Strategic People Advice and Support
CEOs, Leaders or Boards of technology companies are constantly challenged by growing their company and its people at the right pace. Getting people issues wrong can create unnecessary leadership distraction, cost the company time, money, employer brand impact and ultimately reduce employee engagement.
High Calibre People was founded to support VC and PE backed investment teams and their portfolio technology companies to develop their operating models, people strategies and to support leaders through different stages of its evolution. From Series A to C to E and beyond, we relentlessly focus on delivering pragmatic, tangible results particularly in the build, growth or transformation phase of a technology companies’ life cycle. Using our expertise across consumer, ecommerce marketplaces, SaaS and B2B industries, we help you solve people related problems quicker and more effectively than before.
It’s typically the Chairman, CEO, Founder or a member of the C-suite that spots the need for the external support. Depending on the company maturity, there may be no dedicated People leader yet or the current people leader and/or team needs strategic advice in how to support the business in lessons on how to scale fast.
What We Do
Strategic people advice on a project or retained basis, working closely with founders, executives, leadership and people teams to advise on all elements of their Target Operating Model and People strategy.
Due diligence for investors at the assessment stage of their investments.
Executive search advisory support on C level and VP roles.
Project delivery on deep dive topics across the people experience cycle, typically as part of a growth or transformational plan.
- Defining a target operating model to scale
- Organisational design and ways of working effectiveness
- Creating the strategic plans for restructuring and how to implement
- Driving engagement through times of change
- Developing frameworks for people decision making (levelling, performance management, reward, learning development and progression)
Independent and Team Coaching to:
- CEOs and functional leaders (C suite, VPs)
- Founders (as individuals or as co-founders)
- People leaders
on self awareness, leadership, organisational and behavioural topics, as well as more specific Emotional Intelligence coaching using EQ reports as a diagnostic tool.
Coaching
As businesses scale, leaders never stop developing and may be catapulted into new positions without the know-how or support to help them succeed.
We believe that the key to a leader’s success is to improve their Emotional Intelligence. By increasing their self awareness of their behaviours, it can dramatically unblock how they are operating day to day, leading to immediate positive business outcomes. We offer an Emotional Intelligence coaching diagnostic tool as part of the coaching process.
Our approach to coaching leaders is pragmatic; identify the challenges, address self-awareness, encourage reflection and help the leader to find and own the right solutions. We constructively challenge leaders to help them make clearer and bolder decisions. We support yet are upfront in style so the learning is clear.
Following every coaching session, the leader has next step actions, so they are clear on how to make a practical difference quickly.
Our Approach
High Calibre People specialises in driving value for growth companies providing strategic people advice to CEOs, founders, senior leaders and people teams. We get to the heart of the business proposition quickly, by aligning the people strategy to the business strategy.
We start from understanding the company’s purpose and strategy before jumping in. We apply commercial context and then HR competence follows, not the other way around.
With our strategic people experience of what works best when, we’re able to join the People dots seamlessly for the company.
We don’t standardise solutions, as we believe that People lessons learned in growing companies need to be tailored. We’re straight-talking and driven by results, a combination which gives maximum impact.
The magic happens when the business and people strategy are clearly aligned, leaders are self-aware and people teams are set up in an optimal way.
About Us
Janie Links founded High Calibre People in February 2020 to fulfil a dream of setting up a business to help leaders benefit from the people lessons learned in technology companies. Having hired hundreds of leaders into technology companies, managed changing organisational needs, structures, evolving cultures and improved leadership effectiveness, she had a bursting desire to help other companies on a similar journey to be more efficient and effective faster.
Janie is a senior level People leader with experience of working in both large scale technology and rapidly growing VC/ PE backed businesses across EMEA. She has worked in multiple digital technology sectors – consumer, fin tech and media to name a few. Her experience includes working at Google in London as it was scaling from 200 to 1000 people, with Wonga through its growth and subsequent turnaround and latterly with Trainline from KKR acquisition in 2015 to bn valuation at IPO in 2019.
She has coached Leaders extensively both internally within organisations as well as externally, providing Executive, Leadership and Career coaching to senior managers and leaders across Europe.
Janie is a trained coach (Co-active Coaching model, CTI (2005) and licensed Emotional Intelligence Leadership coaching practitioner (Roche Martin, 2019)
It is not unknown for Janie to attempt to coach her 3 children.