Working Together

The contemporary business world is so dynamic that you must be continuously refining your business to remain profitable and prosper. So I advocate a pragmatic approach involving small, incremental improvements that can realistically be delivered at low cost, rather than an all-encompassing and costly "grand design" that may never be fully implemented.

In my experience, successful and sustainable change happens only when an organisation owns and drives the change process. Your business is pretty much unique, and so are your strategies and operating model in terms of processes, people, and technology. So avoid glossy consultancy firms charging huge rates because of their high overheads and offering "turnkey" solutions that may well result in an unsatisfactory "Procrustean Solution"...

Instead, I provide a bespoke service in which I diagnose and challenge the status quo and then to provide technical leadership, mentoring and skills transfer to help you implement the required changes.

As Andrew Maslow rightly observed...

  • My focus is primarily on helping SMEs locally (UK Midlands region),
  • I understand SMEs - I have been the owner of a small business for 17 years
  • I work with you rather than doing things to you so I pass on the skills necessary to sustain improvements and costs are minimised,
  • I am passionate about process and operational excellence so I really care about making a real difference to your performance and profitability,
  • I don’t make your problem fit a particular solution but draw on a toolbox of proven techniques from various improvement philosophies,
  • I tailor my approach to meet your specific needs,
  • I don't just peddle the latest MBA fad with its alphabet soup of jargon,
  • I will tell it like it is - no blethering on in "quango-speak" using arcane terminology such as 'upskilling', 'fitness for purpose', 'stakeholders', 'branding', 'heightening awareness' and all the other meaningless jargon so loved by our public servants.

I will challenge you to find fresh and creative ways of operating, then facilitate, coach and mentor. I will support, enable and encourage at every stage from the initial diagnosis to the final implementation to bring practical improvements for the business, and the people within it. I will help you to create a leaner, keener and more successful enterprise.

Ideally your team should do any improvement work themselves, under my guidance. If required, I can source a small "accelerated deployment team" to undertake specific improvement projects. As your managers learn first-hand to act on their organisation as a system, to see non-value-adding activities and to operate short-interval, visual control, they will start to change the way they think. They will begin to see for themselves the inefficiencies attributable to traditional methods of work and, as they change things, they develop more confidence in the better methods.

PLUS - you will NOT be charged until I understand the scope and nature of your problems and we have agreed a set of objectives, an outline programme and a start point.