About Think Hard Solutions
A founder-led advisory practice, built around the decision.
Think Hard Solutions helps organizations make consequential leadership decisions with clearer standards, better evidence, and an honest view of risk.
Heidi Garside leads every engagement and remains directly involved from the first question through the final advice. Trusted specialists join when the work requires additional expertise, perspective, or capacity.
How the practice works
The team is built around what the question requires.
Some engagements are led and delivered entirely by Heidi. Others benefit from additional expertise, interviews, facilitation, analysis, or capacity.
When that is true, Heidi brings in trusted collaborators whose experience fits the work. They are selected for the engagement, not simply assigned because they are available.
Clients know from the beginning who is involved, why they are there, and what each person owns. Heidi remains accountable for the overall direction of the work, the interpretation of the evidence, and the advice delivered to the client.
About Heidi Garside
Twenty years inside leadership decisions. Enough to know what holds up.
I spent two decades as an HR executive leading global teams and advising senior leaders and boards across talent, assessment, executive compensation, and organizational effectiveness. I lived with the consequences of leadership decisions long after the meeting ended.
I am data-first by nature. I push hard upfront to clarify what we are trying to understand, why it matters, and what evidence would help. Then I hold the work to that purpose.
When it is time to interpret what we have learned, I tell you where the evidence leads, what remains uncertain, and what I think matters most. You retain the authority to decide what happens next.
What the work taught me
The question matters more than the instrument.
Leadership questions rarely begin with a shortage of information.
They begin with a question that has not been made precise enough. When that happens, more assessments, interviews, and opinions can create activity without producing clarity.
I am good at getting underneath the stated request to determine what actually needs to be understood.
Sometimes the question is readiness for a role. Sometimes it is a leader’s impact on others. Sometimes it is a team or operating problem being carried by one person.
I do not assume the instrument defines the work. I determine what the organization needs to know, then build the evidence around that question.
What this gives you
A clearer decision, with the tradeoffs visible.
The standard
A standard that holds
The organization’s actual need stays visible throughout the work, so enthusiasm, familiarity, or pressure does not quietly change the question halfway through.
The read
An honest interpretation
You hear what the evidence supports, where the concerns are, what remains uncertain, and what additional information could change the conclusion. I will not create certainty the evidence cannot support.
The decision
The decision stays yours
I tell you what I think and communicate the implications, conditions, and tradeoffs. You retain the authority to decide, with a much clearer view of the decision you are making.
Background
The judgment comes from the work. The credentials support it.
Executive experience
More than twenty years as an HR executive leading global teams and enterprise work across talent, assessment, executive compensation, and organizational effectiveness, including presentations to boards of publicly traded Fortune 500 companies and privately held organizations.
Education and professional
MBA · ICF Associate Certified Coach · Private Directors Association member
Assessment practice
Deep assessment experience spanning executive personality and risk, leadership impact, team effectiveness, and intercultural effectiveness.
Selected credentials: Hogan Assessments and Hogan 360 · Korn Ferry 360 and Leadership Architect · Leadership Versatility Index · Intercultural Development Inventory · Team Diagnostic Survey
Start here
What are you trying to decide?
Bring the context, what you already know, and the part that is not resolving. I’ll tell you whether I think an independent read would help and, if so, what the work needs to answer.
Discuss the decision