STRENGTHENING HUMAN SYSTEMS UNDER PRESSURE
Helping individuals and teams think, decide and lead with clarity; thrive through complexity, pressure and uncertainty; build resilience; learn and recover rapidly; create and innovate; and perform at their mental and physical peak — all without compromising mental health or wellbeing.
About us
We are a specialist people development company.
We strengthen the human systems behind elite performance, national capability, critical infrastructure, and high‑risk human environments — the individuals and teams whose thinking, decisions and behaviour shape competition, mission and business success, safety, and national outcomes.
We work where humans must deliver at the edge of their capacity and possibility — when it matters most.
What do we do ?
We deliver coaching, leadership development, peak‑performance programmes and keynoting — powered by a fundamentally different mechanism of change.
Our work looks familiar from the outside, but the way we create change is not. We work at the level of the human systems that drive clarity, decision‑making, resilience and performance.
Learn more about what makes our approach different.
We deliver our work is delivered through one‑to‑one and in groups in three core areas:
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Business, competition mission critical needs — and the incidents that arise within them.
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Urgent, time‑restricted, accelerated development, rapid change, transformation or progression in response to unexpected circumstances.
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Strategic development, growth and succession planning.
Who do we work with?
We are trusted by people whose decisions carry real‑world consequence.
We support those who perform on the world stage, protect nations, advance science, serve the public, uphold justice, and safeguard communities.
Our clients include Olympic athletes and coaches, elite sporting bodies, defence‑adjacent operators, scientific institutions, complex multinationals, public institutions within the justice system, emergency‑response agencies, high‑risk human‑services charities, and organisations delivering complex, multi‑stakeholder defence, public‑service and critical‑infrastructure contracts.
How are we different?
We offer something truly unique:
We recode the underlying mechanisms that drive thought, emotion and behaviour — processes usually considered outside conscious control. These mechanisms shape peak performance, leadership, resilience, creativity, innovation, learning and safeguarding long before conscious awareness comes online.
We strengthen human systems by working directly with these mechanisms, recoding them where necessary to enable clarity, decision‑making, resilience, creativity and peak performance with far less effort and far greater stability.
We help individuals, teams and organisations understand and optimise these mechanisms sustainably for lasting high impact and value — enabling them to achieve more with less energy, access clarity, flow and resilience, and operate at their peak without compromising health or wellbeing.
This is not psychology, mindset work, traditional coaching, high performance or leadership development.
This is cutting‑edge neuroscience applied to human systems performance — working with the rapid, automatic, predictive processes that shape thought, behaviour and capacity outside of conscious control.
Our approach draws on the most relevant insights from neuroscience, systems thinking, embodied cognition and emerging fields at the intersection of biology and physics — without being bound to any single discipline. It is grounded in the science of how humans actually learn, adapt and change.
By working at the mechanism level — the deep patterns that determine how people perceive, interpret and respond under pressure — we create swift, lasting shifts that hold in complex, high‑stakes environments.
This deeper work restores capacity, prevents burnout, enables rapid, sustainable performance gains and unlocks higher‑order thinking — allowing people to think clearly, act decisively and operate at their best when it matters most.
The result is measurable, high‑impact, high‑value change, that is often beyond professional personal outcomes, delivered precisely where and when it matters most.
Our founder
I’m Clare, founder of Beyond Instinct and the architect of Human Systems Development.
For 26 years I’ve worked in every imaginable setting from Olympic training centres, military bases, health facilities, corporate environments and everywhere in between.
I support individuals, groups, small businesses and global organisations whose decisions carry real‑world consequence who perform on the world stage, protect nations, advance science, serve the public, uphold justice and safeguard communities.
I work at the limits of human capability.
My purpose is to stretch the boundaries of possibility and human capacity — and enjoy the work along the way.
Human behaviour has fascinated me for as long as I can remember — especially how patterns become ingrained and unconscious and how they can be changed. I see things others don’t and pay attention to information, subtle signs and patterns that others miss.
I’m energised by how rapid fundamental transformation is when the underlying mechanisms update and what becomes possible when people are operating at their best.
I’m a “what‑if” thinker by nature — constantly mapping connections, seeking out knowledge and drawing from different disciplines to apply insights where they create the most leverage. I naturally make connections across boundaries and contexts, synthesise information quickly and generate solutions others wouldn’t think to try.
My expertise is built on practical experience across diverse contexts, a lifelong fascination with how behaviour takes shape, and the ability to select and integrate learning from multiple disciplines in real time according to the needs of the people I’m working with. I’m someone who walks the path myself, dedicates the time, and is always learning and moving forwards — refining and evolving the frameworks that underpin Human Systems Development and make our work at Beyond Instinct exceptional.
Clients describe me as quick, effective, highly experienced, deeply human and exceptionally skilled at what I do. They describe my work as precise, grounding and transformative — bringing clarity to complexity, shifting long‑standing patterns quickly, and enabling people to operate with greater ease, stability, capacity and clarity when it matters most.