Organisations · Leadership through change
For CEOs and HR leaders after a restructure, a merger, or a change of leadership. The chart is new. Decision habits, job scopes and the way people talk to each other still belong to the old one. We find what is actually stuck before anyone buys a fix.
The situation
A Bain survey reported in 2026 that 88% of senior leaders believed their restructuring would achieve its aims. Only 36% of employees agreed. That gap is usually where the trouble starts.
What it looks like
People still working their old job scopes. Decisions that used to take a week now stall. Two managers are each certain the other owns the call. Meetings end with three interpretations of the same decision. The new chart shows none of it. The output numbers do.
Why it happens
A restructure changes reporting lines in a day. It does not change how decisions actually get made, who people go to for a yes, or which version of the old organisation each team is still running. Those patterns persist until someone names them.
What usually gets bought
The standard response is a workshop on communication or collaboration. Sometimes that is right. Often the real constraint is decision rights, role clarity, or a leadership team that has not agreed what the new structure is for. A workshop cannot fix what nobody has diagnosed.
Our position
We sell the diagnosis on its own. Three to four weeks, evidence over opinion, and a recommendation you can act on with us or without us. If the finding is that nothing more is needed, the report says so.
See the four weeks →The entry point
A fixed-scope engagement that answers one question: what is actually preventing this leadership system from performing as required. The report says what the evidence says, however that lands against the brief.
01 · Week 0
The presenting question, the interview list, confidentiality terms, and what happens to the findings, agreed with the CEO or sponsor before anything starts. Anything outside the agreed scope starts a new conversation.
Start with a briefing →02 · Weeks 1 to 2
Confidential interviews across the leadership team and the level below, where the conflicting directions actually land. Document review: the new structure, role definitions, meeting cadences, decision papers. Optional Leadership Circle Profile 360° for key leaders.
03 · Week 3
Where decisions are supposed to sit, where they sit in practice, and where they stall. Overlaps and gaps between roles as designed and roles as worked. The output is a one-page map of how the leadership system actually operates.
04 · Week 4
Prioritised findings, the system map, and a recommended sequence, worked through with the sponsor. You leave with decisions to make rather than a deck to file.
Discuss a diagnostic →After the readout
The roadmap points at the named constraint, and the follow-on work matches it: sessions with the leadership team where decision rights are the problem, or a half-day workshop where a team mid-transition needs shared understanding first. Where the change itself is arriving badly, the leader carrying it gets coaching.
Where the work continues, it is measured. We take the pulse again at agreed intervals against the original evidence, so you can see whether the change held.
Sometimes the roadmap ends the engagement. That outcome is on the table from the start, and we put it in writing at the briefing.
FAQ
Common questions from CEOs and HR leaders in this situation. If yours isn't here, ask directly.
The diagnostic is consultancy: evidence, analysis, a readout, a recommendation. What follows may be coaching, team sessions, workshops, or nothing. We are deliberate about the difference, and the engagement letter names which one you are buying.
No. The patterns this work finds harden rather than fade. A team that has been working around unclear decision rights for a year has usually built informal routes that are even harder to see from the top. The diagnostic reads the system as it operates today, however long ago the structure changed.
Then the report says so. If the constraint is strategy, resourcing, or a single role, you get that finding and a recommendation for the right kind of help, which may not be us. "No further work needed" is a legitimate outcome, and we say so before you commission.
The interview list is agreed with the sponsor at the briefing, usually the leadership team and a selection of the level below. Interviews are non-attributable: findings report as patterns. No quote is traceable to a person, and no named individual gets a verdict. That is stated to every interviewee, because it is what makes the evidence honest.
You can. We run a half-day format often used for a leadership team mid-transition, and it stands on its own. The honest caveat: a workshop without a diagnosis treats the symptom somebody happened to name. If the budget only allows one, the diagnostic tells you more.
Sometimes. The diagnostic is consultancy, and Enterprise Singapore's Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) supports qualifying projects at up to 50% of eligible costs for local SMEs, including management consultancy delivered by an accredited consultant. Gary McRae holds the SBACC Practising Management Consultant certification EDG requires. The headline conditions: the organisation is registered in Singapore with at least 30% local shareholding, and the application is approved before the project starts. Coaching on its own does not qualify. These terms are subject to change: Enterprise Singapore has announced that EDG folds into the new EDGE scheme from the second half of 2026, with updated parameters expected then (source: Enterprise Singapore, enterprisesg.gov.sg). Nothing here is a promise of approval; we point you at the current rules in a scoping conversation.
Fixed scope, agreed in writing before work starts, priced at enquiry against the interview count. No open-ended consulting meters. See the Organisations page for how engagements are structured.
Begin
A scoping conversation is thirty minutes. Bring the version of the situation you would not put in a town hall. We will tell you honestly whether a diagnostic would find anything worth finding.