these are the areas I work in.
Helping leadership teams plan and execute genuine organisational change, not just restructures that shuffle the deck. This includes managing inertia, building change-ready cultures, and closing performance or opportunity gaps.
Working with leaders to diagnose where structure, culture, and capabilities have fallen out of alignment with the strategy. Using the Congruence Model to map root causes and design targeted interventions.
Facilitating strategic reviews that go beyond the standard SWOT. Clarifying purpose, testing strategy against context, identifying performance and opportunity gaps, and building aligned objectives that the organisation can actually execute.
Supporting boards and executive teams with governance frameworks, risk appetite setting, and the leadership practices that keep organisations accountable. Particularly relevant for for-purpose and NFP organisations navigating increased scrutiny.
Diagnosing the norms and behaviours driving your culture, determining whether they serve your strategy, and building practical action plans to shift them using evidence-based frameworks.
Facilitating workshops on ethical leadership, decision-making frameworks, and the moral dimensions of leadership in complex organisations. Useful for leadership teams, boards, and senior cohorts.
How I Work
Most organisational problems are solved with the wrong interventions because the diagnosis came second. I start with the gap, not the solution.
Clarify whether you're facing a performance gap (strategy execution falling short) or an opportunity gap (strategy itself needs to shift).
Map observations to the Congruence Model across tasks, capabilities, formal organisation, and culture. Ask why until we reach something actionable.
Test for misalignments between structure, culture, capabilities, and the actual work that needs to get done. Surface what the hardware and software are both telling us.
Build an integrated intervention that addresses root causes across both hardware (structure, process) and software (culture, capabilities, leadership).
Support implementation with regular observation and adjustment. Good strategy on paper is only half the job.
Further Reading
Practical thinking on culture, strategy, and leadership — written for people doing the real work of organisational change.
Culture isn't a document. It's what people do when no one is watching — how to turn stated values into lived behaviour.
Read article → StrategyWhy emotional intelligence in teams is the deciding factor between a strategy that looks good on paper and one that actually gets executed.
Read article → LeadershipThe warning signs of organisational breakdown are usually quiet. How to recognise them and act before things break.
Read article →A structured 12-week engagement combining curated frameworks, practical application, and regular 1:1 sessions — built around your organisation's specific challenges, not off a shelf.
Who This Is For
I work best with organisations that are honest about where they're stuck and ready to do the actual work of change.
Disability, community services, animal welfare, member-based bodies. I understand the unique pressures of leading with a social mission while managing commercial realities, board expectations, and funding uncertainty.
Growth-stage and established businesses where strategy and execution have drifted apart, culture is getting in the way, or the leadership team needs a clear-eyed external perspective.
Supporting boards to strengthen governance, clarify risk appetite, and build better relationships between governance oversight and executive leadership.
Newly formed or restructured leadership teams that need to build trust, align on strategy, and establish the norms and processes that make them effective together.
A 30-minute conversation costs nothing and usually clarifies a great deal. No pitch, no pressure.
Book a Call About Michael