A milestone
A promotion, a new role, a bigger mandate, someone senior arriving from outside. Brought in early, the executive learns the culture, the power, and the expectations while first impressions are still forming.
A word from Laura
Hello. I’m Laura Lopata. For thirty years, I have advised senior leaders in some of the world’s most demanding organizations. The people I work with are already exceptional. My job is to take them further in their work, in their role, and in reading the organization around them. I am engaged by organizations, and up until now, there was only one way for my clients to find me, and that was by referral. Recently, at the urging of a client, I began to make my thinking more widely available. However you found your way here, welcome. If something is on your mind, reach out. That conversation is where everything begins.
Quoted in
The New York Times
The Times of London
Investor's Business Daily
Over thirty years across four industries, I have advised senior leaders on their organizations’ most complex challenges.
Global organizations engage me to work with their most senior executives and high potentials. My role is part strategist, part translator, part trusted advisor. My work covers what is not on the organizational chart. Politics, leadership presence, communication, cultural fluency, difficult personalities and relationships, eminence building, and what the organization means but does not say.
Strategic planning and execution, building successful and effective teams, preparing for transitions, anticipating changes on the horizon, and figuring out what comes next are also subjects that get addressed.
The executives I work with are not struggling.They are exceptional.
Before it goes anywhere else.
Much of my work with the most senior leaders is counsel. A situation too delicate to raise internally, a decision with consequences in every direction, a problem that touches the organization, the politics, and the personalities all at once.
This work rests on judgment. It requires knowing the organization deeply, knowing the situation completely, and being the one person in the room with no stake in the outcome except getting it right.
Custom designed for each client.
When I first meet a client, I look at the person, the challenges they are facing, and the opportunity they are trying to seize. I listen to their hopes and concerns. I often speak with their superior or main stakeholder and hear their hopes and concerns for the client as well.
I look at the organization, at who actually has the power and influence, how decisions really get made, and what the culture rewards. From all of that, I make a plan for that client, that organization, and that circumstance, including what motivates them, how they communicate, where they would like their career to go, and any personal considerations the engagement needs to accommodate.
Engagements start at one year, though many last years and even decades. Over time, the partnership becomes its own asset. I know how the client thinks, what the organization requires, and what the client is building toward. Some clients work with me continuously. Some take a break and come back when they are about to embark on a new challenge. Many engage me to work with their people.
We speak weekly, usually for an hour. When a client is working on an important project or is under stress, we spend more time together. Should something happen between calls, the client gets in touch and we work through it that day.
Most engagements begin with a specific, visible issue. A blowup. Someone in line for promotion, but there are concerns. A project going awry. Once the immediate concern has been addressed, the work begins on everything that led to it. With the most senior leaders, the work is counsel from the start, because the higher the position, the fewer the people they can speak to.
A promotion, a new role, a bigger mandate, someone senior arriving from outside. Brought in early, the executive learns the culture, the power, and the expectations while first impressions are still forming.
From the idea, through socializing it with stakeholders and overcoming objections, to approval, implementation, and launch.
Some of the most valuable people in an organization are also the hardest to work with, and the organization is rarely willing to lose them. I work both sides of that, with the executive and with the leaders who have to keep them and get the best from them.
The next logical position, an unexpected opportunity, or a role created just for them.
Six engagements, grouped by the kind of problem they began as. Each is the story of an individual leader. The most delicate work is not described here at all. That is the nature of counsel. Open any one to read what happened.
Transition and new leadership
Coming into a role,
or expanding one,
when the stakes are highest.
Reorganization · C-Suite
A seasoned C-Suite executive wanted more responsibility during a reorganization, and leadership was skeptical. Together we built the business case and the path to key stakeholders and board members. The case persuaded them, and the executive was asked to take on two additional departments in the newly reconfigured organization.
