Fractional VP of People · Leadership coaching · OffsitesVP of People · Coaching · Offsites
Fractional support for founders on all things People and Talent.
I draw on my experience of building 6 start-ups back to back to help founders build bar raising people systems and cultures.
Who you'd be working with
Fifteen years building the people side of start-ups, from first hire to NASDAQ listing.
More about Yakub0
years supporting start-ups
0+
people hired
0+
countries' experience
$0bn
NASDAQ listing valuation
No.0
Won LinkedIn No1 UK Start-up, 2020
The Fractional Model
How well you hire, who stays, the culture you build and how well your leaders lead dictate success or failure. I help get these right at a fraction of the perm cost.
- 01
PEOPLE FUNCTION
Boost the people function with senior support
People function audit, change programmes, key projects and initiatives needing senior expertise and capacity you don't have in-house yet.
Fractional VP of People →- 01
Audit
I review your people function against where the business needs to be in 12 months, not where it is today. The gaps are the roadmap.
- 02
Design
We agree the operating model: org design, hiring plan, recruitment model and OKRs. Every priority gets an owner, a budget and a date.
- 03
Build
I lead the work hands-on, inside the business, not from the sidelines. Systems, process and policy go live while the company keeps moving.
- 04
Handover
I either help to player-coach your existing team or when you're ready for a full-time leader, I help you hire them and hand over a function that already works. Built to outlast me.
- 01
- 02
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
Support leaders through management challenges
Similar patterns surface in every scaling team. Leaders who get the support lead faster, decide better and scale further.
Leadership Team Coaching →- 01
Assess
Each leader completes a private self-assessment, and the people around them add their view. The gap between the two is where coaching starts.
- 02
Focus
Together we choose the two or three leadership shifts that matter most to the business right now, each with a clear measure of success.
- 03
Practise
Weekly coaching on real decisions and real conversations as they happen. Every session ends with a commitment to act on before the next.
- 04
Measure
Progress is reviewed against the original baseline every quarter, so you see the change in results, not just in how it feels.
- 01
- 03
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Instil alignment and performance systems where it matters most
Ensure that all leadership vectors are pointing in the right direction. Misalignment and team dynamics issues are tackled openly and everyone is accountable with clear metrics for the plan ahead.
Experiential Offsites →- 01
Diagnose
Every leader completes a private, role-specific diagnostic on their own. The divergence in their answers are essential data points and often go unspoken.
- 02
Mirror
The team sees its own private answers played back as aggregated data. Where you agree becomes the foundation; where you diverge becomes the agenda.
- 03
Stake
A 2 day offsite where the hardest decisions are made, then physically staked through a demanding shared experience, so they're still true in 90 days.
- 04
Sustain
Coaching carries the commitments back into the business, with written agreements, owners and dates.
- 01
Client stories
In their words
Very hands on and action driven. No long pontificating calls where nobody owns the implementation.
When we started, I was a Recruitment Manager. Today I'm Head of People, and Yak has been my mentor the whole way.
Yak helped me structure the culture element of our off-site resulting in 4.79/5 engagement scores.