Client: Powder24 is the founder-led parent company behind multiple specialist travel brands.
Focus: People strategy development and leadership alignment
Sector: Travel and tourism

As founder-led businesses grow, people challenges become business challenges. Discover how CAPE helped P24 create a practical people strategy that aligned leadership, culture and business goals while preparing the organisation for future growth.

The context

Like many ambitious founder-led businesses, P24 had grown quickly.

With more than 80 employees across multiple brands and ambitious plans for future growth, new leaders were stepping up across the organisation. At the same time, the Board found itself increasingly pulled into day-to-day people decisions and operational challenges.

They knew that continuing to grow successfully would require more than a business strategy alone.

They needed a clear people strategy that would:

• Support the delivery of business goals
• Create consistency across teams and departments
• Clarify ownership between the Board, managers and employees
• Give leaders the confidence to step up and lead

Most importantly, they wanted something practical. Not a document that sat on a shelf, but a people strategy that would shape decisions, behaviours and leadership across the business.

The approach

Like many founder-led businesses, P24 faced the challenge of maintaining clarity, ownership and culture while continuing to scale. CAPE partnered with P24’s Board and Head of People to develop a people strategy that aligned with the business strategy, strengthened leadership capability and supported the next stage of growth.

Together, we reframed the role of a people strategy.

Rather than being viewed as an HR initiative, the strategy became the mechanism through which the business strategy would be delivered. This shift in thinking helped the Board see people strategy as a business priority rather than a people initiative.

We used CAPE’s four-pillar framework:

• Attract and onboard: Bringing in the right people and helping them hit the ground running.
• Engage and belong: Building connection, belonging and the glue that holds your culture together.
• Perform and progress: Helping people do great work and grow in their roles.
• Lead and retain: Building confident leaders and future-ready teams.

To explore the current employee experience, identified strengths and friction points, and prioritised the areas that would have the greatest impact over the next 12 months.

The framework helped the Board view people strategy through the whole employee lifecycle, rather than focusing only on immediate operational challenges.

As one Board member reflected:

‘The process and end result were a real eye-opener for us as a company. It helped us balance our focus and efforts across the whole team, as the strategy’s structure closely matched the life cycle of staff and was objective-focused. It also helped us determine what really matters now and our top priorities.‘

Together we then:

• Defined three practical priorities within each pillar
• Agreed clear outcomes and measures of success
• Clarified ownership across the Board, managers and employees
• Mapped actions, timelines and accountability
• Created a straightforward, jargon-free people strategy that leaders could easily understand and apply

The framework we used 

People strategy outcomes

Strategic clarity and focus
P24 now has a clear and focused people strategy directly connected to business priorities and future growth ambitions.

Shared ownership
The process helped the Board distinguish what needed to remain at Board level and what could be owned elsewhere in the organisation.

‘It’s helped us thrash out which elements of this strategy sit with us as leaders and which need to be owned by our managers and staff, enabling us to move forward much more quickly.‘

Leadership confidence
Managers and people leaders now have greater clarity around expectations, responsibilities and their role in delivering the people strategy.

‘It has given them clarity and ownership to get on and be the best managers they can be.‘

A practical roadmap
Rather than creating an aspirational document, the people strategy provides specific actions, priorities, timelines and measures that can be tracked and reviewed over time.

Bringing the strategy to life 

A few weeks later, the people strategy was launched to P24’s 40 people leaders as part of a dedicated Leadership Day.

The focus shifted from creating the strategy to embedding it.

Leaders explored what the priorities meant in practice, how culture is shaped through everyday behaviours and conversations, and how leadership can be distributed beyond the Board.

The work also helped the organisation refine and simplify its company values, creating stronger alignment between culture, leadership expectations and the wider people strategy.

Rather than competing with individual brand identities, the values now provide a practical guide for how people work together, make decisions and lead across the group.

A people strategy isn’t a corporate document to tick a box. It’s how you build confidence that your people are set up to deliver your business goals. 

The impact

The Board now has a clear, future-focused people strategy and plan that supports business growth without creating unnecessary complexity.

Most importantly, it has helped shift leadership ownership across the organisation.

‘It’s given the Board all the control and ability to direct without being stuck in the weeds delivering everything. It keeps us focused on the highest-priority items, so staff start to feel the benefit quickly.‘

P24 now has:

• A people strategy directly linked to business goals
• Clear ownership across the Board and leadership population
• Greater confidence in managers and future leaders
• Consistency across departments and brands
• A practical framework for scaling culture as the business grows

Why it matters

For founder-led and owner-managed businesses, growth often creates a tension between maintaining control and building leadership capability across the organisation. P24’s people strategy helped create clarity around both.

Because a people strategy isn’t a corporate document designed to tick a box. Done well, a people strategy becomes the framework that enables a business to grow through its people.

Board-owned, but not Board-burdened.

Lived daily through leadership, behaviour and conversation.

Directly connected to business performance and future success.

Ready to grow without losing what made your business successful in the first place?

As businesses grow, founders often find themselves pulled into more decisions, more people challenges, and more day-to-day issues. We help founder-led organisations create clear people strategies that build leadership capability, strengthen culture, and reduce reliance on the founder.

Whether you’re developing your first people strategy or refining an existing one, clarity around people, leadership and culture is essential for sustainable business growth.

📧 Get in touch to explore how we can help you scale your people strategy alongside your business.