I work internationally and add value by bringing best practice to clients' businesses and organisations,
across industry, sector and national boundaries, and helping clients to adapt these
tools and techniques to their own circumstances and cultures in the commercial, governmental
and 'third sector'.
In this way I can help executives to become even more effective
as Lateral-thinking Leaders.
Examples of how my work benefits clients by transferring best practice from
outside their own industry include:
- Advising an internet company to understand customer needs better by using affordable
and sustainable market research techniques used successfully in the publishing industry and integrating those
techniques into the practices of the business.
- Working with major Indian corporations on new product development and marketing techniques bringing best practice from
other countries and industries including European businesses and the UK non-profit sector.
- Training senior hotel executives from across Europe and Africa in leadership and communication skills, for example in
leading 'virtual teams', using experience and
best practice from the other industries, sectors and countries including book distribution and the experience
of transatlantic partnerships.
- Teaching marketing and e-commerce in China using examples from the Europe and the USA, working
with business students to adapt best practice to the Chinese marketplace, taking account of
the developing infrastructure and different Chinese culture.
- Training staff in a major insurance company about management information systems, using lessons learned
in the not-for-profit sector.
- Working with a fast-growing magazine publisher to manage change by clarifying the company's
mission and improving internal communications with staff and stakeholders, using systems developed
in the voluntary sector and elsewhere.
- Training the management team of a hotel in the Middle East to measure competitors' strengths and weaknesses in
order to devise a winning competitive strategy using a powerful new planning technique
previously used in the banking industry in Europe, adapted successfully to the hotel and hospitality industry.
- Helping arts organisations to devise appropriate business plans and marketing strategies, using the best business techniques,
tools and models, adapted sensitively and creatively for the arts sector.
- Advising a bank on installing and using specialist intranet software learning
from the experience of a national charity, working in partnership with a web design company.
- Playing a part in a management team which achieved international co-operation between two major
charities in Canada and Britain, which drew on models
used by transnational corporations.
- Bringing Best Practice in business planning from Europe and the USA to a business planning
assignment in the United Arab Emirates.
- Advising a new IT co-operative in South Africa on strategic and operational matters, using experience of working with
co-operatives and the IT industry in Britain.
- Training managers in one of the UK's largest retail businesses in financial anaylsis techniques adapted from systems
developed for a major public sector agency.
- Devising a public consultation with a City Council adapting techniques used successfully in
market research in the commercial sector.
- Advising managers in an international book distribution business on how to apply e-commerce
software developed in a university.
- Offering options for the restructuring of a not-for-profit theatre company based on models used
in the IT sector, amended appropriately.
- Coaching and mentoring start-up enterprises in the creative industries using wide experience
of issues faced in the early
years by businesses in the publishing and broadcasting sector which are now established and successful.
- Training senior managers in an Indonesian utilities company (gas distribution) in leadership using techniques
used successfully by businesses in the USA.
- Setting up a management information system with a major public sector organisation in the UK by
adapting profit centre analysis systems from the commercial sector.
- Guiding a community organisation through the process of writing a realistic business plan
to attract initial public funding and ongoing commercial partnerships, using tools and techniques
used in industries as diverse as IT, publishing and banking.
- Hotel Training and Consultancy to the Hotels and Hospitality industry internationally,
including Hilton International, Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts, and Scandic Hotels. Expertise was
brought from book publishing and distribution, banking and the not-for-profit sector.