We empower the world’s innovators to become Growth Leaders.
A TALENT & GROWTH STRATEGY FIRM GUIDING TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEYS FROM STARTUP TO ASX & FORTUNE 50.
At High Performance People, we are navigators of the intelligence economy.
We bring a full lifecycle approach to your talent and growth strategy, through our domain expertise and an on-demand service ecosystem as unique as your journey.
Our Perform IQ model leverages predictive analytics to help you hire and develop a high-performing leadership team, workforce and culture – one that lays the very foundations for scalable innovation and expansion.
While our predictive marketing and financial forecasting platform, Forebrite, turns your first-party data into a decision-making powerhouse – to drive revenue growth, capitalise on future trends, and maximise profitability.
Our services can be dialled up, down or off as your priorities shift:
Executive Search: our Perform IQ model identifies the 14% of leaders who can perform today & transform for tomorrow.
People-as-a-Service: our HR & Talent solutions are tailor-made to accelerate your journey to repeatable, profitable growth.
Growth-as-a-Service: our software & AI-driven data platform continually drives your marketing ROI & financial performance.
Fractional Flying Squad: our team of specialists provide temporary, targeted & high-impact expertise for your critical projects.
Performance IQ Coaching: our bespoke programs develop your team’s strategic acuity & skills needed to achieve SMART goals.
Create what is next,
right now.
We don’t do different, we are.
Our vision is to be the ‘go-to’ talent & growth strategy partner for ambitious innovators, providing on-demand solutions that accelerate results at scale.
Our advantage? Predictive analytics: to build expert teams, deliver HR & operational efficiencies, drive marketing ROI, scenario-model future growth pathways or cultivate the leadership needed to successfully navigate the intelligence age.
We call it Growth Leadership – encapsulating the mindset, learning agility and skills needed to perform today, and simultaneously reshape a business to transform its future. Performance under pressure, adaptability, follow-though and the ability to motivate a team are crucial differentiators in technology and high-growth industries, and why Perform IQ’s insights are invaluable.
Our multi-dimensional assessment and development model shows that only 14% of leaders have what it takes. Global research studies also show Growth Leaders are 2.4x more likely to outperform their peers, and 97% more likely to achieve profitable above-peer growth.
Areas of focus include:
Digital Media, Sport & Entertainment (incl. streaming, gaming & content creation)
eCommerce (incl. online retail, marketplaces & related logistics)
Software & Cloud Computing (incl. SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, VR & AR)
HealthTech
FinTech
EdTech
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (incl. application across industries)
Creative Agency & Creator Platforms
Private Equity & Portfolio Companies
Our people-as-a-service matters.
We believe in doing things better, and in doing better things.
Our PaaS model was born out of global media & technology titans launching new Australian video streaming services – where we built-out their leadership and GTM teams, projects we delivered cost-effectively and with award-winning results.
Today our HR & Talent playbook is an organic, best-practice document that details the key strategies, operational processes, DE&I policies, technologies and tools needed to compete in the intelligence age.
Our on-demand HR & Talent experts can create your first HR function, hire for hyper-growth, design & deliver world-class coaching programs, and everything in between.
Delivering exactly what you need, but only when you need it.
Major benefits include:
360 solutions: we run HR & Talent health checks to identify pain-points, prioritise objectives & develop a roadmap.
Cost-efficiency: we use predictive analytics to optimise HR & Talent workflows, automating time-consuming tasks.
Elite talent: we leverage Perform IQ to ensure you develop a high-performing leadership team, workforce & culture.
HR & Talent playbook: we tailor & operationalise world-class practices, policies, tools & technologies for scalability.
Strategic partner: we deploy our Fractional Flying Squad with scale-up expertise to deliver mission-critical projects.
Growth-as-a-service: powered by data.
We believe growth is a systematic process, not only an aspiration.
That’s why we built Forebrite, a predictive marketing & financial forecasting platform. It’s designed to optimise your marketing ROI, open up new growth pathways, and unite CMOs and CFOs around how to drive repeatable, profitable revenue growth.
Forebrite’s difference? You’re plugged into both our analytics engine and Growth Team, for unparalleled insights and hands-on execution.
With early-stage clients in online retail, marketplaces, healthcare, pet care and membership associations achieving +20% marketing ROI within 6 months, Forebrite’s success brings its own website: forebrite.com
Imagine a future where every marketing dollar = profitable revenue growth, predictably.
Major benefits include:
Optimised marketing ROI: actioning real-time data insights to maximise strategies, campaigns & overall profitability.
Consistent revenue growth: repeatedly reducing CAC & increasing conversion rates, top-line sales, CLTV & retention.
Future financial health: reporting for three-way forecasting, enhanced risk mitigation & strategic resource allocation.
Unified growth strategy: aligning your marketing & financial teams around your growth metrics, driving collaboration.
New growth pathways: scenario-modelling future opportunities, factoring-in seasonality, trends & behavioural shifts.
Partnerships from Series A to Fortune 50:
We turn your vision, into a predictable reality.
Our mission for mutual success
At High Performance People, doing better things means enabling clients to achieve sustainably higher levels of performance and impact, and doing the same in our community.
Early on, we faced a decision: follow the model of a traditional talent firm, or break the status quo and walk the talk of innovation ourselves.
It’s why our mission is to be the most valuable talent & growth partner to ambitious growth ventures in Australia, and a dedicated pro-bono partner for non-for-profits.
Our values of daring to disrupt, being courageous to innovation, standing up for diversity & valuing progress over perfection underpin it.
Meet our creators.
James - Founder & Head of Talent
James Burke is the driving force behind High Performance People. After launching executive search firm The Ladder in 2003, James gave it a bold makeover in 2013, rebranding to embrace the firm’s expanding suite of leadership advisory services.
