About

I have sat in the chair

Advice about executive decisions is worth more from someone who has had to make them with incomplete information and a board waiting.

The story

I ran a listed industrial group for six years. Before that I led its largest division through a restructuring that removed a quarter of the cost base without losing the two plants that mattered.

Both experiences taught me the same thing from opposite directions: the decision is rarely the hard part. The hard part is the eighteen months afterwards, when the organisation is asked to behave differently and every existing structure quietly resists.

That is the work I now do with other chief executives — and, increasingly, with the boards that appoint them. Sometimes the execution problem sits above the executive team. When it does, I tell the chair.

I take four to six engagements a year. That constraint is deliberate: this work requires being close enough to see what is not said in the room, which is not possible across twenty accounts.

— Elena

Career

Twenty-eight years, most of them operating

1998
Graduate engineer, process plants
Imperial College engineering degree into a plant floor, where she learned that the drawing and the building are rarely the same thing.
2007
General manager, specialty materials
First P&L. Took a loss-making unit to break-even in three years by closing the product lines everyone privately agreed were finished.
2011
Divisional MD, through restructuring
Removed a quarter of the cost base without losing the two plants that mattered. Four years, most of it spent on what happened after the decision.
2015
Chief Executive, listed industrial group
Six years in the chair. Moved the group toward service revenue — slowly at first, and then, once the incentive plan changed, quickly.
2021
Independent advisor and director
Four to six engagements a year with chief executives and boards. Non-executive seats on three boards. Faculty, INSEAD executive education.

How I work

Four commitments I make to every client

They are also, frankly, the four reasons some people decide not to engage me. That is fine; it saves us both time.

I say the thing in the room

You are not short of people who agree with you. The value of an outside advisor is entirely in their willingness to be uncomfortable, and I intend to earn that.

I do not bring a team

No analysts, no associates, no leverage model. You engage me and you get me. It is a deliberate limit on how much work I can take.

Engagements end

Every engagement has a defined close. If we reach it and the work is genuinely unfinished, we say so honestly rather than drifting into a retainer.

The board is often the client

When the problem sits above the executive team, I will tell the chair — which is why some engagements are commissioned by the board directly.

Boards & faculty

Where I still sit at the table

Non-executive directorListed specialty chemicals group · Audit and remuneration committees

Senior independent directorPrivate-equity-owned logistics business · Chair of the people committee

TrusteeEngineering education foundation · Governance and nominations

FacultyINSEAD executive education · Strategy execution for new chief executives

MBAINSEAD, Fontainebleau

BSc EngineeringImperial College London

Enquiries

A thirty-minute conversation, in confidence

Tell me what was decided, what has happened since, and who would describe the gap differently. If I am not the right help, I will say so.

Request an introduction Take the diagnostic

Twenty-eight years, most of them operating

Graduate engineer, process plants

General manager, specialty materials

Divisional MD, through restructuring

Chief Executive, listed industrial group

Independent advisor and director