The Next Move
One to one advisory support. Whether it is a promotion, the next role or an exit, one question sits underneath: what are you actually worth to somebody, and can you say it out loud.
You may arrive believing this is a CV problem. It is a positioning problem, and the two need completely different work.
Why this page exists
When I left corporate, this was the whole idea: help people position for their next move. If one of these sounds like you, this page is for you.
- You are being passed over for promotion again.
- The salary increase that was promised did not come through.
- You have been doing the same role for five years and do not see the next step.
- You are just ready for a new challenge.
- Your boss has recently changed, and you do not click.
- There is restructuring afoot, and you want to get ahead of the curve.
Two ways to work with me
A Decision Call
CHF 375
Forty-five minutes on one decision, or any one-off question where you want an input. I read what you send before we speak, so the call is spent on the decision rather than on the background. Written observations follow within 48 hours, which is the part people keep and re-read.
One decision, one call, nothing ongoing.
Monthly Advisory
CHF 500 a month, minimum three months
For a decision that is going to take a while and keeps changing shape. Every month you get:
- A sixty-minute advisory call.
- Up to three async check-ins between calls as things evolve, which a single call cannot give you.
If your decision is an exit or the next role, that also includes Executive Companion access, built specifically for those two.
Three months minimum. You are reminded seven days before every renewal, and the next call is booked inside the current one.
If you want more than one conversation in a month and are not on Monthly Advisory, that is another Decision Call rather than a favour I quietly absorb. I would rather say that here than be vague about it later.
What actually happens in the room
A year of somebody's work gets settled in about ninety seconds. Not because anybody is careless. Because by the time the discussion reaches the room, the case has already been made or it has not, and what is being argued is a view, not a number.
That is the part almost nobody outside those rooms believes. Reward and promotion are not decided on output. They are decided on performance, which is a subjective view formed by a line manager and then defended in front of peers. Judgement gets weighed. The consequences of your decisions get weighed. Neither is scored.
Which means the person who can describe their own value in the language the room uses has an advantage that has nothing to do with working harder. And most senior people have never had to build that description, because the organisation was doing it for them.
Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse, working to a Chief Technology Officer who sat on the Executive Board. Then technology reward at UBS, during the integration. Sixteen years in banking, across a technology population of more than 24,000, and a great deal of it spent in rooms where senior people were being discussed while they sat somewhere else, waiting.
I did not decide who went where. I watched it get decided, which is a narrower thing and a more useful one, because it is where you learn what the description actually has to do.
Who this is not for
- Anyone who wants a CV written. I do not write CVs and I am not an outplacement service. If the document is genuinely the problem, this is an expensive way to find that out.
- Anyone who wants to be told whether to sign. What your settlement is worth, whether a clause holds, what the tax treatment is: those need somebody qualified in your country, looking at your actual contract. I will tell you what the other side is optimising for. That is a different question and it is the one I can answer.
- Anyone building their own practice rather than taking a next role. That is most of what I do now, and it is in the Studio. It is a different problem with a different ladder, and putting the two together helps nobody.
Where the line is
I am a chartered management accountant, not a tax adviser, and I am not a lawyer. What happens on this page is your arithmetic on your own numbers, and I will not tell you what your number should be. If the answer needs somebody who knows your country's rules, get one.
Everything else, what the institution wants, what is negotiable, what your position actually is and how to say it, I have watched from the inside for sixteen years.
If you are not sure which one
Reply and tell me what is going on. Two lines is plenty. I answer these myself and I will tell you whether a Decision Call or Monthly Advisory fits, or if neither does.
lisa@nextpositionadvisory.com, with Next Move in the subject line.