Never one to shy away from innovation, James created Perform IQ alongside notable psychologists – a model that doesn’t only accurately predict a leader’s ability to perform right now, but also assesses their potential to transform businesses for the future. Adoption of Perform IQ has manifested into masterclasses for start-ups, growth ventures, and digitally powered enterprises, equipping HR professionals with a holistic strategy to identify, develop and retain high-potential employees.
Head of the firm’s executive search & recruitment practice, James has subsequently designed a client-centric playbook that sets the industry’s benchmark, with a guarantee that’s overseen the firm’s 100% placement rate across 1,200+ assignments. As the catalyst behind our breakthrough Talent-as-a-Service and Growth-as-a-Service, he’s brought about a powerful synergy that’s proving instrumental to the success of industry entrepreneurs, disruptors, and innovators across the region.
When he’s not building partnerships with pre- and post-IPO companies, James can be found enjoying his passion for sport, music and next renovation project. If there’s a decent wave nearby, you can also find him still trying to surf.
Emma - Partner & Head of Operations
Emma Delory is our not-so-secret weapon and mastermind behind our operational symphony. A research and operations specialist, Emma rewrites the rules of efficiency – orchestrating the infrastructure that fuels our growth, conducting day-to-day workflows, and composing valuable content for our marketing and social media.
An early adopter who is ‘at one’ with emerging technology, Emma has taken the reins of leveraging artificial intelligence at High Performance People, spearheading the integration of tools including ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Gamma. Emma’s many talents don’t just end there either – a key cog in our Talent-as-a-Service partnerships – she specialises in identifying, screening and interviewing candidates through Perform IQ for junior to mid-level roles.
Multi-lingual, everything comes easily to Emma. After travelling the world previously as a senior marketer and business consultant, hiring teams across continents and running workshops for hundreds of clients on growth strategy, High Performance People is really just home from home.
When she’s not making the magic happen at work, Emma’s a wannabe yogi, fashionista and devoted dog-lover, with an unnaturally healthy attitude to food. Except for weekends.
Sophie - Partner & Head of People
Sophie Needham embodies the centre of excellence that sits behind our People Practice and defines the firm’s social conscience and cultural ethos. Authentic and results-driven, Sophie is our go-to for cutting-edge HR strategy, organisational design, all things HR operations, learning and development, change management, people & culture and transformation.
Well versed in the complexities of driving change across the technology, digital, media, and business consulting landscape, Sophie’s superpower is turning ambiguity into clear and actionable plans that deliver impact. An accomplished communicator, collaborator and relationship builder, Sophie is a hands-on operator across the full talent lifecycle, excelling at aligning people strategies with business goals and cultivating high performing teams and engagement.
Now playing the roles of mentor, coach and confidante to many of our clients’ CEOs and leadership teams, not only when it’s time to ‘course correct’ but also on challenging issues around diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing, Sophie’s straight forward counsel is widely sought. A champion of the business case for DE&I, Sophie’s ability to weave a powerful solution into a killer HR strategy is helping our clients to attract top talent from around the world.
When she’s not humanising the function of HR, Sophie supports great causes and heads up HPP’s for-purpose mission. You’ll find her on weekends spending quality time with family and friends, enjoying the outdoors, catching a live music act or trying a new dining experience.
Vlad – Partner & Head of Growth
Vlad Mehakovic is the growth strategist every founder, innovator and leadership team needs to have on speed dial. Part technologist, innovator, data analyst and strategic marketer, Vlad is the sum of diverse and impressive in-depth expertise, amassed in leadership roles from Series A to ASX 100.
A visionary, Vlad pioneered the early prototypes of Forebrite’s predictive marketing platform with ventures including Laundromap, Providoor, MoleMap, MedView and Hanrob to find perfect product-market fit. A long-term ally of James, it made sense to join forces and break down the barriers that typically prevent clients’ success – which beyond having a smart team, in his case means helping clients to engineer a winnable growth strategy and to drive profitable revenue.
In truth, Vlad breathes predictive intelligence. Whenever he’s bending statistical software, artificial intelligence or building ML tools, he’s only looking to automate model building, evaluation and deployment so there’s more time to focus on customer behaviour, future trends, and monetisation. Which as a former CMO, CTO and CEO, he has a remarkable capacity to synthesise into a language that’s quickly relatable.
When he’s not talking all things North Star metrics, Vlad is a proud health & fitness fanatic, an adoring husband, and a newly minted father of two. Free time? Let’s just say weekends are now officially booked solid.
Our latest thinking…
Articles
Growth Leadership: New leadership for a new ‘pedal to the metal’ world
Business leaders faced an all-time-high rate of change in 2024, spurred by rapid advancements in generative AI according to Accenture’s new Pulse of Change index, and the pace will accelerate throughout 2025 and beyond.
40 Habits of Growth Leaders
Worst First: Start your day by tackling the most unpleasant task. Getting it out of the way early sets a productive tone for the rest of the day.
Peak Times: Figure out when you're most productive and schedule your important tasks during those times. Save less demanding tasks for your off-peak hours.
Growth Partners : 8 skills, beliefs & behaviours shaping law firm leadership in 2025.
Law firms have always had to adapt to change to remain profitable and relevant to clients, but 2025 looks to be the year in which law firm leadership experiences a transformative shift.
Enough about us, let’s talk about you.
Are you readying your business to thrive in an increasingly digital and interconnected world – or launching something new?
We appreciate hearing from our clients and network. If you would like to contact us to discuss any of our services, ask for career advice or to simply provide confidential feedback on your experience with our business, please send us a message.
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Ways to get in touch
If you're not a forms-kinda-person, simply email us - hello@hppeople.com