KHR Executive Advisory

My read of the room is a guess until I check it.

I treat what I pick up as a hypothesis, not a conclusion. The check is saying it out loud and letting people correct me.

If I'm right, the room opens up. If I'm wrong, I just learned something better than my guess.

The skill isn't reading people. It's holding your read loosely enough to be corrected.

Comp season is decided in September, not January.

By the time merit letters go out in January, the budget was set in October and the bands were locked before that. The teams that get comp right do the quiet work now, before budget season.

Pull market data while there's still time to act on it. Pressure-test your bands. Define what a promotion requires before someone asks.

The letters are the last step. If your cycle starts with the budget meeting, it started too late.