We are a consultancy and advisory practice that partners closely with businesses to solve complex challenges across people, process, and operations — delivering senior-level expertise on a flexible, fractional basis when you need us.
When growth starts to stall, it’s rarely just one issue. It’s misaligned teams, inefficient processes, and operational gaps that quietly compound over time. That’s where we come in.
We don’t believe in quick fixes or surface-level recommendations. We go deeper — into the uncomfortable, often overlooked parts of your business — to uncover root causes, not just symptoms. From there, we design and implement the structures, systems, and ways of working that support long-term, sustainable growth.
We work alongside you and your team to bring clarity, alignment, and strategy where it matters most and ensure a smooth change management plan is in place.
Whether you’re scaling, navigating complexity, or simply know there’s a better way to operate, we provide the strategic depth and execution capability to move your business forward — with confidence.
Think of us as your strategic partner: Senior expertise when you need it, practical execution where it counts, and no unnecessary overhead of full-time hires.
We structure our work around three interconnected pillars — underpinned by a foundation of Strategy, Change, and Journey Management. Click any pillar to learn more.
Most consultants arrive with solutions before they understand the problem. Here's why that's backwards.
Growing organisations often need senior leadership before a full-time hire makes sense.
Change programs fail more often for cultural reasons than technical ones.
Our team brings genuine, hands-on operational and consulting experience — not just frameworks from the outside looking in. We have extensive experience working across businesses from start-up to well established, with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through to business sales.
About usWe work across a broad range of disciplines — click anything below to explore. Our work rarely sits neatly in one box, and neither do our clients' challenges. That's why we have multidisciplinary teams in a fractional capacity supporting you through whatever opportunity your business is facing.
✦ Click any service to explore ✦
Our team brings genuine, hands-on operational and consulting experience — not just frameworks from the outside looking in. We have extensive experience working across businesses from start-up to well established, with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through to business sales.
Lianne Friedman is a leader and diversity and inclusion advocate with over 15 years of experience spanning management consulting and senior executive roles. She specialises in helping organisations navigate complexity, scale sustainably, and build high-performing teams that deliver measurable impact.
As a former CEO and now Founder of Pillar and Path Global, Lianne brings a strategic and people-centred approach to solving workforce and operational challenges — partnering with leaders to design adaptive strategies, strengthen governance, and unlock growth.
With deep expertise in healthcare and workforce planning, she is particularly passionate about creating commercially sound solutions that reduce pressure on frontline teams while improving efficiency, stability, and long-term organisational performance.
LinkedInLianne Friedman is a leader and diversity and inclusion advocate with over 15 years of experience spanning management consulting and senior executive roles. She specialises in helping organisations navigate complexity, scale sustainably, and build high-performing teams that deliver measurable impact.
As a former CEO and now Founder of Pillar and Path Global, Lianne brings a strategic and people-centred approach to solving workforce and operational challenges — partnering with leaders to design adaptive strategies, strengthen governance, and unlock growth.
With deep expertise in healthcare and workforce planning, she is particularly passionate about creating commercially sound solutions that reduce pressure on frontline teams while improving efficiency, stability, and long-term organisational performance.
Lianne is an experienced media commentator and public speaker, having appeared across television, radio and print on topics spanning workforce strategy, governance, healthcare reform and diversity and inclusion.
Practical thinking on people, operations, leadership, and business transformation — from the Pillar and Path team.
Most consultants arrive with solutions before they understand the problem. They've seen something similar before, so they reach for the familiar fix. Here's why that's backwards — and what proper diagnosis looks like.
Growing organisations often need senior leadership before a full-time hire makes sense.
Change programs fail more often for cultural reasons than technical ones.
Most consultants arrive with solutions before they understand the problem. They've seen something similar before, so they reach for the familiar fix. The client gets a solution — just not necessarily the right one.
Surface-level symptoms often look identical even when the underlying cause is completely different. Two businesses with high staff turnover might be experiencing totally different root causes — one cultural, one structural, one driven by compensation, another by poor management.
