A practice, not a platform
I have spent twenty years inside HR transformations. Most of them succeed on paper and fail in the soil.
The dashboards run. The training videos get watched. The vendor rolls off to the next client. And a few weeks later a manager sends an email that begins, “I know this is probably just how it works now, but…” — describing a thing the old system let them do with a phone call, and the new system does not let them do at all. The transformation succeeded. Something was in the building that is no longer in the building.
Clover & Myrtle exists to do the work the other way round.
HR transformation, designed to endure.
Three ways in
Wherever you are in the work
You may want to diagnose it first, or read the argument, or start a conversation — I've built three doors, each one meeting a different moment. Choose the one that fits where you are. None of them are wrong.
01 · Ten minutes
Run the diagnostic
Twelve questions that reveal whether your organisation is designing HR for the moment or for endurance. A short personalised reading in return. No score, no grade, no dashboard — just a reading.
Begin the diagnostic →02 · Read first
Read the argument
The Journal is where the philosophy gets worked out — in long essays, unhurried, the opposite of a blog. Start with Twenty Years of Transformation, and What I've Learned to Watch For.
Open the Journal →03 · Calibrate
See the services
Five practices, from strategy and target operating model design through to the work that happens after go-live — the period most consultancies treat as someone else's problem.
See what we do →What we do
Five practices, one argument
Most HR transformations are evaluated on four headline metrics — cost efficiency and productivity, employee experience, future readiness and capability, and data quality and decision readiness. The ledger looks complete. It is not. Our practice adds a fifth column: what the organisation is still capable of, six, twelve, twenty-four months after go-live. Every practice below is designed around that column.
01
Strategy & Design
Target operating model design, business case development, programme setup, governance, and the design of the ledger itself — what will get measured, what will be protected, what won't be traded away.
02
Process & Experience
Hire-to-retire process harmonisation, end-to-end or in targeted pockets. Employee and manager experience design. The daily texture of how people are treated by the system meant to serve them.
03
Technology Selection & Implementation
Platform selection, full HRIS implementation at all stages, and honest value assessments on platforms already in place — including the conversation most vendors and implementation partners will not have with you.
04
AI Enablement
Identifying where AI genuinely helps HR operations and where it does not. Implementation of specific use cases with care. The efficiency dividend, spent on depth rather than volume.
05
After Go-Live
The work the industry forgets. Post-implementation stabilisation, value realisation, and short-form advisory for CHROs between transformations — the period in which the work either takes root or quietly doesn't.
From the Journal
Essays
Featured · 12 min read · April 2026
Twenty Years of Transformation, and What I've Learned to Watch For
“Every HR transformation I have worked on has had a moment that no one schedules on the project plan. It arrives a few weeks after go-live, after the dashboards are running and the training videos have been watched and the vendor has rolled off to the next client…”
Read the essay →The practice
The practice I couldn't find, so I built it.
Clover & Myrtle is the practice I wanted to find, twenty years ago, when I first watched a transformation go live and felt something withdraw from the building at the same time. I could not find it then, and by the time I had watched it happen thirty more times, I had decided to build it.
The firm is solo. I am the practice. The work is mine to deliver, to the standard I hold myself to — including the standards that no steering committee will ever check. When the work calls for more hands than mine, I partner narrowly, with people who hold the same standards. That may change over time. The philosophy will not.
“The transformation industry has a rich vocabulary for what gets gained. It has almost none for what gets lost. The work of the next decade, in my field, is learning to answer the manager's email that no one has answered yet.”
One essay a month. No sales. Unsubscribe any time.
The Journal by email. Long-form writing on HR transformation, craft, and what endures — sent when a piece is ready, never more than once a month.
We never sell, share, or rent email addresses. One essay a month, nothing else.