Corporate Politics · Stability
A C-Suite position turned over three times in quick succession before the fourth executive was given the role. Together we mapped the internal politics, the scope of what had to shift, and the select changes the team needed. The executive succeeded where three predecessors had not, bringing stability to the role, the leadership, and the organization.
Politics, culture and integration
Where the organization,
not the work,
is the obstacle.
Acquisition · Integration · Global Firm
A global firm acquired a boutique on the strength of its senior partner, and the partner resisted integrating into the new culture, putting the firm's entire investment at risk. Together we worked through how the firm operated, what it valued, and how to speak with the other partners. The partner integrated and has grown their global practice area into one of the firm's most profitable.
Management Change · Network · Speed
A senior executive and ongoing client was unexpectedly slated for termination after a change in management. With little time, we designed a plan and the client worked their extensive network. The client secured a position in a more prominent area of the firm.
Eminence and advancement
Exceptional people
who were not
being seen as such.
Leadership · High Stakes · Difficult Market
A young international partner who looked nothing like the firm's traditional leadership was unexpectedly handed a leadership role on one of the organization's most important accounts in a difficult market. Together we worked through what the role required, how to be accepted in it, and the strategic vision it called for. The partner implemented that vision, energized a team of hundreds, and carried the account through the market.
Partnership · Relationship Repair · Professional Services
An international senior associate had been passed over for partnership after a disagreement with an influential partner and was considering an offer from a competing firm. Together we planned the repair, and the client made it, learning how the firm's internal communications actually worked. The next year the client was invited to join the partnership.
For over thirty years, organizations have engaged my services when their senior leaders and high potentials face complex, high stakes leadership challenges. Clients have included Deloitte, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorganChase, Credit Suisse, Bayer, PepsiCo, GE HealthCare, WPP, American Petroleum Institute, Booz & Co. (Strategy&), and Blue Man Group, across financial services, professional services, healthcare, and the arts. Many of my client relationships have continued for decades.
I am a native Manhattanite and now divide my time among New York, Rhode Island, and Paris. My father founded a publicly traded company and was its CEO, and many of his friends were CEOs too. The talk around the table was always about business, and I absorbed all of it. Training as an actress and costume designer taught me to observe behavior closely, which is still how I read an organization.
Taught at NYU School of Continuing Education.
Taught at the Campaign School at Yale and served on its board.
Lectured at the Brown University and Trinity Consortium.
Advisor to the Center for Talent Innovation's Executive Presence Initiative, led by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, and acknowledged in her book Executive Presence.
Quoted in The New York Times, The Times of London, Investor's Business Daily, Crain's New York Business, and The New York Daily News. Named twice to Quest Magazine's Essentials list.
I also work pro bono with a small group of young professionals from my extended network who are just starting out. It is a pleasure helping them find their footing.
When not with my clients, I cook and preserve, often things from my garden, sew, quilt, make jewelry, go to theater, and travel.
Organizations engage me to work with their most senior executives: CEOs, COOs, CAOs, CHROs, EVPs, SVPs, partners, and senior managing directors, primarily in financial services, professional services, healthcare, and the arts. In practice, it is often the executive who knows my work and initiates the conversation. The organization signs the contract. The relationship is between the executive and me.
Thirty years across four industries. I know how different organizations are built and how decisions get made inside each one, and all of it comes to bear on every engagement.
Brilliant but impossible senior executives. Every organization has at least one, but their brilliance and the havoc they cause come in equal measure.
Every engagement is designed specifically for each client. What most have in common is a weekly conversation, and the understanding that if something happens between calls, we speak that day.
Engagements are bespoke and priced accordingly. I am not inexpensive. Senior leaders have chosen to fund this work from their own budgets, year after year, which is the clearest answer I can give about its value.
If your organization is ready for serious, sustained work with a senior executive, please get in touch.
By email at llopata@lauralopata.com or by phone at +1 212 868 0536. I answer personally, usually the same day.
Tell me about the executive and the moment they are in. We will see whether an engagement makes sense.
Telephone