Offer 2: People Foundations Audit & Roadmap

Founders, CEOs, Chief of Staffs and COOs

• "Everyone's really busy and a bit fried, but we're still not hitting our goals quickly enough."

• "We have goals, but day-to-day work and check-ins don't align with them."

• "Ownership is unclear—things fall between teams, and despite assigning owners, it still ends up back with me."

• "New hires take too long to ramp up; the existing team picks up the slack.”

This isn’t a “let’s hire more people” problem.

Your people foundations haven’t caught up with your stage. The way the team, roles and routines were set up 6–12 months ago is still running the show:

• Team and structure don’t align with how work actually gets done.

• Role clarity, performance goals and ownership are fuzzy, so accountability leaks.

• Onboarding is ad-hoc, so new hires don’t know what “good” looks like.

• Ways of working, 1:1s and check-ins aren’t consistently tied to goals.

You’re trying to hit ambitious targets on top of an unsteady base.

• You feel like you’re pushing harder and harder for marginal gains.

• Everyone is busier than ever, but throughput and outcomes don’t match.

• Goals live in decks; the day-to-day operates on old habits and firefighting.

• Work falls between people and bounces back up to you to untangle.

• The existing team carry the weight of every new hire until they’re exhausted.

• The board will start to ask more questions, and you won’t have the answers yet.

1. Keep pushing harder in the current setup – ask people to focus, add a few goals, maybe tweak meetings, but keep running on the same foundations and hope output eventually catches up.

2. Spin up a big “people project” – hire a senior people leader or consultancy to re-org, redesign processes and launch lots of new rituals, with a heavy lift for you and your team.

3. Get a clear audit and a simple, stage-appropriate plan – understand where your foundations are strong, fragile or missing, agree on the minimum you need for this stage, and commit to a plan you can actually execute.

The People Foundations Audit & Roadmap is option 3.

If you don’t address the foundations:

• People stay maxed out, but progress stays slow and lumpy.

• You keep playing escalation catch-all for unclear ownership.

• Each new hire adds strain rather than capacity.

If you run the audit:

• You know, calmly and clearly, whether your current team and structure can support your plan.

• You have a simple, sequenced people roadmap for the next 12 months.

• You reduce founder bottlenecks and confusion about who owns what.

• You have a coherent people story that stands up in board and investor meetings.

This is designed to give you clarity and a realistic 12-month plan – not to drop in a big HR project or re-org.

What it does do:

• Gives you a clear, honest view of whether your current team and structure can support your plan.

• Shows you where your people foundations are strong, fragile or missing.

• Prioritises the minimum set of changes that will actually move the needle in the next 12 months.

• Gives you concrete next steps and a simple story you can share with your board and team.

• Creates a shared picture and roadmap that you can use to brief internal leaders, new hires or external partners.

What it does not do:

• It does not redesign your org chart for you or run a restructuring process.

• It does not implement new onboarding, meeting rhythms or performance processes inside your business.

• It does not train your managers – that sits in Scaling Smart: The Startup Manager Programme.

To get the full value, you’ll need a clear internal owner – usually the Founder, Chief of Staff, COO or Head of People – who is ready to use the roadmap and make decisions from it. I stay close enough to tell you the truth, but light enough that your team owns the change.

1. A Foundations diagnostic and RAG

• Team and structure.

• Role clarity and expectations.

• Onboarding.

• Ways of working and decision-making.

• Manager basics.

• Performance and progression.

• Engagement and retention risks.

2. A 12-month people foundations roadmap

• Prioritised set of people foundations improvements.

• Sequenced quarter by quarter, aligned to business milestones.

3. A 30/60/90 quick-wins plan

• A small number of high-leverage actions to take in the next 30, 60 and 90 days.

4. A minimum viable people systems checklist

• The non-negotiable systems for your stage (and what can wait).

5. A 2-page written summary and board-ready deck

• A simple narrative for founder, leadership team and investors:

  • where you are now

  • where the risks are

  • what you will do over the next 12 months.

6. A backlog of later opportunities

• Items that can be sensibly parked until the company is larger.

The audit is a self-contained piece of work. Many teams:

• Take the roadmap and implement it themselves, using existing leaders and HR / People capacity

• Use it to brief other partners or hire into a Head of People role

For some clients, it also becomes a launchpad for focused follow-on projects, for example:

• Redesigning onboarding so new hires ramp in 90 days instead of 6 months

• Clarifying roles, levels and progression frameworks

• Tightening meeting and decision rhythms so less lands back on the founder

• Preparing managers via the Scaling Smart: The Startup Manager Programme so they can run the new systems well

We only talk about follow-on work once the audit is complete and the priorities are clear. There is no expectation you continue with me – but if we do work together, we’re both working from the same honest picture and plan.

£6,950 (+ VAT where applicable)

Say you have 40 people, with a fully-loaded cost of ~£6k/month per employee. Slow onboarding extends ramp by 3 weeks for 5 new hires in a quarter—that's ~£22.5k of lost output. Escalations and founder bottleneck cost another ~5 hours/week of founder time at £300/hour, or ~£18k per quarter. Add uneven performance standards that push course-corrections later, and you're easily looking at £40k+ in regained value per quarter—before you count re-works, morale dips or a single regretted leaver (which alone can cost 1.5×+ salary, or ~£105k for a £70k role).

The People Foundations Audit gives you a 12-month plan to tighten onboarding, cut escalations and install a light, outcome-tied performance rhythm. Recent audits have delivered ~45% fewer escalations and ~3 weeks faster ramp within a quarter. You get clearer standards, faster decisions and a team that feels lighter. For a £6,950 investment, the ROI is rapid payback—often within one quarter—and compounding gains as your team scales.