Advisory for the business problems
that turn out to be organisational.
Senior advisory for PE firms and portfolio companies, owner-managed businesses, and leadership teams where the real problem sits in the operating model, the structure, or the organisation rather than the function.
Most of the situations that reach Esbee as advisory briefs arrive wearing the wrong label. The presenting problem is a function that has been restructured twice without moving the dial, or a transformation eighteen months in that has begun to feel underpowered, or a post-acquisition integration where synergy capture targets have migrated to year three without anyone formally agreeing that they should. In each case, what the leadership team is managing as a functional problem has its origin somewhere further upstream: in the structure, the total operating model, or the way the organisation makes decisions about itself. The functional intervention has not worked because the functional layer is where the symptom lives, not where the cause does.
The Advisory practice at Esbee works at that upstream level. The starting point is always diagnostic: understanding what is actually going on before designing what to do about it. The diagnostic spans the people, structural, and operating model dimensions that mainstream consulting firms typically separate from each other, and which integrated advisory cannot afford to leave siloed. The intervention follows from the diagnostic rather than from a pre-designed framework. This is what people solutions to business problems means in practice.
When this work shows up
A function the business has restructured twice without moving the dial. The people have changed. The chart has changed. The output has not. The leadership team suspects the issue is not the function, and they are right.
Operating model →A transformation programme eighteen months in. The board updates have started using the word complex. The plan has been revised three times. The original milestones have been quietly rescheduled, and the programme sponsor is managing expectations upward rather than driving delivery forward.
Transformation diagnostics →An acquisition that closed over a year ago. The integration plan exists on slides. Synergy capture targets have slipped into year three. The acquired leadership team's retention window is running down, and nobody has formally acknowledged that the 100-day plan delivered against the process rather than the substance.
Post-acquisition integration →A leadership team where the second tier is thin and the founder or CEO is carrying decisions that should have been delegated eighteen months ago. The key person risk is visible to the board and to the PE sponsor. The retention structure exists on paper. Nobody has yet designed a solution that addresses the actual driver.
Operating model →An operating model that worked at forty million in revenue and is generating the kind of friction at a hundred that does not show up in the management accounts but is felt everywhere in the organisation: in decisions that keep escalating, in functions that keep clashing, in spans of control that nobody has the appetite to address formally.
Operating model →How the practice is structured
Operating Model
Spans and layers, decision rights, capability mapping, workforce mix, and total operating model design. For businesses where the structure has stopped fitting the strategy, or where the VCP cannot be delivered through the operating model the business is running today.
Transformation Diagnostics
Structured diagnostic work for transformation programmes that have stalled, lost sponsorship confidence, or are no longer tracking against the original value creation thesis. The diagnostic comes before the remediation.
Post-Acquisition Integration
The 100-day plan and the integration period beyond it. Synergy capture, TUPE handling, operating model alignment, key person retention, and the organisational questions the deal team did not have time to resolve before completion.
How we engage
Engagements typically begin with a diagnostic phase: structured conversations with the leadership team, a review of the relevant data, and a clear framing of where the actual problem sits before any intervention is designed. The diagnostic phase is usually scoped as a fixed-fee piece of work with a clear written output covering the problem framing, the root cause as we understand it, and the intervention options worth considering. For PE-backed businesses, the diagnostic output is designed to be IC-readable and sponsor-side visible where that is relevant. For OMBs and founder-led businesses, the output is framed for the board and the principal. The engagement then moves to intervention design, delivery support, or both, depending on what the situation requires.
The work is always principal-led: Sam Bramhall leads every engagement from diagnostic through to delivery. Where the scope requires additional specialists, such as employment counsel, occupational health, forensic accountants, executive search, or communications advisory, these are drawn from an established network of specialists who work alongside the practice on a defined-scope basis, selected for technical depth and for the ability to operate at the senior level the work requires.
From the casebook
A growth-stage fintech CFO engaged Esbee to design a redundancy programme in sales and marketing following a revenue plateau in Year 1 of the hold period. The diagnostic identified the real problem. The sales compensation structure had been designed to incentivise deal velocity rather than deal quality, was generating the wrong pipeline mix, and was holding the average contract value at approximately 60 per cent of the level the NTM EBITDA targets assumed. Marketing had been embedded inside the sales function operationally, reporting into the commercial director rather than aligned to product and strategy. The redundancy programme was abandoned. The comp structure was redesigned with rebalanced incentives, and marketing was repositioned reporting to the CEO. Revenue recovered to plan within two quarters. Year 2 EBITDA came in at target.
