Mahesh Sheshadri

I’m Mahesh Sheshadri - Co-Founder at HumanAlpha.

Engineer by training. Strategist by experience. Coach by calling.

I help scaling-stage companies grow through People. Process. Culture. Technology.

Across DRDO, Quark, Bosch, and Finastra, I learned this the hard way:

Transformation doesn’t start with tools. It starts with leaders, systems, and habits.

At HumanAlpha, we partner with founders and CXOs as your Fractional CHRO & Strategic HR Advisor to convert chaos into execution-ready people systems.

Who we work with:

→ Founder-led startups & MSMEs
→ $5M+ revenue, 30–2000 employees
→ Growth-focused, culture-first leaders
→ Teams struggling with people, performance, and leadership pipeline

What we solve:

→ No senior HR leadership, scattered systems, firefighting founders
→ High attrition, weak culture, leadership burnout
→ Gaps in rewards, performance, learning, and succession

How we help:

1/. Strategic HR Advisory — systems that scale (OKRs, capability maps, org design)

2/. Fractional CHRO — senior HR leadership without full-time cost (full-stack PeopleOps)

3/. Leadership Development — coaching, programs & pipelines that build leaders at every level

4/. Holistic Transformation — values, culture, process, tech aligned to revenue


Why us:

1. Execution-ready frameworks (not decks).

2. 55+ years combined leadership across 75+ brands, multiple regions.

3. Cross-functional depth: Strategy, Ops, Tech, HR, Analytics.

4. Outcomes in 6 months: Revenue +15–30% | Productivity +20–35% | Engagement +15–25% | Voluntary Attrition –20–40% | OpEx –10–25%.

Books & POV

Co-author: In Love with Growth, Leading with a Swag, The 55 Frameworks Book.

My approach blends systems thinking with coaching- strategy to execution.

If you’re ready to scale without breaking culture, let’s talk.

📩 mahesh.sheshadri@human-alpha.com | 🌐 human-alpha.com

Co-Founder & Director

HumanAlpha Strategic Solutions is a Strategic HR Advisory & Consulting Firm.

We engage with Businesses to Build their HR Strategy and Implement HR Practices.

This includes:
Goal setting (OKR, Balanced Scorecard, KPIs)
HRIS Implementation & HR Automation
HR Practices & Policies: PMS, C&B, R&R, Learning Strategy, Employee Handbook
Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH)
Employee Engagement
Cultural Transformation
Outsourced CHRO Services

We also add value through:

Executive Search :Hiring for Management Positions to C-Level. 

Business HR Certifications: We are also empowering the Future of HR through Business HR Certifications from the HumanAlpha Learning Academy. This is an off-shoot of our 140+ years of Business HR Leadership Experience

Leadership Development Programs: We work with Businesses in Building Leadership Capabilities. We have identified Core Leadership Competencies as part of HumanAlpha's Unique Leadership Competency Framework. We customize and facilitate in these Programs through Highly Experiential methodologies that includes Workshops, Virtual Simulations, Coaching and On the Job Projects

Established in 2019, HumanAlpha is an award winning HR Consulting firm. We have been recognized among the 10 Most Promising HCM Consultants and Among the 100 Most Admired Brands 2020

In chaos, the leaders who think fastest don’t win.

The leaders who decide fastest do.

That’s where the OODA Loop first became real for me.

A decision model born in aviation…
refined in engineering…
And today, one of the most powerful tools we teach inside.

The loop is simple, but it rewires how leaders operate under pressure:

1. O → Observe

See reality as it is, not as you wish it to be.

I learned this in DRDO: systems fail when leaders ignore early signals.

2. O → Orient

Understand patterns, people, constraints, and context.

This was my life at Bosch: linking tech, process, and operations into one picture.

3. D → Decide

Commit without overthinking.

The best P&L leaders I coach don’t wait for perfect data.
They choose a direction quickly.

4. A → Act

Execute, learn from impact, and loop again.

High-performance cultures aren’t slow- they’re iterative.

