Strategy & Leadership Coach
One-to-one coaching for CEOs, founders and senior leaders. A confidential space to think out loud and get honest challenge, so the call you make is your own.
Now booking: Land & Lead, 90 days to land this year and lead the next
“It’s a bit of a reality check in a good way, because it makes you feel properly prepared and focused.”
Opening
Somewhere on the way up, the job quietly changes. The problems stop having clean answers. The people who once pushed back now wait for your lead.
So you carry it, mostly alone:
It doesn't have to be a solo job. The leaders who keep their edge find someone to think with — outside the business, off the record, with no agenda but theirs. That's the whole of what I do.
In their words
“I’m usually at the coal face, in the mess, and Matt was able to pull me out and help me see the big picture — a perspective I don’t get very often.”
“Having that clarity and peace to think through the strategic issues we needed to focus on is something I can’t find anywhere else.”
Story
For twenty years I made the calls I now help other people make — from scaling startups to leadership roles in global agencies, with a couple of charity boards along the way. I hired and I let people go. I got strategy right and I got it wrong. I learned what it costs to lead when everyone is watching.
But the thread through all of it was never the analysis. What I loved was sitting with someone while they worked out what to do — the conversation that turns a pile of information into a decision. So I made that the work.
You get someone who has climbed the hill, not one reading your map from the side of it. In 2025 I co-founded next + future with Joel Bankhead, and I coach leaders one to one alongside it.
MSc, Alliance Manchester Business School
Executive Strategy Programme, Saïd Business School, Oxford
Trainer and speaker on strategy and leadership
The full history is on LinkedIn.
Coaching
Fortnightly. Ninety minutes. A quarter at a time.
We work on what's live — the decision you keep postponing, the hire that isn't working, the direction you've half-committed to. I'm direct, and you leave every session with the next move, not homework.
By the end of a quarter, most people have:
The call
made the call they’d been sitting on for months
The conversation
had the conversation they’d been avoiding
The direction
got their clarity back about where this is heading
Strategy Coaching
Executive Strategy Programme
This season · Land & Lead
Not sure which fits? Start with a conversation. Half an hour, no pitch, and we'll work out together whether this is useful at all.
Coaching for your team
If you're a CEO, CPO or HR Director arranging coaching for someone on your team, here's how it works when someone else is paying.
What the role needs, what good looks like by the end of the quarter, and whether coaching is the right tool at all.
Half an hour with the person you have in mind. Coaching only works if they choose it, so they can say no.
We agree the goals together, so everyone knows what the work is for.
You hear about progress against those goals, never what was said in the room.
At the end of the quarter we look back at the goals and decide what, if anything, comes next.
Beliefs
Coaching is close, personal work, so it matters that we fit. Here's what I hold to — a filter as much as a manifesto.
Not analysis in a nicer font. It needs imagination — room to think without the constraints before choosing within them.
A list of everything that matters isn’t a strategy. The value is in what you cut.
Teams that agree quickly haven’t decided anything. Surfacing the real disagreement is part of the process, not a failure of it.
Most strategy work produces a document. The hard part is whether it’s still shaping decisions three months later.
If that sounds like how you want to work, the next step is a conversation.
Teams
Sometimes what's stuck isn't one person — it's a leadership team pulling in six directions and calling it alignment. That needs a different format, so it happens somewhere else.
next + future is the strategy practice I co-founded with Joel Bankhead — discovery workshops, retreats and ongoing partnerships for leadership teams. If the problem belongs to your whole team, that's where to take it, and I'll likely be in the room.
Strategy for teams
A discovery workshop is the usual way in.
One day with your leadership team to find the real problem, agree the top three priorities, and leave with a ninety-day plan.
Visit next + futureWriting
Not ready to talk? Read first. These are my own essays and notes on strategy and leadership — written for people doing the job, not studying it, about the decisions that don't show up in frameworks.
No growth tactics, no listicles. The easiest way to get a feel for how I think before we ever speak.
Latest essays
6 October 2026 · 5 min read
We taught delivery teams to work with uncertainty. Then we asked them to sprint towards a strategy written once a year, by a room that works nothing like theirs.
Adventures in Strategy
The next + future newsletter
The best of this, every few weeks, with Joel adding his take on each piece. Free, and you can leave whenever you like.
Questions
Strategy Coaching and the Executive Strategy Programme are packages from £750, shaped to the work; we agree yours on our first call, before you commit to anything. Land & Lead is £1,000 at the founding price for the first four places, then £1,500.
Yes. What you bring stays between us. If your organisation is paying, they hear about progress against the goals we agreed together, never what was said.
Yes. It works the same way, with a short three-way start and review. See how it works when someone else is paying.
Whichever suits you: in person, virtually, or a mix of the two. I'm based in Manchester, and I'll always take a conversation outdoors or over great coffee when we can.
With a half-hour conversation. No pitch and no obligation: we work out together whether this is useful at all. Message me on WhatsApp or find a time in my calendar.
Yes, through next + future, the strategy practice I co-founded with Joel Bankhead. More on team work.
Contact
The hardest part is usually saying it out loud for the first time. That's all a first conversation is:
Half an hour. No pitch. No obligation.
“That space to think is so rare and so valuable to me.”
If it's useful, we'll talk about what comes next. If it isn't, you've gained an outside view. Message me on WhatsApp or find a time in my calendar.
Prefer email? matt@nextandfuture.co.uk