Strengthening human performance and leadership with technology

The scoreboard tells you what already happened. We read what's coming.F1rst Phase black swan

We read you the way your sharpest rival would. Then we take that read inside and build the programme that moves performance.

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Launching August 2026

Built from frameworks used in Elite Sport/ The Boardroom/ Technology & AI

We diagnose how your whole organisation is really performing, from the outside in, then build and run the programme that improves it, from the boardroom down.

If you run a business, here's why this matters

The signal is already in your accounts. The only question is who reads it first.

Your filings, your hires, the things you say in public and the things you stop saying. You are being read from the outside in right now, whether you see it or not.

The threat you can't see is the observable one

Every board-level shock of the last decade was visible in the public record months out. The data was there. Nobody connected it.

Most boards govern on a snapshot

A pack lands, it's read once, it's stale within a week. You are steering on last quarter's footage.

We read you the way your rival would, then take it inside

We test the read with the people who live it and build the programme that moves performance. A coaching team over the data, every week, surfacing the black swan before it lands on the agenda.

The F1rst Phase black swan The black swan

The risk that ends careers is usually the one in plain sight.

A black swan isn't the thing nobody could have known. It's the pattern already in the public record, the filings, the hires, the language leaders use and stop using, that no single view connected until it landed as a crisis.

We read across twelve independent lenses for exactly this: the signal the annual report shows but no board joins up. We surface it as a hypothesis to test, not a conclusion, early enough that you can still act on it.

You can't govern what you can't see. We help you see it first.

Black swan: career-ending risk is in plain sight, the signal no board joins up, surfaced as a hypothesis to test.
The outside-in read

We read your organisation the way your rivals could. Then further.

From the outside, through twelve independent lenses, we surface what a single view misses.

It works the way a race team reads a car, through the signals it is already giving off. It isn't the volume of data that matters, it's the few markers that carry the signal, the handful that warn you weeks before it reaches the scoreboard.

The findings the evidence already agrees on, and the black swans it doesn't. Hypotheses to test, not conclusions.

Public information only 12 independent lenses 4 synthesis passes
F1rst Phase Signal Intelligence Architecture, simplified working model

The Signal Intelligence Architecture · click to enlarge

It starts with the read. Elite sport reads a team from the outside in. What turns data into performance: psychological safety, trust, shared purpose. Where the fix lands: individual, team, context, environment. Luther Burrell did this every week in international rugby, and saw the same game in business. So we did.
The team we built to do it

Sport is the why. The team is the how.

A read only matters if someone can act on it. This is the team that sits over your data and crosses from insight to execution: elite-performance thinking on one side, hard business delivery on the other.

Elite performance

Coaching craft forged in international rugby and elite sport. Reading teams, setting standards, and performing when the pressure is highest.

Board & enterprise leadership

Former CEOs who have run organisations at scale. The view from the top table, and what actually moves a business.

Technology, data & AI

Turning scattered data into a live read. The systems and AI that keep the signal current, not stale by the next board pack.

Consulting & business support

Translating the read into a programme your people can actually run, and staying alongside them while it takes hold.

What we leave behind

Most firms leave a report. We leave an engine.

There's no closeout. The rhythms, the live measurement and the monitoring agents keep running, so capability compounds inside your team long after we've gone. You own the engine, not just the findings.

The team

From the outside-in read to the boardroom.

Founders

Hayden Swerling

Hayden Swerling

Co-founder & CEO

Two decades in organisation design, target operating models and business transformation for global firms, grounded in Big Four and enterprise consulting at PwC and Grant Thornton. Founder of a people-and-change consultancy, turning the doctrine into a system clients can run.

Luther Burrell

Luther Burrell

Co-founder & Chief Performance Officer

England international and the first from his hometown in 75 years to play for England. Over 200 Premiership appearances, five major honours and a Barbarians call-up. Owns the performance doctrine: preparation, tempo and executing under pressure.

Advisors

Paul Hamer

Paul Hamer

Founder & Advisor

Chair and former CEO with 30 years at board level across infrastructure, consultancy, defence, nuclear and energy. First external CEO of Sir Robert McAlpine in its 150-year history, and led the turnaround of listed consultancy WYG Plc. Deep in governance, risk and large-scale transformation.

David Muir

David Muir

Founder & Advisor

Partner at Grant Thornton UK, connecting transformation, technology and workforce capability for organisations navigating AI-driven change. Founder of Code Nation, the digital-skills business he built and sold to the Reed Group in 2024. Two decades building and exiting technology, consulting and outsourcing businesses across PwC, KPMG and IBM.

Why we're called F1rst Phase

Performance is won or lost in the first phase.

The first phase is the decisive opening move, the one you plan before you commit money, people or reputation. Get it right and everything downstream follows. Most organisations skip it and improvise. We make it deliberate.

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We launch in August 2026. Leave your details and we'll send more information and an early invitation.

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Or email hayden@f1rstphase.com