Leadership development built around your business, your team, and the specific problems you're trying to solve. For small business owners who need their managers to actually be able to lead.
Built by Arran Russell · 15 years inside a business that scaled from 25 to 100+
But leadership is a different job to the one they were promoted out of. Most of them were never taught how to do it.
Some are brand new and don't know where to start. Some have been doing it for years but never had any real development. Each is figuring it out their own way, with their own habits and blind spots.
The result is inconsistency. Conversations that should be happening aren't. People who should be growing are stuck. Standards that should be clear are vague. Hires that should be sharp are lukewarm.
The real problem is bigger than any one manager. Your business needs all of its leaders to be better, faster, and pulling in the same direction. That's not something a two-day workshop fixes. It takes a proper programme, built around your business, delivered over months, with coaching built in.
That's what this is.
Four steps. This is the process most training providers skip, and the reason most management training fails to stick.
We start by understanding your business, your culture, and where each leader sits today. What are the gaps? Who's struggling? Who's ready for more? We do this work before any training begins, because the biggest reason programmes fail is that the culture contradicts what people learn.
We design a programme around what your team actually needs. Not everyone gets the same thing. New leaders need different content from experienced ones. Operations managers need different tools from sales leads. Bespoke means bespoke.
Training delivered over months, not crammed into two days. Weekly or fortnightly sessions, your choice. The research on spaced learning is clear: this is how adults actually retain and apply new skills.
Every participant gets 1:1 coaching with me during the programme. McKinsey's research shows that programmes pairing training with follow-up coaching deliver more than double the ROI of programmes that don't. It's how the development actually changes behaviour.
Every Bespoke Programme produces tangible outputs your managers can show, share, and actually use. The capability is the deliverable.
A written document each manager builds across the programme, capturing how they operate: their default settings as a leader, how they communicate, what they expect, where they step in, and what they need from people who work with them. Their team reads it on day one. A new hire knows exactly what they're walking into.
A custom AI tool calibrated to each manager's leadership style, defaults, and growth areas. It asks them the right reflection questions, not generic ones. Their ongoing coach between sessions, and long after the programme ends.
Most small businesses hire from instinct. We give your managers a structured framework for defining the people they actually need, then teach them to use AI to generate sharp role profiles and job descriptions on demand. One profile this week. The capability for every future hire.
The single most-asked question from your team is "what does my future here look like?" Most managers have nothing to show them. Each manager builds a real progression document for one role on their team. Specific. Useable. Shareable.
A custom AI tool loaded with your company context and the frameworks we teach. It generates Ideal Colleague Profiles, interview questions, job descriptions, and development frameworks on demand. The hiring and development capability your team didn't have, codified.
Most managers guess at what their boss cares about. This turns "managing up" from a vague concept into a specific written assessment: what your boss weighs heavily, where you're delivering, and where you're wasting effort. The 2-3 highest-leverage changes, mapped.
You probably don't need more theory. You need someone who's been where your managers are now, made the mistakes, and figured out what works.
I'm not a founder. I was the senior exec inside a business that grew from 25 people to well over 100, the person the founder relied on to develop the management layer beneath them. I started with a handful of direct reports. I ended up responsible for over 60 people across the UK and Europe.
Most small businesses don't have access to proper leadership development. Their managers are learning on the job, in isolation, with whatever they can pick up from a book or a podcast. The stuff I teach isn't academic. It's what actually worked, what didn't, and what I wish someone had given me in year one.
The biggest reason management training fails is that the culture contradicts what people learn. We start with you, not your managers.- Arran Russell, founder
I'm taking on five founding clients at a fraction of the full programme price. You get the full programme. I get the case studies and feedback that shape what comes next.
In exchange for the founding rate, I ask for three things: honest feedback as we go so I can make the programme sharper, willingness to be a reference once you've seen the results, and a public case study if it works.
Every programme is bespoke, but here's the structure. Per-head cost decreases as team size grows.
If you're on the fence, email me. Tell me about your team and I'll give you an honest answer about whether this could help. If it wouldn't, I'll tell you that too.
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