About
The capability that built one stage of growth rarely builds the next.
Untether Advisory works with growing businesses when performance has become too dependent on a few people, management capability has not kept pace, or adding more headcount is no longer producing the same return.
What we do
Most organisations don’t have a training problem. They have a performance problem that has been handed to training.
Untether starts earlier. We look at what people actually need to do differently, what is stopping that happening now, and whether capability is really the issue.
Our approach draws on behavioural economics because performance rarely changes through knowledge alone. Incentives, habits, expectations, management behaviour, accountability and the environment around people all affect what they actually do.
We work across leadership, revenue, and people & capability. In each area, the principle is simple: diagnose what is holding performance back, change what needs to change, and measure whether it worked.
We primarily work with growing businesses in SaaS & Technology, Fintech, Consulting & Advisory, Financial Services, and Recruitment & Staffing — sectors where the margin sits in people rather than product, and where the founder has spent his career.
The most responsive leader in the business is often the reason the managers below are not developing.
When senior leaders repeatedly solve problems for managers, they teach people to escalate. Every fast answer removes a decision the manager would otherwise have learned to make. Over time, escalation becomes part of how the business operates. That gives us useful diagnostic information: where decisions repeatedly travel can reveal gaps in capability, authority, expectations or accountability.
Founder
Rich Benson
Founder & Chief Development Officer
Rich Benson has spent fifteen years developing people and performance across FTSE 100 businesses, scale-ups and start-ups, predominantly in leadership and commercial environments.
That experience shaped the thinking behind Untether: development only matters when something changes in the real world — a better decision, a stronger manager, a more effective commercial conversation, less senior intervention, better performance.
His approach combines practical experience with behavioural science: identify the behaviour that needs to change, understand what is keeping it in place, change the conditions around it, and measure what happens.
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.
Charlie Munger
People respond to what is rewarded, tolerated and made easy. That is why we look beyond what people have been told to do. We look at what gets recognised, what gets escalated, what carries consequences and what the environment quietly encourages. Changing behaviour often means changing those conditions, not simply asking people to try harder.
How we work
- 01
Diagnose
Establish what is really holding performance back — including causes that may not be obvious at the outset.
- 02
Prescribe
Define the intervention around the problem, the connected causes and the business outcomes that need to move.
- 03
Implement
Develop the capability and put the tools, standards, measures and operating rhythms in place.
- 04
Embed
Where useful, stay involved to make sure the change holds and old dependencies do not return.
Practice
Untether Advisory
Founded and led by Rich Benson.
Sister practice
The Positioning Lab
Career strategy for professionals navigating promotion, progression and transition.