When a mandate surfaces something that a search alone won’t settle.

How this works

This page is written for executive search and interim management firms. If you are a founder or CEO, the right starting point is here.

GROW HR Consulting works alongside executive search and interim management firms where a mandate has surfaced governance strain, unclear accountability, or operating model friction. An independent structural assessment before or alongside the search sharpens the brief, reduces the risk of a failed placement, and gives the incoming leader something to inherit other than ambiguity. The practice engages directly with the client organisation as an independent referral — not as part of the search mandate.

When a client needs an independent diagnostic

A client organisation is approaching a leadership transition or a governance reset. An independent assessment of people infrastructure — conducted through structured one-to-one interviews, not via an online tool — clarifies what the incoming leader will inherit in terms of structure, decision rights, and accountability. The diagnostic produces a written, board-ready report. The search mandate is sharper for it, and the placement is considerably less likely to fail because the role has been defined structurally rather than assumed informally.

When the structural context needs to be established first

A mandate is live but the brief is harder to define than it should be. The organisation knows it needs senior leadership in a particular area — but what that leader needs to solve, own, and change has not been independently established. A structural assessment before the search progresses produces a brief grounded in what the organisation actually needs the role to do, and gives the search firm a cleaner mandate to work from.

About the practice

The practice was founded by Alf Carlesäter in 2020. The background most relevant to search firm mandates: thirteen years at GE building and scaling HR capability across 35 countries in APAC, Africa and EMEA; HR Director at Meta where the work included establishing the incident and crisis management function across a global employee population; and an interim HR Director engagement across six APAC markets at Braze, building a regional HR team and operating structure from the ground up. That experience — operating at senior level through complexity and rapid structural change — is what most mandates in this space require. He holds an ICF ACC coaching credential and is the author of When Systems Stretch (2025). GROW HR Consulting operates across APAC, EMEA, and GCC.

Making an introduction

The most useful introductions are direct. A note along the lines of:

“GROW HR Consulting provides independent assessments of governance architecture and people infrastructure — often commissioned before or alongside a leadership search. Given what you are navigating, a conversation with Alf might be worth having.”

The initial conversation with the client organisation is always a scoping call.

Related: People & Governance Diagnostic · Meridian™ Organisational Capability Diagnostic · Fractional HR Leadership