About

I'm James A. Seechurn, an advisor based in San Francisco. I help companies build happier, more productive teams: workplaces where people have autonomy, real problems to solve, and colleagues they want to solve them with.

 

I spent twenty years in compensation and total rewards, advising technology and life science companies on how they pay, measure, and motivate their people. That work taught me where performance actually comes from. The systems most companies rely on — ratings, forced curves, cascaded goals, individual incentives — assume people must be pressured to perform, and the evidence on motivation has contradicted that assumption for decades. My practice helps leaders act on what the evidence shows: increase participation, extend trust, and give teams ownership of the work. Pay and sales compensation remain specializations, approached as signals of trust and instruments of participation.

 

I've written three books — What Pay Costs, Nothing Left to Take Away, and Close the Gap — host the Disengaged podcast, and publish weekly on Substack. If any of this resonates, I'd like to hear from you.

Expertise & Credentials block

Experience — 20+ years. Advising technology and life science companies, from founding teams to global enterprises. Senior roles at Radford (Aon) and Nua Group before founding James Alexander Consulting.

 

What I do

 

• Organizational design built on participation, autonomy, and trust

• Performance management and goal setting that support engagement

• Advisory for founders designing high-trust companies from day one

• Board and executive advisory through organizational change

 

Specializations

 

• Compensation strategy and pay structure design

• Sales compensation, simplified so sellers trust the plan

• Executive compensation