Hard Compass - Founder

I'm Barry Murphy. I spent over twenty years in senior leadership at PwC — leading large, complex businesses in the UK, across EMEA, and globally. I sat in the rooms where strategy gets shaped, where difficult decisions about people and direction actually get made, and where the work of taking an organisation with you is the daily job, not an abstract idea.

That experience is what I now bring to my work with senior leaders. Not as theory. As something I've done, lived with, and occasionally got wrong.

The work I'm most drawn to — and most useful in — is the hinge between a leader's emerging clarity about direction and the organisation actually moving on it. Aligning the team. Sequencing the decisions. Holding nerve while others catch up. Having the conversations no one else will start. It's a particular kind of work, and it takes someone who has had to do it themselves to be genuinely useful in the room.

Alongside my corporate career, I've held advisory and governance roles in social enterprises and public-interest organisations, with a long-standing commitment to social mobility, inclusion and sustainable impact. That work matters to me. It also keeps the perspective honest — performance and purpose aren't separate questions for the leaders I work with, and they aren't for me either.

I founded Hard Compass to do this work directly with leaders carrying real weight. The aim is simple: help them think clearly, decide well, and move their organisations on the things that matter most.

If any of that resonates with where you're sitting — I'd be glad to talk.