For executive search firms
Growth doesn't have to wait.
When a CEO asks you for new marketing or growth leadership, they usually want more than a hire. They want the next wave of growth. The need is immediate, but the search takes time.
I work alongside the search: diagnosing what is constraining growth, giving the existing team a route forward, and sharpening the mandate for the leader you are hiring.
The result: momentum now, a clearer brief, and a stronger start for the person you place.
Diagnose.
Bridge.
Hand over.
A commercial diagnostic that runs with your search, not instead of it.
01 / The search gap
The new hire is in the future. The business problem is happening now.
Your client rarely arrives with time to spare. They come to you with a leadership need and an ambition: find the person who can unlock the next wave of growth.
But something is often already pressing for them today. Growth has slowed. The board wants to see the roadmap. The marketing team is operating without clear leadership or direction. They want their trajectory to change now.
A good search takes time, and it should. While the search is underway, there are three things we can improve in parallel.
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01Move now
Give the existing team direction while the search runs.Growth is already under pressure. Within four weeks I diagnose what is constraining it, set the route forward, and can provide senior growth leadership while the search continues.
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02Sharpen the mandate
Use the diagnostic to refine what the business actually needs.As the search progresses, interviews often clarify or change the brief. Diagnosing the growth constraint early gives you a stronger mandate and reduces time spent searching against the wrong problem.
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03De-risk the placement
Give the incoming leader the groundwork and a clear first 100-day mandate.They arrive with priorities, commercial measures and leadership alignment already in place, giving them a stronger start and reducing the risk of an unsuccessful placement.
I work alongside the search, not instead of it. You find the right person. I keep the business moving and make sure they arrive with the right problem to solve.
02 / How we work with search firms
Your search stays yours.
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Your mandate continues.
I work alongside the search, not instead of it. The diagnostic can begin immediately and does not delay or replace the appointment.
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Your fee is unaffected.
I am not competing for the role or trying to become the permanent hire. My job is to help the business get on the right growth trajectory in the interim, and to make the appointment clearer, faster and more likely to succeed.
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Introductions can be commercial.
Where your firm permits it, I can work on an agreed introducer arrangement for diagnostic engagements that come through you.
Introducer arrangements
I am happy to agree a simple referral fee for successful client introductions, subject to your firm's policies.
03 / What changes
A better brief for the client. A better start for the candidate.
The search firm
A more precise search.
A clearer mandate, fewer contradictory client expectations, and a leadership profile you can defend to a shortlist.
The CEO
Confidence in the problem.
A search that addresses the real business constraint, with the hard questions surfaced before the hire rather than nine months after it.
The incoming leader
A defined first 100 days.
Priorities, success measures, and a business that has already confronted the questions they would otherwise arrive into cold.
The existing team
Continuity through change.
Early actions get implemented instead of stalling, so there is less organisational drift during the transition.
Mismatched briefs are expensive at your end too. A placement that does not last costs the client relationship and the candidate relationship.
04 / The engagement
Define what the next leader needs to change.
I investigate economics, customer, proposition, the growth engine and the organisation together. The output names the constraint and translates it into the mandate your search needs: the role scope, the profile suited to the real problem, the success measures, and the first hundred-day brief.
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Before or alongside the search
Diagnose.
Identify the binding growth constraint and the commercial priorities the next leader will need to own. Four weeks, fixed fee, run in parallel with your process.
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While the search runs
Bridge.
One to two days a week with the existing team, implementing the early priorities. The client sees movement during the months they would otherwise spend waiting, which takes pressure off the timeline you are working to.
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When the leader arrives
Hand over.
Your candidate inherits the diagnosis, the priorities, the measures and a first hundred-day mandate. Then I step back. I am not looking to become a permanent fractional CMO.
05 / Operator experience
Built from the other side of the brief.
thecontribution.co is the advisory practice of Katie Tuffs, who ran growth and marketing at HelloFresh, Eucalyptus (through its acquisition by Hims & Hers) and SPOKE.
I have spent my career inside the kinds of businesses I now advise. It has always been about more than the Facebook account for me. From the P&L to customer behaviour, proposition to retention, I connect marketing decisions to the wider business choices that determine whether growth can compound. Now I help CEOs find an independent answer, and make the change happen.
Katie Tuffs
Connect on LinkedIn ↗
HelloFresh
Eucalyptus
Hims & Hers
SPOKE
Deloitte
Marketing Week Mini-MBA
University of Oxford
A practical referral relationship
Your client needed the new hire yesterday. Let's talk.
A short conversation is enough to establish whether a diagnostic would sharpen the search or simply get in the way. If it would get in the way, I will say so.