When we brought the OODA model into leadership coaching,
decision velocity changed instantly.

Teams stopped reacting.
They started anticipating.

And execution felt lighter, not because chaos was reduced, but because leaders gained clarity inside it.

Speed + clarity = unfair advantage.

Every single time.

Which stage of the OODA Loop do you think your team needs to sharpen first?

Co-Founder, HumanAlpha | Strategic HR Advisor | Leadership Development & Performance Coach | Building Leadership Pipelines for CEOs

If there’s one phrase I’d eliminate from leadership conversations…

It’s this:

“The strategy is strong.
Execution is the problem.”

You’ve heard the symptoms:

1. Vision decks that excite in townhalls but die by Monday. 
2. KPIs that look great on slides but don’t change daily behavior.
3. Leaders aligned in principle, disconnected in practice.

There is a better way to fix this.

It’s called a bridging strategy to behaviour.

And we do it using two simple but powerful levers:

Balanced Scorecard + Execution Excellence Labs

Here’s how the shift actually works:

1. Translate vision into a few non-negotiable strategic KPIs
2. Link each KPI to daily and weekly leadership routines
3. Practice execution in labs, not meetings
4. Review behaviour, not just numbers

Once this bridge is built:

• Strategy stops living in decks
• KPIs start showing up in calendars
• Leaders stop guessing what “focus” means

That’s when execution finally catches up with intent.

Because strategy doesn’t fail due to a lack of intelligence.

It fails when behaviour is left undefined.

Where does execution break most often in your organisation- clarity, routines, or accountability?

This is the simplest leadership scaling mistake I see again and again.

Especially in fast-growing tech companies.

Assuming leaders will magically appear when growth demands them.

I’m sure this will sound familiar:

“We have strong individual contributors.”
“We’ll promote when the time comes.”
“We’ll figure leadership when scale hits.”

And then the scale does hit.

→ Teams outgrow managers
→ Decisions bottleneck
→ Founders get pulled back into ops
→ Performance starts wobbling

So we did something deliberately different.

Not generic training.
Not motivational programs.
Not hope.

We designed a 3-month bespoke Management Development Program.

Here’s what actually changed things:

1. Defined leadership as capability, not title

25 clearly mapped competencies.
Observable behaviours.
No ambiguity about what “ready” looks like.

2. Built leaders through application, not theory

Real problems.
Live decisions.
Coaching in the middle of work- not outside it.

3. Measured progress weekly, not at the end

Growth wasn’t assumed.
It was visible.

The outcome surprised even the leadership team.

An internal pipeline of 14 future leaders-
ready, trusted, and already operating at the next level.

That’s the real shift.

Leadership bench strength isn’t built when growth arrives.

It’s built before growth demands it.

Let me ask you something specific:

If three leaders exited your organisation tomorrow,
how many people are genuinely ready to step up without breaking execution?

I’ve watched leadership teams delay decisions far longer than they should.

So let’s talk about why decisions stall and how to fix them.

Here’s what usually happens when uncertainty shows up:

1. Leaders wait for more data
2. Discussions stretch endlessly
3. Accountability diffuses
4. Momentum quietly dies

I see this pattern often in fast-growing organisations.

So we changed the way decisions were being made.

What worked every single time:

1. Name the context using Cynefin
Stop treating complex problems like predictable ones.

2. Apply the 70% Rule
When clarity is good enough, decide.

3. Learn forward. Correct fast.
Run decision labs, not debates

Short cycles. Clear ownership. Bias for action.

The shift is immediate.

- Fear reduces.
- Confidence builds.
- Decisions move even in ambiguity.

Because leadership is not about certainty.

It’s about deciding responsibly when certainty doesn’t exist.

3 things you can do immediately:

1. Identify one decision your team is over-analysing.
2. Ask: Is this simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic?
3. Decide with 70% clarity and commit to review fast.

Where is your leadership team waiting for “more data”
when what’s really needed is a decision?

“Wait… how did you hire THIS fast?”

