Second Thoughts
An Outside View on High-Stakes People Decisions
Every serious firm has a process for hiring, promoting, and exiting senior people.
Shortlists. Assessments. References. Panel interviews. Partner votes. HR sign-off.
On paper, the machinery looks robust.
In practice, you know how fragile it can be:
A star candidate who interviews beautifully but sets off a faint internal alarm.
A technically gifted director whose behaviour is beginning to corrode trust, but who “delivers.”
A partner whose exit feels necessary, but whose departure could be messy and reputationally costly.
These are not CV questions. These are character and suitability questions under uncertainty. Which is exactly where most internal processes are weakest.
This service exists for those moments.
What this is (and what it isn’t)
This is a quiet, off-the-record advisory relationship for firms who want a second or third objective mind on big people decisions where capital meets consequence.
It is not:
Legal advice
An investigative service or background-check firm
A psychometric test in disguise
A rubber stamp for decisions already made
What I offer is something simpler and rarer: a thoughtful outside perspective from someone who understands both the technical world your people work in and the human patterns that play out over decades in careers.
You bring the live situation.
I bring pattern recognition, questions you may not be asking, and a stubborn concern for integrity.
The “integrity snuff test”
You already know how to assess competence. No one gets near these decisions without a serious track record.
The real question is different:
If this person is given more power here, what happens to the culture, the risk profile, and the people who cannot say no to them?
In conversations with you (and sometimes, with the individual, if appropriate and transparent), we look at things that don’t show up neatly in dashboards or CVs:
How this person talks about past colleagues, subordinates, and clients
Their relationship with mistakes: denial, blame-shifting, or ownership
Their attitude toward rules, constraints, and professional standards
How they handle pressure, boredom, and success
Whether their ambition is aligned with the firm’s mission or only with their own legend
I am not hunting for saints. I am listening for congruence: does what they say line up with how they have lived? Are there hairline fractures between polish and substance that will widen under the weight of a bigger role?
Sometimes the conclusion is, “Yes, promote them, and here are the guardrails.”
Sometimes it is, “They are excellent, but not here, not in this seat.”
Sometimes it is, “You already know the answer; you just needed one more honest mind to say it out loud.”
When firms tend to call
Firms usually reach out when something feels off, even if no one has named it yet:
You are considering a senior hire whose credentials are flawless and whose references are strangely generic.
A long-serving executive is behaving in ways that unsettle people, but they remain commercially valuable.
A senior person may need to be exited, and you want to think through how and when with someone who is not attached to internal politics.
A board seat is being offered to someone whose reputation is impressive, but whose judgment under pressure you have not really seen.
Sometimes, I speak only with the decision-makers, reviewing what you already know and asking questions you may have avoided.
Sometimes, with everyone’s knowledge and consent, I also have a conversation with the individual in question: not as an assessor with a clipboard, but as a peer sounding board. I listen for how they understand themselves, their power, their limits, and their responsibility.
In all cases, the goal is the same: to help you make a decision that your future self — and your stakeholders — can live with.
Seeing both sides
There is no such thing as a purely “good” or purely “bad” candidate.
There are only people whose strengths and flaws interact with your system in different ways.
My role is to help you see both sides clearly:
Where this person’s intensity, ambition, or charisma could be a genuine asset
Where the same traits could, under stress, become corrosive
Where your firm might be projecting hope, fear, or nostalgia onto them
Where your own blind spots — loyalty, fatigue, desire for a quick fix — might be distorting judgment
We also talk frankly about the cost of acting and the cost of not acting.
Keeping a misaligned leader because “they still bring in revenue” has a price in culture, retention, and risk that compounding will gladly expose later. Exiting someone too brutally has a price in trust and reputation. In between those extremes is a narrow path where clarity, kindness, and firmness can sit together.
What this looks like in practice
Practically, this work is light on ceremony and heavy on honesty.
You brief me on the situation, on or off paper.
We speak candidly about what is known, what is suspected, and what is feared.
Where helpful and ethical, I meet or speak with the person in question.
I come back to you with what I see: not a “score,” but a narrative, scenarios, and the questions your decision must be able to answer.
From there, you decide.
I do not vote. I do not sit in your board minutes. I give you a sharper lens, so that whatever you decide, you are less likely to be surprised by the human consequences later.
Why this matters
In highly credentialed environments, it is dangerously easy to confuse brilliance with wisdom, confidence with character, and performance with integrity.
You already have people who can model capital at risk.
This service exists to help you sense character at risk — and, just as importantly, character worth trusting — before the next big decision is made.
If you would like to have that conversation before you sign the offer letter, renew the mandate, or trigger the exit, we talk. Quietly, off the record, and with the full understanding that the decision is yours, not mine.