Structural Integrity / For Leadership Teams
The Choke Point
A leadership diagnostic
Everyone sees the pattern. Asking why isn't the same as looking - and until someone does, the problem just keeps landing somewhere else.
A half-day for owner-operator businesses where everyone’s working hard, the same problems keep coming back, and the real issue isn’t the strategy – it’s what’s running the people running it.
The business isn’t the only place it shows up. And it’s not the only place it’s costing you.
Most trade and construction businesses don’t have a strategy problem. They have a people problem dressed up as one.
The people are good at what they do – but they’re bringing their own biases, blind spots, and bullshit into every decision, every meeting, every conflict. Decisions stall. The real conversations happen in his head on the drive home instead of in the room. The team you’ve written off as “just different personalities.” You’re one of those people. The main one. The tension everyone manages around but nobody addresses.
That’s not a process issue. It’s a structural one. A human one. And until it’s understood, everything else is weakened.
You already know the bottleneck isn’t the strategy. It’s something underneath that hasn’t been named yet – and it’s running you and the business at the same time.
Primarily trades, construction, and the industries that serve them.
$2–20m turnover, where the people who built it are still in the room running it.
Who it's for
You built it. Either by accident or on purpose, you’re now running a company – what I call the Accidental CEO. You got good at the job, built a team around you, and woke up one day holding something you never quite planned to run. The load’s tilted. You’re working harder than anyone in the building. Strategy’s not sticking. Neither is culture. The team’s good at the job, but the same problems keep showing up wearing different clothes.
If that’s your business, the industry is secondary.
What happens in the room
Half a day. The real conversation.
Before Mike arrives, every person in the leadership team completes a short anonymous questionnaire. He reads it. He walks in already knowing what’s operating under the surface. That changes everything about the day.
The frame for the team is simple: Mike’s here to look at how we work together and where we’re getting stuck. That’s it. Not an assessment. Not a fix. A look.
In the room, the team works. Real issues, real dynamics, the stuff that’s been sitting under every meeting and every decision. Not theory. Not a workshop. Work that has immediate value for the people doing it – and that simultaneously gives Mike a clear picture of what’s actually running this business and the people in it.
What he’s watching while that’s happening: where decisions stall, who defers to who and why, what’s driving the friction everyone’s learned to work around, where the simple, fixable blocks are. The stuff that shows up in how a team actually operates together – not what they say in a meeting, but what happens in the room. This is the silent stuff costing the business.
What gets named isn’t people. It’s the choke points costing the business.
The team leaves clearer and more aligned than they arrived. What’s been operating underneath – unseen, unaddressed – is tangible now. And tangible means solvable.
Arms folded
Some of your people might show up with their arms folded. That’s expected. The guy with his arms folded is usually showing you exactly where the work is – he’s an opportunity, not a problem. Getting him to open up isn’t your job. It’s Mike’s. You don’t need buy-in from the team before the day. You need them in the room.
Not a workshop. Not team-building. Not strategy facilitation. A diagnostic – clarity on what’s actually going on, understood, so a plan can be made.
Business is human interaction. Sort the humans, the business follows.
What you walk away with
What gets named isn’t people. It’s what’s actually costing the business – and what to do about it.
A written diagnostic. Two to three pages, delivered within a week.
For the team
What came up at the team level. The choke points – where decisions are stalling, where energy is leaking, where the same problems keep resurfacing in different clothes. Where to focus first and what to do next.
For you, privately
A clear picture of how decisions are actually being made in your business, how conversations are stalling or getting messed up, and where to direct your leadership next. What Mike sees in the room – the full picture – lands with you, in writing, within a week.
The diagnostic stands alone. You can act on it without ever working with Mike again. If it opens a bigger conversation, that’s a separate discussion – not the close of this one.
Who's running the room
14 years. 3,000+ men. 60+ business owners.
Mike’s not a business consultant. He’s not from a corporate HR background. He works with the men running businesses – the ones who built something real and are now caught inside it.
What he brings into a room like this isn’t a framework or a process. It’s fourteen years of sitting across from men who lead teams, run P&Ls, and still can’t work out why the same problems keep coming back. He knows what men resist. What they won’t say out loud even when everyone in the room already knows it. More than that – he knows the underlying drivers that steer men into the same brick walls, in business, in their relationships, and in life.
That’s usually exactly what’s creating the choke points – and the costs that follow. Financial, relational, personal.
Praise for Mike's work
What business owners and leaders say
“A senior person at work pulled me aside and asked what had changed – said I was coming across as more confident, more present, clearer, decisive.”
Nick
Senior Leader
“If I didn’t have the work we’d done, I’d be in a very dark place. We turned around a $2 million deficit, healed a lot of hurt in the school, and built a stable staff again.”
Adam
Principal
“One of my sparkies told me at the gym: ‘I loved working your sites – always organised, tidy, never felt rushed. But we understood what everyone was trying to achieve, as a collective.'”
Mark
Owner, Builder
The investment
Half-day on-site or off-site. Written diagnostic delivered within seven days. Private debrief with the lead person included. Travel included for NZ and Australian east coast.
Anything further, just ask.
Invoiced to the business.
One unresolved conflict, one misaligned hire, one decision that keeps getting kicked down the road – the cost of what’s not working in that room almost always exceeds the investment in this day.
Warm enough to trust. Sharp enough to respect.
Next step
A conversation first. No pitch. Mike asks questions. You talk. Decide together if it’s worth running the diagnostic.
If it isn’t, he’ll say so. If it is, you’ll know.
Bringing someone else into the decision? Share the overview with them first.