Adastrum is a London executive search and leadership advisory firm. We appoint chief executives, chief commercial and digital officers, and the technology and transformation leadership around them, into retail, consumer and FMCG businesses.
Few sectors have had to change shape as often, or as publicly. The appointments made in response are the ones that decide whether a business adapts or simply absorbs the cost.
Talk to us about a senior appointmentWe are retained by boards, chief executives, chief people officers and private equity operating partners to appoint the executive leadership of a retail or consumer business. Retained means we are engaged to solve a defined problem rather than to fill a vacancy: we map the whole relevant market, approach leaders confidentially, assess them against the problem, and stay involved through the offer and the first hundred days.
Retail moves faster than most sectors will admit, and the leadership question is rarely the one on the job description. A business whose digital channel has outgrown its operating model needs a different leader from one whose brand is respected and no longer chosen. Before we open a search we agree which of those you are actually solving.
Retail briefs arrive in the language of channels, formats and margin. Underneath, they reduce to a small number of leadership problems.
We are retained to appoint permanent and interim executive leadership, including
Our work is the leadership that sets direction for a retail or consumer business. We do not place store, field or area management, buying and merchandising teams, or roles below director level, and we are not a contingent agency. If that is what you need, we will gladly point you to someone better placed to help.
Five stages, run the same way on every mandate. The timings are the ones we work to, not the ones that read well.
Stage 1
We establish what the appointment has to change, what the business has already tried, and what a new leader will actually be permitted to do. We will challenge a specification that lists every capability the executive team currently lacks, because that brief describes a committee rather than a person.
Stage 2
We map the relevant market comprehensively: the leaders already doing the job in retail and consumer businesses, and those in adjacent industries whose experience transfers. We approach each one personally and confidentially, and we spend as much time on the environment that shaped them as on the logos.
Stage 3
Assessment is a subject-matter conversation between peers, not a scripted competency exercise. In retail we weight commercial judgement under pressure heavily, because the sector produces confident operators and the difference between confidence and judgement only shows when a season goes wrong. Each shortlisted candidate receives a written assessment mapped against your problem.
Stage 4
We present three to five candidates with our recommendation, the trade-offs between them, and what we would do if it were our decision. We do not rank candidates to you before you meet them, because the ones ranked second and third then walk into the room on the back foot.
Stage 5
We manage the offer and stay close to the leader and the sponsor through the first hundred days. In retail the first peak trading period is the real test, and it arrives before most new leaders have finished being introduced.
A strong CV from a well-known retailer is a safe-looking choice in a board pack. It tells you what someone has been part of. It does not tell you how they will lead when a season underperforms, a peak-trading plan slips, or a cost programme lands on the team they have only just started to build.
Working with the social psychologist Dr Ian Stewart, we assess how a leader operates when the room is calm and, more usefully, what they reach for when it is not. Those defaults are developable rather than fixed, which is the point: a leader who can see their own can regulate it. It is the difference between an appointment that compounds and one that quietly comes apart around month twelve.
We place across sectors on purpose. The pattern recognition that changes an outcome usually travels better from outside an industry than from within it, because people inside a sector have often arrived at the same answers as one another.
A leader who has already rebuilt a direct-to-customer business, or already run a commercial function under investor scrutiny, carries that judgement whatever logo earned it. We map the market inside and outside retail and let the problem decide where the right leader comes from.
Adastrum brings twenty years of appointing senior leaders into complex organisations, a behavioural assessment method developed with the social psychologist Dr Ian Stewart, and our Meta Team programme, which has worked with leadership teams at organisations including Nasdaq, Novartis, HSBC, Unilever and EQT.
No. We appoint board and executive leadership: chief executives, chief commercial, digital, customer and technology officers, and transformation directors. We do not place store, field or area management, buying and merchandising teams, or any role below director level.
Before your next senior appointment, one question is worth sitting with. Are you about to hire someone who knows what good retail looks like, or someone who has actually built it?
If that is a conversation worth having, it is exactly the one we welcome.
Talk to us about a senior appointmentObservations from twenty years of appointing leaders into complex organisations: what separates an appointment that compounds from one that quietly comes apart, why succession plans drift towards the most visible candidate, and what a board ought to ask before it signs off the brief.
The Collaborator is the schema you appoint to make a divided organisation move as one. It is also the one most likely to keep seeking agreement long after the moment for agreement has gone. The most dangerous phrase in a senior team is not “I disagree.” It is “let’s get everyone aligned first.” I watched a leader run a good business into a wasted quarter on that phrase, and almost nobody in the room could see it happ
The most expensive senior appointment I have watched fail had the best roadmap I have ever seen. I mean that sincerely. It was a genuinely impressive piece of thinking. Every workstream mapped, every dependency identified, governance and sequencing and risk all accounted for. The board saw it in month three and applauded. He was still refining it in month fourteen, when they let him go.
The Commander is the schema you appoint in a crisis. It is also the one you have to watch once the crisis has passed. There is a phrase you hear in big organisations when nothing is moving. "It's just how things get done here." Say it out loud and it sounds like culture. Listen properly and it is something sharper. It means someone at the top is commanding, and everyone below has quietly learned to wait.
The board thought they had found the perfect CEO. Two successful exits. A scaled multinational division. References that read like a character witness: decisive, commercially sharp, a natural leader. In the interview he was confident, fluent, convincing on growth and culture and transformation. The appointment was unanimous. Twelve months later the same board was negotiating his exit. Revenue targets had been missed.
There’s one question almost every HR-led interview process insists on. “Tell me about a time you failed.” At junior level, it sometimes earns its keep. At C-suite, it’s a junk question. And it’s almost always the wrong thing to ask in the room. I’ll explain why I won’t ask it. And then I’ll tell you what I ask instead.
Most succession planning assumes someone is ready to step up. But what happens when the obvious successor is the one who leaves? A look at why heir apparent plans fail, the real cost of an unplanned leadership transition, and how boards build genuine continuity.
