At PRISM, one senior practitioner works inside your company two to eight days a month — settling how people are hired, paid, managed and, when it comes to it, let go. Placeholder line, warm and plain, for the page that confirms what you were already told.
Offers were made on instinct, the second manager has never managed, and every awkward conversation still ends up on the founder's calendar. At PRISM the answer is not a handbook — it is the four or five structural decisions that make the next thirty hires survivable. Placeholder paragraph, plain and warm.
People work happens between matters: associate progression handled in a corridor, a lateral hire left to find their own way in, a policy nobody has read since it was written. At PRISM this becomes something designed rather than something survived. Placeholder paragraph, plain and warm.
Most engagements begin with one and widen into the next two. Open a face to see what it contains. Placeholder line.
The shape of the company written down: who reports where, what each level means, and what it pays. Done once, properly, it removes a year of improvised answers. Placeholder description in the voice of the practice.
A loop that does not depend on one person's calendar or one person's instinct: scorecards, a short and defensible interview, and a decision made the same way twice. Placeholder description.
Most first-time managers are promoted for being good at the other job. At PRISM they are given the sentences to use, a cadence to hold, and someone to call before the hard conversation rather than after. Placeholder description.
Handbooks, contracts and the exposures nobody has had time to read. Not a compliance exercise — a short list of what would actually hurt, in the order it should be fixed. Placeholder description.
Restructures, exits, a founder disagreement that has become a people problem. At PRISM these are prepared in writing, rehearsed, and then done in one clean move rather than three messy ones. Placeholder description.
“Two weeks in, PRISM had written down the thing three of us had been circling for a year.”
“We stopped losing candidates in the last week. That alone paid for the year.”
“Senior enough to tell a partner something he did not want to hear, warmly.”
“Our first-time managers stopped apologising for managing. Placeholder quote.”
“The handover was the point. Nine months later the system is still ours.”
Every engagement runs the same three passes, in the same order, whether it lasts a month or a year. Placeholder line.
Start at pass oneInterviews with everyone who touches the problem, the documents as they actually exist, and a seat in the meetings where the friction shows. Nothing changes in this pass. Placeholder text.
Weeks 1—2One document: what is structural, what is personal, what is urgent, and the order to touch it in. Read together, argued with, then agreed. Placeholder text.
Weeks 3—4Two to eight days a month inside the team, building the agreed things and handing each one to the person who will own it. Placeholder text.
Month 2 onwardPRISM leaves. The systems stay, with the names of their owners on them, and a standing half-day if something moves. Placeholder text.
By agreement
PRISM is one person, on purpose. Erin H. Robertson has spent a placeholder number of years running people functions inside companies at the stage yours is at now, and the practice exists so that work can be done without a company having to hire for it too early.
The view here is that HR is an operating discipline, not a compliance function, and that a founder or a partner deserves someone who has already made the mistakes elsewhere. Placeholder paragraph.
A consultant hands over a recommendation. At PRISM the work is done from inside the team, on a standing rhythm, and it is not finished until someone in the company owns it without help. Placeholder answer.
Usually somewhere between twenty and a hundred and fifty people, or a firm with more than a handful of partners. Smaller than that and a few hours of advice is usually enough; larger and a full-time lead is the honest answer. Placeholder answer.
The hiring system gets built and key searches get support, but no placement commission is ever charged — so the advice about whether to hire at all stays honest. Placeholder answer.
Partnership rather than hierarchy, progression rather than levelling, and a practice manager who is usually already doing three jobs. The passes are the same; the vocabulary is not. Placeholder answer.
Two weeks of listening, two weeks of writing, one long read-through, and then the first two structural changes are agreed. Nothing is implemented before it is written down. Placeholder answer.
Thirty days, either side, with no penalty. The intention is always that the engagement ends. Placeholder answer.
Thank you — placeholder confirmation.
A reply comes from a person, usually within two working days.
