June 2026 | Halfway through the year. How does it feel?
June tends to arrive with more on the leadership table than most of us anticipated when the year began. The pace has not slowed and the decisions feel heavier. This edition is for the leaders who want their organisations moving forward with genuine intention, not just speed.
I hope you enjoy this edition.
Silvia Silva
There is a conversation happening in many growing organisations right now that tends to stay implicit.
The business strategy is clear, the direction is set and the decisions are being made at pace. Somewhere in the background, the people decisions are doing their best to keep up, filling the roles that opened, restructuring the teams that need it, addressing the gaps that have already become visible.
This version of people strategy is not wrong, it is necessary. But there is a cost to it that accumulates quietly.
When people decisions follow the business rather than inform it, the organisation is always responding to what has already happened. The capability it needs arrives after the growth has demanded it. The structure it builds is designed for where it was, not where it is going. The leadership conversations that would have changed the decisions happen after the decisions are already made.
The organisations that move differently are not the ones with larger HR teams or more detailed people frameworks. They are the ones where a different conversation is happening at the leadership level before the decisions arrive.
Recent research on organisational performance puts it plainly. The primary competitive advantage in 2026 is not speed alone. It is the ability to bring people and resources together with genuine intention. Speed without that intention builds fast. It does not always build well.
The shift from keeping up to building ahead comes down to three questions worth asking before any significant people decision reaches the leadership table.
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What does the business actually need to build in the next twelve months that the current team cannot yet deliver?
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Where are the capability gaps that will slow the organisation down before they become visible?
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Which people decisions arriving right now are carrying more strategic risk than the leadership team has acknowledged?
These are not just HR questions, they are leadership questions. They change the quality of everything that follows when they are asked early enough.
Knowing the questions is the starting point. Having the right thinking alongside you to work through them before the complexity builds is what makes the difference between a people strategy that keeps up and one that builds ahead.
That is the conversation I have alongside senior leaders every week.
I hope the decisions ahead land well.
Silvia Silva
If you want the right strategic thinking alongside your people decisions before the complexity builds, the Executive Leadership Briefing is where we start.

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