I get this reaction a lot when founders talk about hypergrowth.

So let me be direct here.

1. Hiring at scale doesn’t fail because talent isn’t available.
It fails because there’s no engine behind the hiring.

2. Speed doesn’t come from recruiters working harder
It comes from systems working smarter.

And…

3. Hypergrowth doesn’t forgive improvisation.
If people and systems aren’t ready, growth punishes you.

Here’s what actually happened in one 8X scaling journey we led.

The company needed talent at volume.
Fast.
Without compromising quality.

So we didn’t start with resumes.

We built a people engine:

↳ A campus and early-career funnel aligned to future skill needs.
↳ Structured interviewing frameworks that removed subjectivity.
↳ Hiring managers trained to assess capability, not confidence.
↳ Onboarding systems that converted joins into contributors- fast.

Hiring stopped being a fire drill.

It became predictable.

Roles were filled at speed.
Quality stayed intact.
Teams scaled without cultural dilution.

That’s the HumanAlpha difference.

We don’t “support hiring.”

We design scalable people systems that keep up with ambition.

Because hypergrowth doesn’t wait for HR to catch up.

HR has to be ready before growth arrives.

If your company had to scale 3X this year, would your people systems stretch or snap?

The moment I stopped trusting gut-feel in hiring,
our talent outcomes changed completely.

(I genuinely wish I had done this earlier.)

Stop guessing talent.
Start selecting talent.

Yes: Selecting.
With intent. With structure. With evidence.

Most hiring systems still run on opinions that feel like facts.
Strong confidence gets mistaken for competence.
Likeability quietly replaces fit.

That’s not hiring.
That’s hope wearing a process mask.

So we changed the lens.

Instead of more interviews, we built precision.

Here’s the shift that mattered:

→ Layer one: Competency fit
Can this person actually perform the role under pressure?

→ Layer two: Culture fit
Will this person sustain performance inside this system, with these values?

Then we trained interviewers to do one thing really well
separate evidence from storytelling.

No gut-feel overrides.
No moving goalposts.
No “I just liked them” decisions.

Mis-hires dropped sharply.
Confidence in hiring went up.
Teams stopped gambling on people.

Here’s my firm belief after decades of building teams:

Great talent is not discovered by chance.
It is selected with discipline.

Advice says: “Hire smart people.”
Expertise says: “Design the system that proves who is smart.”

Are your hiring decisions built on structure…
Or still running on instinct?
Answer this honestly.

I have a quiet obsession.

I love proving people wrong.

Especially when they say leadership change takes years.

I’ve heard it too many times in the HR and business rooms:

“Frontline managers won’t change.”
“NBFC field leaders are too transactional.”
“Behavioural shift takes at least a year.”

So let me tell you what actually happened.

When we started working with an NBFC, the verdict was already out.

Territory managers were strong on numbers.
Weak on leadership.
Low ownership.
Inconsistent people management.

The expectation?

→ Marginal improvement
→ Slow culture change
→ Long timelines

Instead, we designed a 90-day leadership shift.

And yes, people were sceptical.

Here’s what we didn’t do:

1. We didn’t overload them with theory
2. We didn’t run long classroom trainings
3. We didn’t wait for “mindset to change on its own.”

Here’s what we did:

→ Applied 70:20:10 the right way
→ Leadership labs linked to real field problems
→ Group coaching that challenged habits, not personalities
→ Field learning that forced reflection and action
→ Weekly visibility on behaviour, not just targets

And then something interesting happened.

Within 90 days:

• Conversations with teams changed
• Accountability stopped being forced
• Ownership started showing up on the ground
• Leadership behaviours became visible, not theoretical

No hype.
No drama.

Just a measurable shift.

That’s the HumanAlpha belief in action:

Leadership doesn’t need more time.
It needs better design.

Fast. Focused. Behaviour-led.

This was one more reminder for me:

Never underestimate people.

And never accept “it can’t be done” as an answer.

Have you ever seen a leadership transformation happen faster than expected?

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