Built for high stakes: leadership strategy that delivers.
When teams span firms and priorities compete, we help the leaders in the middle get results with more ease and earn the trust that makes people follow.
These leaders shape and deliver your strategy. They also carry more pressure than anyone.
They are often your strongest experts, now leading on a larger scale and answering to every stakeholder at once:
Our mission is to help leaders serve their clients, develop their people, and do what is right for the business and the common good.
“Set clear expectations and accountabilities, then let your people be ingenious in how they deliver.”
Mary McCarthy, Founder
We help you get the results you need now and the transformation that drives future success.
Most leadership programs leave people better informed and largely unchanged. The real work happens deeper, in the habits, fears, and old strategies that once made someone successful and no longer work as well. Often a setback or a partnership that went sideways is where the most important growth happens.
We bring decades of research on human behavior, leadership, and high-performing teams together with a practice of rigorous honesty: taking an honest inventory of how you lead and how you are perceived, becoming willing to change when change is needed, and holding the line when the stakes are high and you are asked to compromise your integrity or the integrity of the business.
The result is leaders who stay steady under pressure, make decisions when no path is obvious, and build cultures where others are willing to do the same.
Built for high-stakes complexity.
Leadership means navigating paradox. The fuel that got you here is rarely the fuel that takes you further, and growing often means unlearning as much as learning.
Outsourcing, Public-Private Partnerships, and Multi-Firm Teams
Built for leaders who create and run multi-firm solutions
The most forward-thinking leaders design solutions that reach across company lines: outcome-based outsourcing partnerships, public-private partnerships, and joint ventures built on shared goals and shared rewards. The contracts, governance, and economics of these models get careful attention, while the team that has to make them work every day often gets a single kickoff meeting.
Lasting performance takes a closer look at the systems, structures, behaviors, and mindsets it takes to truly operate as one team. It often means building strategic skills in people who moved from tactical roles to overseeing another firm's work. We help partners hold one another accountable, create a unique culture and expectations for the partnership, learn through trial and error, and work through conflict for the good of the whole.
- Partnerships that deliver the value they were designed to create
- A team that achieves results no single firm could achieve on its own
- Strong working relationships between partners at every level, from the front line to the executive team
Executive Coaching
For leaders ready to lead at a larger scale
The strengths that earned a leader their seat, deep expertise, quick answers, and sheer personal effort, are rarely the ones that carry them to the next level. At scale, results come through other people: a strong bench, a team that wants to follow, and a leader secure enough to care more about the work than the title.
Our coaching works on the beliefs and habits underneath how a leader leads, using assessment data and the real situations in front of them. We help leaders make the shift from being the smartest person in the room to being the person others choose to follow, because people follow who you are, how you treat them, and what you make them believe about themselves.
- Clarity on which old habits no longer serve you
- Results delivered through your people, with more ease
- Power dynamics and political pressure handled with integrity
Client Leadership
For the people who own your most important relationships
Clients expect a partner who anticipates their needs, knows how to navigate their organization, and leads them to better outcomes. Client leadership builds that capability in the people who support your most important client relationships, so clients renew and expand their work with you.
- Clients who see your leaders as trusted advisors
- Relationships at every level of the client organization
- Confidence bringing a point of view and winning new work
Team Offsites
For teams ready to perform as more than the sum of their members
Our offsites ground teams in what a true team is: a group with a shared purpose and goals no single member could reach alone. From there, we design the structure that lets the team perform at that level, including how it makes decisions, shares accountability, and works through conflict.
- Clarity on what the team decides together
- Shared goals over individual agendas
- Accountability held member to member
- Debate that ends in commitment
Organization Design
For leaders creating new systems and ways of working
Technical leaders excel at setting up legal entities, contracts, and financial structures, but designing how people work together is a different discipline. We shape roles, decision rights, and talent frameworks around the strategy, then assess and develop people for the roles we create, so the firm works as well as it is structured.
- A structure built for the strategy
- New roles filled by people ready for them
- Career paths that keep top talent
A movement for the leaders at the heart of it all: the people closest to your clients and your new business, who are the lifeblood of every firm.
chief
The head of a group, the one who sees ahead and sets the course.
able
Skilled and ready.
Chiefable
Ready, willing, and able to lead, and to thrive while doing it.
Senior practitioners who have led inside the businesses we serve.
Mary McCarthy, PCC
Fourteen years at JLL, including as an advisor to the firm's executive team, then Korn Ferry, before founding Chiefable in 2023. Mary has partnered with leaders at many Fortune 500 companies. MBA, University of Notre Dame.
Our senior consultants and coaches each bring decades of experience inside complex organizations.
We match the team to the work, so every client gets senior judgment from the first conversation.
Bring us your most complex situation.
Tell us a little about what you're facing and the leaders in the middle of it. We'll follow up to set a time to talk.