Fractional Chief Human Performance Director
Fatigue and injury climbing, capability programs that do not hold, and no senior seat accountable for how the work is designed. Dr Anthony Walker takes the fractional seat: executive-level human performance leadership scoped to what you need, with redesign work priced as fixed engagements and capability transfer built in.
The seat comes with a method. Every engagement runs on the Crucible Method: Scan, Sprint, Build. You know what you are buying, what it costs, and what you walk away with.
The Problem We Solve
Leaders of mission-critical operations face the same bind: the risks that decide frontline performance, fatigue, rostering, workload, capability, sit with no single senior owner, and a full-time appointment is difficult to fund and harder to fill.
So the accountability fragments. Safety holds part of it, HR holds part of it, operations holds the consequences, and external providers each hold a program. Every one of them treats a symptom, and the work itself, the rosters, roles, tools and decision rights that generate the risk, stays exactly as it was.
A Fractional Chief Human Performance Director closes that gap: one senior executive, accountable for how the work is designed, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time appointment, and with the evidence discipline to make every decision stand up to scrutiny.
"Your teams are capable. Your systems should be too."
The Seat
Executive-level human performance strategy tied to your operational goals, held by one accountable seat.
01
Operations, safety and capability goals pulled into one human performance strategy, so the programs stop competing and start compounding.
02
Measurement of the work, not the worker: how rosters, roles, tools and decision rights actually perform in the field, on observed data rather than survey opinion.
03
Hands-on leadership for your internal teams and external providers, so every program answers to one design intent and one standard of evidence.
04
Evidence that holds up under board, regulator and coronial scrutiny, built into the way decisions are made rather than assembled after the fact.
The Model
The fractional seat keeps senior oversight in place. When redesign work is required, it is scoped and priced as a fixed engagement, never an open-ended day rate.
A defined fraction of a senior executive: strategy, oversight, direction and board-level accountability for human performance risk. You get the seniority of a chief officer appointment at the cost profile of a part-time engagement, with a working network across Defence, emergency services and federal agencies behind it.
"Capability transfer is built in. Your people run the system, and OHP exits on plan."
Dr Anthony Walker · Founder & Managing DirectorWhere the seat identifies work that must change, the redesign is delivered through The Crucible Method as a fixed-scope, fixed-price engagement: Scan diagnoses, Sprint redesigns, Build embeds. The fractional seat sets the direction; the engagements do the heavy lifting; your leaders hold the result.
Ask any provider what happens after they leave. The Crucible Method's third stage is the answer to that question: capability transfer is a scheduled program with a completion review, not a line in a proposal.
The Method
Redesign work is never an open-ended day rate. It runs as fixed Crucible Method engagements: each stage standalone, each with a defined deliverable, sequenced when run together. You cannot redesign what you have not diagnosed, and you cannot sustain what your leaders do not own.
STAGE 01 · SCAN
Critical Role Performance Scan
Twelve field tasks that show you how work actually happens in your critical roles: the gap between how the work is designed and how it performs under real operational conditions. This is the diagnostic the fractional director runs in the first 90 days.
You walk away with
An evidence-based map of where your work system helps or limits performance, actionable with or without progressing to Sprint.
STAGE 02 · SPRINT
Critical Work System Redesign Sprint
The pillars your evidence says are most constrained, rebuilt through one disciplined eight-step delivery engine: scope in writing, data, interviews, evidence-first analysis, findings presented data-first, handover.
You walk away with
A one-page executive dashboard and full findings report per pillar, and defensible pillar scores that stand up to board, regulator and coronial scrutiny.
STAGE 03 · BUILD
Critical Role Capability Program
Four half-day workshops across 12 to 14 weeks, with group debriefs and 1:1 coaching between each, for cohorts of 6 to 12 supervisors. This is the exit mechanism: capability transfer is a scheduled program with a completion review.
You walk away with
Supervisors equipped to run high-performing, high-risk teams, 90-day plans presented at completion review, and OHP out the door on plan.
Who It's For
Who Takes the Seat
Dr Anthony Walker
Founder & Managing Director, Optimised Human Performance
Anthony has sat in the chair this seat reports to: directorate-level responsibility for the health and fitness of an emergency services agency of fifteen hundred personnel, program risk across an eighty-billion-dollar Defence air and missile defence program, and twenty years of frontline fire service operations as a firefighter and station officer, with a PhD in occupational physiology earned while serving.
Optimised Human Performance is the consultancy behind the seat, delivering The Crucible Method across Defence, defence-adjacent federal agencies, emergency services, resources and healthcare. Anthony also delivers the international keynote Past the Envelope, on command at the edge of physiological tolerance.
Ready When You Are
A 45-minute strategy call works through your operation, the risks currently unowned, and what a fractional appointment would take accountability for. If the fit isn't there, you'll leave knowing what to do instead. Or start with the evidence: the Crucible Scan runs as a standalone engagement.