For CEOs in transition
Most CEOs don't lose their position because they stop performing. They lose it because something in how they're operating stops landing the way it used to.
The Signal
Authority erodes quietly, long before it shows up in the numbers.
It rarely arrives as a single failure. It arrives as decisions that take longer to land. A board that asks more questions than it used to. A team that waits for direction instead of moving on it.
By the time it reaches the numbers, the pattern is already set. The work is to read the signal early, while it can still be changed, and to change how you are operating before the room decides for you.
Three minutes will tell you how far along it is. Run the audit.
The Audit
Read the signal. Three minutes.
The Authority Audit
Seven statements. Answer them honestly, nobody sees this but you. Takes about three minutes.
The Work
The first 90 days sets the operating pattern.
New seat, new ownership, new board. The habits you set in the first quarter become the ones the organisation reads back to you for years. Set them deliberately.
Establish authority early
Before it is tested. The room needs to know how you decide, what you will own, and what you will not carry.
Make decisions earlier
The calendar tells you when a decision is due. The pattern is set by the ones you make before it asks.
Let execution compound
Authority early, decisions earlier, and delivery starts to build on itself instead of resetting each quarter.
Authority early. Decisions earlier. Execution compounds.
Why this advice holds
Pattern recognition, earned under pressure.
I am not advising from theory. I have sat in the seat, under private equity ownership, with the board in the room and the numbers on me. The arc below is not a CV. It is evidence of what I have learned to see coming.
Read Chemical Engineering, First Class. The engineer's habit: reduce a complex system to the few things that actually move it, and ignore the rest.
Fifteen years trading commodities and running commercial P&L across three major energy groups, negotiating and leading joint ventures with Morgan Stanley and PetroChina along the way. Once spent a week walking a founder-owner through what his own trading floor was actually doing. Decisions made in hours, held under real exposure, judged by the market the same day.
My first CEO seat, in a technical business, under private equity ownership. Revenue from £10m to over £20m, EBITDA from £2.1m to £4.3m, headcount doubled, operations opened in Germany and South Korea. I learned where authority is won and lost from the inside.
I advise CEOs in the position I was in: new to the seat, new to the ownership, carrying more than the org chart shows. Same pressure, seen from the other side of the table.
In their words
Nick has a strategic approach to leading a business combined with an excellent understanding of the underlying operation of a processing business.
Nick's clear and perceptive analysis of fast-moving and sometimes complex business issues was invaluable... He was decisive in his leadership and combined this with an ability to motivate everyone to pull in the same direction.
He has an exceptional ability to drive growth, build strong, motivated teams, and help individuals reach their full potential.
How the work runs
Shaped to the situation. Disciplined in the rhythm.
A CEO nine months in and one preparing for exit need different work. The shape flexes. What holds constant is the cadence, the confidentiality, and the directness.
Weekly 1:1 sessions
Enough cadence to shift the operating pattern. Not so much that it becomes a dependency you have to manage.
Confidential by default
What is said in the room stays in the room. Including from the board and the sponsor. That is what makes it useful.
Built around your mandate
New ownership, a new board, or a step-up in scope. The work starts from where you actually are, not a standard programme.
Start with one confidential conversation.
One conversation. No pitch. We establish whether the pattern you are seeing is one I can help you change, and you decide from there.