How to Hire a Wine & Spirits Executive
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire wine and spirits leaders who combine genuine brand and marketing strength with an understanding of the category’s craft, heritage, and premiumisation, and its distinctive route-to-market and regulatory dynamics. The best pair the ability to build desirable, premium brands with commercial and channel expertise in […]
How to Leave a Leadership Role Well
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerLeaving a leadership role well means departing with professionalism, grace, and care — ensuring a smooth handover, supporting the transition, protecting relationships and reputation, and going out with integrity rather than acrimony. How a leader leaves is remembered and shapes their legacy and future, so […]
Beauty in Travel Retail: Leadership for the Channel
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerBeauty travel retail leadership takes an understanding of the distinctive duty-free and travel channel — its unique consumer moment, retail environment, and dynamics — combined with beauty brand and commercial strength. The best leaders understand the traveller as a shopper, the channel’s particular retail and […]
Stakeholder Management for Senior Leaders
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerStakeholder management means understanding, engaging, and building trust with the many parties a leader depends on — boards, investors, teams, customers, partners, and others — aligning them where possible and navigating competing interests. Done well, it earns the support, trust, and alignment a leader needs […]
How to Hire a Home Improvement & DIY Executive
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire home improvement and DIY leaders who combine strong retail and operational capability at scale with an understanding of the category’s distinctive customers — both DIY consumers and trade professionals — and its project- and seasonally-driven buying. The best pair retail and commercial rigour with […]
Leading a Supply Chain Transformation
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerLeading a supply chain transformation means fundamentally improving how a business plans, sources, makes, and delivers its products — for cost, resilience, service, or sustainability. It takes a clear goal, deep supply chain and change-leadership capability, the persistence to drive complex change across the business […]
How to Hire a Sporting Goods & Outdoor Executive
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire sporting goods and outdoor leaders who combine genuine passion for and credibility in the category with brand, product, and commercial strength — and an understanding of the performance, community, and increasingly sustainability dimensions that drive it. The best pair authentic connection to sport and […]
How to Hire a Consumer Electronics Executive
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerHire consumer electronics leaders who combine genuine product and technology understanding with brand and commercial capability, and who can navigate the category’s fast innovation cycles, intense competition, and hardware complexity. The best pair a feel for technology products and their development with the commercial and […]
General Counsel vs Company Secretary: What’s the Difference?
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerA General Counsel leads a business’s legal affairs — its legal strategy, advice, risk, and legal team; a Company Secretary ensures the business meets its governance and statutory obligations and supports the board. The two overlap and are sometimes combined, but the General Counsel is […]
What Does a Head of Corporate Development Do?
By Annabel Norman, Managing Partner · Norman Consultants The short answerA Head of Corporate Development leads a business’s inorganic growth and strategic transactions — identifying, evaluating, and executing mergers, acquisitions, investments, partnerships, and divestitures that support the company’s strategy. The role blends strategic thinking with deal-making expertise, helping a business grow and reshape itself through […]