Getting uncomfortable in the problem means resisting the urge to name the solution early. It means asking harder questions, sitting with uncertainty longer, and following the evidence rather than the hypothesis. That leads to solutions that actually stick — and that's the Pillar and Path approach.
Growing organisations face a familiar tension: they need experienced executive leadership but aren't yet at the size where a full-time C-suite hire makes financial sense.
A fractional executive works with your organisation on a part-time or project basis — typically 2–3 days per week, or for the duration of a specific initiative. They operate as a genuine member of your leadership team, not an external adviser at arm's length.
The model works best during periods of transition — scaling, restructuring, system change, or leadership gaps. Done well, a fractional engagement leaves the organisation more capable than it found it.
Change programs fail more often for cultural reasons than technical ones. The system gets implemented, the process gets redesigned — but the people don't change how they work.
Organisations that sustain transformation treat culture as a core design consideration from the start — not something to address once the "real" work is done.
Sustainable culture change is visible in everyday behaviours, not values posters on a wall. It requires leaders who model the change, managers equipped to coach it, and systems that reinforce rather than undermine the new ways of working.
Whether you have a specific challenge in mind or want to explore how we might work together, we'd love to hear from you.
Your people are your most important asset. We support the entire employee journey — from the moment you recruit someone to the insights you gain when they leave — and help you build an organisation where people thrive and perform.
Strategic P&C advisory covering workforce planning, leadership development, engagement strategy, onboarding design, performance frameworks and organisational culture transformation.
Explore People & Culture →Structured change programs for system implementations, structural transformation and cultural change — built on stakeholder engagement and practical implementation planning.
Explore Change Management →End-to-end business development support — from lead generation, proposal writing and pipeline strategy through to negotiations and closing. Built on relationships, not just transactions.
Explore Business Development →Tailored leadership development programs and one-to-one mentorship or coaching. Building real capability at every level — grounded in practice, not just theory.
Explore Leadership & Coaching →Strategic workforce planning — including how to structure, scale and lead offshore resources effectively. Strong leadership is the critical factor that determines whether offshoring works.
Explore Offshoring & Leadership →Designing recruitment frameworks and onboarding experiences that attract the right people and set them up for success from day one. First impressions determine whether great hires stay great hires.
Leadership is learned, not inherited. We design and deliver leadership programs that are grounded in real-world application — not just theory — and create the conditions where mentorship and coaching can genuinely change the trajectory of a career.
We work with organisations to design leadership programs that build the specific capabilities your business needs. Whether you are developing first-time managers, strengthening a mid-level leadership cohort, or preparing executives for the next challenge, our approach is always contextual, practical and measurable.
Programs are tailored to your sector, culture and strategic goals — delivered in formats that work for your team, whether that is intensive workshops, ongoing cohort programs, or blended learning approaches.
Sometimes the most powerful intervention is one-to-one. Whether you are a leader navigating a difficult transition, a founder scaling for the first time, or someone who simply wants a trusted thinking partner, we offer mentorship and executive coaching engagements on an individual basis.
These are not prescribed programs. They are genuine relationships, built on honesty and tailored entirely to you.
Offshoring can deliver real competitive advantage — but only when it is set up correctly and led well. The difference between an offshore team that thrives and one that quietly underperforms almost always comes down to leadership.
Most offshoring challenges are not operational — they are cultural and relational. Offshore teams are often treated as a cost lever rather than a genuine extension of the business, and the result is disengagement, high attrition and underperformance that erodes the original rationale for offshoring in the first place.
We help organisations build the structure, culture and leadership practices that allow offshore teams to genuinely contribute — not just execute instructions from a distance.
Designing the right operating model from the start — roles, accountability, communication rhythms and escalation paths that work across geographies and time zones.
Building the leadership capability to manage offshore teams with consistency, empathy and clarity. The best offshore leaders invest in relationships before they invest in output.
Extending your organisational culture to offshore teams in a way that feels genuine — not performative. Offshore staff should feel like colleagues, not contractors.
