The peopleup story
After a 15 year career supporting organisations as a business psychologist and leadership consultant, I found myself in 2015 as a Managing Consultant at YSC. As Head of YSC’s Digital Leadership team my role was to help clients find and develop the leadership skills the needed to digitally transform their businesses. After a presentation to clients that fell flat I had a moment of truth - Genchi Genbutsu - it’s not possible to help corporates to adopt the methods and mindsets of startups and tech businesses without understanding those businesses first hand. That thought took me on a journey of understanding - meeting founders and startup teams, shadowing tech leaders, exploring how lean and agile methodologies can be applied to the People function - that led to the following conclusions:
Startups, tech firms and more established businesses have a lot to learn from each other. It is not a one way street
Many startups have a people and leadership blindspot - while they care deeply about people and culture, they have not had the years of training and practice that other leaders have had
Established leadership consultancies do not have the right insight, or the right business model, to support startup leaders
It was also clear that to be successful in this space I needed to say goodbye to my role at YSC, take a deep breath, and embrace the uncertainty and excitement of starting a new venture alone. Peopleup was born.
A few years (and one global pandemic) later I work with a group of clients who straddle two worlds: high growth startups and scaleups, and established businesses seeking to reinvigorate their leaders with the courage to experiment.
On the way I also founded the Startup People Clinic - with Amy and Craig - which has a mission to help early stage startups make people their strength and competitive advantage with coaching, advice and practical support.
