Independent consultant · teams carrying a change

Nobody did anything wrong.
The work still stalled.

After a merger, a move into adjacent markets, dual-use, or a regulatory shock, the risk usually comes from reasonable people doing what they believe is right. Every side has a fair claim. What one person cares about is another person's boundary. I help leaders and teams find those lines, often where one has already been crossed.

A few weeks of confidential one-to-one conversations, scaled to the size of your company. Then the people doing the work make sense of what surfaced, together, and decide what to do with it.

Thirty years in product, operations and delivery. One PE-owned cross-border post-close integration involved eight acquired product suites across two countries. Work across agri-food, telecom, healthcare, government, public safety and dual-use technology.

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Where it starts

Change arrives in different forms. The stall has a familiar shape.

Mergers and acquisitions

New ownership, new obligations and old habits meeting inside one company.

Entering dual use

Commercial teams learning where fast sharing meets need to know.

When the rules change around you

Sanctions, export controls or a new regulator change who you can sell to and what you can share. Teams built for the old rules keep working to them.

Technology turns, including AI landing in the workflow

New tools, new handoffs and new decisions arriving before people have agreed how the work should move.

The diagnostic

Find the lines people are already working around.

I lead every engagement personally. The diagnostic begins with confidential conversations across the affected work, then a working session with leadership to decide what needs attention and what can move.

01

Listen and observe

Confidential one-to-one conversations across the teams living the change, usually over a few weeks. How many depends on the size of the company. I watch how the work moves as well as what people say about it.

02

Read the friction together

In the working session, the people living the change see where fair claims collide, where handoffs drop, and which unmarked lines are slowing the work.

03

Decide together. Teams own the change.

Your leaders and the people doing the work come together. I run the session and bring the tools. Their own words, with names removed, go into the room. The room decides what they mean. Everyone in that room needs the authority to agree and act. If some decisions sit with people who aren't there, working out who decides becomes its own session. Meanwhile, the room acts on what it can decide. I don't add another layer of approvals. The point is to take drag out of the work.

They choose what to change first. They agree what to watch for, including what they didn't expect, and meet again when the signals change. Short Praxis sessions help them practise the hard conversations along the way.

“Most of the risk in a change sits between people who are each doing their job well.”

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From a client

“The magic that Sherryl brings to collaboration is that she sees past the ingrained dogma and asks the questions that shine a light on the 'Why'. The key to finding the right path forward is to focus on the goal you are trying to achieve, and Sherryl knows how to get to the core of the problem by drawing on the collective experience of the teams involved in the challenge.”

Cam Cullen, CMO, Blastwave

Who it is for

For leaders carrying the work through a consequential change.

Leaders carrying a merger or acquisition

When two companies share one name and nobody has agreed how the work moves between them.

See the cases →

Operating partners

With a portfolio company where the deal has closed and the work has gone quiet.

Leaders of commercial tech firms entering adjacent markets

Where regulation changes how the work gets done. Dual use is the sharpest version of this.

Explore dual use →

Anyone owning delivery through the change

When the old approvals no longer fit the work.

Usually a CEO or president, an operating partner, or the person handed the integration.

A clear place to start

Bring the decision that keeps returning.

You do not need a finished diagnosis or a ready-made scope before reaching out. Start with the condition that has made the work slow down.

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