Insights
Practical frameworks on structure, performance, leadership, careers and scaling, written for founders, COOs and People leaders who have to make a decision this quarter.
Pay transparency turns a communication choice into a management obligation. The work for an SME is to have levels, bands and written criteria in place before anyone asks.
Ana Reis
Organisational culture is not the statement on the wall. It is the pattern of decisions people have already watched being made, which is also the only place it can be changed.
Ana Reis
A policy is a decision written down once, so managers stop deciding case by case. These are the eight to write first, with the template each one should follow.
Francisco Campos
Calibration is where ratings stop being one manager's opinion and become comparable across teams. Ninety minutes, a fixed agenda, and every rating explainable to the person who receives it.
Ana Reis
An interim HR director covers a gap full time for a fixed period; a fractional Chief People Officer is senior leadership on a part-time basis, with no end date implied. Which one fits depends on size, stage and the problem you are actually solving.
Francisco Campos
A compliance audit checks files and contracts. An organisational diagnostic checks whether the way the company is managed still fits its size. Growing companies usually need the second one first.
Francisco Campos
Most management training teaches concepts and changes nothing on Monday. An internal programme of six sessions, built on the company's own routines and templates, does the opposite.
Ana Reis
A hybrid working policy is where a company writes down the decisions it is already making badly, one case at a time. Here is what it has to settle, and the rule that makes it hold.
Francisco Campos
Four decisions, in order: levels, market position, ranges, then people. The hard part is not drawing the ranges — it is what you do about the ones who fall outside.
Ana Reis
Six numbers, each pointing at a specific part of the system — starting with the one everybody asks about first. Not a dashboard project: a way of finding out what is failing before someone resigns.
Francisco Campos
Most one-to-ones are status meetings with two people in them. The fix is not a better template — it is deciding what the meeting is for, then protecting thirty minutes for it.
Ana Reis
A value nobody has ever paid a price for is a preference. The test is whether it has changed a decision that cost something.
Ana Reis
Six systems, in a specific order. Building them in the wrong sequence is the most common and most expensive mistake between twenty and three hundred people.
Francisco Campos
Built too early it is theatre. Built too late you are unwinding two years of individual negotiations. The trigger is more specific than headcount.
Ana Reis
Delegation fails when the task moves and the standard stays in the founder's head. The work is writing down the judgement, not handing over the to-do list.
Francisco Campos
Unclear roles do not announce themselves. They show up as slow decisions, duplicated work and performance conversations nobody can evidence.
Francisco Campos
A performance management framework is only as good as the conversation it produces. Here is the whole process, with a review template, a rating scale and twelve example comments.
Ana Reis
Headcount is the wrong trigger. The right one is the point at which People decisions start being expensive to reverse.
Ana Reis
HR delivers processes. An operating system connects them. The difference shows up the first time a performance rating has to justify a pay decision.
Ana Reis
Most restructures move boxes and leave the decisions where they were. A structure only scales when ownership, decision rights and interfaces are designed together.
Francisco Campos
The People Diagnostic applies these frameworks to your company's actual situation.