Each engagement begins with detailed analysis of the people, resources and culture of an organisation.  I work with your teams to identify problems and opportunities and provide the support to improve outcomes and align to strategy. I engage as an advisor, partner, mentor or Non-Executive Director and working closely with the “C” suite to navigate challenges and deliver real benefits.

Through many years working with leading and entrepreneurial businesses across industries, I maintain a large and active network of technologists, business leaders, functional specialists, business angels and financing organisations that I can access to maximise my value delivery.

Team and Organisation Audit

Growth puts many pressures on a business. Hiring and getting the most out of your team is one of the critical issue to get right. A dysfunctional team, an inefficient organisational structure or poor culture can lead to business underperformance or failure. As a CEO, seeing things from the inside can be difficult and comparing to outside best-practice almost impossible.

I have undertaken numerous assignments to analyse teams of executives and key staff to understand the dynamics, skills and processes they operate with. The first step is an in-depth discussion with the CEO and members of the “C” suite to understand the business, its market and perceived strengths and weaknesses.

The next step is a series of structured, confidential discussions with individuals across the organisation to ascertain performance, capabilities, morale and growth potential. Though individual discussions are confidential, the meta data is used to inform feedback and actions to fix issues and enhance the organisation and individual performance.

The output from the projects is a snapshot of the business defining its current state and challenges followed by a clear strategy and set of operational steps to align the team and organisation with the corporate goals.

Role Design

Business changes fast. The impact of new technologies, business models and many other factors create a dynamic environment where the old certainties of what a particular role should look like have gone. Organisations increasingly need to take a far more proactive approach to role design to optimise each staff members contribution to the organisation and to ensure their job satisfaction and thereby retain top talent.

The approach is to take a wide view of the organisation to understand the processes, responsibilities, outputs and information flows. Roles are then designed within this matrix to optimise both their and the organisations efficiency and value-add.

Executive and Team Mentoring

An external mentor brings many benefits to the executive team. Mentoring can focus on individuals, helping them develop skills or broadening perspectives or it can work at a team level to improve the dynamics, communications and processes of the executive team.

Human Resource (HR) Mentoring

As a function, HR is often viewed as a necessary overhead; pay, rations and risk management and as a cost centre where the output is difficult to value. The demands of the people side of your business can often mean that HR staff are forced to act tactically due to the day-to-day pressures and fail to contribute effectively to the attainment of strategic goals.

HR should be at the heart of any organisation. Businesses are people; they do not exist without people and the best businesses know how to harness the collective energies, talents and creativity of their teams. This happens through effective leadership backed up with a strategically aligned HR capability.

We have conducted assignments where we first understand the strategic objectives of the business and then engage with the HR team to help them create some space from their regular activities then focus on and prioritise actions that will contribute to strategic outcomes.

Mentoring helps them to prioritise tasks, anticipate needs, manage risk and communicate more effectively across the organisation.

After an initial intensive 1- or 2-day session, the mentoring service provides a once per week touchpoint to discuss issues, challenge beliefs and develop skills that align with the needs of the organisation. This provides for personal and team growth, deeper skills and enhances the value of the team to your business.

Career Counselling

Charting a course for your career can be daunting. Depending on your point of view, you are either faced with myriad choices or feel stuck in a cul-de-sac with no clear options for progression.

I have mentored and advised hundreds of people on career (and life) choices to maximise what they want to get out of life. I have helped students get their initial bearings, mothers to return to work or professionals seeking the next step up and all this across numerous industries.

More than just advice, I give you tools so you can help yourself, think rationally and open you eyes to the true range of opportunities than can be accessed.