Growth, pressure, change.
They arrive together.
So do we.
Why we built this
Through years of working with founders, leadership teams and growing businesses, we kept noticing the same thing.
A growth challenge turns into a communication challenge. A culture issue becomes a leadership issue. A restructure affects trust. Pressure changes how people make decisions. Creative teams start playing safe. Leaders end up carrying too much.
And the pace of change has never been faster. Scaling, M&A, restructures, leadership transitions, keeping a strong culture intact under pressure. The moments that test organisations most are rarely straightforward.
Culture work surfaces all kinds of things.
Each person in the Collective has been chosen carefully. They share our values, they’ve been in the room, and they work with a small number of clients at any one time so the work gets the attention it deserves.
HappyHQ is at the centre. The Collective is who we bring in around it.
Running Partner
Nickii Gray
Scaling and growth are exciting until the culture can't keep up.
Most founders navigating rapid growth, restructuring or a potential exit haven’t been through it before. The commercial decisions are hard enough. Keeping people aligned, motivated and with you while everything is changing around them is often harder.
Nickii built, grew and sold IMA, one of the UK’s largest independent creative agencies, leading teams of 400 people across five continents over 20 years. She now works with a small number of founders at any one time, as a genuine running partner through the moments that test leadership most.
"Growth is exciting. Change is a given. Evolution and revolution need managing from a culture perspective. Not frameworks. Not detached advice. Someone in the room who has done it."
Kevin O'Connor
Organisations are communicating more change, more often, to teams who are already stretched.
The gap between what leaders think they are saying and what people actually hear has never been wider. Getting communication right during restructures, leadership transitions and large-scale change isn’t a comms problem. It’s a leadership problem. And when it goes wrong, it’s very hard to recover.
Kevin spent years as a national newspaper editor making readers care, quickly, clearly and on deadline. He brings that same instinct to organisations dealing with communication moments that are too important or too complicated to get wrong. He’s worked with AstraZeneca, BAT and Deutsche Bank.
"Getting people to understand change isn't just a comms challenge. It is a leadership challenge."
HR and People Leadership
Tacita Small
Getting the HR foundations right isn't just good practice. Right now, with employment legislation changing faster than most leadership teams can keep up with, it's commercial protection.
But for Tacita it’s always been about more than compliance. Her belief is straightforward: everyone at work deserves transparent, honest and genuinely supportive conditions. And businesses that get that right don’t just avoid problems. They build something people want to be part of.
Tacita spent over two decades as a senior HR leader inside some of the most recognisable names in entertainment, retail and media, including The Walt Disney Company, Apple, BBC Worldwide, Ministry of Sound, Fremantle and Westfield. In 2019 she founded The Small HR Company, bringing practical, modern HR thinking to businesses at every stage of growth. With over 250 clients served, she knows what good people infrastructure looks like and what it costs when it’s not there.
"Good HR practice shouldn't be a luxury. It's what makes the difference between a culture that brilliant people want to stay in and one they don't."
PR and Brand Communications
Celia Venables
Organisations are under more scrutiny than ever on what they actually stand for.
The gap between external messaging and lived experience, on leadership, culture and workplace fairness, is much harder to hide than it used to be. Getting that story right requires more than good PR. It requires honesty about what is actually happening inside, and communications that can hold up to that scrutiny.
Celia has spent more than 18 years leading communications for global brands, start-ups and purpose-led campaigns, including eHarmony, MOO, Pregnant Then Screwed, FiveXMore and Dad Shift. Her work has increasingly focused on fairness, visibility and social change, and she understands how to help organisations tell stories that build genuine momentum rather than just noise.
"People connect with honesty. They remember stories that actually mean something."
Ellen C Scott
When people lose sight of why the work matters, culture starts to quietly unravel.
Organisations are good at describing what they do. The why is harder. And when people can’t feel it, it shows up in engagement, retention, and the energy of the team day-to-day.
Ellen spent a decade in senior journalism roles at Metro and Stylist before turning her focus to helping organisations and individuals rethink their relationship with work. She’s the author of Working on Purpose and works with teams on the question that sits underneath most culture work: what are we here for, and does the way we work reflect that?
"What are we here for, and does the way we work reflect that? That is the question underneath most culture work."
Creative Director
Ottilie Ross
When organisations are under pressure, creative teams start playing safe. That is exactly when they can't afford to.
Tighter budgets, higher expectations and constant delivery pressure push in-house brand and marketing teams toward safer thinking. The result is work that doesn’t cut through, at the moment the business most needs originality.
Ottilie is Creative Director at Mischief PR, with multi-award winning campaigns behind her and a reputation for work that refuses to blend in. She works with in-house creative and marketing teams to rebuild creative confidence and build cultures where brave ideas can actually survive the internal process.
"The most dangerous thing a brand can do is play it safe."
Not sure what you need? That is where we start.
Tell us what you are navigating
A 30-minute call to understand the situation, the team and what you are trying to change.
We recommend the right approach
HappyHQ work, the Collective, or a combination. Always an honest recommendation.
The right people come in
Practical, embedded, and focused on what is useful on Monday.
Ready to talk about your brief?
Get in touch and we will work out together whether the Collective is the right fit for what you are navigating.
Or email hello@happyhq.co.uk