Coaching for leaders whose role has grown faster than their playbook
Are you thriving, or surviving?
I work with managers and leaders taking on roles, teams and programmes that are bigger and harder than anything they've run before.
Does this sound like you?
"I'm accountable for work I don't fully understand, and I'm not sure what I'm here to add."
"I'm doing two jobs and doing both of them badly."
"Everyone agrees in the meeting, and nothing changes afterwards."
"I'm the one keeping everything running. If I step back, things slip."
"I've been asked to use AI to drive growth, and to do it like a startup. Nobody has said what that means in practice."
"It's on me to work out what AI means for how my team works, while staying a step ahead of them."
If one of these is you, the problem probably isn't you.
Your role changed faster than your playbook
The way you've worked until now got you here. It was built for a particular job, a particular team and a particular pace. Then the job changed: a new domain, a bigger team, a mandate nobody has run before, a programme that cuts across the whole business.
The instincts that used to be reliable start giving you mixed results. It's easy to read that as a personal shortfall. It isn't. It's a playbook that needs rewriting, and most people are expected to rewrite it while running the role at full speed.
That's the work we do together: building the playbook for the job you have now, while you're doing it.
How I coach
-
I've made these moves myself
Over twenty years I've worked in marketing, product, project management, software development and operations, hands-on and leading teams, across medical devices, IT services, consumer electronics and fintech. I've switched domains, inherited teams and run programmes bigger than anything I'd done before. I know what it's like from the inside.
-
Practical not theoretical
We work on what's actually in front of you: the programme that's stalling, the decision you keep deferring, the conversation you're avoiding. You leave each session with something you can use that week, not a model to admire.
-
Built around your situation, not a programme
There's no fixed curriculum. We start with what's in your way and adjust as it shifts. Sometimes the work is the plan. Sometimes it's the pressure you're under while you make it, and how you're thinking when it matters most.
Introducing Prashant
I've spent my career inside growing technology businesses, moving between marketing, product, project management, software and operations, and leading teams in each. Every one of those moves meant taking on work I hadn't done before and leading people who knew it better than I did.
What I learned is that the hard part of a bigger role is rarely the technical content. It's working out what to carry forward, what to let go of, and how to lead when the old approach stops working.
Alongside that, I trained and worked as a mindfulness and mindset coach. It shaped how I coach: attention to how you're thinking under pressure, not just what you're doing.
I coach because I remember what it was like to be in these roles without anyone to think it through with.
“If the problem is that your role changed faster than your playbook, the answer isn't fixing you. It's building the playbook for the job you have now.”
— Prashant Ponkshe, Symphony5