Operating model work →Casebook entry pending. Engagement material for a transformation diagnostics engagement to be provided by Sam. Entry will follow once the anonymised brief is received.
Transformation diagnostics →Casebook entry pending. Engagement material for a post-acquisition integration engagement to be provided by Sam. Entry will follow once the anonymised brief is received.
Post-acquisition integration →Who this work is for
Audience
Private Equity
PE firms and portfolio company leadership teams. Operating model and people advisory across the hold period, from VCP design through to exit prep.
Audience
Founders and owner-managed businesses
Owner-managed businesses and founder-led organisations navigating transition, succession, or the professional management questions that come with scale.
Audience
Scaling tech and fintech
High-growth technology and fintech businesses where the operating model has not kept pace with headcount, the engineering organisation needs restructuring, or the AI adoption questions are beginning to land in the org.
Audience
Professional services
Legal, accountancy, and advisory firms managing partnership transition, practice group restructuring, or the operating model questions that accompany a merger or lateral hire programme.
The practice is led by Sam Bramhall.
Sam Bramhall is the Principal Consultant at Esbee, with two decades of board-level strategic HR and organisational advisory across telecoms, fintech, professional services, technology, and PE-backed businesses. Engagements are principal-led: you work directly with Sam throughout, not with a junior team managing upward.
About Sam and the firm →Common questions about the Advisory practice
- What kinds of organisations engage Esbee's advisory practice?
- The typical client is a PE firm or portfolio company leadership team, an owner-managed business navigating growth or transition, or a leadership team in a scaling business that has outpaced its operating model. The common property across all of them is that the problem they are bringing has already been addressed through the functional layer and has not resolved. The advisory practice specialises in the level above the functional.
- How does Esbee's advisory work differ from a mainstream management consultancy?
- The main structural difference is that Esbee operates at the intersection of the operating model and the people dimension, which mainstream strategy firms and mainstream HR consultancies both treat as separate domains. A strategy firm will diagnose operating model problems but will rarely go deep on the employment, leadership, and people change dimensions required to resolve them. An HR consultancy will handle the people side but lacks the operating model framing to identify what is actually driving the dysfunction. The Advisory practice covers both, in the same engagement, with the same principal.
- What does a typical engagement look like?
- Most engagements have three phases: a diagnostic phase that produces a written framing of the actual problem, an intervention design phase that defines what needs to change and in what sequence, and a delivery support phase that provides hands-on advisory during implementation. The diagnostic phase is usually scoped as a fixed-fee piece of work. The intervention and delivery phases are scoped once the diagnostic output is agreed. Not every engagement runs all three phases: some clients commission the diagnostic only and use it to brief their own team.
- How long does the diagnostic phase usually take?
- For a typical mid-market business or portfolio company, the diagnostic phase takes between three and six weeks from briefing to written output. For more complex situations involving multiple entities, a large leadership team, or significant operational complexity, four to eight weeks is more realistic. The timeline is agreed at briefing rather than imposed from a standard template.
- Do you support PE-backed businesses across the hold period?
- Yes. The advisory practice works at all stages of the hold period, from the 100-day plan through to exit prep. The work changes at different stages: the early hold period tends to involve operating model design against the VCP, key person retention planning, and leadership team assessment; the mid-hold period tends to involve transformation and restructuring work; the late hold period involves exit readiness, VDD preparation, and ensuring the people and organisational story holds up under commercial DD scrutiny.
- Can the advisory practice support TUPE and integration work alongside an in-house integration team?
- Yes. The advisory practice is designed to work alongside rather than replace in-house resource. In post-acquisition situations, this typically means providing the diagnostic framing and structural design expertise the in-house team does not have, handling the TUPE and harmonisation workstream where external independence is valuable, and providing the board and sponsor with a senior independent read on integration progress separate from the integration team's own reporting.
Last reviewed: May 2026
Ready to talk?
All initial conversations are confidential and without obligation. Tell us what you are facing and we will give you a clear sense of whether it is the kind of work we do.
Get in touch