Sequent Advisory is a specialist advisory firm for senior departures. We work with the firm and the person leaving because what happens on one side affects the other.
Does the successor have the necessary authority? A client may have accepted the formal handover and still be calling their old contact.
The person leaving might be a quiet rainmaker, having spent years bringing business into the firm without formal attribution. Once they are outside, there is no reason to assume those referrals will continue.
The relationship after exit may never have been properly discussed either. What, if anything, is supposed to continue?
Sometimes the difficulty is more personal. The person may simply be unable to envisage a good future beyond the role.
The departing person is dealing with the end of a role that may have defined them. Indeed, it might have filled every minute, squeezing out other interests and talents over the years. When the role ends, what happens to status, structure and relationships? It is a question of identity as much as work: not so much ‘what do you do?’ as ‘who are you now?’
When a senior person leaves
Behind the leaving date is a lot of work.
A successor can be appointed quickly but establishing them takes time. Clients may need months to grow into a new relationship. The person leaving has to make room for the successor without being made to feel that they have no value, even while occupying the role.
How the exit is handled affects the relationships the firm wants to keep. The management of the handover impacts the successor’s authority and ability to serve the client. How the departing person is treated matters here too. The firm is asking them to transfer relationships, knowledge and goodwill at precisely the moment when their own relationship with the firm is being redefined and their working identity may itself be under threat.
Partnerships are particularly exposed to senior exits.
A client may formally belong to the firm while much of the trust sits with an individual partner. When that person leaves, the firm cannot assume the relationship simply transfers with the account.
The outgoing partner may remain commercially important right up to departure. But the chance to shape the handover while the old and new relationships still overlap disappears once they have gone.
The partnership structure creates awkward incentives. Someone has to start the conversation about departure, but doing so means taking on non-billable work and political exposure before they have even had the uncomfortable conversation with a respected colleague. And what incentive does a partner have to give early notice if they believe doing so could cost them standing or even billing?
Meanwhile, the other partners are watching. They know that one day the process may be applied to them.
Firm-wide review & implementation
The firm’s stake is commercial. Clients need protecting and the successor needs enough authority to do the job. Knowledge, judgement and trust also have to survive the change.
The person’s stake is deeply personal. They are handing over assets built painstakingly over decades. Relationships are passed down, effectively conferring one’s reputation upon others.
They hold the most important question of all: what comes next?
People who have spent thirty years becoming extremely good at one kind of working life can find themselves asked, almost immediately, what the next one is going to be. It is unlikely to be answered by a few coaching sessions and a psychometric test.
Some know exactly what they want and don’t expect that to change. Others haven’t got the first idea. There can be anxiety in that, but also excitement.
Sequent Advisory doesn't push for an answer too early. The work is practical. You try things, meet people you wouldn't otherwise have met, and pay attention to what actually holds your interest.
What Sequent does is get the difficult conversations happening early enough to be worth having.
Coaching and outplacement have their place, and Sequent provides both where they help. But most career-transition work takes the professional identity someone already has and looks for the next use of it. That misses something deeper. A long career at the top can leave whole parts of a person undeveloped, simply because the job never left room for them.
What comes next might look a lot like the old life, or it might come from somewhere that has barely been touched in thirty years.
Sequent Atrium supports the post-exit stage
Sequent Atrium is the post-exit ecosystem for senior people. It gives them the time, support and resources to explore possibilities without having to commit to one too soon.
Atrium includes peer groups, specialist help and room to experiment. It sits within Sequent Advisory’s wider work with firms and departing senior people.
There is no pressure to manufacture a reinvention or swap one prestigious identity for another.
The relationship after exit
Every engagement has at least two senior people involved.
There is no consulting pyramid. Everyone involved in delivery is senior.
Where the stakes are this high, experience counts.
