Post-deal integration, interim CHRO mandates, Total Rewards architecture, and organisational redesign — built from the operator’s seat, not the advisory chair.
Each is senior work, led and delivered by Nicolas directly. Named specialists from a trusted network join when scale warrants; never a junior team behind an email address.
People architecture for the first twelve months after a transaction — organisational design, leadership alignment, cultural stitching, and the retention work that protects deal value. Built for PE-backed and corporate acquirers where integration quality materially affects the return.
Senior HR leadership during transitions — CHRO gaps, turnaround periods, or whenever a leadership team needs a permanent hand in the room without a permanent hire. Four to twelve months, typically. Full presence, full accountability, clear handover.
Grading frameworks, pay transparency programmes (including the EU Pay Transparency Directive), executive compensation design, and long-term incentive vehicles — from LTI plans in large corporates to management incentive schemes in PE-backed portfolios. Twenty years designing Total Rewards at multinational scale; now applied where it actually moves behaviour and aligns leadership with the outcome.
Operating-model work, HR function transformation, and the decisions that come with restructuring. Unglamorous, hands-on engagements where the outcome is measured in months, not slides. Co-designed with your leadership team, owned in-house at handover.
In Japanese, komichi is the route that knows the landscape — the one you take when you know what you’re looking for and don’t need the highway to get there. The name isn’t accidental. KoMiChi is built around four values drawn from Japanese corporate culture: 公平 Kōhei (fairness), 未来 Mirai (future), 知恵 Chie (wisdom), 品質 Hinshitsu (quality).
In practice, that translates to five things: senior people doing the actual work, not selling it; pragmatism over frameworks; decisions made with the leadership team rather than at them; structures that hold under pressure; and the discipline to leave when the work is standing on its own, not a day longer.
It is quieter than consultancy. That is the point.
Founder. The operator who ends up running HR when organisations are mid-transformation.
Twenty-plus years in senior HR, across global organisations. Eleven of those at Bridgestone — the final two years as Vice President HR at corporate level, across EMIA, Mobility Solutions, and the Americas. The work was operator-shaped throughout: lean resources, no playbook, hands-on involvement across entities from thirty people to several thousand. The scale was large; the work was founder-shaped.
Earlier: HR roles at Coca-Cola Enterprises, LBC Tank Terminals, and Pfizer. Earliest: consulting at Arthur Andersen, Deloitte, and EY. Executive education at INSEAD and Cornell. Multilingual, Benelux-based, Europe-comfortable.
KoMiChi exists to offer that same senior-operator work to the organisations that need it most — PE-backed portfolios, mid-market firms in transition, and boards that want experience in the room rather than an RFP response.
The path from first call to signed engagement is three short conversations. First one is a thirty-minute call — no slides, no process.