Establishing fair, transparent performance frameworks and engagement practices that acknowledge the specific context of offshore employment.
Most operational problems are symptoms of something deeper. Before we recommend anything, we do the work of truly understanding how your business actually operates — and why it operates that way. Then we build a practical plan to fix what matters most.
End-to-end operational review and redesign for complex organisations. We identify what's working, diagnose root causes, and put the right structures in place to support sustainable performance.
Explore Operational Consulting →Reviewing, redesigning and optimising business processes to improve efficiency, reduce waste and create scalable, sustainable operations.
Explore Process Optimisation →End-to-end support for new businesses and organisations in growth phases — from operational foundations and governance setup through to team building and scaling strategy.
Explore Start-up & Scaling →Government and sector tender submissions developed with deep knowledge of compliance requirements and evaluation criteria. Available on retainer for organisations with ongoing procurement needs.
Explore Tender & Grant Writing →Technology should enable your strategy — not define it. We review your current tech stack without vendor bias, identify what is working and what is creating friction, and give you a clear, practical roadmap for moving forward.
We map everything you are using — licences, integrations, workarounds and shadow IT — and assess how well each component is actually serving its intended purpose.
We evaluate your technology against your actual business needs, not against a theoretical ideal. Often organisations are either over-invested in tools they are barely using, or under-supported in areas that are genuinely limiting growth.
A clear, prioritised set of recommendations — with rationale, estimated effort, and sequencing logic. We tell you what to keep, what to replace, and what you could do without.
We have led complex technology go-lives in demanding environments. If implementation is needed, we can support the full process — from vendor selection through to go-live and post-implementation review.
Transformation is more than technology. We help you manage the people and process dimensions of digital change — the elements that most technology projects underestimate and most failures can be traced back to.
Ensuring your systems talk to each other — and to your people — in ways that create efficiency rather than additional complexity. Clean data flows and logical automation are often more valuable than new software.
Click a service area below to learn more, or get in touch to discuss your specific technology context.
Hands-on guidance through technology and systems change — from CRM and ERP implementations through to process digitisation and integration planning.
Explore Digital Transformation →A vendor-neutral audit of your current technology environment — identifying what is working, what is creating friction, and what a practical improvement roadmap looks like.
Surface symptoms are rarely the real issue. Most organisations know something is wrong — they can see the attrition, the missed targets, the process failures — but fixing what is visible without addressing what is underneath is expensive and temporary.
We get uncomfortable in the problem. We ask harder questions, sit with uncertainty longer, and follow the evidence rather than the hypothesis. That discomfort is where the real understanding lives — and real understanding is what leads to solutions that actually stick.
Isolated incidents are noise. Patterns are intelligence. We look for the trends and themes that tell you something meaningful about how your organisation is really operating — and we use data to separate the signals from the noise. Sustainable, scalable solutions are never built on instinct alone.
We get to know you, your business, your pain points and your challenges before we do anything else. This is not a courtesy call — it is the most important part of the work. We are here to support you throughout your journey, not just to complete a scope and move on.
The initial scope of the problem or opportunity. We listen carefully, ask the right questions, and resist the temptation to define the solution before we understand the situation. Discovery is where we earn the right to make recommendations.
Most of our clients have complex needs, and complexity requires a phased approach. We do a deep dive into the root cause of the problem — or the full scope of the opportunity. This may involve interviews with your team, workshops, reviewing your processes as if we were a new staff member being onboarded, or experiencing your services as a client would. These approaches surface findings that would never appear in a standard audit.
We can help implement on shore or offshore — learn more about our approach to offshore leadership — or we can transition cleanly to your internal team. The goal is never dependency on us. It is a business that is more capable after we leave than before we arrived.
Controversial, we know! We will say it plainly: at the end of the day, the foundation of everything is trust and the relationships that sit beneath it. With clients, with your team, our team, with suppliers and partners — relationships built on honesty and mutual respect create the conditions where everything else becomes possible. That is not soft thinking. It is the most practical thing we know and genuine at its core. We do exceptional work and build and retain long term relationships.
