The People Operator

The People systems that actually work, with the receipts.

A brief for Heads of People at venture-backed startups. Each issue takes one real problem in performance, comp, or hiring: what broke, the system that fixed it, and what changed afterwards.

LatestAI raised the floor and hid the ceiling.

By Owen Fleming, Head of People at a Series B fintech. I built the function from the ground up to 150+ people across the UK, US, Europe and Africa, and shipped 20+ tools to run it.

Free. Some Wednesdays. I have a day job.

Latest issues View all issues →
AI 28 Oct 2026

AI raised the floor and hid the ceiling.

Two people got the same feedback note in the same week. The writing was clean and it said nothing.

3 min read
AI 5 Aug 2026

The EU AI Act Deadline Moved 16 Months. I'd Still Run the Audit This Month.

I heard a lot of chat about the EU AI Act and hiring. Deadlines coming, serious fines, GDPR 2.0. Then the deadline got kicked down the road a bit.

3 min read
Hiring 15 Jul 2026

I built a bot to chase interviewers for feedback. Here is the whole system.

Chasing interview feedback was costing me hours every week. Now a bot does it, and it nudges the CEO the same as everyone else.

5 min read