Preparing for the Next Role
For a high-performing leader building the breadth to take on general management or enterprise responsibility. We build the capability; you make it visible.
Executive coaching for technical leaders
Are you ready for what’s next?
I help accomplished functional leaders build the commercial, financial and leadership breadth they need for bigger roles.
Schedule a conversationA brief, confidential conversation about your role, the situation and whether I’m the right person to help.
- EngineeringTechnical foundation
- ProductOutcomes, not features
- Sales & MarketingCommercialization
- General ManagementP&L ownership
- C-SuiteEnterprise leadership
The transition
Your expertise is the foundation. Not the finish line.
The skills that make you exceptional in your function are still essential. Broader responsibility asks you to connect the entire business, crossing boundaries: customers, markets, products, people, investment, and the P&L.
Let’s leverage your expertise and build on it.
Ways to work together
Built around the role you’re moving toward, or the one you just earned.
Your real business situations, not a canned curriculum.
Stepping Into the Bigger Role
For the newly promoted leader. The P&L, the team, the decisions that can’t wait — we work those together, and you build the judgment the role demands.
Executive Sounding Board
Targeted perspective for experienced leaders working through consequential decisions.
How I think
Practical operating principles, not management jargon.
Patterns from running businesses, not from a textbook.
Technical → Commercial → Financial
Connect what you build, why customers buy, and how that shows up in the economics.
Structure → Process → People → Outcomes
Before you call it a people problem, check whether the system lets capable people succeed.
Strategy → Execution → Accountability
Strategy is real when priorities change and people know what to do differently.
Why Mark
I’ve made the transition you’re ready to make.
- General Manager
Carried full P&L across a business and grew the unit from roughly $20 million to $50 million in four years.
- Chief Executive Officer
Increased the company’s valuation fourfold in under two years and led it through a sale.
- Chief Product Officer
Rebuilt the Product organization around commercial outcomes rather than delivery.
I know what it’s like to move from being valued for the depth of your answers to being responsible for the quality of the whole business. My coaching combines honest challenge, clear explanation and pattern recognition earned in the operator’s seat.
“You don’t need to become the CFO, CRO or CPO. You do need to understand how their worlds connect—and lead across all of them.”
What leaders say
Perspective that changes how you lead. Proven, direct, and immediately useful.
I’ve brought Mark into four companies where I worked. Every time, he cleared the logjams and translated between teams that thought they were speaking the same language.
Mark gives you the feedback you need, even if you didn’t know you needed it. And when he delivers it, you know he’s genuinely invested in you.
He pushed me past “does this make sense for the product?” to “how does this fit what the business needs, financially and strategically?” I went from chapter lead to director.
Mark’s coaching helped me move from being perceived as a blocker to becoming a trusted enabler of growth. It gave me the skills and confidence to influence executive leaders and build shared ownership of security across the organisation.
For companies
Turn your strongest functional leaders into well-rounded business leaders.
Give a high-potential leader targeted development before a bigger move—or support them through the moment when the stakes become real. The work is practical, confidential and connected to the outcomes their role requires.
Sponsor a leaderInsights
Clear thinking for the questions bigger roles create.
Useful answers for leaders learning to see beyond their function.
Leadership
A performance problem is not a diagnosis
Six things to score, and the two my client got wrong on the first pass.
P&LA strong P&L can hide a struggling R&D program
A P&L will show you that growth has stopped. It will not show you why.
Commercialization · LeadershipEven I won’t skip the process
Executives promise customers features because they want to help. Product stops getting overruled when the most senior people defer to the process.
Why “Octane Man”?
It started with premium gas—and a table of people leaning in.
It started at dinner. Friends got me talking about premium gasoline — they’d all heard of engines that knock, but none knew what was actually happening. So I explained it: what octane measures, why it matters, and whether cars actually need it. It wasn’t complicated. It had just never been explained to them clearly. Strangers at the next table overheard, started asking questions, and by the end of the night I had new and old friends calling me “Octane Man.”
It stuck for the same reason the coaching does: taking something technical that most people find confusing, and making it clear enough that people lean in instead of tuning out.
That’s how I coach. Clear, direct, and actionable.
Ready for broader responsibility?
Bring the whole business into view.
Whether you’re preparing for the next role, stepping into it now or investing in someone who is, let’s talk about what success requires.
Schedule a conversation
A brief, confidential conversation about your role, the situation and whether I’m the right person to help.
More information