People and culture strategy is not an HR function — it is a leadership function. When your culture, your people systems and your organisation's purpose are genuinely aligned, everything else becomes easier: performance, retention, growth.
Designing the right organisational structure for where you are going — not just where you are now. We help organisations think through capability requirements, spans of control, and how to restructure thoughtfully rather than reactively.
Building capability across your leadership cohort — from first-time managers through to senior executives. We design programs that are grounded in your specific context, not generic frameworks.
Understanding what drives engagement in your specific environment — and what is quietly eroding it. We design practical strategies that address the real drivers of engagement, not just the visible symptoms.
Creating performance management systems that are clear, fair and actually used. The best frameworks are simple enough to be embedded into everyday conversations, not just annual reviews.
Building onboarding experiences that set new people up for success from day one. Structured onboarding reduces time to productivity and significantly improves early retention.
Culture is not a values poster — it is what happens every day in every interaction. We help organisations define the culture they want, understand the gap between that and the current reality, and build practical pathways to close it.
Change fails more often for human reasons than technical ones. The system gets implemented, the process gets redesigned — but the people do not change how they work. Effective change management addresses the human dimension from the start, not as an afterthought.
We treat culture and people as core design considerations in any change initiative — not something to manage around the edges. From the earliest stages of planning, we build stakeholder engagement, communication and capability-building into the program architecture.
Managing the people-side of technology change — from CRM and ERP rollouts to broader digital transformation. We have led complex tech go-lives in challenging environments and know what separates successful from unsuccessful ones.
Supporting organisations through restructures, mergers, acquisitions or significant operational change — with a focus on maintaining trust and momentum through periods of uncertainty.
Identifying who is impacted, understanding their concerns, and designing engagement approaches that bring people along rather than dragging them. Resistance is information — we work with it rather than against it.
Designing and implementing programs that create lasting shifts in behaviour — not just awareness. Sustainable cultural change is visible in everyday interactions, not values posters on a wall.
Sustainable business development is ultimately about relationships — with clients, partners and your own team. We provide end-to-end support across the full business development lifecycle, from identifying opportunity through to closing and retaining.
Building a sustainable pipeline of qualified opportunities — not a spray-and-pray approach, but targeted outreach grounded in a clear understanding of where your best clients come from and why.
Developing compelling, tailored proposals that communicate your value clearly and differentiate you from the competition. We help you write for the reader, not for yourself.
Structuring and negotiating commercial arrangements that work for both parties and lay the foundation for a long-term relationship — not just a transactional deal.
Designing the systems, rhythms and mindset that turn good clients into long-term partners. Client retention is the most cost-effective form of business development.
We conduct end-to-end operational reviews and deliver strategic input for boards and executive teams. We identify what is working, diagnose root causes, and put the right structures in place to support sustainable performance — without the jargon or the pre-packaged solutions.
Our operational consulting engagements begin with genuine inquiry — not assumption. We spend time understanding how your business actually operates before we say anything about how it should operate. This means we sometimes find that the stated problem is not the real problem, and we would rather tell you that early than deliver a solution to the wrong question.
A comprehensive review of how your business operates end-to-end — what is working, what is not, and why. We follow the evidence to root causes rather than reaching for familiar fixes.
Strategic input for boards and executive teams — including growth strategy, organisational design and sector-specific advisory for health, community services and professional services organisations.
Designing and implementing quality frameworks that are fit for purpose — rigorous enough to drive genuine improvement, practical enough to actually be used by the people responsible for them.
Strategic advisory support for boards navigating complexity — from governance questions to major operational decisions that require an experienced independent perspective.
Reviewing, redesigning and optimising business processes to improve efficiency, reduce waste and create operations that scale. We map your current state, identify the gaps, and build frameworks that deliver lasting improvement — not temporary fixes.
We document how things actually work — not how the policy says they work. This often surfaces informal workarounds, unacknowledged bottlenecks and process steps that exist out of habit rather than necessity.
Understanding the difference between the current state and what is needed — and tracing the source of each gap to its underlying cause. Fixing symptoms without addressing root causes is expensive and temporary.
Designing the processes and governance structures that will deliver what the business needs — built for scalability and practical enough for real teams to operate.
Translating the design into practical documentation, standard operating procedures and implementation plans — then supporting rollout or transitioning cleanly to your team.
Scaling is one of the hardest things an organisation does. It demands operational rigour and strong leadership simultaneously — and most of the things that go wrong during a growth phase trace back to a deficit in one or both. We work across both dimensions because you cannot separate them.
Growth exposes leadership gaps faster than anything else. The skills that helped you build a business to ten people are rarely the same ones that will take it to fifty. We work directly with founders and leadership teams to build the capability, clarity and confidence needed to lead through a growth phase — without losing what made the business good in the first place.
One-to-one coaching for founders and senior leaders navigating the particular pressures of a scaling business — strategic clarity, decision-making under uncertainty, team dynamics and personal resilience.
Learn about coaching →Helping leadership teams design their organisational structure for scale — identifying which capabilities they need, when they need them, and whether to build, hire or bring in fractional support.
The culture you have at ten people does not survive to fifty without intentional effort. We help founders understand what they want to preserve as they scale — and design the practices that protect it.
Helping scaling businesses build the commercial capability and client relationships that support sustainable revenue growth — not just a spike driven by founder hustle.
The processes and systems that work at early stage become the bottlenecks that constrain growth if they are not redesigned in time. We help scaling organisations build the operational foundations they need — without over-engineering for a future size they have not yet reached.
Establishing the core processes, systems and governance structures a scaling business needs — built for flexibility, not bureaucracy. Getting this right early saves significant rework later.
Designing appropriate governance frameworks for your stage — from initial board composition through to the policies and accountability structures that support sustainable growth without bureaucratic overhead.
Practical strategic support for organisations navigating a growth phase — including where to focus, what to invest in, and what to deliberately leave until later. Growth without direction is just expansion.
Identifying the right technology infrastructure for your next stage of growth — without over-investing in systems you are not yet ready to use, or under-investing in the ones that will constrain you.
Government and sector tender submissions developed with deep knowledge of compliance requirements and evaluation criteria. Writing that wins is writing that understands what the evaluator is looking for — and then delivers it with clarity and confidence.
Tender writing is a discipline. It requires an understanding of the procurement environment, the evaluation criteria, the compliance requirements and the competitive context — as well as the ability to communicate your organisation's capability compellingly and precisely. We bring all of this.
Experience across federal, state and local government procurement — understanding how evaluation panels work and what distinguishes a technically compliant submission from a winning one.
Developing compelling grant applications that communicate impact clearly and align your program or project to the funder's objectives. We write for the reader, not for the organisation.
For organisations with ongoing procurement needs, we offer retainer arrangements that provide consistent, responsive support across multiple submissions — maintaining quality and institutional knowledge over time.
Deep familiarity with health, community services, professional services and social infrastructure procurement — including the sector-specific language and compliance frameworks that matter.
We are a small, experienced team that works with a wide range of clients across people, processes and technology. If you are someone who has done the work — not just studied it — and you thrive in a collaborative, flexible environment, we would love to hear from you.
We value people who have worked inside organisations — not just consulted to them from the outside. You understand what it actually takes to get things done, and you bring that grounded perspective to every engagement.
We ask hard questions and work through complex problems together. We are looking for people who are genuinely curious, comfortable with ambiguity, and who make the people around them better.
Our work is built on trust — with clients, with each other, and with partners. If you believe that genuine relationships are the foundation of everything good in business, you will fit right in.
We operate on a fractional and project basis, which means our team members are trusted to manage their own time and deliver with minimal hand-holding. We back people who back themselves.
We do not always have open roles listed — but we are always interested in great people. If your background sits across any of the following areas, reach out and introduce yourself.
We read every submission and will be in touch if we think there's a fit — now or down the track.